UO Second Age

Guild warfare is in place.

* Guildmasters can now declare war against other guilds. When the war is mutually declared, a state of war exists. Note that the Declare War window only shows 150 guilds at a time. To get a different set of 150, simply cancel the window and reopen it.
* Members of guilds you are at war with will appear orange.
* Fellow guildmembers will appear green.
* A new free-for-all warfare method exists: order and chaos guilds.
o Order and Virtue guards as they currently exist go away.
o Guildmasters can now declare their guild to be either order or chaos, if they meet the requirements.
o You must be at the third tier of Fame (the level just below Lord) and not be a murderer, in order to join an order or chaos guild.
o Any members who do not meet the requirements when a guild becomes an order or chaos guild will be kicked out of the guild automatically.
o If you are a member of an order or chaos guild, and become a murderer, or lose enough fame to fall below the requirements (by dying or by atrophy), you'll be removed from the guild.
o All members of order and chaos guilds will be forced to display their guild abbreviation at all times. In addition, their abbreviation will automatically be followed by "(Order)" or "(Chaos)".
o If you are a member of an order or chaos guild, and do not have the special shield, you can simply say "order shield" or "chaos shield" to one of the guards of Lord British or Lord Blackthorn (you must ask the appropriate guard for the appropriate shield, of course).
o The shields will no longr disappear immediately. They are also no longer required to be worn.
o For highlighting purposes, all members of guilds of the opposing alignment will appear orange, and can be freely attacked. All members of guilds of the same alignment will appear green, and can also be freely attacked.

# Guilds and player vs player combat:
* The Fame requirement or joining and staying in order/chaos guilds will be removed.
* All the glitches in fealty calculation in guildstones are believed to be ironed out. Incorrect GMs will be automatically deposed when fealty challenges occur.
* You are no longer criminal flagged for looting the corpses of opponents in guild warfare.

March 7, 1999 Newsgroup wrote:I'm glad that UO is going to make fellow chaos members blue to each other
(if in other guilds). I'm sick and tired of chaos members preying on each
other. Doesn't this take the virtue out of the guild?

Chaos members who kill other chaos members are anti-social serial killers.
They have no honor and they should be banned from the game.

November 22, 1999 wrote: Your depiction of Order/Chaos warfare is
hopelessly out of date. The Order/Chaos
system was revised several months ago so
that Order folk are now blue to other Order
folk and Chaos folk are now blue to other
Chaos folk. The only folks who are green are
the ones in your own guild, and if they're
gangbanging you then I suspect this is
indicative of an internal guild problem
rather than a flaw in the O/C system itself.

March 5, 1999 wrote:Pulled this off of Stratics today:

[begin quote]

The Future of PvP: Comments from the Dev Team

The following was recently posted on the Comments from the Dev Team
section of the Update Center. I know many of you who have taken
special interest in not only the proposed changes to the "blue PK"
problem, but also the latest comments from Designer Dragon concerning
in-town fighting will find the essay, which was written by the Dev
Team, not only interesting but informative.

Of Blue PKs, Townfighting, and You

Quite a furor started up on the various discussion boards today when
measures were discussed that we are taking to make towns a safer
haven. In addition, there's a lot of discussion going on around the
measures we're going to take to reduce antisocial behavior in
Britannia.

We want to make clear that we regard player-vs-player combat as an
important part of the Ultima Online experience. We feel that it can be
a fun pastime, that it can provide great challenge, and that it also
allows the online society to develop in interesting ways, allowing
greater scope for roleplay.

That said, we are working towards reducing the amount of playerkilling
in UO. In particular, we are targeting the so-called "blue PKs"--those
who kill whilst flagged as a blue innocent, thus surprising their
victims, and then macro away time online in order to keep their murder
counts low enough to remain blue. We feel that this conscious
circumventing of the reputation system cannot continue.

To that end, we are instituting a new tracking layer on the reputation
system. In addition to tracking reports on an 8 hour timer, we will
track them on a 40 hour timer as well. We will base stat loss on the 8
hour timer, but we will base going red on the 40 hour timer. This
means that when a player receives his fifth murder report, he will
remain red for 40 hours of play time, instead of 8. We have been
passively tracking these figures on the public shards for some time
now, and have enough data to be able to tell that a large number of
the blue PKs will be caught by this additional tracking layer, and
made red. If these measures are not sufficient, we intend to keep
tightening up. The next obvious step would be to make the stat loss
count decay at 40 hours as well. In addition, we will be tracking the
number of times a player goes from red to blue, and players who
exhibit a pattern of doing this will be made permanently red. This
will take effect next update.

