Scamming

[EVeee]

I've seen several threads about this topic. A lot of people get very fired up over in-game scammers (to be clear, we're not discussing people selling or pretending to sell game items or accounts for real money). I've got two questions about this. The first is - in a game where nearly everyone plays "safe" blue characters and murderers at the same time so you're nuts if you trust anyone, where reds gang-bang bards for guaranteed kills sport-and-pride-be-damned, where tedious and petty meannesses like town macroer killing, clogging up stables with dogs, et cetera are still a tradition, why is it so widely considered repulsive to scam people? For the record, I'm not a scammer. And I wouldn't like to be scammed either. But personally I don't consider someone trying to scam me out of gold any worse than say, killing a character with a house rune and key and recalling there to loot it, which anyone here would do. I don't think it's worse than running up and stealing loot right off of someone else's monster corpses, which I've seen plenty of people do. It's clearly perceived to be worse by a lot of people and I'm just wondering why. My second question is - to what extent (if any) is scamming punishable by staff/admins? I've never seen an offical rule condemning it yet I've also seen people talk about bannings and so forth for it here on the boards, so I'm just curious.

[Jupiter]

... any worse than say, killing a character with a house rune and key and recalling there to loot it, which anyone here would do. I don't think it's worse than running up and stealing loot right off of someone else's monster corpses, which I've seen plenty of people do.

I wouldn't do this.

It's clearly perceived to be worse by a lot of people and I'm just wondering why.

There's probably a lot deeper psychological analysis that should be conducted on us, but I bet a very simple way of looking at this is you have a bunch of people playing a game to fill a certain need. For some people this is just a different game of sport (CoD type just get out their kill/steal, die, respawn, start over and over). For them, the moral consequence of scamming will never weigh upon their ever living souls because they are truly fulfilling the purpose of the game in their heads. There are all kinds of other psychoanalysis that could be done on the rest of us who don't fit that first bill, but for all those who play this game for that first reason, the disconnection from 'reality' allows people to conduct themselves in ways they wouldn't (or don't dare) to in real life in most situations, because again, to them it is no different than getting another kill/point in the sport game of your choice.

My second question is - to what extent (if any) is scamming punishable by staff/admins? I've never seen an offical rule condemning it yet I've also seen people talk about bannings and so forth for it here on the boards, so I'm just curious.

Now, if you were able to pull off some really big scam ($1 mill + in a short amount of time) purely in game from very few marks, that would be come a thing of legend. But most people consider IRC/forums posts to be outside of the UO realm and therefore dealing with the 'actual' person. I think there is still a fairly large majority of people in the real world who feel that using real life relationships/trust as leverage to conduct scams is morally wrong

the tl;dr version:

In game emotions/trust are the equivalent of pixels and therefore obsolete for most UO players.

It appears real life emotions/trust are still of some kind of value in the real world and therefore sometimes efforts are made to punish villains who clearly and evidently utilize them as leverage to con their friends.

- Jupiter

[WiseOne]

There are all kinds of other psychoanalysis that could be done on the rest of us who don't fit that first bill, but for all those who play this game for that first reason, the disconnection from 'reality' allows people to conduct themselves in ways they wouldn't (or don't dare) to in real life in most situations, because again, to them it is no different than getting another kill/point in the sport game of your choice.

Came across this a while back, very interesting psychoanalytical stuff

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartle_Test

[Sheer Luck]

The first is - why is it so widely considered repulsive to scam people?

Personal thought here.. it's an age thing, a technology thing.
In the day, many older players <Mid-20's + > brought their real-world morals with them. Murdering someone, taking their possessions and slaughtering their livestock in RL resulted in inconvenient prison terms. To these players, they came into the gates of UO and had to adjust personal beliefs to match the scenario. This is the world the "writers" and Richard Garriot intended. They built this "sandbox" coming from the same mindset. It has been well documented that they were quite shocked when....

Many Younger players viewed UO differently. They were raised with Nintendos, Sega and the internet. This wasn't an inclusive a social media for them, it was another video game.
Games had RULES: You did this you got *Loot* .... Do that, and you *Died*.
Everything they saw in UO was based on that. They went with the the profit margin. They PK'd. They stole, and they Scammed. No Moral compass applied. Pretty simple, really.

An older *Blue* player got PWND in-game and thought
"Man, WTF. UO is full of Dirtbags."

A Younger *Red* Player gets PWND and thinks *Man that was freakin' AWESOME, how did he do that??*

My second question is - to what extent (if any) is scamming punishable by staff/admins? .

