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Ultima Online Character Auctioned for $500
Splatta writes
"Someone bought an RPG character for $521 on eBay.
The character was from Ultima Online. "
Does this strike anyone besides me as being strange?
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If only people were willing to pay this kind of money for MUD characters. I'd be steeenking rrrrrich!
yeah CT - its damn strange... to the guy who sold it - WHY? WHY? you invested years in this! 1/10th of that time at a minimum wage job would have gotten you $500!! Come on!!!!
Wow. If there's a big market for these things, that's a powerful incentive to start writing custom UO clients that'll gather money for you.
Oh wait, don't they charge by the hour or something?
They charge by the month, I believe...about ten bucks. I recall seeing somewhere a currency conversion page which sold Ultima Gold for US dollars. You could pay with a credit card, then log into the game and collect your gold from a player. A friend told me about an artist/ultima player who would create a drawing of your character for in-game gold. Someday, I think some virtual world cash exchange rate will be listed in international currency exchanges. :)
Maybe $500 means nothing to the purchaser. Maybe it's a day's pay.
It's a tradeoff. I mean if you're into this sort of stuff, it could be a bargain in that you don't have to invest the time and money it takes the character to get to that level. But I wonder like you...it seems to me the dude auctioning the character is losing money considering all the time and monthly payments he invested. The real question is why people ascribe so much value to this fantasy world at all. It's a f'ing waste of time, and this is from a former IMM mudaddict who realized the error of his ways.
They do, or at least did. I had friends who built up chars and sold them to people on-line ... sometimes making $40-$60 a char ... all depends on how stacked they were. EOTL (End Of The Line) helped put a few of my friends through college, or at least it bought them beer for the parties.
nerd - recovered mud addict.
I played UO for a few weeks a while back and it
can be difficult to gain wealth and power in this
game unless you cheat for spend a long time
playing it. There were way too many PKers when I
played. The first character I had was a bow maker
which carried the bare minimum with him. One time
I was encumbered with a bunch of logs and someone
comes up to my character and kills him without
one word and the only thing he takes are the logs
which took me only a few minutes to cut down.
but he would probably have to play UO for like a year to get what that account had. If you are rich in rl, hey why not?
This isn't as much strange as it is pathetic.
Fire up an lpmud or dikumud on your linux box, create a character and give it all the gold/weapons you want. See how fun and cheap that was? Next!
I can't believe people waste their time & money with this sh**. People would rather spend all day in la-la land, rather than actually learn something useful that people would pay _them_ for.
I use to be a f**king moron like this, until a friend drove a sledgehammer and some sense into my skull. The sad part is, many ppl never get out of this addiction, you have ppl that continue to play and admin muds/rpgs to the detriment of gpa and relationships. Many of the same people on the mud I played for a few years are still there 3 years later. What the hell?
Recovered Imm and mud addict
What a waste. For $50 he could have earned a theological degree from that P.O. Box in Fresno, or a Ph.D. (credits awarded based on life experience) from an actual non-accredited university. But some people waste their life playing games. :-)
Ah well. If someone must fund our nation's economic engine, why not the gullible and the vain?
>The real question is why people ascribe so much >value to this fantasy world at all. It's a f'ing >waste of time, and this is from a former IMM >mudaddict who realized the error of his ways.
uh! oh! slashdot.org, also is a waste of time. don't kid yourself you'll never realize the error of your ways. you'll die a lonely WWW addicted net-porn pervert, just like the rest of the world.
bye
E.g., if I own 50 chess books in an attempt to do better at chess tournaments, do I need to get a life? (50 books is easily over $500).
I used to be an amatuer astronomer--my telescope and other equipment was worth more than $500. Do you think that's too much?
All those people into ham radio would have to call their shrinks, according to you, because they've spent too much on their hobby.
How much is a good set of golf clubs? A good set of skis? A boat?
punk!
