Was I Just Lucky?

[Lord Kynd]

The problem is, as someone else pointed out, what we agreed to was the possibility of being banned for duping, exploiting, or KNOWINGLY posessing dupes. With Mythic not telling us what to be careful of, no, we cannot say FOR CERTAIN than anything is or is not a dupe. Not like it has a tag. Unless you personnally dupe it or the seller tells you "hey, I duped this" you DONT know. Sure, you can SUSPECT, but what good is that?

paranoia
it also makes people not trust others.

now the problem is the people don't know who or what they can trust to buy.. this can be thanked to EA tho for how bans where handled.. they should have fixed the dupe bug.. then taken the dupers out and then deleted every duped item.
if EA would have fixed the dupe bug right away alot of people wouldn't have bought the item and even more wouldn't have gotten banned..

kinda like going to the bar and drinking,, it's illegal to drive after you've been drinking yet alot of people take the risk and break the law by going to the bar's and drink then drive... yet you don't see cop's sitting at the entrances of the bars handing out tickets before people can leave, nor do you see them doing mass raid's because they know you will be driving once the bar closes.


allowing a dupe bug to continue when known about is more or less entrapment on EA's part for not taking care of it right away.. i'm near positive they could have turned off bod's ( if thats what was allowing the dupe) with a flip of a switch. but instead allowed it to continue until alot more people then was needed got banned.

 

[galefan2004]

If you bought them and burnt them as soon as you did it would be almost completely untracable. They only banned people that actually held onto the items. They have no way to trace a runic to an account. They have no way to trace items to a runic. Therefore, if you burnt them you were fine, but if you didn't burn them you got screwed. So, they didn't ban everyone that bennefited from duped runics, they just banned those that weren't smart enough to burn the duped runics as soon as they bought them. Typical EA.

 

[galefan2004]

Its like buying stolen goods, the only thing you are doing is encouraging the thieves to steal more. Way to go..

You can LEGALLY buy stolen goods. You just have to make damn sure you have a way to prove that you bought the items from a person (a receipt for example). Pawn shops buy stollen goods all the time with absolutely no liability.

 

[galefan2004]

You know dam well at BEST there should be 1 or 3 val hammer per year per shard , obtained through bods. Don't even try to act all smug and cover your butt. As usual your first line of defense is to insult.

If this is truely the case then entire BOD system is an ABSOLUTE joke. The hammers should be obtainable in a rate of 9-10 a month not 1-3 a year. 1-3 a year is just a pathetic joke to anyone doing BODs. Also, I would love to see how you have arrived at these numbers seeing its a % chance to get a certain BOD and like all other RNG stupidity it can never actually be reliable.

 

[galefan2004]

after all you didn't do the exploiting you were just taking advantage of what was already done.

Lets blame him for taking advantage of the stuipidity and lazyness of the developers. By that token they should ban everyone that killed Melissa more than once because that did more to harm the average player than the runic dupe did. The ingredients market went from a good way to get gold for effort to a complete and utter joke.

Do us all a favor and quit UO for good.

This would not be a favor to me. If everyone that took advantage of the stupidity of game systems gone awry suddenly quit UO the only person that would still be playing (according to you) is you.

 

[galefan2004]

You know what would happen if they increased the chance of getting a val hammer to a point where casual players were likely to get one?

Casual players would actually be on par with those that decided to give their lives over to the game?

Well.. The scripters wouldnt suddenly quit. You would have an honest player getting one per month and scripters getting one every 10mins.

I think you (or someone else) made the arguement that scripters/exploiters go after something that actually has value. If they made it so that everything could be obtainable by casual players none of it would have an extreme value. I don't think many people scripted vanquishing and invulnerablity items back in the day because 200k was not a huge value. They mostly duped gold and item bless deeds back then.

Scriptors and dupers hurt the honest player because the honest player is nver capable of selling the item he received for its true value.

Actually they help the honest player that can look the other way from time to time. Most of those items are sold for next to nothing, and that means that the "honest" player bennefits because they can suddenly get items they believe unobtainable.

Just go and sell a Val hamer now for 50m.... see how fast someone buys it.

The runic market controls the influx of items that EVERY player needs. That means that those that control the runic market bennefit greatly, but the average player ends up using gear that is way underpar. Making it a chore to get gear in a game does nothing other than make people get burnt out on the game faster. Why do you think console games don't use a RNG. You beat boss A and you get item A. Its not you beat boss A you have a 1% chance of getting item A but not if you get item B (and item B sucks) which has a 99% chance to drop. RNGs in MMORPGs are the bane of those that aren't willing to give their lives to the game. If they ever make a game that destroys the RNG for a decent reward/work system then that will be the game I rush to.

 

[Yalp]

I don't think anyone is screaming about EA finally taking action against cheaters and dupers.

What I think we can reach a consensus about is that EA did it badly and what seems in violation of their own TOS.

I think we can also agree that EA still has a ton of work to do to end dupers, scripters, hacking and cheating in the game.

And except for the biggest jackasses posting on these forums, I think we can agree that if we ( 100% of players) have the information that xxx item is actively being duped... we can avoid being in possession of these items. Anyone who risks it and gets banned has no leg to stand on.

As it stands now, EA's actions have shown us its...

1) Bad to have some duped items, ok to have other duped items
2) Bad to have alot of some duped items, ok to have a few of every duped item
3) Bad to buy duped items, ok to use duped items.
4) Bad to sell duped items en-mass, ok to sell duped items one at a time
5) Bad to buy duped items en-mass, ok to buy duped items one at a time
6) Bad to be a trusting buyer, ok to be duper
7) Bad to be buyer/duper on some shards, ok to be buyer/duper on other shards


LORD Yalp of Zento, CTDM

 

[galefan2004]

And to top it off, a week after you are hung, the same people are selling the same TV's one block down, laughing that you got hung.

