China bans gold farming, gamers rejoice

At first glance this topic may seem like a total troll post.  China ban gold farming, ya right.  The reality is gold farming is now illegal in China as is trading virtual currency for real goods or services.  Another big issue with this new law means the sale of "pre-paid cards of cyber games" is no longer legal.  I don't know if the public wellness benefits of such a measure outweigh the losses in the economy but apparently the Chinese feel it does.

Could this be the miracle we were seeking to rid Gameriot of the persistently-annoying gold farmers that always try to sneak in late at night passing themselves off as inquisitive WoW players?  I know, I know, that may be a bit selfish of me.  What about all the people out of work?  Well to be honest I don't really feel for the business though I can sympathize with the employees.  I guess coming from the fact that they work a job which is surely frowned upon by Blizzard they shouldn't have expected some sort of union-like job security.  Job loss sucks however, so I can understand the impact this will have on lives and economy and that is zero fun regardless of what crappy jobs you may have been stuck in.

Coming from a gamer however I have little sympathy.  I am sure more people have bought gold then they will fess up to but this is largely a system that annoys most MMO players if not from an "unfair advantage" point of view but the in-game spam as well. 

The overall virtual gold market is estimated anywhere from 500 million to 1 billion dollars with some estimates of China having 80-90% of the market.  Eurogamer estimates are as high as 2 billion dollars with over 1 million Chinese involved in the business.  Surely some will stay in business illegally as they know nothing else. 

Interestingly I do wonder what kind of impact this will have on the market itself.  I imagine a majority of shops will shut down and that should cause the cost of gold to rise dramatically in a fairly competitive market.  May gold prices double or even triple?  I am not up on gold price fluctuations so I am curious to know what will happen.


(This post has been modified from the original post, now lacking obscure references)