The way i see it, if my life is as equally devoid of purpose as the poor individuals who both bid on this character and devoloped him. I would be so damn rich if i got paid for my quake habit, thats not even including the time i spend working on linux or looking at porn :)
I can see very well the situation, as I can relate. I played the game for 6 months straight, addicted as hell, and finally one day I noticed that I no longer had a life and quit right then and there, no regrets, no desire to return to the game, it was a clean break. However, I DID have a well established character when I quit, and I was quite loaded. By the time you reach that point in the game, it tends to lose its appeal and you spend all your time not losing what you already have.
when this guy wanted to quit, he figured he could probably make a few bucks off the account before dumping it completely. I seriously doubt he expected it to sell as well as it did.
To whoever bought the account, you are most definitly the loser in this situation. All the fun in that game was advancing. That was the challenge. With all the merciless player killers, and timewarps, and crashes, and cheaters... just trying to get ahead in the game at all was most of the fun. Once you finally made it, there was really nothing else much to do.
Why are you speaking directly to CmdrTaco? Do you know him. Does he know you? I wish that people would stop getting personal with Rob. You don't know him, stop kissing his ass.
Heheh I quit UO maybe 8 months after final...I had like 2 million gold, 50,000 of each reag and like 10 house deeds... If I only knew there are suckers like these out there I could've gotten like a grand for my account hehe.
speaking as an ac again?
Isn't this slavery...the selling of 5 living breathing Ultima Online characters on the open market?!?!
I'd like to jump into a Quake arena with these slave traders and BFG em all, along with all the fscking domain name squatters.
Yeah, like i wish I new that Magic cards would turn out to be so valuable before I gave them all away. @^*#&$!!!
Damn down here in New Orleans 250 will get you some time with a 9/10 on weekends and a 10/10 weeknights. 500 will get her for the entire night. Just go to PatO's. The finest come to the big easy knowing its pretty easy.
hehe
PS: If you don't live here then you only have the first option the other loot will buy your plane ticket.
*squirt*
woops!
I better get some kleenex to wipe off the keyboard.
brb
Folks these days don't understand that it's the journey, not the destination, that's important. The satisfaction comes from earning something, not from having it.
The game has been very successful for Origin, but on the down side, once you start playing it...
It's like a Mud x 10. It's a horrible, evil, vile thing that could potentially harm school/work and having a life. I've been playing this evil/horrible game for about 9 months now and it's just as addictive as crack (not that I've ever had crack or anything... just a caffeine junky). A few of my friends play it too, we play on the Baja shard. It just consumes too much time. I play it once a week now just to refresh my house and make sure all my belongings don't decay, but... now that I think about it, it's costing me. Damn... doh.
I work 40 Hours a week and take one class at DVC, our local community college. Last semester, I played the game so much that it hurt my grades (I was working 25 hours a week and taking 3 classes).
I don't know... the games can be a lot of fun, but it's tough to quit. Fortunately, Origin is making a completely stupid move towards making the game more "newbie friendly." After a while of playing the game, I joined the more devious side of Ultima Online-- that of Player Killers. Several new players will bitch and whine about being killed by player killers, but they need to learn how to avoid those people. Player killing is the one _fun_ element in the game. Origin is working on making it so that people can't player kill... I'm sure they'll be fine without my $10/month. This will probably move 5 or so of my friends to quit the game... No loss to Origin.
Not to mention that they have good server emulators these days. Play for free without paying $10/month.
Well, I think I'll stick to games that get borring quickly for a while... can't wait to get tired of Quake III after it comes out.
I think that a lot of people are going to be leaving Ultima Online soon... many people, like myself, find that the only satisfying thing in the game is killing other players and depriving them of their hard earned belongings (and it happens to the best of us too). The people who don't know how the game works will complain on and on to no end. It's quite silly.... I just think about it like quake. People online trying to kill eachother. That's how it should be. I mean, we're not going to make an online game where people tend to "virtual gardens" and keep their "online house" clean for company, etc. That would be just plain borring. As would walking around in a happy little world with happy little people-- where everyone is your friend and you don't have to worry about those obnoxious challenges because games are the one place in your life where you don't have to meet challenges... hehe... "What's the cheat code for such and such game, I just want to see the ending?" Oh, it amuses me so!
