Upkeep of player ran towns?

[Derrick]

I was just curious what the requirements were for a guild to retain their player ran town/blessings?

This is usually done on a case by case basis. Much of Shadowmire has decayed due to inactivity, but it's not been wholely inactive, and there have been talk of comebacks. It is mostly a ghost town right now. The NPC's that were there left months ago.

[Hicha]

I was just curious what the requirements were for a guild to retain their player ran town/blessings?

The requirements are simple: one person keeps refreshing all the establishments.

Most player towns here are just a horde of empty houses owned by a small handful of people. K^A, !!!, Ascalon, Shadowmire, the town north of Minoc. Just a bunch of houses. I could list a few more but I don't always pick up on the names of the towns.

I don't see how people can care about dead player towns when nobody seems to care about the maximum number of houses a player can own. Aside from a few visual perks, what's really the difference?

[Apok]

I was just curious what the requirements were for a guild to retain their player ran town/blessings?

The requirements are simple: one person keeps refreshing all the establishments.

Most player towns here are just a horde of empty houses owned by a small handful of people. K^A, !!!, Ascalon,the town north of Minoc. Just a bunch of houses. I could list a few more but I don't always pick up on the names of the towns.quote]

Well with k'a i dont think thats the case. we often have idocs from players that where with K'a that are no longer active..

In terms of the town itself there is the guild tower. coowned . a guild castle coowned. a rune libary owned by map, a tavern and a market place owned by map. several of the small vendor houses are owned and maintiained by other active players. i own a large house. My borther owns the castle right next to the tower. my other borther has a patio. Exodus have a large house. the castle just south of me is ownde by a K'A citizen who logs on often.
Next to him is a none Ka member monaxe in a tower ..there is a dozen small houses along the mountain side none ka members. deathstryke owns a towner in there somewhere.

Although map is currently not as active, Damascus steel is doing his best to get ka up and running again.

[Kefka]

Aside from a few visual perks, what's really the difference?

That is the point. It costs 200 trophy points to get a single unique item. It costs less than that to get an entire town of cool items!!!!

Guilds should have to be ACTIVE and contribute to the community in order to be able to keep those given visual perks.

[Ronk]

Here is a rough draft on my take...

Requirements for a blessed building:
1. A well established public building which remains a hot spot for activity (be it pvp, shopping, auctions, events, etc). The actual definition of how many people per day equals a hot spot is up for debate.
2. The established building should remain a 'hot spot' for at least 1-2 months. This duration is mainly based off of frequency of events and activity. The idea is that the building should be a popular spot without the need for a GM blessing AND it should remain a popular spot for a good length of time.
3. At a point where the establishment has been decently active for several months time, a player vote can begin on the forums for whether or not the place deserves a blessing. Though in actuality, I believe a seer or staff member should 'notice' what the establishment is doing for the shard and offer to bless it.
4. A blessed building should remain public.

Requirements to keep a blessed building:
1. A blessed building should require little more than the house upkeep to keep it in existence. By the time a building is blessed it should be well known, popular, and already apart of shard history. In the event the establishment fades from memory it should still remain due to the hours given to the shard and the memories created there.
2. To keep a blessed building, the original owner must still be in possession of the structure. Blessed buildings should lose all blessings and identify if they are ever sold or traded. This will discourage a person from 'selling' their blessed building for real money and/or in game loot.
3. The house must be refreshed. If a blessed structure decays, the blessings should be removed. They should certainly not be 'lootable' and the terrain should be cleared of any remnants.

Requirements to keep NPC's:
1. Blessed establishments with NPC's should require continued activity to maintain. Once activity dies down, the NPC's should 'leave' and be removed. Continued activity means the establishment should continue to get decent foot traffic (vendors or pvp hotspot) and/or host an event at least once a month.
2. The NPC's at the blessed building should be benefiting more people than just the owning guild or they should be aiding the hosting guild during events, etc. In addition, the NPC's should make sense. For example, a barkeep NPC should only remain as long as there are many vendors and high foot traffic. A stable master should not remain if one or two house owners just use it to save themselves city trips to dump pets.
3. The owner and/or owning guild is not improperly using the NPC's. A mage shop locked in a blessed tower so they can macro the purchasing of regs is inappropriate. Granted, I feel a mage shop is an inappropriate NPC anyway since player vendors can sell regs.

