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now let us solve inflation

railshot

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The items are shard bound [not rewards] - because if they werent, I would have 20 accounts farming a low population server for 30 days, transfer it all to atl, and make a GIGAZILLION gold. Instead I had 4 accounts farming atlantic and will only make a few plat. Well played mesanna.
And you have a problem with this why? You just can't sleep at night because some stranger makes "a GIGAZILLION gold?" I personally do not care. I do care that this incredibly illiterate decision decreases availability and raises prices for these items. I might want to get an additional item in the future and not be able to. And that bothers me a lot more than how much gold someone made.
 
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Alaric

Adventurer
UNLEASHED
@railshot I have the a problem with this because it promotes illegal unattended scripted gameplay multiplied by the number of they DONT pay for, because EJ accounts could participate in that event. Nothing in the game should reward that.
 

railshot

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@railshot I have the a problem with this because it promotes illegal unattended scripted gameplay multiplied by the number of they DONT pay for, because EJ accounts could participate in that event. Nothing in the game should reward that.
It also promotes legal attended unscripted gameplay. Any kind of solution that limits legal gameplay is throwing the baby out with the bath water. Moreover, this thread is about how to lower inflation. Don't look now, but any kind of farming, unscripted or scripted lowers prices while limiting it does the reverse.
 

Blackie

Seasoned Veteran
Stratics Veteran
Shard bounding is not the solution, if it was we could scrap the transfer shield system and the game would be great right? Hmm, not so much. Merging everyone onto one server isn't the answer either, that was tried with DAoC where all the servers were converted into one physical server(Ywain). The result, people quit. They tried to divide the server into sections (ywain 1, ywain2 etc) but that didn't work either.

Lets take a look at a real example of the effects of shard-bounding.
pic.jpg

I stole that from Mondain's dungeon a long, long time ago. The spawn was originally broken, some shards going as long as 16 months between spawns, on some it never spawned, and on Atlantic I believe it spawned twice. The dungeon underwent layout changes, itemization changes and more and after those changes this painting was only available in shard-bound variety. Most say shard-bound in the description you see.

You cannot get this painting in non shard-bound flavor any more and it's more rare than even a 10x limited run of an event item, but....

Did making all new copies shard-bound help do anything but drive up the value of this one? Did it make the new ones, if lucky enough to even find one, more fun or valuable? Nope. In fact 99% of new players will see it on the wall and not realize it's rarity, or care, but to me it's priceless. A memory from a time long gone. So is that hay btw, it only spawned in that direction once per shard and not many are left, but it's not shardbound either and it's value is also not appreciated. Because the hay facing the other direction does not SAY shard-bound the fact you can't get hay in this direction(to my knowledge) doesn't change its perceived value. Priceless to me, worthless to others, even if it can be gotten again some day.

So would shard-bounding everything fix the economy, or break it? My gut says the later, I like that these items exist.
 

SteelRust

Sage
Stratics Veteran
I've pointed out we have examples of closed shards and their economy both stable and inflation free...
And the reply is that those two Shards are as empty of players as the other Prodo ones, bar ATL.

If ALL the poeple that play UO liked so much to play in closed Shards, Siege & Mugen would be "standing places only", where the reality is that today it is so ONLY for ATL, and this is so because that Shard, for various historical reason, has become the ***FREE TRADING*** Hub of UO.
 

Anon McDougle

Grand Inquisitor
Stratics Veteran
UNLEASHED
And the reply is that those two Shards are as empty of players as the other Prodo ones, bar ATL.

If ALL the poeple that play UO liked so much to play in closed Shards, Siege & Mugen would be "standing places only", where the reality is that today it is so ONLY for ATL, and this is so because that Shard, for various historical reason, has become the ***FREE TRADING*** Hub of UO.
Long ago before transfers Pacific was as full as Atlantic many other shards had thriving populations the first group to transfer a lot was pvpers looking for fresh meat they of course started farming dead shards for PS eventually Atlantic just became the place a sledge pool of commerce
 

HRH Liz

Lore Master
UNLEASHED
Long ago before transfers Pacific was as full as Atlantic many other shards had thriving populations the first group to transfer a lot was pvpers looking for fresh meat they of course started farming dead shards for PS eventually Atlantic just became the place a sledge pool of commerce
Don't forget all the Rare Fests Atl had in a row
 

Alaric

Adventurer
UNLEASHED
It also promotes legal attended unscripted gameplay. Any kind of solution that limits legal gameplay is throwing the baby out with the bath water. Moreover, this thread is about how to lower inflation. Don't look now, but any kind of farming, unscripted or scripted lowers prices while limiting it does the reverse.
That was an answer to your question "..what is your problem with people making gold?.." To which my response is 'any time gold/items are flooded into the game via illegal gameplay is destructive to the economy you claim to care about'

How to solve inflation ;

What is your problem with inflation? You would rather pay 1m for something than 10m? Whats the difference if there is 10x less gold in the economy?

Mesanna takes everyones balance in bank and vendors and removes some zero. Blames her cat. Trillions Removed instantly.
 

Phreak

Journeyman
Stratics Veteran
UNLEASHED
I ran across this blog from 2003-2004 where a writer documented his UO sales. It has gold/$ prices of houses and items and also talks about one of the big gold ebay sellers, ingotdude.
JULIAN DIBBELL

20 billion gold given a value of $300,000
 
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HRH Liz

Lore Master
UNLEASHED
That was an answer to your question "..what is your problem with people making gold?.." To which my response is 'any time gold/items are flooded into the game via illegal gameplay is destructive to the economy you claim to care about'

How to solve inflation ;

What is your problem with inflation? You would rather pay 1m for something than 10m? Whats the difference if there is 10x less gold in the economy?

