I've been back in the game for about a month or so now and have found my shard to be lacking in what I consider a bustling economy. One of my favorite parts of the game back in the day was buying/selling all sorts of wares, whether by bank sitting or venders.
Most vendors on my shard are empty and have been since returning and selling/buying at the bank has proven a waste. I'll be transferring shards and wanted the communities thoughts on which ones had a healthy economy. The bummer is ill only be able to transfer one character.
Thanks for any thoughts and suggestions. Also I am in US MST zone.
Personally, whether right or wrong in my thinking I think that the economy today is the result of a lack of foresight in the past.
The main factors I think have been 2, the first is making changes to the game, little by little but continuously, that have increasingly allowed players to become self sufficient in most if not all of their needs. If a player can get on one's own all that he/she needs, where is the necessity of buying from other players ??
The second factor has been not being able to make it impossible to script in the game from early on. Scripting is bad, as I see it, because it floods the economy of all that can be scripted from resources to Bulk Order Deeds and their rewards and Library Collectibles.
Both these factors have a particularly devastating effect, IMHO, on new or returning players who find it much much harder to climb the ladder since they find no niche items or hardly any to sell to existing players and thus have increasing trouble in building up some wealth to be competitive in the game. And this difficulty might deter some from keeping playing the game and thus hurt the ability of Ultima Online to consolidate a larger subscription base.
In order to restore a healthy economy I think that somehow players must be taken away the current self sufficiency they have and scripting needs to be eradicated from Ultima Online for good. Then, over time and with new items introducted and current resources getting depleted, hopefully there might be some re-birth of an economy in the game.
That's my point of view on this issue.