In UO, the thing that kept me playing for the first 4 months was saving up for a house, then saving for a tower took what seems like years, but then a 16x16 etc. Jealousy of the 16 castles on my shard was pretty crucial to my interest in the game economy so I don't think the disparity is totally a bad thing...



But the markets are totally different.



in UO, the gold market was the only serious way to transact real estate or rares, and you needed it for a constant supply of gear.



With SoTA there are 2 extremely easy Real Money Transaction methods of buying and selling: the add-on store, and the forums.



Trading property for gold, on the other hand, is not even supported by the game client. The market is divided into 125 markets. The gold economy is so constrained by all kinds of economic philosophy mechanics, which are cool and whatnot, but make RMT hecka low friction by comparison. Gold will always be a minority market as long as the RMT market is so convenient.



The fix could be cutting off the RMT market. Or the fix could be integrating RMT more integrally in the game but with a tax, and try to get trade volume back into the game and more fluid on gold markets than RMT markets. But the best fix in my opinion, would be abandoning some of the arbitrary economic constraints; anything that restores the gold market as the primary market. A global auction house with the right parameters would do it.

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