FYI atlantic dupes. Something interesting to see.

[Eslake]

If you believe that the dupers are going to inevitably get your gold no matter what you do, then why are you still playing the game? Why would you support the bottom line of a company that doesn't take a hard stand against cheaters and lets them profit at the cost of the average player?

Actually they can, but they won't invest the sort of effort required.
My post above was just about making things More Easily trackable.


But there is a far simpler solution to duping. Make it impossible.
Seeing as how I could do exactly that given 10 minutes alone with the source code, I don't know why they haven't bothered.

There is a routine in the server code that generates a unique ID for every item that is generated in the game. You can see the evidence of this in erred strings, certain bugs that have come up in the past, or by simply getting that certain Script program we aren't allowed to even hint the name of .

Want to end all duping of high end items? Edit that routine.
Instead of simply allowing ALL requests for item identities.
>It should check the Type of the item.
>If it is a hammer, check to see if it is a val/verite/aggy runic.
=If so, verify that the calling routine is a legitimate source of them (in this case, only the BOD turnins quest system)

It wouldn't even lag anything, since there are only a few request services that require item identifiers to be generated.
-Spellcasting (create food)
-Loot Assessment
-Crafting Menu action
-Quest Systems (there are like 4 of them now)
-Item Usage (using a plant bowl on dirt creates a new item etc)
~and Character Creation (which I believe actually calls on a loot assessment so it isn't actually another instance)

There is also the use of commodity deeds and creating/cashing of checks, but those always produce the same Type of items so they should be given a seperate identity creation thread entirely. (a much simpler one in fact)


If you have ever done any programming, you can see the simplicity of this block. Something a novice programmer could do in just a few minutes, and yet in 11 years the Professional Programmers at OSI/EA/EA-M have never bothered to do.

That indicates to me that they do not Want to end duping.

 

[Uriah Heep]

Be realistic.

Ending duping once and for all, would cancel mucho subscriptions. If the dupers couldnt dupe, they wouldnt need all those duping accounts. They wouldnt need all those householding storage accounts. And last but not least, they wouldn't need all those fencing/vendor accounts.

Ending duping would cost EAMythic lots more money, than the few accounts they lose from disgusted, say, rares dealers, or disappointed casual players.

 

[Jeremy]

Uriah, that's a common argument made by players about game companies, but I've never heard it actually said by a game company internally, and the numbers just don't back it up.

Generally, dupers/scripters/hackers are no more honest about giving us money than they are about making money, and they either use trial accounts, stolen accounts, or accounts billed to fraudulent credit cards (which COSTS us money in the end - rather a lot of it.) In my experience, banning cheaters leads to a short-term dip and a long-term gain in subs. It's a net win for us. The problem is, of course, that we tend to have to run as fast as we can just to stay in the same place - the initiative always goes to the cheater.

(Off-topic, if your sig refers to the comment at the Town Hall, that wasn't me - that was the Whispering Rose staffer who was reading questions for us. Me, I'm used to the tone here )

 

[Zooithion]

Amazing... I hadn't seen or heard of any on the main shard I play on and still haven't.
I started reading this post and got curious and went to one of those 'search Luna' sites.

I didn't see any there for my shard so I checked Atlantic and there was close to 50 listed if not more.

So sad... and how long has this been going on???

 

[RoycroftLS]

The game isnt real life.

But Ill be standing with you when real life issues becomes a matter of action.

Usually I'm the first one to say that it's "just a game". But at the same time, this is a legitimate issue that is making some people a lot of real money and causing most everyone else a lot of real frustration.

And I agree, there are plenty of other aspects of the game that are fun. But if we keep looking the other way from issues that affect a bunch of players (but not us personally), eventually there is going to be no one left to have fun with.

 

[Uriah Heep]

Uriah, that's a common argument made by players about game companies, but I've never heard it actually said by a game company internally, and the numbers just don't back it up.