Anyway, hmm... (mental note: will cash in on selling UO character before game starts to really suck).
Ultima Online is fun, but it's anti-productive because it takes too much time.
Quake you can play for 10 minutes and leave fulfilled (and not wanting more).
No one really roleplays in Ultima Online, at least, not many people... so the game was defeated from the start. It's just quake with magic spells, no 3d/3d acceleration, really annoying bots, people who complain to no end about being killed, and a lot of silly rules. That's my take on it after wasting 9 months playing it.
-Henry a.k.a. Hallucinosis
It was because Rob was like "Does this strike anyone besides me as being strange" so he answered him.
The person who paid $500 wasn't spending money on a game. They were
spending $500 to NOT play a game. Think about it.
If I ran Ultima Online, I would be trying to cover this story up, since
it gives the impression that building up a 'character' on the game isn't
any fun.
I used to be a little bitter that the UO client software didn't get ported
to "Real Computers." After reading this story, I don't care any more.
almost as stange as UO itself.
when i first heard about it i was like "oh this sounds cool" then i discovered the first thing you have to do is get a job. the last thing i need is a virtual job. ive got my hahands full with a real one.
>I used to be an amatuer astronomer--my telescope and other equipment
;-)
>was worth more than $500. Do you think that's too much?
Let's say you kept a journal of all your astro observations. What would
you think if another amateur astronomer offered $500 for your journal?
Not so they could learn from it -- but so they could pretend that
_they_ made the observations within, and use the journal to impress
their friends.
You take the $500 if you're smart, and recommend they see a shrink if
your compassionate.
Personally I don't see this as any better than someone using a trainer to create a super-character in Diablo. Everyone freaked over that because everyone had these high level fighters with every spell, equipment no one could get, etc. Anyone that would just buy or cheat their way into a gaming community is a friggin lamer. If you're going to play, play. If you're going to buy a character just to say you have it and are cool then you are a complete dork.
I used to be a little bitter that the UO client software didn't get ported to "Real Computers." After reading this story, I don't care any more.
exactly what is a real computer, please enlighten us!
You run that board, Henry's hallucination. I go to DVC. You know David Pratt, and all those other guys, right?
He's talking about Domain Names like www.yahoo.com . I'm sure thats gotta be worth a pretty penny.
I paid 3 months of rent selling Zombie MUD equipment. People ARE crazy. But it's never the seller who is stupid, it's the buyer :)
And they also have problems. However their existence doesn't make buying an Ultima Online character any less pathetic.
(although that may be difficult for someone like you)
I thought this same thing almost immediately after reading the story. All the talk displaying amazement over someone spending "that much money for a character!" just tells me that the person talking sees that as being a whole lot of money.
Not everyone playing these games is a poor college student. If the exchange was for a small utility that someone wrote in their spare time, it wouldn't even be a news story.
In the early 90's, I heard people were trading
BatMUD equipment for MtG cards (well cash too).
Oh well.
--
A former BatMUD and Magic player, never addicted
You're assuming the person who bought the character is going to try and impress his friends with it. Maybe he thinks the game is more fun with a good character than a bad one. Ever type in a cheat code in a game? Ever do it to impress a friend? Nope, me neither.
I can see it now, a company making a killer game with no cheat codes and selling saved games with full equipment and health.
The thing that puzzles me about this is that someone (assumingly an RPGer) would PAY to buy an account... it makes no sense. Gotta be some punk kid who doesn't know what "work" is. Let me pose this question... WHY PURCHASE AN RPG GAME IF YOU DON'T WANT TO PLAY?
