Disturbing Comments from Old UOSA Vets

[SirEricKain]

This is a list I've compiled of comments and complaints from some old UOSA Vet friends I'm trying to coax into returning here.

Who have you spoken with ...

Soma posted this question, there are a number of members from C_V/DG/K^A and a few of the old merchant guilds I speak to regularly that are now on other shards for these various reasons.

These were not the universal problems posed by all, just the main 3 I gathered that were most in common between them.

I like the server the way it is just fine, it's why I'm here today and don't play across multiple UO platforms.

[SirEricKain]

I'll try to address the two points that you felt were unaddressed.

First, regarding account abuses:

While it is likely true that some players do game the system to utilize more than their fair share of accounts, we have to use an evidenced based approach to determine whether that's true or not. For example, if a claim is levied that a particular player has access to and uses 6 or more accounts, we would need concrete evidence that the player is actually using those accounts to take action against them. This requires us to see it as it happens, or find concrete evidence stemming from other sources, and that information isn't procured by simply clicking on a button to see the evidence.

Additionally, there are a significant number of houses that are owned by players who don't generally play, and are up-kept by other players who simply refresh those houses for them by being friended. While this doesn't erase the possibility that players are gaming the system, it would be foolhardy to suggest that 100% of all vacant houses fall into the other category. As a matter of pure function, it is far more likely that multiple people either have others refresh their houses, or simply log on just to refresh their own houses on a regular basis than it is that a single player owns hundreds of houses, or even that multiple players owning 60 houses apiece.

As a last point on this subject, it is important to consider that the current live IP count is not reflective of the entire population of the server as a whole. IF we see 100 unique IP addresses, this does not mean that the population of the server is 100, and no more. It is possible that more than one person lives at a given location (yes, it actually happens), and a random sample of users at any given point of the day will necessarily exclude anyone who didn't decide to play on that day, or doesn't play on the chosen day in general. Regardless of these factors, we do investigate if someone believes that another player is violating the account limit, but it isn't some simple process that we just don't do.

Regarding AFK resource gatherers:

We do actually check on resource gatherers to determine whether they are there or not, and we have methods of tracking all players that are gathering resources. As for our policy against AFK resource gatherers, we have a 3 strikes rule against AFK resource gathering that starts at a warning, then a 24 hour ban, and finally a permanent ban if you are caught gathering resources a third time Does this policy and means to track all players gathering resource guarantee that we will always catch all AFK resource gatherers? No (we actually have to check on them). But we do police against these sorts of things, and we do catch them (one was caught in the writing of this post).

As for publicizing bans due to AFK resource gathering, we do not publicize the reasons for any bans, as it is a matter between the offending player and the administration. While we do realize that this doesn't create the kind of transparency that players want, we do not view it as an appropriate step to put anyone on the spot, especially after they were just banned.

Of course, as always, if you feel that someone is AFK resource gathering, please page in and we'll try to look into it. We won't always be there to catch them, but we'll do our best when we're there.

Thanks for chiming in on this Kaivan,

I understand your point on innocent until proven guilty in terms of multiple IP's, Effe brought up a valid solution to my understanding.

This is 2015, everyone has their own computers, only at the risk of higher energy bills will people not break your TOS with regards to a 15 char limit.

I get not wanting to put anyone on the spot, stating "such and such person" blatantly disregarded the rules and hence resulted in a perma ban after multiple warnings isn't stringing them up in real life. They are banned anyway, why would they care who knows or not? The people here would want to know with out question, this is universal, it's why we have court systems and fundamentally why the GM system was implemented.

[SirEricKain]

There is close to 500 unique IP's that log in every day, this can be seen by saying !status in IRC right before server down. So there is your answer to housing right there. Vet's who no longer play here still log in to refresh their houses, I believe many of them are waiting for something to happen before they become active again, perhaps a higher population, some sort of action, auto event's, I cant say for sure.

In my opinion I think we need to draw ideas from the past to grow the server today. I highly agree with you Kain when you say we should have both unscheduled and scheduled "quick events". These scheduled events such as Tournaments, CTF's, and Double Domination's were a cornerstone of action in the past - they created a hype to log in, hours of action beforehand and afterwards and were quite fun to take part in. Do they need to be reworked to fit our era? Probably. Is it ok to use scripts to run them? Why not.

The website. Take a moment and compare our website with other servers and then realize that we are the ugly one of the bunch, Boomland has a really nice website that would make a great replacement and I hope staff is going forward with that. MyUOSA used to have leader board's matched with the tournaments and I am super sad that that part of our website/game is gone. If you look at UOR's website, they have literally copy and pasted that portion of MyUOSA and are now using it just like we were here. Leader boards of all kinds would be fantastic - monster kills, player kills, bounties collected, tournament wins, bagball wins etc etc...

