Gold Farming

Gold Farmers across Ultima Online are feeling the impact of the feud between Blacksnow and the EasyUO Cartel. Rich Thurman, a leader of the EasyUO Cartel and user of the exevents code, has been repeatedly banned from Ultima Online following a conflict with the Blacksnow-Ingotdude coalition. Blacksnow is now reeling from massive account losses, attributed to the hard work of the EasyUO coalition.

Lee Caldwell, a leader of Blacksnow and Ingotdude, originally contacted Thurman and the two discussed the possibility of joining forces to control the economy of Ultima Online. Thurman’s team was made up of strong programmers, while Caldwell’s team had extensively studied the market and had already been successful at manipulating the market. If the two groups combined their skills, they could completely control the market, and would have immense power within Ultima Online, possibly even more than game developers had. But Caldwell wanted access to the exevents code in exchange for his teams’ talents, and Thurman was unwilling to agree. Thurman explained that the creator of exevents did not give it to ay outsiders, and that it was impossible for Caldwell to get the code. Caldwell and Thurman parted on good terms without coming to an agreement.

But one day later Caldwell contacted Thurman with the news that someone had been reposting his characters to game masters, and that his characters had been banned. Thurman denied any involvement and claimed that all of his characters as well as his team members’ characters had also been banned. A suspicious Caldwell found a character belonging to Josh, another member of the Cartel, and asked Josh about the widespread banning. Josh explained that exevents had been given to a blackmailer to keep him quiet. Caldwell reported this information back to Thurman who denied everything and stood by his original statement that exevents could not be given to players outside of the Cartel. Thurman also claimed that exevents had been shut down by its creator, and that other players could no longer use it. Caldwell was infuriated that Thurman gave exevents to a blackmailer after refusing to give it to Blacksnow in exchange for their cooperation. After a brief argument, Caldwell promised that he would get revenge, while Josh promised to destroy Blacksnow.

Reports now state that Blacksnow has had massive account losses, which are credited to the work of the Cartel. In response to the conflict, Blacksnow has been searching for and immediately reporting and banning every character that is created by Thurman. Thurman has not yet been able to keep a new character in the game. The Cartel is now looking to discover new bugs that will allow them to continue to farm with less exposure and less competition.