The concept of red/blue is deprecated and has been for some time. The addition of pardons effectively removed red status from the game without doing so physically in order to avoid a community backlash from the traditionalists about reds "not being punished" if they had done so. This was largely successful as it effectively went under the radar since those Trammel players didn't notice any difference whatsoever in their gameplay experience.
Removing red status was a good thing. "PKs" do not exist anymore. Everyone flips on their PvP consent switch when they visit Felucca and you should be prepared for PvP and embrace it if you visit the facet. Players there shouldn't be penalized in the long term for initiating combat; that's what the facet is there for and it should be seen as a positive thing that the person attacking is creating a PvP situation on a PvP facet. They're providing content and entertainment in the appropriate venue which you should be prepared for and capable of fighting back, hopefully enjoying the combat experience which you signed up for by entering the facet.
The concept of "red" and the need to "punish" red characters was ludicrous in a post-Trammel world and particularly post-AoS when champ spawns were added and it was perfectly possible to go red purely through defending a champ spawn for your guild against an enemy guild who would sometimes show up with blues. It was not a distinguishing factor between "good" or "bad" nor an indicator of whether a person would even attack you on-sight or not. It was just an annoyance that you had to macro off counts or keep a character slot for a red permanently arbitrarily limited to a single facet because you enjoy PvP.
I'm going to take your post with a
handful of salt, seeing as how your posting history is quite inflammatory to begin with. Even on the first page of your posting history you are telling people to "not be a penis" and calling things a "dumb and childish", not to mention even reverting back to the provoking "u mad?" comment. Furthermore, the word "deprecated" means that you don't approve of it and your context of "Post-AoS" world is in the context that it doesn't actually include AoS, in which it clearly does. Kind of like post-2nd world war was about the Cold War, not including the chapters of Japan and Nazi Germany. Buy hey, I'm not here to be a grammar Nazi, however after you read the last paragraph of my reply you should immediately refer back to this first paragraph and the circle of enlightenment to which I am about to blow your ****ing mind with will be complete.
Let's examine two things, and then take a moment to reflect.
First, a small list of how Fel has been castrated. There has been only a small handful of additions and content added to Fel in a
post-AoS world. (Did you catch that?) A few champ spawns were added to Fel ruleset (cool!) which feature the same exact loot table, save a few crappy items, that the T2A spawns have. They don't even produce a skull worth throwing on the altar of the harrower. Actually in hindsight, you can piss that one away and chalk it up as a negative. Stealing house keys was removed early on in the game. Item insurance was added (I have to agree on this one based on the quality of the items people must use). Bounties were removed. Looting someone elses monster corpse no longer turns you grey and opens you up for attack, you just simply cannot do it - that's a tram ruleset attribute in case you've forgotten. Look, the thing is that I could sit here all night and try to remember every little way that Fel players have been slighted, but I would like to move on with this damning indictment. In full transparancy I must point out the good things that have happened to Fel over the years, in a
post-AoS world. Double resources. Hmm, yep. That's all I can thing of at the moment. I mean VvV? Seriously? It's pretty lame, but that's not what this thread is about.
I'll try to keep this entire reply short so you can better grasp it. Sorry, no one liner insults and calling people penises in my responses. I actually try to think things out.
Secondly, let's take a closer look at the subscription base. In 1997-1999, UO broke 100k players due to some bandwidth breakthrough I won't get into. Lineage in comparison just broke over a million that same period, that should put some things into perspective. UO subscriptions went on to peak in 2003 to 250,000, the highest sub base that they have ever had. In case you didn't know, this was the Age of Shadows expansion. Subscriptions in the
post-AoS world (starting to like doing that) have been in steady decline. I hear numbers are in the low 40,000 range, but I may never know for sure. That could possibly be an overestimate since less than a handful of servers are truly "active". IDOCs are more rampant then ever before, you can go to Pac and pretty much place a keep wherever you want, the only reason a good amount of people still have castles on GL and pay their sub fees is because they paid a redeculous amount of cash for them, and there has been a player exodus in the past 3+ years. People have been moving off of their dead servers to places like ATL because they have the most vibrant and active population. I'm counting the days until old servers begin to get shut down. Age of Shadows was the pinnacle of UO because it brought in a modern item base and a challenging arena where players could fight each other for a reward (champ spawns). Furthermore, red PK play was highly encouraged and you could even go as far to say as it was fostered. If someone was on a blue doing a spawn with their friends and other blues came to help, they were not killed by the other blues unless they met certain conditions. Who are they?- was a big one. Besides, the reds almost always came in near the end of the spawn. Why would you want to kill a random blue if he's just going to help you get there faster? You know, I'm not going to write a book on this subject, which I could, because the more I think about it, and the more I look back at what you actually wrote, I've come to the conclusion that you played a little bit around in Fel, but were carried by the other wolves such as myself. So you probably don't even meet the cognitive requirements to even have this discussion. You, nor Merlin.
Also might I make a little footnote on Siege Perilous. The PVP scene has been ravaged there as well because the noble blood of SP, the people who have clanned together and make GM political decisions, have neutered the PK's on their server. They are furious. They have dedicated the same amount of time and spirit to play how they want to and just because a larger, more ingrained organization doesn't like it, POOF! They throttle what I can only assume is a socialist tendency in a GM/dev mind to appease the larger crowd for subscription purposes. This has backfired due to the falling out of
truly hardcore players.
In conclusion, I have come to the opinion that you don't know what the **** you are talking about. Through a philanthropy scope, there is an evolutionary anomaly that has taken place in UO and many other MMO's. People like you, and the rest of trammelites (siege included) have complained and lobbied to get your way so much that you have completely driven off your opposition who liked the way things were. The best way to explain this, coupling my argument with the subscription numbers, is that people like yourself have complained your way into a down spiral that cannot be refuted, and eventually the lions share of your player base will be people bickering about how they want it easier. Now, your player base has been diluted that eventually this is all you will have left. I'm OK with that. Looks like I'm going back to Dark Souls 3, a place where murder is encouraged. Thank you for your absurd and nonsensical reply, I've reflected on it and decided my time is better spent elsewhere.
