Re:
Sorry, but I'm definitely not having this problem at all. If anything, my "to do" list in UO is almost overwhelming. I play on multiple shards and very very few of my characters have what I consider perfect or near-perfect gear. And I'm not an anomaly either.
I'm aware of many PvPers who play multiple shards for a variety of reasons (e.g., better fights, more opportunity to do champs and harrowers, etc.) and am pretty certain they are all in more or less the same situation. Some may have more gold than others to buy what they need on the shards they visit; however, I think a fair number of them are still "farming" for ingredients and probably will be for quite some time. There are also some that feel that the faction artifacts may become nonfunctional if there's a faction revamp and they are working now to replace their faction artifacts before that happens.
And then they are the event-item collectors and/or roleplayers who play on multiple shards. I don't see them going away either, unless EA decides to make event items non-transferable. These people are also most likely still making more characters and perfecting all of their suits.
There are also a number of people like me who just plain like to try out other shards and/or enjoy the challenge of building up new characters. Some may do it because most of their old friends have left the game and continuing to play on their home shard is almost too painful for the constant reminders of people who are no longer around or just flat out doesn't feel like "home" any more.
All in all, I would certainly say the situation is nowhere close to as dire as you make it out to be. PvM farming for ingredients, loot, and gold is far from dead. Just because people aren't putting their ingredients on vendors doesn't mean they aren't still collecting ingredients. I believe a lot of people who used to run vendors in the past with the idea of trying to provide a service to their shard just simply got tired of seeing their stock bought out and sold by someone else at a mark-up. Argue all you want about how there's not a problem with that; however, I think that practice has really put a sour taste in the mouths of people who laboriously went out and collected resources and/or crafted goods without the aid of scripting and put it on vendors in hopes of providing a much-needed service and making a modest profit. Some of those people may still be around after having their modest dreams dashed by the big greedy merchant billionaires of UO; however, I expect that now they sell their goods directly to others and advertise by word-of-mouth or via chat or a forum.
If you and your league of merchants are despairing because you've run out of small-time suppliers, maybe you need to look at how you treat other players. Maybe it's time you come up with a more cooperative and inclusive system for making money from merchanting, instead of one that only benefits your little price-fixing, player-gouging clique.
Assume people don't like to start over from scratch as thats a very small minority and really is another way to fix the system by doing a complete wipe. i am against that though.
Event hunters are always waiting for the next event if a event don't come it's over for them.
Rare hunters there less and less rares these days. I know I used to be one of them. The community of rare hunters have fallen of the map lately.
In all the thought. Siege must be excluded from this conversation there system is different. The once farming for ingrediants are the players in dead shards where there is nobody that can sell them the rare ingrediants. The markets are shot out from those poor shards so they have to do things themselves.
Sure there are players farming in other shards as essences and the rare drops are the only thing that sells really in PVM. Take those away and am sure they all be as dead as the old dungeons.
It is dire you will see it sooner than later even if you don't see it now. Run around to those old community vender malls outside luna that stood up around your shard and still were around. Hell just run around luna don't you notice something. Take a trip down to any dungeon other than SA. Matter of fact remmeber how when the spawns in SA where camped that you had to take turns. Run around there on peak hour and notice where there should be 20 players there is only 2. look around open your eyes. Don't think about the short term look at the long term.
Head to test center and give your self everything then don't play anything but test center don't PVP there either just do trammel things there untill you get sick and tired of it. Then imagine that in pubic shards.
Head to a populated shard Farm anything that doesn't give you essence or rares for a week. Then think about it for a sec and ask yourself why are you killing this creature?
We have some time but it's inevitable there is no way around it. 1+1 =2 and not 4. No matter what the reason fact is fact there is no interpretation about it. What is unseen will be seen eventually. Look around.
Word of advise. Nobody can price fix anything players pay what it's worth based on supply and demand people can only manage the uncontrollable with teamwork so the market doesn't become like the poor guy who couldn't find seeds in chessy. As long as the player who made the resource or gathered the resource got paid what they asked for then they shouldn't worry about what theplayer who bought from them does with it. We have enough of that from the music comapanies already.
The only ones who suffer from low prices are players who pvm'ers,blacksmith,imbuers,tailors,carpenters,fletchers,,botanist,miners,lumberers,fishers,crafters,vender home owners,poor players who work hard,idocers,leather gatheres,cooks,beggers,rare thief,champ spawners,real state sellers and sorry for anybody else i missed
The ones who suffer from High prices are Pure pvp players,reds,faction pvpers,roleplayers who talk in weird language and don't leave the in character state, lazy players who want everything handed to them,Rich players,decoraters,realestate buyers,hobbyist.
Newbies are categorized in both areas as they suffer short term from high prices cause they can't afford anything but they also suffer long term because they can't make enough gold from the products they produce to actualy catch up to the rest of us. So in the short term they need things to be cheap but in long term they need things to be priced high.
Resellers which is how aquire my funds are immune from low prices and high prices. We make the same profit regardless and do not need to produce anything from scratch so we don't lose time,gold or work. the person who gathered something makes the 100k from us and we sell it for 125k all we made was 25k. the one who produce it makes alot more than we do but they do the work so they deserve it. We just have customers and more personal relationship and ties that have more gold to spread around for the pleasure of always being supplied and personal interaction or enjoy buying in bulk to use or resele themselves. Still we always make alot less on the product than the player who aquired it or produce it for himself. Thats how it works. Works like that in real life. Manufacturer-wholesaler-retail-customer. Prices increase downt he line but the margin of profit gets smaller.
Though i still like the feeling of producing my own products as is how I started out I was one of those trusted GM Blacksmith back in the days that you came to a public forge in brit to repair your item.
While other players were busy killing each other we were busy building community.
