Gold question

[Lador]

I have been playing UO for twenty years and in that time I have seen many changes but the biggest seems to be in peoples wealth.

In twenty years I have managed to save about seven million in gold and that took time and effort to do so.

Reading trading posts I see people selling things like a bane dragon for 300 million and they get offers, where do people get that sort of gold from?

I admit I haven't followed all the changes to do with weapon and armour stats etc but they do seem like huge amounts.

Thanks for reading this,

Lador

 

[Fridgster]

I have been playing UO for twenty years and in that time I have seen many changes but the biggest seems to be in peoples wealth.

In twenty years I have managed to save about seven million in gold and that took time and effort to do so.

Reading trading posts I see people selling things like a bane dragon for 300 million and they get offers, where do people get that sort of gold from?

I admit I haven't followed all the changes to do with weapon and armour stats etc but they do seem like huge amounts.

Thanks for reading this,

Lador

20+ years of gold creation + no real type of gold sink = Tons of gold in the system. Literally billions if not trillions.

 

[petemage]

I have been playing UO for twenty years and in that time I have seen many changes but the biggest seems to be in peoples wealth.

In twenty years I have managed to save about seven million in gold and that took time and effort to do so.

Reading trading posts I see people selling things like a bane dragon for 300 million and they get offers, where do people get that sort of gold from?

I admit I haven't followed all the changes to do with weapon and armour stats etc but they do seem like huge amounts.

Thanks for reading this,

Lador

Some of those people run multiple accounts and spent dozens of hours per week in the game ... since years. It depends if you go full tryhard mode or just play casual on a single account. Lots of middle ground too ofc.

Lots of people I know never had a billion (platinum nowadays) in 20 years, while others can farm 10 or 20 plat a month.

 

[(Taler)]

Some of those people run multiple accounts and spent dozens of hours per week in the game ... since years. It depends if you go full tryhard mode or just play casual on a single account. Lots of middle ground too ofc.

Lots of people I know never had a billion (platinum nowadays) in 20 years, while others can farm 10 or 20 plat a month.

Going along with this, remember there is a consolidation of wealth with people leaving and either giving their stuff to someone or IDOCs. Also luck in say placing a Luna house and getting lots of rent from people. Now you get the work of 20 something people. Things like that make gaining money easy.

 

[Laura_Gold]

1. Looting monsters.
2. Picking up gold after spawns.
3. Treasure chests
4. "Laundered" duplicated gold.
5. You were born with 1K gold.
6. Finishing certain quests, e.g. turning in pirates / pirate death certificates

That's where gold comes from. Did I miss one or two sources?
You can get gold from other players too, but originally it came from those sources.
Get gold from other players by selling them EM event items or stuff that sells well such as Minax crest items, +skill scrolls, +stat scrolls, blues, pinks

 

[petemage]

1. Looting monsters.
2. Picking up gold after spawns.
3. Treasure chests
4. "Laundered" duplicated gold.
5. You were born with 1K gold.
6. Finishing certain quests, e.g. turning in pirates / pirate death certificates

7. Selling stuff to NPCs

 

[fonsvitae]

7. Selling stuff to NPCs

Cannot do that on Siege.

 

[Keven2002]

I have been playing UO for twenty years and in that time I have seen many changes but the biggest seems to be in peoples wealth.

In twenty years I have managed to save about seven million in gold and that took time and effort to do so.

Reading trading posts I see people selling things like a bane dragon for 300 million and they get offers, where do people get that sort of gold from?

I admit I haven't followed all the changes to do with weapon and armour stats etc but they do seem like huge amounts.

Thanks for reading this,

Lador

It's a bit of a combo of what everyone has posted. Obviously with 20 years of existence the "world of UO" has had time for people to obtain gold from all the things Laura mentioned which is basically like the a country just printing new money without destroying the old money so 20 years ago there might have only been 10 million gold in existence (completely random guess). Through all the years of that money hanging around and being transferred between hands of the players (not NPCs) the amount of gold "in the world" has kept going up. Couple that with people duping gold the amount has exponentially increased to billions or trillions now in existence.

