Actually, it doesn't "confirm" anything at all. You swing the "dupe hammer" so fast I don't believe that you think before you swing.
This person is a veteran UO player that has been around for a decade or more. I have played with him for over 5 years and know that he privately sales EM items and runs a rather large vendor house on two shards to get his gold. He sales peerless and other artifact drops along with Covetous items. (we KNOW what kind of gold these items bring nowadays.)
The last time you infered that someone was duping gold, it was another friend of mine: Outcry.
If I go to the effort to mention someone in a post, that means that I know them from first hand account or they are my friend. It is not speculation or rumor.
Furthermore, if I DID know someone that was duping, why in the world would I bring them up and cite them as an example?
Anyway, I only mentioned that he sold gold before at $75/billion because I wanted to highlight the fact that inflation is the MAIN reason that EM items and other desirable UO goods had skyrocketed. He simply wants to move gold as fast as he makes it, he undercuts every price he can find. He is $75/billion because the gold seller competition has FORCED the price to drop to record lows. Sure, people's greed has made some items sale prices rise, but that is an uncontrollable part of the free market. The part that IS controllable is that if we collectively stop paying the exorbant prices and we will see a correction, although I doubt we ever go back to prices we saw 5 years ago.
It is so easy to make gold in this game it is unreal. Forget the fact that there has been gold duped. Give me a vendor and a few hours a day and I can make a billion a month without trying hard. NOW, let's think about multiplying that by the number of people that play this game for 10 HOURS A DAY!?!!? Throw in the anonymous selling of EM items for cash... taking that cash and buying bulk gold from legitimate or non-legitimate gold sellers for the cheapest price possible... Then, don't even get me started on the people that are now selling gold thru their own mini-sites! All most of them do is buy and re-sell. They aren't playing the game to get these items, they are simply a middle-man that is making the money off the margins.
No matter if you agree with my assessment or not, no matter if you think a 'price guide' would help or if it is a waste of time, we have come to a point in UO where a huge number of those left playing are simply doing it for the 'business' of playing. I'm afraid it's a battle that we won't win. Until they make major changes to the monetary system, all of this is folly.
