At least those could be macroed afk, which was legal then. I remember when eval for spell damage was introduced, and everybody parked chars around town criers.
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At least those could be macroed afk, which was legal then. I remember when eval for spell damage was introduced, and everybody parked chars around town criers.
I don't ever remember AFK macroing being ok... then again, I never did.
Oh yes, it was, until a while after Siege opened. Siege rules were quickly amended to forbid macroing, leading to RoT, and the anti-unattended macroing rule was extended to all other shards later.
After the Notoriety System was dropped in favor of Reputation, some "blue PKs" went red every weekend, then spent the week macroing off counts even if they hadn't died. Some set up funny macros to stand around the bank and simulate conversations. I'll never forget one guy: "It's that time of the week again, macroing off murders...Hey how you doing...Nice talking to you..." The friend who introduced me to UO simply stayed red, and anytime he died, he'd sit at an inn spamming, "All shall pay!"
When I first started, I macroed fancy shirts to earn money, and 8K an hour was pretty darn good. Tailoring and carpentry could make anything in the list, as skill determined success chance, and fancy shirts gave the best return. I macroed certain skills out of necessity, gaining a few points of strength in an entire night by herding a trapped pet in my house (which was also legal at the time), because of the strength bug. Character total stat caps were inconsistent, and I had one capped at just 208, falling from 88 str to 87 and gaining 1 dex from lumberjacking. Later with the early 1999 PvP revamp, I'd get maybe .5 eval a night in the mid-90s. Skill gains were tied to how often a skill was used, so when one person macroed, it pushed everybody into it. In the very high 90s magery, it could take me 50 successful level 8 casts to get .1, and that was before meditation. That was 208 minutes and 20 seconds just waiting for mana, not counting fizzles!
And there were no skill locks, either, so most players were constantly retraining .1 or .2 that were suddenly lost. While that has some basis in reality, gamers don't want to have to spend time doing that. Some things were pretty bad and didn't get fixed or improved for many months, and today's players would have never tolerated any of them, not with the MMO competition available.
Didn't mean to imply that is wasn't... or say it wasn't... I was just saying I don't remember it. Then again, that wasn't how I played the game.
I remember most of that... just not the macroing is ok part.
Uh, AFK macroing has NEVER been legal in UO. EVER. There are rooms in Fel Bucc's inn just for macroers as it was wildly popular way to raise skill way back in '97, well before Siege was even a twinkle in Runesabre's eye.
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I don't remember it either.
I third that.
I remember it, working provoke on a rabbit in my 7x7!
And you three are incorrect. Until a while after Siege opened, lots of people macroed openly. In the beginning, people used to train stealing by working with a partner inside a house, stealing from each others' backpacks full of dye tubs. GMs did nothing because it was not against policy. We used to be able to gain taming by repeatedly taming and releasing on a few horses. We also used to be able to mine through walls, which was perfect for unattended macroing.
Do any of you remember when town criers were altered so a player can't use eval or anatomy on them? It was because players parked their new mages or dexxers around the town criers. Again, GMs did nothing because it was no problem.
Do any of you remember when town criers were altered so a player can't use eval or anatomy on them? It was because players parked their new mages or dexxers around the town criers. Again, GMs did nothing because it was no problem.
Something I didn't notice at first: your memory there is faulty. The inn rooms with moongates (I've been there once) weren't set up until 1999.
If macroing wasn't legal, then please explain why people openly set up characters, not hiding, to do eval or anatomy on town criers.
Just because people do something, even openly, doesn't mean it was legal. People were also opening duping and telling others how to do it. I accidentally did it, paged a GM on myself and he just laughed it off. Doesn't mean it was ok.
And, just for the record, I am not saying you are wrong. Honestly, I have no memory of it one way or the other. The only thing I can specifically recall is a guy getting banned for unattended training on one of the dummies (I was there when it happened and knew the guy in real life). That was in November just after the game came out.
