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As to the effect of excessive farming, automated or otherwise, I do not believe that this sort of behavior would have a substancial detrimental effect.
Assuming 'Bad' Farming provides a proportionally large sum of money, what would one do with it? Sell it on ebay? Buy items on the AH?
If it were disproportionately distributed, via ebay or another real-life transaction, these other players would be faced with the same decision. What to do with the money?
What can money really buy in WoW?
For those whom have reached the 'end game' phase of WoW, money doesn't matter quite as much as the 'uber loot' bind-on-pickup items from high level instances. Money won't buy these items, and by the time you can actually use the best bind-on-pickup items, you've leveled up to the point where you can easily afford to buy most anything on the AH.
So, if a level 20 character suddenly had 5000 gold, what would happen? They might buy all the slots in the bank, and fill them with 16 slot bags. Maybe they'd outfit themselves with a full compliment of 16 slot bags to carry around, and the best level 20 equipment available on the AH.
Maybe they'd get a few enchantments.
Buying the bags would give some money to some high level players who made the bags, buying the enchantments would also give high level players some money. Not very much money, and certainly not enough to destabilize the entire economy.
What if they decide to power level a trade skill by buying out all the items on the AH that they need? They could buy up hundreds of stacks of wool, silk, dust, herbs, ore, whatever they needed. If they worked at it, they might level their trade up to 225 in a single session. They'd still have to actually 'play' the game to go level up to get beyond 225, (as I recall, I had to be level 40 to train alchemy beyond that point) and that's something money won't do for them.
What about all the materials they bought on the AH? I can't recall ever seeing a shortage of low-level trade goods on the AH. I'm not sure anyone could actually buy all of a certain category before people would keep selling more and more to replace it... So there wouldn't likely be a shortage of the materials for other people. But what about prices of these materials? Would they skyrocket as our imaginary rich character bought these items in massive quantites? Once he was done buying them, who would pay the high prices? Lower level characters who would typically buy them couldn't afford them, so they would either farm them themselves, or wait for the inevitable undercutting process to take over, and deflate prices within minutes.
Even if a relatively large percentage of players, perhaps as high as 20% on a single server suddenly had thousands of gold, there's just not much you can really do with it to actually affect other people.
If someone outbids me on a really rare item, it doesn't really matter if they 'bought' their money or not, as there's always going to be someone richer out there who actually earned their money some other way than 'bad' ways.
Let's take this to the extreme.
What about the 'normal' person running about trying to make their way through WoW, without the excess gold 'everyone' else would have if 'bad' farming were rampant?
Would they still sell their vendor trash after killing level 1 mobs and learning the ropes?
Would they still run around doing quests, gaining money and items from NPCs and looting items as they gained XP? Would they still buy the level 1-10 grey equipment sold by the vendors before they could even begin to look at what's for sale on the AH?
When would they start to be affected by being the only person on the server without 5000 gold in their pockets? NPCs wouldn't change their prices for training. Minerals and herbs would still be found in the usual places in the wild, fish would still be swimming about in the streams and lakes.
They could still take their linen scraps gathered from kobold corpses and fashion tattered robes to train their tailoring, and assemble meager leather armor from the skins of the animals they've killed.
The only place that would affect him would be if he tried to buy something on the auction house. If everyone was so rich, and gold worthless, he wouldn't be able to afford anything. He'd be forced to kill things, run through instances, and use what he found on corpses for equipment... until he found something to sell.
He could go collect some kind of trade good, and sell it on the AH at huge prices (everyone is rich, so prices must be super high) and suddenly he'd have a lot of money too. After selling a bunch of things he found in the game, he'd be rich from selling items at fantastically inflated prices. Just like everyone else.
I don't know about you, but that really sounds pretty similar to my own personal experiences in this game. Everyone else seems super rich, you work your way up to having as much gold as everyone else, because no one can affect what you make or find out in the wild. Anyone can find a really rare item that makes them a fortune overnight. Anyone can spend 24/7 grinding through instances to find rare items, and be on equal footing with all the other ultra-rich players.
I've heard a lot of people say that 'bad' farming would destroy the economy, but I just don't see how that would happen...
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