Please make IDOCs go away for good

Bilbo · May 2019

@Luc_of_Legends BS/DAoC/UO does not own DAoC/UO EA does and do you think a judge will issue a DMCA after EA has allowed this to go on for 20 years? I am not advocating for the Scriptoids but EA has already set a precedence by not enforcing their ToS for the last 20 years and now you want a judge to enforce it, IMHO i do not see it happening. Also for the guy that bought gametime with UO Gold at some point along the line some one had to pay cash for the gametime, this would also mean that buying anything ingame that cost real money would need to fall into the same category as the gametime you are talking about. I truly wish there was a way to stop the cheating without endangering UO.

Bilbo · May 2019

Anyone who wants to file a lawsuit for copyright infringement is typically required to do so within the applicable time limit. The U.S. Copyright Act requires a civil lawsuit to be filed within three years after the claim accrued. This statute of limitations applies in all U.S. states.

Kind of looks like 17 years to late.

Tim · May 2019

First under fair discloser my preference would be to do away with IDOCs. It always felt to me like seeing someone's obituary in the paper and heading over to see what might be "just lying around".

But that being said I have a suggestion that would make them more entertaining and do away with scripters. My idea should be fairly easy to implement as most of what it does is already implemented in housing.

Rather than have the house collapse transfer the "ownership" to a "No player" account.
Then set access to public and security on all containers to "Owner Only"
I would also like all "locked down" and deeded items put into containers but that might make it too big a programming project. That would make it impossible to know whether all the "good" items are gone and where in the house they are.
At random times over the next week or two, a random container switches to "Anyone" and/or deeded or locked down item released.
When a new container switches to "Anyone", any already at "Anyone" are unsecured and allowed to fade away as normal. Hopefully someone found it and got the contents but if not "easy come easy go"
Also at random times (once an hour ?) any player in the house is "Banished". The odds of an honest player being caught by this are very slim. How much time would you spend checking for open containers and is there any other reason to be in the IDOC staring at the screen? But a scripter wouldn't last long and would at least have to set up an other robot.
EJ characters would be allowed in the house but as I understand it could not even check if a container is openable so would be useless to a cheater.
After the last item is released a timer till final collapse is started.

This method would allow everyone to participate not just those who happened to be on at the time of the collapse. Some thing else to do when you do your BOD run. Not that I really care but I would think PvPs would enjoy something to fight over for a week or more rather the just an hour. As I see it the only losers would be scripters and resellers.

Of course the Devil is in the details, is a week or two too long? Should the "Banish" be less often at the start and more often as time goes on? What about "containers" that are useful in their own right like the new repair bench?

PS to the off topic posts if the record companies couldn't shut down music sharing sites how do you expect the Devs to shut the resellers down?

Luc_of_Legends · May 2019

Bilbo said:

@ Luc_of_Legends BS/DAoC/UO does not own DAoC/UO EA does and do you think a judge will issue a DMCA after EA has allowed this to go on for 20 years? I am not advocating for the Scriptoids but EA has already set a precedence by not enforcing their ToS for the last 20 years and now you want a judge to enforce it, IMHO i do not see it happening. Also for the guy that bought gametime with UO Gold at some point along the line some one had to pay cash for the gametime, this would also mean that buying anything ingame that cost real money would need to fall into the same category as the gametime you are talking about. I truly wish there was a way to stop the cheating without endangering UO.

Billbo did you miss completely that EA OWNS Broadsword? It's what is known as a subsidiary.

Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines a subsidiary as:

subsidiary
noun
plural subsidiaries
Definition of subsidiary (Entry 2 of 2)
: one that is subsidiary especially : a company wholly controlled by another

Okay, while wholly control, a subsidiary will operate as a company within a company. Let me elaborate; while Broadsword gets it operating budget from and is answerable to EA. Broadsword has it's own company structure. That structure is something like this Rob Denton is the head honcho. Then below him is Bonnie Armstrong in charge of UO and Collin Viteri (?) in charge of DAoC. Then below them are their respective team etc.

The long and short of is its still EA anyway you slice it.

Luc_of_Legends · May 2019

Bilbo said:

Anyone who wants to file a lawsuit for copyright infringement is typically required to do so within the applicable time limit. The U.S. Copyright Act requires a civil lawsuit to be filed within three years after the claim accrued. This statute of limitations applies in all U.S. states.

Kind of looks like 17 years to late.

