If you have played on a production shard for any amount of time, you have seen script farming at work. You have gone to Swoop only to find a sampire (seemingly mute and unable to answer any of your questions) farming gold. You have gone to the gold elementals in Blackthorn's dungeon only to find a Greater Dragon chewing them up (seemingly unattended, though you keep "tripping" over someone just outside of the reveal range of the room doors), or, as has been repeatedly shown recently, you go to the Doom Gauntlet only to find five identically dressed dexxers uncannily matching each other's moves step for step.
Guess what?
That probably is not going to get better. The Devs have made it clear that they do not want to lose subscriptions. And while a good argument has been made that multi-boxing and multiclienting and script farming does not produce the same revenue stream as a plain Jane casual gamer, you as an individual player cannot really do much about the situation. At least in Trammel.
But wait!
There is still Siege Perilous. You probably have heard about this server through posts on Uhall, or from some of the entertaining UO blogs of the past (Chad Sexington's immediately comes to mind).
What does Siege have to do with the script farming problem?
Well, for starters, you can be killed essentially everywhere on Siege Perilous. Someone AFK farming the Blackthorn Mages? No problem! Even better, if you are of the more meek type, you don't even have to get your own hands dirty. A quick shout out in General Chat of "How long has X been AFK in Blackthorn's?" will cause several (often invisible) players with pokey things in their hands to come check.
Siege has several other benefits for the jaded UO player.
Worried that the rare you've just purchased is a dupe? Not on Siege! The inability to transfer between shards created a positive side effect in that the duping exploits used in the past could not be applied to items on Siege Perilous. So those players with billions of gold tied up in checks don't exist here.
Of course, Siege isn't perfect. It can be a weird, wild place. Sometimes players use scripts here. But you have recourse. And there's a lot going on (though not always obvious to the casual visitor). Just look at this recap of last month on Siege Perilous:
[SPHS] January 2017 Shard Chronicle
That's right! All but one item in the list of activities were user generated!
As a player on Siege Perilous, you:
1. Get to own a second house in addition to your house on a production shard. So your account can have a castle on Legends and an 18 x 18 on Siege AT THE SAME TIME!
2. Fall under a completely different set of skill gain rules. Once you hit 70 in any skill, you ARE GUARANTEED skill points under a Rate over Time schedule. So all it takes to get 120 in a skill is actually playing.
3. Have access to a shard-sponsored new player guild. Even long-time UO players take a little while to adjust to Siege. The NOOB Guild, led by Tanager, gets players started their first month with lower-level scrolls, masteries, and equipment while also providing them some protection. Most Siege players will not harass a player with the NOOB Guild Banner, and in some player events NOOB gets special consideration (such as the current fishing contest).
4. Get to be part of a healthier economy and community. Reminiscent of the first years of UO, on Siege there is much more of a sense of community. Players saying hello in General Chat are received like Norm from Cheers (usually, anyway, some exceptions apply to the asshat of the week). Bartering is often the most effective way to obtain items.
5. Feel that sense of accomplishment that is hard to come by on production shards nowadays. Solo'd a Miasma on Atlantic? *yawn* Solo'd a Miasma on Siege? Nice Job! Between stam blocking minotaurs and constant checks by roaming PK'ers, not to mention putting together a decent suit that you could possibly lose at any second, this actually means something again. Finished putting together that 2000+ luck suit on Atlantic? *yawn* with a couple of mouse clicks you could have bought the entire thing off a third-party site. Build the same suit on Siege? Wow! There might only be 10 others like it on the entire shard! With very few exceptions, gold and items must be earned on Siege Perilous.
Third-party sites, unapproved scripting programs, AFK players, these are the reality of Ultima Online today. And honestly, I accept that. I can't really fault the third-party sites, they are providing items to players that realistically should be available in the In-Game Store. I don't have a problem with the scripting programs, because they provide functionality that should have been available in the official client years ago. And I understand the Devs approach to AFK players. All of these things have issues, but it is hard for me to see UO existing without them.
BUT there is a different option, and that is Siege Perilous. I encourage you to try it out. Seriously, what do you have to lose? You may be surprised when you remember the delight of getting that 0.1 skill gain in Magery, or the adrenaline rush of trying to get your suit back before those monsters loot it, or the fun of trading for that rare piece of deco you've been searching for for months.
