我们试图在《魔兽世界：Forever》中两小时内赚取尽可能多的金币——其中包括抢劫、诽谤和至少一次崩溃

If you want to make money in World of Warcraft, well… I cannot rightly say that we at PC Gamer are any good at it, based on the evidence given to us—but we are at least inventing new ways of money-making. And isn't invention the mother of necessity? Or was it the other way around? Who cares, we've got pockets to line.

I wrangled two of my erstwhile co-workers, Fraser Brown and Joshua Wolens, to see which of us was the best at making money in World of Warcraft: Forever's beta. Which felt like a fair testing ground, given both how populated it is and how un-inflated its new, fledgling economy would be. Here were the rules:

• We started as level 1 horde characters.
• We each had a nest-egg of 20 silver to get us started.
• Starting from our spawning points into Azeroth, we had to make as much gold as we could in two hours.
• There were some additional rules about auction house postings that didn't become relevant.
• No really. I spent a lot of time thinking about them and their implications for the challenge. None of us bothered.
• I'm definitely not mad about it.

Each of us entered with a different strategy. Well, two of us did (more on that later) to try and make the most bank. I, the Orc of Wisdom, would weaponise my 15+ years of roleplay experience to trade knowledge with the masses. Josh, the Majestic Celebrity, would try to wield his status as a games journalist and very famous person to his benefit—hamstrung only by the fact he had never actually played much World of Warcraft.

There was also Fraser, as Boeuf Beef, who did a secret third thing. I'll let him enlighten you about his masterful machinations myself.

This is a story of wisdom, courage, and bull-headed bravery—and, more importantly, it's a story of how those virtues could be mercilessly weaponised to siphon as much money from the economy as possible.

I've been roleplaying in MMOs for about 16 years—it is, in fact, what got me into writing—so rather than simply beg the masses for hand-outs, I would use it. I am, first and foremost, an entertainer.

I assembled a document full of snippets of wisdom—some reworded adages and sayings, others my original work—and decided to leverage them around WoW: Forever's new campfire feature. For those not in the know, anyone with a cooking skill can set down a campfire, around which may be set various fixtures. Sit around the fire for a minute, and you'll get buffs.

This made for a pretty cheap initial investment of seven silver and 66 copper: Enough to train my cooking skill as well as some simple wood and tinder. All of which was available on the jog up to Razor Hill, which was very pretty. An auspicious sign, I thought, for my journey.

With the ability to make campfires in hand, I parked myself somewhere people would be forced to interact with me by game mechanics alone: The top of a zeppelin tower. Being the only convenient route to the Undercity, home to the new Ruins of Lordaeron dungeon everyone was keen to try, passengers would be forced to stand around while I gave them my spiel.

Originally, I was going to set a static price for my wisdom—but at the last minute, I decided to change my tact to simply requesting whatever people could spare. I am, after all, a humble old orc simply looking for a hot meal and a place to stay. Durotar nights get so very cold.

And, listen—I'm guilty of my fair share of cynicism of the MMO populace, but the two hours I spent up here were nothing short of delightful as the WoW community played ball. Here's a short-list of the characters I encountered:

• A druid, who could not give me money, but did give me meat.
• An absolute mensch who gave me one entire gold piece.
• An elf who was very mean to me, but hit my ramblings about the vigors of youth with "And the daftness of age is clear upon your face", which is unfortunately a solid dunk.
• An undead named Glenda, perhaps my one true love, who replenished the fire for me when it ran out.
• A tauren who gave me 5 silver, then whispered to me that he didn't want wisdom, he just wanted to tip me for my good roleplay.
• An orc rogue who straight-up mugged me (note: threateningly opened a trade window). She got so into the RP that she panicked when the zeppelin was leaving and managed to fall off the tower instead.
• A cat burning themselves on my fire. TheOrc OfWisdom said this was concerning, to which someone else quipped: "Don't worry. They've got nine lives."
• An undead who told me I couldn't park here, and that it was "time to move". Then then proceeded to bust it down. TheOrc OfWisdom took a break to bust it down with them.

I had a lovely old time—and one that was very profitable. My final score—minus my initial silver stipend—can be found at the bottom of this article.

I don't know what WoW is. I don't know what my abilities are. I don't know where this zeppelin is taking me and I don't know what the buttons in my hotbar do. I don't know what any of this shit is and I'm fucking scared.

What I do know: I'm incredibly important. My name is on something like 68 million articles on PC Gamer dot com, making me a rough hybrid of Scarlett Johansson and George Herbert Walker Bush in fame and significance. Play to your strengths, they always told me, so off I went to ignore circa 99% of WoW's actual mechanics in favour of simply impressing my incredible renown on other players and asking them for money.

