PvP Thieving: A Lesson in Adaptation

[Taylor]

In the following article, Atlantic's infamous thief Shinobi, founder and GM of UO's largest thieving guild, comments on P0O's ability to adapt PvP thieving to the current UO gameplay environment.

http://www.uoledger.com/pvp-thieving-a-lesson-in-adaptation/

 

[Robthemilt]

OOOOOOHHHH

We're gonna be able to see the hate coming out of some peoples eyes on this one.

 

[Omnius]

persuasion thief? Theft taxes are old news... But persuasion theft is really on that blurry line between theft and scam.

Infiltration thieves, the ones that join guilds under special names, rob everyone blind then soulstone skills around to pk them for good measure are old news as well.


I hesitate to call persuasion a type of theft. As for stealing boats, who on pacific doesn't remember GOR stealing so many boats that we blockaded moonglow fel for months before a gm deleted every ship we had.

 

[Shinobi]

persuasion thief? Theft taxes are old news... But persuasion theft is really on that blurry line between theft and scam.

Infiltration thieves, the ones that join guilds under special names, rob everyone blind then soulstone skills around to pk them for good measure are old news as well.


I hesitate to call persuasion a type of theft. As for stealing boats, who on pacific doesn't remember GOR stealing so many boats that we blockaded moonglow fel for months before a gm deleted every ship we had.

Yes, persuasion thieves walk a fine line. But rather than sit around and wait for a good item to just appear in front of us, we go out and find them.

Guild infiltrating/taxing is old news. But we've basically told the major guilds on atlantic to either pay us 1mil monthly, or we will infiltrate monthly and steal something worth far more.

As far as GOR and all the boats, that does sound hilarious, lol. Wish I could have seen that one. We definetly need to bring GOR to atlantic.

 

[Omnius]

Good days were when spawn guilds used boats to enter t2a and GOR stole all the boat keys and kept the coasts of 3 spawns surrounded as well.

GOR means Grief. And few could deny that a small team of thieves could ever impact a shard as hard as we did.

Spawns slowing down? No problem GOR will make an army of naked guys with blessed weapons to reskill everyone everywhere.

Boat Macroing makes a resurgence? Enter The Pirates of GOR, marauding thieves on the high seas.

Mining without a license? No worries GOR has lots of tamers to release nightmares where you mine.

Of course who could forget GOR infiltrating the biggest spawn guild in UO(at the time FL had nearly 600 members). We infiltrated their massive guild wedding event and stole the cakes, and most of the deco.

GOR makes a visit to siege? An EM is giving out special kinds of wine you say? All is well brothers, GOR will steal the wine out of the EMs pack in front of a massive crowd of pvpers.

 

[Touzoko]

This I'd like to see. Thieves have lost their old attitude, and need to regain it. Thief is a hard template to beat, really, and we need to remember that.

 

[Barl DeAbreago]

It has been a long time since I really played a pvp thief in fel, but it was a lot of fun back in the day.

A few questions/comments though.

1) Have you considered or do you already include RP/pvp thieves? I have an RP thief that I've been very heavily considering taking to fel and getting back into the real thieving world.

Though I will admit, I too am not such a fan of the persuasion thief, I'd probably lean more towards spawn thieving.

2) When it comes to thief taxes... Again from the eyes of an rp/pvper...have you ever considered doing thief taxes a different way?

For example:

I have played atlantic for years now, but my home shard was Napa Valley. One of my most fond memories was Adam Ant, probably the most successful RP Pk there has been in my eyes. If you entered their dungeon and they found you, they would offer you a red bandanna. If you took the bandanna and wore it all was well, if you didn't however, they were going to kill you. Sometimes they didn't even offer you that, they just attacked, because after a while everyone on the shard KNEW that if they were without bandanna they should expect a fight.

So having taken from that, even if it is just as much a borrowed concept as joining/robbing guilds...

What if your thief tax was more of something say related to champ spawns? Pay the thief tax or our team of thieves are going to rob every scroll you get while you do all the work for us?

Just throwing thoughts out there.

I guess that is all I have for now.

 

[Touzoko]

All good ideas- anything the makes the marks pay, are good ideas.
You used to play? I don't recall seeing your name- welcome back and good luck purloining! I am on Siege- if you ever come this direction, message me and I'll help you get a toe-hold.

 

[Barl DeAbreago]

Thank you. My fel thief days were mostly back on Napa admittedly, and I never posted here then.

Been a long while I guess you could say

 

[Touzoko]

It is a slow period right now- with summer here. Now would be a great time to re-enter the thieves world, get your feet under you, and catch up.

 

[Omnius]

Keep in mind, theres little guarentee when stealing scrolls. Most spawn guilds more than capable at capturing a very prepared thief. And they're also very experienced at hunting and killing. That said, a spawn guild would welcome your attempts to rob them as they'd likely take more money in insurance from a thieves guild than that thieves guild would realistically benefit.

Guild infiltration and thieves taxes are traditional and hold great RP value. We say tax but it is extortion. Pay your protection money or we will beat you weak store owners up.

 

[Omnius]

The Infamous Evil Lord SMuRFY, Blind Fury and other members of GOR would join guilds under disguise kit names and then rob people blind. Of course most GOR members were also extremely experienced pvpers and when attacked(because banning people with names that don't match the guild list of a big guilds roster is hard), they would attempt to hunt and kill you until you quit. Inevitably GOR would prevail and take a trammel guild for millions. We'd steal a few hundred k worth and then we'd kill our way into loot.

As far as I can tell you can't kill and loot anymore so you have to be more cunning to get anything from those carebear gimps to make extortion still work.