Mesanna takes everyones balance in bank and vendors and removes some zero. Blames her cat. Trillions Removed instantly.
People are used to getting XXX for their goods and if you think reducing every bodies gold by XYZ is going to lower prices than you sir are a fool, people will stil want the old price and if you want that item you will either farm gold or buy gold from a RMT. I earned all my gold the legal way and if you start to deduct zeros from my bank then I may very well quit. 10X less gold will only hurt the small guy and make the gold sellers richer so you must be a gold seller. Kind of like taxing the rich and the little guy pays for it.
 

Alaric

Adventurer
UNLEASHED
People are used to getting XXX for their goods and if you think reducing every bodies gold by XYZ is going to lower prices than you sir are a fool, people will stil want the old price and if you want that item you will either farm gold or buy gold from a RMT. I earned all my gold the legal way and if you start to deduct zeros from my bank then I may very well quit. 10X less gold will only hurt the small guy and make the gold sellers richer so you must be a gold seller. Kind of like taxing the rich and the little guy pays for it.
Ok pretend time. I want to know what kinds of things you buy so I can mark up the price by 1000%, and according to your logic, you will pay it, because thats the price I want.
 

SteelRust

Sage
Stratics Veteran
Long ago before transfers Pacific was as full as Atlantic many other shards had thriving populations the first group to transfer a lot was pvpers looking for fresh meat they of course started farming dead shards for PS eventually Atlantic just became the place a sledge pool of commerce
You are missing the point: long ago ALL UO Shards had thriving populations, full stop.
I remember Europa Shard in 2001: there wasn't a single free plot to place anything bigger that a Small Tower in the whole continent!
And UO had a decent population until at least 2018: I remenber when I come back in fall 2018, Europa Luna City was FULL of WELL STOCKED Vendor Houses, in which one could buy almost anything.
Today in the WHOLE SHARD there are maybe two surviving Vendor Malls, kept open mainly as an RPG gesture by their owners, and the whole EUR Malas is a TOTAL WASTELAND.
DRAK is in far worse situation: there even inside Luna walls there are free BIG plots.
So, plaese, explain to me:
1. what Free InterShard Trade has to do with people MASSIVELY quitting the game;
2. how Shard Bounding even the pisspots can reverse the situation.

BTW: "sledge pool of commerce"... oh, please, gimme a break! :D

WADR, even I, that am Italian, find this kind of moral high horse attitude built on a high ground made by a mountain of HorseScheisse at best...:p;)
 
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SteelRust

Sage
Stratics Veteran
I ran across this blog from 2003-2004 where a writer documented his UO sales. It has gold/$ prices of houses and items and also talks about one of the big gold ebay sellers, ingotdude.
JULIAN DIBBELL

20 billion gold given a value of $300,000
Now UO 20 Plats have a value of about 1,500 US$... :D
 

railshot

Slightly Crazed
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
UNLEASHED
How to solve inflation ;

What is your problem with inflation? You would rather pay 1m for something than 10m? Whats the difference if there is 10x less gold in the economy?

Mesanna takes everyones balance in bank and vendors and removes some zero. Blames her cat. Trillions Removed instantly.
I don't understand what you are asking or stating above. I do not have a problem with inflation. I don't care whether I have to pay 1m or 10m for something, because if I have to pay 10m for something, that means I can sell that something for 10m too. Inflation only hurts old money bags sitting on billions of gold, and they really can afford not to care either. For the new players the inflation is largely irrelevant.

I have no idea what the Mesanna comment is about.
 

HRH Liz

Lore Master
UNLEASHED
Ok pretend time. I want to know what kinds of things you buy so I can mark up the price by 1000%, and according to your logic, you will pay it, because thats the price I want.
You are totally clueless about game econ, that has unlimited input of gold and very little things that take gold out of the game. Vet rewards are 200M and you think that by dropping zero off everybody's gold that the price will drop to 20M, I want what you are smoking. 120 Tact is 100M plus and you think you going to get them for 10M, you are an idiot.
 

SteelRust

Sage
Stratics Veteran
I don't understand what you are asking or stating above. I do not have a problem with inflation. I don't care whether I have to pay 1m or 10m for something, because if I have to pay 10m for something, that means I can sell that something for 10m too. Inflation only hurts old money bags sitting on billions of gold, and they really can afford not to care either. For the new players the inflation is largely irrelevant.

I have no idea what the Mesanna comment is about.
Don't you know? It is the (in)famous UO "Reductio ad Mesannum", typical of who has no valid arguments... :p ;)
 

Pawain

I Hate Skilling
Governor
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
UNLEASHED
Ok pretend time. I want to know what kinds of things you buy so I can mark up the price by 1000%, and according to your logic, you will pay it, because thats the price I want.
EM event items sell for 400M They cost 0 to get. Do all the events and put them on safes on Atlantic.
Set yourself up as a broker for players with many plats.

Use the plats from a few drops to expand your sales.

There is nothing wrong with this game play.

Items that can not be brought to the trade hub will not be a part of this gameplay.
More shard bound items, less inventory for this style game play.
 

Merlin

The Enchanter
Moderator
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Folks, good discussion here. Inflation affects all of us which is why I commented in the early part of the discussion. It's been one of the long-term controversial topics in Ultima Online, and also one where there seems to be little consensus on how to address it.

With that said, please keep it on topic without any personal insults or forum PVP.
 