Okay, I don't claim to know law very well but the proverbial fly-in-the-ointment is that both UO and many of the RMT websites PREDATE the DMCA. Secondly you are talk about the copyright act. I am referring the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Which was passed in 1998. UO and many of the rmt sites predate this so its a legal conundrum. The biggest reason they didn't do anything is that Origin/EA wasn't sure it was worth the gamble. The internet was still in its infancy and they would be one of the first to go after something like this. At the time I'm sure their legal department probably didn't think it was worth it. They did not have the foresight (nor did anyone else at the time) to see how BIG a problem these guys were going to become. It is the unfortunate side effect of being the FIRST. Everyone else like Blizzard,Standing Stone Games, Microsoft(XboxLive), Sony, and Nintendo learned from OUR MISTAKES.

Bilbo · May 2019

@Luc_of_Legends EA DOES NOT OWN BS. In case you missed it

Mythic devs form new studio, take over DAoC and Ultima Online
https://www.engadget.com/2014/02/05/mythic-devs-form-new-studio-take-over-daoc-and-ultima-online/

Video game company EA to close storied studio in Fairfax
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/capitalbusiness/video-game-company-ea-to-close-storied-studio-in-fairfax/2014/06/06/897b48bc-ec24-11e3-93d2-edd4be1f5d9e_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.d10f8e7ebd1c

EA hired BS to run DAoC/UO. EA collects all money from subs/Origin store sells. EA pays BS to maintain DAoC/UO. BS must follow EAs ToS as EA still owns DAoC/UO.

Bilbo · May 2019

What is the statute of limitations on intellectual property?

Infringement of a copyright may result in civil and/or criminal liability. The statute of limitations for criminal proceedings is five years, while for a civil action it is three years. 17 U.S.C. §507. Copyrights and patents are easily confused but are two very different intellectual property interests.

It is still all based on copyright infringement and EA gave up that right a long long time ago.

I can not pass a law today and convict you of it for something you did 20 years ago.

Mariah · May 2019

This thread is getting rather off topic, can we get it back on track please?

Bilbo · May 2019

Tim · May 2019

Mariah said:

This thread is getting rather off topic, can we get it back on track please?

Nominated for understatement of the year <span>

</span>

AnglesWings · May 2019

Lot of people been talking about this topic and the most suggested option will be to remove the status of the house from the sign, as many people said, the majority of the rails system used nowadays, read the condition status of the houses:

Remove that from the house sign and at least 1/2 of the people running Rails will be mad , because they cant script , what they cant find.

I said 1/2 , because the other 1/2 are always 20 steps ahead of anyone in this game.

They run their websites (members only) with all shards idocs, locations, time on each house and so on, we all know who "they" are. If you take the house sign off the game , you will hurt only the 1/2 brainers running rails, but the "expert" ones, can switch the house signs option for looking for groubers on the entire map all day, 24/7 on all shards and if the script find, make sound an alarm and voila, they have the idocs all for themselves again!!! , so there is not a win win situation at all, either you hurt them all or nothing!.

The other solution that I have , which will benefit the GAME ITESELF and Hurt them all.

the changes will be the follow.

House will start Stage as it is now, giving the normal 5 days staging process (Slight, Sworn, Fairly, Greatly and Idoc) which will give 7 days total to the owner either refresh the house or transfer, same way as it is now.

After 7 days, House will go MANDATORY OSI and Players will have a choice to BID on the OWNERSHIP of the house*.

Player MUST have a Paid Account and FREE of any Houses on that Account, as the new House would be transferred to THAT account that Bid, this will make fair to everyone, because , even people with 30+ accounts, would need to have the accounts Paid and No houses on it, this will force people to buy more and more subscription. you follow what I am thinking....
Think about the Gold Sink that this will generate if a castle is falling or a Luna, the system should work the same way as an auction safe, takes the gold instantly from the account until the next person outbid and so on. Only people with No houses will be able to bid on it and NO ACCESS to the HOUSE at all, so you can either Score HUGE or Nada, or if you want to be nice to players, just show the amount of storage on the house, so we will know if it is empty!

After 7 days of been OSI, which will give time to people remove their vendors, if any, or people to Bid on it, if NO ONE bid on it, than the house will collapse as it is now!.

Soldahouse · May 2019

I think the easiest thing for all to do is what im doing. Just go mark them all and share them with everyone. You get 40 people at an idoc the cheaters cant grab everything. I really think they will stop going to them if they cant get all items. They don't seem to be showing up on atl. Big full 18x18 houses take 5 minutes to clear out. it will not hurt to try it. the stuff some of you guys think might help will only cause tons of work for the dev team if they can even do it. Just go try it for a month and see what happens.