This era is widely known and accepted as the best era to PvP in - we must embrace that as we have in the past. One of the most important reasons people aren't playing here anymore (opinion) is because those old quick events I previously mentioned were catered to the PvP crowd and they truly left a gaping hole in the PvP scene here. I absolutely love Boomlands event's, I think the ongoing quests are something special and unmatched in the UO scene right now and without them the server pop would probably have dwindled to barley playable levels. They are however not catered directly to the PvP'ers that want those frequent instant gratification style tournament's we had in the past.

Lastly, I think a lot of people miss Derrick our glorious god of the realm and father of all creation. All Hail!. Seeing him take an active interest in the community would likely show the vet's that this isn't a dying shard and that it's worth coming back to. I don't know about the rest of you, but anytime he made a post (especially a patch note) I got pretty hyped up, hes a rad dude.

I agree with you on this one Rose, I don't want anything taken away from people and can confirm many pvpers have left due to no more CTF events. The PvMers with their bards seem to miss the provoking event in much the same way.

Derrick is a staple to UOSA, he is very much missed by all and him being active again would bring about excitement. I know how much he loves this game, we can't always make time for all the things we love to do however, I'm sure he's occupied with other matters and will return when he can.

I want to take the time to thank all of you for partaking in this thread.

[Happy Gilmore]

CTF would be great but I now understand why it doesnt happen. Last week I witnessed first hand that CTF crashes the server. Boom and I was on Test server just to see if we could get it going and it crashed seconds after sign up. I think we would have CTF again if it was stable.


My view on housing issue is simple, Change the "if the real owner dont refresh house within 6 months it goes condemn" to 2 or 3 months. Force Rammar to keep emailing people to come refresh their own house cause he cant do it.

[Nickodemuse]

I understand where you are coming from on the stone tossing thing, but that player would have to be logged in for that to happen and if that is happening to them then they would know the end result. I dont see them staying logged in-game for that.

[SirEricKain]

I could volunteer to make a char with the appropriate name, all we need is a wooden stage and "pile of rocks" with a similar mechanic to snow piles with a rock crunching sound given to a crowd of angry citizens.

[Roser]

CTF would be great but I now understand why it doesnt happen. Last week I witnessed first hand that CTF crashes the server. Boom and I was on Test server just to see if we could get it going and it crashed seconds after sign up. I think we would have CTF again if it was stable.

Code must have been changed on it? It did work for many years before they were taken out.

[Apoc]

This is a list I've compiled of comments and complaints from some old UOSA Vet friends I'm trying to coax into returning here.

Who have you spoken with ...

Soma posted this question, there are a number of members from C_V/DG/K^A and a few of the old merchant guilds I speak to regularly that are now on other shards for these various reasons.

I like the server the way it is just fine, it's why I'm here today and don't play across multiple UO platforms.

CV DG K^A really come on man K^A died yrs ago DG ... n CV we all know where they play :p

[iamreallysquall]

this thread reminds me of why i griefed this guy alot lol

[SirEricKain]

this thread reminds me of why i griefed this guy alot lol

Another brilliant quote from this guy...

Then shouldn't auto events be in game to compensate for the lack of real life content creators? There sure isn't a lot of them anymore like there was in 1999. It wouldn't be in line with regular mechanics, but it would be in line with the intent.

Just because you had the same stand as I and failed to gain attention doesn't mean you need to attempt to derail my thread with your cries.

I don't remember you at all.

[EffeYhor]

After further reading, my mac address idea would screw over anyone refreshing their friends houses. That isnt my intention; I didnt take that into consideration. My bad

People waiting for there to be more of a population here before coming back are, in turn, contributing to their own reason for not coming back haha.

[iamreallysquall]

this thread reminds me of why i griefed this guy alot lol

Another brilliant quote from this guy...

Then shouldn't auto events be in game to compensate for the lack of real life content creators? There sure isn't a lot of them anymore like there was in 1999. It wouldn't be in line with regular mechanics, but it would be in line with the intent.

Just because you had the same stand as I and failed to gain attention doesn't mean you need to attempt to derail my thread with your cries.

I don't remember you at all.

nice fake quote everyone knows lelouche doesn't proper spelling or grammer duh and ive griefed you loads mr sir eric cain

[SirEricKain]

this thread reminds me of why i griefed this guy alot lol

Another brilliant quote from this guy...

Then shouldn't auto events be in game to compensate for the lack of real life content creators? There sure isn't a lot of them anymore like there was in 1999. It wouldn't be in line with regular mechanics, but it would be in line with the intent.

Just because you had the same stand as I and failed to gain attention doesn't mean you need to attempt to derail my thread with your cries.

I don't remember you at all.

nice fake quote everyone knows lelouche doesn't proper spelling or grammer duh and ive griefed you loads mr sir eric cain

Never faked a quote, don't ever plan on it either, your about as confused as they come and I still don't remember you.

Then again what is a ant to a boot after all?

[iamreallysquall]

viewtopic.php?f=45&t=28874&start=15
this "ant" has steped on you the tiny real tiny ant many a times that thread is just one example that would be nearest to the time you left.

[Roser]

LeLouche (iamreallysquall), what exactly are you doing here with your off topic/semi-readable posts?