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I missed the part where they said they were aware of all the lag, and the disconnects, and shard downtimes. Guess I'll go re-read it
So invasion is turned off mid-July then a month and half of nothing. Sounds... exciting?
That will come up here is why
Just a heads up on Monday July 27th, Atlantic @ 7PM ET atlantic sever will be down. Only her favourite players will have access to that shard at that time.
Just 3 of Avatar accounts dont worry he has many more.
Captn Norrington
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It's great that they're giving a way to recover old accounts...but that's a long list of required information, and I really can't see anyone remembering all of that from so many years ago.
Account creation date down to the exact day?....nobody knows that off the top of their head.
account close date?....I can't see anyone remembering more than the year that they closed it.
Key codes redeemed?....highly doubt people will remember exactly what they did and didn't buy for their account 10 years ago.
Last 4 digits of a credit card that's been expired for 10 years?.....unlikely.
Account creation date down to the exact day?....nobody knows that off the top of their head.
account close date?....I can't see anyone remembering more than the year that they closed it.
Key codes redeemed?....highly doubt people will remember exactly what they did and didn't buy for their account 10 years ago.
Last 4 digits of a credit card that's been expired for 10 years?.....unlikely.
I get that the more info the better. But like you said, some of those things don't make sense. I only remember to pay my 6th month fees when I can't log in. You can be sure I don't know when my account creation or close date would be.
The only way I can maybe tell you key codes redeemed is from old emails.
I hope they have thought this through for once. Just I feel those events will be nothing more than glorified EM events. Will the EMs also have to create rewards? Will there be any rewards apart from EM rares? Let's see.
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So now she pretends that the 'Player Quest System' that was discussed at the 20th Anniversary was just a 'potential future project' not something they announced and people got excited about....I don't think she would know the truth if it hit her on the head. Just one more thing she announced before she had any idea if it was possible. 
1. What’s the status of player tools for quests and such?
This was something we talked about as a potential future project at the 20th Anniversary Party. At this time we have no plans to implement a more robust system to support player generated quests, however a number of tools in the game exist that allow you to put together some really exciting adventures!
1. What’s the status of player tools for quests and such?
This was something we talked about as a potential future project at the 20th Anniversary Party. At this time we have no plans to implement a more robust system to support player generated quests, however a number of tools in the game exist that allow you to put together some really exciting adventures!
Mary Jane - Atlantic
Adventurer
I think this sums it up?
Did anybody notice that nobody is getting banned anymore for duping, which was a separate category in past newsletters?
I conclude the following:
1. Staff reclassified duping bans and added it to another category (if so, which?)
2. The dupers don't get caught that easily anymore
3. Staff managed to finally close duping loopholes
I conclude the following:
1. Staff reclassified duping bans and added it to another category (if so, which?)
2. The dupers don't get caught that easily anymore
3. Staff managed to finally close duping loopholes
Or they just finally eliminated the unwanted ones
Trying this on a different game. I have the account name and password but the game it self went through changes and was sold to a new company.
Here is what they wanted.
account name / easy I remember it.
• in-game handle name / I remeber it
• First and last name on the account / remember it
• E-mail Address on file / remember it
• Last four digits of the credit card on file / that was harder but checking my Amazon account found all my old cc info from 2003
• Any 25-digit retail product key activated on the account / had it
• Any credit card transaction ID number / email saying change to remember ship
• Any PayPal transaction ID number / never used for the game
We will see what happens. Info not hard to find if you look for it
Edit. I have not log onto this game in at lest 8 years
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Update from last post.
After waiting a few hours I decided to check my ticket. Saw they had a help chat channel. After talking with a GM from game chat. Only providing the email and name on account. I was able to log into a game I have not played since 2011.
This was STO.
Monday I will see how easy it is geting one or both of my everquest accounts back. I remember at lest one of the account names and password but I wont tell them that.
Why does BS make it so hard?
After waiting a few hours I decided to check my ticket. Saw they had a help chat channel. After talking with a GM from game chat. Only providing the email and name on account. I was able to log into a game I have not played since 2011.
This was STO.
Monday I will see how easy it is geting one or both of my everquest accounts back. I remember at lest one of the account names and password but I wont tell them that.
Why does BS make it so hard?
Captn Norrington
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I tried my own experiment as well, attempted my original Runescape account I haven't used since 2005. All I remembered was the character name (there's only one character per account) and the old email address I used. They got me my account back in less than an hour.
Mary Jane - Atlantic
Adventurer
So, is it safe to say that Broadsword/EA just doesn't have the ambition to help fellow members and would rather attempt to "force" players into buying all new? Seems very lucrative to make it almost impossible to get your old account, so you would have to buy all the expansions and such to start over again, give them some kind of revenue...
You would still have to buy the expansions. And such. When I came back before SA I still needed to get the ones that came out. It would have been cheaper for me to wait and just buy SA so I got all the others ones for free. New account would have had to buy them then as well. Or just wait until SA to get them free. Only accounts that of ToL free where active accounts.
They are just lazy is all.
I needed to get a copy of something it was done sometime in 1980s I had to make the poor girl working for the church look through all the old files by hand to find the records I need to get my kids into a catholic school. Toke her a few weeks but she found it.