Radst · May 2019

Either delete everything, or keep everything for the owner. That's the only way.

A proper fix will have to ensure all these 3 objectives are achieved:

1. UO retains revenue

2. Owners keep their items/memories

3. No more IDOC scripting

All house items are packed in an "IDOC crate" that will go into their bank acct, and the owner must pay for all the monthly subs that they missed, in order to get the items back. Done.

And, by reading some of the "suggestions" here and there, I cant help but wonder if some of those are FAKE "solutions" to mislead everyone/Dev. It seems there's only very few people that have the means to run bots on auto rails 24/7 on all shards looking for decays (and mind you, they have someone that can write very advanced scripts for themselves.)

Therefore - If the house sign info is removed - what would happen is that they will continue to run bots everywhere 24/7 - and when they detect a bunch of boxes on ground, that's when they get notification. And they will be laughing so hard at how they tricked you into thinking this was the "real" fix -- to rule out one final possible means for the regular players to find decays.

And the one that says "drop all houses at server up, because no one can be at all places at the same time"? Well, guess what: only they can. And they have AFK auto looting scripts (without the use of packies, and perhaps Bag of Sending support).

As you see, their "real" solution package would make them the only party to find and to loot. So much is at stake to them that they have multiple posting accounts on different forums to attempt these twists.

As for auctions, this will just turn Ultima Online into IDOC Online. Why would you do any new/old content when you can sit around waiting for an IDOC auction that may possibly give you plats worth of items?

And...what, "only people with No houses will be able to bid on it"? Which legit players have extra paid accounts sit around with no houses? Of course, those IDOC Pros. Very convenient.

IDOC is such a curse once you get a taste of it, this is all that you do in game. Some people already do that for years. Not very healthy, though a play style, unless you can remove all the cheating. But you cant. So, just delete everything or keep everything.

Bilbo · May 2019

@Radst ; YES

NO WAY IN $%^^ should they ever be allowed to go to an auction type because only the uber rich will get them and still remain uber rich. Gold sellers/cheaters/scriptors would love this.

Ivenor · May 2019

Bilbo said:

@ Radst YES

NO WAY IN $%^^ should they ever be allowed to go to an auction type because only the uber rich will get them and still remain uber rich. Gold sellers/cheaters/scriptors would love this.

Once in a lifetime I totally agree with Bilbo.

cytex · May 2019

MissE said:

Just don't advertise something is going IDOC. The house owner should get an email, the house should turn idoc with NO notification on the sign and then it should just drop. If your lucky enough to be around when it does you score. If not tough luck. Pretty simple solution.

LMFAO that's by far the worst idea Ive ever heard! You do know how scripting works right? I hope you also realize the vast majority of idoc scripters have no life or job and on game 24/7. All they would have to do is right a simple script to rail the shard and give a ding everytime something of value was on floor with a disregard for locked down/secured items. THEY would score all day every day and no one else would.

cytex · May 2019

MissE said:

It is just so simple, stop the sign advertising the house condition as I said above. If ya don't know it is idoc you can't script it, can't camp it, cant get organized with a hundred packies.

No need for all the above complicated solutions. No packy banning, or time changes or storing stuff, or stopping them completely.

The WHOLE problem will instantly STOP if people don't know a joint is in idoc state.

Send the owner an email, kick the co-owners/friends etc off as currently happens so that IF that person has any friends/guildies that bother to go to their house they won't be able to get in so will get a heads up on it and can contact the owner if needed and/or organize with those friended to the house or guildmates to check their FRIENDS property for when it drops and gather as much as possible, as it should be, friends first.

Let it drop anytime within 10 hrs of it going idoc.

People who are out actually PLAYING the game and getting around the facets will be the lucky ones to stumble across goods on the ground rather than the scripted bots do the idoc checking.

