play the game for what its worth. if half of you spent a fraction of the time you spend complaining about game mechanics and harping on us pks (who, trust me, have gotten more than our fair share of 'the shaft' over the past 6 years) on being a little more open minded and improving your characters, we'd probably have a lot more people enthusiastic about PvPing. but the Tram generation often denies felucca its rightful chance. don't let the few bad apples ruin it, there is lots of fun to be had! there is nothing stopping any of you from saving up for artifacts and a powerscroll or two.
Personally, I sell crap in tram and thats absolutely it, because brit bank is the only densely populated place in the game really (besides skara). as far as i'm concerned trammel's intro was the pvp switch. i could go off about the overkill that was trammel for eons but i won't. its all been said a thousand times before.
MOST UO veterans, even the ones who don't actively PvP, heavily prefer felucca over trammel for the sole reason that it offers a feeling of true risk vs. reward and accomplishment. sad sauce AI doesn't 'do it' for the majority of skilled players any longer. a good rl bud of mine's father has played UO as long as me and absolutely hates pking, but i'll be damned if i ever see him set foot in trammel. he says he feels like hes cheating himself by playing there. UO's defining characteristic is its versatility and VARIETY most of all, a large part of which is non-con pvp. it has already been crushed with the introduction of trammel, and complete removal of the system would doom my accounts to the great end-all cash-in that is eBay.
the problem is, a vast percentage of UO's current population was not around for the enthralling red vs. blue wars that took place around every hotspot during the game's best years (late 98-2k1). i personally loved pking then, even WITH statloss (it separated the men from the boys, so to speak, and was a fine system for limiting the number of pkers) because it was such a rush. when you killed a pk, you basically set them back a serious amount of character development, which felt great for the antis=P and pking itself required great teamwork and concentration. on top of that, every lost connection as a 7x red with over 1000 kills left me sweating like an idiot, praying for colors when i got back into the game. hell, even DISCONNECTING was exciting.
righting myself from that wild tangent, on the cheating issue: NOT THAT MANY PEOPLE ACTUALLY SPEEDHACK! when whiners die, they blame speedhack or just make up some 'cheat' their killer was using. sure, there are scripts and speedhacks i guess, but few serious players use them (they don't need to!). just because you read about them from posters using the F word and angry ALL CAPS once and a while doesn't mean they're such a rampant problem. it often just means the poster got bizzowned in a hardcore embarassing manner (like a lucky exp-fs-armorignore or something=P ) and is mad about it. it happens to the best of us. chill out.
i guess i just miss the community aspect of pre-Tram PvP. belonging to a guild MEANT something; you had numbers and protection on a hunt. pks couldn't just mow your PvM asses down as easily because the hunters went in groups just as large as pks and skill (not item) based pvp applied as much in the blues favor as the reds. equilbrium! calling my buds to blood elems to own some random para ganker from DnA or a high bounty from SUN who had just rocked my warrior was some of the most fun UO has ever given me, and I miss it. the revenge sure was sweet, and it worked both ways.
i'll never forget how much fun it was to hide inside destard entrance with KaBoom-DnA, Luba and Zemial to surprise-tactic drop Jasos (the founder and leader of once-mighty GoL anti-pks) in front of 10+ of his loyal guildmembers on their hunt. they fought back fiercely every time, and it was great. thats all over now, unfortunately =/ and a 'true' PvP switch would kill the last of that excitement for good. guild wars, factions, etc. are great, but no stone-chisled ruleset will ever replace true governing by the players.