It's about the rules, Man!
Anything that happens in-game, according to the mechanics of the era, is fair game. Spell-book scams, Real Estate Douche-baggery, Trade Window then Steal, are all era-accurate. These things were part of what UO was in Era, and are all intended to be in UOSA.

OTOH, things are different outside the client. Luring anyone into the above type of scam using IRC or forums will get you WTFADMINPWNED, post haste. These bans are generally only for the medium they occur in. IRC luring someone into a pack of PK's, could result in a ban from #Secondage: Generally, there is no Game Account ban based on this behavior.

[EVeee]

@Jupiter - you're right, the 'point' of the game isn't necessarily the same for everyone. And I believe that in-game scammers look at what they do as morally no better or worse than the rotten yet more acceptable things that other players do. In actual T2A I spent most of my time playing my thief, and we know how popular that was with some people.

I imagine you're also right about people drawing a line between scamming in-game and via IRC/forums and that being the source of dismay. The thing about that is though, just because one person has drawn a line somewhere doesn't mean that everyone else has to see it or abide by it. It's a matter of 'I'm comfortable with screwing you this much and I don't want to be screwed any worse than that either'. And when someone escalates it past that point, people get butthurt but it happens sometimes. If you treat people as non-humans in the context of the game, whose fault is it really if they decide you're a tool in or out of game? Don't get me wrong - if as a community everyone agrees that scamming on forums or IRC is unjust then that's different, but like I said I haven't seen any official notice of condemnation from Derrick about scamming.

[EVeee]

Personal thought here.. it's an age thing, a technology thing.
In the day, many older players <Mid-20's + > brought their real-world morals with them. Murdering someone, taking their possessions and slaughtering their livestock in RL resulted in inconvenient prison terms. To these players, they came into the gates of UO and had to adjust personal beliefs to match the scenario. This is the world the "writers" and Richard Garriot intended. They built this "sandbox" coming from the same mindset. It has been well documented that they were quite shocked when....

Many Younger players viewed UO differently. They were raised with Nintendos, Sega and the internet. This wasn't an inclusive a social media for them, it was another video game.
Games had RULES: You did this you got *Loot* .... Do that, and you *Died*.
Everything they saw in UO was based on that. They went with the the profit margin. They PK'd. They stole, and they Scammed. No Moral compass applied. Pretty simple, really.

An older *Blue* player got PWND in-game and thought
"Man, WTF. UO is full of Dirtbags."

A Younger *Red* Player gets PWND and thinks *Man that was freakin' AWESOME, how did he do that??*

So you're saying that scammers and bad guys in general are all younger players? I hope not, because that's not the case.

It's about the rules, Man!
Anything that happens in-game, according to the mechanics of the era, is fair game. Spell-book scams, Real Estate Douche-baggery, Trade Window then Steal, are all era-accurate. These things were part of what UO was in Era, and are all intended to be in UOSA.

OTOH, things are different outside the client. Luring anyone into the above type of scam using IRC or forums will get you WTFADMINPWNED, post haste. These bans are generally only for the medium they occur in. IRC luring someone into a pack of PK's, could result in a ban from #Secondage: Generally, there is no Game Account ban based on this behavior.

Could someone please provide a link to a thread where an admin states this clearly? I can't find one.

[Malaikat]

So you're saying that scammers and bad guys in general are all younger players? I hope not, because that's not the case.

It's certainly not all inclusive, but I'd say this is more accurate than you may think. I know it's true for myself. When I started in 97 I would have been 15, and I had no problem scamming people and generally being an ass. This was back when you didn't just loot a house, you'd straight up steal it. And we did on multiple occasions, even from guild mates.

Now I'm an old softy. My list of acceptable or personally enjoyable behaviors, while still more extensive than others, has gotten considerably shorter. I'll still loot your house if you're stupid enough to roll around with keys and a rune. I just won't hang around to kill you when you recall in to change the locks.

[EVeee]

So you're saying that scammers and bad guys in general are all younger players? I hope not, because that's not the case.

It's certainly not all inclusive, but I'd say this is more accurate than you may think. I know it's true for myself. When I started in 97 I would have been 15, and I had no problem scamming people and generally being an ass. This was back when you didn't just loot a house, you'd straight up steal it. And we did on multiple occasions, even from guild mates.

It can't be proven one way or the other but like I said in another thread, I doubt there are many (if any) 15 year olds currenty playing this or any other fifteen-year-old game. They tend to like the latest and greatest. I've perused the websites of some UOSA guilds and read these boards quite a bit and I haven't yet seen anyone claim to be younger than mid-20's. Even if there are any youngins here I'm betting they're an extreme minority. Generally it's 30s - 40s or 'undisclosed'.

lol @ your signature - nope, it's not arrogance. But it's damn sure a beacon for haters.

