15,000,000,000,000
That’s a lot of gold pieces. Gold pieces deleted from UO, that is. Apparently some sort of exploit involving large checks.
It’ll be interesting to see what happens to the economy with this action. The currency was presumably being hoarded for some reason (else it’d be in smaller denominations than 1,000,000 checks? Or not… see below), so it was largely illiquid. But presumably some amount of this cash was then getting broken up for use on the in-game markets.
It looks like 10,000,000 goes for around $14 these days on eBay. So this was a police action removing $1.5m dollars. Edit: I forgot to multiply by $14. Oops. I guess that puts it at $21,000,000. Good catch, Amaranthar!
And a quick scan of the top auctions seems to show that 10m is the smallest typical amount purchased — all of a sudden checks for 1,000,000gp don’t seem extravagant — they seem like dollar bills.
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That is a lot of money…but its good to see a crack down on exploiters for sure.
It will have an interesting effect on the community and also on the economy, I assume. I have never played UO, is it a player based economy like SWG or a more traditional economy with shops, etc.?
Raph:
In the UO Stratics forum thread, some players asked about the total gold in circulation. Are metrics regarding the virtual economy collected?
I love these big numbers. I still remember killing that first dragon and looting 12,000 gold… I was rich for a few seconds.
Uh, Raph, that’d be more like $21 million. Since some games sell game money in RMT, this would seem to be some heavy crime.
So all the exploiters will now use checks for 999,999 gold? Reminds me of gangster writing checks at 9,999 so they don’t get reported to the IRS.
[…] Comments […]
The thing that has me wondering if the gold was gained illegally to start with or was the gold legal and stored illegally. While no exploit is a good thing, the second seems lesser of two evils (EA refers it as “dirty money” but makes no mention to illegal means to gain that weath).
Sadly I agree Raph. While the number has shock value, when you divide that total across all the shards it will probably have little to no effect. UO has been suffering from this problem for some time now and it has been growing at the same time. When Age of Shadows came out and the game moved towards an item based game it became even more noticeable, because it quickly became hard to buy high end items within the game because of so much of it went directly to Ebay.
[…] 15,000,000,000,000: “That’s a lot of gold pieces. Gold pieces deleted from UO, that is. Apparently somesort of exploit involving large checks. […]
[…] According to Raph Koster the value of this currency in the real world markets is $21 million dollars. I won’t jump on my anti-gold soapbox, but I’m confident that $21 million could be better spent. […]
Lost, not only has it become hard to buy high end items because of the EBaying, but the in game price has shot up because the cheaters, whether dupers or scripters, buy the best things at ever increasing prices. That leaves honest players out of the market, unless they can powergame enough to compensate.
One fact that’s hard to overlook is that there is one group in particular, known as HAX, who’ve been mass banned before but are known to be back in UO. I’m sure there are a few under the radar too. But these guilds are massive exploiters. This raises a question of where in criminal law they fall. I’ve raised the question on the UO boards and someone else noted that they seem to fall under Racketeering laws. While I doubt that the game producers are quite ready to go that far, it leaves me wondering just how long will it be before this stuff starts to look like something this serious. Especially since some games are involved in RMT with their game items. Planted seeds grow, and this is one bad seed.
They should just make a Pre-Champ Spawn/Power Scroll server. I know I’d buy a box and activate an account.
I don’t completely buy that. Yes, according to the quick math it is $21m, but if that money were put into circulation then it would depress the RMT price of $14/10,000,000.
Of course it’s still worth a lot of money.
[…] Previous | Two weeks after Ultima Online began utilising online third-party cheat detector PunkBuster, it has announced the closing of 180 accounts and the removal of a massive portion of its economy. After discovering cheques held in accounts for amounts more than the current million-gold restriction, UO mods have permanently deleted an approximated 15 trillion gold pieces from its world. The amount, as Raph Koster points out, is the equivalent of a potential 21 million dollars in the virtual-money market going by current eBay prices. While the actual effects of the removal aren’t yet clear, it is at least a sign of EA’s continued strategy to revitalize the game even a decade on into its lifespan. Posted at 7:59 COMMENTS POST A COMMENT […]
Before anyone starts using the word illegal, get your terms right. None of this activity is illegal in the US, despite what SOE might want people to believe to further their interests. While this activity is cheating the game, it is no more illegal than cheating in a game of checkers.