The other interesting thing about this will be how OSI handles it. As far as I know, people are only allowed to have ONE account, all server-side, which means that the guy who bought it is probably just looking for more "slots" for his characters (I know ppl who have 5 on each of the 20 or so servers, which is maxed out). If this is the case, they'll cancel him and he'll be sol.
Any other comments (from the more legally adept) on what might happen to the enterprising young character seller?
That really is nothing.
Imagine buying a single can of beer in 1996, for two bucks, and that can of beer, still full, now being worth $7000... or $1000 empty.
By the way, we are talking about 'Duff' Beer which lasted for a little less than a month on market before FOX sued their butt to the wall.
Dan.
I was a newbie on uo just after beta came out and yes at the time you could dupe gold and do almost anything raise skills by macroing in 1 night etc. I then quit my account once the new rep system came in becaouse I got a dread lord wich I was pissed I could no longer pk without a stat loss =P
I then reopend my account 2 weeks later I could not take it with out uo hehehe uo is DAMN adictive and its hard to get away from you have dreams about raiseing skills to 100 and things of that sort. I now play on pacific shard and have a murder whos nick is of chaos and he is on the bounty board =)) pking is the only thing to do and I have been pking scence almost when I started and its still fun to kill the people. get all the loot although I have PLENTY of loot I have 3 mill. in the bank and a full set of plate invulnetbility and many vanquishing weapons. I now wish I would of never joined uo ok on top of that I also own a 2 story house =P.
I have to agree with whoever it was that commented on people renouncing their addictions and things they used to enjoy. Why dump on it now? It is obviously because it is viewed as a weakness. I know I used to play MUDs, but I never really got into them. It was more a way for me to get away from high school (especially because I lived in the middle of nowhere) and it was kind of fun. I question why I did it frequently, but it doesn't really matter. Why do we do anything? You can always look back on things ask why you would do something like that, but it must have made sense at the time. You can just as easily look back and remember that you had fun. It might not be fun anymore, but now it's time for something else.
As to a few other comments saying how the struggle is the only real fun: it's a perspective thing. Some people get off on beating a game rather than playing it. I know people who wouldn't dream of playing MUDs because you can never really win. They had some silly view that said winning is everything. For some people, and psychology would say they are uncomfortable with themselves, winning makes them feel better. I look at life, having no real winning or losing status, and I question how they can hope for anything, but I guess if you break it down to things like, "I want that job," or, "I must have that man/woman," it can be a win or lose type thing. It would also bring out treating everything like an object or possession. Too bad. That implies to me that they wouldn't truely enjoy anything. But, that's probably because it's me, and they might.
At a few points in my life, if given the chance, I would have lived it over. You know, say it had all been a dream from the time I was 2. I actually wanted to a few times. What it really meant was that I was unhappy with my life as it was. One thing I had to accept was that what I had done I had done, and what I had done and didn't like, I learned from. I relate that to a lot of what I do now. If I look at something, I imagine the implications a lot more now. I have a lot more experience now to tell me that I have more fun doing other things than playing games. I found that games really just passed the time for me. They didn't give me a great sense of having fun or anything, they just kept me busy. Kind of like sleeping. It's a great thing, most people prefer sleeping over most other things. What is it really though? I suppose being tired is a big part of it, but being bored is part of games. I found that once I found something that not only kept my boredom away, but I really enjoyed, I no longer want to go back. I look forward to having more fun, specifically dancing. I do remember many times when I would go to sleep at 5-6am and get up at 10am, ready to keep playing. I suppose I was driven, but it was mostly because I knew the more I played, the better I would get. I also had an alternate life there. I wasn't bored or required to do anything. I didn't have to worry about that assignment due the next day. I see that one of the main reasons I played was because I disliked the real world. Again, now that I have found dancing, I'm excited to do it several times a day. Rather than denying reality, I see how much fun there is in it.