So now that the gold is there in existence people have several different ways to acquire it. Honestly you probably won't make a fortune just killing monsters (but if that's what you enjoy more power to you). So how do people get 100+ million? Some people spend RL money for it, others have it transferred to them from a player leaving, some find a bag of checks in a bag from an IDOC, some make money from hoarding things that become rares over time and sell them, and then others acquire things that are highly sought after and sell to people with gold. The last option is basically what I've done to break the 100M and 1P barriers. I made a good portion of my gold from taming (before the taming change and PSing pets). I'd spend tons of time finding 4 star or higher pets and then train them and sell them off in Mag Stalls. I could make 100M+ in a week which I did for several months. When Eodon came out and Shadowguard started, I did hundreds of runs and with some luck I got things like Hawkwind's Robe etc which were selling for 80-100M per at the time (price has dramatically fallen since).

Long story short, to make a good amount of gold I'd say you want to find a thing that you enjoy doing that has some sort of sought after drop and just keep at it. Once you get a drop you can sell the drop. Use the gold to improve your suit / character and go back doing the same thing. It should be easier to do and you should be able to streamline it to be able to do more of it quicker. Get another drop and sell it again. Rinse and repeat.

 

[Maldar]

I can't believe nobody mentioned a lot of those people BUY their gold online.

 

[MalagAste]

Obviously a lot of people must buy it from that annoying spammer as otherwise he wouldn't be continuing to spam all day every day on every shard...

 

[Basara]

Consider that, if you don't loot the boss on the roof, just hope to get a drop, then pick up gold from the floor as quickly as possible before you get kicked out, a person with a giant beetle can carry out 300k+ gold from one Roof (240k on beetle, 60k or more in backpack, NOT COUNTING any gold sent from your pack with a bag of sending if you manage to hit backpack capacity after filling the beetle and still have time to pick up more). And, the right drop can get you several million more if sold.

Champ spawns have over 100k, and are relatively safe to pick the gold up from in Ilshenar, Malas, Eodon, and Tokuno - and even in most shard's Fel spawns, depending on the time of day.

 

[Captn Norrington]

Doing it the actual gameplay way, it's possible to farm about one million gold per day just by picking up the gold from champion spawns, killing troglodytes (1k each, takes like 3 seconds to kill them and instant respawn) and things along those lines.

Doing it the vending, businessman way once you have 100m or so saved up to use as startup money, you can pretty easily make 10m+ per day just by buying items for low prices and selling them for higher prices in general chat or on vendors.

Doing it the business tycoon, event item trader way, once you have a billion or so saved up to use as startup money, you can make 50-100m per day with occasional high value sales where you make 250m+ off of one item.

Hosting an auction where you get a percentage of the final sale is another good option. For example I used to run silent and live auctions once a week for a 10% commission. Once it got established most of them ended up with 750m+ in total sales, so my 10% would be 75m profit every week for like 6 hours of work preparing and running everything.

Everything except the actual gameplay part is probably only possible on Atlantic though due to the large population.

 

[Captn Norrington]

20+ years of gold creation + no real type of gold sink = Tons of gold in the system. Literally billions if not trillions.

Definitely many trillions at this point. I know of around 10 people with over 100 billion each so that'd be a trillion by itself.

 

[Victim of Siege]

 

[Fridgster]

I can't believe nobody mentioned a lot of those people BUY their gold online.

Gold still has to be generated in gam3.

 

[Capt. Lucky]

Go to events. Get a drop. Hopefully it's something cool and you can get 200 mill more or less for it. If you got shard shields you can really clean up.

 

[Gb8719]

Go to events. Get a drop. Hopefully it's something cool and you can get 200 mill more or less for it. If you got shard shields you can really clean up.

I have the option to select shard shields but haven’t done it. Could you elaborate on how they could be used to make money?

 

[Captn Norrington]

I have the option to select shard shields but haven’t done it. Could you elaborate on how they could be used to make money?

The original way, which is harder now but still possible, is to buy items on other shards where they're priced lower due to a smaller population and then bring them to Atlantic to sell for full price due to the larger population. It's become more difficult because pretty much every shard other than Atlantic has already been stripped clean of valuable items due to years of people doing this.