At lest are info for the game is in a database not some files in a cabinet in a dark basement
This is the exact problem I'm running into. It was my friend's account from 15 years ago.... I have no clue about those details on my own account so there is no way I'm going to know that stuff for the account he gave me. It's funny because this was the entire point of EJ; drum up some possible subscriptions from old accounts which I'm willing do but they don't want the details I provided about the account. I get it that they would be cautious about this but at the end of the day if the account has been sitting there unused for 10 years then you would figure maybe I'm telling the truth. It's not like I'm looking to recover an account that logged in last week.
Not sure about other games, but back in the day you could buy and sell UO accounts easily on ebay (ebay later revised its RMT policy).
This might possibly explain UO's stricter reacivation rule, as the original vs. the current account holder might differ in a large number of cases. Afaik, the registered email address is one of the main infos required. This way they make sure to give the account to the original owner only. Just my 2 cents ...
This might possibly explain UO's stricter reacivation rule, as the original vs. the current account holder might differ in a large number of cases. Afaik, the registered email address is one of the main infos required. This way they make sure to give the account to the original owner only. Just my 2 cents ...
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The stricter rules are only a recent thing though, for years after accounts were sold they didn't ask for so much info. I got mine back in 2016 after two weeks of e-mails and attempts to find old e-mail addresses, phone numbers etc. It was difficult for us as my husband was in the Armed Forces and we had to move around a lot, usually every few years but sometimes it was only a year, so we didn't remember old phone numbers and email addresses as there were a lot of them. I didn't need to give the account creation date, in fact I had no clue about that as the account I used previously belonged to a friend who was long since gone to play other games, I really didn't expect to get the accounts back to be honest.
Like others have said it's much easier in other games, we played EQ2 and stopped for 5 years, when we wanted the accounts back it took a day or so and they gave us the info for ALL associated accounts for the e-mail address that was used at the time, four accounts in total, I can't fault the customer service people, they were fantastic. Another plus was that my houses were just as I left them, even after a server merge, not a thing was missing from our houses or our Guild Hall!
I'm starting to think that it's a cash grab to get people to pay out for stuff, it goes hand-in-hand with deleting soulstones etc. but they must know that people who have lost everything will go and buy gold to get back to where they were, right?
Like others have said it's much easier in other games, we played EQ2 and stopped for 5 years, when we wanted the accounts back it took a day or so and they gave us the info for ALL associated accounts for the e-mail address that was used at the time, four accounts in total, I can't fault the customer service people, they were fantastic. Another plus was that my houses were just as I left them, even after a server merge, not a thing was missing from our houses or our Guild Hall!
I'm starting to think that it's a cash grab to get people to pay out for stuff, it goes hand-in-hand with deleting soulstones etc. but they must know that people who have lost everything will go and buy gold to get back to where they were, right?
You forgot #4. They allow their pets to dupe but ban everyone else and call macroing.
This is the funniest of jokes..
The Origin store is the only official site for purchasing UO codes and purchasing codes from a third party site is not advised. Purchases from 3rd party sites are not supported and these codes can be considered to be fraudulent by EA. With that being said we want to give everyone fair warning regarding buying codes from a 3rd party site. If your account is flagged for buying codes from a 3rd party site it may result in your accounts being actioned.
No they won't shut down known 3rd party sites, and in fact allow them to advertise uninterrupted, but don't you dare buy from them, because you'll be actioned on.
The Origin store is the only official site for purchasing UO codes and purchasing codes from a third party site is not advised. Purchases from 3rd party sites are not supported and these codes can be considered to be fraudulent by EA. With that being said we want to give everyone fair warning regarding buying codes from a 3rd party site. If your account is flagged for buying codes from a 3rd party site it may result in your accounts being actioned.
No they won't shut down known 3rd party sites, and in fact allow them to advertise uninterrupted, but don't you dare buy from them, because you'll be actioned on.
It's not about lazy... it's that once upon a time people sold accounts via things like EBay... accounts were shuffled about and years later when people started thinking about account worth and all some nefarious individuals went and told UO that they wanted their account back... pretending like they had forgotten an old account... But these accounts were still active... being played by people who purchased them many years ago or friends of those people who were given the account by a passing friend who'd bought it off EBay or somewhere... and EA saw fit to give it back to the seller or whoever called to ask for the account with enough small information to get it... Which you can imagine certainly ticked off some players who'd been paying for that account for years... just try to imagine that you log in one day and find you can't. So you get on another account and see someone on your characters stripping your houses and selling all your stuff...
Yeah, it's happened. I've heard this a few times... so Yes they now make DANG sure that who is inquiring about the account really and truly is the OWNER... For awhile this practice was happening often... And even with people "guessing" a few character names on an account and making like they forgot things and had accounts handed to them. Phishing and all sorts of things to get accounts. Especially ones that are old and might have "rares"...
With that in mind as most of us really don't have a clue about when we started our account or anything... I would HIGHLY suggest that you go to the account mismanagement page and take screenshots of all the data you can there and save that to an external area... such as cloud storage so in case something does happen to your computer and all and you need to retrieve your account you have all that data...
