Gold sink

[Merth]

i keep hearing talk of gold sinks and scriptors etc. Scriptors and sellers have always been a problem even back to the days of Tradespot (bought my first house there). Im not an economist by any means but I dont understand where the problem exists. Im sure this has been beat down in the past. Observations from the last few days back:

1. If UO store sold gold for sovereigns it would put gold sellers out of business provided the prices werent ridiculous.

2. Close accounts immediately no questions asked of spammers offering to sell. No point to that anyways.

3. Gold sinks are simple allow gold to be traded for game time codes. Yes this would allow scriptors to stop paying sub fees, but they dont pay them anyways since they are selling gold to pay for them anyways.

4. Make housing need refreshing again not just paying sub fees.

5. Sell one of a kind items for cash in UO Store that are account and shard bound.

Just a few ideas im sure the community has a ton more.

 

[Xris]

I think the problem in a gold sink is some people have almost unlimited gold. The minority of these people worked hard for their gold for many years (which I respect). But duped gold and items have kind of ruined the economy. How can you have a gold sink when there are people have 30 plat+. If they want to fix the economy they need to find and fix every bug that could give you more than you started with. I think most know that gold sites are still selling duped stuff. Hire someone to investigate this idc what you do, just find and stop it. How can an economy be fixed with this still happening?

 

[Merth]

Would be a fairly simple thing to do run a script that shows the gold/plat count of every account. Start with the whales and follow the money. If they are actively playing how are they making gold. Are they using illegal programs etc etc

 

[Xris]

Would be a fairly simple thing to do run a script that shows the gold/plat count of every account. Start with the whales and follow the money. If they are actively playing how are they making gold. Are they using illegal programs etc etc

I think the problem with that is that people do it on multiple burner accounts and distribute it through multiple accounts. I think they could fairly easily solve this by monitoring certain players accounts and working backwards with the money. There has to be something stopping them from doing this, so I don't know.

 

[Merth]

My guess is they anticipate a large number of accts involved either “making” the money which they will lose sub fees on and accts buying the gold which they will also lose sub fees on.

In addition they probably have a team of about two people actually working on the game so no time to actually follow up on anything.

 

[Xare]

Would be a fairly simple thing to do run a script that shows the gold/plat count of every account. Start with the whales and follow the money. If they are actively playing how are they making gold. Are they using illegal programs etc etc

That's a lot larger time investment than you think it is.

 

[Merth]

Ya im sure it must be reason why they dont do it. I have no game design knowledge/experience so im just talking out my *%# tho I think they need to prioritize this problem.

In its current state I dont see how they can attract either new players or keep returning vets disheartened to come back to nothing to stay.

 

[Merth]

One solution could be to reorganize a volunteer force that helps moniter the game. Give some of the vets gm accts that can be used only for helping other players freeing up the paid employees to follow up on some deeper issues

 

[Xris]

One solution could be to reorganize a volunteer force that helps moniter the game. Give some of the vets gm accts that can be used only for helping other players freeing up the paid employees to follow up on some deeper issues

I think they know who's doing it, few years ago they banned all those accts for duping. I think it's catching them in the act and proving it somehow. They must know who the gold sellers are, catching them seems to be difficult. Nobody that gets banned for duping seems to care, they open another account and start again. I think catching them in the act is the problem. Id literally lol if we found out gold websites are run by someone who works for UO, and is a big source of their income. Otherwise who would tolerate this!

 

[J. E. Tamer]

OOC: If they were interested in sinking gold, then items in the UO Store would have a price in gold in addition to the $USD ("sovereigns" ain't fooling anyone, Mesanna, Kyronix).

 

[Fridgster]

Problem with pricing things such as gametimes and such with gold is the fact that there is trillions of gold in the system. This gold for the most part is controlled by a very small percentage of the player base. All making things purchasable via gold would do is give that small percentage a much larger advantage in game. Then of course you have the duping issues. Until those are ALL closed selling anything like gametime would be catastrophic to the monitary income to UO itself. Why would someone spend real money on something when you can just dupe your way to it?

