Platinum has little to no value.

I didn’t read it because it’s too long and I don’t care, but did @Gideon Jura finally....
A. Post a real reply to something in earnest.
B. Finally cop to price fixing?

Love those plat rewards! Hype!

That’s my boy!

Don't delete your account(s) or rage quit, you'll regret it folks!

Lots of good info above...

But why did the guy pointing his finger go quiet when people started to point back??

@wylwrk loves it when I say... "Own your shit people."

Because I have a job. (its been less than 24 hours since my initial response)

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I think the majority of you are missing the point. I am not pointing a finger at "that group". It was an example of how platinum price could be controlled and how the platinum price isn't decreased via their efforts. I just happened to point out that there was such a group. Anyways, as a long term solution of utilizing platinum it is much safer to use it and the accompanying rewards in direct trade for items. But overall there is no shortage of platinum whether or not that group existed. This whole topic is about how easy it can be farmed, how much there is, and the lack of ability to actually sell it off at what is perceived as market value.

Case Study 2
Player A -sells 1st anniversary sandals.
Player B -buys those sandals at 60m with 5000 platinum and 20million gold (This is an exaggerated situation you can look at that in smaller terms).
Player A -decides that they want gold and try to sell the platinum. They will not be able to dump it all because nobody wants to buy that much plat at current market prices. A little here a little there (mostly sold to new players). Hence my analysis of "5k" being asked to purchase over the course of 10 months. -OR- Player A will have to purchase items with that plat (perhaps they do it naturally without considering liquidation), take those items and sell those for gold.

It is your everyday millionaire-joe taking plat in for trade at X amount that is really propagating the cost of platinum. Once somebody like me comes along and is motivated to dump platinum, even by reducing the price a little at a time, the price of platinum will drop. The average joes will change their plat acceptance rate to a price +-500gp of that rate because it will become the standard. It becomes that standard because it shows the new players that are buying plat, subconsciously perhaps, that there is no such thing as a shortage. It is a faith based currency that has no backing, no real sink. Once you have the plat rewards that you want there is no other alternative but to use it for trade or to sell it. There already is too much on the market. The supply, even without that group, is too damn high.

To say the economy on UOR isn't backed by something is a bunch of bologna. Everything you buy and sell has a certain rarity value attached to it and a desire value attached to it. 1st anni sandals 1of5 sells for a lot more than a board 1of50,000,000. Platinum is the same way but the realization of its rarity and desire hasn't settled in with the common people. The rich unknowingly put its value on a pedestal. The group that made 60k plat would have 450m of purchasing power at 7.5k per. That's 7.5 pairs of first anni sandals, or 6 occlo bank houses, or 6 yew bank patios, or 22.5 castles @ 20m.... By the time platinum has plunged deeper the value of the shit that millionare-joe sold them will be doubled and the value of platinum that millionare-joe has will be halved.

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Some random thoughts
To make 2,075 platinum (at current 7.5k) you could:
-spend 64 hours chilling with 3 of your best buds
-spend 129 hours at blood elementals consistently pulling 120k/hour
-spend 5.7 years collecting welfare plat on 3 accounts and spending over $1026 on electricity
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Burn me at the stake and call me a witch, I am just pointing out the obvious. If I need plat or gold I would go form a group and farm champs. But I'm loaded on gold and have plenty of ethereals and runebooks. I would rather spend my 1-2 hours of game time pvping.

@Gideon Jura Exactly my point with my little gold standard comment. There's nothing that has ever backed the coins here. We are creating infinity wealth, its not like someone is hoarding the bullion

If there was a limit per day/week/time period of how many coins could drop, this thread might have some validity.

Some more plat sinks would be a good thing imo though.
I wonder, could a one way exchange, plat to copper be viable? At some ludicrous ratio? *shrug*

@Erlkonig You're right. It's possible to affect uonomics doing things in game.
Right, wrong or irrelevant, it IS a playstyle.

Alternative currency store items are for the most part tangible and thus trade-able. The currency just changes form. It's only taken out of the game on the rare occasions when left to rot after an overlooked IDoC... ha, as if.

I personally don't see that as a problem right now but, I suppose it could be argued there's a need for a vehicle to take currency out of the game.


