Im addicted.
But you miss an important points. Hacking, scripting, and exploiting has nothing to do with profit makers or pvpers. They use whats available.
If you had a game that could not be hacked, exploited or scripted... You would not lose business. Your logic is a bit flawed. Here is why...
Your suggesting stopping these things cause players to quit. Or if they are banned you end up losing some player base. Banned players return currently when caught.
Profit is made in UO if you script or gain in normal game play. I used to sell on ebay. I'd sell what I would get. Sold gold sometimes when you got $20 per million. Normal play.
You see where I am headed. Normal game play netted me $20 for a million. Now you buy gold $1 per million. Scripting and exploiting only drives down selling price, it doesnt create the business. They dont care if they get $20 per million or $20 per 20 million. Its business. Scripting and hacking etc isnt needed for these companies to stay in business. I think it actually hurts them in the long run. Even dupes, just drive down cost.
If the scripting, exploits and hacks are removed, eventually normal game play becomes profitable. No one is going to leave the game if the game is fixed up.
Actually more will return... PvP will be even. Selling items will be even. Or close to it. Banned players will come back on a different account.
The key is a level playing field. "okay if I script I get caught" to "how can I get items to sell without scripting"
1. Normal game play.
2. Buy items for RL cash and resell them higher for RL cash.
3. Script on a dead account and lose nothing when caught.
I don't know... I dont understand why people think profit players would quit if scripting ends or once banned they would never come back. It doesnt happen.
You Kindof forgot some very important factors.
1)Back in the days it took a very long time to aquire 500k gold let alone 1mil gold.
2)Many Gold dupes which were a problem with the code increased the availabilty of gold 10000x %.
3)Gold doesn't easily leave it just exchange hands.
4)Back then UO didn't have much competition.
5)Back then UO graphics was only a few yeasr old and catered to the players who enjoy content and remmebr ultima series. These days the younger generation is only interested in High graphics. I can't even get anybody to play for more than a day.
6)Ebay allowed easy transactions after ebay banned all virtual wares UO market slowed to a crawl.
7)Making 100's of million generated by the current system through normal playing is pretty easy for anybody who is a vet compared to the old days.
8) No new players coming in and they wont. They don't know anything about cheating,scripts,market. They only know the game is old.
9)No shelf present most likely not enough sales to justify the the cost.
10) Returning vets left for more reasons than just other people cheating. They left cause it got dull,better things,loss of income,They get all there pvp fun in freeshards " How can you compete with free?" Nerfs and a variety of other reasons way too numerous.
11)If the players playing now haven't left yet then theres a good chance they won't.
Finaly reality is we are standing on balcony and a couple of pushes and nudges will make us fall to our shards death. Reduction first then that will accelerate the players that leave cause there homes are gone and then finaly closing.
Whatever they do if they do anything they must be as careful as walking in a mindfield.
Now in calculation these factors must be included in a overall view.