Generally, dupers/scripters/hackers are no more honest about giving us money than they are about making money, and they either use trial accounts, stolen accounts, or accounts billed to fraudulent credit cards (which COSTS us money in the end - rather a lot of it.) In my experience, banning cheaters leads to a short-term dip and a long-term gain in subs. It's a net win for us. The problem is, of course, that we tend to have to run as fast as we can just to stay in the same place - the initiative always goes to the cheater.

(Off-topic, if your sig refers to the comment at the Town Hall, that wasn't me - that was the Whispering Rose staffer who was reading questions for us. Me, I'm used to the tone here )

Just seems that the "wheels of justice" turn awful slowly, Jeremy. I mean, the redneck in me says if ya got a vendor selling a load of val hammers, something aint right, and the vendor should be deleted on the spot, along with all its goods. Vendor owner says "I didnt dupe em, i brought em in from other shards" yeah right, the cost to recover the xfer token would be more than some hammers are selling for right now. If banning the CC and IPs of the cheaters actually doesn't hurt your bottom line, either $$ wise or in the sub # ranking, the prove it...Take em out, and keep em out. Or else declare it open season and let everyone do it.

Btw, was a bit confusing on the sig, between WRR and Vent and the game and Uriah Heep playin on Realplayer, thats corrected now

 

[Jeremy]

Well, I should clarify - banning cheaters = good, ban first ask questions later = bad. Banning legitimate players unfairly tends to drive them and their friends away in droves, and that's no good either. So... yeah, it does take a while.

(No worries on the sig, just wanted it accurate )

 

[Uriah Heep]

And totally off-topic, when can those "things yall cant talk about" be talked about??
Since we're here anyway...

 

[RavenWinterHawk]

Uriah, that's a common argument made by players about game companies, but I've never heard it actually said by a game company internally, and the numbers just don't back it up.

Generally, dupers/scripters/hackers are no more honest about giving us money than they are about making money, and they either use trial accounts, stolen accounts, or accounts billed to fraudulent credit cards (which COSTS us money in the end - rather a lot of it.) In my experience, banning cheaters leads to a short-term dip and a long-term gain in subs. It's a net win for us. The problem is, of course, that we tend to have to run as fast as we can just to stay in the same place - the initiative always goes to the cheater.

(Off-topic, if your sig refers to the comment at the Town Hall, that wasn't me - that was the Whispering Rose staffer who was reading questions for us. Me, I'm used to the tone here )

The banning was great. It energized me. Its just been depressing in game lately.

 

[Pickaxe Pete]

Soon, all artifacts and high end combat items will become irrelevant if this continues.

Ah, you mean the game will be just like Pre-AoS?

Sorry could not resist.

 

[RoycroftLS]

Well, I should clarify - banning cheaters = good, ban first ask questions later = bad. Banning legitimate players unfairly tends to drive them and their friends away in droves, and that's no good either.

I can understand being careful about that kind of thing. I can also understand that holding off banning one person for a while and watching their activities can lead to a larger resolution to the problem as a whole.

However, with both the last major bannings and this time around, the most brazen and egregious offenders were left alone for so long and caused so much turmoil that it's difficult to understand why they weren't banned immediately.

 

[Nyses]

Well, I should clarify - banning cheaters = good, ban first ask questions later = bad. Banning legitimate players unfairly tends to drive them and their friends away in droves, and that's no good either. So... yeah, it does take a while.

(No worries on the sig, just wanted it accurate )

Yes, it is good to be careful. It however seems, all the clues are in the code, there is a really good "paper trail" there.

And, as I stated in another post, the longer the dupes and cheats go on, the more completely one UO endgame is destroyed for me. There is no longer any sense of accomplishment or reward in completing that Val Hammer BOD, and it is now, relatively worthless.

 

[MYUO]

Ah, you mean the game will be just like Pre-AoS?

Sorry could not resist.

No need to sorry. Pre-AOS, item is no less important than now. The difference is insurance. Without insurance, most of uber items that players are now using will stay in their bank boxes collecting dust, just like pre-AOS. At that time, hardly anyone use supremely accurate vanquish katana anywhere near places where they can lose it.