 

[Merth]

I agree but that is in essence what they are doing anyways. Dupe gold, sell to legit players, use cash to pay dues. Or likewise use scripts to get high end goods, sell for gold (or cash), pay dues

 

[Fridgster]

I agree but that is in essence what they are doing anyways. Dupe gold, sell to legit players, use cash to pay dues. Or likewise use scripts to get high end goods, sell for gold (or cash), pay dues

Perhaps... but really no need to streamline it.

 

[Great DC]

First they have to find and fix all the loopholes that allow you to dupe. Then track down and eradicate the dupers. Its actually not that hard, they either just don't care, or are involved in making money off of it.

 

[Dot_Warner]

​

 

[railshot]

Problem with pricing things such as gametimes and such with gold is the fact that there is trillions of gold in the system. This gold for the most part is controlled by a very small percentage of the player base. All making things purchasable via gold would do is give that small percentage a much larger advantage in game. Then of course you have the duping issues. Until those are ALL closed selling anything like gametime would be catastrophic to the monitary income to UO itself. Why would someone spend real money on something when you can just dupe your way to it?

This^. Selling gamecodes for in game currency worked pretty well for EVE online. But despite having probably the freest MMO market in the industry, they control in game currency pretty well. And by control I don't mean a mere restriction on inflation. They are able to make it go up or down or into negatives if needed. They also spend quite a bit of effort on banning scripters. And to boot, EVE is an almost unlimited PVP game, so scripting is that much more difficult even without GM enforcement.
UO has none of those capabilities and controls. And UO still has duping. Offering gametime for gold would give a huge boost to all the scripters and dupers. Whatever dollar income UO still generates would take a big hit. Inflation might actually go down a bit, but I don't think this is a good trade.

 

[Shiranui Renn]

They should add a new landmass where the super rich can rent exclusive castle plots where they can build whatever they want. Maybe add different sizes like 2 plots next to each other or 4 in square without the gap between the plots so you can build over all plots. Set the rent to at least 1 plat / month for each plot maybe with a discount of 10 plat for 1 year in advance.

The plots should be with all luxury you can think. Like every plot is for its own on a small island surrounded by a few trees, a pond or/and whatever (maybe let them choose from a few options). Add a small landing stage for ships aso. Toss in a personal npc for bank access and a wandering healer outside the plots to spice things up.

 

[Uvtha]

i keep hearing talk of gold sinks and scriptors etc. Scriptors and sellers have always been a problem even back to the days of Tradespot (bought my first house there). Im not an economist by any means but I dont understand where the problem exists. Im sure this has been beat down in the past. Observations from the last few days back:

1. If UO store sold gold for sovereigns it would put gold sellers out of business provided the prices werent ridiculous.

2. Close accounts immediately no questions asked of spammers offering to sell. No point to that anyways.

3. Gold sinks are simple allow gold to be traded for game time codes. Yes this would allow scriptors to stop paying sub fees, but they dont pay them anyways since they are selling gold to pay for them anyways.

4. Make housing need refreshing again not just paying sub fees.

5. Sell one of a kind items for cash in UO Store that are account and shard bound.

Just a few ideas im sure the community has a ton more.

1) No. That's like saying we have ants, so to solve that... let's make the whole house out of ants, so that the ants crawling in won't be a bother. Gold sellers aren't a problem, the gold has to be "earned" by someone farming it, this via gameplay. How it gets moved around afterward isn't really important. Selling gold flat out would be putting gold directly into the system instantly devaluing any gold earned by playing the game. No, no, no.

2) They should tie bans to card numbers. That's the only realistic way to stop people from just making a new account 10 seconds after being banned.

3) This will never happen. Mainly because it's not important to have gold sinks. Certainly not from the perspective of the developers. Why would they essentially pay us to remove fictional currency from a system, for ostensibly no reason?

4) I really can't imagine what benefit this would provide. All this would do is annoy literally everyone who has a paid account. I don't really even understand what problem this would be trying to solve.

