[Kennedy]

A player was jailed today for guild looting. I myself was not aware this was against the rules because it has been happening since day 1 in ultima online.

Guilds should recruit SMARTLY. Guild members should trust one another and should have trial periods for potential members to prove themselves before deemed worthy of joining....much like vampires do with acolytes and shadow mages with shadow apprentices. In my years of playing uo and observing, the BEST and most SUCCESSFUL guilds have always been close, tight knit groups with 10 or below members.

If you zerg random members, you're bound to get a sheister sooner or later people. This IS UO afterall.

Guild infiltration has always been a tactic of good theifs in uo. Gain trust, work your way in and loot the place dry.

If you dont trust players, dont recruit them into your guild and give them access to your guild chests. Dont put anything terribly important in guild chests that you would risk losing FFS! I dont think it gets any more logical than that. This is a pretty carebear rule, and I dread is just a taste of things/changes to come.

Lets all remind ourselves and those around us that this is a FEL shard.

I have proposed several, easy to follow suggestions that would almost ensure you WONT be guild looted and would merit this bunk rule non existent:

-have a buffer zone/halfway guild for members to prove themselves
-Dont zerg random members
-recruit SMARTLY, recruit people you know, recruit people that others can vouch for
-Make members provide their own supplies
-Dont put anything into guildchests you have become emotionally attached to
-Dont use guild chests
-Dont be in/run a guild

WOW! It's magic! Honestly, uo is not a new game....players should know what they're getting into when they play, or make choices to start/run with a guild.

[Fulmanar]

But this isn't a new development, this rule has been ongoing for quite some time, this isn't a new change.

The playerbase right now is sitting very stable at this juncture, the guilds keep it afloat, we risk causing a schism in the playerbase like this, one will can ill afford right now.

It would also effectively remove new players from joining guilds anymore, many of the current guilds are old IN members who keep to their own, people will stop playing at some point causing a slow death to guilds as new members won't be allowed access because they're not trusted.

While I agree that this is not necessarily the spirit of UO, I agree that it's a necessary measure that needs to be taken to ensure a stable playerbase.

[Kennedy]

Thousands of shards get along just fine with guild looting, and always have lol.

This is a fine print rule, one that people would figure as a no brainer since its day 1 uo mechanics......but SURPRISE!

Anyone who is against this kind of gameplay (thieving, looting, guild infiltration) belongs on a tram shard. period.

Live and learn, dont zerg members on a whim. Poor planning on their part should not constitute an emergency on our part.


Think of it as a player standpoint though with these factors

-staff have player accounts (not implying anyone in doom is a GM....but who knows)
-doom guildmaster is a good donator, told me himself hes donated over $300
-guild member loots guild chest (not exploiting any mechanics or anything...but i guess against carebear rules)
-member gets jailed

Was this rule set in place to cater to donators and/or playing staff members? Does their word mean more than the average, non donating player? Was there ever a thread/vote to make it illegal in the first place?

[Fulmanar]

Again as i've pointed out, shards are created on a whim, Taran had a whim to make guild looting illegal for whatever reason he thought was good at the time, he did so.

This is not a democracy where we are concerned, if a shard is suitable to a person then he will play that shard, if not then he will not. I agree with you that this is not in the spirit of UO, it's been a thing since day one, but it seems necessary given that you could destabilize entire guilds very easily and the guilds are the lifeblood of the playerbase currently.

You're also misplacing your standpoint, the donators/guilds/GM's have nothing to do with this issue, it is simply, should guild looting be legal y/n here is for here is against. do not obfuscate the issue by bringing in an unrelated problem which Loki clearly demonstrated isn't actually the case.

[Kennedy]

If this shard is not a democracy and players have no say.....WHY IN THE **** IS THERE A VOTING BOOTH with the words 'let your voice be heard' in the description

[Fulmanar]

You mistake a voting booth with actually change, you can suggest whatever you like and vote to the end of time but if Taran/whomever doesn't like it or want it then he simply won't do it. I'm sure all of us would like to have infinite gold and taming spawns in our guildhouse, and we'd all for for it of course but he'd never do such a thing.

Taran has to worry about very few things: server cost, webhost, playerbase.

If he does not have a tenable playerbase there is no shard, no shard means you don't get to play here. In the end it's not about what we want, it's about what needs to be.

[Kennedy]

You mistake a voting booth with actually change, you can suggest whatever you like and vote to the end of time but if Taran/whomever doesn't like it or want it then he simply won't do it. I'm sure all of us would like to have infinite gold and taming spawns in our guildhouse, and we'd all for for it of course but he'd never do such a thing.

