Farming

Farm·ing
a.

Pertaining to agriculture; devoted to, adapted to, or engaged in, farming; as, farming tools; farming land; a farming community.

Farm·ing
n.

The business of cultivating land.

Or so Webster's Dictionary says. I think I have a vague memory of that. But I am not sure. Think I might have met a farmer once, and he was doing exactly that, but it was early in my childhood and my memory wasn't well formed.

Farming is the killing of monsters for the purpose of gathering items, experience, gold, Faction, or promotion points and is considered to be one of the quickest and easiest ways to amass wealth.

Ah, now that sounds more familiar. You learn more about it here.

So yes, I do like playing video games and I happen to play Guild Wars, why that and not something else is besides the point (they're all the same). Now let's go back to the dictionary again:

game
n.

An activity providing entertainment or amusement; a pastime: party games; word games.

So... who exactly was the sick mind behind the idea of "farming" in video games? I can imagine the following discussion in a team developing games:

"- Oh shit! We worked 5 years on this game and the test users finished it in 10 hours! What do we do? What do we do?"
" - Oh well... we can't provide new content, that would actually mean working to make the game interesting and exciting. And even if we did that for a month or two, we definitively don't want to do that for the next two years! I mean that would mean us really working on the thing!"
" - Yeah, but what to keep our players busy with while we monthly take money out of their accounts for doing nothing?"
" - Well... I know! We can make them like work!"
" - Work?"
" - Yeah, you know like when you have a daily job and you have to go mine for ore or something."
" - Hmmm... mine for ore. So we just put some ore mines here and there... oh I have an even greater idea make the mining succeed or fail randomly! I mean it's not like a real miner in a mine, though some of them were dying weren't they?"
" - Yeah, that's a great idea! If we make mining to give in return random items and the cool ones will be rare I bet players will just mine forever hoping to get the rare items. I mean you know hope dies last!"
" - Excellent! That should keep many busy, but how about those that don't like mining?"
" - Oh well... make them farm!"

Brilliant, just brilliant. From game "an activity providing entertainment or amusement" to "mining and farming". Brilliant I tell you. No one would ever want to farm or mine in RL (that is Real Life) but they would all do it online! As if the modern man has so much free time and his job is not "job" enough, so we need to give modern man another "job" for the spare time.

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WTF? Really! WTF are you people doing? WTF are you gamers doing? Farming? And WTF are you game developers doing? Throwing work at people and *charging* them for working??? And making millions while at it?

I want a *game* I am *not* looking for a job! And I find mining and farming to be crappy jobs even if i was looking for one.