[MUD-Dev] UO currency

[Timothy O'Neill Dang]

While I was going over what I said in the earlier discussion of currency,
I was struck by something. I hope y'all don't mind a UO-centric thing
here, but it's relevant to game currency generally.

I noted that UO gold has two primary features which would tend to keep it
a healthy currency. It's more or less backed, in that it can be redeemed
for real good such as reagents at NPC shops. And it has the strong
"inside" feature of being the only useful currency (via a debit card, no
less) for purchasing from player vendors.

What I failed to note before is that both of these are changes from the
early days of UO. In theory, one could always redeem gold for goods at
shops, but since supply was so short, I gather the practicality of doing
so was immensely challenging. And UO didn't have the player-run vendors at
first, so there wasn't built-in motivation to use gold as the trade medium
with other players.

So Raph, did you notice any change in the use of gold during these two
changes? I imagine it will be difficult to identify, since there was also
the gold-duping problem, but if you think you could identify separate
effects, I'd love to hear about them.

------------------------------
Timothy O'Neill Dang/Cretog8
timothy at nmia.com
H: 505-843-6966
W: 505-244-8803
One monkey don't stop no show






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