UO Second Age

First off, not sure if this is intended or not. I remember similar topics being discussed, but failed to find them in a forums search. Perhaps i'm not using the right words in my searches. Anywho, here goes...

I watched one of my friends get whacked by the guards out of nowhere the other night. I was confused by this, so I walked up to where it happened to look and was guard whacked myself. We had been PvP'ing various folks at the time, but I had not attacked anyone recently and was certainly out of the "guards can be called on you" timer.

This confused me, so we went and started testing this.

We were able to recreate this.

I attacked someone outside of a guard zone. I then left them alone until I turned blue while the person I attacked kept casting spells at me. We then both walked into a guard zone. He attacked me, and then called guards. I was blue. The guards came and killed me.

Again, not sure if this is intentional, but it is pretty lame at the very least. Someone can theoretically keep attacking you all day long and get you guard whacked as soon as you step in town even if you haven't attacked them for quite a while...indefinitely if they keep sneaking in a magic arrow at you.

Is this intentional or a bug? An intentional bug?

I'm not sure about this, but based on my experience, my understanding is that nothing they do to you can cause you to commit a criminal action, but rather if you happen to get too close and auto-attack them, then that swing is a criminal action. I have used this fact (and others have used it on me) to chase down somebody who previously attacked me (when I was blue, and they being still grey to me), and spam "attack last" so that even if they tab out, they will auto swing at me and I can get them guard whacked.

If you didn't swing at them, the only thing I can think of:
Perhaps magic reflect was involved (I haven't tested this before), but perhaps if they shoot a spell at you and it gets reflected back to them, it counts as if you "attacked"? I could see how this would be unnoticeable under normal PvP conditions, because if they were PKing you, your reflect back at them would be "attacking" a newly criminal person while you are still innocent to them (they having initiated an attack). However, if you attacked an innocent, and then he shot you with magic arrow and it reflected back, since he's still innocent to you, maybe it counts as you attacking him. I dunno.

I did not have reflect on. They attacked me via a spell from a distance. They then called guards. Guards killed me.

Hmm interesting... I suppose I've never tried shooting a spell from a distance, now that I think about it--When I'm in this situation, I'm always am trying to attack last to get them to swing at me. I guess I just assumed that there was nothing they could do to turn you criminal, but it sounds like I was wrong.

This is what happened. LS attacked me, I retaliated and kept attacking for 2 mins while he stopped attacking me. After the 2 mins, he turned blue, while still grey to me. We walked into the GZ, and I cast a magic arrow on him, and ran to him for him to auto-defend. As soon as he took a swing at me, I called guards, he got guard-whacked.

It was definitely an auto-defend issue. I don't know if this is accurate or not, but sounds like it should not be working this way.

Did you actually wrestle me? I can't remember. My screenshots didn't get it.

I must've turned off my Auto-SS on death, but yeah, I deliberately ran up to you.

This is working correctly. The same circumstances can be set up in the demo with the same results.

LS was grey to Pirul, but Pirul was blue to LS. LS damaged him, and was thus eiligible to be guardwhacked in town.

Oh well.

I unfortunately was on the doo-doo end of the stick of this mechanic after a looong battle with someone. We recalled out to restock, and to my bad luck we recalled to the same bank, and he knew the mechanic and I didn't at the time. Let's just say, it's a good thing we were restocking...I was out of everything.

I think the best advice is that if you initiate aggression, don't go to town until you haven't seen em for at least two minutes