5) Why? Again, what problem is this trying to address? Why should we be paying for this object? Why not get it from a quest or a monster drop?

One idea them I personally want to interject my own vehement dislike of is the "sell x in the store..." ideas. Lets ask for ideas that are part of actual game play, not ideas to give them more of our money to cut out the game play. This is why a hybrid system like we now have is troublesome. If a lot of the new content is going to come from the store the value of a sub really goes down, and makes people feel like they are just getting double milked.

 

[Uvtha]

Ya im sure it must be reason why they dont do it. I have no game design knowledge/experience so im just talking out my *%# tho I think they need to prioritize this problem.

I'm afraid that if it were a reasonably solvable problem, it would already be solved by now.

 

[Uvtha]

This^. Selling gamecodes for in game currency worked pretty well for EVE online. But despite having probably the freest MMO market in the industry, they control in game currency pretty well. And by control I don't mean a mere restriction on inflation. They are able to make it go up or down or into negatives if needed. They also spend quite a bit of effort on banning scripters. And to boot, EVE is an almost unlimited PVP game, so scripting is that much more difficult even without GM enforcement.
UO has none of those capabilities and controls. And UO still has duping. Offering gametime for gold would give a huge boost to all the scripters and dupers. Whatever dollar income UO still generates would take a big hit. Inflation might actually go down a bit, but I don't think this is a good trade.

EVE also employs actual economists.

 

[Lord Frodo]

I'm afraid that if it were a reasonably solvable problem, it would already be solved by now.

You are assuming that "they" want to solve it in the first place.

 

[Uvtha]

You are assuming that "they" want to solve it in the first place.

Why would I assume otherwise?

 

[Merth]

1) No. That's like saying we have ants, so to solve that... let's make the whole house out of ants, so that the ants crawling in won't be a bother. Gold sellers aren't a problem, the gold has to be "earned" by someone farming it, this via gameplay. How it gets moved around afterward isn't really important. Selling gold flat out would be putting gold directly into the system instantly devaluing any gold earned by playing the game. No, no, no.

2) They should tie bans to card numbers. That's the only realistic way to stop people from just making a new account 10 seconds after being banned.

3) This will never happen. Mainly because it's not important to have gold sinks. Certainly not from the perspective of the developers. Why would they essentially pay us to remove fictional currency from a system, for ostensibly no reason?

4) I really can't imagine what benefit this would provide. All this would do is annoy literally everyone who has a paid account. I don't really even understand what problem this would be trying to solve.

5) Why? Again, what problem is this trying to address? Why should we be paying for this object? Why not get it from a quest or a monster drop?

One idea them I personally want to interject my own vehement dislike of is the "sell x in the store..." ideas. Lets ask for ideas that are part of actual game play, not ideas to give them more of our money to cut out the game play. This is why a hybrid system like we now have is troublesome. If a lot of the new content is going to come from the store the value of a sub really goes down, and makes people feel like they are just getting double milked.

I guess the bigger question is what are we trying to solve? Personal observation is there are several problems on multiple levels, but the biggest issue is the gap between 15-20 veterans and either new or returning players. Veterans are looking for one thing (new content etc), new players are looking for another (fun engagement etc). So how does UO deliver and keep both sides (and those in between happy?

As a returning vet I can only give my opinions based on my experiences.

1. If gold sellers arent an issue then I would prefer to buy gold from UO then an outside source interjecting more cash that can be used to pay more people to work on the game.

2. Spammer accounts are annoying on all levels in all games. Directly traceable and easily bannable. I agree link it to the card.

3. Gold for game time is great for keeping players around that struggle to pay subs.

4. Refreshing houses eliminates the accounts that just hold houses for selling i mean really how hard is it to refresh your houses say once a month if you actually play. Also gives new players an opportunity to actually place a house.

5. It gives UO another income stream that doesnt give scammers an opportunity to cash in on. Gives the elitists another thing to add to their collections.

