Why Are Paying Customers Being Silenced on Critical Topics?

LilyGrace · July 27

Lokea said:

Somebody said there's an IDOC in a few hours on Atlantic, a Minoc castle, so we'll see who ends up with it.

I haven't looked yet as I'm getting ready for Mistas, but if it's in Fel, it's going to be hilarious. Note: IDOCs for billing problems or somebody rage-quitting are not funny as that represents the loss of a UO player, However, a castle in Fel on Atlantic has a lot of potential for humor.

D'oh! I wish I'd read this soon enough to be a fly on the wall for it.

I'm in agreement with Lokea and others who are not interested in raffles. In a raffle players with a large number of accounts will always have the advantage. Maybe an argument could be made that it's fair since they pay more each month, but it's no way to make the majority of players happy on the whole. Certainly not happy making for new or returning players. And it takes away long held traditions and fun, like back when placing houses wasn't overrun by cheaters.

On the other hand I don't think it's fair to keep hammering at Atlantic players, telling them in effect they've made their beds with choosing to play and live on Atlantic. I read that all the time, like there should be a punishment for playing there. You can't fault someone for wanting to play on a highly populated shard.

That said, I think there is a fix for it, but lots of people don't want that either. If moving in-between shards and shard bound equipment didn't make things so restrictive, players would be able find housing elsewhere and go where they want to fight, join groups, take part in events, etc.

And with that said, I've come to see how the ability to move that freely between shards could disrupt established, happy, healthy player communities. That would not be a good thing. I'm speaking strictly regarding moving between shards, not at all about shard bound items. Shard bound items, without a means to turn items account bound, blows. I mean really, really blows. Like, takes a trip to Tijuana gets all liquored up and blows hard.

Anywho, I'm guessing multiple people have probably already suggested this so, forgive me if I'm repeating something that's already been hashed out...

Why not create satellite shards that are just for housing? Same rules apply, only one house per account. You have a satellite moongate that brings you to your shard's Housing Only area. No mobs there to fight. You can't farm resources. You can't train skills there. You can put your house and all that goes into running and enjoying it there, deco, utilitarian items, resources, etc., including vendors.

What are the down sides? There very well may be things that make this a bad idea. Like what? Off the top of my head it seems doable and a good solution to housing shortages on some shards.

Pawain · July 27

Like, takes a trip to Tijuana gets all liquored up and blows hard.

I think you are overestimating how many posters are interested in what I'm doing on my vacation.

LilyGrace · July 27

Pawain said:

Like, takes a trip to Tijuana gets all liquored up and blows hard.

I think you are overestimating how many posters are interested in what I'm doing on my vacation.

Lokea · July 27

LilyGrace said:

I'm in agreement with Lokea and others who are not interested in raffles. In a raffle players with a large number of accounts will always have the advantage. Maybe an argument could be made that it's fair since they pay more each month, but it's no way to make the majority of players happy on the whole. Certainly not happy making for new or returning players. And it takes away long held traditions and fun, like back when placing houses wasn't overrun by cheaters.

I am in fact interested in raffles/lottery as a solution. It's auctions that I'm against.

Right now, this is what happens with an IDOC:

IDOC -> Botters/Scripters Place -> Wealthy Players Buy House

Under an auction, this is what happens with an IDOC:

IDOC -> Wealthy Players Win House

All that's changed under an auction system is that the botters/scripters are cut out of the process, and in fact, given that the botters/scripters are wealthy, they may very well end up with the house anyways. And yes, plenty of them will transition from 100% profit under the current system to only 25% profit, because it's ultimately still free money to them, and we've seen them change their business models multiple times over the past couple of decades. Regular/returning/casual players never have a chance.

Under a raffle system, limit the number of tickets to one per account, and then it doesn't matter if the people we are talking about have 50 accounts, if there's a thousand accounts that enter, there's 950 other accounts that have an actual decent shot at winning the plot.

I lived through the New Magincia raffle/lottery, and there was no limit on the amount of tickets and whether you were doing the 2,000 or 10,000 gold tickets, but we all at least had a fighting chance at getting something.