And, just for the record, I am not saying you are wrong. Honestly, I have no memory of it one way or the other. The only thing I can specifically recall is a guy getting banned for unattended training on one of the dummies (I was there when it happened and knew the guy in real life). That was in November just after the game came out.
It was well-known that everybody macroed unattended. It wasn't declared illegal for 21 months after the game's official debut -- and even then only for Siege. Duping was always declared illegal very quickly.
Now tell me why the highest UO powers would say "Don't macro on Siege" but not mention it for all other shards? Because it was still legal outside of Siege. That guy who got banned was acted upon by a GM who didn't know what he was doing (maybe Darwin so he could steal the guy's house spot?).
As I said, lots of us went unattended in tailor shops, at the bank, and openly in our houses. I can't believe any of you are arguing with me on this very simple fact of UO history.
All I can think of is that Origin didn't have a policy on macroing because they didn't know players were doing it.
Since this was the first online game. No one had macroed before in an online game. So technically it was legal because it was unknown there fore not an issue.
Yep I remember the change to criers.
Just my 2 cents
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I find this one of the arguments that is used to make people feel better when they do it.
Not 'everybody' did it. I would go so far as to say a significant portion of the playbase didn't do it.
When you start using absolutes in discussions like that, your stance loses it's foundation.
I too remember doing things on my boat using the 7x7 method, but I was always present to do the action. I remember getting a timeout for training parry on a polar bear my guild had trapped in our tower.
The way I remember things:
Were people ABLE to AFK macro - yes
DID some people AFK macro - yes
Was AFK macroing considered LEGAL - no
They very well knew that unattended macroing was done.
"Everybody" is clearly hyperbole. Is the rest of your argument as faulty as your memory, that you can only nit-pick one word?
Now to address this part specifically, your argument is a strawman, because I never justified it on that basis, so kindly do not misrepresent what I'm saying. Lots of people used the popular cheat program of the day, but you won't see me justifying it based on the number of users.
What about trapping monsters with crates, whether in dungeons or houses? That was legal too, until declared illegal. But it was permitted. If you had paged on someone who set up crates so he could plunk away with archery, or trapped a polar bear in a house to train weapon skill, nothing would have happened, because those were legal.
You said nothing in reply about this person whose existence I now question. Which is more likely, that there was an uninformed GM when the game was new, or that GMs went after that single individual yet ignored the dozens who macroed unattended around banks and in tailor shops?
Remember, if you were actually there, that house break-in exploits were once called "a clever use of game mechanics" by uninformed GMs, when the Dev team always considered them impermissible exploits.
Just because something isn't specifically outlined at illegal doesn't make it legal.
I didn't misrepresent anything, you said, and I'll quote:
Everyone didn't. And it's a common argument that people who run those programs use... 'well, everyone else is doing it' as a justification for their actions. I've been in numerous vents and other chat places where people openly talk about using such things. And still do.
As far as Scott getting banned, you make quite an assumption there. That the GM didn't know what he was doing or had some ulterior motive for doing it. And for you questioning his existence... really? What should I do, have him come here and post? Give you a call? There are people consistently unattended macroing at banks today (Luna specifically) and they don't get banned. There are people still script mining, visiting the same places on each shard every day, and they aren't banned. Your argument is flawed.
Yeah, I was there and victim to several break ins and lost everything in my house multiple times (before you could even lock anything down inside a house). Should I screen shot my account creation date or in game time count, or would you question their existence too?
It was perfectly legal, not just tolerated, but specifically stated as legal. It was so legal that people did it all the time, in the multiple examples I've given, and to a greater extent than you think.
If macroing was illegal, then why do you think it took until July 1999 for the Devs to say anything against it? You have completely ignored that, falling back on this "But nothing was specifically permitted" nonsense. Some players of your type complained, here and on Crossroads of Britannia, probably because they didn't have stable enough connections and/or a second phone line to do an overnight macro. The UO powers very much knew there was macroing, and it was just fine to them.