There is a lot of philosophy on achievements. Most agree that the journey is the real fun. Most of the time the struggle to get some place takes a large multiplier of the time you enjoy the success. People don't realize how much it becomes a part of them until they finish and there is a large empty spot. There is a specific type of person that enjoys being at the top, and doesn't really enjoy the climb. As I said earlier, it boggles me how they can take pleasure, not only from being at the top, but being at the top without actually getting there. These are the kind of people that cheat in a game, so they can finish it and tell people they finished it. The point is lost in my game, but in theirs they score a few.
I would say the person who got the $500 hit a lucky spot. Not only did he hit a point where he could look down and enjoy it, but after he had enjoyed it enough, he got money, which is like a neat bonus. I hope the person who paid for it enjoys it $500 worth. They might even realize that being on top isn't as fun if you didn't get there yourself.
Yep, the correct link is http://www.owo.com/
Someone (or ones) seriously need a visit to a good shrink. If you are going to pay $500+ just to advance in a computer game, you would be better off spending it on a good shrink to help you get back your life. Or better yet, just plain go out and buy one!
-------------------------------
"For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain." - Phil. 1:21 (KJV)
why not just play the game for long periods of time have no life and build your character up, or better yet not play the lame ass game, and do something fun like shoting old junk hard drives
I played Magic for approx. 6 months (along with my sister) before I realized it was a big money sink. I still have a drawer filled with Revised (Third) Edition cards - last I heard they were on the fifth edition. Anybody know if these are worth anything, or did the game finally die and they are worth more as fire fuel?
I also have some of Decipher's Star Trek Customizable Card Game cards. It wouldn't suprise me if these aren't worth the paper they are printed on, considering how badly designed that game was. (Certain missions were hard to complete unless you had some specific card, say, Geordi LaForge, and many of the rare cards such as Jean-Luc Picard were WAAY too good and really threw off the game balance. Picards were going for $80 at one point.)
People will pay for anything. My guess, and I'm not a UO player, would be that the original owner ran out of fun. Games aren't that much fun when there is no challenge and it sounds like his players are pretty much maxed out. I can't imagine it being $500 of fun to own those characters, I'd be worried about losing them.
I think it's kind of sad that people spend so much of their time with a computer game, but I've seen it before. I used to have a roommate that was definitely a MUD addict. Eventually, he got a job and later kicked the habit. He wound up trading one of the item he acquired for a couple of 32 MB SIMMs!
For God's sake, load uox3 on your machine and give yourself 500,000 GP and a mage tower.
And be a GM, and not have to play with all the UO PK assholes named "BoB Dah KiLLaH"
UO is a great idea, poorly implemented.
--
As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
Nahhh, that's what IPv6 is for. Doesn't it provide on the order of 10^24 IP addresses for every square meter of the earth's surface?
--
Posted with Mozilla
Heh.
On my MUD, someone bough a "generation" for something like USD 100-200, too.
I'd not be surprised if someone would sell/buy a high level character for higher amounts.
There are addicts everywhere...
Oh, and there's more around on MUDs than the journey. It's also the joy of creation, and the feeling you get when the mortals for once actually think you did something cool.
But seriously folks, it won't be long now till we start hearing about domain names and those 4 octet addresses they're tied to (whose name escapes me at the moment)being left to heirs in wills, used as collateral, mortgaged, and maybe even getting property tax levied against them. Or, like when the gov wants land for a highway or military base or whatever, condemned and forced sale conducted. The more things change, etc.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
"10^24 IP addresses for every square meter of the earth's surface?"
Well that ought to about cover all those Internet Enabled refrigerators, microwaves, et cetera.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
I know that I'm not the only person who is/was friends with people who've spent literally thousands of dollars keeping up their system so they can be the `best' Quake players out there. I'm talking about people who have T1 lines in their homes, who would move to get a better ping time, who have to have the newest/fastest/coolest card/chip/game/mousepad the day it comes out. Just because someone (stupidly) paid money to further themselves in Ultima Online doesn't mean that it hasn't happened before and that it won't happen again.
