Good to know Capt, To be honest I would never sell it anyways. Any idea why they just pick and choose what items they feel to call illegal?
That's a good question but in general they are determined by:
1. Does the result disrupt the game system, i.e. making it imbalance between players e.g. portable forges and anvils, vine cord sandals etc...
2. Does it hurt the gaming company from their actual profits, e.g. transfer tokens on vendors (everyone knows back then they were duped but it was so rampant it was too hard to catch them all unless they found them in duper stashed houses and delete the entire thing etc..
3. Does it change the aesthetics of the game at the time they were created, i.e. sigil dye items (at one point they were highly illegal but as UO became more colorful so gradually those items became acceptable). The etheral items were the same way. It was ok when there was only 1 (cloak of shadows from the end of the Talkeesh Arc on Napa Valley) existed but when everything else became etheral, at the time, it was too hard to take in. And most likely, as for the discussion of their legality nowadays. probably Mesanna and her crew just hadn't thought much about it since.
4. The other way UO has dealt with duped powerful or pretty items back then was to reinvent them as replicas and made them available to everyone. It was their way of "sticking it" to the dupers from selling and profiting off of them, e.g. the original two tone weapons Calm, Subdue, dyable shrouds, Orc Chief helms etc....