What those services would be that wouldn't be game-breaking is beyond me.

@wylwrk Is copper intended to ever enter the world, or only sit inside our account wallets?

If it will never exist as pixels, this would be a one way exchange that yes, does change form, but cannot ever change back. So it effectively leaves the economy in exchange for "vet level" addons/stuff.

Edit: I guess if there were items attainable this wouldnt work. Even addons to houses, unless wiped on transfer, could be used to trade. :/

@Erlkonig

One could argue, again and again, that idea that a luxury home costing someone 15 million is a deterrent for new people.

But, who cares right?! Put in the time and try and play catch-up to guys who have been power gaming for 5 years!

So ask yourself, do you want shined things or do you want population?

Personally,
I don’t play enough to care either way, however, those newbies that come to this server might find it hard to swallow that a server with a population of 3-400 people has no room for larger homes and those larger homes sell for between 10 and 40 times deed price.

Would I like to see prices drop? Sure! Would I lose my hat on shit I’ve bought due to devaluation? No.

So take my opinion with that in mind.

Also @Erlkonig , nice humblebrag ya dirty cock sniffer.

Wanna get people talking? Maybe don’t tell us how great you are or all the yuuuuge things you have done, cause nobody here actually gives a fuck.

Just a friendly PSA

+1. I couldn't care less about all this shit, i am just glad to play classic UO on a populated shard again and relive treasured memories. Plat at 4k? Plat at 20k? Fort at 25m? Fuck it, it just provides another goal to achieve

I want to hear more about the cheating in the past though.. that sounds like an interesting story!

@TrojanCow I agree with you that this isn't really a big deal, if I may concatenate your post that way.

I will be the first to admit I liked it better when we had two cartels (iDerp and TT) than our current unipolar oligarchy, but things still mostly work fine. I believe you when you say TT was monopolizing champs for a while. Seems like something they would do. @Mes was very open about his belief in "Total War".

So more or less we have two ideas here:

1) Platinum is still overpriced, despite having fallen considerably in the past few months. - Most people seem to agree.

2) Years of platinum being overpriced may be due to "that certain group" using alts to lie about it. - I couldn't rule it out. Most people don't seem to care.

So everyone keep in mind, if you overpay for plat, you may be lining the pockets of already rich people. Furthermore, some of them may be pretending to be new players.

I have always appreciated @Erlkonig's PSAs and I still do. If I ever need to buy plat again I'll think twice about it. My opinion of the IDOC crew or Plat Train or whatever is unchanged because we already knew they use alt forum accounts and control much of the server economy. I don't have any reason to believe they're cheating in game, and I didn't notice Erl accuse them of it.

I can't say I really care though. As I've said a few times before, there's a crooked elite who manipulate the economy to their own ends in the real world, why not in UO?

Also, expensive platinum does help genuinely new players as well. It's "the middle class" (like me) that gets screwed with expensive platinum, and I still don't care much. @merlin8666's point was correct, making end games more difficult to achieve just increases the game's replay value.

Being 100% candid right now (really, candid, not sarcastic) - Do you feel you do this?

@One, bless your heart. I'll be straight up and candid.

You play the forums very hard, however I think you need some in game experience. I really don't know your playstyle, I almost get the vibe you don't have a play style?

What? Plat Train died 2 years ago!
iDerp to blame?? Wait, What? You know what they do right?

You cant believe that, please tell me you don't. You've made a few comments like this, You actually think a group have alt forum accounts and "lie to people" on what Plat is worth!? More impressively, control the entire economy!? What are they "lieing about".. Really though? What is the lie?

If anything iDerp drives the price of items lower... Imagine what would happen if all the rares they "garbage picked" would decay.. Prices would sky rocket. What if all the shovels, ingots, tmaps, and general everyday items they dig up just decayed... wouldn't there be less of it in the world and make it harder / more expensive to buy? supply/demand? Please, don't switch your logic now because you don't like a group of people.

I could go on, I mean you make these statements and you fall victim to believing others.

