Magincia Housing Lottery Scam. Our Future… coming right up.

[EvilPixieWorks]

A very bad idea: (Lotto is always a scam)

If you haven't seen it yet… New Magincia will have a lottery for the new, in town, plots. Each is 15x15 max. 22 lots per facet. These will make up the new town with a few NPC buildings. Each plot has it's own marker where you can buy tickets… unlimited amounts of tickets. Who really wins?

What this does… is remove gold from the system. They could have easily set up a lotto where you are bidding for 1 of the 22 plots… in the same glass-jar. Or just do 1 ticket per account for 1 of the 22. No, it's per plot. You can easily dump 100 million gold into 1 plot… or divide your money to go into a couple or each. So, in other worlds… you can put all your money into one basket and loose it all… or spread your money around and still loose every gold piece of your 100 million.

And I’m sure not saying that removing gold from the system is a BAD thing! It's a GREAT thing… but what will the cost of these plots be? From my small experiment, I’m estimating these new plots on Atlantic will run someplace between 200 million… and a full castle in Tram. Record prices, the likes have never been seen.

My experiment was bidding on lot SW-2, just north of the docks.
Total tickets sold: 150,143.
Price per ticket: 2k, each.
Total gold sink before the plot was awarded: 300,286,000 gold.

Remember… that’s over 300 million gold for a 15x15 plot.

I pooled some money, bought 21,300 tickets.
The sign gave me a 1 in 9 chance of winning.
My gold spent: 42,600,000 gold.

You could have thrown a bag with the 42.6 million down at the Luna bank and have just as much for the effort. Nothing. Didn’t win it… but that was not the point of the experiment.

Now… I know there are people who have no problem throwing 300+ million into a silly idea like this, but I work hard for my nearly worthless game money. hehe. Not happening. I’ll keep my town.

Just thought I would share. This should take billions out of the game, easily. Just based on the test shard, if all plots went 300m in tickets, that would be a 6,600,000,000 total, just talking about Tram. Seeing we all play Atlantic, you could maybe bump that a minimum of 10x? 60 billion gold. Could prices for goods actually go up with such a dent put in our community gold supply?

 

[T-Hunt]

No different on GL shard only spent 1 mill....but it is a test centre so who knows how it will go in real..

Are they worth it? **** NO!..

will i try for one ? yes..and i dont have millions.

Only people i see winning in the long run are the ones who sell ingame gold for real cash..

So ya i think they should have found a beter way to have a gold sink then this..

I ticket per account like the North plots would be beter..and no trial accounts..

only accounts opened for 30 days or more can purchase tickets also...stop the 1 month account on 3 off players....

You want a gold sink..simple pay rent for house size and storage in it..
That or just do a OH Sorry! whey deleated everyons gold but 1 million..

Haha , ya rite...

 

[Draken-Korin]

To the OP do you ever feel yourself getting a migraine overthinking the minutia of this game? Just curious.

 

[EvilPixieWorks]

Only people i see winning in the long run are the ones who sell ingame gold for real cash..

SOMEONE HIT THE NAIL RIGHT ON THE HEAD!

I was sharing this data with someone else… and the same topic came up, because we have problems with scripting book droppers that you report endlessly and nothing ever happens to them.

BUT, realistically… you can spend all of 2k and maybe actually win a plot. No one said you had to spend 300m, but you can bank on the fact the most greedy will have those lots for sale as soon as they are awarded. It's not like some of these really weird houses that get place “somehow”, from the past… when staff helped place houses for people. I love the idea this will be a true player town to some degree. Not worth it… for me too… I agree.

I would like to say, if you are playing GL real shard… or any of the lower populated shards, you could easily have a plot for 1 million gold. It's just that Atlantic is one of the more populated in the US shards.

I’m also sure newbie accounts will still have to be 15 days old… and then they have to PAY for them. And when the house falls, if it's either newbie account or someone just quits cold… the house may go back to the lotto again. More gold sink.

I also said for years they need to do a gold exchange… like after a major war, when the government prints far too much money for what they can back up. Like Italy after WW2. If you could imagine taking a wheelbarrow of cash to buy your weekly food? They had to do an exchange to get matters under control.


And to “Draken-Korin”… I’m just sharing the data I found. It's not like I didn’t play the ML Beta and kept everything I found a secret. Whoops! Did I type that? hehe.

 

[Hell's Ironworks]

Well imo they should have made all plots 1 ticket per account period. its not a gold sink if you have something you can RESELL for more than what you paid for. They should also have limited vendor counts to just a a few.

A gold sink to me is like the special hair and beard dyes you can buy from an npc alchemist. Pay alot of gold for something that can only be used by your char and cant resell.

25 million gold personnal bless deeds @ an npc scribe would have been a much better gold sink.

your opinions may differ...