The most commonly used way currently, is to attend EM events on every shard and then transfer the event items back to Atlantic to sell. Even if you only win 25% of the items that's still about 5ish items to sell every month by transferring them back to Atlantic for free with shard shields. Using multiple accounts to attend events like many people do, that could be 20 items a month using 4 accounts with the same 25% success rate.

You can also farm things like champion spawns and Navrey on other less populated shards where you're the only one there so can farm as long as you want, then transfer the rewards back to Atlantic to sell. Doing that on Atlantic, you'd be constantly interrupted by other players, but on a small shard you can do it in solitude.

 

[Nero]

You can also farm things like champion spawns and Navrey on other less populated shards where you're the only one there so can farm as long as you want, then transfer the rewards back to Atlantic to sell. Doing that on Atlantic, you'd be constantly interrupted by other players, but on a small shard you can do it in solitude.

It's not only the lower population that makes it easier to farm on other shards without interruption from other players. If you choose a shard from a completely other time zone where local time is morning or early afternoon, you got all dungeons for yourself. The downside might be ping, but still at 150-250 ms the game is playable.

 

[Lore]

I'm skeptical of your post because 20+ years you could get a lot more than 7 million gold accrued even if you only killed earth elementals casually and put away 10% to save. It's definitely a far cry from pre AOS. I remember having to fight over Elder Gazer spawns to camp with a dragon. These days I see players just leaving gold after champ spawns more often than not. Like the gold just isn't worth the effort to pick up and use a bag of sending charge on.

That's when you know the economy is beyond just bad and in need of help. It's just done. One of the higher contents you can do for gold isn't even bothered with.

 

[PageBoy]

Reading trading posts I see people selling things like a bane dragon for 300 million and they get offers, where do people get that sort of gold from?

Years of duping and afk farming

 

[Theo_GL]

I have been playing UO for twenty years and in that time I have seen many changes but the biggest seems to be in peoples wealth.

In twenty years I have managed to save about seven million in gold and that took time and effort to do so.

Reading trading posts I see people selling things like a bane dragon for 300 million and they get offers, where do people get that sort of gold from?

I admit I haven't followed all the changes to do with weapon and armour stats etc but they do seem like huge amounts.

Thanks for reading this,

Lador

You can solo a champ spawn in about 30-45 minutes and scoop up 300k in gold. Imagine 5 spawns going an hour - 1.5m gold per hour x 10 hours thats just 11.5 million gold a day on one shard in champs - forget other ways to generate gold through monster hunting etc.

As someone else pointed out - very few gold sinks (insurance, housing, etc are all very small drains vs how fast you can generate it).

Also in the heyday - UO had 250k subscribers generating gold much faster and much of that gold got redistributed to others as people quit the game. Yes much was lost in bank accounts but much was transferred or lost in gold checks and on vendors in their house. Imagine 200k people with 5m gold (1T) and then imagine 50k subscribers now having 20m gold each for example.

As a side note - its pretty easy to generate items you can sell to others for the gold they possess. If you have played 20 years - you really should be able to generate 1-2m gold per day with a couple hours work at best (champ spawn, Bods, TMaps, etc etc).

 

[chester rockwell]

We need a democratic socialist to redistribute all this wealth.

 

[Grace of Minoc]

I'm skeptical of your post because 20+ years you could get a lot more than 7 million gold accrued even if you only killed earth elementals casually and put away 10% to save. It's definitely a far cry from pre AOS. I remember having to fight over Elder Gazer spawns to camp with a dragon. These days I see players just leaving gold after champ spawns more often than not. Like the gold just isn't worth the effort to pick up and use a bag of sending charge on.

That's when you know the economy is beyond just bad and in need of help. It's just done. One of the higher contents you can do for gold isn't even bothered with.

I only have about 5mil at the moment and no rares and have played more often than not since 2001.

How can that be you ask?

The taming revamp came out and powerscrolls bankrupted me. Did I lose all sense of self control with that? Hell yes, but sheesh building pets is addicting.

Also, living in a rural area, even with a great computer, my internet service just plain sucks so no events for me or even thinking about getting myself
in a position to have to defend myself against other players (champ spawns).

Not complaining, but indeed there is a great wealth gap in the game and it is too late to catch up unless you buy the gold which I will not.

I will happily play the game without all the great wealth till it shuts down however. Always something fun to do!

