[UO Herald] Healer Quest Results

[UO News]

We would like to thank everyone who participated in assisting the Mysterious Healer in combating the horrid plague that has afflicted the Gargish of Ter Mur. Thanks to your hard work and dedication the Gargish will survive!
Keep an eye on the Herald in coming days for more fiction as we finish The Awakening leading up to our 15th Anniversary.

Total
Total Participants
Highest
Sashes
Staves
Amulets
Bracers
Legends
2513
30
472
30
16
6
1
Atlantic
9318
109
732
109
55
8
3
Lake Superior
2458
47
495
47
25
10
1
Great Lakes
5152
92
482
82
53
19
2
Chesapeake
5169
92
1852
92
92
19
2
Catskills
7505
78
1192
78
78
16
2
Siege Perilous
549
13
173
12
7
3
1
Origin
595
21
319
21
19
5
1
Pacific
2278
21
461
21
11
5
1
Sonoma
2184
46
500
46
23
10
1
Lake Austin
771
20
139
18
10
4
1
Baja
1470
41
214
41
25
9
1
Napa Valley
2263
42
715
42
42
9
1
Drachenfels
1257
30
243
30
19
6
1
Europa
5518
48
1427
48
24
10
1
Oceania
2196
18
403
18
9
5
1
Mugen
4299
54
588
54
29
11
2
Wakoku
16461
229
1354
229
229
45
5
Hokuto
16102
208
1117
208
107
44
5
Formosa
4910
153
601
153
153
34
4
Izumo
17554
207
1204
207
106
43
5
Mizuho
20932
232
1002
232
118
48
5
Yamato
29519
390
2865
390
211
54
21
Asuka
18136
310
2385
310
158
63
7
Arirang
3724
56
886
56
29
13
2
Balhae
3262
74
408
74
39
16
2
Sakura
17104
264
1230
264
140
54
6
Totals
203199
2925
2865
2912
1827
569
85

Continue reading...

 

[Merus]

You almost get the impression they are proud of this event... Truly out of touch if you ask me.

 

[Winker]

inslut to injury

 

[Promathia]

wow....Most shard its 1-2 people got the bracers....


And look at total participants....only 2925? Sheesh

 

[NBG]

Yeah, I think I done with this game for a long while.

My nuts can't take anymore beating from all the stupidity from Devs from all these years and I am too old to put up with this BS.

 

[Cetric]

hahahaha, check out lake austin's numbers... could def got the bracers there.

I like how they do seem to be very proud of this event. hopefully the nubmer that participated isn't any indication of population..lol

 

[Promathia]

Here is what I dont get...

Yamato - 21 bracers..... HIGHEST single total given in - 2865

So your telling me, 20 other people got close to that?

 

[Merus]

85 bracers and 64 of them went to Asian shards. Not that I have anything against those shards but that leaves a whopping 21 for all other shards.

 

[Quickblade]

Here is what I dont get...

Yamato - 21 bracers..... HIGHEST single total given in - 2865

So your telling me, 20 other people got close to that?

thats weird because if I do a quick calcul, 20 x (2865 -10%) = 20 x (2580ish) = over 50k cures turned (and im just counting the number of cures turned for those who got bracers on yamato) , however they only say 30k cures turned TOTAL for yamato

 

[NBG]

Here is what I dont get...

Yamato - 21 bracers..... HIGHEST single total given in - 2865

So your telling me, 20 other people got close to that?

Just means that alot of cheaters on that shard.

 

[Adol]

Here is what I dont get...

Yamato - 21 bracers..... HIGHEST single total given in - 2865

So your telling me, 20 other people got close to that?

If they attempted to manipulate it as a team, or it's just one player with 3 accounts who was really determined (3x7 characters = 21), it could easily happen. You just hand in the exact same amount on every character, and assuming you set the curve (a big IF on the Japanese shards, which are hyper dedicated) well 2865 is identical to any other 2865 cures, so all 21 would be absolutely expected to win... if there's a bit of leeway (other shards, also Japanese mostly, have multiple winners) you could do the same by just getting second place, with 21 characters on 1000 cures, say... again, the mathematics would only be able to record 2 results, 2865 and 1000 (lots of).

The number crunchers will soon work out from the figures an approximate reward curve, and whether such manipulation borked the people lower down the curve... but for now, behold the mathematical horror of just those "Highest" figures.

