WE PAY FOR WHAT, AGAIN? [Author: lum]

Background material: http://www.drtwister.com/ultimaonline/let-mac.html

OK, I’ve been ranting and raving about this macroing thing for a while. But thanks to this leaked chat (what? you mean out of 1000 counselors, one would actually send a copy to “Dr.” TwisTer? Say it isn’t so!) we now know exactly how each and every one of you are filthy exploiters fit only to have your accounts cleared and space made for people who will actually play the game correctly.

[18:30] <Kal_El> if we get calls on ppl macroing unattended in town or any where they will be kicked from the game

Translation: If you are macroing unattended in town or anywhere (um, anywhere would pretty much cover… anywhere?) you will get a nice pretty “Connection Lost” on your screen. Go forth, my child, and macro no more.

[18:31] <Rmageddon> the FAQ says that GMs are not to be called for it unless it is causing actual problems to players around them right? like summon animals or spam or music..
[18:31] <Kal_El> causing lag….if they are macroing skill gain…
[18:31] <Kal_El> then this will make it even harder for ppl actually in the game to gain skill
[18:31] <Rmageddon> ah
[18:31] * ChalKzhar nods
[18:31] <Flame> so anyone at all who is doing it, even in their house, will be kicked if reported?
[18:32] <IronWill> in addition you know as well as we do that most people do not care what the FAQ says – if something bugs them they will call us
[18:32] <Kal_El> we want to encourage ppl to actually play

So the rules you were actually told are, to quote Ron Ziegler, Nixon’s press secretary, “inoperative”. Just macroing to gain skill is reason enough to get knocked off line. Which would pretty much cover almost every activity in the game. Of course, you would never actually be told this, unless you read “Dr.” TwisTer’s site, which, according to UO’s Terms of Service, is illegal.

So what’s next? Well, you better not ever go red…

[18:36] <Rmageddon> so macroers anywhere town, in woods, in hosues, anywhere – even ghosts just staying online to kill murder counts get GM pages now?
[18:36] <IronWill> yes
[18:36] * ChalKzhar cringes at how the GM queue will look

So if you try to macro off your murders, you’ll get kicked. Great. If you ever EVER want to go blue, for EACH count, you will have to be IN GAME, PLAYING for 8 hours a kill just to avoid stat loss. And IN GAME, PLAYING, for FORTY hours a kill if you ever want to enter a town again.

But OSI doesn’t hate PKs! No! They love them! Mmmm! They’re crunchy in milk!

Well, here’s the crux of the matter:

[18:32] <Kal_El> we will not actively seek out macroers…
[18:32] <Kal_El> but if ppl complain about it then we will do something

Call it enforcement by snitching. Basically, if you’re popular and everyone loves you, you can macro with impunity. Lord help you if you pissed someone off, though. You are at their mercy.

Let me tell you a story, my children…

There was a land once, we’ll call it the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, just for shits and giggles. There was this event called the Great Purge, where a very bad man named Stalin sent millions of people to labor camps merely for looking sideways.

There was a little boy, named Pavlik Morozov. He was a very studious boy, and did very well in school.

One day his teachers explained to him what “class enemies” and “enemies of the people” were. They were bad people, who worked against Comrade Stalin and his glorious worker’s paradise.

Pavlik was told that it was his duty, as a little soldier in service to the state, to tell his teachers of anyone who was an “enemy of the people”. Even his parents.

Pavlik was confused, but he did what he was told, and told his teachers about the conversations his parents had late at night, when no one was listening, about how Comrade Stalin was really a monster destroying his country.

Pavlik’s parents disappeared soon thereafter, and Pavlik was sent to a camp for good little soldiers. There was even a statue to Pavlik in his home town, as an example to all good little soldiers. Children everywhere in the USSR were told to be noble as Pavlik, to tell their teachers and policemen whenever anyone said bad things.

And they did. The children were the worst scourges of the land, because they were given the power to be so.

Now I am not so ate up with it that I think being prohibited from macroing in any way relates to the annihilation of a people. But that’s not the point.

The USSR was a corrupt land, and it was made so in large part by the rendering of the rule of law as trivial. There was no overriding set of rules that a sane person could follow – people were killed for espousing a particular Party line one month, and be rewarded for it the next. The enforcement of “law” was capricious and whimsical, and this bred terror.

Terror.

We have already established that 95% of the UO population (and 99.99999% of the pvp subset) macros. We are all criminals now – we can be removed from the game at will.

But we won’t. We’ll continue to build our characters in the same fashion, simply because there is no alternative.

And anyone who has a grudge can fill up GM page queues – “Joe Bob is macro mining” “Marcus is a red ghost in a dungeon macroing” “Sally is in her house just standing there, she’s probably macroing arms lore or something” – and according to the support chat log posted, they have said that they will follow up on it, despite knowing the workload nightmare it will cause.

Every time someone sees a Connection Lost, they have to wonder… was it the usual crappy Internet connection, or something more sinister?

And here is why I am pissed, why you should be pissed.

Read that chat again.

You know, those people are your employees. YOU PAY THEIR SALARY.

Does it sound like it?

It strikes me more as some folks developing an overwhelming sense of their own self-importance – that given a “god like power” over their little milieu, they are taking it and running with it. Banning entire guilds, detaling the minions to go spy on those that they may disagree with for rules violations – rules that everyone violates, that every honest person agrees is a complete joke…

And you’re paying for it.

You paid $60 for the interface that installed on your PC. You pay $10 a month for the bandwidth to connect to it.

YOU ARE PAYING FOR IT.

More on the decline and fall of the UO support staff anon.

Keep those cards and letters coming, and a big howdy to gnat6.owo.com!