A lot of ppl don't see the whole picture - AOS just made tons of different items. It was insurance that made it possible for players to use the best ones.

 

[MonkeyBusiness]

Sadly, the only way to fix the scripting and duping problem at least for the short term is to take the 2D client out of service for good. All of the scripting and duping issues have arisen from use of the 2D client and at least for scripting the use of 3rd party programs. This is however an unacceptable fix at this time for two reasons. One, KR is bugged to all h*ll (I use KR, see my recent post regarding a vendor issue with it) and crashes at the drop of a hat. The second reason is that KR requires about 50X the computing power of the 2D making it unavaliable to about 75% of current subscribers and they cannot afford to lose anymore. Since EA doesn't have a time machine it cannot re-engineer KR to make it run on personal computers. Therefore, EA's strategy to stay ahead of the dupers is by basically adding new uber-uber items that trump the old duped uber items every few years (ala, Age of Shadows). Basically, EA makes the duped items worthless by adding new content. Expect the same for Stygian Abyss whenever that actually is released (if that ever happens). My recommendation is not to buy anything of extreme value before that comes out. I'm sure there will be Super Gargoyle Armor of the Pixies and Hit Mana Leech Dragon Rockets that will take the place of RBCs and soulseekers. This is EA's method for fixing things in UO. It's a cycle an Uber-cycle.

 

[MonkeyBusiness]

Oh, as long as duping is running rampant could someone dupe a spirit of the Totem for me and transfer it to Lake Austin? I've been looking for one on LA for weeks, ridiculous.

 

[Lady_Mina]

Well at least we know their ban-button works.

Now if only they would ban the exploiters instead of those who report them then we would be one step further.

 

[MonkeyBusiness]

Also, it would be great if EA would let me know what kind of system I will need to run Stygian Abyss ahead of time because tracking down "Deep-Blue" or getting a job at NASA will require some leadtime.

 

[Halister Marner]

Its just been depressing in game lately.

Very depressing to say the least.

 

[Slasherpvp]

Now on top of the duping the runic hammers for sale, they are using them to make some of the best samari and mage plate armor I've ever seen. Boat loads of it at real high prices. To boot, the so called illegal pvpers with their own bag of goodies in the past are now wearing the most gimp suits craftable in game. The duping itself was just the begining sadly. Now they are getting paid from the runic hammers, armors and alot of insurance money after they collect peoples 120 power scrolls at champs they worked all the way up to the boss. Think I'm just gonna sadly hang my head now.

 

[RavenWinterHawk]

Now on top of the duping the runic hammers for sale, they are using them to make some of the best samari and mage plate armor I've ever seen. Boat loads of it at real high prices. To boot, the so called illegal pvpers with their own bag of goodies in the past are now wearing the most gimp suits craftable in game. The duping itself was just the begining sadly. Now they are getting paid from the runic hammers, armors and alot of insurance money after they collect peoples 120 power scrolls at champs they worked all the way up to the boss. Think I'm just gonna sadly hang my head now.

Thats the point Ive been trying to make. The hammers have been diminished by the tons of high end armor. You dont need to buy the hammers now. You can buy the armor for less then the hammer.

SO MUCH IS coming out. I cant see people not buying it. I cant see it going away. I cant really see anything but buying whats out there as in game items. Hope the devs fix the exploits and hope the future gets better.

this was a killer dupe.

KIller.

 

[Lord Kynd]

"Ok, Captain but it will take sometime. I can tell you. Hmm let me got Fxxxx0.com. (that special website) Lets see there are 86 valorite hammers on UO atlantic."
QUOTE]


so you are promoting a illegal web site ? that clearly uses scripts to gather the information ??
yet you are against duping/cheats/scripting/exploits ??

sorry but even visiting that site or the other one makes you an accomplice to the scripter. thus you are now labled a scripter by default.

and since people liek to compare a game to real life....

if you know someone murders someone else , whether it be by watching,knowing, or helping. you are as guilty as the person that commited the murder.


you are helping these scripters by utilizing there site's and causing a need for them to script.