[Foxhound3857]

I wouldn't loot someones house if I acquired their key. In fact, someone I was hanging with at brit graveyard yesterday, St Louis, and he got killed by this dumb bimbo (Betty Rhe) that was res-killing every non-blue on sight. She caught him off guard and killed him, and he had a bag absolutely FULL of useful stuff, 100+ regs, good weapons, runes, potions, and lo and behold, his house key. I actually recalled off the key just to be sure, and indeed it was his house, absolutely full of loot.

I took nothing though. I came back and told the guy to wait until she was blue to him and meet me at the healer. He came, ressed, and I gave it all back to him (what I was able to loot anyway, she did get a few things off him). I can't tell you how ecstatic the guy was to get his stuff back and know that his possessions were still safe.

I can't say that I wasn't tempted to keep all his shit and loot the house down for myself, but I can say that I felt good helping the guy out and giving it all back to him. And I feel like I earned a bit of respect too.

[Orion GM B^D]

I wouldn't loot someones house if I acquired their key. In fact, someone I was hanging with at brit graveyard yesterday, St Louis, and he got killed by this dumb bimbo (Betty Rhe) that was res-killing every non-blue on sight. She caught him off guard and killed him, and he had a bag absolutely FULL of useful stuff, 100+ regs, good weapons, runes, potions, and lo and behold, his house key. I actually recalled off the key just to be sure, and indeed it was his house, absolutely full of loot.

I took nothing though. I came back and told the guy to wait until she was blue to him and meet me at the healer. He came, ressed, and I gave it all back to him (what I was able to loot anyway, she did get a few things off him). I can't tell you how ecstatic the guy was to get his stuff back and know that his possessions were still safe.

I can't say that I wasn't tempted to keep all his shit and loot the house down for myself, but I can say that I felt good helping the guy out and giving it all back to him. And I feel like I earned a bit of respect too.

You recalled off his key to his house?

[Foxhound3857]

I wouldn't loot someones house if I acquired their key. In fact, someone I was hanging with at brit graveyard yesterday, St Louis, and he got killed by this dumb bimbo (Betty Rhe) that was res-killing every non-blue on sight. She caught him off guard and killed him, and he had a bag absolutely FULL of useful stuff, 100+ regs, good weapons, runes, potions, and lo and behold, his house key. I actually recalled off the key just to be sure, and indeed it was his house, absolutely full of loot.

I took nothing though. I came back and told the guy to wait until she was blue to him and meet me at the healer. He came, ressed, and I gave it all back to him (what I was able to loot anyway, she did get a few things off him). I can't tell you how ecstatic the guy was to get his stuff back and know that his possessions were still safe.

I can't say that I wasn't tempted to keep all his shit and loot the house down for myself, but I can say that I felt good helping the guy out and giving it all back to him. And I feel like I earned a bit of respect too.

You recalled off his key to his house?

Well, off the rune. Dunno why I said key, I probably remember being able to recall onto a boat via key.

He had a few runes on his body (most in the bag, but I didn't get them all), and one of them was for his house. Lucky the key was in the bag with it or someone would've nabbed it.

[Malaikat]

I haven't yet seen anyone claim to be younger than mid-20's.

Hang around brit gy until you encounter T-Rab and Goon. They're both 13/14, and will make you want to punch every middle schooler you come upon for the next week directly in the throat.

[Captain Awesome]

It can't be proven one way or the other but like I said in another thread, I doubt there are many (if any) 15 year olds currenty playing this or any other fifteen-year-old game.

You'd be surprised. Not only are there "kids" playing this game on this server, but some of them are second generation UOers. Dads, Uncles & older brothers played, so now they are giving it a try.

I would have thought the exact same thing as you, but experience tells me otherwise. I think it's the free form nature of the game that draws the younger ones. You can literally do whatever you want with little to no consequence.

[EVeee]

@Foxhound3857 - I'd definitely loot someone's house if I found key and rune. I do nice things from time to time - help newbies with advice/supplies, guard someone's body instead of looting it, et cetera - but I'm no full-time angel. I'm just as likely to take as to give; it depends on how I feel at the time and what my opinion of the player/situation is.

@Malaikat - lol... who needs an excuse to punch middle schoolers in the throat?

@Captain Awesome - How many have you actually encountered? I just haven't met, heard, or read about any other than those Malaikat mentioned.

[Hicha]

People hate scamming (or thievery for that matter) because they feel it is an unjust way to lose items or gold. How scamming/stealing is anymore unjust than kill griefing, getting pked or ganked is beyond me.