In the other thread there was a question about why there was "the wipe" which in my opinion was the original reason why Siege lost and never regained it's player base, let me take you back a few years...
Back in the early years of UO, OSI put up a "veteran shard", (also known as the hard shard), Siege Perilous, which had 1 character per account, no stat loss for reds, triple prices on all NPC goods, vendors ddidn't buy anything from you. Everyone was happy. People were reactivating accounts and moving to SP full time before it was even up. The first weekend, by all reports, was amazing… "UO the way it was meant to be" was a familiar expression.
There were some things that were bad though.
The GM’s were out on a macror witch hunt like no one could believe. People were suspended and banned for going to the bathroom without logging out first (of course, this was according to them, but there are too many reports like this to ignore). As always, GM’s refuse to listed to anyone.
A really old and never fixed bug that allowed people to gain tinkering rapidly with almost no material investment became an issue, as everyone needed things that tinkers courld make, but no one could afford to buy it in a shop. Everyone’s tools began to break too quickly, which required them to jump through all sorts of hoops to replace their crappy chopping axes, hammers, shovels, sewing kits, whatever. Macro tinkers flourished even more.
In their continuing delusion that macroing is the source of all of UO’s problems (instead of the natural byproduct of the real issues), OSI implemented a series of truly bizarre limitations, i.e. skills that do not take resources now use stamina or mana instead. Hide, lose 10 stamina. Use anatomy, lose 10 stamina. Besides that fact that this makes no sense at all, it messed up gameplay a lot, since the fact that people are were newbies who were supposedly not macroing means that people have very little stamina to toss away while trying to figure out how to use the anatomy skill. Gaining lore skills become as tiring for the character as they were tiresome for the macroless player.
Also, completely out of the blue, it was announced that stats would have different effects on combat abilities. For instance, your fighter’s ability to swing a heavy object at something else and bash it were going to be affected by intelligence. Casting times for mages were going to be affected by dexterity. Health was going to be modified by intelligence and dexterity. No one asked for this, and it was unthinkable who would think these ideas made any sense at all.
The next day, after message boards everywhere were spammed with messages concerning OSI’s ******** approach, Runesabre announces that the stamina/mana drains will be removed. Instead, non-resource skills will now be limited to gaining based on time, therefore making the skills even more tedious to raise, more tiresome to deal with, and above all, more in need of macroing. Good idea, and the birth of RoT.
Also bowing to the numerous caring observations that the ideas regarding stats and combat were thought up by some lobotomized ****wit chimpanzee, the stat changes were removed as well. Players waited expectantly for the announcement that cooking skill would soon determine the damage of an energy bolt, and damage taken from weapons would be modified depending on what resolution your Windows desktop was set to.
One day, the SP players logged in to see an in-game survey which asked them their opinion on a shard wipe. This was immediately notable because the dev team had obviously put more effort into getting this stupid survey to work than they ever had put into fixing a real problem. The players had been told previously that the shard would not be wiped unless there was a really serious issue. At this time, the only real issues (besides the usual ****ty support, loser players, and constant disconnects) were the tinkering thing (which should have been fixed years ago and could be handled now with a lowering of tinkering skills, pissing off only some of the players) and the fact that GM’s were macroer-hunting nazis.
The poll results were 53% against a wipe, 47% for a wipe.
OSI decided to wipe the shard anyway.
And now you know the rest of the story...la
Back in the early years of UO, OSI put up a "veteran shard", (also known as the hard shard), Siege Perilous, which had 1 character per account, no stat loss for reds, triple prices on all NPC goods, vendors ddidn't buy anything from you. Everyone was happy. People were reactivating accounts and moving to SP full time before it was even up. The first weekend, by all reports, was amazing… "UO the way it was meant to be" was a familiar expression.
There were some things that were bad though.
The GM’s were out on a macror witch hunt like no one could believe. People were suspended and banned for going to the bathroom without logging out first (of course, this was according to them, but there are too many reports like this to ignore). As always, GM’s refuse to listed to anyone.
A really old and never fixed bug that allowed people to gain tinkering rapidly with almost no material investment became an issue, as everyone needed things that tinkers courld make, but no one could afford to buy it in a shop. Everyone’s tools began to break too quickly, which required them to jump through all sorts of hoops to replace their crappy chopping axes, hammers, shovels, sewing kits, whatever. Macro tinkers flourished even more.
In their continuing delusion that macroing is the source of all of UO’s problems (instead of the natural byproduct of the real issues), OSI implemented a series of truly bizarre limitations, i.e. skills that do not take resources now use stamina or mana instead. Hide, lose 10 stamina. Use anatomy, lose 10 stamina. Besides that fact that this makes no sense at all, it messed up gameplay a lot, since the fact that people are were newbies who were supposedly not macroing means that people have very little stamina to toss away while trying to figure out how to use the anatomy skill. Gaining lore skills become as tiring for the character as they were tiresome for the macroless player.
Also, completely out of the blue, it was announced that stats would have different effects on combat abilities. For instance, your fighter’s ability to swing a heavy object at something else and bash it were going to be affected by intelligence. Casting times for mages were going to be affected by dexterity. Health was going to be modified by intelligence and dexterity. No one asked for this, and it was unthinkable who would think these ideas made any sense at all.
The next day, after message boards everywhere were spammed with messages concerning OSI’s ******** approach, Runesabre announces that the stamina/mana drains will be removed. Instead, non-resource skills will now be limited to gaining based on time, therefore making the skills even more tedious to raise, more tiresome to deal with, and above all, more in need of macroing. Good idea, and the birth of RoT.
Also bowing to the numerous caring observations that the ideas regarding stats and combat were thought up by some lobotomized ****wit chimpanzee, the stat changes were removed as well. Players waited expectantly for the announcement that cooking skill would soon determine the damage of an energy bolt, and damage taken from weapons would be modified depending on what resolution your Windows desktop was set to.
One day, the SP players logged in to see an in-game survey which asked them their opinion on a shard wipe. This was immediately notable because the dev team had obviously put more effort into getting this stupid survey to work than they ever had put into fixing a real problem. The players had been told previously that the shard would not be wiped unless there was a really serious issue. At this time, the only real issues (besides the usual ****ty support, loser players, and constant disconnects) were the tinkering thing (which should have been fixed years ago and could be handled now with a lowering of tinkering skills, pissing off only some of the players) and the fact that GM’s were macroer-hunting nazis.
The poll results were 53% against a wipe, 47% for a wipe.
OSI decided to wipe the shard anyway.
And now you know the rest of the story...la
...la
, so we can all get back to this 
. and we will all be a great big happy 