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First off, I like to express my understanding that it may be very difficult for GMs to
prove that someone was cheating. And you should have prove if you want to take actions against somebody's account.
I want to give a little thought-provoking impulse. Why is cheating / duping / scripting so important to some users? Cheating only exists, because people want to achieve the highest possible levels in a game. However, once they have reached those levels, the game will be boring to those players and they will leave sooner or later. People who cheat or script (and with "scripting" I don't mean simplifying tedious tasks, but automating large parts of gameplay like mining) have no idea what this game is all about.
I personally wouldn't even know or care about cheaters, if I wouldn't read this forum. Why not? Because these people
do not affect my gameplay. I don't buy 10,000 ingots from a vendor, I mine them myself. I don't pay 2 mill for an artifact, I only use those I achieve by myself. I don't play on Felucca as PKs there are so advanced equipment-wise I am no match for them anyway (lacking this challenge I find a little sad, but I can live with it).
My conclusion and advise is: Only few players seem to know how much fun it is to advance slowly, step by step. To start hunting in Ettin dungeons and working your way slowly up until you can engage a Dragon. Many players want to have artifacts and kill Doom creatures after playing UO for a month.
Most of the players I met don't even know dungeons like Covetous, Despise, Wrong or Hythloth. All they know is Luna, Doom and Mel (not even knowing her full name "Melisande"), and they can tell you how to make a legendary smith in only one week.
I am convinced that you will have
much more fun in UO, if you are satisified with medium equipment and do not always strive for the high-end stuff. Suddenly people who macro a skill or dupe items do not bother you anymore.
Cheating should be looked into by the Devs, no doubt. But I would never dislike the game because of people who advance through illegal methods.
By the way, The mentioned ingot vendors are on Catskills as well.
I never bought anything from those, though.
One thing I keep asking myself: What does a cheater do with, say, 500 million gold pieces earned through his vendors? There isn't any use for that much gold in the game. The only thing I can think of is, that those people try to destroy UO economy to harm the game. But who would do something like that?
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If you found out you could sell boogers for $2 each, wouldn't you have your fingers up every nose within a thousand mile radius, at least as long as the owners of said noses allowed it (took my nose to Wow, thanks)?
Thus are the gold sellers (scripters/dupers/hackers/cheaters) of UO, with their fingers up all your UO noses, as in, you are not allowed to own a Luna City plot unless you can cough up thousands of dollars real cash, as in you ARE allowed to buy their dupes and scripted wares and help them pay their real life bills.
Now you know what 500 million gold in UO is good for, eh? They sell the gold for cash which goes to pay their real life jacuzzi note.
So long as you continue to play alone and aspire to nothingness UO might make be able to make you happy.
Just don't try to be part of a community that is full of barracudas in friends/guildie clothing just waiting to convert your items into cash in their real life bank accounts.
I'd say the biggest issue with cheating in online UO is the loss of customers/accounts. Perhaps you haven't noticed that there's fewer players on UO today compared to five years ago?
Loss of credibility for the online gaming company that allows their games to be overrun with cheats/cheating is second. UO is run not by EA/Mythic, but by a handful of gold sellers (scripters/dupers/hackers/cheaters).
After watching EA/Mythic's fierce battle with cheaters in UO this past year (sarcasm) I know that they will be just as ineffectual against cheaters and in keeping a level playing field for all players in ANY and ALL online games that they offer in the future.
In other words, I can expect to be treated like a second class citizen in Warhammer exactly the same way I am treated like a second class citizen in UO (gold sellers/cheaters being first class citizens).
My dollars say, no thank you.
Blizzard tries so hard to make Wow fair to ALL it's customers, (not just for it's employee's best friends or the company president's bum brotherinlaw, or dimwitted cousin) that it's almost to the point of being sickening. I mean, are soulbound (unusable by ANYONE else once a character equips it) bags used to store items really necessary to keep the game fair to all?
But 10 million WoW customers compared to a helluva lot less UO customers (50k?) proves that players desire that level of fairness, which is something EA/Mythic doesn't seem to know or understand much about.