You can read the analysis and results for yourself, straight from the UO devs:

https://web.archive.org/web/20110822221846/http://mythicmktg.fileburst.net/uo/media/pdfs/Magincia%20Lottery%20Analysis.pdf

And that analysis is insane - they broke it down by actual individual plots. There were later comments from the devs discussing how quickly the gold that was taken out of the game for the lottery was replaced, as well as what they would have done different, but I can't find those - they were in response to some player questions on maybe Stratics or UO Forums (neither of which did a good job of archiving their old stuff with archive.org).

Anyways, I'd prefer a ticket system (even as high as 100,000 gold for a ticket), just with the caveat that it's one ticket per account. At least all players would have a better chance at an IDOC than the current system, or a system with the highest bid.

Lokea · July 27

LilyGrace said:

On the other hand I don't think it's fair to keep hammering at Atlantic players, telling them in effect they've made their beds with choosing to play and live on Atlantic. I read that all the time, like there should be a punishment for playing there. You can't fault someone for wanting to play on a highly populated shard.

It's not so much about hammering at Atlantic players, but I understand and have seen that mentality, and maybe my comments came across that way, in which case I apologize - I was treated very nicely on Atlantic when I poked around upon my return (I was even given gold and some gear, which I was able to pass on to another returning player whose original home was Atlantic, unlike mine).

It's just that it is really an Atlantic-only problem, so any major solutions should be confined to Atlantic's situation.

Are there bots/scripters placing IDOCs on other shards? I have no doubt, I've occasionally seen such people hit IDOCs on LS (I haven't seen any in Fel doing that but definitely saw it on Tram) and I know there are a few flippers on LS that try to acquire high-value spots and try to drive the prices up. I'm sure it happens with other shards, and I'm sure high-interest plots (castles and prime keeps) draw the botters/scripters out.

But when researching keep and castle spots and prices on non-Atlantic shards for my own keep/castle acquisition, I saw plenty of high-value properties going for months without selling and prices being dropped. Properties that would go for multiple plat on Atlantic would sell in the low to medium hundreds.

The reason being that Vendor Search means a lot of us no longer care about "prime" spots in Luna, and on every non-Atlantic shard, any of us could easily place a max-storage customizable plot, and on most we can even go place an 18x18 or a tower if we spent a little time looking (one could do it in mere minutes on most shards). We are not faced with an Atlantic problem of paying somebody an insane amount of gold for a decent-sized spot with the alternative of placing a 7x7 or 8x8 like it's UO in 1998 There's even keep spots available on a lot of shards in Fel and even Tram, and when I came back and surveyed all of the shards, I even saw some Luna plots on the smaller shards.

TLDR: non-Atlantic shards don't have the issue of a lot of prime or max-storage real estate being held by flippers/realtors/scripters/botters, so any solutions should leave us out.

Lokea · July 27

LilyGrace said:

That said, I think there is a fix for it, but lots of people don't want that either. If moving in-between shards and shard bound equipment didn't make things so restrictive, players would be able find housing elsewhere and go where they want to fight, join groups, take part in events, etc.

And with that said, I've come to see how the ability to move that freely between shards could disrupt established, happy, healthy player communities. That would not be a good thing. I'm speaking strictly regarding moving between shards, not at all about shard bound items. Shard bound items, without a means to turn items account bound, blows. I mean really, really blows. Like, takes a trip to Tijuana gets all liquored up and blows hard.

Anywho, I'm guessing multiple people have probably already suggested this so, forgive me if I'm repeating something that's already been hashed out...

Why not create satellite shards that are just for housing? Same rules apply, only one house per account. You have a satellite moongate that brings you to your shard's Housing Only area. No mobs there to fight. You can't farm resources. You can't train skills there. You can put your house and all that goes into running and enjoying it there, deco, utilitarian items, resources, etc., including vendors.

What are the down sides? There very well may be things that make this a bad idea. Like what? Off the top of my head it seems doable and a good solution to housing shortages on some shards.

