SEX, LIES, AND ONE HIT KILL WEAPONRY [Author: wirehead]

You know, when I posted the story below, I didn’t think the main story was the ongoing sexual hijinks between (mostly male) GMs and (mostly female) smurfs. These kind of rumors have been going on since pretty much UO began. And as anyone who was around for the BBS scene in the early 90s can tell you, this is by no means nothing new. Give any geek a small snippet of power and they turn into Henry VIII faster than you can say “jus primae noctis”.

So I guess you all missed the part where the ex-SRC mentioned the one-hit killer weapons and twinked characters given to her as party favors.

It’s all about corruption. We have an obviously mismanaged, totally unsupervised GM staff who see their job description as macking on the more flirtatious smurfs when not busy PKing their customers. (Yes, that story was confirmed too. Gee, I guess Dr. Twister gets some things right once in a while. Oh, and check out the story of the GMs screwing with a player town while you’re there.)

And of course the smurfs themselves are all to eager to assuage these netp1mps‘ egos. Considering that most of the smurfs in question are older than most of the GMs, it’s really hard to see them as helpless exploited maidens. Especially when they then brag about what they got for their services. (Of course, there’s a word for that, and it’s not a pretty one.)

But you know who is really to blame here? It’s not Origin, it’s not the smurfs, it’s not even the GMs.

It’s you.

This is a community problem… our problem. We tolerate this corruption in our midst; by our silence we become a co-conspirator. I know for damned sure I have heard of this kind of rot for months now; many of you have as well. And in case you think the SRC below is an isolated phenomenon — she is only in that she is the only one brave and/or angry enough to actually come forward and allow her story to be posted. I’ve gotten dozens, dozens of confirmations of her story from many people associated with the program, past and present.

We knew this was going on. We did nothing to stop it.

So. What is to be done, then?

I’ve met the staff Origin hired earlier this year to clean house. I believe that they really want to run an honest game. (I mean, why wouldn’t they? Do you want to go to work every day saying “Hmm, today I think I’ll lie, cheat and exploit my customers!”) It’s time to let them do their job.

Many of you have written me about the abuses you’ve witnessed in the volunteer program. And many of you haven’t, because you didn’t want me to publish it for everyone to see, or maybe because you think Dr. Twister and I are two sides of the same coin.

Or maybe you just didn’t think it was important, that it is just a game, nothing much to really be worked up over. I trust that the past few days has corrected that. These are real people getting caught in the maelstrom.

All of you, it’s time to do the right thing.

Collect your evidence, all of it and ship it off to the following email address:

uoconcern@uo.com

This is monitored by the folks who can take action in this matter. It will not be read by GMs, or SRCs, or SLCs. And it will not be ignored.

The question is, what are you going to do about it?