 

[BeaIank]

Something is very weird with Legends numbers, or the rewards are bugged...
I turned in 1 cure and got a sash and a staff. Yet there are 14 people who supposedly only got the sash.
How many cures did they turn in? Half?

 

[Quickblade]

If they attempted to manipulate it as a team, or it's just one player with 3 accounts who was really determined (3x7 characters = 21), it could easily happen. You just hand in the exact same amount on every character, and assuming you set the curve (a big IF on the Japanese shards, which are hyper dedicated) well 2865 is identical to any other 2865 cures, so all 21 would be absolutely expected to win... if there's a bit of leeway (other shards, also Japanese mostly, have multiple winners) you could do the same by just getting second place, with 21 characters on 1000 cures, say... again, the mathematics would only be able to record 2 results, 2865 and 1000 (lots of).

The number crunchers will soon work out from the figures an approximate reward curve, and whether such manipulation borked the people lower down the curve... but for now, behold the mathematical horror of just those "Highest" figures.

I dont think it was about first or second place that was going to get the sleeves since, many shard only got 1 pair and lets just take Odin on Europa example he did 911 cure and didnt get sleeves and highest on europa was 1427... So im taking that only thoses who were in the 10% range of that 1427 were able to receive the sleeves ( the range would be (between 1285 and 1427 cures).

 

[Angel of Sonoma]

here's what i see ... for every 50 participants per shard (or fraction thereof) one bracer was awarded. except yamato ... 21 bracers?? that doesn't seem right. the only way i see 21 as a possibility on yamato is if numerous players all turned in the exact same amount of cures.

if europa had 3 more participants, odin may have received tier 4 (assuming he had the 2nd highest # of cures).

 

[Adol]

I dont think it was about first or second place that was going to get the sleeves since, many shard only got 1 pair and lets just take Odin on Europa example he did 911 cure and didnt get sleeves and highest on europa was 1427... So im taking that only thoses who were in the 10% range of that 1427 were able to receive the sleeves ( the range would be (between 1285 and 1427 cures).

It depends on how it's scaled; if it's percentages, but very small ones, Europa may not have had enough participants over all to open out the top end rewards enough for there to be more than 1... where as the Japanese shards have far more individuals involved which may have allowed it... or, as I think we both suspect, it's someone who has (or an organized team effort to) handed in 2865 cures 21 times. On the discussion thread about this event, someone admits they tried to create a group of friends who'd done just that cure-matching, but someone's greed ruined the team effort.

 

[Quickblade]

It depends on how it's scaled; if it's percentages, but very small ones, Europa may not have had enough participants over all to open out the top end rewards enough for there to be more than 1... where as the Japanese shards have far more individuals involved which may have allowed it... or, as I think we both suspect, it's someone who has (or an organized team effort to) handed in 2865 cures 21 times. On the discussion thread about this event, someone admits they tried to create a group of friends who'd so just that cure-matching, but someone's greed ruined the team effort.

Do that 2865 x 21 and check result ,it doesnt match with total cures for yamato they just announced (and its just supposed to be the total cures by the ones who got sleeves im not even counting the cures of the 369 others players that contributed)

 

[Adol]

Do that 2865 x 21 and check result ,it doesnt match with total cures for yamato they just announced

Well, as I say, the number crunchers will solve the approximate formulas soon enough; Nimauq tells me he's already worked out the totals of items is not the total of participants so yes it's possible for people to get bupkis; meanwhile somehow 21 people managed to get within the target, with the highest at nearly 3000... the next few days of board posting are going to be very interesting indeed.

 

[Nimuaq]

As far as I can see, (and as Angel of Sonoma already explained yet I missed that post) and according to the number of total participants per shard:

• 0 - 49 : 1 Sleeves
• 50 - 99 : 2 Sleeves
• 100 - 149 : 3 Sleeves
• 150 - 199 : 4 Sleeves
• 200 - 249 : 5 Sleeves
• 250 - 299 : 6 Sleeves
• 300 - 349 : 7 Sleeves
• 350+ : 21 Sleeves (??)

So while we have 921 and 1423 cures in Europa, since the number of total participants is 48 (less than 50), only one of them gets the cure. If 2 more players would have participated, Odin (921) would get the sleeves too.

 

[Nimuaq]

So, if the shard is less populated, or less players participated in the event, no matter how many cures two players turn in, only one of them gets the sleeves . And the shard which has the most participation (Yamato) gets the rest of the sleeves. It is not how many cures you turned in, you can go wild and turn in thousands of them, it is how many players participated on your shard.

