When I was 16/17 years old I was clearing 500/1000 a week goldfarming for this game. Failed AP Calculus and stunted my social life.. and the money didn't last l

When I was 16/17 years old I was clearing 500/1000 a week goldfarming for this game. Failed AP Calculus and stunted my social life.. and the money didn't last long.. but it sparked an interest in software engineering and entrepreneurship that continues to this day. The margins for large scale botting operations on this game were absolutely ludicrous if you knew what you were doing. Gold coins were going for $5/million and a good bot could churn in about 7.2 million/day. The bot clients were a pretty un-optimized pile of java and could eat up about half a gig of ram each, but once you hit any sort of scale the vps's became a drop in the hat to the amount you were raking in. That hardest part was actually managing the cash flow. Gold was usually sold through paypal transactions and charge backs were egregiously common. Paypal would basically tell you to go fuck yourself because they were "virtual transactions" regardless of how much evidence was provided. I had a partner from New Zealand (now working in finance) who would negotiate bulk rates, as well as purchase accounts in order to optimize our workflow. Every now and then I look back and imagine how much I vould've made if I knew then what I knew now regarding scaling, coding, business, etc. I knew kids buying hundred thousand dollar sports cars with the money they earned. Sigh to be young again..