Requirements for a blessed city:
1. All requirements of a blessed building apply. In essence, a blessed town or city is a collection of blessed buildings.
2. The blessed city should be in a contained area. For example, one should not be sprawled across the entire plane north of minoc. That many buildings and that much space is not needed.
3. A blessed city is expected to have more activity than a blessed establishment. Most of the building should be used.
4. A blessed city should have a theme and make sense. It should not be a mismatched group of private houses that are connected by a GM made road. In addition, only public areas should be blessed. So while a road could be extended to private buildings, the inside of those private buildings should not be blessed.

[tenduil]

Aside from a few visual perks, what's really the difference?

That is the point. It costs 200 trophy points to get a single unique item. It costs less than that to get an entire town of cool items!!!!

Guilds should have to be ACTIVE and contribute to the community in order to be able to keep those given visual perks.

This.

[Derrick]

Great proposal Ronk. Thanks. We're discussing this.

It should be noted that the town does not own the items and does not have the ability to move anything that is placed there, and anything placed there can be removed by staff at any time.

On the flip side any unique item award from a trophy turn in is moveable, lock-downable, sellable, etc.

[BlackFoot]

One thing people are kind of overlooking is the 'active' part of a town. Every quotes it over and over in their arguments but really its unfair. If you say by number of people in/out you just set up a bunch of vendors and now your super active..but theres not actually anyone hanging out or doing anything there.

Having the place active for events means you have a ton of activity there for short spurts, but if you run through the town at noon its a ghost town. Does that make it inactive? even though really theres more activity than purely a shopping mall.

Do you have people live in all the buildings and the amount of activity is them recalling in out//logging, storage etc. Its a very populated area always refreshed and well used but nothing happening there.

I run through a few towns when I'm on daily and never see a soul for hours. But if I were to log on Saturday night theres 15 people going to war and using these places. Should that entire day of inactivity overshadow and ultimately decide the towns future, or should the brightest best part of the towns use be more important.

'player towns' are groups of buildings with some cool roads that add interest and uniqueness to the UOSA landscape. Putting a bunch of arbitrary rules levied against players trying to do something fun in the game wont accomplish anything for anyone.

Another argument is its a waste of player housing space for people who would use the area. The house wouldn't go anywhere and no housing space would be opened up if the town add ons were gone.

Shadowmire example -> The guild UoH currently uses shadowmire to live and hold events in.
There are multiple events weekly held inside the shadowmire town and the guild is incredibly active. There are large auctions being held routinely. We coordinate and have organized pvp battles against the orcs. We tried holding weekly 1v1 tournies/2v2 tournies and unfortunately we had the same 4 people show up to them over and over because of the timeslot. We have held capture the flag events and will continue to do so in the town. Everyone on the server is invited to all of these events.
Is it the towns fault that the player base doesn't use it more or take advantage of the events offered?

Theres only so much organizers can do to keep a town active with a player base this large. Our most active times of the day are at the lowest peak of clients of the day.

On all of UOSA we hold the most events, the most routine events and are one of the most helpful guilds to new players and most active guilds on UOSA.
Despite all of our efforts the town would be considered 'inactive' by the playerbase.

A lot of thought needs to be put into deciding what is actually considered active and inactive.
Also, it takes a lot of effort and time on Maahes/Derricks side of this. They have to physically build the areas and deal with the town founders. That in itself should leaving you feeling good about who does and who doesnt receive additions. You all trust their judgement of just about everything else

edit: as a side note Red Devils blessed area on great lakes was a ghost town most the time. OSI admin also understood the limitations of trying to keep a place active, but still rewarded the area for its events.

[Biohazard]

I killed 3 Urks in the Hedge Maze a few days ago, I also got into a few random battles in the Bloody Plains with them.

I think that "obvious" towns should slowly decay with no activity. Houses will remain, but their GM blessings should crumble with time.

I like this idea.