Just saying.
Yeah, it's happened. I've heard this a few times... so Yes they now make DANG sure that who is inquiring about the account really and truly is the OWNER... For awhile this practice was happening often... And even with people "guessing" a few character names on an account and making like they forgot things and had accounts handed to them. Phishing and all sorts of things to get accounts. Especially ones that are old and might have "rares"...
With that in mind as most of us really don't have a clue about when we started our account or anything... I would HIGHLY suggest that you go to the account mismanagement page and take screenshots of all the data you can there and save that to an external area... such as cloud storage so in case something does happen to your computer and all and you need to retrieve your account you have all that data...
Just saying.
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Hmmm that might actually explain all those people that have come back and found their accounts stripped, if the original owner took control and sold everything. We had quite a few people on Europa that said all their stuff from the bank was gone.
Alexey Kurkdjian
Journeyman
I remember when everything was so easy and we had the account transfer option available, pay a $20 fee to safe transfer the account to someone else, now you cant access any of your own information, you have to beg to someone on support to answer and if you piss them with so many emails, they magic move your email address to the block section amd you are done.
Pets Dupe? WOW you mean like rabbits multiply. Would be awesome idea to get pets to breed?..hehe..JK I know what you mean
+
Can my grater dragon mate with your cu lol
Can my grater dragon mate with your cu lol
My bet is on #5. The point of this list is make players feel good about proactive GMs. Listing dupers there created a lot of outrage by the fact of their existence after all these years. So they just don't list them anymore, even if they do catch them. Players assume there are no dupers - everybody's happy.
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I think we all know there are still dupers, the multiple RMT sites proves this, I'm just surprised there are enough actual players (i.e not scripters and dupers) left to keep them all running. Of course running a business from your bedroom has few overhead costs.
Mary Jane - Atlantic
Adventurer
I am just blown away that EA hasn't been able to shut the websites down, but after all these years of running, I can see why they don't know. Not worth their time as they are devoting time and energy into new games, for example, FIFA (A lady I went to University with has a brother who works in the head office of EA (in Canada) and stated EA just focused on newer games; UO wasn't brought up)
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Most of EA probably forgot UO exists, which can be both a good and a bad thing. Broadsword on the other hand had a golden opportunity with the 20th Anniversary party to get some free advertising for UO, they could have invited game magazine/site journalists to the party, but of course they didn't bother, so after 20 years of the game, which was a big achievement, they did nothing to promote it.
Except in this instance, the account I'm talking about I had the name of AND 4 of the characters on the account AND it hasn't been active for 10+ years so there is zero chance there is any house plot from that account. The account doesn't have much value aside from it probably is about 6-7 years old and if I started paying the subscription again (for a year) I'd get 2 vet reward choices... so pay $120+ to get 2 things worth maybe 75m each.... yea that sounds like a great scam lol
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You would think they would be making things easier, they know account management is a mess, they know people sometimes take long breaks, they know there are a lot less players than there used to be and they know when an account was last played....why is it so difficult to give them money?
Trying to shut down the websites may be problematic from the legal standpoint. Even it they could do it, it would just drive the sellers underground - forums and such. What is mind boggling to me is after 2+ decades they were unable to remove the possibility from the game. Duping is a beta disease. Everywhere it appears, it is fixed quickly and permanently. But not UO.
Captn Norrington
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The problem is that for duping to be stopped the developers have to be better programmers than the cheaters, and that's definitely not the case in UO. Some of the dupers have such an expert level of knowledge about game mechanics and the code that operates it, they can run circles around the developers no matter how much time they put into stopping duping. The dupers can experiment endlessly on free shards and figure out exactly what to do and how to do it before they try on the real UO servers.
EA couldn't care less micromanaging one of their titles unless the actual developers request for it.
Go figure what Bonnie is going to tell them about the very gold sellers she has on her payroll.
Ya know what, prove it. I'm tired of seeing baseless accusations like this. I'm not even a fan of the Dev team, but this is one of the stupidest conspiracy theories I've seen. Either prove it, with real evidence, not lack of opposition evidence, or shut the hell up.
Nah, everyone is free to make his own judgement considering all the questionable actions and decisions regarding the swag store, the facebook page, EM power abuse, known gold sellers having their protection and what not.
Well, Bonnie HAS had at least 3 people with "ties" to gold sellers as EM's! That IS a fact. Along with the little tidbit that I have had one of the biggest RMT people in UO tell me that Bonnie KNOWS what he is doing and is fine with it!
I know your smart enough to know what conjecture is.
I wasn't around with the gold sellers being EM's, so I'm not sure if that was an unintended idiocy on Bonnie's part or done with her knowledge. We typically rely on innocent till proven guilty in the US (or we're supposed too). Do we know if she did? Or have strong evidence that she knew?
And circumstantial. I agree that everyone has the right to make their own judgements, but just sprouting circumstantial evidence doesn't really help your case or really help other people.
It's difficult to talk about such things here with the rules being what they are.
If you consider emails sent to her by multiple players showing EM's (and other players) "links" to RMT's "strong evidence", then yes. ROFL