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The GMs are still very new its been little over a year since Mythic GMs took over the EA GMs. And even before the change they weren't always that up to speed for enforcements. Or for a better choice of words, they had their protocols to follow. But isn't that true for all large companies? You can't expect to have a GM at your calling soon as you detect something fishy in this game.
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No, I do expect this from large companies I pay to play on. Simply using WOW as an example since it was the other major game I played for a while. You find an exploiter or scripter and page a gm? What happens? Within 30minutes to an hour later the player is thus banned from the game.
What happens in UO when you page about a script miner/Ljer, afk arcane demon killer, or jhelom tamer ? 2-3 hours later you may receive a canned reply saying "Thank you for reporting this issue, be assured this matter will be investigated and appropriate action will be taken. You will not be informed of the outcome." etc... Yet sure enough, hour after hour, day after day, the same players are doing the same exact scripting in the same way. Oh they don't ban for scripting or botting, all they will do is sit there for you to reply. What happens when they do find you to be afk using an illegal 3rd party program? a slap on the wrist and a 72 hour ban at most. What happens right after 72 hours is over? Right back to what they were doing except now the script will have a hiding loop or a new location in it. Wow, great method of policing the game and keeping it clean. No wonder noobs will complain that everything costs hundreds of mils now. It's because no one does anything about the game being flooded with 12-15 mil pure gold per char, per shard, per afk gold killing location each day on a vamp dexer with bags of sending. Let's see, a player opens 10 newbie accounts and outfits them with a cookie cutter suit. Loads em up with some bags of sending and a stack of powder and runs the script off in a remote location. Boom, 150mil per day from all 10 accounts each day from killing demons.
Sure speedhacking is harder to detect as well as duping and requires investigation. However if they were the least bit serious about preventing the masses from freely using these 3rd party progs they would implement progs like nProtect on the client loading. Are there ways around that? Sure. Will your average 12 year old copy-paste script kiddie know how to get around it? Doubtful.
So yes, I expect it from games I play. However I don't expect it from UO because it clearly refuses to enforce their own TOS. When you hire an employee to a company whether it's a merger or a fresh set of staff, you train them on the current protocol. This would include everything from what's legal to what's not. Selling Dupes has somehow become legal along the years. But wait, don't wear a quiver with 400 stones !! God forbid the game breaking tactic of having 4000 arrows instead of 400. That's clearly more important to enforce than players selling 1000000000000000000 duped ankh deeds, fountains, ornies, server births, event rares, and thousands of bkits.
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When did they ever do this? Dupping existed as long as I can remember, but they need proof and proper investigation before they take actions. <blockquote><hr>
Exactly. They never did and never will. They don't "investigate" until they lose face when a guild like HAX decides to be able to bring the servers down daily to make thousands of arties blatantly. The problem is they don't care to enforce their own rules while the problem is still small and contained. They'd rather wait till an epidemic breaks out and quarantine the entire area with a blanket ban and hope they fixed it.
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It is not so much of a lack of game support per say but rather a new way of support. Which is not surprising whenever you see a new company taking over.
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There new way of support, ah I see. "You are 6th in the queue" 1 month later your page gets answered asking you be patient as the issue is still being looked into. Great. Oh, and I've waited 2 months now for my dungeon keeper gems to be fixed and have the name that GM Sakinthlas erased off the gem. Result? The gems are still not movable, GM Cevone now has possession of the gems after telling me he'd transfer them to my new house on lake superior for me. What happened with that? Ooopsie he made a mistake. Now I can't get my gems because he won't return them to me unless I own a house on Atlantic on the account I paged from. But wait, how can I have a house on atlantic when I own a house on lake superior ? Why do I own a house on lake superior on that account ? Because he told me to transfer it from my secondary account to my main account since I couldn't have the gems placed in a secondary account house holder. YAY! Now I have a house under the wrong char, and 2 dungeon keeper gems that a GM can never give back to me because I can never own a house on atlantic without opening another account to take my lake superior luna house. Oh did I forget to mention I had to empty 40 full vendors and reprice all the items to do this ? And If i chose to for some reason place a dummy house on atlantic to get my gems back, they'd still be immovable.
So, cevone tells me that in order for me to move them to atlantic after he gives them back I would need to purchase an Xfer from uogamecodes.com So I go and buy an xfer token and ask for my gems to be placed in my character's backpack. What's the reply I get after 2 days in the gm queue ? Oh we can't put the gems in that character's backpack. Only in a house you own on that account. So, basically the GM staff or lack there of has cost me roughly over 100mil so far in time, effort, and items.
So yea, forgive me if I'm not as happy about the staff as you seeing as how I don't get to have my accounts unbanned when I ask friends to check in on it for me. I get forwarded to pakistan to talk to an account agent who can't help me with the issue because they don't have access to that information.