 

[Victim of Siege]

We need a democratic socialist to redistribute all this wealth.

Make Sosaria great again, say no to socialist Minocian ideals!

 

[celticus]

Years of duping and afk farming

Yep, thats sad. Mistakes/Exploits of the past haunting us into the future..

 

[PageBoy]

Yep, thats sad. Mistakes/Exploits of the past haunting us into the future..

I don’t really care tbh, it’s a game and exploits are part of UO history.

 

[Dorset]

If you want gold, play on a low pop server - champ after champ- week after week. Transfer to Atlantic and sell, this goes on 24/7 on all servers, on all different types of resources as well.
I did this for a couple of months years back and still have enough power scrolls + coin (for me anyway) until the lights go off. Boring as hell and id not want to do it again.


I wouldn't have said it at the time, but I miss the days when I was fighting and mining for every scrap I could get.
Even keeping my horse fed so it wouldn't throw we was hard work. You learned to not leave anything behind, skin any corpse you could & take the meat as well!

Current & returning players will never stop buying gold from these sites, its a game with an older player base with spare coin in their pocket. This along with the majority mentality of having to have everything now kills the progressive game play.

 

[SwordofExcalibur]

We need a democratic socialist to redistribute all this wealth.

Or practice responsible and compassionate capitalism.

 

[GarthGrey]

I have been playing UO for twenty years and in that time I have seen many changes but the biggest seems to be in peoples wealth.

In twenty years I have managed to save about seven million in gold and that took time and effort to do so.

Reading trading posts I see people selling things like a bane dragon for 300 million and they get offers, where do people get that sort of gold from?

I admit I haven't followed all the changes to do with weapon and armour stats etc but they do seem like huge amounts.

Thanks for reading this,

Lador

Gold was duped, billions of it. It's all still in the system, it just got passed around and transferred around. Anyone who thinks all of this gold got farmed up doing spawns 200k at a time is high.

 

[jack flash uk]

I remember they deleted 15 trillion gold in a big anti duping move in 2006

 

[Capt. Lucky]

Yes we all know there was duping for a long time. But any game that has a ton of players creating gold everyday is going to accumulate gold over the course of 20 years. Plus there's no real gold sinks and the money just floats around from person to person. The first noticeable gold sink was the new castle and keep customizing and I guess you even get that back if you want to get rid of it. We should have high end gold sink items but I guess all that kinda stuff they want real life dollars for now.

 

[THP]

I remember they deleted 15 trillion gold in a big anti duping move in 2006

and that was miniscule to the actual amount duped

 

[MalagAste]

Yes we all know there was duping for a long time. But any game that has a ton of players creating gold everyday is going to accumulate gold over the course of 20 years. Plus there's no real gold sinks and the money just floats around from person to person. The first noticeable gold sink was the new castle and keep customizing and I guess you even get that back if you want to get rid of it. We should have high end gold sink items but I guess all that kinda stuff they want real life dollars for now.

There are some gold sinks but not enough or not the right ones... If they allowed gold to be used in the store they would rid the lands of a lot more gold... if they put stuff in the store that was gold only even if it's deco or some sort of titles and such they could lose even more. People seem to like silly titles... They also like deco stuff... so win win...

 

[MalagAste]

One thing they could do that would be super easy and fix 2 or 3 problems would be to make all EM Drops shard bound and then sell "replica's" in the store for gold... This way people that got the drop on another shard could sell the drop on that shard and buy it for their home shard... and people that wanted a particular item could pay gold to get it... but have like a 1 year or so wait between when it dropped and when it's available in the store.

 

[celticus]

There are some gold sinks but not enough or not the right ones... If they allowed gold to be used in the store they would rid the lands of a lot more gold... if they put stuff in the store that was gold only even if it's deco or some sort of titles and such they could lose even more. People seem to like silly titles... They also like deco stuff... so win win...

Yes and make only select items to be sold at the in-game uo store, mostly deco and some useful items.

 

[celticus]

One thing they could do that would be super easy and fix 2 or 3 problems would be to make all EM Drops shard bound and then sell "replica's" in the store for gold... This way people that got the drop on another shard could sell the drop on that shard and buy it for their home shard... and people that wanted a particular item could pay gold to get it... but have like a 1 year or so wait between when it dropped and when it's available in the store.