 

[Kylie Kinslayer]

I just find it strange how a few years ago folks at the top of the food chain understood the EM's giving out overpowered rewards in very limited numbers was a bad thing. So they put a stop to it. Now they go and do the same thing themselves with these bracers? Strikes me as odd. *shrugs* Congrats to the script... errr ummm I mean the folks that toughed it out and snagged 'em.

 

[NBG]

Ummmm is it just me or does this sounds like the reuse of of code logic and math used to assign faction ranks that got everyone pissed off leading to the recent change to faction again?

If so Devs, WTF are you thinking? It DID NOT work for factions rank assignment based on # of participants versus points of each participant why would you Devs think it would work for quest reward distribution? It both has similar issue with bring able to access the top end tier faction items when used for faction and now the new quest with another top tier item causing the same issue!!!!!!

Do you Devs just don't care anymore? If you do not give a damn about the player please quit your job and let someone else step in.

 

[legendsguy]

here's what i see ... for every 50 participants per shard (or fraction thereof) one bracer was awarded. except yamato ... 21 bracers?? that doesn't seem right. the only way i see 21 as a possibility on yamato is if numerous players all turned in the exact same amount of cures.

if europa had 3 more participants, odin may have received tier 4 (assuming he had the 2nd highest # of cures).

Yeah, you make a really good point about Yamato. That whole shard is suspect of having been complicit in cheating.

 

[Picus at the office]

Yeah, you make a really good point about Yamato. That whole shard is suspect of having been complicit in cheating.

If this is the case it is hardly called cheating. One might call it gaming the system but cheating is a far cry from what might have gone on. If you had 5-21 people who came to the conclusion they could hijack the event and it turned out they were correct then I say good job to them. IMO they spent more effort than the single people who cried here for a far better end result. It seems that they might have shown the classic team work that made UO a great game and not the MINE MINE MINE mentality that is so common in today's MTV generation.

 

[NBG]

If this is the case it is hardly called cheating. One might call it gaming the system but cheating is a far cry from what might have gone on. If you had 5-21 people who came to the conclusion they could hijack the event and it turned out they were correct then I say good job to them. IMO they spent more effort than the single people who cried here for a far better end result. It seems that they might have shown the classic team work that made UO a great game and not the MINE MINE MINE mentality that is so common in today's MTV generation.

Um so if we estimate the time it takes to make 2500 or so cures, is it still do able without scripting?

I kind of doubt that it is humanly possible without some plant growing script + looting script at the very least. Lets not even talk about scripts that makes the cure. Unless someone is treating UO like a job, I do not see how that can be accomplished without scripting.

 

[Picus at the office]

All that is known about that shard is one person turned in 2800+ items while nothing is known about the other 20 people/chars.

If it was possible that the event was scripted and for a month the bot did the same action yet no negative result was had from the GM's then I say the cat is clearly out of the bag. Lets pretend that a new quest was put into the game, with new actions and nearly new everything but still it's scripted to all heck yet nothing is done....clearly the Dev team has no intrest in stopping this action as this would be easier than anything else to catch.

Sadly if the above is true it's time to come to the same conclusion that everyone else has come to 7+ years ago, script what you want and when you want to...nothing bad will come of it.

 

[Cerwin Vega]

I never knew their were so many asian players, I guess we can see whos keeping Uo going.

 

[Angel of Sonoma]

now that i think about it, giving out 1 bracer per 50 participants is really sucky. sonoma only has about 51 players so we'd need 100% shard participation in order to get more than one tier 4 reward. (btw...the little tag line for the sonoma shard forum that says 'The best kept secret in UO. 217 people can't be wrong.' is way outdated. lol)

 

[G.v.P]

That's insane. One guy almost turned in 3,000 cures, lol.

 

[MalagAste]

I'm curious as to what percentage of players did the quest.

I'm guessing somewhere in the region of maybe 30% or 40%.

Anyone else hazard a guess?

 

[Picus of Napa]

30% might have done one cure but I'd bet a far lower number tried to win.

 

[Samara]

I'm willing to bet the 3,000 cures was a whole guild contribution, and one person turning them in. Clearly the asian population is healthy and active. I see no foul play, but I do see something to applaud.

 

[NBG]

I'm willing to bet the 3,000 cures was a whole guild contribution, and one person turning them in. Clearly the asian population is healthy and active. I see no foul play, but I do see something to applaud.

