Exploits: Single Player Online/Friends Mode is Grandmaster Stealth for Free

The situation I was referring to was during the mass land rush and lot claim.
The city in question was sold out and lots of people wanted the area.
Most of the lots were the same type and the people allowed to claim on that day were of that type.
I can appreciate that someone could "right place right time" and that may have been the case.
(I was not there to see it happen)

It was not a great time to be trying to do a swap for sure.

 

This has been discussed a few times, not a big issue and there are other ways to boot players out of a house.

I know your thoughts are sound but they wont do anything since it would only affect a very few people

Players have aske for about a year now to have a safe way to trade / transfer properties.

Go add to wish list. Again.

 

it really doesnt matter even one would be in multiplayer online,
theres big chance you dont see lot claimer because instances
i would guess places having big amounts players are always running 2-5 multiplayer instances
(not sure if blocking player make you go to different instance also)

 

We should change the lot claiming process so that when someone want's to claim a lot, they have to be in multi-player, are PvP flagged, a 5 minute wait timer is invoked, and zone chat sends out broadcasts with a lot location indicator on the compass.

It would make for a much more exciting process.

 

So now we would be forcing people to pvp? what if pvp is against their virtue..... and no that would not fix any of the problems in this thread.

 

I was joking

 

Everyone knows there's no joking on a @Bom thread ...

~Time Lord~

 

Apparently this has already been tried and nothing has been corrected. At least if players are aware of it they can take precautions.

If all game modes are "equally important" then there should be no advantages to playing in Single Player Online/Friends mode. You're being quite hypocritical against Multiplayer.

Even if it is a rare occurrence that a lot is stolen, you surely wouldn't want it to be yours? Whether it is a rare occurrence or not, I could have stolen Wilfred's lot. Would that have been fair? Lesni posted earlier that a lot was stolen when a mother tried to transfer a lot to her son. If your lot had been stolen in a "very rare occurrence," I think you would feel a little differently.

I'm surprised anyone would attempt to make an argument against fixing an exploit in home transfers. And I'm even further surprised that you would claim the odds don't matter in the very same thread where two cases were presented. Maybe you replied without reading the thread, and maybe you are simply unaware of how easy this would be to do in combination with a macro which is set and left to run 24 hours a day?

 

I'm not arguing against it, just stating that it seems like something that would have a very low rate of occurrence and am surprised to see it come up.
At random chance, its extremely unlikely. If you were after a specific location and had foreknowledge that that player was planning to unclaim/sell, then yes, it is possible, but surely there aren't invisible macrobots parked next to all of our housing stones, just waiting for an opportunity? And if they were, surely that'd be detectable?
And if someone's using an unattended macro, that's bannable, right?


At any rate, it seems like something that should be easy enough to fix with some sort of transfer ownership function, as was said.

 

It's very easy to attend multiple computers running macros. You leave them running on computers next to you with an audible alarm if anyone speaks to you or even chat with your cell phone remotely (see below).

From Terra Nova:



"Rich Thurman, at one time possibly the biggest gold farmer in Ultima Online, ICQ’d me the other day to let me know it’s all over. He’s moving on and – in the hallowed tradition of MMORPG liquidators everywhere – putting his famous automated gold farm (pictured left) up for auction on eBay. No, the machines don’t come bundled with the gold-harvesting uber-macros he wrote for them, so don’t go getting ideas. But if you want a piece of virtual-world history, make your bid. And if you want a rare first-person glimpse into the world of the hardcore farmer, check out Rich’s farewell confessional to the UO community, in which we learn of high-tech hacks for dodging GMs, mob wars between competing bot-runners, and the curiously ludic motivations of at least one unrepentant exploiter. It can now be revealed, as well, that virtual crime pays: Rich claims to have produced and sold over 9 billion gold pieces in two years, for a total rake of about $106,000, all while holding down a respectable day job as a software consultant and putting in quality time with his wife and three kids."

Using a cellphone to chat unattended:

"What about the EULA and ROC? Well, the EULA stats that no 3rd party applications are allowed, but we all know and use many different utilities out there. So, since I agreed to the EULA, I am the first party, being the paying member for UO and EA is the second party, being the provider. So, if *I* make/author a utility, it is a 1st party utility, and in my opinion, anything you make doesn’t apply. Over simplification maybe, but I can sleep at night on those terms. Now, the rules of conduct are a different story. The ROC say something like, thou shall not macro unattended. The litmus test for this rule is a GM asking you to respond, and if the GM is satisfied, you are golden. I concentrated on resolving this first problem and I believe it was a pretty creative solution.

Instant messaging has been a great blessing and is used by millions of people everyday for instant communication. When a GM talks to you in the game, or anyone for that matter, UO becomes one massive IM application. So, why not wire UO up to something akin to Trillian and pipe any in-game text to an IM application of your choice? This is exactly what I did. Since I was able to get game text from the game client, I piped it to MSN messenger and was able to converse with GMs or anyone else in the game from my smart phone that was MSN messenger aware. So, as long as you are able to respond right? I felt that I had satisfied the ROC. Game on!"