Taran has to worry about very few things: server cost, webhost, playerbase.

If he does not have a tenable playerbase there is no shard, no shard means you don't get to play here. In the end it's not about what we want, it's about what needs to be.

Sorry, but that is comparing oranges to apples.....something entirely stupid that would absolutely break the shard, while Im sure the majority accept and expect guild looting the moment the login to play ultima online.

I promise you this, rules and punishment for things like this are the very things that break shards, cause unhappy playerbase and population decline. Sure, he can coax and comfort his donators for now, but whats he gonna do when he has a 20 client playerbase?

[Loki]

It is true the server is not a democracy as such, but voting is a way for us to see what people want and we do care about what most the players want. It is true that we don't want to lose any big guilds to a guild looting though, it would be very bad for the server as a whole if that sort of thing happened.

As for the accusations regarding GMs and donators. I was the GM handling this looting, no other staff was involved, I am not and never have been a member of DOOM or even spoken to any before today and I also do not keep abreast of donations so I had no idea that anyone in DOOM had ever donated anything. I was simply enforcing the rules as they are stated on the website, personal feelings do not come into it. If the rules change, I'll enforce those ones instead.

As for the incident in question, the looting was if anything minor and the person in question is already free.

Edit: For the record I'll happily jail donators etc. that break the rules also. The rules are the rules and you can't break them just because you don't like them. You are however welcome to try and get support to change them as you are doing and I am not entering in to that debate.

[Fulmanar]

We had a 20 player playerbase, it stayed like that for a long time, THEN this rule was made, and we shot up to 200.

You're also missing the point to my allegory.

[Kennedy]

We had a 20 player playerbase, it stayed like that for a long time, THEN this rule was made, and we shot up to 200.

LOL sorry man, but this sentence makes it hard to take you seriously

[Kennedy]

As for the accusations regarding GMs and donators. I was the GM handling this looting, no other staff was involved, I am not and never have been a member of DOOM or even spoken to any before today and I also do not keep abreast of donations so I had no idea that anyone in DOOM had ever donated anything. I was simply enforcing the rules as they are stated on the website, personal feelings do not come into it. If the rules change, I'll enforce those ones instead.

Thats fine and dandy Loki, and I appreciate your professionalism....but I was implying how it looks to the playerbase at first glance. To those who do not delve more into the situation. Will the shard continue to change and make rules based around the opinions of its small veteran base...even against higher numbers of differing opinions of newer players? If that is the case, IN should appreciate its playerbase right now, while it still has one is all i'm saying.

[Eru]

Think of it as a player standpoint though with these factors

-staff have player accounts (not implying anyone in doom is a GM....but who knows)
-doom guildmaster is a good donator, told me himself hes donated over $300
-guild member loots guild chest (not exploiting any mechanics or anything...but i guess against carebear rules)
-member gets jailed

Was this rule set in place to cater to donators and/or playing staff members? Does their word mean more than the average, non donating player? Was there ever a thread/vote to make it illegal in the first place?

No, the rule was not put in place to cater to anyone in particular, their word means exactly the same as anyone else's word, and no there was not a vote to put this rule into place.

Feel free to read the whole thread here: http://in-uo.net/forums/showthread.php?7...ld-looting

If you're interested, it was put into place after a string of guild lootings where a few guilds were recruiting large numbers of players, then were looted for massive amounts of items. Granted, leaving lots of loot out in the open then inviting complete strangers to come paw at it makes me shake my head in disbelief.

However, large guilds such as these *do* help young players get started and that was the main reason behind the rule. To help young players, to protect people who are trying to contribute to the community, and to punish the griefers.

If this shard is not a democracy and players have no say.....WHY IN THE **** IS THERE A VOTING BOOTH with the words 'let your voice be heard' in the description

There's a voting booth to let your voice be heard, but just because you can hear someone doesn't mean that what they're saying is necessarily good. Staff can decide if it's a voice worth listening to. If you don't think that we listen to players, then you haven't been around very long.

We had a 20 player playerbase, it stayed like that for a long time, THEN this rule was made, and we shot up to 200.

Correlation doesn't imply causation. I think a more reasonable explanation would be that we took out advertising on Top200 and were #1 via votes on Top100 at the same time that a lot of MMOs started to get stale and SW:TOR had a huge fallout of max-levels with nothing to do.