WoW may be taken offline for Chinese transition, says Morhaime
VG247: Blizzard boss Mike Morhaime has warned that the Chinese version of World of Warcraft may be taken offline while the company swaps operators in the country.
(PC, World of Warcraft)
The farmers play on American servers (at least, many of them do. I imagine gold is sold on Chinese servers too). So this won't affect them. More like the addicted players will all go out and get farming jobs so they can keep playing.
No joke.