21 peopele turned in enough to get tier four with highest around 2800+ on that shard, which means that the other 20 winners also turned in something relative close in the amount of the highest turn in.

So all those people are also part of other guilds?

Something stinks here, I do not see any thing here worth applauding. More like this stinks to the high heavens that we all need to pinch our nose instead. Wake up and smell the cheaters.

I was naive once but when the figures clearly indicated foul play, I no longer see the need to make up some random positive reason to argue other wise.

 

[Eärendil]

I am working in a job that is closely related to probability statistics and - honestly - looking at this data makes me VERY sceptical. It is highly unlikely that distributions spread like this... Not very proportinal. Either they act together as community and coordinate their input - this would be a very impressive work and we should congratulate them for such perfect team-work. Or there is something wrong here - but I cannot say what. And I don´t like conspiration-theories...

 

[Mapper]

Europa gets more participants at general EM events then this global did.. I hope really hard this is a sign, this type of event doesn't work... And it tells the Devs what players really want.

 

[THP]

Europa gets more participants at general EM events then this global did.. I hope really hard this is a sign, this type of event doesn't work... And it tells the Devs what players really want.

Errr thats because 3/4s of the EM run europa event peopl are from another shard....dohhhhhhhhhh

Besides 48 people had a stab at it...i was not one for sure.....u need time for this crap that i have not got, besides the its a scripters event ....an afk'ers dream .....but at least say 1/10th of the europa populous had a go....not tooo bad...

 

[Petra Fyde]

What do players really want? Ask any 10 players and you'll get 10 different answers. 'no grind'? But by some definitions EVERYTHING is a grind. Heck even getting up in the morning is a grind, because you do the same thing every day.

I wonder how many people didn't do it because other players told them it was a waste of time and not to bother?
I did it because I was enjoying it. I did it in a very casual way, half an hour here, half an hour there maybe 2 or 3 days per week actually making the cures, nothing taxing. I used the hunting involved to train my new bard. I handed in 185 cures and got, to my surprise, 3 of the rewards. As such I was perfectly happy with the event.
I accept that this is not the popular view expressed here.

 

[THP]

why do they keep making semi unique event items????? hell this thread proves people are mad as hell because someone else got the win and not them ...why not make a nice event that is fun and everyone gets a nice memeto.....

some of the bracers are selling for over 1.2 billion gold on the rares board..and the bidding as not stopped!!!!!!!!!....quite honestly this will only encourage scripting/ afk-ing play style to get the top prizes to sell....

i have said it many times....semi unique items like this have totallly ruined the economy of the game....when a certain event program was reformed it was promised that NO!!! all singing, all dancing, all blinging items would be dropped.....one month later that promise was broken....look were its got us today.....thanks for nothing ...

 

[Adol]

Heck even getting up in the morning is a grind, because you do the same thing every day.

I wonder how many people didn't do it because other players told them it was a waste of time and not to bother?
.

So if they grind all day, why would they want to grind all night too? Do you not see what a complete misunderstanding of "leisure time" that is, even from just a design perspective?

And as one of the people who told them it was a waste of time... I'm sorry Petra, but we were right, and you were wrong. Indeed, you couldn't have been right, because with no cap on the total submissions but with current submissions hidden, if more people had bothered, the harder in fact the competition becomes, driven by the paranoia of how much they are doing and you aren't, and the encouragement to obsession and greed which locks people in the pattern... they've come so far, damned if they'll be beaten now... and at 1.1 billion yesterday for the T4 prize, why should they give up? You'll never see that level of profit again. The results would have been nastier, not better.

If Nimuaq is correct, more engagement would perhaps have opened up more opportunities for Tier 4 rewards, but this just allows scripters to get more themselves; honest people, people who didn't enjoy the grind, or people who just don't have the time to compete with 24/7 bots would fall further, not closer behind... We've already had years of illustration of this with regards to Mining and Lumberjacking; even if you know where the veins of ore are in the short term, the randomization doesn't help you compete because the advantages of automated recall mining 24 hours a day (or even just duping the results of 1 day) are still far too great for an honest miner to compete with. We are dealing with ancient MMO history here, the lessons should have been learned years ago; so your own figure for the event being roughly only 1/10th of the Europa highest score shouldn't be a surprise, and that was just against an honest but dedicated player too; Encouraging more people in, when most of them wouldn't stand a chance either, would have just made 500 people unhappy instead of 50... because if they were in it when the basic design couldn't keep their interest, they were obviously in it to win. And they had less, not more chance to win the more got involved.

