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Ultima Online Patch Introduces Economy-Wrecking Bug?

Posted by simoniker on from the money-for-nothing dept.

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.

7 of 59 comments (clear)

  1. exploit? by kisrael · · Score: 3, Funny

    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.)

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    SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
  2. Unintended Consequences by G4from128k · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

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    Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
  3. er by truffle · · Score: 3, Insightful


    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
    1. Re:er by Hedonist123 · · Score: 3, Interesting
      This seems to lead me to the question, is it right for Origin to be able to do this? I mean, granted it's not good for the game to have this sort of inflation. But, it's not necessarily true that the player did anything wrong. It's somewhat like someone playing the stock market really, really well in real life. Should the government be able to say, sorry, your system worked too well, we're taking the money back? Granted, this is a private company with holdings in a game... I guess I just think it's fun to think about.

      hed.

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      http://goldysmom.blogspot.com
    2. Re:er by That's+Unpossible! · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It's somewhat like someone playing the stock market really, really well in real life.

      No, it's nothing like that, it is wealth created by a bug in the system. If the stock market systems had a similar bug, and you were able to take advantage of it like this, the money would absolutely be returned. What's more, if they could prove you took advantage of this bug to make money, you would likely go to jail.

      Imagine going to an ATM, requesting $20 and getting $200. Once the bank finds out for sure, you will find a $180 deduction from your account.

      --
      Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
  4. Wait a Sec... by DaRat · · Score: 3, Funny

    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?

  5. Simple Solution by BurritoJ · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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