It is the simplest solution out. No idea why there needs to be a heap of discussion over something so easily fixed. @ Kyronix

PLEASE DO NOT LISTEN TO THIS PERSON! they are either uneducated about scripters or they have a script waiting to hit play on! That is worse then the 5-10-15 hour they did which ONLY catered to stay at home scripters, this would be them scoring 100% of the time! @Kyronix

cytex · May 2019

My first idea was to have ALL houses drop at server up for respective shards. Kinda like grabbing daily spawned items back in the day. However that still kind of caters to the jobless, who can just have ppl logging in all over. Plus you can write scripts to autolog and start looting, so those afk stealthing llamas would end up winning all the time, we all know who that is. I think the greatest idea is no more of this staging. If the person doesn't refresh before 90 days then his/her loss for cycling and being cheap. On the 91st day. The house opens to auction. An Auction safe drops in front and you have to bid on the place. You have to have an account open, paid for, and not have a house on account. Then 24 hours to place bid. I say a "first price, sealed bid," auction should be set. Everyone gets one bid, highest bidder takes it without knowing what everyone else bids. With that many houses u cant have 10min rules and auction safes aren't fair with the last second bids. I do think the houses should be open to public so everyone knows what they are bidding on though. That would be a great gold sink to, because all the gold would go to the game, not to another person, and more subs would be purchased to buy these houses, so more income for the devs to create new things! just saying

@Kyronix @Mesanna

Ivenor · May 2019

cytex said:

My first idea was to have ALL houses drop at server up for respective shards. Kinda like grabbing daily spawned items back in the day. However that still kind of caters to the jobless, who can just have ppl logging in all over. Plus you can write scripts to autolog and start looting, so those afk stealthing llamas would end up winning all the time, we all know who that is. I think the greatest idea is no more of this staging. If the person doesn't refresh before 90 days then his/her loss for cycling and being cheap. On the 91st day. The house opens to auction. An Auction safe drops in front and you have to bid on the place. You have to have an account open, paid for, and not have a house on account. Then 24 hours to place bid. I say a "first price, sealed bid," auction should be set. Everyone gets one bid, highest bidder takes it without knowing what everyone else bids. With that many houses u cant have 10min rules and auction safes aren't fair with the last second bids. I do think the houses should be open to public so everyone knows what they are bidding on though. That would be a great gold sink to, because all the gold would go to the game, not to another person, and more subs would be purchased to buy these houses, so more income for the devs to create new things! just saying

@ Kyronix @ Mesanna

Do you understand that "1 account equal 1 bid" will favorite the rich with dozen of Account, right?

Tjalle · May 2019

Keep it simple.
Just remove the status on the house sign on all facets with Trammel ruleset. Let´s have people out exploring and roam the lands again.
All this talk about how the scripters will just do this and that and get all the loot then just sounds like scaremongering to me.

Keep it as is in Felucca and on Siege/Mugen where it´s player justice monitored.

TimSt · May 2019

Something that I brought up during an IDOC last night. When a house falls randomly scatter the loot across the land mass. Kind of like if a tornado came along and flung the insides of the house to the far reaches.

Bilbo · May 2019

TimSt said:

Something that I brought up during an IDOC last night. When a house falls randomly scatter the loot across the land mass. Kind of like if a tornado came along and flung the insides of the house to the far reaches.

Outstanding idea, exploding houses. That sounds like fun. You might be in your house and get hit by falling items, LOL.

Gidge · May 2019

TimSt said:

Something that I brought up during an IDOC last night. When a house falls randomly scatter the loot across the land mass. Kind of like if a tornado came along and flung the insides of the house to the far reaches.

Please make a new post and put a poll up for this with a simple yes or no!

I like this idea best. There could even be a shard wide message and even an earthquake sound if they want people to participate.

I get that people (not scriptors) put a lot of time into finding, and sitting, timing etc of the homes that are going to fall, but many things have changed over time and it seems that this is something that can be implemented. I am trying to think of one of the events where things were blown up and scattered. I know the original Blackrock event did that.

Ivenor · May 2019

Gidge said:

TimSt said:

Something that I brought up during an IDOC last night. When a house falls randomly scatter the loot across the land mass. Kind of like if a tornado came along and flung the insides of the house to the far reaches.

Please make a new post and put a poll up for this with a simple yes or no!

I like this idea best. There could even be a shard wide message and even an earthquake sound if they want people to participate.

I get that people (not scriptors) put a lot of time into finding, and sitting, timing etc of the homes that are going to fall, but many things have changed over time and it seems that this is something that can be implemented. I am trying to think of one of the events where things were blown up and scattered. I know the original Blackrock event did that.

Magincia Invasion too...

Kirthag · May 2019

TimSt said:

Something that I brought up during an IDOC last night. When a house falls randomly scatter the loot across the land mass. Kind of like if a tornado came along and flung the insides of the house to the far reaches.

Ohhhh!! This sounds FUN!