As I said, "everybody" was hyperbole. Are you going to accuse Little Eva of inaccuracy now, since she sang "everybody's doing"?
But no, you just gloss over that in your feeble attempt to condemn something that was quite legal, just as trapping creatures with crates, in and out of houses, was quite legal.
Have you not paid attention in this thread? GMs from the beginning have sometimes been so uninformed of rules and rule changes that even today some of us don't dare try what we think.
For example, one more time, house break-in exploits were always illegal, but some idiot GMs didn't realize that, dismissing them as "a clever use of in-game mechanics."
So? It was declared illegal for all shards about 14 years ago. They aren't caught simply because of a lack of GM power.
On the other hand, when there was a sizeable GM population, people macroed openly at banks with no repercussions. You can't even address the issue of people macroing eval or anatomy on town criers. Town criers were simply changed to prevent that, and there was no mention of "You can't macro unattended," simply because unattended macroing wasn't against the rules then.
Your argument is flawed here. Unattended macroing for all shards was specifically banned starting in the latter part of 1999, so the number of scripters today doesn't matter. It's illegal.
When Siege opened in July 1999, and unattended macroing was quickly declared illegal then, then why wasn't it stated so for all other shards? ANSWER THAT.
Whoop-te-do, want a cookie? I'll just show mine with an account creation date of 1865.
Unlike you, my repeated citing of player behavior and mechanics of the time show I was there, so I need not prove a thing.[/QUOTE]
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Nusair is right that they started staking actions on player caught macroing unattended a couple of months after UO was released, and declared unattended macroing was illegal. Players caught doing this would be sent to jail.
The reason was more because macro'ing players left their PCs running all day, taking up the server sessions. "Servers full" prevented other players from being able to logon to the servers.
Before they explained that issue, I myself had a paperweight on my "use last object" and "yell Guards" macro, and had my character bashing the training dummy overnight/strumming an instrument when I started. It simply didn't occur to me before that announcement that my action could be causing other players to be unable to enjoy this wonderful game.
So OSI (yes, still run by OSI then) definitely knew about the unattended macro'ing as Zog says.
But started taking action only a couple of months after the game's release. Mainly kicking or suspending players rather than outright bans.
The anti-macro jail in Buc's Den was added much later. And later on, the dungeon jail.
If they had immediately started outright bans then, the jails wound not have been required later.
An older discussion:
http://stratics.com/community/threads/request-information-on-unattended-macroing.94857/#post-790742
And you are incorrect. Individual GMs, misinformed about the rules, may have taken action against players, but actual policy was that that it was just fine. Perfectly permissible, aka legal. Plenty of players burned off counts at the bank, trained hiding, sewed fancy shirts, and did all sorts of other things in plain view.
Neither of you can answer this very simple point: if macroing was already declared not legal, then why did it have to be specified a few days after Siege opened? Why was it declared illegal for all shards a good while after that?
You're linking to a 2008 thread, which in UO terms might as well be yesterday. I'm talking 1997 through 1999.
Right, let's see if I can convince you otherwise.
This archive page below is from Oct 1999. You can see that unattended macroing was never just illegal on Siege but okay for other shards. They were just harsher on Siege (suspension instead of jail).
http://web.archive.org/web/19991013005622/http://support.uo.com/gm_8.html
Siege was introduced on July 16 1999. Source:
http://uo2.stratics.com/miscellaneous/siege-perilous
Here you find a stratics archive in April 1999 that mentions OSI had a policy against unattended macroing (though they do not ban):
http://uo.stratics.com/news/arc3-1999.shtml
A lot of info was lost when OSI reorganized their website and shut down their forums.
A lot more info was lost due to the Stratics crashed.
So researching historical information is less straightforward now.
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Your first link is from 1999. I already said that upon Siege's opening, macroing was specifically declared illegal for it. Now why would they have to do that, then declare macroing illegal later on for other shards, if macroing was already illegal?
