What People Are Buying Items For...

[RavenWinterHawk]

Maybe this needs to be moved to trade forum but Ill leave that to the powers.

Well, I say duping.
Others disagree.

How I think I can tell is buy the prices people are paying for stuff/selling.
They tend to show up as event items. For me I am now buying runic hammers.

So does that make me a mechant as I like to play.
A fencer (not the warrior) if I post a buying add and just buy.
Do I need to ask where they got it from?

Is a good deal a cheat or is it a player that has a valorite hammer or 2 and wants to sell them fast.

I know a got a few on black rock turn ins from origin.


My point is...
Do I pay 25 million for a valorite hammer to the guy that says he earned it legit because that was a fair market price?

Or do I put out a buy offer for 12.5 million for a valorite hammer because I see them everywhere now in bulk?

Without information from EA about duping. No not details but a statement saying large quantities of A,B, and C are being duped...

What do we do?

Quit playing our merchants?
Attack each other here on morality?
Just play on?

Im playing on. I am unknowingly knowingly buying items that appear to be in higher quantity then I would suspect from normal use of the bod system.

Silly isnt it.

Some asked how duping effects the game. It does and it doesnt. If you say it does, it effects the guy that got his first valorite hammer yesterday and I will only pay 12.5 million for it.

If you say it doesn't then I found a glut of hammers to buy for 12.5 million.

 

[Gildar]

I say go ahead and buy the items that bring the best value to you.
You don't know that the person selling his hammer for 25 mil claiming that it was his first hammer didn't dupe it. You don't know that they didn't just buy one for 12.5 from a duper and then try to re-sell it for 25. And you don't know that the person selling them for 12.5 is a duper.

If you see a formerly unique or nearly unique item being sold in high quantities - that's almost definitely a dupe and you should page a GM about it. If you see somebody selling lots of items for well below their previous market value that typically take a long time to get, it's suspicious and it wouldn't hurt to page a GM to say "Hey, can you check this items to see if they might be duped?", and send an e-mail off to Jeremy (or Bob if she's on vacation) saying you suspect there is a dupe of <insert item type(s)> that people are using.

If somebody admits to duping, you shouldn't buy things from them.

If you learn details about how to dupe, you should immediately e-mail them to Jeremy (or Bob) and uobugs.

 

[Fox (Europa)]

Yes there has been a recent dupe being used - that's why transfers are down.

 

[RavenWinterHawk]

Yes there has been a recent dupe being used - that's why transfers are down.

I suspect.
People keep asking how does a dupe effect the game. Various answers. Im just providing a merchants side to it.

 

[Revvo]

Siege has a perfectly working economy without a single duped item from shard transfers, i think our gold has remained the same value $ wise for the past five years

 

[Doomsday Dragon]

I suspect.
People keep asking how does a dupe effect the game. Various answers. Im just providing a merchants side to it.

Probably the best thing you can do is buy buy buy while they are cheap hold out for a dupe to be fixed and then sell sell sell.

once the damage has been done there is nothing you or I can do but take advantage of the situation and use it to get ahead also. A dupe hurts the game but taking advantage of the dupe doesn't and if your smart you will grab up what you can and use it to get a jump ahead.

 

[Leto]

If you ask me the answer is pretty straightforward: Don't buy any runics!

It's fairly safe to say that 99% of all runics currently on the market are dupes, specially valorite hammers. And if they aren't dupes then they were aquired through scripting (this goes mostly for non-smithing runics).
Even if there hadn't been an active dupe-bug I would still stay away from runics. Tailoring bods are always heavily scripted and for the fletching kits/saws I would even go so far as to say those are aquired exclusively by scripters.
For all runics it's true there is the possibility they are legit but dupe or no dupe, that possibility is very remote.

Does that mean you should stop playing a merchant alltogether? No but you should find a different trade. There's plenty of other items you can trade.
The choice is yours: Do you or do you not want to be a fence?

 

[RavenWinterHawk]

If you ask me the answer is pretty straightforward: Don't buy any runics!

