Put your houses on private or be banned.

Smoot

From this months producer's notes:

We would also like to update everyone on a new policy as it relates to how we handle ToS violations within a house.  If players are caught in a house violating the ToS, in any form, the account which owns the house will also be actioned.

Untill we know exactly what this means for players, it would be prudent to put your houses on private.  very obvious how this new policy could be abused.  to many, getting a throwaway account banned would be worth getting a players main house / account banned.

Cinderella

They should allow vendors in private houses.
Let people access vendors through the house sign.

Looks like I will be shutting down my vendors and free access to the repair station.

AtlanticRealtor

I am sure they mean the person need to be friended or co owned to the house!

Drakelord

mine homes are open to the public so I guess I need to fix this, access to friends only, clear the list and start over, reset the security main doors

Uriah_Heep

Say goodbye to Libraries, Rune Libraries,  publ;ic accessible davies lockers and repair stations, forges, etc etc.

Ridiculous.
Completely.

If they meant anyone co0owned or friended, they should ahve said so.  But communication has never been a real strong point, since Wilki left.

Drakelord

I hope @Mesanna is seeing this

Uriah_Heep

Yeah we wouldn't want public access to houses in an MMORPG...smh

MissE

Well if someone comes into all my PUBLIC houses, rune libraries, shops etc and spends time scripting, and gets caught, either by reporting themselves on another account to 'grief' or by some other passer by  doing their civic duty and my accounts end up being 'actioned' well what a perfect excuse I will finally have for closing the accounts down.  When you are on the 'edge' in UO something like this would definitely be the tipping point. 

You would think the person would need to be 'friended' etc however, given 50% of the houses in UO are public I would assume they would of said so if that was the case.  If not it is a griefer's wet dream.

Drakelord

This really bugs me, and I hate to say would be a game breaker for a lot of people that have homes like you said above, I have repair stations that were open to the public but now I have to close that.  Libraries like ours on Sonoma at Luna would have to go private to protect the owner.

I have to many vendors to just shut down and go private, best I can do is reset the security of main doors and clear the friends listing, still that leaves the steps outside that door they can stand on to do this unattending BS

Ezekiel_Zane

This is just insane!  So now anyone can come into any public house and start yelling obscenities and vulgarities and have a house owner's account actioned?  As written it's just that simple.

It may be time for me to come to the realization that I've spent way too much of my life and treasure inside an online fantasy world.  My life, my wallet, my family and my health will all be the better for it.

Last break I stored as much as I could anticipating the obligatory eventual return.  This time I'm gonna give some away and delete the rest.

Smoot

it cant be right (hope not), but does need to be clarified what this means.   

Pawain

This better only count towards accounts that are Friended or Co-Owner to the house.  @Kyronix ; @Bleak @Mesanna @Misk

This is a way to grief someone with a throwaway account by doing something in someones house and paging on themselves.

This is great cause for getting out the torches and pitchforks and head to the castle.

Maximus_Neximus

This definitely needs clarifying. As written, it's a terrible policy.

TimSt

I am thinking they are more concerned with macroing then obscenities in public houses.  They did ban 142 accounts for macroing last month after all.  One scenario I can think of is EJ account uses macros to mine ore, recalls to a public house, and drops the ore; then house account picks up the ore, smelts it, and stacks it.  Multi-box macroing.

Hopefully they are not after skill training macros in public houses.  One of my EJ accounts is in one of my houses using a totally EC macro that takes 5 hours to run to increase his spell weaving skill. I do keep an eye on the screen incase a GM shows up.

Merus

Utterly shameful that such a vague post even made it into the news letter. 

Anyone could make a new EJ account and start macroing in public Luna houses then report themselves from their main account. 

Clearly they had the idea that they don't want people letting friends use their houses to break the ToS, but this VERY clearly was not thought through at all.  As usual with this team... decent idea to start with... utter fail on execution.

Maximus_Neximus

TimSt said:

I am thinking they are more concerned with macroing then obscenities in public houses.  They did ban 142 accounts for macroing last month after all.  One scenario I can think of is EJ account uses macros to mine ore, recalls to a public house, and drops the ore; then house account picks up the ore, smelts it, and stacks it.  Multi-box macroing.

Hopefully they are not after skill training macros in public houses.  One of my EJ accounts is in one of my houses using a totally EC macro that takes 5 hours to run to increase his spell weaving skill. I do keep an eye on the screen incase a GM shows up.

Per the official UO EJ page:

Endless Journey accounts cannot access mailboxes, locked down or secure containers, drop stackable items onto a locked down stack, or place auction safes. Endless Journey accounts cannot safe logout in housing and must use a city inn or tavern.

Based on that, I doubt it's for miners.

Andrasta

I think we need some immediate clarification on that statement.

Ezekiel_Zane

Maximus_Neximus said:

TimSt said:

I am thinking they are more concerned with macroing then obscenities in public houses.  They did ban 142 accounts for macroing last month after all.  One scenario I can think of is EJ account uses macros to mine ore, recalls to a public house, and drops the ore; then house account picks up the ore, smelts it, and stacks it.  Multi-box macroing.

Hopefully they are not after skill training macros in public houses.  One of my EJ accounts is in one of my houses using a totally EC macro that takes 5 hours to run to increase his spell weaving skill. I do keep an eye on the screen incase a GM shows up.

Per the official UO EJ page:

Endless Journey accounts cannot access mailboxes, locked down or secure containers, drop stackable items onto a locked down stack, or place auction safes. Endless Journey accounts cannot safe logout in housing and must use a city inn or tavern.

