Sadly, I doubt EA is going to promote stratics much... even though stratics has been a primary source of information to players as far back as I can remember (97ish) - EA is now actually trying to bring their own game info database up to speed. Which, on the one hand, can be viewed as an admirable effort, since new players who buy the game will know about the official website from the packaging, on the other hand its kinda sad. For many years about the only useful information on uo.com was information about guilds.
As far as scams... if you blow 23 mil at a vendor without looking twice at what you're buying . . . and dont tell me yer a noob with 23 mil, cuz I aint buying that. People in UO have just gotten a little too lazy, cuz we've been playing so long, and had so many aspects of the game made more secure for us, that we are forgetting to think. (MasterP, back me up here - I've read your post in the other thread..) Maybe old players have a real advantage with pre-T2A experience - during times when a new scam was around every corner, and no one gave a sheit; your house got looted, your ship was stolen, but life didn't stop. Face it, no one is gonna get put on the Oprah show for losing digital money in a game. And if you think security is good, let's look at the number of folks we're playing with today as opposed to any number of years ago.
I realize 23 mil is a big chunk of money, certanly more than I've ever had at one time. But theoretically (and practically - given UO's history) and given that UO is a roleplaying game, one that is outstanding in its complexity ~ wouldn't that mean that it's supposed to resemble life? And arent thieves and scammers a part of life? How different are the scammers of UO from folks who try to sell you that crap on TV? ("Why certanly Jane, this knife can cut through the hull of a russian submarine.. after which it will still be sharp enough to slice them tomatoes onboard your newly infiltrated nuclear vessel" - Wow Jim, that is amazing! Your TV knife is teh leet!)