It's fairly safe to say that 99% of all runics currently on the market are dupes, specially valorite hammers. And if they aren't dupes then they were aquired through scripting (this goes mostly for non-smithing runics).
Even if there hadn't been an active dupe-bug I would still stay away from runics. Tailoring bods are always heavily scripted and for the fletching kits/saws I would even go so far as to say those are aquired exclusively by scripters.
For all runics it's true there is the possibility they are legit but dupe or no dupe, that possibility is very remote.

Does that mean you should stop playing a merchant alltogether? No but you should find a different trade. There's plenty of other items you can trade.
The choice is yours: Do you or do you not want to be a fence?

What I want is not to have to labor a decision that shouldnt be in the game.

But realistically, I am buying.

Which might make me a fence unless I buy from the right guy. Of course I have to give him the third degree and get references and start with a bit of doubt.

Fun.

Its even more fun for the guy that just got his verite hammer the old way. Now hes out a good 5 to 10 million gold.

 

[Leto]

I say go ahead and buy the items that bring the best value to you.
You don't know that the person selling his hammer for 25 mil claiming that it was his first hammer didn't dupe it. You don't know that they didn't just buy one for 12.5 from a duper and then try to re-sell it for 25. And you don't know that the person selling them for 12.5 is a duper.

Even people who owned Vine Cord Sandals used that excuse: These could be the real ones, there's no way I can tell so I'll go ahead and buy them.
If you can reasonably assume an item has been duped (or scripted), EG chances the item is illegit are greater then it being legit, then you shouldn't buy it. If you do you're effectivly supporting dupers/scripters.

Probably the best thing you can do is buy buy buy while they are cheap hold out for a dupe to be fixed and then sell sell sell.

This is without question the worst thing you could do. At least I have great moral objections against this practice.

 

[Leto]

What I want is not to have to labor a decision that shouldnt be in the game.

Now that I can agree with! However sad though, it's a decision you are going to have to make in this game.

Which might make me a fence unless I buy from the right guy.

Realisticly, you won't find the right guy course that guy won't be selling his hard-earned item right now. He'll be holding out untill the dupe is fixed and if he isn't you should do the right thing and tell him to.

 

[Prince Caspian]

Again, let's look at counterfeiting.


When you counterfeit money and go to Best Buy and buy a stereo, and get away with it, guess what. It wasn't free. It was free to you. However, thanks to you, the REST OF US will have to pay for it. Each phony bill you print is going to force everyone else who uses legit money to make good on its value in the long run.

Money does not come out of thin air. Well, maybe it does when it is counterfeited, but the actual value behind it does not. That's WHY people counterfeit. Because they want the wealth attached to money they do not have.

Duping is the same thing in UO because items are currency in this game. Items are in fact the basis of our economy, not gold.

Saying "duping affects other players? Well it does and it doesn't" -- you are half right.

IT DOES. End of story. When you CHEAT and create a valuable item that draws money from the economy, you STEAL from all of us.

If it was a one-player game where you create items and riches for yourself -- hey, good for you. You are only hurting yourself by robbing yourself of the game experience. But when there is an economy in the game, even one as worn and stretched as UOs has become, saying it doesnt affect us is assinine. A crime isn't victimless because you want to believe it is.

 

[Black Betty]

It almost seems that double blessed sandies are everywhere now. Makes a person uncomfortable and uneasy about seeing 3 pair on one vendor too.

Sorry, but when people duped the hooded shrouds, it was obvious and instead of purchasing them for 100k a pop, they were reported and then banned. If you have to cheat, why bother? It's a game.

To me these are the same as people that refuse to work and stand in a welfare line complaining that they should get more or resort to becoming a thief because they don't want to work for things like the rest of us.

 

[Gildar]

Even people who owned Vine Cord Sandals used that excuse: These could be the real ones, there's no way I can tell so I'll go ahead and buy them.

No. With the Vine Cord Sandals, there was only ever one.
With runic hammers... there are lots, and people can and have stockpiled for long periods of time.
Yes, there are definitely numerous duped hammers out there. But 12.5 mil for a hammer though might be seen as a good profit for some people. There might also be people who were slowly gathering hammers for later use/sale that went "Oh no! hammer prices are dropping! Better sell while I can still make some gold." There might also be people who just got a few hammers (through BODs, or an IDOC, or some contest, or whatever), checked a random vendor for pricing, and thought 12.5 was normal. Those are all reasonable things to believe.