Your second link is common knowledge. Your third link in fact does not talk about any policy against macroing. It's someone talking about UO Assist (which became legal in 1999 after the Devs finally accepted Last Target, which they in fact added later on to game macros) and then his justification for unattended macroing. He doesn't talk about penalties, only that people (players and Devs) opposed it. However, there was no official policy against it, for all shards, until later in 1999.
As I said, any GMs jailing players clearly didn't know there was no official policy against macroing. There have been lots of uninformed (and a few corrupt) GMs over the years. A bunch of us were jailed and squelched after someone started talking vulgarity to our group, called in his GM friend.
It is undeniable fact that many of us did unattended macroing very much in the open for the game's first couple of years, with never a single repercussion. After Reputation was introduced, people burned off counts at the bank. My friend would have his red ghost spam "All shall pay" in the Sweet Dreams Inn until he turned blue. Once unattended macroing was forbidden for all shards, later in 1999, the Buc's Den room was set up, and GMs would send/disconnect anyone who didn't respond.
Note the part about "this shard."
From the old Stratics article you mentioned:
The problem wasn't with unattended macroing, but with Last Target. A lot of players today probably don't know it took a couple of years for the game to get that internally.
Sorry, guy, but I did plenty of unattended macroing right in the open. I already posted about the one guy whose macro simulated conversations as he burned off counts, and he did that right at East Brit Bank.
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Ok, so I just need to show you that it was illegal before Siege was implemented before July 1999, that can be done.
http://web.archive.org/web/19990508172226/http://www.uo.com/news.html
Further down:
So, would this persuade you to reconsider your statements?
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Only as a matter of timeframe. You're talking April and May 1999. Lots of us still macroed openly long before that policy, or the creation of the Buc's moongates.
Also, "repeatedly" was not just two or three strikes. A GM might disconnect a player (a way to save on the game's bandwidth costs), but there was no jailing.
But as far as you and NuSair's claim that macroing was never legal, you both are simply wrong. You still have yet to address how players burned off counts at the bank, tailored shirts, or trained eval int and anatomy on town criers. Instead you want to play some silly game of "gotcha" with archives that were actually quite a ways into UO. All you can do is get me on just two or three months.
If macroing was never legal, how did blue PKs get away with burning off counts at banks, or as ghosts spamming in an inn? It was late August or early September 1998 when my "All shall pay" friend reactivated his account and macroed his red back to blue, so he could res without penalties.
"Click here" brings us to this:
But that page is from November 1999, when unattended macroing was very much illegal anywhere.
Were you even there when changes were made, or are you just pulling up whatever web archives you can find?
I know you definitely remember seeing and experiencing certain events very clearly, I do not doubt that.
I too remember people openly macroing. However, this basis alone that doesn't neccessary mean that it was legal.
We all have memories which have shaped our perception over so many years that we might have inferred that things happened differently than in reality. 16 years is a long time.
In my other thread that you have participated in, you can see me admitting that a lot of the features were implemented way earlier than I remembered.
Let me see if I can convince you. But first, I ask that if any of the statements makes you feel defensive, just try to hear me out with an open mind. I assure you, I am not trying to be offensive or snide.
Firstly, given the link I provided, do you believe these statements might not be 100% accurate?
1) macroing was specifically declared illegal for Siege (only)
2) declared macroing illegal later on for other shards (after Siege)
3) it declared illegal for all shards a good while after that (after Siege)
By your statement above, are you now willing to accept the following happened?
1) Before jails (Bucs, and later the GM Dungeon) were introduced and before Siege, GMs did take actions like disconnecting players
2) GMs marked accounts with "strikes"
3) One of the reasons they did this was to save bandwidth (and possibly prevent server full issues)
This was what I said:
Would it be reasonable for you to agree that:
1) Rather than me saying "macroing was never legal", you might have inferred that was what I said and your memory is now "remembering" me saying that?