This I can mostly agree with you on! The only real solution to housing shortages is not trying to manipulate the price of housing, but instead the amount of housing. I live in what was/is one of the fastest growing cities in the US, and I see the literal issue of housing being bought up by flippers/corporations and the impact as more people move in play out every day. I see near-by apartment complexes having to maintain or drop their rates when new projects open up.

Rather than creating new land masses, I wonder if we could tap into some other solutions:

Increased storage for smaller homes. I saw item storage driving a lot of people wanting larger properties. I've even known people who acquired keeps/castles because they needed the storage. What if a 9x9 up through a 14x14 gave you the same storage as a 15x15 through 18x18? What if you could get the same storage in a 17x17 or 18x18 or tower as a keep? Could the servers handle it? I would think so, as long as they aren't loading the contents of every home whenever a player shows up outside (there maybe a toggle in the EC).
Instanced housing in the cities? Would a lot of people be willing to move into Sosaria's cities if they had decent storage? Vendors would be tricky but maybe handled through Vendor Search or through a better/more condensed situation like New Magincia's stalls - a farmer's market of sorts that doesn't load unless you step inside. I have a home that borders a Zento wall/gate, and I love seeing NPCs around and being able to run over to the bank or various workshops. Wouldn't it be interesting if people lived in the actual cities, lived in homes that matched the local architecture and right next door to NPCs and NPC shops, and not just the Luna situation where you get beautiful homes that could fit into a medieval setting placed right next to Ye Olde Borg Monstrosities. I would move to Britain in a heartbeat (West Britain, mind you, I'm a refined person!). It would bring life back to the cities.
Let's talk about moongates - I think I mentioned it in another post, but I'll try to get a thread started about an old article form July of 1997. The original UO devs intended for people on different shards to be able to play together by simply going through a moongate to a shard and meeting up with their friends/guilds from other shards. Right now, cross-shard play is limited to players with plenty of real-life money to burn, people who are making money from moving goods between shards (which screws with economies on all shards and lets a few people have an outsized influence on things) or people who have paid accounts of at least 14 years old (thankfully non-consecutive). What if say shards were clustered based on region they originated in? The Asian shards were clustered, the Pacific, Central, and Atlantic shards were clustered together, etc. Clustered, not merged. I as an LS player couldn't hop over to Atlantic or Pacific, but if I were on say Atlantic, what if I could easily move to Catskills, while still hanging on Atlantic when I want to? I could find a decent house on Catskills, and still get everything I need supplies or goods-wise on multiple shards. If I'm a vendor, I'm able to sell to all kinds of shoppers from other shards. If I'm needing people to go hit up a dungeon with, I will be able to find them if I have multiple shards I can visit/work with, etc. The possibilities are endless, and it could bring life back to smaller shards, while reducing the housing crunch on Atlantic. Are the cross-shard traders going to be mad? Maybe (but they'll have more shards to access and not be paying a lot). Could there be a drop in revenue from shard transfers? Maybe, but if you limit people to just a few shards within their shard's original geographic/timezone designation, there will see be costs that can be recouped. I think player engagement would go up. I would certainly be shard-hopping, as would many others. Events like the Riftborne/Mistas thing woudl be easier for those on smaller shards, etc., etc. I'll post the article later, it was interesting in general as a snapshot of UO in mid-1997 before it launched.

LilyGrace · July 28

Girrrrl, or guyyyyyy, that is a lot! lol

More storage is always a welcome thing. I think it could be a strain if players across the board are allowed to cram more contents into all size housing by way of additional lock-downs and secures. Perhaps offering players more storage in a way that functions like your bank box might be a better solution.

I'm not saying allowing for more containers and lock-downs in houses would necessarily put a strain on servers. That said, I think it could put a crimp in how players enjoy looking at their game world landscape. I wouldn't want to be forced to click the button to not allow house contents to load because running through heavily populated areas has become a lag-fest. I enjoy looking at players home builds and decorating ideas too much to not see houses load with their contents. I don't have a great computer, Grim!