 

[Amber Witch]

They should add a new landmass where the super rich can rent exclusive castle plots where they can build whatever they want. Maybe add different sizes like 2 plots next to each other or 4 in square without the gap between the plots so you can build over all plots. Set the rent to at least 1 plat / month for each plot maybe with a discount of 10 plat for 1 year in advance.

The plots should be with all luxury you can think. Like every plot is for its own on a small island surrounded by a few trees, a pond or/and whatever (maybe let them choose from a few options). Add a small landing stage for ships aso. Toss in a personal npc for bank access and a wandering healer outside the plots to spice things up.

This is what I've been saying too. But I hesitate at a monthly rental fee as I'd be afraid of where that road would lead to. As long as it remains only for the 'Platleet' and doesn't trickle down I'm good with it.

I think this should be a separate design contest and what ever design wins, it should be converted by the dev team's newest artist, built with precious metals, stones and woods . Same sq footage as the castle but gaudy as all hell. Make it cost 10 plat up front and 1 plat a month. No discount for paying up front. They don't need a discount. Save that for single parents and people who live on fixed incomes.

 

[Lord Frodo]

Why would I assume otherwise?

Because they have not done it in 20 years.

 

[Uvtha]

I guess the bigger question is what are we trying to solve? Personal observation is there are several problems on multiple levels, but the biggest issue is the gap between 15-20 veterans and either new or returning players. Veterans are looking for one thing (new content etc), new players are looking for another (fun engagement etc). So how does UO deliver and keep both sides (and those in between happy?

As a returning vet I can only give my opinions based on my experiences.

1. If gold sellers arent an issue then I would prefer to buy gold from UO then an outside source interjecting more cash that can be used to pay more people to work on the game.

2. Spammer accounts are annoying on all levels in all games. Directly traceable and easily bannable. I agree link it to the card.

3. Gold for game time is great for keeping players around that struggle to pay subs.

4. Refreshing houses eliminates the accounts that just hold houses for selling i mean really how hard is it to refresh your houses say once a month if you actually play. Also gives new players an opportunity to actually place a house.

5. It gives UO another income stream that doesnt give scammers an opportunity to cash in on. Gives the elitists another thing to add to their collections.

1) Gold sellers aren't an issue assuming the gold is not duped. If we are laboring under the idea that it is all or mostly duped (I honestly can't comment on the validity of that) then UO selling gold would be just as bad, if not worse because more people would likely avail themselves of a "legal" source.

3) I don't think they care a ton about people who can't pay subs, that's what EJ is for.

4) An easier solution is to make houses on inactive accounts inaccessible. No one is annoyed, and people don't lose their stuff right away when they aren't subbed. No need to annoy people if you don't have to. I mean what if someone has a paid account and they just don't feel like, or can't play, or forget to play for a month? Anyway, is housing a problem on most shards? If it is, then there are probably a ton of people with account holding houses, and this change would cost the game a lot of money, or there isn't and it's a non problem.
I would honestly rather they have a 5 dollar monthly "keep my house" fee so people could take breaks, or have extra houses and not worry about resubbing ever 3 months.

5) I think people should worry less about "scammers"... not more. The game has taken a lot of bad turns ignoring actual players and making changes to combat cheaters.

 

[Lord Frodo]

There are some good ideas here but people need to remember that anything that takes money out of EAs pocket is an automatic NO. EA could care less where the green comes from just as long as it is green. So buying stuff for ingame gold from the ingame store is off the table.

 

[Uvtha]

Because they have not done it in 20 years.

I don't think that even needed to be stated, we wouldn't be talking about it otherwise. I still don't know why you would assume they don't want to fix the problem.

 

[Lord Frodo]

I don't think that even needed to be stated, we wouldn't be talking about it otherwise. I still don't know why you would assume they don't want to fix the problem.

How hard is it to search a Database? Every item is UO is located in a database and UO knows exactly what you have in your account but the big question is who owns these accounts with all this "stuff" in them and how much money do they pay EA to maintain these accounts and IF EA allowed UO to ban these accounts would UO survive is the big question. Sony not EA got the selling of stuff on E-Bay banned and what is funny is EA is/was a lot bigger so why didn't they do it, because they really didn't care. EA only cares about the green.