SteelRust

Sage
Stratics Veteran
Folks, good discussion here. Inflation affects all of us which is why I commented in the early part of the discussion. It's been one of the long-term controversial topics in Ultima Online, and also one where there seems to be little consensus on how to address it.

With that said, please keep it on topic without any personal insults or forum PVP.
Sure! As you noted I'm restraining myself to pure Irony & Sarcasm... and to use swearwords in German to circumvent the filtering system... :p ;)
 

SteelRust

Sage
Stratics Veteran
EM event items sell for 400M They cost 0 to get. Do all the events and put them on safes on Atlantic.
Set yourself up as a broker for players with many plats.

Use the plats from a few drops to expand your sales.

There is nothing wrong with this game play.

Items that can not be brought to the trade hub will not be a part of this gameplay.
More shard bound items, less inventory for this style game play.
And, in the (not so) long run, less and less UO for playing in ANY style...
 

John Knighthawke

Seasoned Veteran
Stratics Veteran
People who play UO are real people who behave in the same way they do in the real world. So, the economy behaves in a very similar manner, at least where supply-demand is concerned. EVE-online, another "game, not a real life environment" keeps a staff economist to help them manage inflation among other things. And that is a RL economist, not a game one.
I....don't really care what Eve Online does. Though I have to admit the thought of an economist dictating a game mechanic is kinda funny to me so I guess I got a little chuckle out of it.

I'd definitely dispute the notion that in-game mechanics behave like economies just because real people are involved in both. Real life people did real life medieval swordfighting too -- it still is nothing like swordfighting in UO. Also with regard to RL economies, let's confine ourselves to a couple of examples of just how different our game mechanics are from an RL economy. The classical model of firm location, the one propagated by Alfred Weber, doesn't even begin to apply in a place like UO because there's little to no concern with the cost of manufacturing the item versus the cost of shipping the item to the consumer. There's no need for unemployment insurance because there's no layoffs, so we can toss out John Commons along with Alfred Weber. While we're at it, let's toss out all of the folks at the National Bureau of Economic Research who study business cycles because there's no real business cycles here.
 

John Knighthawke

Seasoned Veteran
Stratics Veteran
OK, that's your PoV, I take note. Do you remember that UO is a SANDBOX game, right?
Sure, technically this stuff is just my point of view, analysis, opinion, and whatnot. That sure enough is absolutely true. Of course the same is true of anyone posting in this thread, but I don't see anyone posting to point that out, or have I missed something? Sadly in this day and age the currency of the realm (to bring it back to economics...ho ho!) is projection of confidence and assertiveness. Why single me out for that?

Also, and I'll try and speak the all caps language you seem to favor based on your post, YES. I do realize that UO IS considered SANDBOX game, by industry definitions of such. But that's really GOT NOTHING to do with the current topic, near as I can tell.

Am I missing someTHING?
 

John Knighthawke

Seasoned Veteran
Stratics Veteran
EM event items sell for 400M They cost 0 to get.
Hi there. Gotta object, mildly and on very narrow grounds, to this statement: equipment costs something in-game, emotional investment costs something IRL (and folks who tell you they aren't invested emotionally are lying -- we're all emotionally invested in our hobbies), and time/labor has both an RL and in-game "cost."

So...Not sure if that impacts your overall argument or not, honestly, but had to bring that up. Sorry!
 

railshot

Slightly Crazed
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UNLEASHED
I....don't really care what Eve Online does. Though I have to admit the thought of an economist dictating a game mechanic is kinda funny to me so I guess I got a little chuckle out of it.

I'd definitely dispute the notion that in-game mechanics behave like economies just because real people are involved in both. Real life people did real life medieval swordfighting too -- it still is nothing like swordfighting in UO. Also with regard to RL economies, let's confine ourselves to a couple of examples of just how different our game mechanics are from an RL economy. The classical model of firm location, the one propagated by Alfred Weber, doesn't even begin to apply in a place like UO because there's little to no concern with the cost of manufacturing the item versus the cost of shipping the item to the consumer. There's no need for unemployment insurance because there's no layoffs, so we can toss out John Commons along with Alfred Weber. While we're at it, let's toss out all of the folks at the National Bureau of Economic Research who study business cycles because there's no real business cycles here.
Let's not obfuscate the issue to the point of not being able to find the answer ever. Yes, UO is not 100% like the RL economy. But the laws of supply and demand work the same pretty much everywhere, including UO. And this can be demonstrated in numerous past examples.
 

SteelRust

Sage
Stratics Veteran
Sure, technically this stuff is just my point of view, analysis, opinion, and whatnot. That sure enough is absolutely true. Of course the same is true of anyone posting in this thread, but I don't see anyone posting to point that out, or have I missed something? Sadly in this day and age the currency of the realm (to bring it back to economics...ho ho!) is projection of confidence and assertiveness. Why single me out for that?

Also, and I'll try and speak the all caps language you seem to favor based on your post, YES. I do realize that UO IS considered SANDBOX game, by industry definitions of such. But that's really GOT NOTHING to do with the current topic, near as I can tell.

Am I missing someTHING?
Yes, IMO you are missing A LOT, but, frankly, I'm done with wasting time trying to explain what.

Have a nice game.
 
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skett

Babbling Loonie
Professional
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Imagination (from shard shields) also has an impact on the game’s economy as well right ?


Hehe
 

Quickblade

Lore Master
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UNLEASHED
You guys are so focused on shard bound that you forget the economy in the game was broken long ago before even introducing 'shard bound' term.
The mass migration to Atlantic combined with shard shield is what caused all the inflation.
Everyone is packed up with plats nowadays , 50m is little change for a vet , not so much for a new player and this is the main problem, because yes it's rather easy to make gold now but as a new player the game is so complex and deep that it may take alot of time or help from someone.