Regarding moongates and shard hopping. I've pressed hard in posts about allowing players to move around more freely. I pressed for allowing all players to go to all shards any time they want. It's a double edged sword for reasons I didn't really always understand, but see more clearly now.

I think there's a happy medium. I think solutions for allowing players to move around more freely, opening up opportunities for spontaneous game play, while not negatively impacting established player communities, is to find ways to make farming less appealing. Reduce the need some segments of the population, myself included at times, have in needing what other players farm.

I do think 14 years for shard shields is too restrictive. I think the age requirement should be lowered. More importantly, allow players to turn their shard bound items into account bound items. This still wouldn't make gold farming go away but really? Who cares? It would almost certainly reduce the number of players farming drops on multiple shards during these ToT type events. Why should we depend on power gamers farming drops on multiple shards in order to rebuild suits on other shards we want to visit?

Let us earn our drops and prizes and let us keep our prizes when we want to go visit another shard. This sounds so much better to me than trying to move a gimped character around because you had to leave your suit behind. Now you're dependent on players who farmed enough that they're selling these sought after items on the shard you want to move to or visit. This not only seems unnecessary to me, it seems unfair and punitive. I'm being redundant here, I'm to tired to fix it. Read it twice! lol

The clustered shards thing? I don't see that making players happy. Telling east and west coast players they can't play together? That sounds terrible to me.

Housing and IDOCs

Instanced housing sounds intriguing. It wouldn't be to my liking because I really like to decorate my houses. But I can see how for those not interested in playing around with house building and decorating it could be fun to go to your "apartment" so to speak in a city. Maybe something like this could be tied into an extra storage idea. Pledge to a particular town and you have access to your storage unit.

Regarding IDOC and raffles etc. At this point you hate to see houses with anything in them fall because it means another player is gone. With how changed the IDOC scene is now, resources go poof, vet rewards go poof, the biggest interest has to be the available land for housing that'll be created.

If devs gave us more land for housing it really pulls the teeth out of those who cheat to place, no? Wouldn't a moongate leading to a large housing area pretty much put them out of business? I don't think additional housing space it something needed only for Atlantic. Though they surely need it most.

There are other shards with a lot less population that have players who have so many accounts they've managed over the years to snap up pretty much all the castle and keep spots. There's no opportunity for others to place any of the bigger homes. Most players want an opportunity to set down a keep or castle. There has to be a limit even for those folks, no? If we're given more land are these folks going to buy even more accounts and snap up the new lands? I don't think so.

So far it seems the solutions devs are rolling out, to curb scripters, ends up being punishing to average players. The timer on the house placement tool for instance. Everyone has been telling devs for ages that this isn't stopping the cheaters it's only hurting honest players.

Why not come at this from the other side and see if it works out any better? Instead of placing restrictions on housing, shard travel, and access to the items we've earned, why not expand access to these things for all players? Give us more land for housing until competing with cheaters placing houses becomes a non issue. Let us keep our shard bound items on our accounts and we won't need what the farmers of drops and shard bound items have to offer.

Lokea · July 29

@LilyGrace

More storage might be doable - UO has a lot more processing power behind it than it did 20 years ago. The idea of something like an extended bank box is interesting - I know I have plenty of items that I don't need immediate access to at my house, but that I'm keeping for one reason or another. Make it a one-time fee and I'm there (but not too expensive, the $20 for 20% upgrade is rough).

The original UO devs intended for players to move around between shards freely, since people would become friends out of the game through places such as forums, but might be on different shards. It also alleviates the housing problem for those who play on Atlantic, and it might make things open to a lot more players who prefer to spend their time being merchants and craftspeople.

I mentioned clustering shards by their original geographic regions and not letting them shard hop just anywhere, because I recognize that free travel between all shards will hurt UO's revenue. Obviously, as UO goes along and more players hit the 14-year mark, there will be less and less purchases of shard transfer tokens. If you keep some kind of situation where paid tokens are necessary, hopefully the accountants would be happy.