EM drops are a major mover in the economy, and there are a lot of major collecting business behind it. Shard bound EM drops would effectively NUKE these collectors, and make a ton of people very upset. We would not want to create more mayhem for the game. This would be a dangerous move for the game, on a trade that has been created by the game over many years. Not too sure about this one. It sounds beneficial for the different shards superficially, but possibly has the potential to bring the game further down a few notches possibly. EM drops are ok as they are now, there is some kind of balance with these. What they need to work on is develop a system of detecting cheats with EM events and deal with cheaters effectively instead.

 

[MalagAste]

EM drops are a major mover in the economy, and there are a lot of major collecting business behind it. Shard bound EM drops would effectively NUKE these collectors, and make a ton of people very upset. We would not want to create more mayhem for the game. This would be a dangerous move for the game, on a trade that has been created by the game over many years. Not too sure about this one. It sounds beneficial for the different shards superficially, but possibly has the potential to bring the game further down a few notches possibly. EM drops are ok as they are now, there is some kind of balance with these. What they need to work on is develop a system of detecting cheats with EM events and deal with cheaters effectively instead.

What good would that do? Even with several people pointing out blatant offenders whenever seen (I know I report them)... they do NOTHING... I've watched the same person running 4 or 5 wraith throwers in tandem obviously running a multibox script attend EM event after EM Event... I've paged on them... my friends have paged on them... others have paged on them... yet they are still there... and remain there the entire event. I can tell the difference between multiclienting and multiboxing... it's as obvious as the nose on someones face... or Elvira at church... more obvious than a white bulb on a string of colored lights... yet nothing ever gets done about this person...

Same with IDOC scripters and everything else... The game has become more about making cash for people than having fun... and it's draining the life out of the game.

They need to be serious about fixing what's broken... and stop pretending that everything is fine and ignoring the major issues. Multiboxing, the Economy, IDOCs and the use of 3rd party programs... they need to fix it so people can't use them... if that means removing the client that is allowing them then so be it... yes they will lose some folk... but I think they will gain more than they would lose however that's thinking that it might be too little too late for any of that.

Maybe they have resigned themselves to the fact that the game is just going to be populated by those of us who are diehards and won't quit no matter what.. and those who are cheaters and out to only make a buck... Maybe they have figured that's all there is any more and they will just ignore all the blatant cheating... rampant use of illegal 3rd party apps and such and just put out new deco crap and non-sense and take the paycheck and not care anymore...

 

[Lore]

multiclienting and multiboxing...

I thought they said this was fine. And you don't know the difference. Multiclienting and multiboxing are the same thing. You need multiple clients to run multiple accounts. All multiboxing does is force your key and mouse to go to multiple applications or machines. You can do this with multiple PCs and a cheap piece of hardware or software that doesn't interact with UO at all. It just tells your OS to do the commands in the multiple clients or not.

It's funny the things I see people complaining about others doing but they openly brag about parking a discord person somewhere to run multiple accounts in a way they feel is legit.

If you REALLY thought this was a problem you wouldn't do either. Don't get mad that someone else is doing the same thing you're doing, smarter.

 

[MalagAste]

I thought they said this was fine. And you don't know the difference. Multiclienting and multiboxing are the same thing. You need multiple clients to run multiple accounts. All multiboxing does is force your key and mouse to go to multiple applications or machines. You can do this with multiple PCs and a cheap piece of hardware or software that doesn't interact with UO at all. It just tells your OS to do the commands in the multiple clients or not.

It's funny the things I see people complaining about others doing but they openly brag about parking a discord person somewhere to run multiple accounts in a way they feel is legit.

If you REALLY thought this was a problem you wouldn't do either. Don't get mad that someone else is doing the same thing you're doing, smarter.

Multiboxing is Illegal and against the TOS... and it's stated as such ...

 

[Theo_GL]

Maybe they have resigned themselves to the fact that the game is just going to be populated by those of us who are diehards and won't quit no matter what.. and those who are cheaters and out to only make a buck... Maybe they have figured that's all there is any more and they will just ignore all the blatant cheating... rampant use of illegal 3rd party apps and such and just put out new deco crap and non-sense and take the paycheck and not care anymore...