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Again, I am not so sure if its lack of development but rather trying to watchout for 1 million + bits of information its hard to do a perfect QC/QA
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1million + bits isn't too difficult to monitor when you're fixing a specific block of code.
You're editing a sub for a fountain deed so that owners can freely do what they want with it. Normal companies would think to test all aspects of the deed once the initial problem is fixed as to make sure there's no NEW problems that arise. Does EA? course not. They just slap on the quick patch and hope it's fixed. So what if it creates another dupe? We'll just deal with it a few months after if anyone ever finds out how to do it. Doesn't matter if there's a few thousand more of those items out it's just a game.
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Playing the game to debug their software saves us the long run of paying another 20 bucks for a new game. Ever think of it that way? Besides, a lot of people actually thought it was a honor to be involved in this process. To them, they feel their opinions mattered as the developers took their suggestions and continuousely trying to change.
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What do you think Stygian Abyss will be if not a game we have to pay another $20 for ?
And what client will SA Require to play? Wow, the KR client. Oh wait, you mean that client that we paid $13 a month to debug for EA/mythic for the past summer which still has a multitude of bugs, lack of item hues, functionality, and floating walk/run cycles? Fyi for those who haven't studied animation/3d animation every reel that you submit in your portfolio requires a good character walk cycle. So this is actually one of the most basic and fundamental requirements in becoming an animator or getting hired as one. So when I randomly flail my arms and legs around when I'm running about the world I don't quite see where me paying $13 a month to debug their software is being worth while. Do I get college credit or a IT/IS certificate after they come out with SA? Nope, I get to pay $20 for the CD, $30 for the Collector's edition that has a fancy new feature, and $13 more a month to play it.
Alot of people may have thought it was an honor to feel like a part of the team. What did they do in actuality? They did the work of the people they're paying with subscriptions. Would you all like to come eat at my restaurant and pay $20 for a meal that you have to cook and prepare yourself while I sit there watching TV? I didn't think so.
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I don't disagree with you that there are plenty of new games out there that might seem appealing for the short time being, but for me, its UO as long as it exist. I've been playing this for 10 years and looking back this game has really been good to me. Do I remember parts of Diablo I, II, Dungeons and Dragons, Dungeon Seige etc.. of which I've also played? Not really. But UO, ahhhh the memories. This is the only game where I can leave it along, and come back after a while and still have fun going out with old friends to do a peerless run, or get my butt kicked at PVP or do a Doom run to steal something or simply going all over shards looking at museums. There are no other games like it.
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I remember bits of every game that I've played. Both the good and the bad. Do I remember 6 hour games of starcraft with 4v4 BGHs ? Sure I do. It was hell of a lot of fun to go at it with that many people. Do I remember Diablo with all the hacks and cheats? Sure do. I also remember all the SOJ dupes and people buying them on ebay for $5 per.
Do I remember WOW? Sure I remember the 2 years of fun I got out of it pvping 24/7. grinding up to the level caps, questing with friends, doing my first 40man raid to Molten Core.
I also remember when UO was fun and challenging to make it big. It was actually a fulfilling goal to achieve when you made that first million gold. It was fun to compete against others when you tried to place an idoc or loot it without saying F this rafman and his team will just script it anyway so why bother. I remember leveling my chars at the bone knight wall for a few hours each day while chatting with people and making friends. I remember the few idiots each day that wouldn't move back into the BK wall line and would go on killing everything. I remember casting an army of blade spirits to kill ogre lords.
What is UO now? Hey I need to GM magery on a new char, let me load up a script to cast spells on my spellbook for the next 4 hours till I'm gm while I use a -29 mage wand. I mean they've literally been trying to make scripting easier for people. At least with 8x8 you could actively block players from afk scripting by plopping 50 fishing nets down around a macroers boat and invising yourself. Or making a blockade of ships to block their auto-unstuck scripts.
Oh I need to GM a new warrior. What will I do? Make a new char with 50 skill, pop on +25 jewelry and whack a golem afk for a day. Magically voile I now have GM anat, tactics, swords, and lumberjacking.
What's that ? I need 300 bkits to buy some stuff irlz? Sure, let me load up a few newbie accounts and set them up in a few minutes so they can sit atop luna and login to auto harvest bods and logout instantly at the inn.
Yes, I remember many things about every game I've played and unfortunately UO has the one that has let me down the most times out of all of them due to their lack of dedication to keeping the game clean.
Even free MMOs have better security and game staffing than UO nowadays. UO is no different than a free emulator shard now with all the colors, dupers, exploiters, speed hackers, and lack of support.
check my rares thread for details.