I read it, and all I saw was that he is apparently mad, and is giving up. Just sayin'.
Not mad, just really disappointed and so damn tired of trying to get Broadsword, Mythic or EA to ever actually listen to what we say, or grasp the idea of enforcing their own rules, or live up to their promises. I came very close to giving up a year ago, but hoped the change to Broadsword might make things improve - but sadly as far as I can see, it's made no difference at all.
We're always given a runaround, whatever we try raise with them - unless it's what they want to hear, it's essentially ignored. They keep saying they 'communicate', but really results suggest to me they don't. Just look back at all the conversations we have tried having with them about so many things that just ran into the ground when they concluded we were 'wrong', the 'misunderstandings' when people explain something (look back on the meet and greets, where people explain in very clear detail what the problem they see is and get a response that clearly shows nobody read or understood what was said, and instead a 'canned' speech about something sort of related, but not really relevant, is the result).
Sure sometimes the posts around here get overly aggressive, or rude, or simply confusing to try work through - but there have been a hell of a lot of polite, calm and reasoned discussions that got utterly ignored, brushed off, or the devs dropped out of the conversation when we just did not agree with their line.
We're regularly told how important the rules of behaviour are, yet even when absolutely blatantly those are being abused, by the same few people on a regular basis, nothing happens (the most blatant of the many, many times I've seen this was an EM event being totally trashed by a small group of people, Mesanna was called on to try sort it out, and she turned up and spent her time talking to some folks about an upcoming rares fest on another shard, whilst the disruption and bad behaviour went on right in front of her....).
There are so very many examples where we're promised things, or even have a reasonable right to expect things (stuff like the most basic levels of efficiency, consistency or professionalism) yet they never happen. Things are always going to be addressed and improved 'soon', we're told harrassment and abuse are taken really seriously but when the regular offenders get reported or paged on, nothing happens. (It so happens some of my accounts were on different email addresses, so one time I raised a problem separately with each email account to see what happened - the replies, in this order of receipt, were 'We take all such issues really seriously, thank you for your mail', then ' it is important you use the systems for reporting these incidents at the time' - the email I send clearly stated I and others had done just that - and last of all a cople of days later 'We're not aware of any such problems on that particular shard'.....). And of course nothing ever happened to resolve the problem.
Ask around the previous Governors and see how many can say they had a clear understanding of what they could ask for as results of their events, we kept getting contradictory answers where things that had already been done in some places were 'impossible' or 'against the rules', but when we asked 'well what exactly ARE these rules' we just got more confusing smoke and mirrors replies. It all gave the feeling of being made up as they go along based on whims and moods, and that's no way to manage anything....
The whole list of things that have gone wrong, keep going wrong, and as far as I can see will forever remain unaddressed would be FAR too long for anyone sane to read through - it's not a case of being 'mad', it's being worn down by a company that says all the right words about caring, and wanting things to be better - and the track record of their actions and the results of their bizarre decision keeps falling woefully short of anything I can term acceptable.
It's still one of the greatest games ever, and most of the community comprises really good people I'm proud to call friends - but the constant stream of bad decisions, failures to act, and horrible mismanagement has finally become more than I can put up with. The game, and especially the people, deserve SO much better than what they get.....
I can't fault the amount of work the devs seem to do, Mesanna seems to spend too many hours per day for anyone's health sorting out account issues, or transfer glitches, or other bugs - but that surely is what a GM level person should be doing, not a manager who is setting the culture and future track for the entire game - the future just seems to be more time-limited 'special events' for the rare drop, or more grinds for things, less actual understanding of how many people actually
play the game, and no ambition beyond 'make a new area and some new pixel crack'. Power creep on items looks to be endless, with a new 'must have' set of objects coming in as a quick boost to playing numbers or activity - but it's so short sighted, having got on to the treadmill of 'must give players cool new stuff' they seem unable to get off it, but what made this such a great game in the past was you could dive in to any aspect of it with a reasonable level of success without huge investment of time, or nowadays RL money, and be fully involved. I kept hoping for monsters with better AI, but we got more HP and higher resists instead, or stories that held together and made the world more 'alive' and coherent, not apparently parachuted in new 'twists' in what seemed more a 'that would be cool, throw it in' approach than anything that actually resembled a living and evolving world. You CAN have neat new toys and stuff to collect AND have an internally consistent world for them to happen in - but that's just not the way they seem to think.
The old RP communities have pretty much died out on the shards I played, as have many 'communities' that were just groups of folks playing and having fun with their friends - a few smaller groups like that are still around, but it is a few, and smaller, and they seem to get smaller each passing year. New players struggle, we try help but we have been told for literally years a 'better' new player experience is important, and being worked on - but where is it? Ah yes .... "soon".... Like so many things that are 'coming' if only we wait a bit longer - but that 'bit longer' too often turns out to be three or four YEARS without any sign of progress, or a poorly cobbled together and buggy mess getting launched way before it's fit for play, and then maybe partly fixed if we're lucky.
Sure someone can pick on any of the examples I mention and pick a counterpoint - but it's the entire slow decline of almost every aspect of what made UO special that's finally got to, me, and I've completely lost faith that the developers understand the things we try get over to them. Saying you communicate is not a substitute for genuinely communicating, talking AT us is not a conversation, and saying you 'care' about an issue is not the same as actually addressing it.
Recently some of us noticed something going on that we thought qualified as griefing - I'll not explain here exactly what, since it would likely lead to someone copying the activity elsewhere - so asked an Advisor if it was actually something we should report. They said' good question, let us check with the GMs' and after a little while we got the answer 'yes, it qualifies as griefing' with the suggested solution that ... we players go elsewhere. So I think not unreasonably we said 'hang on, this is breaking the rules by someone else and WE should move on?', and got the stunning reply 'well yes but those people pay to play the game as well'...... Effectively, then, I'm taking their advice, and going elsewhere. I won't find a better game, or a better community, I think, in any other game - but I might find one that's not so horribly mismanaged as UO, and where the people running it understand what their responsibilities to the players are and live up to them.