Based on that, I doubt it's for miners.

In addition EJ accounts cannot mine anything but iron ore.  Nobody is running an EJ account and resource gathering scripts.  Iron and wood aren't worth enough.

Dasilva

as the new kid on the block (I have only been back 9 months) it looks ot me like they are targetting the dead servers, UO cannot shut down the dead servers because of the stuff ppl have accumulated over the years, but most of those ppl are no longer active so they dont play on the dead servers BUT they have friends who still do and these friends have been friended to their houses for years if not decades, now they can punish the macroer AND the house owner for the actions on dead servers, its a win/win if they are looking to shut down servers. quite honestly macroing in itself unless its exploitation has been part fo Ultima Online since day 1, I can remember sticking a penny in the key to hold the button down to mine through a house wall over night. they really need to focus on other things that really break the game like the idoc guys who have 10 - 30 accounts at idocs to the people who can dupe items that they sell in their websites and stores undercutting the origin store by 50% THATS who they need to go after, not the poor dude macroing inside a open house. talk about a way to discourage returning players. but then again maybe thats the intention

Queen_Arya

@Mesanna I was about to open a casino/tavern/chicken fighting events on Atlantic shard

What do I do now? I am holding my breath and turning blue

I cant make my vendor houses private- Please clarify ASAP

Thanks

Queen Arya

Toad Town

Atlantic shard

Uriah_Heep

It says a lot to me, that after they have [hopefully] been at work 2 hours now, that there is still no word on this.  Whether it was a mistake, or whether we should kiss UO goodbye forever.

Communication...the skill that BS never implemented

Cronus

Strange position....

Bilbo

OMFG  Someone from UO needs to get on here ASAP and explain this one.  @Mesanna @Kyronix @Bleak @Misk @Mariah @Rorschach ANYBODY

Drakelord

Had a couple friends by to see if they could enter any of the open space of the castle, also I strongly suggest you keep the detect hidden icon on the game screen to check for hidden people I plan on make sure all our characters have it

Drakelord

Faeryl

Per UO.com:

Hello Everyone,

Keep in mind this is not a change to the TOS, this is a change as to how we will handle macroers from this point forward.  In case you haven’t read the newsletter for the past few months the numbers being banned are rising and we feel are out of control.  Scripting/macroing needs to stop and this is the step in doing that  .  So this is how it will be handled in the future by the GM’s.  This is not to punish the innocent but to catch the cheaters.

Moving forward, we are going  to start noting the accounts of house owners where we have verified illicit activities taking place. Specifically, if we come across a situation where a group of macroers are holed up in a house doing whatever it is they are doing (skill gains, crafting etc) or a recall group dropping off resources in chests at a specific house (or houses), We are going  to confirm the house owner from the house sign and then note that house-owner account about what the GM observed  in the product account notes section of that house-owner account.

This way if someone is gaining ‘hidden’ benefits from a bot network or at the very least providing a safe haven for scripters they will end up getting actioned as well.

Thank you,

Bonnie “Mesanna” Armstrong

~~~~~

It still seems fairly abuseable how they explained it, because frankly the house owner can't prove one way or another if they do or don't know the people macroing. It's the word of the house owner against the GMs as to whether or not it's some random person hanging out in their house without permission when they're not around.

TimSt

Either I am prophetic or @Mesanna read my earlier comment because "Specifically, if we come across a situation where a group of macroers are holed up in a house doing whatever it is they are doing (skill gains, crafting etc) or a recall group dropping off resources in chests at a specific house (or houses), ".  Both things I commented on.

I am going to chance it and go buy some mega millions lotto tickets.

Urge

So if you don't like that ugly Luna shop just stick some throwaway accounts in it to macro and get caught. 

Grief factor will be extreme. 

Cinderella

Urge said:

So if you don't like that ugly Luna shop just stick some throwaway accounts in it to macro and get caught. 

Grief factor will be extreme. 

Exactly.
I commented in General Chat last night about hating this...
And right away someone mentioned a former governor by name & said it was time to get rid of them.  

but what I don't get is... 
a group dropping off resources at one location.
The guild I am in, we occasionally go out and do resource gathering and bring everything back to one location. 
And I go out and do pirates but bring them back to a house I am co-owned too.
in an hour last night, our guild did lot of pirates (I kinda lost track of how many we did, maybe 9 or 10)  and every time I would recall back. so if someone thought that was suspicious, they could report me... and it would get noted on the home owners account... doesn't make sense.

Mariah

Maybe you should read that more closely. Mesanna didn't say 'see it, ban it', she said see it, note it. They will be checking into what is happening, not taking a report and leaping to conclusions.

We've all seen folk who recall in, dump in a box on the steps and recall out again. Those are the ones that need catching. Not those that recall in, go into the house and carefully put things away before restocking and then recalling away again.

Merus

Implemented correctly this policy could really do a lot of good.  As it has been written, and attempted to be explained, it is an absolute disaster.

First and foremost there needs to be something more than mere presence to connect the person violating the ToS and the house owner... something that shows a relation.  Do they have access to containers? Are they friended to the house?  Do they share the same master account?  Do they share the same billing information?  Without something to connect the two, the door is wide open for griefing.

However, I think the premise behind this is good.  Finding the subscription accounts that are supporting the rampant abuse of the EJ or multiboxing accounts is a good thing... they are skill training and getting gear someplace.  Finding the subscription accounts that are supporting the RMT business is a good thing... they are storing all of these good for sale somewhere.  These would be a couple good applications of a policy that enables action against accounts who are linked to cheating even though that account might not be the exact account breaking the ToS.