OTHER PEOPLE’S PROPRIETY [Author: Lum the Mad]

It seems the OPP guild on Pacific liked to PK people. I know, it’s probably a shock to you, but there are still PKs in UO. They’re kept on Felucca now. Please be gentle when you see them, as they may be easily frightened by bright lights and sudden movements. In case you had forgotten the raw joy and youthful verve of peekaying in UO, here’s a typical day in the life of OPP.

So anyway, OPP has basically been sitting around doing nothing bored out of our skulls. We killed some newbie guild: Ut at the X-Roads five separate times which sort of kept our attention. We saw a FL today for the first time in awhile, but he died all too easily and of course had no back up…Saw a group of about 15 SL at their tower by the yew gate…they gated to East Britain where we attacked with five Minax and saw the entire group scatter and hide *watches Mythra recall*. We were reduced to flagging gray at Bucs and pretending to be thieves, which was sort of fun…aside from the fact that everyone dives for the server line. Won me four more duels today and tied some other guy I’ve never even heard of (yah I suck). Another boring day on UO…Wake me up when there’s some enemies out. *passes out*

Apparently, however, people are actually playing UO now without being ganked at will. This bothers OPP. A lot. In their words, “there are entirely too many newbies getting away with things“. And, gosh darn it, OPP tried to do something about it. A “carebear guild”, the Keepers of Maddox, tried to organize a “dungeon crawl” in Khaldun. OSI, in an attempt to mark Khaldun more clearly as “a really dangerous place” (or, more likely, trying to load balance the servers which usually contain 30,000 people on Trammel and 5 really bored PKs in Felucca) made Khaldun only appear in Felucca.

KoM’s mistake? They posted about it in public.

To all who seek adventure, The Keepers of Maddox are hosting a siege-style dungeon quest. The date for the quest will be Saturday 26th of May. We will meet outside the east entrance to the dungeon of Khaldun at 2:00 pm pst (5:00 pm est.). From there we will break off into teams of 5 and proceed into the dungeon.

OPP’s mistake? They bragged about destroying KoM.

Oh good lord this is a must!!! Anyone with a PK or a few counts needs to show up for this event. OPP will be there with bells on, ready to show them what it’s like to do a “dungeon crawl” in Felucca. If we can’t PK in Tram, then they can’t dungeon crawl in Fel. Anyone who wants to join us is welcome to…any gray or red will be considered a friend until every last newbie is dead. So bring your thieves and PKs out and lets show them what a real dungeon crawl is like.

The result was a clear victory for oldschool peekays everywhere, as people used to the, um, much more liberal Trammel ruleset were mowed down like curs. As OPP put it,

The turn out was great, I would guess somewhere between 25-35 PKs/Thieves showed up to welcome the participants of the Dungeon Crawl. As you probably guessed by now they never even got into the dungeon to start the event. As they came in they were robbed, murderer, and generally harassed. Even after being murdered the morons trying to run this event still didn’t know what was going on. The event was a total success! I would like to thank the Keepers of Maddox for organizing this slaughter and of course everyone who was doing the slaughtering. We look forward to more events like this in the future.

The response was swift – everyone identified as a member of OPP were handed a 48 hour suspension and a mark on their account.

This morning a number of OPP members were targeted simply for being part of OPP. OSI is blatantly trying to destroy the Pacific PvP community. Could it be any clearer?

Many of those with suspensions had already had, let us say, less than clean accounts already. Whether through macroing or dying things purple or simply just being gentlemen and scholars.

Apparently someone at OPP finally found out that they were targeted for “disrupting an event”. OPP’s response:

Clearly no one can argue against the fact that PKing is part of the game and part of Fel. However, an argument regarding the disruption of an event seems to be getting quite a bit of attention. What exactly makes something an event? In general terms, it’s something that you plan in advance, right? If you check OPP News we clearly stated several times that we were planning to attack Kalidun that same day. Does this mean we have conflicting events? How exactly is that handled? Now we know…The Trammies are always right.

Now, one of you wise guys go through all the BS OSI has posted and tell me exactly how what went on that day is/was any different than the PKing that goes on, on a daily basis? Since day one of Pacific people have planned PK events around other events. It’s how a PK operates…OSI didn’t like the system, so they gave PKs stat loss…Nope still didn’t work, so they nerfed PvP and gave the newbies Tram. Hasn’t OSI figured out by now that if they keep bending over for every gimp that cries to them that they’re just going to keep asking for more? Now everyone in Fel has to face the fact that you can be banned for holding a PK event or PKing people holding an event. Should PKs now walk up to folks and ask them first: would you like to engage in combat? Why not just remove PKing completely and stop operating in the gray area so your customers know what to expect?

OSI, when asked for comment, had none to give.

Lum, when asked for comment, had this:

No one will ever hold up OPP as poster children for the rights of people online. I quoted liberally from their web page specifically to make this point: these guys are not angels. Their web page is replete with “Fuck You OSI” messages that make you wonder why they put so much time, effort, and above all money into a game run by a company they profess to despise. It’s nothing new, and almost charmingly oldschool. I thought Trammel and the fleeing of the sheep to greener pastures had stamped out this sort of thing, frankly.

Yet the point isn’t are OPP or are they not proper roleplayers that you’d choose to invite to dinner, virtual or otherwise. The point is, were OPP playing by the rules? OSI says no. I disagree. If you set foot in Felucca, you are saying “I acknowledge that other players may try to kill me.” That is the nature of OSI’s bizarro-land PK switch. The fact that the cool stuff may be in Felucca or that it’s less crowded or that you may own a house there from long ago doesn’t make this any different. Felucca is where people go to die. It is part of the game.

Nowhere on OPP’s page does it say that they were guilty of anything worse than bad manners and poor writing skills. Were the guild in question, say, the Temple of Mondain or the Shadowclan Orcs intercepting KoM’s frolicsome dungone run, I wonder if they would have been handed 48 hour suspensions as well.

Of course they wouldn’t. ToM and SC play(ed) by the rules. OPP didn’t. The rules in this case weren’t written down. They were implied. The implied rule in this case is – if you’re going to kill someone, don’t post on your website that you did it. Don’t brag about ganking newbies. Just do it. For god’s sake, don’t be honest about your motivations. Then you can be held accountable for them, despite what the in-game rules may lead you to believe you can and cannot do. In the end, it’s all up to whether or not some nameless person at OSI sees your website and approves of how you present your actions.

Don’t agree with those rules? Maybe new ones need to be written. Clearer ones.