You were also wrong about how it could be scripted, people have already revealed how it was. Understand this though; I didn't want to be right, this is the only MMO I still play after over a decade in the genre, but the design was so obviously flawed right from the start that I couldn't in any honest sense support it.

The new content on Test however shows that "Good Dev Team" is back near the keyboard. I look forward to more long term, unique content, and it's good to see that they are using the dungeon overhaul to add new, casual mechanics in. Just keep "Bad Dev Team" locked in a cupboard somewhere... please?

 

[Petra Fyde]

The EM program doesn't drop 'all singing all dancing bling'. It drops useless objects with pretty colours or names on them. The rares community still pays silly prices for them.
This was not an EM event, it was a global event, and most of the 'scripting' is in the minds of the posters. I never saw anyone scripting when I was doing it. The cure solutions were designed in a way that made efficient scripting next to impossible. I saw the description of the so called 'script', but having accidentally covered up the tongs with my beetle several times I can tell you that 'one step back' wasn't enough to re-set the flask.

 

[Petra Fyde]

I don't play the same game you do. I don't see every single item in game in terms of 'profit'. I didn't care if I didn't get the bracers because I haven't a character with the right skill set to use them. Also, I did the whole thing with the expectation of not getting anything at all.
I don't think we're reading the same board either. 'Good dev team?' Haven't you seen the complaints about the new content already?

 

[Picus at the office]

Lets all pretend that the typical asian math geek joke is correct: it is more than possible that they managed to do the math and see what was needed to rank at tier 4. I've seen the asian guilds who had set up shops on the smaller west coast shards to farm late night local time, they are worthy of doing such stuff. I've seen, not lately, groups of two players quickly turn to 10 in a matter of minutes so it is more than possible that the same has happened here.

I'll agree that the amount of items seem far beyond the NA shards but given the way NA players have been the last 10 years I'm not shocked to see that a group effort might have crushed the efforts of a single player. If you just had three people on ATL or any other server working to get the sleeves with the complete intention of selling them they would have won by far, the best that ATL could manage was only 732 yet chessy and catskills managed to nearly double it.

 

[Eärendil]

Lets all pretend that the typical asian math geek joke is correct: it is more than possible that they managed to do the math and see what was needed to rank at tier 4. I've seen the asian guilds who had set up shops on the smaller west coast shards to farm late night local time, they are worthy of doing such stuff. I've seen, not lately, groups of two players quickly turn to 10 in a matter of minutes so it is more than possible that the same has happened here.

I'll agree that the amount of items seem far beyond the NA shards but given the way NA players have been the last 10 years I'm not shocked to see that a group effort might have crushed the efforts of a single player. If you just had three people on ATL or any other server working to get the sleeves with the complete intention of selling them they would have won by far, the best that ATL could manage was only 732 yet chessy and catskills managed to nearly double it.

If this is true - and I think it might be very well the case - this would change the discussion we had a little bit: Still, the design of the quest was worthy to be criticized - especially with regard to casual player´s frustration. I would still say that this quest was a hughe failure.

But it makes me sorry that we weren´t able to do comparable collective action in our shards. It feels like they cooperated while we (most of us) didn´t. Don´t wanna speculate about the reasons (level of organization, cultural differences etc.) - but it would have been interesting to find out WHY...

 

[Picus at the office]

Yup, three people could have made 1000 of these cures, looked at ATL and been worried that this might not be a large enough number so they review shards and transfer them to LA or Origin(this would have been my personal choice) or where ever Luna is the largest ghost town and been up 1 billion gold. Risky as it would be in this rare case hindsight makes me pissed I never thought of it.

 

[Merus]

I see alot of hindsight discussion on how players could have "gamed the system" to get around the poor design of the quest, but to me the issue IS the poor design of the quest.

 

[Ashlynn_L]

Yes, on Chesapeake a big group of us worked at the cures and single person handed them in. I don't think most of us knew how it worked though beyond "make lots of cures". If I'd known that the number of tier 4 items given out was based on the number of participants, I'd have urged a lot of people to hand in a cure or two themselves because quite a number of us didn't bother handing any in.

 

[Adol]

I don't play the same game you do. I don't see every single item in game in terms of 'profit'. I didn't care if I didn't get the bracers because I haven't a character with the right skill set to use them. Also, I did the whole thing with the expectation of not getting anything at all.
I don't think we're reading the same board either. 'Good dev team?' Haven't you seen the complaints about the new content already?