 

[Merth]

How hard is it to search a Database? Every item is UO is located in a database and UO knows exactly what you have in your account but the big question is who owns these accounts with all this "stuff" in them and how much money do they pay EA to maintain these accounts and IF EA allowed UO to ban these accounts would UO survive is the big question. Sony not EA got the selling of stuff on E-Bay banned and what is funny is EA is/was a lot bigger so why didn't they do it, because they really didn't care. EA only cares about the green.

I think there is a fine line but from a logic standpoint...actual paying players have to be more than these “accounts” otherwise why would they continue to pay/sell for said accounts. It doesnt make sense not to shut them down unless a. They are getting some form of kickback (or actually own them) b. Not worth the effort to bother

 

[Val-Tur]

One of the last member of the UO team to actually do anything substantial about scripting / duping issue did a big grand gesture by closing the offenders accounts & burning their in game houses. They were applauded by the community. They were quickly promoted after that & were no longer involved in the game in such a direct manner. It was rather convenient the promotion timing. I think he scared the suits.

I think they really do not know how to solve the problem in any long term way without destroying the game as we know it. I do not think UO would survive the massive revamp it would take. The cost would also be substantial. It would gain us what 6-7 yrs before the problems began again? Also, there is too much pressure to keep turning a profit. All the suits will see is that by eliminating too many accounts (even if it makes the community better) the profits will go down. They do not see these as communities. They are mostly on board with the last decade of cash grab MMO's that have ruined the genre. Every 5-6 yrs the UO team is allowed to make some guesture that will appease the community for a while. But it is never permanent or far reaching to do long term good.

4) Hell no to going back to house refreshing. Many of us here have paid continually for decade or more. We take long breaks. Life happens. People get deployed overseas. People go on long vacations. There should be no requirement to refresh your house as long as the account is paid for.

 

[Lord Frodo]

I think there is a fine line but from a logic standpoint...actual paying players have to be more than these “accounts” otherwise why would they continue to pay/sell for said accounts. It doesnt make sense not to shut them down unless a. They are getting some form of kickback (or actually own them) b. Not worth the effort to bother

EA is all about the money and we have no clue as to how many paying accounts UO has so closing down let say %10 of the accounts may be more money then EA is willing to lose. Between holder accounts/duping accounts and scripting accounts IMHO there are more than we care to agree on.

 

[Siabra]

I
As a returning vet I can only give my opinions based on my experiences.

4. Refreshing houses eliminates the accounts that just hold houses for selling i mean really how hard is it to refresh your houses say once a month if you actually play. Also gives new players an opportunity to actually place a house.

NO ... No .. NO ... to doing the house refresh - they stopped that ages ago .. ages .. and this is from a vet who has always been playing since 1998
didn't care for it then & most certainly do NOT want it back .. ... thats my experience ... go for a different idea perhaps

and there are plenty of places to put a house - maybe not a castle but tons of spots to place homes

 

[railshot]

I think they really do not know how to solve the problem in any long term way without destroying the game as we know it. I do not think UO would survive the massive revamp it would take. The cost would also be substantial. It would gain us what 6-7 yrs before the problems began again? Also, there is too much pressure to keep turning a profit. All the suits will see is that by eliminating too many accounts (even if it makes the community better) the profits will go down. They do not see these as communities. They are mostly on board with the last decade of cash grab MMO's that have ruined the genre. Every 5-6 yrs the UO team is allowed to make some guesture that will appease the community for a while. But it is never permanent or far reaching to do long term good.

It's pretty much a proven fact that scripters decrease profits for the publishers. In cases where due to past permissiveness scripting got so bad that everyone is doing it (I don't think this is even close to being the case in UO). If the "suits" think that fighting scripters would destroy the game faster than letting them run amok, then I guess we still have incompetents running the show. You know, the kind that never fail to take a bad situation, and after careful analysis make it worse ( shard shields and 2 active clients come immediately to mind).

 

[railshot]

EVE also employs actual economists.