A few other minor things will go in next update to better channel PvP
activity. Order members will now highlight blue to other Order
members, and Chaos members will appear blue to other Chaos members.
Shoving past someone while stealthy will make you visible. Lastly,
partly in preparation for someday making towns safe, but also simply
because of crowding and performance issues in towns, we will be
disallowing summoning of creatures in towns.

In the future (but not in the next update) we intend to add a far more
robust system for consensual player-vs-player combat. Players should
expect scoring systems akin to those that we have been testing on the
Abyss, the ability to capture cities, and large-scale warfare between
factions that are major players in UO's ongoing plot. Guild warfare
will receive an update as well, making it easier to declare war and
also to determine guild standings. Once these changes go in, we will
also make towns a safe haven for all players.

In addition, of course, as we've previously mentioned, the Abyss will
be returning permanently, with new features.

We hope that these changes will make UO a more enjoyable experience
for everyone: the devotees of playerkilling and the pacifists alike.

-The UO Dev Team

[end quote]

Kaivan wrote:To that end, we are instituting a new tracking layer on the reputation
system. In addition to tracking reports on an 8 hour timer, we will
track them on a 40 hour timer as well. We will base stat loss on the 8
hour timer, but we will base going red on the 40 hour timer. This
means that when a player receives his fifth murder report, he will
remain red for 40 hours of play time, instead of 8. We have been
passively tracking these figures on the public shards for some time
now, and have enough data to be able to tell that a large number of
the blue PKs will be caught by this additional tracking layer, and
made red. If these measures are not sufficient, we intend to keep
tightening up. The next obvious step would be to make the stat loss
count decay at 40 hours as well. In addition, we will be tracking the
number of times a player goes from red to blue, and players who
exhibit a pattern of doing this will be made permanently red. This
will take effect next update.

nightshark wrote:

Kaivan wrote:To that end, we are instituting a new tracking layer on the reputation
system. In addition to tracking reports on an 8 hour timer, we will
track them on a 40 hour timer as well. We will base stat loss on the 8
hour timer, but we will base going red on the 40 hour timer. This
means that when a player receives his fifth murder report, he will
remain red for 40 hours of play time, instead of 8. We have been
passively tracking these figures on the public shards for some time
now, and have enough data to be able to tell that a large number of
the blue PKs will be caught by this additional tracking layer, and
made red. If these measures are not sufficient, we intend to keep
tightening up. The next obvious step would be to make the stat loss
count decay at 40 hours as well. In addition, we will be tracking the
number of times a player goes from red to blue, and players who
exhibit a pattern of doing this will be made permanently red. This
will take effect next update.

Sorry to deviate from the main topic. I'm not sure if this is a bug or not, especially since when I asked Derrick about this, he gave me the incorrect answer. I asked Derrick long ago if a new murder count will "refresh" the long term murder count timer (same for short terms). He told me the answer is yes. This article also suggests that this should be the case.

Currently, it doesn't work like that on UOSA. It is possible to go red, and then blue 10 minutes later, if it has been 39 hours and 50 minutes since your last murder count. More bizarre - it is possible to go from 0-1, and back to 0 murder counts in this fashion (as in there is a timer ticking even when you don't have any counts).

In response to the article, I kinda wish they'd implemented 40 hour short term counts.

#on message<"murderReport">(object sender, list args)
{
  integer Q67H = args[0x00];
  integer murderCount = 0x01 + getMurderCount(this);
  if(murderCount >= 0x05)
  {
    if(murderCount == 0x05)
    {
      systemMessage(this, "You are now known as a murderer!");
    }
    integer Q4UR = 0x00;
    integer Q4UT = 0x00;
    object Q4UP = getItemAtSlot(this, 0x0B);
    if(Q4UP != NULL())
    {
      Q4UR = getHue(Q4UP);
      Q4UT = getObjType(Q4UP);
    }
    args = this, murderCount, getSex(this), Q4UT, Q4UR, getHue(this);
    multiMessageToLoc(getRelayLoc(this), "updateBountyDesc", args);
  }
  changeKarma(this, 0x00 - Q67H);
  setMurderCount(this, murderCount);
  callbackAdvanced(this, 0x0001C200, 0x11, 0x03);
  return(0x00);
}

  setMurderCount(this, murderCount);
  callbackAdvanced(this, 0x0001C200, 0x11, 0x03);

  setMurderCount(this, murderCount);
  if(murderCount == 0x01)
  {
    callbackAdvanced(this, 0x0001C200, 0x11, 0x03);
  }

Mainly we don't know the answer to the question: Can a player have multiple callbacks to the same ID ticking at the same time?

Zelek Uther wrote:Patch 140b:
Virtue guilds are no longer allied
Patch 140 - Jan 19-26: RunUO 2.1 + misc item mechanics.