You could be right Connor, I hadn't thought of that.
Although I'm also really interested in hearing the reasons people feel like soloing hurts them or the game. I see posts from people who seem to think it's some sort of sin for anyone to be able to do it, calling for this or that nerf, and I always wonder why they feel so strongly about it.
In my opinion it all comes down to jealousy. It's the same reason why some people will simply key a nice expensive car they see in the parking lot for no apparent reason. Real reason behind it? They see a nice expensive car that someone worked very hard to save up and buy and don't think it's fair that they don't have one. Result? They key the car and try to make it uglier because damaging the situation and ruining it for the people who worked hard for their nice things makes themselves feel better for not working hard for anything themselves.
The same thing applies with the nerfs in the game for the past 10 years. If they see that someone has perfected their skill template, spent hundreds of millions of gold and countless hours of time perfecting a suit of gear to supplement their build, and hours soloing what a group can do in 10 minutes they want it nerfed and make it look like the player can solo it in 5 minutes and get all the loot with no risk. Same exact thing as the real life analogy and keying the cars. The mentality of "If I can't have it, no one can" it's such a childish way to look at things but unfortunately, EA is the parents that spoil the whining child. Instead of telling players to get off their lazy butts and do something constructive to achieve success they dumb down the situation and environment in some way to accommodate the whines. As I've stated in another post
http://vboards.stratics.com/showthread.php?t=104193
It will never be equal people will always find something to complain about being biased or overpowered. Every template that ends up becoming the effective one will simply be nerfed by EA because the vast majority will whine and moan about it until it's changed. The mechanics of moves will keep being altered to accommodate the skill-less, the way npcs react will be buffed because skilled players who have more than half a brain were able to solo it with the most expensive gear around. No even if everyone were naked with no armor, accessories, or weapons to use there will still be someone complaining that the brown horse someone has gives them an advantage over their light brown horse because it blends in better in dungeons when night sight runs out. I wouldn't even doubt it if someone complains that a bald character has an advantage over one with long hair because it's more camouflaged.
Sadly no, since AOS came out, this game will never be equal and about skill ever again. It will always be an item based game and a race to see who can get the best combination of the gear available to better exploit the next overpowered build. That is why UO will never be good again and just be a shadow of what it once was for pvp. And those of us who follow the path of merchanting will simply be shafted over and over because the equipment will no longer be something rare, just something generic and disposable that everyone will be able to attain after slaying one skeleton in the graveyard for some gold.
Guess I'll have to go back to setting up a shop outside a dungeon to sell bandages and potions. Would probably make more money than burning kits to sell armor nowadays anyway with the speed of how fast EA devs keep nerfing builds and the way things work. I wonder if UO is still in Beta? Maybe my GM forensic eval, item ID, and taste ID will be useful eventually instead of just wasting a soulstone to show off that I wasted time training it.
Unfortunately the new staff we have at UO has more than likely never actually played for the entire duration of the game and has no idea of what
TRULY needs fixing or how to go about doing it. They simply refer to U.Hall suggestion threads and think that the handful of people voicing their opinions to nerf something means the entirety of UO feels that way. Only such a small portion of the game's playerbase posts on stratics, however they are the ones that dictate where the game goes.
Nerf threads and 100 pages of crying about a template will get it nerfed within a few publishes. People crying that someone can "solo" a boss easily will get that boss buffed so people can't solo it. Side effect of that? It has 100x more HP and hits 10x harder, now the people who couldn't even do it in a group easily will stand absolutely no chance just so the player who stood out from the crowd and spent time perfecting soloing it can't reap the benefits of his labor.
It's why I don't bother investing any time making good armor suits anymore. Everything I've made in regards to specific builds such as Vampiric Mages for regen and poison resist becomes useless because someone whines about a build since it poses a challenge for them either in PvP or PvM. Instead of finding a build to better defeat those said builds in their weakpoints they rather complain till it's nerfed and yet another build comes to take its place.
This game has never left Beta and never will. The Devs have no idea where to take the game because the playerbase would rather continue whining and complaining about anything that gives them a challenge rather than adapting to the situations and letting the game actually become a solid game. Why would ANY new player want to play UO ? They have no idea what they are getting into, everything will change again in a couple of publishes, half the things they buy will end up to be dupes, and customer service is non-existent. The only thing to be grateful for now is the lack of customer service and GMs, at least this way there CAN'T be anymore corrupted GMs abusing their power because they have none to begin with.
I finished having fun with this game when they canned the only fun thing left for me to do, and that was to attend Event Moderator storyline events on shards. Just because they'd rather waste their budget on other things like nerfing things people whine about enough instead of focusing solely on tracking down every duped item and delete it based on itemID and item creation dates. Or maybe making skills that actually have a purpose: Herding, Item Identification, Taste Identification, Begging.
Screenies or it didn't happen, dude. 