 

[Lord Kynd]

Sadly, the only way to fix the scripting and duping problem at least for the short term is to take the 2D client out of service for good. All of the scripting and duping issues have arisen from use of the 2D client and at least for scripting the use of 3rd party programs. This is however an unacceptable fix at this time for two reasons. One, KR is bugged to all h*ll (I use KR, see my recent post regarding a vendor issue with it) and crashes at the drop of a hat. The second reason is that KR requires about 50X the computing power of the 2D making it unavaliable to about 75% of current subscribers and they cannot afford to lose anymore. Since EA doesn't have a time machine it cannot re-engineer KR to make it run on personal computers. Therefore, EA's strategy to stay ahead of the dupers is by basically adding new uber-uber items that trump the old duped uber items every few years (ala, Age of Shadows). Basically, EA makes the duped items worthless by adding new content. Expect the same for Stygian Abyss whenever that actually is released (if that ever happens). My recommendation is not to buy anything of extreme value before that comes out. I'm sure there will be Super Gargoyle Armor of the Pixies and Hit Mana Leech Dragon Rockets that will take the place of RBCs and soulseekers. This is EA's method for fixing things in UO. It's a cycle an Uber-cycle.

well forget your idea...
scripting is not 2d specific. dunno what makes anyone think this.
and , i would bet that the scripters who make the scripts and programs have very well made one for the KR client by now.

people like you do not understand how things work in the computer world.

 

[Lord Kynd]

The banning was great. It energized me. Its just been depressing in game lately.

perhaps if you would mind your business and not what others are doing it would help free you of there borring life's

really all i see you post about is cheater/duper/scripter this or that ...
don't you have your own life ?
i hear cybercops pay about .56 cents a hour .. might see that guy over sea's for a job

hearing about all the negatives is definitly not a positive thing.

 

[Slasherpvp]

Sorry Lord Kynd. People in this thread are seriously discussing the duping problem they see,possible ways to fix it and why it has gone on so long. I'm sorry if everyone doesn't think exactly as you and is so all knowing. We are frustrated paying players just like everyone else. As paying customers, we do have a voice. We are just charged on how we use it on these boards. You sir, if all you wish to do is come in and quote and slam people to get off topic, can take your finger pointing flame war starting somewhere else. We have tried and prefer to stay on topic, no personal attacks or sarcasm here please. This is a serious issue. No matter the way we discuss it, we are trying to stay on topic and not attack each other for just being frustrated with this huge monster.Thank you.

 

[Slasherpvp]

BTW. If any of the Devs do still look over this thread, maybe you can explain this. Last night in Luna, many people stood around one of the large vendor malls that has been and still carries lots of duped items and duped runic made items. It was part of a three group chain of malls and the other two, for some reason, shut down recently. Must have an insider or got worried. Anyway, single flames were bouncing around the vendors landing singly on each from one end to the other rapidly. Any clue? Please tell me and others it wasn't fair warning to the dupers to come and grab your items and bank it? I would hope you wouldn't telegraph something like that. I have never seen so many new characters run up to one vendor house with a [Young] tag on them. Just hope this wasn't the case. Oh, and there was a toon standing in the house someone was allowed to name Dev.

 

[RavenWinterHawk]

"Ok, Captain but it will take sometime. I can tell you. Hmm let me got Fxxxx0.com. (that special website) Lets see there are 86 valorite hammers on UO atlantic."
QUOTE]


so you are promoting a illegal web site ? that clearly uses scripts to gather the information ??
yet you are against duping/cheats/scripting/exploits ??

sorry but even visiting that site or the other one makes you an accomplice to the scripter. thus you are now labled a scripter by default.

and since people liek to compare a game to real life....

if you know someone murders someone else , whether it be by watching,knowing, or helping. you are as guilty as the person that commited the murder.


you are helping these scripters by utilizing there site's and causing a need for them to script.

Oh brother. Yeah I am an accomplice. Spare me Lord.

