What kinda UO do we play when someone goes vendor shopping, sees a "Lady bug" on a vendor stocked with runics and goes on stratics complaining about the lady bug? I opened the pictures like everyone else did, and I looked at the beetle being over priced because not everyone reads stratics, yeah, big deal, happens all the time with every weapon. But the fact there's like a bajillion neatly placed fletching runics didn't bother anyone? Are people just starting to accept cheating and worry more about the price of basically worthless deco item?
For me, it was more of the "they know about the scrpiting/duping and refuse to stop it". I am sure theres more to it than I know of. Seems like its time for another round of mass bannings.
Would there be a UO after more bannings?
I hope so.
It's not the worst fall out from scripting, but there is a breakdown in community agreement on what is acceptable to do and what isn't (re cheating), when something illegal goes on so long without any attempts at corrective measures (stricter policing efforts or preventative coding etc). As far as I can see, people waver between seeing that scripting is widespread and scripters don't get in trouble, so they decide to dip their toes into the pool, or they become immune to the rampant evidence of cheating, or they remain disgusted and keep playing or quit.
It just fragments the community further, with more and more cheating there are more anecdotes of the faithfully honest player having a friend for a while then finding out that they script this or that.
The ones in group four (disgusted but still playing) get to regularly be faced with situations they can page on but find the situations do not change over time. Enforced helplessness in the face of regular frustration.
I went to Yomotsu mines this morning for some pet training (little blue beetle) and there was a tamer there hidden with a dread mare. Every few minutes it would go to where they were hidden till a new earth ele popped up or it would notice some other spawn. They didn't say anything when I vetted it twice back to full health, or when I dragged spawn away, or when I finally just took over the spawn area to do my own training.
So should I have paged? It seems so pointless to page. I'm not even sure what I should bother trying to do anymore, if it even matters at all, or if I should just become like most other people who stop caring about the cheating. Maybe then when I find out people I am friends with are cheating it won't bother me.