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. -- Oscar Wilde
There are price lists out there. I would be willing to buy some off of you if you make a list. Or I will buy them bulk.
pronoblem
Suckers at ebay
pronoblem
And this is just more evidence to prove it.
I used to play BBS games, and sometimes I'd wish I could somehow come across a good player made for me instead of working through it myself. It's almost like cheating though, if you think about it.
I find it humorous to observe how vehemently former MUD/Quake/UO/(fill-in-the-blank) addicts decry the thing they formerly loved. Like someone born-again or, perhaps more accurately, one who realizes that their significant other, while great in the sack, is not, perhaps, the one of their dreams, and that it's time to get back to looking for that one again.
So like the burning prophet on the mountain top, they say to themselves, "Get thee gone, MUD/Quake/UO! I renounce thee!", and to others, "Seek not the MUD/Quake/UO, for therein lies madness! I have seen the light!"
Gimme a break. What they all are angry at is not the game, but themselves, angry because they think they were weak, and now they have to act righteous to show that they're strong manly men now.
ObMUDAddictStory: I played JediMUD pretty much continuously for 6 months, back in '92 during grad school. Wrecked a year's worth of classes, or nearly so. Do I regret it? Nope. Sure was fun.
These long lasting games and activities tend to fulfill some need in a person's life at the time they're playing. When the need disappears, the desire to play disappears. Just like a girlfriend; she seemed right at the time, but after a while it was obvious she wasn't.
Certainly its no worse to play these kinds of games than many other activities are. You could, y'know, work for Microsoft, or something.
I know someone who sold off a Level 43 Mage in MajorMUD for $100. ..
I don't know why the hell people pay that kind of money
sure beats spending it on 5 Color Crack (Magic the Squandering :).
I mean as a recovered MTG player I gotta tell ya, spending/trading big bucks on cards only to see them banned from play sucks.
So dropping $500 (about as much as a box of Magic "Legends" in '92 ) for a permanent gain shows some sense. Maybe a bit of the old power gaming disease, but at least s/he's got something to use in play next year.
~Grell
"I forsee that you will meet a king, the father of the beautiful Princess
Plote DeVice; and he will insist that you rescue her from the keep of the
infamous Duke Carad Bored Vilan." "Can we kill the DM now?" "No."
...when it gets down to fundamentals, do what you have to do and shed no tears. Dr. Matson in Tunnel in the Sky
It's not like the seller started his Ultima gaming
as an investment--he was presumably playing for fun.
Say he got good, built up a nice character or two, then
got bored and now wants to do something else with his
time. If he can make some money off of his no-longer
used characters, I say more power to him.
Of course, I think the buyer is probably missing the
point of on-line gaming--it's the journey, not the
destination!
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
for Ulitma Online...
UO is addictive, I play it so I know, but to pay that much for an account is just plain screwed. Firstly IMHO, the fun in UO is building you own character. Secondly, how do people justify paying that much, and for those selling, how do they justify the price. I acknowledge this case was an auction on ebay, but I have heard people pay $1000 for an account. Are thay trying to recover ISP and game play charges?
"I just can't sit while people are saying nonsense in a meeting without saying it's nonsense" J Watson, Sci Am 288:(4)51
I agree... I was addicted to muds for the longest time. But what it comes down to is all these are just GAMES to keep you entertained, not to run your life. It doesn't matter what you do in the MUD wether your a really high level char or a low newbie, what matters is that how you do in real life. Everytime I see a MUDDer now I try to explain to them how muds are bad for them and what happned to me, maybe its not as bad a drugs but I think it falls under the same section.
Paying that kind of money for an online figure? That is just weird. Oh wait a minute; perhaps now I _can_ buy me a life?
I've seen things like this before. Never quite $500, but characters from the Simutronics online games are frequently sold by people who are tired of playing them. I find it rather sad though that someone would buy one of these characters. Half the fun on the games are to start from the begining and make progress.
- AMW