 

[concernedplayer]

It is very likely that the dupe is limited to bod rewards, otherwise, you will see crimson, blackrock rift, server rares popping up everywhere, sold in quantity of hundreads.

Runics are the "safe" dupe. Dupe the other stuff and there's no way to launder the duped items except through xshards, which may be fixed by now. But if you dupe a bod that you turn in for a val kit, that is a new item, new ID and the theory is thats safer for the dupers.

Plus, even at 17 million, dupe a bod book thats 5 val runics per slot, 85 million gold. The dupers have destroyed the value of everything else, there's not many things left in the game worth over 20. Plus they are consumable, people will buy 100's of valorite hammers ... they're not going to sell 100 ornaments a day for sure.

 

[RavenWinterHawk]

perhaps if you would mind your business and not what others are doing it would help free you of there borring life's

really all i see you post about is cheater/duper/scripter this or that ...
don't you have your own life ?
i hear cybercops pay about .56 cents a hour .. might see that guy over sea's for a job

hearing about all the negatives is definitly not a positive thing.

You make me laugh. I write poorly when speed typing, so I usually get what people are saying. But I dont know exactly what you are saying. I should comment on the positives?

Perhaps I post about what I post about because its a freaking game that can be programmed and corrected. But you might not understand programming. And being a game, duping is one of the main issues.

But thanks for policing me. Ill stay on my toes and try and make more positive posts.

I hear people that get cybercops jobs get .26 cents an hour... might see that guy overseas, so your getting paid for helping fill their vacancies by guiding me to another career.

Thanks.

 

[RavenWinterHawk]

Runics are the "safe" dupe. Dupe the other stuff and there's no way to launder the duped items except through xshards, which may be fixed by now. But if you dupe a bod that you turn in for a val kit, that is a new item, new ID and the theory is thats safer for the dupers.

Plus, even at 17 million, dupe a bod book thats 5 val runics per slot, 85 million gold. The dupers have destroyed the value of everything else, there's not many things left in the game worth over 20. Plus they are consumable, people will buy 100's of valorite hammers ... they're not going to sell 100 ornaments a day for sure.

That makes sense. So you need a way to clear the tags. Either xshard or turn in.

So if you dupe say everything in Atlantic, youd have to leave altantic to erase the items history.

I dont see why they dont just make xshard 1x per month per account and track what is moved.

Doesnt seem that hard.

 

[the 4th man]

I agree with most everyone on here except kynd......and posting that link was a real no brainer........

 

[Shamrock1492]

Thanks for this thread. I did not know what I had done wrong. The message I got said I used an exploit. Now I know I got banned for buying duped hammers. I just got back from 15 months in Iraq. How was I to know they were duped? I started to play UO in 1998 everything I owned was in my house which was deleted and my account banned. I never used an exploit or bug or cheat. I bought Val hammers off a vendor.

 

[Kith Kanan]

Well, I should clarify - banning cheaters = good, ban first ask questions later = bad. Banning legitimate players unfairly tends to drive them and their friends away in droves, and that's no good either. So... yeah, it does take a while.

(No worries on the sig, just wanted it accurate )

well thats kinda what I feel is going on atm , I have I'll admit it bought some runic hammers , not so silly priced that they could be recogniced easily as dupes or i would have let em be , and not that many tbh , but now I got my account blocked , my house is gone , and then an email saying If i wish to complain please e-mail us.. but whats with my stuff ?? is it gone allready ???

 

[Tjalle]

Well you are absolutely right. The is no value of 15 day account for a player, less you dupe. Business end it is also useless.

Make UO free with stipulations to try it out.

Basically the free account theory is I give you 15 days and you give me your credit card and I bill you after 15 days unless you say no.

Its a lousy model and its abused.

Like I said and other have said Make UO free.

You open A FREE acount and get this.
A player: ONLY ONE.
A backpack: HOLDS only 25 items.
A bank: HOLDS only 25 items.
NO house rights in any form but you can go to a create housing zone to see what housing is about. Its in lala land and has no realness but to let you experiment and see it.