MEGA GOLD SINKS is the only way I can see, short time, to reduce the inflation. I've been thinking about if they created a new in-game currency but poeple would just trade their plats for that new in-game currency so it wouldnt work for now.
 

railshot

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You guys are so focused on shard bound that you forget the economy in the game was broken long ago before even introducing 'shard bound' term.
The mass migration to Atlantic combined with shard shield is what caused all the inflation.
That's what I meant when I said that UO Dev's historically specialize in taking a bad situation and applying a lot of effort to make it worse.
They had a low population on some shards (by 2000s standards). How to make everything worse? - Introduce shard shields. How to make everything even worse? -Make them available only to veterans.
Now you have high prices? How to make the situation worse? -Impede trade even further by shard bounding things. I mean you could make some satirical learning materials out of this for some community college Econ 101 class.

The inflation was not caused by the migration BTW. We have two factors driving the inflation -
1) People farming gold in the normal course of gameplay (or purposefully farming it) and not enough gold sinks. This is absolutely normal in a PvE game and is really not worth fighting. You'll never be able to balance the two.
2) Gold duping. Trying to fix #1 is even more pointless when #2 is around. Duping in UO is limited, I suspect, by only one factor - how fast RMT traders are able to sell it. And it is a serious limiting factor in a top-heavy game where a lot of players already have a lot of gold.

But the high prices on low pop shards have another component to them. There is a base high price caused by inflation. But there is a surcharge due to low market volume. This was helped quite a bit by introducing commission vendors. But still, people who generate a lot of expensive things to sell (like PvPers who need gold for PvP gear) just take their stuff to Atl, because they don't want it to sit forever. So, when someone does decide to sell something on Origin, there is no competition, so they can price it at whatever they want (and frequently do). The overpriced items don't sell for a long time creating a catch 22.

Here com Devs with another way to make a bad situation worse. On the surface it looks good - let's decrease the demand by making the items shard bound and preventing evil Atlantic traders from buying them. Except the supply is not fixed in this case. And all of those high end players/farmers/etc who would normally farm this stuff for sale, don't bother anymore, because they know Origin has 3.5 active players and they already got their own items. So even though demand went down, supply just went to zero. And we have inflation, plus high prices due to limited trade (no free inter-shard trade), plus even higher prices due to even higher limits on trade imposed by shard bounding.

Again, a freshman two weeks into their Econ 101 could have predicted exactly what would happen in this situation. This is basic stuff. It happened a dozen times in other MMOs already. But, here we go again.
 

OREOGL

Crazed Zealot
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Theres no way to fix the inflation problem. They're about 10 years too late, if not longer.

They could have introduced NPC vendor items that cost significant amounts of gold or auction items from the game. But this was never a guarantee itd even work due to the amount of gold already in game.

They compounded vet reward inflation due to them now being deleted from idocs. A commodity box that was going for 5 million is now up to 75 million.
 

Quickblade

Lore Master
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
UNLEASHED
The inflation was not caused by the migration BTW. We have two factors driving the inflation -
1) People farming gold in the normal course of gameplay (or purposefully farming it) and not enough gold sinks. This is absolutely normal in a PvE game and is really not worth fighting. You'll never be able to balance the two.
2) Gold duping. Trying to fix #1 is even more pointless when #2 is around. Duping in UO is limited, I suspect, by only one factor - how fast RMT traders are able to sell it. And it is a serious limiting factor in a top-heavy game where a lot of players already have a lot of gold.
#2 - I do not believe gold is being duped atm, maybe in the past (alot of years ago) , I know some items been duped lately , but not gold directly
But #1 is true and ej account havent help that also with all the scripts and possible gold farming
 

Anon McDougle

Grand Inquisitor
Stratics Veteran
UNLEASHED
That's what I meant when I said that UO Dev's historically specialize in taking a bad situation and applying a lot of effort to make it worse.
They had a low population on some shards (by 2000s standards). How to make everything worse? - Introduce shard shields. How to make everything even worse? -Make them available only to veterans.
Now you have high prices? How to make the situation worse? -Impede trade even further by shard bounding things. I mean you could make some satirical learning materials out of this for some community college Econ 101 class.

The inflation was not caused by the migration BTW. We have two factors driving the inflation -
1) People farming gold in the normal course of gameplay (or purposefully farming it) and not enough gold sinks. This is absolutely normal in a PvE game and is really not worth fighting. You'll never be able to balance the two.
2) Gold duping. Trying to fix #1 is even more pointless when #2 is around. Duping in UO is limited, I suspect, by only one factor - how fast RMT traders are able to sell it. And it is a serious limiting factor in a top-heavy game where a lot of players already have a lot of gold.

But the high prices on low pop shards have another component to them. There is a base high price caused by inflation. But there is a surcharge due to low market volume. This was helped quite a bit by introducing commission vendors. But still, people who generate a lot of expensive things to sell (like PvPers who need gold for PvP gear) just take their stuff to Atl, because they don't want it to sit forever. So, when someone does decide to sell something on Origin, there is no competition, so they can price it at whatever they want (and frequently do). The overpriced items don't sell for a long time creating a catch 22.