My other strength is slander, so at the same time as I harangued people about my own importance, I also let them know that my two opponents were dreadful. Just utter bastards.

This worked alarmingly well. Did you know you can just ask people for money and get it? I might try this out in real life. Just a few minutes in, my very first beg netted me some silver pieces and well-wishes.

The issue was not the effectiveness of my tactics but my complete unfamiliarity with the videogame 'World of Warcraft'. I quickly realised that I had genuinely no idea what the relative value of these coins were. Is a silver piece nothing? Is it a billion dollars? Am I the richest man in MMO history already?

Likewise, simple mechanics hamstrung me. Did you know to actually get into The Undercity there's a whole elevator system? I didn't! So instead I just sort of roamed around the top part for a while, unsure what kind of zone I was even in. This was, on reflection, not a lucrative use of my time.

The highlights of my adventure? I'll be honest, I mostly just had a pleasant time ambling from town to town and asking people to give money to the world's most important man (me). This did backfire once, though.

In dialogue with one player, Zippie Skadoo, I referred to him as a "good man" (or maybe "good friend," I forget). It turns out this was not acceptable. Zippie Skadoo quickly educated me that he was, in fact, bad to the bone, on the verge of going berserk, and might be inclined to assault me.

So that could have gone better.

Elsewise? I reckon I could have won this thing had I not wasted time in A) The Undercity and B) taking a boat or something to another continent and getting repeatedly killed by panthers for a bit.

Lessons for next time, I suppose, when Majestic Celebrity once again graces… Azeroth(?) with his presence.

I've been playing WoW off and on since 2004. So you'd think I'd find this challenge a doddle. Nope! This was, and I am not prone to exaggeration, the worst two hours of… if not my entire life, at least this month.

OK, so, I didn't have a plan. Or rather, my plan was to tell everyone I had an amazing plan, in the hope that an amazing plan would just pop into my brain. It did not. What actually happened was I rushed headfirst into insanity. It's a good thing the video accompanying this is short, because I really don't want the world to see the extent of my madness.

At one point, I just started making animal noises.

After failing to prepare a plan, I decided to simply skin a bunch of critters and make money that way. Perhaps selling them to generous players. Easy, right? Obviously not, or I'd still have my sanity. I have listened back to my full recording and plucked out some choice quotes.

• "I'm flagging and it's only been half an hour."
• "What am I doing with my life?"
• "I feel time just slipping away."
• "My screams of anguish have woken both my dogs."
• "I am so angry."
• "I am filled with rage."
• "I am filled with rage. I am filled with rage."
• "This is my supervillain origin story."
• "This is Hell. This is Hell."
• "I have lost my mind."

So, yeah, I had a great fucking time. And then I had to listen to my two-hour descent into madness. Which, let me tell you, was not fun! I got to relive the experience of wasting time and money when I should have been making money.

At one point, I spent about 20 minutes trying to complete a single quest, which I should add only promised a reward of two silver. I never really dipped into WoW Classic, so I forgot how unforgiving OG WoW was. I'm not used to being a weak baby who will die as soon as a large bird or boisterous pig-man so much as looks at me. And I was already tired and annoyed by this point. I could have moved on. But I was determined to complete this stupid bloody quest. And I did it! I got my two silver.

Why was I even taking quests on!? I should have just stuck to murdering and skinning critters.

Anyway! I had a horrible time, made less than 10 silver, and because I'm not a very nice man, the knowledge that Josh and Harvey had a lovely time only makes me feel worse.

The final scores...

At the end of our two-hour stint, we'd made a combined two gold, 49 silver, and 20 copper, after subtracting our 20 silver stipends. Which isn't exactly that much for a combined six hours of work, but given we were all starting at level one? I'm not that upset.

Last place: Fraser

9 silver, 89 copper.

I will be donating this to whatever charity is willing to help me get my revenge.

Second Place: Josh

1 gold, 13 silver, 25 copper.

So near and yet so far. Were it not for my panoramic ignorance, I probably could have come a lot further ahead than I did. I'm not even talking about the game anymore.

First place: Harvey

1 gold, 26 silver, 6 copper.

I honestly didn't expect this to work nearly as well as it did.

It's somewhat telling that Josh managed to produce roughly the same result by simply telling folks that he was trying to beat "two bastards" in a competition. Still, I chalk this up to WoW's community being refreshingly funny and willing to play ball: I had a lot of folks whispering to me during my wise vigil with kind words, which honestly brightened up my time as TheOrc OfWisdom considerably.

What did we learn? I think, unfortunately, that begging in an MMO is surprisingly effective, provided you're insightful or "famous" enough. Maybe stick to selling copper bars, or something.

Best MMOs: Most massive
Best strategy games: Number crunching
Best open world games: Unlimited exploration
Best survival games: Live craft love
Best horror games: Fight or flight