Bingo. You've summed it up 100%. This game has been on maintenance mode for 5+ years. Keep it running with the smallest cheapest staff you can find and hope you can collect enough subs to eek out a profit. Its a shame because with some effort this game has more content than most others but they spend their precious cycles working on TMap changes instead of things that could revitalize this game.

 

[MalagAste]

Bingo. You've summed it up 100%. This game has been on maintenance mode for 5+ years. Keep it running with the smallest cheapest staff you can find and hope you can collect enough subs to eek out a profit. Its a shame because with some effort this game has more content than most others but they spend their precious cycles working on TMap changes instead of things that could revitalize this game.

I don't think they have any clue what would revitalize the game... I told EA before it was given to BS that they had a diamond in the rough and with a little tender loving care and polish they could really have something better than WoW and FF and so many others... but yeah...

 

[Luc of Legends]

EM drops are a major mover in the economy, and there are a lot of major collecting business behind it. Shard bound EM drops would effectively NUKE these collectors, and make a ton of people very upset. We would not want to create more mayhem for the game. This would be a dangerous move for the game, on a trade that has been created by the game over many years. Not too sure about this one. It sounds beneficial for the different shards superficially, but possibly has the potential to bring the game further down a few notches possibly. EM drops are ok as they are now, there is some kind of balance with these. What they need to work on is develop a system of detecting cheats with EM events and deal with cheaters effectively instead.

Honestly and truly I am sick TO DEATH of THAT crowd. They have run UO into the ground, but God-forbid we don't stick a pacifier in their mouth when they scream, change their nasty nappies when they fuss and pick up their toys when they toss them out of the pram when they have a tantrum. It's time THAT CROWD grow-up, pick up their own toys and learn to use the big boy/girl potty!

 

[Chap]

The first noticeable gold sink was the new castle and keep customizing and I guess you even get that back if you want to get rid of it. We should have high end gold sink items.

Its not the first, but ill mention a few more:
Castle deed from NPC cost like 900k-1m gold, at the time it was introduced it was alot of gold. But then again in 1997-1998-1999 there wasnt much places to put a castle So I guess this didnt draw alot of gold. As a moneydrain it must have been quite ineffective.
The cuztomizable plot which came from AoS (around 2004) cost 33k-187k for a plot, depending on size + money for cuztomization of house with walls and tiles., still exist today. Imagine the huge chunk of gold it has drawn from the game since then. (But the bad thing, if you demo the plot you get money back doh!) idoc however draws money out of the game.

the rope to buy to get into poroximus 5k, bought a million times over the years, also abit of gold.
Item insurance, if killed by monster, boom 5-10-15-20k each death out of the game.
City loyalty titles, upto 50m for the best, in total alot of gold drawn out of the game.

The real first moneydrain must be the hairdye/beard you could buy from NPC for 500k, alot of players had this.

All these are examples of moneydrains still existing in the game today, but Id say even combined it wasnt enough money drain.
NPCs sell stuff for 5gp, 30gp and 120gp etc, we all just laugh at the NPC, "hey everything is free". But for a new player starting with 1k gold those prices are pretty serious.
Old returners who have 10-15million gold which might have been alot at that time, will ofcourse fall of their chair hearing prices of hundreds of millions or even plats.
Luck for the returners gold is relatively easy to get, champing, idoc, trading, claiming vet rewards, selling houses, vendors, quests etcetc

My conclusion:

The reason gold exists in 10s-100s of plats now is that nearly everyone active xfered their char and gold to ATL so it became so consentraded. If you took all ATL gold and split on 25 shards it wouldnt be so much.
Even if gold exists in hundreds of millions or plats, it should be taken down to earth again with more money drains.
Money should be a factor, even when buying from NPCs or other players. More moneydrains are needed.