You say most people agree that plat is still overpriced? How can you say this? There is no change in the market. Yes, 4 months ago the market shifted, sure. I'm buying all the plat you'll sell me @ 4.2 - no one is stepping up... If another person with 10k plat wanted to sell off a TON of plat, sure price may go down.. Same thing would happen if 4 forts hit the market for sale. How often does this happen? How many people sit on 10k plat?

Keep in mind, If plat drops in price, everything drops in price.. do you think someone has 60m in gold to buy the sandals in the case study?

I'm still being candid here.. lets assume you take Erl's comments at face value... go do it.. someone, please follow his logic and go do it... Shit you'd potentially lower plat price even more! Please, just post back how "easy" it was for you to create 60k plat.

I imagine you're asking because of the comments from the fruit in previous posts, go check our history. He loves to slander my name.
I really don't have much "shit" to own up too, the problem is, I speak out on people, they bite back and all it takes is One naive person to believe them.

Yeah see that's exactly what I expected, you to come here and claim everyone has "shit" but you and your pals. Absurd.

I've been clear in several posts about my playstyle. Holiday events. Occasionally maps, nets, or instances. Used to PK and steal sometimes, don't anymore (Owning my shit: I do, but very rarely). I have usually been and still am a casual player.

Plat price, just going by this thread, don't know otherwise. But most don't seem to object to that part of the post.

As for controlling the economy, the fact is most (not all) of the richest players have been part of that crew at some point. That's all that means.

And I certainly believe you and/or your buddies use alt accounts. Deny it all you want I think you're completely full of shit and you do not own it at all.

And I'm watching this thread over here like...

This has been a long running argument with lots of suggestions.

I would argue that the biggest issue in game that actually matters is Keeps and Forts being in limited supply.



When people talk about inflation in UO:R they are using the term inappropriately IMHO. Inflation IRL means a currency has less buying power. In UO:R the exchange rate between gold and ingots stays nearly perfectly constant. Same with gold for regs. Gold seems to buy equipment at a better rate over time.

There are certain items which ARE inflating and they inflate a lot which makes people think that gold has become less valuable. No, those items are simply incredibly rare. This doesn't represent the true value of gold.

A good real life analogy is rare paintings. One recently sold for $500m. Does this mean the dollar has suddenly decreased in value since the last painting sold for far less? No. Same with rare baseball cards and stamps. Those rare items are luxury vanity items that represent an extremely niche market.

Sandals and masks and other rare pixels are the same situation. The very very rare ones explode in value. The moderately rare ones? Not so much. Cupids and such still sell for the same value they did years ago. 4th anni stuff mostly also. But 3rd? 2nd? 1st? It is an increasingly upward pressure since quantity falls so fast.



Housing is the issue that directly impacts the most people. Keeps and Forts are hard to find and like rares, their value is way up.

There isn't MUH COLLUSION or anything of the sort. If a person or group lists a Keep at 8m and some individual does a buyout at 15m, that was their choice. The collusion isn't the seller. It's the 150 Keep owners who never sell! Or, in my case, some individual bought my Britain Keep for ~20m (I think?), that is not a conspiracy and is not price fixing.

About to say something to ruffle some feathers but stop being giant crybaby socialists and realize that a fairly run auction for a house or rare on UOR is literally supply-demand economics at work. There isn't any frigging rigging. Occlo and Yew Bank houses sold for 70m+. They are THAT rare. The people who bought them are probably glad they did because now they own that super rare postage stamp.



I've often considered gold sinks or no-trade items (to really sink some value) an option but I think a better option would be @El Horno 's Tower w/ Courtyard idea he posted long ago. I think it would put a bit of downward pressure on the price of the only "rare" I think really matters - large courtyarded housing.

Yes. This is how economics has worked for eons. See something you think is under/overvalued, adjust strategy accordingly. Enough people do so, prices re-establish to reflect new paradigm. Are there losers and winners during the adjustment? Absolutely. Is it always a certain group that wins? Absolutely not. As I stated, I sold stuff with plat at 10k, then it went down to 8k. I once sold stuff with hcoin at 8k then it went to 6k. That's just what happens in markets with floating values and no price controls.

But price controls would simply make things even worse.

Suggestion: Stop letting others rule over you.

There is no such thing as a middle class in UO. They are called casuals. And just like in Clash of Clans, they don't have a level 11 town hall or whatever.