Maybe a happy medium in place of letting us freely move around would be 500 sovereigns for a transfer token. I won't pay $20 to go shop on Atlantic (I'm weeks away from 14 years and several shields anyways) - but I'll pay somebody in-game to get me stuff on Atlantic and bring it to me when they move around the shards using their vet shield tokens. Nor wil I pay $20 to go play with friends on another shard (I'll just use a weaker toon that I have already on that shard). Moot point since I'm about to cash in half-a-dozen vet rewards on shield tokens, but prior to now, I would have easily been paying $5 a pop to move between shards a few times a month prior to now.

Drop the prices of a shard transfer down though, and I bet many of us who aren't at 14 years or more would gladly pay it. And I do think if we had a more accessible shard transfer system, it would cut way down on people who complain on Atlantic about no housing - if they could place on Catskills or Chessie, but still easily shop or play on Atlantic for some events, many would probably take it. Smaller shards would see an increase in activity as well. It would also improve the economies a bit - make things more available on more shards, etc.

I agree on the 14 years for shard shields is too restrictive. Make it 10 or even 5. I see way too many quality-of-life benefits or items in UO that are locked behind either account age restrictions or were tied to specific events that happened years ago. They would benefit so many players, which would increase overall player happiness. But in this case, the shield tokens would eat into UO's revenue (which leads me back to 500 sovereigns for a simple transfer).

Personally, with IDOCs, I feel sleazy doing them when they are clearly somebody who had a billing issue or rage-quit and left everything, because it absolutely is the loss of a UO player, who at some point cared about UO. I personally think they should do like other MMORPGs (World of Warcraft in particular) and package everything up in a crate to be retrieved by the player later on and just let the plot fall. I bet a lot more players would have come back over the years if they didn't lose a lot in an IDOC.

I do agree with a lot of what you say, at least in spirit. I am surprised the devs aren't giving us more incentives to give them more money - if it was 500 sovereigns for a one-way transfer token, I would imagine a lot of players who don't have vet shields would snap them up in a heartbeat. Heck, if they weren't account bound, I'd buy a couple through the Ultima Store and sell them in-game, and I'd bet others would as well.

Grimbeard · July 29

It's way too late to shut the barn door transfer shields have screwed the pooch and there's no recovering

Rocko · August 2

You may remember back in 99 or 2000..not sure of the year, people were asking for "green acres" to be opened up for housing. Clearly this is not a new issue and in modern days seems to be only only an issue on Atlantic.

Since Atlantic is the server to go to, maybe "instanced" housing would work. If you played LOTRO you have an idea of what I am trying to articulate.

Anyway, if you are complaining about one person controlling the housing market, I share your pain but aren't they operating within the game mechanics?

If not, then BS needs to ban them.

__Psycoder · August 2

Rocko said:

You may remember back in 99 or 2000..not sure of the year, people were asking for "green acres" to be opened up for housing. Clearly this is not a new issue and in modern days seems to be only only an issue on Atlantic.

Since Atlantic is the server to go to, maybe "instanced" housing would work. If you played LOTRO you have an idea of what I am trying to articulate.

Anyway, if you are complaining about one person controlling the housing market, I share your pain but aren't they operating within the game mechanics?

If not, then BS needs to ban them.

At the current development speed, we are talking about 5 to 10 years for instanced housing.
They would not want that. I can single-handedly point to at least 20 people that keeps paying their monthly subscription even though they did net login in the last 2 years. If UO ever adds instanced housing, they will lose more than 50% of their revenue.

> aren't they operating within the game mechanics?

No they are not, hence the problem.

> If not, then BS needs to ban them.
They did not ban anyone until now despite the fact that the problem is known, and the person causing the problem is knows. On the other hand, every single topic about this problem on this forum was closed with one excuse or another. You can find topics about this exact issue with this exact person, going back many years on this forum. All closed. They allowed this one to remain after closing the initial post from NikonUS.

