(Player News) The Perilous Inquirer - Eighth Issue

[DeadBob]

The Perilous Inquirer V1,8
Vol. 1, Eighth Issue
August 23, 2013

WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?
That's the question I asked myself while observing the EM Event on Bucs Den. I wondered about the SL players who expertly killed everyone and everything. And I wondered about the outrage at them on chat. The answer, it turns out, is that this is exactly how UO was designed. The following is from a 1998 essay written by the original UO Lead Designer, Raph "Designer Dragon" Koster.
"Eliminating the killers from the mix of the population results in a stagnant society. Players become cliquish, and without adversity to bring communities together, they fragment and eventually go away. At the same time, too many killers will quite successfully chase away everyone else. And after feeding on themselves for a little while, they will move on too. Leaving an empty world.
Ideally, we bring killers to an awareness of the virtual community they are disrupting, whilst at the same time still permitting people to exercise power over one another, because people tend to seek status and power, and it's an important mechanic we cannot do without."
See Dragon's essay, "Who Are These People Anyway?" at raphkoster.com/gaming/essay3.shtml

SUGAR SMACKS CONFESSES
To being The Boston Strangler, the West Mesa Bone Collector & The Phantom Killer of Texarkana
"It's been preying on my conscious for years, all those unsolved murders. But I feared it would damage my career on UO if it got out that I was a -shudder- a secret serial killer. I mean, what good is killing if you can't boast of it? But now it's out. I killed all those 29 people."

SATAN INTERVIEW
by Kattasrophe (age 12)
Satan, 31, is a PvPr in the guild FSP, his main target, blues. He says he likes to think of himself as an equal opportunity killer. He says he doesn't care if they are red, blue, new, old or an NPC, he will kill them.
He has played for over 187 months. He started when he was 16. He found out about Ultima Online from a friend and got the game for his dad on Christmas.
The only time he hasn't played was when he was deployed to Iraq and Cuba.
(Side note: While doing the interview, he went to Shame and killed a guild member of mine.)
But besides killing people, he is kinda nice!

"REPORT-GOD" CREATED
Siege Only
UO has authorized creation of a God statue where Siege players can report each other. "It'll save staff time not having to deal with whiners," UO explained. The new God, named Bigus Dickus in honor of Mel Brooks, will be installed on Fire Island where Siege Players can take their prayers & supplications for relief.

CLASSIFIED AD
Siege Estates - An updated runebook to Siege Vendors by Grimlex.
"Shopping could not be easier with this gate traveling wonder. See Gate Book Store at the Perilous Inquirer."

The Perilous Inquirer
3rd house on left out the Luna south gate.
Reporter: Kattasrophe
Contributor: Grimlex
Sealed copies of the current issue are on the steward. Back copies are free on the shop named, "Siege Droppings."
Submission guidelines are posted on the bulletin board.

~sine die~

 

[Guardian KX]

Yup, another.... ummmm.... paper.
Think I total 12 minutes of life wasted now.

 

[FrejaSP]

I don't think Designer Dragon really understood the world UO was back in 1997-98, nor would he understand what we have here on Siege.
He thought he had to make rules to nerf the killers. Later we had seen, advantages for being blue works much better to keep the numbers of killers down. When Siege was young we had a much larger % of reds than we have now.

A while a go, it was Arrr, who was blamed for ruining EM events, now it is SL. In the future, it may be a 3th guild.

 

[DeadBob]

I don't think Designer Dragon really understood the world UO was back in 1997-98, nor would he understand what we have here on Siege.
He thought he had to make rules to nerf the killers. Later we had seen, advantages for being blue works much better to keep the numbers of killers down. When Siege was young we had a much larger % of reds than we have now.
A while a go, it was Arrr, who was blamed for ruining EM events, now it is SL. In the future, it may be a 3th guild.

Thanks, Freja. Your point is well taken. Trammel proves that most players want to live blue.
That may be why UO threw monster invasions, on the production shards, at Trammel towns where players liked to congregate, to foster a sense of community by putting the blues in a common danger. It didn't work, of course. The Moonglow invasion caused the bank sitters to move to Britain. The Britain invasion moved them to Luna.

There is a feeling on Siege, unlike say, Atlantic. It's like the difference between living in a small town vs. a big city: A small town rife with murder vs. a big city where whole neighborhoods are safe and secure and prosperous. I think of Siege as the last frontier town. It's just more fun to play here.

 

[FrejaSP]

I really believe it have to do with our ruleset, instead of devs making rules to control the evils, it is in our hands to make it work, that be with debat or with killing the trouble makers or with abanding them from the shops.
In Trammel, players tend to try to go solo and don't really need to group up. With item insurance, they don't need friends to help get their loot back from looting monsters. Also I don't think attack of towns are the way to go in Trammel. Devs need to close their ears, when they ask to have all over land spawn removed. Give them some of our Dark Wisps, and let them raid the overland in groups from 1-3 wisps.
Also let some Lich Lords make randum trips to the dungeons and kill all on their way and loo everything they can, so the tramme players have to kill them to get their on insure able loot back.
That would be the only way I think to help the community on normal shards. They would cry loud but it would make the game more exciting and they would not get bored so fast.

They added faction to let players fight without having to go red but I really did like it much better before we got faction. Siege had it's own factions.

Crafters and PvM'ers who rarely tryed to fight but depended of the anti PK's
Blue PvP'ers / Anti PK's, who try to keep the crafters and farmers and player towns safe for PK's
RP PK, who tryed to share the fun with their victims. The anti PK's mostly have friendly fights with them and they would allie vs the worse PK's
The evil PK's, who most play for own fun and for the loot. Some of them would seack easy target, other would target the blue PK'ers first or crafters/farmers to get the anti PK's to show up.

Faction messed up all this old factions and alliances. On normal shards, the split in fel and tram was the worse move they could make, much better would had been smaller places around the land, deep forest, some dungeon levels, some parts of Ilshenar and Tokuno, where all could attack all but attacking blue would make you red and you could not go to towns before you was blue again and all blue npc's would auto attack you. There would still be the guildwars too.

If we look back at Siege years ago, before faction, we did have alot guilds, both red and blue and alot roaming reds. We did not have gen chat but we had a few extern chat (forgot the name of it). The anti PK had a chat where crafters and farmers could call for help, and we had a gen chat too and there was a few others too.

We have the freedom to solve our problems without calling a gm