T
TheLostKnight
Guest
I remember the first days when a charecter enters the world, when he has nothing and needs everything, when everything is difficult and long to accomplish. When he seeks for what he needs and cannot get, or it is difficult to find. When after killing a monster he loots his first corpses which gives him only a small amount of gold with a few weapons maybe magical, which won't help him much along his journey. The blacksmith which doesn't pay a lot in return for the sales of them considering all the efforts which it has required to acquire them for the previous transaction. To go along the journey and become more able to take advantage of the Ultima Online features and to acquire better skills to finially be able to start having a decent gold income. This was really the core of the game, how it was written and designed with the gold system. And then his charecter being properly trainned, it is much more easy to have access to riches. Nothing to blame, we all need that resource but later on for an experienced player what does gold mean?
I ran through a very basic feature of the game when I realised that the NPC system and the items which it sells or the various other ways where a player spends his money are not well balanced to give a real value to gold. Most players after a few weeks have become millionaire or are already become multi-millionaire. I cannot blame the game system for being what it is as this is the most advanced RPG game ever created, neither for it's rare item drops which as created a world of player vendors where it would leave the blame on the possibility to make a lot of gold from our loots. At the same time the fact remains that it is difficult to compare the price of regular items with the fortune of a player.
One exemple which I found stunning tonight was when I was selecting items in the item insurance menu and I realised that the system doesn't consider the magic attributes or the artifac rarity as a factor to give a value to the item which is to be insured. This is as an exemple where a player should spend his gold to insure items that are sometimes worth millions at the risk of loosing it.
There are many factors to consider but I believe that for most experienced players gold has become like nickels or iron in uo terms.