__Psycoder · August 2

I am adding this for everyone to see:

Image: https://forum.uo.com/uploads/editor/jw/8b0imdmvs19f.jpg

This is the EXTREMELY WELL KNOWN IDOC abuser. He is selling 10+ houses at the official discord.

Yesterday, I added a comment same as below to this chat room at the official discord:

Image: https://forum.uo.com/uploads/editor/52/54punc6st7xm.png

Today, this comment is deleted from his room. Discord shows list of people that interacted with a post room at the right side of the screen. Here is the screenshot of people that interacted with that room. Can you spot who in that list has the right to delete my post? I can only see a single name that makes sense!

Anybody wants to discuss why our warnings about this guy are disappearing from the official discord?

To be clear, I am not calling anybody anything. I am just trying to figure out why our warnings about an EXTREMELY WELL KNOWN EXPLOIT/SCRIPT user keeps disappearing from the official discord? I am just trying to understand what is going on.

Grimbeard · August 2

See if you call the police and they say they are investigating you don't get to help or prosecute the alleged criminal forget everything from Mesanna time give Kyronix 6 months until then just be quiet

__Psycoder · August 2

Grimbeard said:

See if you call the police and they say they are investigating you don't get to help or prosecute the alleged criminal forget everything from Mesanna time give Kyronix 6 months until then just be quiet

Did you really understand what I am saying in my post before you reply?

Grimbeard · August 2

__Psycoder said:

Grimbeard said:

See if you call the police and they say they are investigating you don't get to help or prosecute the alleged criminal forget everything from Mesanna time give Kyronix 6 months until then just be quiet

Did you really understand what I am saying in my post before you reply?

1000% but Kyronix said they will address it he has 100% done everything he's said he'd do give him time

__Psycoder · August 2

Grimbeard said:
1000% but Kyronix said they will address it he has 100% done everything he's said he'd do give him time

You and I are living in different realities my friend. All he did was give a verbal warning and another 6 months to the scripter that has been exploiting the game mechanics for many years now.

Why does that guy, and that guy alone, get a verbal warning for something that would be immediate ban for all of us?
Why does that guy get to have his sales channel cleaned up after a verbal warning telling him to stop?

Wake me up when any real world action is taken.

username · August 2

__Psycoder said:

I am adding this for everyone to see:

This is the EXTREMELY WELL KNOWN IDOC abuser. He is selling 10+ houses at the official discord.

Yesterday, I added a comment same as below to this chat room at the official discord:

Today, this comment is deleted from his room. Discord shows list of people that interacted with a post room at the right side of the screen. Here is the screenshot of people that interacted with that room. Can you spot who in that list has the right to delete my post? I can only see a single name that makes sense!

Anybody wants to discuss why our warnings about this guy are disappearing from the official discord?

To be clear, I am not calling anybody anything. I am just trying to figure out why our warnings about an EXTREMELY WELL KNOWN EXPLOIT/SCRIPT user keeps disappearing from the official discord? I am just trying to understand what is going on.

Insane man. I seriously didn't think it could this bad so fast after Mesanna stepped down but this is the reality now. I can't believe one of the biggest fundamental parts of this game, the most unique and often the reason most play, pay, and stick around, is housing. And it's totally f**ked on Atlantic.

How is this still going on in 2025?

__Psycoder · August 2

username said:
How is this still going on in 2025?

I don't know, this is why I am asking questions.

In the last roadmap broadcast, I expected the devs to say something like "In a week, we will look into this.". Then in a week, I would expect them to ban all of the accounts and burn all of houses.

The last thing I expected was a verbal warning and some time for the criminal to sell remaining houses or correct his behavior on his own.

Mariah · August 3

Kyronix is aware of this situation, he doesn't need telling daily

Kyronix is NOT going to tell you what he plans to do about it, because that would be forewarning those doing it.

I am locking this thread now. Please do not re-open it.

Howdy, Stranger!

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Why Are Paying Customers Being Silenced on Critical Topics?

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How is this still going on in 2025?

How is this still going on in 2025?