2) There might have been some clean GMs who were not misinformed about the rules, who have taken action against players according to the policy
3) Even before Siege, the actual policy was not that it was fine/perfectly permissible/aka legal. And even if there were no jails or bans, certain actions did happen, like kicking players off the server
I shall correct that oversight. I needed to establish some of the points I mentioned above first.
Given that there was indeed a policy pre-Siege as proven, and that GMs were indeed kicking people off the servers for bandwidth reasons, would you agree that some of the following scenarios might have occurred:
1) GMs did not actively patrol the servers looking for macro'ers to take action against
2) They instead, would only investigate if someone paged
3) They were less griefers then that paged on other players who appeared to be macroing
4) A number of the folks that macro'd openly did not do it unattended and could respond to the GMs' questions
5) Others had scripts smart enough to respond with "I no speak Englsih" (typo intended), or other smart responses
6) Had more sophisticated ways to send/receive questions/response via the macroer's mobile phone (1 gold farmer came out in the open, how many more do you think did not?)
7) The GMs were misinformed about the rules the other way around and thought it was fine
8) The GMs had other duties like actually helping players and dealing with macroer's were low on priority
9) The GMs did not want to write reports should players send a complain that they were being mistreated
10) The GMs couldn't be bothered because they were busy generating stuff to sell on ebay
11) Maybe because the consequences were a simple disconnection/suspension with no harsh penalties, macroers' don't mind getting caught repeatedly
12) Perhaps a lot more than we know were indeed caught, but simply thought it was a lost conn issue rather than being kicked
Edit, I misread the year of the example given.
Let us use newer examples. Even after Siege was introduced, there were still people who macro'd openly.
Did
So what other reasons could there be? Logic tells us then that there must be other causes. Not being caught doesn't imply that it's legal. It simply means that no one was there to catch the macroers or they were smart enough to not get caught.
You can see that I have not mocked you in any of my responses by saying "gotcha" or anything similar. I merely asked if you can be persuaded to think differently.
My intention was never to play gotcha nor deride your statements as a silly game.
Because we've lost so much info through the forum closing and crashes, in reality, what I am interested in, is the real history behind it, how it came about, and be corrected if my memories are proven to be wrong. The archives might be a way to do that.
If you look at my post history, I have been wrong many times and have never been shy from admitting my mistakes publicly.
Yes, it's possible that they had the policy just 2 or 3 months pre Siege. But, what if my memories of the server full messages are correct in the initial months? What if my memories of OSI making this policy to kick users then are correct?
I have not brushed your views or perspective in any offhand manner, but have instead made an effort to search the archives to find out more.
All I ask is that you consider the facts and the responses of others with an open mind. Perhaps there are other truths besides what you recall.
This warrants some explanation as I believe many people might not understand how the way back machine works.
1) There are at 3.5 billion internet webpages, there's no way for the wayback machine to archive everything on the same day. Each day, it only archives some. This creates a situation where 1 page might be achived today, but another page that was linked might be archived months later.
2) The "What's New" page I linked to, was archived on May 8 1999. This part is simple to understand by simply looking at the top.
3) At the time the archive was done, a snap shot was done of that page.
4) OSI had listed a number of news article on that page back then.
5) The news article titled "Unattended Macroing: Does Origin have a policy?" was old news dated Apr 19 1999. Which OSI have not removed from the webpage yet.
6) That article dated Apr 19 1999 "Click the below link to find out more about unattended macroing and Ultima Online." also had a "Click Here" link to "http://support.uo.com/gm_exploit.html"
7) That means that this linked article already existed in Apr 1999
8) The reason that you were directed to the version in November 1999 is because the archives did not have "http://support.uo.com/gm_exploit.html", so it redirected you to the next version it found
9) It does not mean that in Apr 1999, OSI somehow created a link to an article that would have been only written in the future of Nov 1999. The page to find out more about unattended macroing must already have been there for them to link it.
Yes I was there. You should be able to tell from my post history or even my other recent post you participated in.