I’m just waiting for a heist movie featuring an intrepid band of inside men who plot to create and sell $5,000,000 of WoW gold.
heheh yeah as a James Bond/007 spoof….or better yet ala office space…hehe
Yes it might have some effect in depress/deflate, but across 15 shards/servers (not counting Siege Perilous because of its rule set, where NPCs not buying items from players and that is where many of exploits have been).
I know that all to well. While my accounts are still “active”. I haven’t really played since sometime after AoS because there was no way for me to powergame enough to keep up and the sorting thousands of junk items to find one so-so item drove me out. I think that I remember reading about HAX, I believe they were the ones duping massive amounts artifacts (and only caught because they bragged about it and posted screen shots of it). I also remember seeing people that had scripts set up to farm gold from the world map/scroll change when that was around. I wonder how much (if any) data is logged/collected and analyzed to spot cheating (maybe Raph could shed some light on that part).
Sorry I didn’t mean to stir up trouble in the direction of what illegal means. I only meant it within the context of game worlds and rules applied to them and not in the US legal/court system (But, we could take it farther to say the rules are the laws within the game, therefor exploiting the rules is breaking the laws of the game world and illegal within the game world. Also, I figure if Windows “blue screen of death” uses illegal operation it can be used in computer terms/context.)
How do you figure? Where property is involved, people own rights. And cash profits are most certainly a property belonging to an MMO producer.
When playing chess, moving a pawn horizontally is considered an "illegal move". The legality of player behavior is mostly determined by the set of rules used by the game to provide an interactive experience to players. In addition, behaviors that violate the Terms of Use, Acceptable Use Policy, and/or the End User License Agreement are also considered "illegal". By extension, behaviors that violate the laws of the state and/or the laws of the federation can also be described as "illegal".
What does the term illegal mean anyway? According to WordNet, the term illegal is an adjective defined as "prohibited by law or by official or accepted rules".
Always consider the context.
[…] US$21 Million in Loot Seized in Ultima Online I guess if we call MMO-pros “Gold Farmers”, then they should store their loot in silos, right? Electronic Arts’ MMO Ultima Online team joins the US and others in fighting crime – hitting them in their wallets. In this case, instead of attacking game exploits directly, the Ultima Online team shut down a mechanism to hide or perhaps even launder loot in the game – checks. On July 7th, they took 15 Trillion in suspect money out of the game, about US$21 Million at current exchange rates (Thanks Raph). […]
[…] Das entspricht einem momentanen ebay-Wert von ca. 21Mio US$. Bei soviel mehr Geld im Umlauf wäre der Kurs natürlich schnell verfallen. Angeblich durch einen Exploit angehäuftes Geld wurde beschlagnahmt und vernichtet. Vermutlich wurde die Kohle gebunkert um dann langsam zu verkaufen. Zeigt auf, was man denn so alles machen kann. Was da so mancher gleich vermutet is aber auch nimmer feierlich (von gamasutra.com): "This crackdown follows the recent news, following EA’s acquisition of MMO developer Mythic Entertainment, that the newly acquired studio will help current EA staffers with the Ultima Online series. It is unknown if this added workforce have yet started looking at problems such as this within Ultima Online, however." Quelle: http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=10018 Diskussion: https://www.raphkoster.com/2006/07/06/15000000000000/ […]
[…] de 30.000.000 en dólares, uno de seis estrenos, alcanzara en su debú una cifra superior a los 15.000.000 en dólares. La audiencia estuvo dividida casi por igual entre chicos y adultos nostálgicos, y la […]
[…] Raph’s Website " 15,000,000,000,000 According to Raph Koster the value of this currency in the real world … Online I guess if we call MMO-pros "Gold Farmers", then they shoul… https://www.raphkoster.com/2006/07/06/15000000000000/ […]