Did not they lay him off after awhile?

 

[Lord Arm]

dupers/scripters did use the 14 day trial accounts, but now they can use the endless cheating accounts. i posted about this on the uo forums, stating that alot of money/revenue is lost due to the gold/item selling sites but my post was removed. mod stated this post may cause arguements lol.

 

[Uvtha]

Did not they lay him off after awhile?

Possible, I haven't looked into that game in ages. I was under the impression they had more than one, or have had several over time, but that's all just what I gleaned from curiosity web searches years ago.

 

[Uvtha]

How hard is it to search a Database? Every item is UO is located in a database and UO knows exactly what you have in your account but the big question is who owns these accounts with all this "stuff" in them and how much money do they pay EA to maintain these accounts and IF EA allowed UO to ban these accounts would UO survive is the big question. Sony not EA got the selling of stuff on E-Bay banned and what is funny is EA is/was a lot bigger so why didn't they do it, because they really didn't care. EA only cares about the green.

I don't presume to know how their code is structured, or what difficulties may be inherent there in.

Basically your premise is then tha that UO could have stopped dupers at any point in time, but that at no point in the last 20 years would the game have survived removing all of the people who dupe to sell? Not only does that seem highly unlikely (boardering on conspiratorial), but it also requires a massive amount of presumption, so I'll have to say I can't see any reason to believe it.

 

[ShriNayne]

Maybe if they stopped making changes that benefit scripters more than the average casual player we wouldn't be having so much trouble. Just saying 'we can't do anything about scripters and cheaters' for 20 years does not make it true. Other games have had these issues and other games have dealt with them. Saying it's impossible to deal with it is just a cop-out, if it really mattered to them they would have done something years ago. The team is too small now to even begin to tackle it.

 

[Uvtha]

Maybe if they stopped making changes that benefit scripters more than the average casual player we wouldn't be having so much trouble. Just saying 'we can't do anything about scripters and cheaters' for 20 years does not make it true. Other games have had these issues and other games have dealt with them. Saying it's impossible to deal with it is just a cop-out, if it really mattered to them they would have done something years ago. The team is too small now to even begin to tackle it.

They could just use punkbuster. ;P

 

[Fridgster]

They could just use punkbuster. ;P

I seem to remember people losing their mind when UO attempted to implement that years ago.

 

[Uvtha]

I seem to remember people losing their mind when UO attempted to implement that years ago.

Yes, a lot of people did freak out.

 

[ShriNayne]

I wonder which people were freaking out?

 

[Lord Frodo]

I don't presume to know how their code is structured, or what difficulties may be inherent there in.

Basically your premise is then tha that UO could have stopped dupers at any point in time, but that at no point in the last 20 years would the game have survived removing all of the people who dupe to sell? Not only does that seem highly unlikely (boardering on conspiratorial), but it also requires a massive amount of presumption, so I'll have to say I can't see any reason to believe it.

I think his name was Cal, the guy right before Bannie said that they had a database with everything and that they knew everything you have done so what does that tell you. Bonnie was even tell people at an M&G or was it with just a group of people that she knew every program they were running and proceeded to tell them and that was even talked about here on stratics. I am sorry but having worked in the field from 1973 on and working with programs that collected massive amounts of data, military wants to know everything, even back then was easy to retrieve data and they are saying they can't more like they don not want to, sorry.

 

[Spartan]

I think his name was Cal, the guy right before Bannie said that they had a database with everything and that they knew everything you have done so what does that tell you. Bonnie was even tell people at an M&G or was it with just a group of people that she knew every program they were running and proceeded to tell them and that was even talked about here on stratics. I am sorry but having worked in the field from 1973 on and working with programs that collected massive amounts of data, military wants to know everything, even back then was easy to retrieve data and they are saying they can't more like they don not want to, sorry.

Yup ... 100% agree. I started with computers in 1973 and even then we could figure out glitched/bogus data very easily. And I think it was Cal Crowner or something like that. I remember the discussion here about what could/could not be detected.

