I ended up running a small experiment that turned out to be quite interesting. But first, a little background.
How I Got Into the Botting Industry
I have a disability, and finding work when I was younger was quite difficult, especially work I could do given my physical limitations. So I had to look for unconventional ways to earn money. One of them was working for a company that ran bots in World of Warcraft. This was back in the Wrath of the Lich King and Cataclysm days.
My job focused on the technical side of the operation rather than selling in-game gold directly. I launched bots, monitored them, leveled characters, and prepared accounts for automated farming. The scale was fairly substantial for the time. We had computers running 30–40 game accounts each, all at once.
Imagine dozens of characters automatically performing in-game actions, gathering resources, killing monsters, and earning gold. It was essentially a small-scale virtual resource production operation. For an ordinary player, World of Warcraft means entertainment, raids, dungeons, PvP, and spending time with friends. For companies involved in botting, it was also a virtual economy that could be turned into very real money.
I worked at one of these companies as a regular employee, which gave me a chance to see the industry from the inside. That experience changed the way I looked at video games.
