Internet-age miners had always accompanied massively multiplayer online games, or MMOs, including Ultima Online and OSRS Gold. They even worked on some text-based virtual worlds, said Julian Dibbell, now a technology lawyers who used to write about virtual economies in his journalistic work.
In the past, a lot of these gold miners were located in China. Many hid in makeshift factories, where they slaughtered virtual ogres as well as looted their bodies in 12-hour shifts. There were even reports of the Chinese government employing prisoners to create gold farms.
In RuneScape, the black-market industry that was backed by gold farmers was relatively small--until 2013. People were unhappy with the extent to which the game had changed since it was first launched in 2001. Therefore, they requested Jagex to bring back the original version. Jagex released one from its archive, and players flocked back to what would later be called Old School RuneScape.
Many of them were similar to Mobley. They played RuneScape when they were teenagers and looked back fondly on the exaggerated graphics and funky soundtrack. Although these 20- and 30-year-olds could spare a few hours as children They now had responsibilities beyond their homework.
"People work, and might have families," said Stefan Kempe who is another popular producer of content for RuneScape who has close to 200k subscribers and goes under the name SoupRS in an interview. "It's one of the factors that limit how much they are able to play everyday."
The game isn't easy. To boost a character's agility from 1 to 99, which is the most powerful level, it's going to require more than a week of nonstop play, according to a thorough tutorial published by the game's developer with Buy RuneScape Gold. Since they now had more than their typical allowances at the age of 18, players like Mobley, who works in the data center, decided to skip the hassle of leveling up their characters, the cost of rare items, and the often boring beginnings to the game.