So freaking true. So freaking true. I really hope that puts it into persepective for the holier than thou idiots that think just because you buy an item you think might have been duped you are lower than those that duped it.

 

[galefan2004]

You forgot the part where you explicitly agreed to let the police have those powers before you even moved into the community. And also the part where you could freely leave the community at any time if you decided that the police more resembled a gestapo.

You must be freaking kidding. Are you forgetting the part where we pay $12.95 a month. For a veteran that has played 10 years (I know it wasn't always $12.95 a month), they have paid $1554. Do you know many businesses that would screw over a customer that spent that much money? Thats a great way to not stay in business.

Plus, I was under the impression that TOS said that the item would be deleted and you MAY be banned. Not that you will be banned.

 

[Onyxia]

That in itself is the real problem.

If the game had fewer irritating repetitious stuff there would be fewer scripters and dupers because there would be less point to it. The best way to fight scripting is to just let honest players have a real chance at this stuff.

*sniff sniff* Smells like communism, make everybody equal!

 

[UOKaiser]

Is it just me or is everyone just not believing the new calculations on the abilities to receive val runic hammers that I have mentioned many times?

I repeat it was 1-3 hammers per year per shard BEFORE the changes to the bod system. But EA did a good thing and made it possible for regular players to get 1-3 hammers each per year and more. If they power game the amount of hammers can reach 1 per month making it 12 for 1 player a year.

Though realistically a player who doesn't do bods regularly and actually has a life wont receive any type of good ratio of hammers but thats the penalty of enjoying you're life. Its the simple system of put in more time and effort you get more rewards.

I would never want any high end rewards giving to me for doing nothing. I like to work for everything i get, to feel a accomplishment that i put in all this effort and was rewarded whith something extremly useful. Even when I buy any thing high end that person gets the reward from my gold for there effort and I get the item I need cause i put in the effort to get the gold to afford there struggle.

 

[Goldberg-Chessy]

Hi Goldy.

I shoulda warned you about these people. They cant seem to relate that some people just like to play the game when we can.

Why should it be our responsibility to determine or even verify if an item is legit. It is EA/Mythics or the GM's responsability.

Yes they can say we are part of the problem, but I agree with you. If I see an item and I can afford it, I'm going to buy it.

Funny how the "have not's" always side with honor.

I don't belive for a second that anyone in this forum wouldnt buy a Val hammer for 20 mill if they had it to spend.

Also the peeps in this forum think that every person who plays UO comes to this website, yet EA never once attmepted to communicate to the entire population by putting a message of the day in the login screen warning about the duping and not to buy items off of vendors.

Good to hear from ya.
Drag

Well said. Its funny how people like Arcus & Mordoc are so quick to ask people to quit & recommend bannings on these boards.

If either one of them actually possessed the ability to think or post with an unbiased point of view maybe they would someday be able to understand what other people are talking about.

The on-target police analogy in this thread is a perfect example of how screwed up EA is at this point in time yet these 2 fine gentlemen can do nothing other then preach.

 

[Tomas_Bryce]

Funny how the "have not's" always side with honor.

Funny how some people always assume that everyone else simply did not do something because they did not have the opportunity.

 

[Sneaky Que]

I had been laying low for a couple months & only logging on a couple times a week to pvp.

Anyways, when I came back full-tilt just recently I dusted off some high-end items I had lying around and sold them so that I could buy some bulk runics to satisfy my never-ending crafting urge. I did at least a dozen heartwood fletch kits and another dozen or so val/ver hammers with no repercussions.

I just found out about the bannings and am wondering if maybe i was just extremely lucky??

Is it now a very bad idea to hunt down and buy bulk high-end runics off Luna vendors?

You did nothing wrong, so no you were not lucky at all, just not involved.

 

[Llewen]

YOu know what gets me about this? Say you go to the cops and say "People are stealing things out of cars and houses in this neighborhood, nonstop every day and selling them" and the cops say "We cannot acknowledge that you have told us this, we cannot discuss if we are investigating, we cannot comment on this issue" and then a couple weeks later you say "Hey, officers, they are selling stolen goods at this shop, there is no way they could have thousands of legal used TV's, especially when so many have been stolen!" and the cops say "We cannot acknowledge that you have told us this, we cannot say if we are/are not investigating, we cannot confirm we are aware of the issue, we cannot confirm the items are stolen, we will not tell you anything, but we might or might not arrest you for knowing that or buying the stuff, we cant tell you that".

Weeks go by and this stuff is still there. You begin to think, "well, the cops dont care, they are not doing anything, I may as well buy that TV because apparently it is no longer illegal to sell and buy stolen things, and hey, maybe they really are legit".

Then a few more weeks later the cops show up and say "We cannot tell you what you posess that is illegal, we cannot tell you what we investigated, nor who was actually doing the illegal things, nor where they were selling illegal items. We will not confirm what ANY of the illegal items were, but somewhere in your home there is something illegal and you knew it even if you didnt know it. We are not going to let you have a lawyer or defend yourself and we will not even confirm to the community that we have arrested you, but you are now going to be hung."

Nice, eh?

And to top it off, a week after you are hung, the same people are selling the same TV's one block down, laughing that you got hung.

I'll repeat what I've said in other places, I expect that for the vast majority of those that were banned, the bans were well deserved, but it does appear that for one or two at least, what you have posted sums up the situation quite neatly.