I either played or watched the game from practically it's beginning until some time before UO:R. The "Dread Lord" days were the best, imho, at least reputation-wise. You could go red and face no stat loss, so there was no fear of built-in consequences from PKing, other than being banned from town. Even in those days, if I remember correctly, they went back and forth on the reputation system between stat loss, perma-red, etc.Derrick wrote: Stat loss was pre-T2A, and way before anything like trammel was ever considered. I really do believe it gives PK's a little notoriety and respect. That's only my opinion, though not trying to open up a debate on the issue of stat loss. The bottom line is that the reason we have stat loss is that it's accurate to the era. The long term counts can go either way since it's accurate either way.
As for blue PKs, I did that plenty. Murdering added an element of danger to soloing, making people legitimately fear going into dungeons or even out in the forest late at night. On the other hand, people would chase down PKs and swarms of Anti-PKs would appear if the murderers stayed in one place for too long.
I voted for long term counts in this case just because I want to be able to kill PKs on sight without flagging.