The people who really didn't know where the sandals came from who saw them had a legitimate excuse ("Ooo! Sandals with resist! Gimmie gimmie!" - good excuse, but highly likely to be bad for the wallet since you might just be buying a common item you haven't learned about yet if you don't know the origin). Those who knew the origin, and bought them anyway, however, did not.

 

[Leto]

No. With the Vine Cord Sandals, there was only ever one.
With runic hammers... there are lots, and people can and have stockpiled for long periods of time.
Yes, there are definitely numerous duped hammers out there. But 12.5 mil for a hammer though might be seen as a good profit for some people. There might also be people who were slowly gathering hammers for later use/sale that went "Oh no! hammer prices are dropping! Better sell while I can still make some gold." There might also be people who just got a few hammers (through BODs, or an IDOC, or some contest, or whatever), checked a random vendor for pricing, and thought 12.5 was normal. Those are all reasonable things to believe.

Whatever helps you sleep at night...

Like I said before: It is indeed not impossible some of the hammers that are for sale are legit. However, with the current situation I think it is more reasonable to assume any given hammer isn't legit then to go by the off-chance it is.

 

[RavenWinterHawk]

Again, let's look at counterfeiting.


When you counterfeit money and go to Best Buy and buy a stereo, and get away with it, guess what. It wasn't free. It was free to you. However, thanks to you, the REST OF US will have to pay for it. Each phony bill you print is going to force everyone else who uses legit money to make good on its value in the long run.

Money does not come out of thin air. Well, maybe it does when it is counterfeited, but the actual value behind it does not. That's WHY people counterfeit. Because they want the wealth attached to money they do not have.

Duping is the same thing in UO because items are currency in this game. Items are in fact the basis of our economy, not gold.

Saying "duping affects other players? Well it does and it doesn't" -- you are half right.

IT DOES. End of story. When you CHEAT and create a valuable item that draws money from the economy, you STEAL from all of us.

If it was a one-player game where you create items and riches for yourself -- hey, good for you. You are only hurting yourself by robbing yourself of the game experience. But when there is an economy in the game, even one as worn and stretched as UOs has become, saying it doesnt affect us is assinine. A crime isn't victimless because you want to believe it is.

Actually money does come out of thin air in the U.S.

Thats the problem. The big business get the contracts, get the money, spend it, and by the time the money gets out to us, its devalued or prices go up.

So like the duper, they get great buying power when the government prints out money. That is banks. The Feds loan them money to stay liquid and all that.

But I agree with you. Its just money does come out of thin air now a days. We all just buy into it.

 

[Ishmael]

To me these are the same as people that refuse to work and stand in a welfare line complaining that they should get more or resort to becoming a thief because they don't want to work for things like the rest of us.

While I agree with your point about UO, your analogy is way off.

The people who are duping, and the secondary market resellers of dupes come from the top of the UO economic scale, not the bottom.

The rest of this rant is more generalized and not targeted to Black Betty.

First off, the vast majority of people who accept government aid do not complain that they should get more, and are not there because they don't want to work. Most conservatives keep one or two stories about lazy people sponging off the government handy in their back pocket to create the impression that this represents the majority of aid recipients. It gets people's blood boiling and makes them more receptive to all the rest of the right-wing nut-job worldview. This form of monologue is code-speak for the overt racist arguments which are only heard nowadays when the speaker thinks that everyone present already agrees with him or her.

What the dupers ARE like, is the corporations who find every loophole, grey area, and rule-bending opportunity to make billions off of us every day. It used to be that something was only illegal if you got caught, but now it is only illegal if you get caught AND someone in the justice department is willing to stop looking the other way long enough to prosecute. (Another way in which the management of UO is apparently trying to mimic reality)

The secondary resellers of dupes are like the investors who gain from trading in the stocks of these companies. They can always claim ignorance.

The question, as always, is - Who knew what, and when did they know it?