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Date Posted: 22:44:22 06/13/02 Thu
Author: Vlad the Impaler
Subject: A rant of mine entitled "We brought it on Ourselves"

We brought it on ourselves ..

I read the post recently in which the author whined and blamed everything on the developers for ruining the Felucia facet. It was amusing to say the least. Although he did have a few good points I couldn’t help but become a bit outraged as he continually trashed the developers with continual blame for everything from Trammel’s conception to the complete ruin of Felucia, a facet that he himself claims to neither live or play much.
What he failed to understand is the reasoning behind UO:R, Trammel and the complete and udder destruction of my beloved homelands, namely Felucia. The developers didn’t ‘wake up’ one day and decide that Felucia was perfect the way it was, UO was bringing in mega bucks for the company and “Hey, lets fuck that up and ruin everything because we’re bored.” No, what they did was respond to the public outcry of the unfairness of being harassed, pk’d, and exploited within the original game’s rules.
If he had spent those early days in Felucia, he would understand the attempt by the game’s designers to create a world that was more friendly, more appealing to the mass public and of course create the ability to generate more profits for the company by reaching a new audience and keeping them a bit longer by offering them a world that was free from all this grief.
When the game originated, there weren’t such things as skill locking, and skills decayed at such an alarming rate that it was hard for the average player to get a firm foothold in the land. You couldn’t make gold with a warrior, or bard as you can these days. Worker characters were a necessity in order to be able to afford the necessary supplies needed to adventurer as a mage, warrior, or any other class. Yes, power hour and the ‘make-last’ technique has ruined the worker class in my opinion as well, but let’s not simply blame the developers for ruining this. They simply failed to realize the potential misuse of the systems they put in place to attempt a fix for such issues.
Yes, they destroyed Felucia, and it really, really sucks for me. All my homes are in Felucia. I sold my vendor house quite some time ago due to lack of traffic, and the inability to sell anything other then basic PvP related merchandise. My vast collection of rares, semi-rares, and highly valuable weapons and armor sat on the vendors for months with no offers. No one wants to buy these things in Felucia because thieves hiding nearby the vendor house could steal them. These items can be easily purchased in a Trammel vendor with no fear and no risk.
Trammel is the direct result of the continual grief play-style of the past. Due to continual exploitation of every possible situation, rule, or play-style found there. Field spells were quickly found useless in Felucia due to the pk’s who used them to flag against the player and kill them, loot them, and then gloat over them with their childish attitudes of “I ownz youz newb.”
He complained about the ‘push-through’ effect in Trammel that allows players to pass by others with no stamina loss, yet fails to realize it’s there because it was exploited in Felucia for years by gangs of grief players who used it to trap players in areas where those ‘stupid monster AI” could easily kill them. Or trap them to better make them thief bait. I can remember a time when gangs of thieves held me at bay in the bone magi room by surrounding me constantly while they picked my pack clean.
I remember the early days of duping, which caused most of my friends to leave the game completely, as it gave us no chance to compete with such an immense influx of unlimited possessions, supplies, and yes the complete destruction of any possible chance of finding a place for a house when you could finally afford one.
So you can complain all you want about Trammel’s existence and the continual efforts of the development team to fix the issues they missed during conception stages of the game, new materials, and recent patches. Just keep in mind that Trammel exists because we made it into reality through the continual exploitation of our world given to us by these developers.
I for one, applaud the efforts of the developer’s for with all their mistakes, lack of foresight and ignorance of the complete lack of morals of a lot of their customer base they have still presented me with a game that I have played and mostly enjoyed over the past 5 years. I had no idea what I was getting myself into the first time I logged into Ultima Online, for if I did, I might not have started. I never dreamed that I would play this game for so long and still find it fun, at times exhilarating, and yes, at times very, very frustrating.
Lets put the blame where it belongs .. On US for making Trammel a necessity to OSI to continue to make profits and keep players returning to this world and their accounts active. For after all, they do run a business and profits keep them in that business. When the Korean shard closed recently, it gave some of us a slap in the face that this world is in reality only a game, one that will disappear completely should that company fail to continue to realize those profit margins due to their inability to adjust to the ever changing needs of their customers. No, they’re not perfect, yet neither are they the mindless ignorant persona that Hennarr embellishes them with. They are simply trying to react to the continual mis-use of their rules and TOS. Yes, they tried to make a gold sink to help the economy, and how did WE answer them? Lord Anon’s hair style program which allowed young characters to go directly from the inn they were ‘born’ in to the hairstylist and adorn themselves with something which was supposed to be put in place to assist the sagging economy of the realm.
Wake up and face the music my friends, you can complain all you want, but the continued exploitation of our realm is leading directly to the changes we now all face. Indeed we are all paying the price for the few that exploit, grief-play and continue to look for these loopholes in the rules to give ourselves an unfair advantage in the game. Not because we’re ‘power gamers’ but because we’re lazy, and lack the morals to play the game within the TOS and rules.

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