And other stuff that lets you play the game.

If you decide you like it then you have to pay for full active account.

Potential for abuse. Sure. But limited to holding 50 items. Sure you could have 20 of them and hold 1000 items.

BUT THE KICKER IS they dont refresh. WOOHOO. THEY DONT REFRESH. You can use it for a month and it dies and you have to start again. You cant close it and come back to it for the secret storage.

GEEZ.

Oh spare me the loss. If you are loving it for 29 days and building skill then you will buy the game.

SIMPLE.


Oh and EA, you would get a lot more people checking out the game this way then asking for a credit card. Come on. Time for some new ideas.

Perhaps it would be better if they keep the free trial accounts as they are but make it so that they only work on Test Center...

There a new player can try (almost) anything ingame and best of all, it won´t affect the production shards or Siege.

 

[Kith Kanan]

I think it is foolish to buy hammers from these vendors. You certainly can't claim you didn't realize the hammers were duped. It's pretty freakin obvious that something's wrong when a vendor has 20+ valorite hammers.

Don't think you can just buy a hammer from one of these places and consume it without getting in trouble. Who's to say the devs didn't add some logging to track the purchase of duped hammers?

well I bought from the vendors with a little higher price and only 2-4 hammers on them and my account still got blocked and my house is gone..

 

[Lady_Mina]

That's just the problem...how the hell are people suposed to know they're buying something legit or something duped if it's sold in a very small stock?

These days you'd be scared to buy anything....

 

[Kith Kanan]

I dont know.. I thought I did what I could to not end up with duped ones...
Guesse I just ended up paying xtra for the priviledge to get cheated and banned... Aint I a lucky *******....

 

[Aurelius]

Banning legitimate players unfairly tends to drive them and their friends away in droves, and that's no good either.

I'm not sure I count as a 'friend' to some of the Europa folks who have been banned recently, but I know for sure I trust them considerably more than I trust EA/Mythic to have got their investigations right. Currently, I'm almost certain my accounts won't be getting renewed.

We seem to have reached a point where it's unsafe to buy items, even those at pretty sensible and proportionate prices, for fear of them being dupes. Similarly picking up idoc items is too chancy if you value your account. Trading stuff between friends, to try out deco ideas or test suit/item combinations is now apparently risky. Presumably duped stuff is getting used as trade-ins on the collections, so (for me at least) the integrity of those is being tarnished.

When an 'online community game' hits that level of distrust, it's time to go.

 

[FarausKarzak]

Well...

for the few who know Faraus Karzak who was on Chesapeake then on Atlantic, you prolly know that I wasnt a cheat.

2 days ago my only account been banned without notice. my new acquired Destard house was trown to the ground as a friend sent me screenshot.

I am not a rare collector... I fited all my stuff into a 7x7 with 586 max storage... nothing rare and old... i dont care for that stuff.. I been running luna vendors selling ilsenhar and peerless artefacts that i buy and resell like many of us. And I did it for years.

Why?
Did i bought something duped? The only thing I had in BULK was peerless ingredient.. and again I had about 3000 of em.. aint that much. All were bought from atlantic players. and a few were crosssharded from asian shards.
I bought em.

I never used any script as I am an extremist on anti cheat. I builded up close to 700m gold buyin and reselling in about 2 years... Is that why i been banned?? they couldnt beleive i made this gold checks legitely?? I never sold or bought any gold except the 2-3 times that I left UO and sold all my gold.

Yes I was playing this game to make money. to make virtual money, but I wasnt playing to sell my millions, I was pilling checks to buy a luna house!! I have no motive to cheat at all.

I always been extremely carefull to dont involve myself into activities that could get me banned since this was my ONLY ACCOUNT that I had pride to say I BUILDED MY FORTUNE BY MYSELF.

Why the hell they banned me? destroying my house without any warnings or reasons THAT I KNOW

I live in Quebec Canada, I was waiting on phone for about 50minutes calling representatives (I beleive it was Chad)... I payed the long distance bill and used my poor talked english 2 days ago to know WHY the H***!!?? I been banned...

honestly.. would a GUILTY sane person would really do THAT????