Here com Devs with another way to make a bad situation worse. On the surface it looks good - let's decrease the demand by making the items shard bound and preventing evil Atlantic traders from buying them. Except the supply is not fixed in this case. And all of those high end players/farmers/etc who would normally farm this stuff for sale, don't bother anymore, because they know Origin has 3.5 active players and they already got their own items. So even though demand went down, supply just went to zero. And we have inflation, plus high prices due to limited trade (no free inter-shard trade), plus even higher prices due to even higher limits on trade imposed by shard bounding.

Again, a freshman two weeks into their Econ 101 could have predicted exactly what would happen in this situation. This is basic stuff. It happened a dozen times in other MMOs already. But, here we go again.
I prefer to identify as 3/4th of an Origin player
 

railshot

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#2 - I do not believe gold is being duped atm, maybe in the past (alot of years ago) , I know some items been duped lately , but not gold directly
But #1 is true and ej account havent help that also with all the scripts and possible gold farming
How do you know this? They still periodically report disciplinary actions against dupers, and there are still plenty of checks out there.
 

Quickblade

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How do you know this? They still periodically report disciplinary actions against dupers, and there are still plenty of checks out there.
Just with a little bit of logic you can answer this : do you really think all the big boys would care about all the idocs and house scripting ( main source of gold farming atm ) and many others scripting sources, if they were able to dupe directly gold ?
Item dupes, scripts and glitches over time get known by other ppl ( either it gets leaked by good friends etc but it ends up being known by others ) so if someone was duping gold still today, let me tell you there would be a bunch of ppl knowing about it in a very short time.
 
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Loriel

Sage
Stratics Veteran
UNLEASHED
Just with a little bit of logic you can answer this : do you really think all the big boys would care about all the idocs and house scripting ( main source of gold farming atm ) and many others scripting sources, if they were able to dupe directly gold ?
Item dupes, scripts and glitches over time get known by other ppl ( either it gets leaked by good friends etc but it ends up being known by others ) so if someone was duping gold still today, let me tell you there would be a bunch of ppl knowing about it in a very short time.
There was a significant number of unscheduled server downs and reverts on Atlantic I believe in December 2020, it was about once or twice a week for about a month-6 weeks, I actually remember it pretty well. I am told this was a mass duping of gold, probably to resupply the gold sellers who had run out of stock when the lockdowns hit. No idea how they do it but its probably only one person doing it or at least a small group of organised people who scheduled it so tightly over that period of time in a concerted effort.

In regards to railshot's comments, I don't know how long I've been saying it but because the markets have limits/are closed to all but a certain number of people, there are barriers to trade which increase inflation. When all but a few are in control of the markets the prices can be set and colluded upon by those few people meaning they can practically choose how much to charge whenever they like and to suit whatever agenda. The property market on Atlantic is a prime example and that's without even relating it to shard transfers at all. I actually wrote a report on this back in 2014/15 when I first returned and sent it to Kyronix. I got a few emails back from him but I got the general sense that he couldn't really implement any of my suggestions without going higher and that they possibly would be too much of a risk in terms of disrupting the status quo. You probably also don't want to reverse decisions and risk contradicting yourself in that situation. I actually believe that NL is mainly a response to issues that have been caused by the hyper inflation and they have taken steps to make sure this issue isn't repeated on this new server.
 

Quickblade

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There was a significant number of unscheduled server downs and reverts on Atlantic I believe in December 2020, it was about once or twice a week for about a month-6 weeks, I actually remember it pretty well. I am told this was a mass duping of gold, probably to resupply the gold sellers who had run out of stock when the lockdowns hit. No idea how they do it but its probably only one person doing it or at least a small group of organised people who scheduled it so tightly over that period of time in a concerted effort.
Well put but, I know for a fact if you intentionally crash a server in any way , you'll eventually get a visit by Mesanna in game very shortly. But that being said if there had been any gold dupes at all in the last years, it would probably be from intentional or unintentional reverts/xfers or both , I agree with you on this.
 

railshot

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Stratics Legend
UNLEASHED
Just with a little bit of logic you can answer this : do you really think all the big boys would care about all the idocs and house scripting ( main source of gold farming atm ) and many others scripting sources, if they were able to dupe directly gold ?
Item dupes, scripts and glitches over time get known by other ppl ( either it gets leaked by good friends etc but it ends up being known by others ) so if someone was duping gold still today, let me tell you there would be a bunch of ppl knowing about it in a very short time.
How do you know that a bunch of people do not know about duping gold? They keep banning people for duping, so, obviously, it continues to happen. And just because the big boys get rich duping, does not mean they won't dip into a much lower risk activity like IDOCs.
 

Theo_GL

Grand Poobah
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
UNLEASHED
I agree with many of the other posters here - you can't just start over and rares will always be rare etc.

The great thing about UO is you can come into the world with nothing and you can earn the items you need to be successful through foraging and crafting etc. You can do the events and get drops and sell for hundreds of millions. You can band up with another person or two and do champ spawns for scrolls that sell for gold. Honestly in a month you could make your first plat if you wanted but its not by gathering gold off the ground. Its in work to acquire things others value at an amount that is higher than you can earn by killing monsters.

That being said - if you have a sampire - you can easily make lots of pure gold by killing monsters and looting. Miasma is 2k a pop plus the chests with maps it drops. You can kill a miasma every 30 seconds. 120 an hour at 2k each is 250k in gold. Get some chests which contain a level 6 map and sell those for 50k each. Woudlnt' be crazy to get 400k or more an hour in 'value' by simply hunting Miasma.