What a scavenger hunt that would be! Imagine! You're sitting in your home doing BoDs when a siren sounds - TORNADO WARNING! You wait for the all clear, go outside, and BAMF! Sitting at your doorstep is the latest drop from an EM! Or perhaps some Dread Lord's head (a la old-skool pvp days), or wait, there's a pile of crafted masonry blocks and walls all colorful from special dyes!

Kinda hilarious if you ask me, but I love the idea. Not sure how that would be programmed -

OR... maybe everything winds up in the dump (Rat Man's lair in the Abyss) but make it an arena ruleset where ppl fight not only ratmen but each other for the loots.

That would also be fun.

Road_House · June 2019

I have to agree with the original poster. We have a player on Atlantic who has now made it his new priority to mark every idoc daily and put it out on his house steps for the public to access. In itself that seems like a nice service to help others but really it's the worst of a double edged sword. What this is doing and what is actually taking place is not helping the normal player find idocs but instead every hacker in the game now simply has to go to this public book for fast access with zero effort. I used to love idocs, spent like 6 hours a week looking for them, and was always able to grab one or two chests making my endless hours of looking for them worth it every day after I got home from work. Now Im lucky if I can literally grab a single item worth 100k gold because every hacker in the game has gravitated to these books on our server. All that this is doing now is making the idoc experience the worst it has ever been. You spend 15 hours waiting for it to fall only to get scraps if even that much. Meanwhile, all the hackers stroll off with packies full of loot among a small percentage of total players at the falling house. It is time for IDOCs to end, we are at that point now where it must sadly stop.

Soldahouse · June 2019

Road_House said:

" What this is doing and what is actually taking place is not helping the normal player find idocs but instead every hacker in the game now simply has to go to this public book for fast access with zero effort. I used to love idocs, spent like 6 hours a week looking for them, and was always able to grab one or two chests making my endless hours of looking for them worth it every day after I got home from work. Now Im lucky if I can literally grab a single item worth 100k gold because every hacker in the game has gravitated to these books on our server. All that this is doing now is making the idoc experience the worst it has ever been. You spend 15 hours waiting for it to fall only to get scraps if even that much. Meanwhile, all the hackers stroll off with packies full of loot among a small percentage of total players at the falling house. "

1st the cheaters were already going to the IDOCs and taking all items. They have a cheat that shows them where all idocs are, and don't even have to click house signs.
2nd if we have 40 people at one idoc when it falls everyone grabs one item that is less the cheaters get and now more people get stuff not just a few that would get everything.
3rd I try to mark them all but I know I miss some. you don't have to spend 6 hours a week looking anymore, but you could spend one hour a week and help me out.
4th I really do try to get the times and share with everyone so people don't have to wait 15 hours standing at a house to fall.
5th just looked at one vendor shop everyone says is the biggest cheater around and his vendors are almost empty, go look.

I know that what Im doing is making some of you really really mad, I hear it in chat, but there are so many that are having fun going to the idocs. many show me the items they get or tell me how happy they are they got one item they always wanted. me marking books and sharing isn't helping the cheaters they already went to all idocs and got all items. im helping out the folks that don't have tons of time to play. every item we pick up is one less item the cheaters get.

I cant understand why you want to get rid of them now. Before just a select few with their friends and the cheaters went to them and got all items. now many go to them and most get some items. sometimes those items are worth 10m sometimes they are just trash.

Doing this also helps out the folks that want to PvP. just go to a big felucca idoc and see everyone running for their life or chasing a person to kill. I knew I was going to make some mad and im sorry for that but I have made so many more happy. I really think this is hurting the cheaters and helping out UO players.

TimSt · June 2019

@Soldahouse, Thank you for finding the houses and letting people know about them. Thanks to you I have filled up my bank box twice with items that I got at various IDOCs. I would like to start up a similar thing on my home shard of Pacific.

Whisperer · June 2019

Get rid of script programs, get rid of EJ at idocs, get rid of pack animals at idocs. moniter them and Messana, when someone gives you the time and place how about actually going to the idoc and seeing the cheating for yourself?
Atlantic idocs are a joke right now, and it does not help when a disgruntled player decides to place public rune books on her house for everyone to go without anyone putting in the work to find them for themselves.
This does not teter the scripters, it just makes their life even easier

Whisperer · June 2019

Summoned said:

So the real problem is scripting and CC client again. Just like the other 100 post.

YES 100%

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Please make IDOCs go away for good

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