Im now waiting on their replies.. I filled the paperwork on their EA custumers website...

I can only hope that I will at least get my characters and my acces to UO back... as I know of course that I will never see my house, my vendors, my rare high end stuff back.

They erased around 200m in a few minutes... without considering they were maybe wrong.

Well... friends offered me to give me half of their stuff to me to start over.
I answered... Will they ban me again after 2 years of playin...? Do I know? nope... do I wanna risk it...? Do i wanna loose my time into this world...?

No... they lost my trust... whole EA lost my trust.

Sorry you all GMs who built this game, but you screwed this up again, but this time you went too far.

You all can say whatever you want, but I know that I didnt deserved this.


and btw... I never bought a runic hammers higher than gold... and its been a while. I didnt had any runics. xept 2 coppers.

 

[NuSair]

I think there should be a seperate forum for each person that was banned to come out and say 'Yes, I want you to tell me publically why i was banned, because I did nothing wrong' and for Mythic to respond with- here's why, here are the SS's / Logs, or sorry, our mistake.....

Not that it would happen, but, I would like to see it.

 

[Surgeries]

Right now on Pacific Val hammers are a little bit less than 2 mil cheaper than Verite hammers, and have been for about a week or so now. Where Val hammers used to run 50mil just months ago, now they're down to 17 mil. If the price keeps falling and nothing is done about it I don't know if I'll be able to resist the temptation to pick one up for a few mil myself. I've only managed to get the large Bod and 1 of the smalls for a Val hammer, and this is after almost 4 yrs of collecting Bods. I have to ask myself why I even bother saving the Val hammer Bods instead of just selling them.

These are valid points, and it sucks that one of the highest end Runics ever can now be had for slightly more than a Crimson Cincture.

No one will ever truly know the extent of the damage this has done, and it saddens me that it appears, at least on the surface, that EA is extremely slow to act, and prevent further damage. I know some people have been banned, but like so many have pointed out, there are many, many, many loopholes allowing almost unlimited amounts of crap to be duped, and stored, limited only by storage amounts.

The Vendor Mall in Luna on Pac that was selling the 25 Valorite Hammers simply has the vendor spot empty. I would hope the place would go up in flames, for criminy sake.

It's lame, really. I am usually not the one to find fault with much of anything, but man oh man. This is not looking so good for the game, IMO.

I just hope you don't let the evil get the best of you, Connor. Integrity has no equal.

It is infinitely more valuable than making a fortune, to make a noble life, I have heard it said...

 

[MonkeyBusiness]

Well...

for the few who know Faraus Karzak who was on Chesapeake then on Atlantic, you prolly know that I wasnt a cheat.

2 days ago my only account been banned without notice. my new acquired Destard house was trown to the ground as a friend sent me screenshot.

I am not a rare collector... I fited all my stuff into a 7x7 with 586 max storage... nothing rare and old... i dont care for that stuff.. I been running luna vendors selling ilsenhar and peerless artefacts that i buy and resell like many of us. And I did it for years.

Why?
Did i bought something duped? The only thing I had in BULK was peerless ingredient.. and again I had about 3000 of em.. aint that much. All were bought from atlantic players. and a few were crosssharded from asian shards.
I bought em.

I never used any script as I am an extremist on anti cheat. I builded up close to 700m gold buyin and reselling in about 2 years... Is that why i been banned?? they couldnt beleive i made this gold checks legitely?? I never sold or bought any gold except the 2-3 times that I left UO and sold all my gold.