There are any number of ways for a new toon to make gold pretty quickly. On a new shard I can spin up a toon and make 50k in an hour or less. You can mine sell ingots. You can chop trees, kill turkeys (with 50 weapon skill) and make arrows to sell to vendors at luna for 40gp an arrow. 1,000 arrows is 40k. You can buy and sell cloth from one cheap vendor to an overpriced vendor in luna where everyone buys cloth bandies. All it takes is some LRC or Sacred journey and a ridable beetle to carry the heavy rolls. Ask someone to tame a beetle for you, mark a rune at a fel tailor shop and one in luna. Buy for 120gp a roll and sell for 300gp. You can't do it forever but you can make a nice chunk of change on each buy/sell.
For killing monsters - don't go for the high end 2k monsters - go for quick to kill. Elemental slayer and Earth Elementals drop 200 gold each. Those are one to two hit monsters. Dread Spiders 450-600 gold. They insta spawn in the cave in Ilsh and a spider slayer with enemy of one and you can drop them in two hits. Etc.

For the tamer on this thread - ditch the unicorn. Get a cu sidhe that heals itself. Level it up on a crazed mage to at least level 4. It can kill about anything you need at that level. Takes about an hour or two to train it up. If your taming is low - wear jewels.

Back to the OP.... For removing gold....

* Sell IDOC items via auction instead of drop for free. Money paid for said items gets deleted. Thus each time a house drops items on the ground they would suck gold out of the economy.
* Sell items on vendors. You can still obtain through gameplay if you don't have the money. But then you can cap the prices of drops to the vendor charge. Say you sell a Tangle for 50m. No one could ever sell for more because the UO store sells unlimited for 50m. Each ones removes 50m from the game. Players can undercut the store but no one could sell for more than 50m and you can still obtain for free by doing medusa.
* Charge an upkeep on houses like tax. This would take gold out of your account weekly or monthly. If you go negative you lose the ability to lock things down in your house or put things in a secure until you pay your back tax.
* At EM events - allow people who participate to 'buy' the EM item for 20m gold or whatever. Stop it from being a free ticket to getting rich and instead capture a little gold. People will pay it and still sell to collectors for more money but why make it totally free?

There are any number of ways to suck more gold out of the system over time. As it is - you can make 100k with almost no effort and it would take me week to lose 100k in insurance and other gold sinks. Need more gold sinks to drain out the gold being generated every day.
 

HRH Liz

Lore Master
UNLEASHED
Lets look at gold duping for 1 sec. 1 bag of 124 60K cks = 7,440,000 gold and to get 1P you would need to dupe it 135 times. Now do you really think that people are duping gold cks.
 

Loriel

Sage
Stratics Veteran
UNLEASHED
Lets look at gold duping for 1 sec. 1 bag of 124 60K cks = 7,440,000 gold and to get 1P you would need to dupe it 135 times. Now do you really think that people are duping gold cks.
Also, pretty sure it has nothing to do with cheques anymore and a lot to do with having your char on two shards at once when a crash and revert happens. I’m not sure that’s exactly how they do it but I think that’s the general idea.
 

John Knighthawke

Seasoned Veteran
Stratics Veteran
Let's not obfuscate the issue to the point of not being able to find the answer ever. Yes, UO is not 100% like the RL economy. But the laws of supply and demand work the same pretty much everywhere, including UO. And this can be demonstrated in numerous past examples.
Not really sure what you mean by "laws of supply and demand" in this context. Just that people will pay what they'll pay and people will sell what they'll sell for, and that if one so chose we could graph it out and how the intersection of two curves? If so the only response has to be "yep, and?" It's still a very big stretch to say "curves intersect here, and curves intersect there, therefore same thing."

I have to say it's a little funny how controversial it has been for me to point out what should be obvious, which is that the UO 'economy' is a game mechanic. I mean, really, what on earth else could it be?
 

John Knighthawke

Seasoned Veteran
Stratics Veteran
Yes, IMO you are missing A LOT, but, frankly, I'm done with wasting time trying to explain what.

Have a nice game.
Umm...OK? Sorry to be so politically incorrect about this but I'm rather mystified that UO's 'economy' being a game mechanic, rather than an economy per se, is such a controversial point.
 

Pawain

I Hate Skilling
Governor
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
UNLEASHED
Umm...OK? Sorry to be so politically incorrect about this but I'm rather mystified that UO's 'economy' being a game mechanic, rather than an economy per se, is such a controversial point.
Yes the fact that players can create an economy makes it a game mechanic. A Merchant/Store Keeper/Trader/ect have always been in the game. Because there may not be a player taking the role, they made NPCs.

Players made the non NPC economy what it is. And the devs have no problem feeding it.

Maybe it is more advanced that RG thought it would become. Seems more advanced than you accept.
 

gwen

Slightly Crazed
I agree with many of the other posters here - you can't just start over and rares will always be rare etc.

The great thing about UO is you can come into the world with nothing and you can earn the items you need to be successful through foraging and crafting etc. You can do the events and get drops and sell for hundreds of millions. You can band up with another person or two and do champ spawns for scrolls that sell for gold. Honestly in a month you could make your first plat if you wanted but its not by gathering gold off the ground. Its in work to acquire things others value at an amount that is higher than you can earn by killing monsters.

That being said - if you have a sampire - you can easily make lots of pure gold by killing monsters and looting. Miasma is 2k a pop plus the chests with maps it drops. You can kill a miasma every 30 seconds. 120 an hour at 2k each is 250k in gold. Get some chests which contain a level 6 map and sell those for 50k each. Woudlnt' be crazy to get 400k or more an hour in 'value' by simply hunting Miasma.