 

[canary]

[

I would like to say, if you are playing GL real shard… or any of the lower populated shards, you could easily have a plot for 1 million gold.

You do realize that GL is one of the most populated shards in UO besides Atlantic, right?

 

[Assia Penryn]

Many people play multiple shards or have significant gold on multiple shards. I think the low population shards will go for much more than a million since people have the ability to sell the house deed if they win and that they can win multiple houses as far as I know. With the system they have in place, it has encouraged people to participate for financial advancement as well.

 

[EvilPixieWorks]

25 million gold personnal bless deeds @ an npc scribe would have been a much better gold sink.

Agreed 100%!!! No question.

I would much rather pay millions… and have something in return then zero payout. I may be funny that way… I don’t gamble.

I also thought it was a wonderful idea to have a gold trade-in at the library, zoo, and museum for goodies… but the price is far too high when we talk about 15 gold to 1 point. In many cases it's worth the extra work not to use gold, however I have thrown gold into the box vs. taming pets for months on end. At least you get something. Still, I would love to see a more “gold only” reward system that isn’t so hard to reach for so many. As anyone who plays other shards knows… some of them can get 18x18 plots for free. Gold isn’t so common, because it's not needed.

Like “canary” on GL… it would be interesting to see the outcome from that lotto system compared to ours. And to “Assia”… you know that the worst factions will be taking a strong interest to make a killing in profits. I’ve never even put real money into game stuff, pass the game code store… yet, if someone new needed gold, I would easily pay them gold for their real money investment.

Anyways… it shouldn’t be long. Maybe Monday or Tuesday. Then, I believe it's 10 days after the publish hits we’ll have some totals.

 

[Sarah Styles]

Here is my problem. I won on gl mag lottery then log on to claim and some other person placed there. The little note said the land was gone. But at least i had the stupid scroll of paper.


Why was the spot not held for me? I won and still some other person placed there.

It left me thinking about how the hell did that happen?


Have fun...

But those people in luna with all that gold sit in luna. Like sheep, if you win congrats. Dont win and let the house sit. Make these homes into a village that people will wanna come and see each and every day.

 

[EvilPixieWorks]

Here is my problem. I won on gl mag lottery then log on to claim and some other person placed there. The little note said the land was gone. But at least i had the stupid scroll of paper.


Why was the spot not held for me? I won and still some other person placed there.

It left me thinking about how the hell did that happen?

That was on the copy of GL on the test shard? I know the GM page doesn’t work on tests most of the time, all the tell you is to report issues to whatever website or whatever. That sounds extremely wrong. If you WIN and someone else places… they should have the house removed right away.

A critical flaw… and just to think, this is live on Origins shard right now!

Good lord… I could see how well this would work with our level of criminals on Atlantic. The staff better get it fixed. Please let us know if you find anything out.

 

[MrNiceMNC]

I think the system is fine. If people think its a bad idea just dont spend money on it. I went around and bought 100 tickets for each plot. Didnt cost me much at all I think 250k a plot? Anyways the pick is gonna be random. Watch it be someone who only bought one ticket. Is it the best gold sink? Not at all...is it a cool idea? I think so.

 

[Lady Mal]

I don't see the problem.

Give it enough time and the prices for the plots will drop significantly. Just like Ter Mur. It's just all very new right now, so people are for sure going to charge insane amounts for the plots they are selling. It's very spread out, and distant from both moongate and bank. I don't expect a Luna 2.

 

[EvilPixieWorks]

Well... small note to my first report... I don’t know if it was changed or like this one the test shard, half the lots are these limitless 2k tickets... and half are 1x only (Per account) 10k tickets.

Frankly, I love the 1x only ones... but the price should have been more like 100k or even 1m a pop. I still see it as highly interesting what people are pumping into the limitless lots. You will see the “shadiest” members of the community getting involved heavily… spending even a fraction of their horded riches, and turning that around in hopes of making a killing. That and the pro-gold seller companies, as our friend mentioned above.

All and all I think it will be a very interesting experiment and I am watching. I will also list out what totals I see in the final moments, before the deeds are awarded.

So far, 2 of the highest totals… as of Monday, April 4, 2011 (4:30pm EST):

10k ticket, 1 per account (highest): 470 (Plot C-3)
2k ticket, unlimited: 263,870,000 gold spent so far (Plot C-1)
(That’s up over 80m since this morning.)

6 days to go! It will be interesting! Party on.

 

[Roland']

Evil scripting book droppers. I trained 100scribe the otehr day and left books on the ground at haven for newbies, used the ec client for everygain. something like 3000 books 100 per bag.

i think the world is just out to get you. PS braveheart called.

 

[Ahuaeyjnkxs]

oh man...