It would have quite hard for anyone who were not there find what to look for in the archives.
You don't have to take it so personally when others present their memories which are different from yours.
In summary, when different people remembers 2 conflicting versions of history, you look to whatever documented records you can find. Without that, either party that insist that theirs is the only correct version would not bear results except frustration on why the other side don't see things your way.
Finally I ask again if, in the light of evidence provided, could what you think happened historically, have been inferred based on your own experience in 1 aspect, rather than the reality?
Could others beside you, also be right?
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I thank thee! Esp for reading it 
I know my posts tend to be overly long at times.
I have corrected some mistakes that I made, some typos and more notably, of the example I used.
Now, I freely admit that my memories might have been incorrect as well. I can not find any references to the UO servers being full even though I remember this happening and I kept re-entering my login.
So much info has been lost...
I know my posts tend to be overly long at times.
I have corrected some mistakes that I made, some typos and more notably, of the example I used.
Now, I freely admit that my memories might have been incorrect as well. I can not find any references to the UO servers being full even though I remember this happening and I kept re-entering my login.
So much info has been lost...
If it wasn't legal, then why wasn't more action taken? When eval and anatomy became required skills, why did so many people work it openly on town criers, if it was illegal? Note that that was early 1999, and what did game powers do? They simply made it impossible to train the skills on town criers. They didn't remind anyone of any "It's illegal to macro" policy, because such a policy did not yet exist.
That still does not change certain things. People macroed openly on town criers. They burned off counts at the bank or elsewhere. Someone could stand in the open and train hiding. Many of us sewed directly in tailor shops. Once eval became a requirement for spell damage, I trained just fine in my house, working eval and provocation together.
Those statements are in fact all accurate.
Uninformed GMs (and those friendly with players) may have "marked" early on, but it wasn't until well into 1999 that they could officially take action that left things on accounts.
You act as if any of these invalidate the fact that unattended macroing was legal for a long time. Any "strikes" did not come until after Siege. Don't you remember players getting scared, "Yikes, I got caught unattended on Siege, now I can't even do it on my main shard"?
I was referring to NuSair's declaration that it was never legal. Answer plainly here: are you defending that misconception or not?
This much is true, from the early UO anecdote NuSair mentioned about a friend. I, however, had never known anyone to be punished even for open macroing.
There is a difference between "illegal" and "unwanted." What is true is that Designer Dragon and others didn't want players to macro, but they knew slow skill gain had to be fixed, and until then macroing was permitted. "Permitted" as in "legal." The first attempt, you'll recall, was power hour.
It's very rare that GMs did for any reason.
And in what timeframe? Early days, 1998 or 1999?
6) Had more sophisticated ways to send/receive questions/response via the macroer's mobile phone (1 gold farmer came out in the open, how many more do you think did not?)[/quote]
I don't script, but as far as I know, programs to reply to someone weren't created until well after macroing was officially declared illegal.
This much has been true about a lot of things, not just the permissible unattended macroing.
Again, in what timeframe? Not until well into 1999 would GMs bother with an unattended macroer.
I've never seen that GMs ever cared about this.
Actually, I thought Darwin was rather liked by players.
You're getting into triviality with these. Perhaps this occurred to some in the early days, but as for me, my friends and anyone else we knew, we could macro openly until well into 1999.
I'm not talking about post-Siege and the clear policy against unattended macros, for all shards, that came about in later 1999.
Furthermore, your supposition "Players simply weren't caught" is patently untrue, because at any time in January 1999, GMs could have simply looked at town criers to see who was macroing unattended..
"Gotcha" is all you were doing from the start, trying to get me into certain statements so you could bring up "But here we have," and it still didn't work.
And just because your particular memories are flawed doesn't mean anyone else's is automatically questionable. That's faulty logic.
These are actually known to be true, just as monsters could be gated (like into town), ancient wyrms were once tameable, and dragons weren't aggressive. But your memory of macroing as "illegal" is clearly flawed. I did it. My friends did it. Lots of other people did it. I could visit most any bank in the middle of the night in early and find lots of naked toons practicing eval and anatomy on town criers.
