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Ultima Online Patch Introduces Economy-Wrecking Bug?
Thanks to PlayMoney for its weblog post revealing a recent Ultima Online patch designed to shore up the economy may have introduced new problems, as "the very same game patch... also [seems] to have introduced a gold-gusher of a bug, allowing some people to conjure themselves up a few hundred million gold pieces in the space of a week." The author references a thread on UO Stratics which includes allegations about "one guy that claimed to have made over 700mil to date on [a particular game server] with this bug", a total of $9947 under current dollar exchange rates if successfully auctioned. Although the other new economic rules "seem otherwise to be working out fine", and this exploit was "fixed last Friday [5th]", the author is concerned that "by the time the new money gets fully circulated, gold will be selling for $7 per million", half of the current $14-per-million auction price.
is this real money?
Just out of curiosity (never played UO, probably never will) does anyone know what the exploit looked like, what you had to do?
I remember Star Control 2, being able to sell more shuttles than you had, so your amount of cash 'wrapped around' to a large positive rather than negative value....frankly, I was just as happy to avoid all the semi-tedious mineral collecting and just go to work on the main story. (Which I used a walkthrough for...sigh, I'm such a wuss gamer. Still, I loved that game.)
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
The reminds me of an Artificial Life example. A scientist was simulating evolution using some little virtual animals. Built into the simulation was an energy cost for moving -- the virtual creatures were supposed to evolve efficient strategies for finding food and mates. The creatures quickly evolved the ability to move backwards becuase this was counted as negative movement which meant negative cost, so that actually gave the creatures more energy.
For every clever policy created by some scientist, game designer, economist, corporate manager, or clever politician, there is an even more clever counterstrategy that someone is bound to discover.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Origins will probably just track down the exploiters and close their accounts, retrieving 90% of the bad gold in the process. It's not too hard to look for people who have disproportionately high gold reserves. Once you identify those people, you can on an individual basis check out what kind of gold reserves they had a few weeks ago, and compare.
It's possible Origin can't do this kind of detective work, but seems unlikely.
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I support spreading santorum
Just curious, but how do you spend your money? Ever spend real money on a movie? DVD? VHS? TV? Book? Did any of that help the starving people? How is spendning money on virtual entertainment any different than spending money on other forms of entertainment? -- C.
Wait a sec... Are you sure that the bug was in Ultima Online and not recently introduced as a new fiscal policy by the government in the real world?
In a world where A LOT of people starve to death every day...
Well then, it's good to know that you've sent your money to those needy starving people. I mean, imagine if you had spent some money watching a movie. That's virtual entertainment right there. Same with attending theatre productions. No material reward there, so you've obviously taken steps to avoid them.
Own any aggregated investments? I didn't think so, because you surely know that these things generally involve technology-based businesses dealing with non-material services.
MP3s? Didn't think so. You'd never put your own enjoyment over the survival of others.
In fact, I'm amazed you managed to type your post at all. I mean, having done it without using software and all. Imagine if you had put money toward a particular sequence of binary digits!
The solution to this problem is to remove some of that money from circulation. The most straight forward way would be to make available at auction a few unique expendable items. These items may need to be powerful enough to unbalance other parts of the game, but with limited uses (maybe even just one) this should correct itself rather quickly. If the item is powerful enough it may never be used because some enterprising soul will see it as an 'investment' to be sold on EBay when his real-world life needs a capital infusion.
Joe
being a currency trader is a risky business to begin with, but trading in FAKE currencies, where the government (in this case, UO patch team) can cause massive (in|de)flation at any time? There's a lot of money to be made, but the traders shouldn't whine so much when they get burned.
/bin/fortune | slashdotsig.sh
Even a broken watch is correct twice a day.
Please, hubris on slashdot is sooooo 1990's.
A few days later he got a nasty call from the bank telling him that he owed them money.
So yeah, you might find a bug and think that you've gotten away with something, but they will catch you.
Lasers Controlled Games!
Just read that Stratics thread. All the players are going apeshit on something that really doesn't matter. But you know what? Suddenly it does matter because they're shelling out $13 a month for that game. Money does funny things to people. Just read the damn thread. People talking about wiping everyone's money, other people begging and pleading not to do that, god. And look at the first post in that thread. The moderator is participating in active censorship, as if talking about the exploit is going to damage the "community" beyond repair.
Before you go flaming me and modding me down, I speak as a former participant of that exact community. I left Stratics and stopped playing UO for many reasons, but the fanatical obsessive player community was high on the list. There was a time when you could have an intelligent discussion on those boards. You could even freely speak of exploits and even post screenshots of yourself using exploits. But ever since EA made Stratics into the official forums for UO, it's gone downhill.
It's like a Nazi state. Active censorship and a fanatical frantic population willing to do drastic things to save a lost cause.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
What I've never understood is the ongoing concern about how little $GAME $CURRENCY_UNIT sells for on eBay. What matters is how it effects gameplay.
The blunt and simple fact is the massive influx of currency has far less effect on the game than most Chicken Littles seem to think. Sure the price of super rares goes up, as do the prices of other 'trophy' items, but these effect the day-to-day pricing of items used by the normal gamer little, if at all. Smiths don't pay more for the ingots my Miner produces. No one pays more for the potions and seeds my Alchemist/Gardener produces, nor for the scrolls my Scribe produces. Nor can my Tamer sell beasts for more than long stable prices...
If the 'real' economy of the game was as badly affected as predicted, then the BOD/Deed bug earlier this year should have massively changed how my virtual business runs. It didn't.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
... because ever since they pussified UO, it's really just been IRC with a virtual economy attached to it.
From a real-world perspective this out-of-game trading is simply cheating, and on that level it might ruin the game for some people. But putting aside the fact that Ultima is a game, from an in-game point of view the real world is a sort of otherworldly plane, where strange things can happen. For example, the game gets recompiled. I mean, if the idea of divine intervention is acceptable in RPGs then I see no problem with mysterious ethereal benefactors compelling characters to give each other stuff.