 

[Effort]

yeah the game just needs gold sinks; introduce cosmetic clickies that expire in 30 days, but let people with too much gold ball out a bit for fun, while still draining gold. Temporary Dyes, 100m a pop, the time decay function is already part of the game (keys, quest items), so it wont be a hard implementation, has no negative ramifications on the actual game mechanics. Just let us dye our horse for 1 plat, or 100m for some 30 day temp stuff, harmless stuff but will drain bulk gold

 

[Theo_GL]

yeah the game just needs gold sinks; introduce cosmetic clickies that expire in 30 days, but let people with too much gold ball out a bit for fun, while still draining gold. Temporary Dyes, 100m a pop, the time decay function is already part of the game (keys, quest items), so it wont be a hard implementation, has no negative ramifications on the actual game mechanics. Just let us dye our horse for 1 plat, or 100m for some 30 day temp stuff, harmless stuff but will drain bulk gold

Yes, of course they are trying to make this a F2P type game and offering these things through the store for sovereigns but honestly if they would allow us to buy sovereigns with gold - this would be the gold sink you are looking for.

It would hurt $$ sales to start but then at some point when gold is sucked out - we'd be back to paying for the items. Of course, they would have to get the exchange right to encourage it and I don't trust them to do this. Example - transfer tokens cost 80-90m gold now when for sale - so if the sovereigns rate was like 300m - no one would ever do it. It needs to be set roughly equivalent to today's pricing.

I do like the idea of keys and other items for gold or sovereign prices. People can still acquire and sell but it would give people another avenue to catch up. If you want to join in on the UO fun and spend a few hundred bucks outfitting your characters - why not? No need to slog through a year of content to be able to PvP. We need WAYS for people to get into the game and if that way is drop RL coin or someone buys items with UO gold - either way its good.

Think about the EM drops - instead of dropping them - what if they were made for sale after the event in limited quantity? Like 10 drops at the event and 10 more on an NPC at 100m each? 1 Plat removed from the economy for each event.

 

[Luc of Legends]

Chap -You missed a gold sink er gold miss.. the Britannia ship. I say miss cause you could either sink gold or items to get one from library or buy from EA/Origin. Sadly as fast as they introduce a gold sink it become more of a drop in the bucket.

Theo_GL - I love the idea of putting event item on NPC but super-botman 1000 will most likely have a bot waiting to buy them up. (sorry to be debbie downer, but i have ideas to outwit bot-man) However maybe implement such limits like were you can only buy per acct, EJ accounts would not be allowed to purchase, and maybe you have to have been present not just logged in during event. (OK, last idea might be one to toss out, cause i know there are folks that work or whatever that might want event items) Another idea, if you got a drop during event you could not purchase. (ok this could either be master acct or individual acct.) I know this won't stop greedy McGreedyson, but just a good place to start.


Effort-- The pet dye should not be 1P, maybe 5mil or 10mil. As a tamer i would buy a lot at those prices, but at 1p forget it. Great idea's unless your being snarky. Then fun snark.

 

[Chap]

Since I started mention money sinks, I forgot to mention perhaps the biggest:
Player vendors and its alot of them out there, over 20years its alot of thousands of plats.
Even with new vendor type, a certain % of fee in direct sale its a good gold sink.

If devs wanted, no need to do anything about ea.com soverign price or ingame store,
just add a OSI owned vendor sell everything that ingame store has for 30% less than current price on vendor search, 1month, huge sink.
pre announced an UO.com that its an limited offer, people would go bananas buying. But they wont do it cause it hurt real sales $$$
So I say make a few new items then limited offer. delete vendor and gold after a month.

pretty easy really, its not a final fix to economy, but a good start.

 

[Gb8719]

There is a huge market in this game for vanity and showing off.

I love the idea of temporary mounts, dyes, and decorations that people can buy and show off when bank sitting. Even a potential house add on beyond the dimensions of a house that last for 30 days and require a lot of gold to upkeep it.

Imagine how much money people would pay to hire NPCs like guards to patrol their house and kill spawn or have bank access.

 

[Amber Witch]

The quest for MORE gold, more rares, more this, more that.... Gold isn't the answer. Forget gold.
We're all like that child with a new toy. After about 5 minutes we see a newer shiny and now we want that and think the newer shiny will make our world perfect. We get it and 5 minutes later it's covered with dust and now we're where we were 10 minutes ago.
Play the game, do stuff with friends, spend what little gold you have on others without fanfare. Be the secret Santa.
It's like real life. Money isn't the key. You really don't need a damn thing. It's what you do with your life. In this case, your UO life.