Well you never know who is a good guy or who is a bad guy in the traders market. Markee has been up for a very long time, and was a site very useful in finding knowledge of many UO items, events and other things. A great site.
But yes, rampant abuse of the UO system has been in use for a long time. I myself traded with many uo suppliers over the years, some good, some crooked, and believe me, abuse is rampant.
But also real trading is rampant also. Buying low and selling high has been the traders credo since day 1. There isn't anything wrong with what markee did, or many other traders, including myself did. Gold and RL money go hand in hand, the value of each depends on how the player deems them important.
If you play UO once in a while and make some gold, it will take you a LONG time to make 50 million gold. Yet today i can contact a gold trader and buy 50 million gold for money. One days work. So i can decide to work an extra saturday and make some money to buy 50 million gold, or i can play uo and maybe take months to make it. mmmm so which is more important.
Me, i've played for many years, so making gold is boring, and i don't like doing it. I play to have fun. if i want a great arti or item i just buy it, i don't work for months to save up gold to buy it. To me thats worthless and wasteful. I can buy it, and enjoy the game instead of having to "gold farm".
But the people who used to make money in the game fastest were the traders (not the hackers/dupers/abusers of today who dupe their items to hawk for 10 mil each). Traders were those who bought an account from someone quitting for 400 dollars, and took the time to re-sell everything and make 500 dollars. Or smart traders would sit at the bank when glacial staffs first came out, buying them for 100k and selling them 5 minutes later for 125k. Thats what traders do. We don't take the current duping method of getting glacial robes and make 100 of them to hawk across the shards.
Did Markee make his gold honestly or not? Don't know, i don't know the guy. But i know many of the gold traders out there, i have did business with them over the years, and some do ok, and some do it by cheating. I remember on catskills there was a HUGE trader/collector in the old days who made his fortune duping items, using that money and items to purchace true rares, and had the largest collection on catskills. People worshipped him for his collection, but he gained it all through bad methods. Thankfully he disappeared and his many items were spread out to other people like Centurio and other collectors.
Not all people play by the rules, but there isn't anything wrong with people who play by the rules and make money. Thats what business is. I only traded part time, i wasn't a full time UO trader like Markee or others were, and i easily was trading 20 mil gold a week not even including houses, accounts, items, etc. There were traders who did 10x as much as I ever could have who did it full time.
I did everything legally, i loved my accounts i wouldn't do anything to risk them, even though I knew of the dupe methods, the young/inkeeper seller programs, and all the other stuff. I didn't trade for the money, i did it because i liked doing it, it was fun. I was the first person on catskills to bulk trade regeants by collecting them and selling them in bulks of 5000/10000 for 2x the price and people laughed and said "no one will ever buy for that" but everyone did, because it saved them time when they could be doing other things than gathering regs. And i never ran out of customers. Doran keep up the tradition after i left ( i guess he's still about, don't know).
Trading means finding a nich that people need. And a good trader was able to use the real life money/gold connection to take advantage even more.
