Easily the most divisive topic to date, the argument for & against making UTs tradable once again is a highly sensitive issue. Impassioned people on both sides of the argument (sometimes disrespectfully) make their cases. Today, I’d like to try to be the guy on the fence, looking at both points of view.
Arguments AGAINST tradable UTs:
- Duping
- RWT
- The value/prestige of UTs
- A means of progress in the game
The first 2 reasons are sadly VERY valid. Duping was the reason UTs became SB in the first place, & the very real concern of RWT shops profiting off of a UT weekend was proven during the last UT weekend in September 2013. However, the last 2 reasons are faulty, & I will explain why.
Many people want to keep UTs SB because they fear they lose ‘value’ if they become tradable. The term value is highly subjective in this case, because UTs (mostly) cannot be traded. Since they have no value in an economic sense, they have value only in the sense of personal worth & the perceived notion of rarity. A means of flexing rare items. This is a flawed argument because there’s no stable metric of measuring an item’s rarity. How does one know that an item is rare? Do they know exactly how many of ANY particular item is in the game at any point? No. They do not. Thus, this argument pretty much devolves into people wanting to keep items rare because they don’t want THEIR sense of prestige, value, etc. hurt by other players having THEIR shiny toys. If an item has a means of being obtainable, then the argument of value is paradoxical, hypocritical & self-defeating. People are going to get said item whether they like it or not.
I am the poster boy for loss of value, on two separate occasions. The first instance being when the Gentleman skin was re-released on July 22, 2016. Know how I felt about it? I was actually FINE with other people having it! Yes, it meant I was no longer one of the only people to have it, but on the other hand, I can now derp about with other fine gents. Nothing I can say or do will make the Gentleman rare again, so why waste calories & effort whining about it? The second instance being when the Jack-o’-naut helm was re-released. I was fine with it being available again because it was UNGODLY difficult the first time around. Nobody should have to go through what I went though to get an item. I was QUITE happy they brought back the Jack-'o-naut & made it easier to get. The item itself may not have the prestige it once had, but the accomplishment of getting one during Halloween 2017 is more than enough for me. I still have it though, despite my numerous encounters with the legendary Sprite God. 
Another strike against the value argument is the fact that Deca has made UTs significantly easier to obtain through quests & events. Deca has also stated that they particularly dislike the legacy rules regarding event UTs & wanted to make them easier to obtain. Given that event whites are more difficult to obtain than ever before (largely due to unfortunate circumstances), trying to obtain one can be EXTREMELY frustrating. Server hopping was punished because of notifiers, & events are no longer guaranteed to spawn, which makes trying to farm for any particular event white that doesn’t have the word crystal in them an approach to insanity (doing the same thing over and over & expecting a different result each time). I get that getting an event white is highly exciting, but considering that event white drop rates were arbitrarily left unchecked by Kabam, people have accepted this as the new norm.
Arguments FOR tradable UTs:
- Gives players something to do with unwanted UTs
- Makes UTs easier to obtain
- Bringing players back to ROTMG
One of the biggest problems ROTMG faces is a lack of options regarding unwanted UTs. Currently, you can:
- Feed it to your pet
- Store it forever
- Throw it away
Pets have an endpoint due to the 50 pet holding limit, but a MUCH more realistic endpoint of players running out of fame/gold. And almost all players will stop feeding UTs once they reach Legendary level. Thanks to the pet wardrobe, it’s no longer necessary to make multiple pets based on cosmetics. Keeping it forever is an issue because it takes of precious, limited vault space. And if you’re just going to throw away a white bag item, doesn’t that defeat (or at least hurt) the purpose of running a dungeon?
For ALL of their flaws (and they had many), Kabam at least acknowledged the issue that unwanted UTs
& a lack of options regarding them hurt the game in the long run. They at least tried to come up with a new system that gave players something new to do with excess UTs. I say tried in the loosest sense of the term, because what resulted was the infamous ‘UT Quest’ that was implemented during MOTMG 2015. For those not in the know, Kabam tried to add a Daily quest option of turning in a random UT item for a Greater Wisdom Potion. Yes, ANY random UT item, including such items as Ogmur, Jugg & CDirk. This was a tremendous flop that received a wave of backlash not seen since build 9 (the infamous build that removed pot drops from the godlands). The UT Quest was removed the day it was introduced.
The underlying problem here is that most people want a UT weekend because they want SOMETHING productive to do with their unwanted UTs. Trading them was the natural solution, but because of a lack of foresight on the behalf of WildShadow, & other players ruthlessly exploiting the game for personal gain, that privilege was revoked (probably permanently). Kabam tried to fix that problem, but blundered it once with pets, & blundered it AGAIN with the flawed UT Quest. There NEEDS to be a permanent, long term system in place that gives players an incentive to farm UTs & rewards them for having excess ones to spare. Because right now, ‘progressing’ in this game means grinding the same event/dungeon repeatedly. Hopefully Deca can produce a satisfactory compromise to this whole mess that Kabam left behind.