There are any number of ways for a new toon to make gold pretty quickly. On a new shard I can spin up a toon and make 50k in an hour or less. You can mine sell ingots. You can chop trees, kill turkeys (with 50 weapon skill) and make arrows to sell to vendors at luna for 40gp an arrow. 1,000 arrows is 40k. You can buy and sell cloth from one cheap vendor to an overpriced vendor in luna where everyone buys cloth bandies. All it takes is some LRC or Sacred journey and a ridable beetle to carry the heavy rolls. Ask someone to tame a beetle for you, mark a rune at a fel tailor shop and one in luna. Buy for 120gp a roll and sell for 300gp. You can't do it forever but you can make a nice chunk of change on each buy/sell.
For killing monsters - don't go for the high end 2k monsters - go for quick to kill. Elemental slayer and Earth Elementals drop 200 gold each. Those are one to two hit monsters. Dread Spiders 450-600 gold. They insta spawn in the cave in Ilsh and a spider slayer with enemy of one and you can drop them in two hits. Etc.

For the tamer on this thread - ditch the unicorn. Get a cu sidhe that heals itself. Level it up on a crazed mage to at least level 4. It can kill about anything you need at that level. Takes about an hour or two to train it up. If your taming is low - wear jewels.

Back to the OP.... For removing gold....

* Sell IDOC items via auction instead of drop for free. Money paid for said items gets deleted. Thus each time a house drops items on the ground they would suck gold out of the economy.
* Sell items on vendors. You can still obtain through gameplay if you don't have the money. But then you can cap the prices of drops to the vendor charge. Say you sell a Tangle for 50m. No one could ever sell for more because the UO store sells unlimited for 50m. Each ones removes 50m from the game. Players can undercut the store but no one could sell for more than 50m and you can still obtain for free by doing medusa.
* Charge an upkeep on houses like tax. This would take gold out of your account weekly or monthly. If you go negative you lose the ability to lock things down in your house or put things in a secure until you pay your back tax.
* At EM events - allow people who participate to 'buy' the EM item for 20m gold or whatever. Stop it from being a free ticket to getting rich and instead capture a little gold. People will pay it and still sell to collectors for more money but why make it totally free?

There are any number of ways to suck more gold out of the system over time. As it is - you can make 100k with almost no effort and it would take me week to lose 100k in insurance and other gold sinks. Need more gold sinks to drain out the gold being generated every day.
One you stated correctly is cloth. I recently made 10+mil on PAC doing that. Took me like 2 hours.
But you are wrong about placing stuff on vendors that people will be unable to sell for more money. Do library quest, buy Mace and Shield glasses 12m per , sell on vendor at 15m per. Can do this on ATL. Not a hot seller but 1-2 per week will be sold.
Now about what people do value in game. It is loot. Materials, rare stuff, gear. Where you actually need to play to get it. Miasma is 2k gold. 1 hoard map from her chest is 100k+ She also can give you very valuable gear. Legendary or just 10SSI 25DI clean jewel.
Lizardman in Despise 60gp. Spined leather from it is 3k gp. With just butcher war cleaver or harvester blade, bag if sending and your luck finding a vendor in New Mag buying that leather you will prosper.

People don't value you killing mobs. They need some stuff. Why sell Slither 50M per if it is perfectly sold from safes 200m+ Why undercut players who actually went through getting keys, killing Medusa which has junk loot and same gold as Miasma. Even her blood and scales can be sold too we know all people are there for slither. Or just make keys and sell. Not much skill needed. Good moneymaker on ATL for sure.
Slither looks expensive from one angle. But it is 2-3 *120tactics scrolls. Or 2000*Stealing 120. Or 100.000 Miasma kills , lol. Or 0.2-0.5 rare EM event drop. Pick activity you like and trade rewards for other rewards. From events you didn't attend or don't like to do.
Castles and keeps cost dozens of plats. You think individual who sold a castle cannot afford slither ?
Gold just used to make trade easier. Millions prices are hard to accept for a player who just returned , killed several ettins and wants to buy gear on VS.
You can help them by placing vendors (normal ones, don't take lockdown slots in house) and selling gear for 0gp. LRC , resists, stamina. Goes pretty fast on my vendors. I was looting para Balrons for this as much as I could during DF event.
Those who found ways to make gold are ok with current prices.
 

SteelRust

Sage
Stratics Veteran
Yes the fact that players can create an economy makes it a game mechanic. A Merchant/Store Keeper/Trader/ect have always been in the game. Because there may not be a player taking the role, they made NPCs.

Players made the non NPC economy what it is. And the devs have no problem feeding it.

Maybe it is more advanced that RG thought it would become. Seems more advanced than you accept.
"Advanced" for sure, and in a very peculiar way!
From RG interviews, there were 3 main points that were the central focus of UO from the beginning: Dungeoning, Economy & Ecology (a food chain, ect).
The third one was TOTALLY WASTED by players on a "kill-all-that-moves" spree even in the beta (see the famous RG interview on this... :p), and so was quickly down-scaled to what we have today: "spontaneous generation" of various critters from the Sosaria soil itself.
The first one has stayed more or less the same from 1998 till today, even considering the various Devs' teams (not only by the current one) "nerf-all-that-kills" sprees, and even today lives its own life, with the Virtues, the narratively and graphically elaborate quests (that falls well beyond the capacity of 90% not only of UO players, but of 90% of today human beings at large, to be undestood, let figure appreciated. But, hey, Writers gotta write, it his their Nature:);)) .
The second... well, it gots its downfall (or lateral-fall, if you prefer) incorporated in its nature itself, with its Auction Safes & Vendors filled houses (and a sooo American one!:D I apologize for my "discrimination", but that it is the reality: remeber what was written about Romero & the meaning of choosing a Mall, a Temple of detail consumerism, as the setting for the seminal "Day of the Dead") .
A couple of times (before the today age of "shop by Home" made possible by the Global Vendor Search... I find SO FUNNY that now we have a REMOTE SHOPPING SYSTEM in a MMORPG like we have Amazon in the real one...:D) I imagined the Avatar and his Companions on a rampage in Luna (that should have been the City of the Paldins, but has become a den of... well, thieves and scammers and money-lenders too, at least!;)), chasing the Vendors outside its walls, but that CAN NOT HAPPENS, because the Vending Contracts were and are issued by the Avatar original creator, and woven in the "fabric" of his silver-plated, ankh-marked chainmail itself...
 