Thanks for taking the time to read this, and may you follow in the Avatar's footsteps (which lead to Siege!),
-- Calavera, Siege Perilous Historical Society
Guess what?
That probably is not going to get better. The Devs have made it clear that they do not want to lose subscriptions. And while a good argument has been made that multi-boxing and multiclienting and script farming does not produce the same revenue stream as a plain Jane casual gamer, you as an individual player cannot really do much about the situation. At least in Trammel.
But wait!
There is still Siege Perilous. You probably have heard about this server through posts on Uhall, or from some of the entertaining UO blogs of the past (Chad Sexington's immediately comes to mind).
What does Siege have to do with the script farming problem?
Well, for starters, you can be killed essentially everywhere on Siege Perilous. Someone AFK farming the Blackthorn Mages? No problem! Even better, if you are of the more meek type, you don't even have to get your own hands dirty. A quick shout out in General Chat of "How long has X been AFK in Blackthorn's?" will cause several (often invisible) players with pokey things in their hands to come check.
Siege has several other benefits for the jaded UO player.
Worried that the rare you've just purchased is a dupe? Not on Siege! The inability to transfer between shards created a positive side effect in that the duping exploits used in the past could not be applied to items on Siege Perilous. So those players with billions of gold tied up in checks don't exist here.
Of course, Siege isn't perfect. It can be a weird, wild place. Sometimes players use scripts here. But you have recourse. And there's a lot going on (though not always obvious to the casual visitor). Just look at this recap of last month on Siege Perilous:
[SPHS] January 2017 Shard Chronicle
That's right! All but one item in the list of activities were user generated!
As a player on Siege Perilous, you:
1. Get to own a second house in addition to your house on a production shard. So your account can have a castle on Legends and an 18 x 18 on Siege AT THE SAME TIME!
2. Fall under a completely different set of skill gain rules. Once you hit 70 in any skill, you ARE GUARANTEED skill points under a Rate over Time schedule. So all it takes to get 120 in a skill is actually playing.
3. Have access to a shard-sponsored new player guild. Even long-time UO players take a little while to adjust to Siege. The NOOB Guild, led by Tanager, gets players started their first month with lower-level scrolls, masteries, and equipment while also providing them some protection. Most Siege players will not harass a player with the NOOB Guild Banner, and in some player events NOOB gets special consideration (such as the current fishing contest).
4. Get to be part of a healthier economy and community. Reminiscent of the first years of UO, on Siege there is much more of a sense of community. Players saying hello in General Chat are received like Norm from Cheers (usually, anyway, some exceptions apply to the asshat of the week). Bartering is often the most effective way to obtain items.
5. Feel that sense of accomplishment that is hard to come by on production shards nowadays. Solo'd a Miasma on Atlantic? *yawn* Solo'd a Miasma on Siege? Nice Job! Between stam blocking minotaurs and constant checks by roaming PK'ers, not to mention putting together a decent suit that you could possibly lose at any second, this actually means something again. Finished putting together that 2000+ luck suit on Atlantic? *yawn* with a couple of mouse clicks you could have bought the entire thing off a third-party site. Build the same suit on Siege? Wow! There might only be 10 others like it on the entire shard! With very few exceptions, gold and items must be earned on Siege Perilous.
Third-party sites, unapproved scripting programs, AFK players, these are the reality of Ultima Online today. And honestly, I accept that. I can't really fault the third-party sites, they are providing items to players that realistically should be available in the In-Game Store. I don't have a problem with the scripting programs, because they provide functionality that should have been available in the official client years ago. And I understand the Devs approach to AFK players. All of these things have issues, but it is hard for me to see UO existing without them.
BUT there is a different option, and that is Siege Perilous. I encourage you to try it out. Seriously, what do you have to lose? You may be surprised when you remember the delight of getting that 0.1 skill gain in Magery, or the adrenaline rush of trying to get your suit back before those monsters loot it, or the fun of trading for that rare piece of deco you've been searching for for months.
Thanks for taking the time to read this, and may you follow in the Avatar's footsteps (which lead to Siege!),
-- Calavera, Siege Perilous Historical Society