And I have, and you are still incorrect.
There are no earlier versions of the page, however, which would exist had it referred to an anti-macro policy. Or where is the earliest archived page you can find that says players can't macro unattended?
There are no such pages, because they do not exist. You can call unattended macroing "tolerated" or even "decriminalized," but you still can't refute how many of us did it openly, with zero fear of penalty, well into 1999. Just because DD and others didn't like it, because they wanted players to gain through actual play, didn't mean it wasn't illegal.
I really have to wonder, just for the fact you think unattended macroing was always illegal.
I am in fact not taking it personally. I'm just being very blunt that you can't address how so many did unattended macroing without any worries. It was so commonplace that Lost in UO did a comic about macro-mining, which I already posted.
http://lostinuo.tripod.com/comics/41/41.htm
You should be aware that the tactic of a reply so lengthy that the other person won't bother to reply does not work with me.
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Then explain town criers, and how everybody and his uncle would train eval and anatomy on them in the open.
Don't look at me. I thought it was common knowledge that it was quite legal, that a whole lot of players did it, and now someone's to the point of bringing up web archives from dates that don't even apply.
It does, though, give an interesting view to post-1999 players of much the game has changed. Killing ogres and ettins in Wrong could net 3K-4K an hour, or you could macro sewing fancy shirts for 8K an hour. There was no Trammel, there were lots of PKs, and they macroed off counts a lot. I forget when in 1999 it was changed to 40 hours long, 8 hours short, with a "ping-pong" counter (go red five times and you stay red), instead of just 8 hours period.
But don't you understand that those statements could not have been accurate?
You saw the archive page on May 1999 that I linked that clearly stated they have a policy against this, and that was pre-Siege.
Which I have already given a dozen reasons why they wouldn't have been caught.
You cannot infer that it was legal just because you don't witness or hear of anyone that was caught. That logic is faulty.
Do you remember Tug had to remove the "Continuous" macro option in order to get OSI to approve UOA?
I'm not trying to trick you or anything. If you think that was what I was doing, look back into the earlier posts in this thread you posted. You were saying that even before my first post.
At the moment, Apr 1999. Months before Siege was introduced.
Unfortunately, as I have explained, the way back machine could only archive web pages semi regularly. OSI also changed their web layout and URL sometime around there.
Let my turn this around, which year is your earliest documented evidence that says players can macro unattended?
I'm not saying that it was illegal from the start and have never claimed that. It was only a couple of months into UO before they started policies to kick unattended macro's off (again, no bans or jails until Bucs, like I have said).
Again, no tactics. Despite what you seem to believe, I'm not trying to trick you or anything.
That's May 1999, and after you brought that up, I remembered that GMs could officially start disconnecting. But there were no "strikes" and no "bans."
It is fact that when eval and anat became useful, people were training openly on town criers. That was early 1999. There was no warning given about macroing being illegal, and the solution was simply to make town criers unusable for the skills.
And they are all nonsense. From the beginning I've given you a number of reasons why it was so perfectly permissible that people could freely macro in the open. You can't address the one specific issue of town criers, or that of blue PKs openly burning murder counts, or so many of us sewing right in tailor shops. You can't explain why newborn Siege had a warning against unattended macroing, since according to your faulty memory it would have been a reminder about it being illegal on any shard. When it was announced later in 1999, and I clearly remember this, that the policy was extended to all shards, lots of us were very disappointed.
I'm not saying that at all, so kindly don't imply so. What I am pointing out is that unattended macroing, while undesired, was simply not "never legal" or "always illegal."
So are you saying you were using UOA before it was legal?
I never used it until sometime in 2000. After UO Pro commenced, I still refused to get UOA purely out of principle, because I felt its main features (like Last Target and tying a macro to a specific item) should have been part of the game. The Devs in 1999 said they were going to put in Last Target and other targeting that they specifically said would be "nicer" (their word) than any third-party programs, and eventually I got tired of waiting.