Yes I was playing this game to make money. to make virtual money, but I wasnt playing to sell my millions, I was pilling checks to buy a luna house!! I have no motive to cheat at all....QUOTE]

I assure you that EA/UO is only banning accounts that they know to be involved in duping and scripting. It takes an act of God to get any action whatsoever from EA regarding blatant scripting in Painted Caves or 50 duped valorite runic hammers on a single vendor. EA has time and time again erred on the side of not banning accounts. This simple fact gives me confidence in their selection for those that were banned. EA knows who is duping items and who is script-farming, and who is shard xfering 200 or 700 million gold around. It is not rocket science to determine who moves gold and valorite runic hammers around and transfers gold in bulk to other players. I like how you casually and innocently accumulated 700 million in gold over 2 years. That looks suspicious as hell. Are you online 24-7? You must be a robot to accumulate that kind of wealth in that time frame. That is roughly 1 million per day for 2 years. No human playing UO could generate this kind of wealth through legitimate means. Although, if you are a robot you could stand to have your grammar and spell check software updated. So I say GREAT JOB EA!!! For the first time in a long time I actually mean it!

 

[BlissMarie]

I like how you casually and innocently accumulated 700 million in gold over 2 years. That looks suspicious as hell. Are you online 24-7? You must be a robot to accumulate that kind of wealth in that time frame. That is roughly 1 million per day for 2 years. No human playing UO could generate this kind of wealth through legitimate means.

It's possible to accumulate great UO wealth in a short period of time doing IDOCs.

 

[Sarsmi]

I am ecstatic that EA has decided to finally do something about dupers, but I got banned as well and I have never duped anything. I did purchase hammers for a great deal of gold off Luna vendors.

I know people here do not know me, and this is only a post on a forum, and everyone in jail says they are innocent; the problem is statistic show that innocent people do get sent to jail too.

I think we should start a tread of people quitting UO because someone they know got banned whose crime was shopping, to try to compete with all the real cheats and scammers in UO.

Buying many runic hammers means you aren't innocent apparently. High end runic hammers are supposed to be very rare. You can do bods like crazy for years and never see a val hammer for all your effort. Do you know how much a val hammer would cost if they had never been duped? The point being you got some very nice items for cheap where common sense should have told you that you were benefitting from someone else's duping.

However because it is a slippery slope (how many is enough to get banned/over what period of time etc) I don't really like this method of punishment. I think they tried to soften the blow by only deleting the accounts that purchased the items and not all the associated accounts.

I believe they are trying to send the message that it is not ok to support dupers. I think it would have been fine to simply remove the items and mark the offending accounts, but I'm a softie.

 

[MonkeyBusiness]

That would be the shortest thread ever! Nobody has ever quit UO because of a perceived injustice to someone else. Everyone knew what those hammers were and where they can from. Unfortunately, the legit players like myself that refrained from buying these obviously duped goods are still going to be paying a big price (albeit not as severe as the cheaters, you included). I am absolutely positive that armor and weapons created from these hammers are now everywhere. This sucks because I just spent the better part of the last four months working toward equiping my character with excellent armor and weapons (but not the best). Compared to the items created from these duped hammers I might as well equip my character with a fireworks wand and npc ringmail.

 

[MonkeyBusiness]

The previous message was referring to the Ice Princess's comments. Hey, I should see if some house placements spots just opened up.

 

[Ice Princess]

Can someone answer this question, how come the person that owned the vendor I bought the Val hammers from is not banned, but I am?

 

[Connor_Graham]

I just hope you don't let the evil get the best of you, Connor. Integrity has no equal.

I didn't. My steadfast refusal to deal with anything that could be a duped or scripted item without actually obtaining the item myself proved to be worth it in the long run.

I admit it was tempting, but it just felt too wrong to me to buy something that I could be reasonably certain was duped, or at the very least, scripted.

 

[Anakena]

Can someone answer this question, how come the person that owned the vendor I bought the Val hammers from is not banned, but I am?

I suppose the vendors are owned by newbie accounts with no other account related/linked. What EA wants to do is to catch the real owner behind them. banning the vendor account wouldn't hurt much the real owner.

You must understand that vendors are used as laundry. They want to follow the product of the laundry (money) and to see where the money goes. This is why (I guess) some people were banned after buying UoGold for real money. They received checks coming from such vendors and were considered as guilty. from the game point of vue, this money changed hands without counterpart.