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At least for this day, the community mattered - it's future should as well.
Myself? I'd actually like to see the plots, no matter how big or small, made into public parks, no matter where they are (similar to Tokuno, perhaps with a small pond here or there and some benches)- given back to the community as a whole, not for the personal gain of one. A park would have just as much of a lasting effect in the world as charred ruins. I mean, come one, how many of us walk past the Moonglow coten fields and talk about how we use to pick it for money...walking back and forth to the tailor, barefoot, in the dark, without a coat......
Your thoughts?
Edited to add: The plots in Fel - something worth fighting for control of - say perhaps entrances to the Harrower - may provide a bit more entertainment than hiddens simply camping the dungeons.
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So one day I made a new character on Pacific and ran her from New Haven to Luna City so I could use the nifty rune library I had spotted in a Luna City vendor house. Think I was looking for a rune to Compassion desert since my main house is there.
I open a runebook, find a rune to Compassion shrine and click...
Nothing happens...
Ah! The rune library is NOT set for public use. So...
I am not new to UO, I did know of one other rune library that wasn't as convenient, Mellow Yellow's in the wilderness of Skara Brae, but I was annoyed so I said a few things out loud:
"A rune library not set in Luna City NOT set for public use?!! What's the point of that?! Does the house owner really hate new UO players that much? I say we vote this guy off the island and bring Mellow Yellow in in his place!"
Well it just so happened that the house owner was in his other house across the road. Yes, he owned 2 Luna City houses (maybe more), although the other house was piled high with valuable UO items rather than an Unusable rune library.
He took the time to tell me that the rune library was set to his guildies only. This is one of the larger guilds on Pac and the same guild that I discovered had a "cheatUO" link on their guild webpage awhile back (which was linked through UO.com's guild page), so this Unusable rune library was strike 2 for this guy and his guild in my opinion.
So ok it's his vendor house, his rune library I suppose he can set the library to be used by whomever he likes, but what harm could it possibly to do to let the general public use it? (Oh yes I suppose if some of the books lead to "our" favorite afk script-mining spots" I could sort of understand them not wanting the public to see that).
It's my opinion that if you ain't helping UO then you are hurting UO, and this guy with his nonpublic rune library and his being in a guild that had a cheat uo link on its guildpage certainly wasn't HELPING UO. These are the types of players left in UO today, which is pretty sad. Since I was already ticked off with the devs for NOT doing anything about dupers, I left UO to go play Wow.
Wow is down or something one day so I get on UO and visit a vendor house in Makoto that sells idoc items and there I bump into a fairly famous rune book maker (NOT Mellow Yellow), we chat, and it turns out this person had asked the Luna City nonpublic rune library house owner to NOT set the books to public so THEY could SELL more rune books over at the home owner's other house across the street (rune book maker and Luna City nonpublic rune library house owner are guildies in that cheatuo linked guild).
So I finally have an answer as to why the Luna City rune library was NOT made usable to the public, greed.
Having purchased some Candle of Love premarked rune books made by this rune book seller (5k-10K) I knew those rune books weren't cheap.
I know that a newb in UO gets 1k to start out and usually spends 500 plus of that buying a horse, and that a newb is mostly likely the player most in need of public rune librarys, to me the rune book seller thinking he/she was going to make 5k-10k off selling rune books to players new to UO was ludicrous.
I wasn't even a newb in need of a rune library I knew where to go to find a public one, but I could imagine how a new player might feel if they got sent to this rune library and found it unusable like I had done.
They would feel pretty unwelcome in the community.
That is why I would like to see Mellow Yellow take over that burning Luna City plot on Pacific.
I admit I do not know this person ingame or in real life, they might be a mass murderer for all I know, but I have seen their work and they don't require that you join their cheatuo linked guild, or pay real cash up front, or pay 10k to buy one of their rune books, or hand over your ICQ before they will help you. Mellow Yellow's rune library is public.
Mellow Yellow provides a free and useful service to ALL UO players and this is the kind of player I want to interact with in my UO community (although I realize that it wouldn't be a TRUE community unless it had a certain amount of greedy evildoers trying to to steal my stuff and telling me that I am unwelcome in the community by setting up public rune libraries NOT set to the public).
Maybe some sort of rental from EA of these burned out plots for those who provide free truly PUBLIC rune libraries could be set up.
Otherwise I'd prefer to see shopping move AWAY from Luna City vendors so my vote would go to make these plots unusable by players, the hope being that eventually 90% of the Luna vendors houses would be burned (my opinion that at least 90% sell ill gotten goods), and we would be rid of the capital city of cheaters once and for all.