I was saying you were playing "gotcha" even before you started posting in this thread? Or that I'm saying that about others? Not in the least.
What I am saying is that with your second post, you started pulling up archived pages, none of which even hint that unattended macroing was "always illegal." That is the claim I am debunking: "always." I find it unfathomable that supposed veterans can't remember how perfectly fine it was to start EZ Macros or whatever.
That's a nice excuse.
The reason it doesn't exist isn't because of a lack of web pages: it's because there was no such policy.
So now you're asking me to prove that negative. Pfft. Prove to me that UFOs don't exist.
It is known, however, that DD and others would comment on unattended macroing -- without any warnings of illegality -- to say they were thinking of ways to improve skill gain so players wouldn't do it. He didn't realize that it wasn't entirely about skill gain, but things like tailoring unattended for easy money, or burning off murder counts.
I'm not the only one who remembers what actually was. Before you start accusing me of this, I'm not at all going by "the most supporters must mean it's right." But there are other old-timers who remember when it was legal.
http://stratics.com/community/threads/unattended-macroing-yes-no.143376/#post-1266351
http://www.uoforums.com/topic/48553-macroing/
It was Dot Warner who started the claim, "Uh, AFK macroing has NEVER been legal in UO. EVER," with a few others chiming in. They are still completely incorrect.
Now you're saying "a couple of months into UO." Whatever happened would have had to be uninformed GMs enforcing their interpretation of rules. That's it.
Then speak plainly without dredging up things from irrelevant timeframes, or going into long-winded hypotheticals, just because you're trying to justify something you can't remember. I was there and most certainly remember doing it without any fear of repercussion.
This.
You three are free to ignore our posts, or put us on ignore.
I was not the one who derailed things. Someone mentioned slow skill gain way back when. I replied, "At least those could be macroed afk, which was legal then. I remember when eval for spell damage was introduced, and everybody parked chars around town criers." The next thing I know, I'm butting heads with the equivalent of Holocaust deniers.
I was not the one who derailed things. Someone mentioned slow skill gain way back when. I replied, "At least those could be macroed afk, which was legal then. I remember when eval for spell damage was introduced, and everybody parked chars around town criers." The next thing I know, I'm butting heads with the equivalent of Holocaust deniers.
You already had lost the battle due to lack of points made. Now you lost your face too.
Do yourself a favor and stop now.
Do yourself a favor and stop now.
You could you know... just say "agree to disagree". I know you won't, but you DO have that option because it takes two to tango, and yes it IS annoying when 3 pages of 10 paragraph posts clutter up a discussion involving responses from a dev member about actual relevant game issues.
As for the holocaust deniers comment, it really makes me wonder what you think of yourself, and of this conversation...
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You could always make a new thread in rants and raves...
Was AFK Macroing legal in 1998(like anyone cares) (DISCLAIMER : Pissing contest in progress)
ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK!!
I'm sure that would work...
Let me know if anything useful regarding the OP has been posted..pfft like we get useful posts :clown:
Was AFK Macroing legal in 1998(like anyone cares) (DISCLAIMER : Pissing contest in progress)
ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK!!
I'm sure that would work...
Let me know if anything useful regarding the OP has been posted..pfft like we get useful posts :clown:
Lack of points? I'm the one who brought up eval/anatomy on town criers, openly done unattended, without fear of repercussion. Blue PKs macroing off counts. Unattended sewing macros right in tailor shops. What do you have to refute any of that?
Or are you talking about support? A majority does not mean that they're correct. If you can't understand that simple point of logic, then please exit.
Really? REALLY?[/quote]
Yes. Evidently you can't understand the comparison to those who deny that something undeniable ever happened.
Tell that to the other guy who prolonged the thread. I am not the one who someone pointed out made the longest post he'd ever seen.
You didn't understand the comparison either, I see.