You do away with 3rd party programmes and uo's health will improve.
SIMPLE.
Yes there are a few bugs here and there, a few balancing issues. Nothing is as annoying as speedhacking moving shot archers/dexxers!
I would settle for a buggy hack free uo over a unbugged cheat fest!
You wont lose half as many people as you may think and if we do, meaning they cant play without there crutches...THEN F OFF!
Rich,
You are failing at some basic comprehension to my argument.
It doesn't matter how many people we lose if they removed ALL the people using cheat programs... you will NEVER gain back the lost users because the people who have left over the cheat programs are nowhere near the number of people who are using.
Let us put some hypothetical numbers to this so you can understand. Let us say that UO currently has 100k subscribers. Let us say 10% of them use a cheat program of some sort(I think that is very under stated and probably closer to 20%) for 10k subscriptions. I HIGHLY doubt that there have been 10k or more subscriptions who have left UO over people using cheat programs. And I highly doubt that many would come back.
EA already stated they aren't going to do ANY advertising for UO. So short of word of mouth, there will be NO new players coming to UO. That leaves returning players and maintaining subscriptions.
Of those people that quit, the anti-Tram and anti-item guys are gone forever. I'd guess 200k subscriptions.
The boredom people may pop their head in when we get new content. But the fact they left once(or more) says they'll be gone after one or two months. I'd guess 300k subscriptions.
That leaves the poor customer service group and the fubar server rules group that EA should be appealing to. Of those two, the only one they can do with the most visibility is fix their fubar server rules... ie FIX THE BUGS IN A TIMELY MANNER!!
I'd bet more people have quit over items disappearing under houses, houses being lost due to game glitches, items just disappearing, etc than have EVER quit due to cheat programs.
There are two minorities who complain about cheat programs:
1) PvPers. I'd say MAYBE 20% of any given shard PvPs. And as this thread shows, they are all effected by someone on the shard who uses cheat programs.
2) Power merchants. Aka the guy who complains about scripting because it cuts into their profit. I'd say maybe 2%. To me, kind of a hypocritical argument. "I want people banned because I can't earn more gold in UO that
I can sell."
Unfortunately, EA has developed systems and further tweaked systems that make it impossible for the casual player to accomplish anything. EX: Bod system, random resources, community collection, etc. The only way to get some of these items is to power game(aka UO as a full time job) or use one of the cheat programs. They keep adding new systems to try to combat the cheat programs and only succeed in making them more lucrative while pushing the casual gamer further out(the random resources being a PRIME example of this)
As for the argument of their being a few bugs... that is like saying it was a pin hole that sunk the Titanic.
From a strictly PvP standpoint, lets look at some of the current issues that EA hasn't seen fit to adjust and instead keep compounding the issue:
1) Pets in PvP. First it was rune beetles and mares that were terrors. Then they add in dread mares and greater dragons. I have YET to see a fix for these nor have I heard any rumors of the devs doing anything. This is not a cheat program related issue.
2) Bugged quivers of rage. Free 5 points of damage for archers and only a half baked fix for them. Only would take 5 minutes to figure out an SQL query to fix this and maybe 20 minutes to run to remove ALL of them. This is ALSO not a cheat program related issue.
3) Gimp templates. Fill in your latest gimp template. Usually takes months if they even fix them. Took them 2-3 months to fix the 70+ deathstrike ninjas. Hmmm... still not a cheat program related issue.
4) Crashing when dragging bars. Yup, you can crash while grabbing health bars. I've died more due to this than a lot of other issues. Not sure this is an easy fix but it also hasn't been mentioned or addressed. Looks like another non cheat program related issue.
5) Super duper faction items. Uh... yeah. Easier to get than regular arties and 2x more powerful. Looks like an EA brain fart. Still not cheat program related issue unless you consider silver farmer.
6) Faction point broken system. "Yup, my crafter has 50,000,000 gained honesty"

Two issues: gaining points is abused and transfering points to a "points mule" to prevent other guilds from getting items. Still looking for a cheat program related issue

7) Synchronized targetting. This is the uncanny ability of some groups to always hit the same target. No real fix aside from finding a way to get rid of THE cheat program. Whoa... I think we found a cheat program related issue.

8) Pod racing players. Another of those uncanny faster than a speeding bullet abilities that some players seem to posses. Wow. We are at TWO cheat program related issues

9) Graphic hacks... you know, the special field and tree graphics that seem to pop up in PvP pictures every once in a while. It is also the simplest of things to fix in 10 minutes of coding... can anyone say file integrity check? So while this is semi cheat program related, it is more of an EA lazy issue than anything. I'd say half a cheat related issue:loser:
So, out of the 9 issues that just crossed my mind, we've got 2.5 issues that are cheat programs that are out of EA's control. While the other 6.5 issues are things that EA has DIRECT control over and could easily address.
I'll make this VERY clear: I hate all the GD cheating going on but it is beyond EA's ability to control while keeping UO running. If EA does the iron fisted move with cheating, UO is gone. They will lose way more people than they will gain back from that move and UO will in no way be a viable product for EA to continue to support even in their current minimalist support.