Last edited:

MalagAste

Belaern d'Zhaunil
Alumni
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
UNLEASHED
Campaign Supporter
I agree with many of the other posters here - you can't just start over and rares will always be rare etc.

The great thing about UO is you can come into the world with nothing and you can earn the items you need to be successful through foraging and crafting etc. You can do the events and get drops and sell for hundreds of millions. You can band up with another person or two and do champ spawns for scrolls that sell for gold. Honestly in a month you could make your first plat if you wanted but its not by gathering gold off the ground. Its in work to acquire things others value at an amount that is higher than you can earn by killing monsters.

That being said - if you have a sampire - you can easily make lots of pure gold by killing monsters and looting. Miasma is 2k a pop plus the chests with maps it drops. You can kill a miasma every 30 seconds. 120 an hour at 2k each is 250k in gold. Get some chests which contain a level 6 map and sell those for 50k each. Woudlnt' be crazy to get 400k or more an hour in 'value' by simply hunting Miasma.

There are any number of ways for a new toon to make gold pretty quickly. On a new shard I can spin up a toon and make 50k in an hour or less. You can mine sell ingots. You can chop trees, kill turkeys (with 50 weapon skill) and make arrows to sell to vendors at luna for 40gp an arrow. 1,000 arrows is 40k. You can buy and sell cloth from one cheap vendor to an overpriced vendor in luna where everyone buys cloth bandies. All it takes is some LRC or Sacred journey and a ridable beetle to carry the heavy rolls. Ask someone to tame a beetle for you, mark a rune at a fel tailor shop and one in luna. Buy for 120gp a roll and sell for 300gp. You can't do it forever but you can make a nice chunk of change on each buy/sell.
For killing monsters - don't go for the high end 2k monsters - go for quick to kill. Elemental slayer and Earth Elementals drop 200 gold each. Those are one to two hit monsters. Dread Spiders 450-600 gold. They insta spawn in the cave in Ilsh and a spider slayer with enemy of one and you can drop them in two hits. Etc.

For the tamer on this thread - ditch the unicorn. Get a cu sidhe that heals itself. Level it up on a crazed mage to at least level 4. It can kill about anything you need at that level. Takes about an hour or two to train it up. If your taming is low - wear jewels.

Back to the OP.... For removing gold....

* Sell IDOC items via auction instead of drop for free. Money paid for said items gets deleted. Thus each time a house drops items on the ground they would suck gold out of the economy.
* Sell items on vendors. You can still obtain through gameplay if you don't have the money. But then you can cap the prices of drops to the vendor charge. Say you sell a Tangle for 50m. No one could ever sell for more because the UO store sells unlimited for 50m. Each ones removes 50m from the game. Players can undercut the store but no one could sell for more than 50m and you can still obtain for free by doing medusa.
* Charge an upkeep on houses like tax. This would take gold out of your account weekly or monthly. If you go negative you lose the ability to lock things down in your house or put things in a secure until you pay your back tax.
* At EM events - allow people who participate to 'buy' the EM item for 20m gold or whatever. Stop it from being a free ticket to getting rich and instead capture a little gold. People will pay it and still sell to collectors for more money but why make it totally free?

There are any number of ways to suck more gold out of the system over time. As it is - you can make 100k with almost no effort and it would take me week to lose 100k in insurance and other gold sinks. Need more gold sinks to drain out the gold being generated every day.
In FFXIV you can wait a year and the "uber" drop from the year before goes to the Market... so why doesn't EA/UO sell all these EM drops as "replicas" a year or so later in their store ... Make themselves a few bucks or sell it for gold on a special vendor once a year or so and remove tons of gold from the shard... they could sell them at 100M if they wanted... and it would remove gold. The items can say "a replica" of whatever the heck... and that would keep the "rares" rare and make others happy. Just my opinion... Other games do this.

If you start charging upkeep for housing we already pay for our account Monthly... There is NO way I'd pay again for my house... that's insane... but if they want to do something like that... allow us to "buy/rent" a basement with the lockdowns of a Castle/Keep for X gold a month and make a server of black space and put 32x32 bases on it people can custom maybe 2 stories... of "basement" they buy/rent a teleporter to lock down at their house and use... and that goes to their "basement" failure to pay after 3 months results in all that crap in their going to an auction... where it's auctioned off to the highest bidder and you rid the shards of even more money as you know people would spend money on that.

But NO my subscription allows me a house... If I had to pay a monthly fee of gold for that now after 24 years of it being part of your paid subscription that's a hard NO... I'd be done. I don't need a gold sink... I don't have multiplats... unlike loads of people that's not my thing.
 

gwen

Slightly Crazed
@MalagAste great idea about paid basements !
Paying for a crap I am hoarding and allow me to store 2times more junk I will never use - I'll be so glad to do this .
 
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