I don't play the game to make a profit either; so why would I grind, which is even less fun, for an event that only offers profit? None of the cures we handed in made a difference to the game world, but you are defending the event on the basis of enjoying the logic puzzle individually; most people found 1 puzzle repeated 100, let alone 3000 times boring beyond belief. Where as if I had designed the event, I would have made it into a communal race to hit a target just as a fun thing to do, whilst building a permanent Gargoyle hospital or new colony which would open up permanent vendors of some kind for the shard... have the lumberjacks chopping wood to clear the spot, the crafters adding tools etc to put up buildings... No individual reward, communal pride at the job, no items for selling on, options opened for all later.

And "good dev team" is only my personal belief in turn, and meant to indicate what I have seen as a schizophrenic approach over the entire Arc; some great moments, an awful lot of baffling decisions which have disappointed a great many. I have of course seen the recent complaints about the new publish, but as I've not been on test centre I have no opinion on whether they are valid or not. And I will, as I always do, make my own mind up on that in turn... just like I defend anyone who I think is being unfairly attacked, or unfairly praised for that matter.
But in theory a wider amount of permanent, actual new gameplay is something to be approved of. The Void Pool proved a success, not because of the rewards which people largely ignore, but because it's fun to play. We'll see if this new dungeon does the same. But already it has light years more content than doing the same puzzle over and over... So yes, "Good dev team" on that.

 

[blinkdog]

If they added a grind where you needed to turn in a trillion widgets to get a prize, Petra would turn in one or two widgets per week planning to get her prize ten million years from now, and make posts wondering why everyone else was mad. That's not even an attempt at a burn or anything, she just would.

 

[popps]

You almost get the impression they are proud of this event... Truly out of touch if you ask me.

If the "number of participants" figure shows the number of players who participated per shard, I get the impression that this Event was very scarcely participated (I was shocked to read only 21 on Pacific)....... If my math is not wrong, I calculated that only about 1.4% of total players participated to the Event (total participants on total). That is a mere 1 out of 70 players on average !! And perhaps, it could even be less participants than that if the total lists the number of accounts (houses owned which we know can only be 1 per account) while the participants to this Event may have played it on more than 1 shard.

Also, the figures of cures turned in per shard vary a whole lot. I think the highest shard lists 2,865 as the highest number of cures turned in on that shard. I read posts indicating that 200/300 was still a lot of work, I imagine 8/9 times that number of cures how much work and time must have been.

The showed results reinforce my opinion that I really hope this is the very last time we see an Event where casual gamers are put into competition versus powergamers. All players pay the same subscription but not all players have the same time to play the game. As I see it, those players who have less time to play should not be penalized in their game play because of that. And seeing how few participated, I have the impression that those players with less time to play outnumber those players who have more time to play. So, I would imagine, casual players, being the majority of players, should be kept in a higher, not lower consideration.....

 

[popps]

Heck even getting up in the morning is a grind, because you do the same thing every day.

I wonder how many people didn't do it because other players told them it was a waste of time and not to bother?

You were also wrong about how it could be scripted, people have already revealed how it was. Understand this though; I didn't want to be right, this is the only MMO I still play after over a decade in the genre, but the design was so obviously flawed right from the start that I couldn't in any honest sense support it.

I have always been opposed to scripting because I think it harms the game in many ways. One of these ways, is that I think it makes the designing work for Developers more difficult and with unpredictable results. An idea which might in theory be a good one, because of scripting possible in the game gets screwed up and delivers unwanted results. Take for example the randomizing of resources veins which was randomized because scripting was making the rare veins too productive. This randomization hurts those players who do not script (and I am not sure it creates that much of a problem to scripters....).

What I am trying to say, is that I am convinced that if scripting was finally eradicated from Ultima Online it would become a much better game, and perhaps make the design of its Events and content better.

Yet, years go by (how many years have passed now since the news of that spreadsheet ?) and I still have to play a game where there is scripting going on. I do not like it.

 

[Petra Fyde]

I don't think it can be eradicated, it would need a full team working full time to even keep track. The system for making cures was complex and, I believed, not scriptable. Yet I was assured that scripting was happening - although I never saw it.
Even if it was eradicated, there would still be a perception of scripting, because people assume it's happening whether it is or not. Both my husband and I have frequently been accused of the activity. Neither of us have ever been guilty of it.