As a victim of all sorts of scams, dupes, and account hacks... I can't sincerely fault anyone, but myself for taking such a financial risk on a game. Those players who choose to take advantage of other players do so like a Nigerian Internet Thief from a distance with no personal knowledge of their victims. I can only imagine it is far easier to steal from someone without having to look them in their eyes over a gun barrel as you rob their grocery store. Yet unlike the Nigerians, I imagine most of these thieves don't have starving families to feed, and could easily make a decent living on their own.
No instead they take the easy road rather than the high road. They want the quick buck for that new souped up computer. Somehow they can sleep more soundly a night not worrying whether or not a Father spent his last dime on rares rather than buying baby formula for his crying son. They can laugh amongst their friends without a care in the world while a paraplegic who can't leave his house very easily just spent a large sum of money on a game rather than paying for a new evasive operation to help him walk again. Yeah these players can pay for a nice new car or put a down payment on their 2500 square foot house rather than think about the wife who's husband just left her because of her $5000 credit card debt spent on rares or gold they can't afford or even sell back for a profit. I bet who ever benefits off these innocent victims does so without conscience and guilt. He never has to see his victims struggle from paycheck to paycheck to pay their rent or health insurance coverage. They are no more real to him than a paperdoll of computer pixels in a game that is only a means to an end.
These victims are not alone. All of Ultima has suffered at the hands of these MMORPG terrorists. Since every single one of us has had to deal with the effect their crimes which have greatly impacted the Ultima economy at large. At first thought, many would blame the UO staff for this decline, but I say to you they are the greatest victims of all when you take into account this one simple fact. Consider the company Microsoft, it makes trillions of dollars in gross earnings, and yet even they can't fix their products on time before viral damage is inflicted on hundreds of thousands of their own customers. What would make any of us think EA could do better? All the hard working developers get beat up because they couldn't do enough to outwit all the security breaches which exists in nearly every software program ever made while also being expect to fix game play bugs, make improvements, design new enticing content and graphics. Heck they even have to make changes to accommodate new computer software like Windows Vista. It is no wonder that UO goes through so many growing pains to please us.
Instead of laying any more blame and complaining about every single game mechanic that irritates us... What we should be doing is asking ourselves if we truly love to play this game, what can we do to prevent scammers, hackers, and dupers in the future? Because in the end, our actions will either benefit us or ruin us all.