They had a way then to know what was bogus and what wasn't. Why not use that knowledge now ... unless some closely associated persons are generating the junk? Hmmmm? Yes, that is a bit of conspiracy theory, folks!

 

[Flagg]

I think only remotely feasible way for Broadsword to "sell gold" would be via subscription tokens. One would buy a 30 days sub token from Broadsword for 20 bux, then sell it for a veteran for 500 mils or whatnot. This way Broadsword would not generate hundreds of millions of gold out of thin air(would be a real bad idea) but instead, distribute what already is there more evenly among players. I'm not sure if UO can or should do it.(Some dupers sitting on trillions of gold, buying all the tokens and efficiently turn UO free for them on top of it all)

WoW has it up and running quite nicely -there, devs keep an eye on the sub token market. They don't fully control the price but ensure it never skyrockets or falls in some pernament, unpredictable way. Players can only sell/buy for a specific price in a specific place. Lessens the amount of exploiting, scams etc.



In a way, this is something that has been in the game for years though. Plenty of desirable tokens in item shop. Ones you can turn into gold with ease, if you feel you can spend the Euros.

 

[Fridgster]

I think only remotely feasible way for Broadsword to "sell gold" would be via subscription tokens. One would buy a 30 days sub token from Broadsword for 20 bux, then sell it for a veteran for 500 mils or whatnot. This way Broadsword would not generate hundreds of millions of gold out of thin air(would be a real bad idea) but instead, distribute what already is there more evenly among players. I'm not sure if UO can or should do it.(Some dupers sitting on trillions of gold, buying all the tokens and efficiently turn UO free for them on top of it all)

WoW has it up and running quite nicely -there, devs keep an eye on the sub token market. They don't fully control the price but ensure it never skyrockets or falls in some pernament, unpredictable way. Players can only sell/buy for a specific price in a specific place. Lessens the amount of exploiting, scams etc.



In a way, this is something that has been in the game for years though. Plenty of desirable tokens in item shop. Ones you can turn into gold with ease, if you feel you can spend the Euros.

@Mesanna ^^^^This would be a gold sink. A darn good one at that.

 

[ShriNayne]

Doesn't EVE online allow you to pay for subs with game currency?

 

[Spartan]

I think only remotely feasible way for Broadsword to "sell gold" would be via subscription tokens. One would buy a 30 days sub token from Broadsword for 20 bux, then sell it for a veteran for 500 mils or whatnot. This way Broadsword would not generate hundreds of millions of gold out of thin air(would be a real bad idea) but instead, distribute what already is there more evenly among players. I'm not sure if UO can or should do it.(Some dupers sitting on trillions of gold, buying all the tokens and efficiently turn UO free for them on top of it all)

WoW has it up and running quite nicely -there, devs keep an eye on the sub token market. They don't fully control the price but ensure it never skyrockets or falls in some pernament, unpredictable way. Players can only sell/buy for a specific price in a specific place. Lessens the amount of exploiting, scams etc.



In a way, this is something that has been in the game for years though. Plenty of desirable tokens in item shop. Ones you can turn into gold with ease, if you feel you can spend the Euros.

@Mesanna I'm with Fridgster on this. This is one handy and seemingly good gold sink. Please?

 

[Angleswings]

This is how many people make their gold.
You can just buy sovereigns and than use the credit to buy transfer tokens, mythic tokens, artifact tool or whatever and than sell them for gold. People also used to buy game time codes and sell them for gold but because many of those GTC were acquired using stolen CC's or other fraudulent ways BS dont want the headache and nowadays you cant sell them ingame, there is still a lot of people that sell gametime codes for gold, but you dont see them on ingame vendors anymore.
but also the problem on buying sovereigns and than buying mythic tokens or transfer tokens and selling them for gold, is the current rate of the gold in exchange. it is a lot cheaper nowadays buy those tokens using ingame search than buying them using sovereigns.
Would be a nice idea to buy GTC using our own gold but EA/BS would never approve that, because they are already losing big time money with EJ accounts and they would make no money at all if you could pay with gold.