Farewell

I think this thread has run it's course and everyone has had a chance to express their opinions.

I will cover a few things very briefly.

Basic Code of Conduct - http://www.uorenaissance.com/conduct
Detailed Code of Conduct - http://uorforum.com/threads/renaissance-code-of-conduct-updated-7-15-14.237/

1. Just because you do not witness administrative action, punishment, warning, etc does not mean it has not happened. Players are disciplined regarding conduct, actions, 3rd party programs, conduct all the time. It is documented and the rules are made clear to the player in question.

What you will find different on UO:Renaissance is staff opinions are never used in the decision making process. We ask the players to follow the rules, and respect the server. And we then promise to the players that we will always enforce the rules as posted. We do not grade the politics of a situation, the value of items, or our personal relationship with players in the decision making process. When I apply discipline to a player, I check the rules, and make sure our punishment of a situation is based on then rules we have posted.

Generally everyone on Renaissance gets one warning about conduct. This can be any form of conduct in which a staff member has to direct you to review the code of conduct. In some cases we lack a rule to cover the situation, so the player in question might get a warning, and the rules are thus updated. One classic example of this is a situation from early in the servers life.

A player decided to use a EUO macro to gather cotton. He was caught the offense was documented and he was jailed. Clearly he was using EUO but we gave him a warning, advised him to cease the behavior and he could continue to play here. 1 Week later he was caught doing the exact same thing. This action was documented and his accounts and access to the server was terminated.

You can see the videos we recorded of the offense here.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10600402/Shane/bandicam 2014-04-25 10-36-50-525.avi
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10600402/Shane/bandicam 2014-04-25 10-37-49-855.avi

We take a great deal of care with our players in only making a decision to punish someone when clear evidence is obtained by the staff indicating that the rules were not followed, a warning was not followed and the activity continues.

And unlike some servers that offer amnesty or temporary bans once we ban a player it is for life. There is no appeal process, or allowance back onto the server. This is because we never take those steps unless it is completely necessary.

At any given moment I am tracking 10-20 players waiting for them to demonstrate some sort of behavior that I can document to use as a reason to discipline this player. In some situations I take the behavior in question and develop additional tools to track the behavior after the next patch.

Currently we are monitoring a variety of situations and players related to these situations.

• Players filling bulk order deeds while not at the computer.
• Players sharing accounts to PvP with.
• Players using shill accounts to hold houses.
• Players gate trapping other players forcing them to use the help stuck system.
• Player verbally abusing other players
• Players using a unapproved 3rd party application to fish up and loot MIB's

Should we catch someone, and document the offense, action will be taken. You might not see it, it will not be broadcast publicly but it will be addressed and we will be fair in addressing it.

2. Player Terrorism (aka demanding a change, action, ban or you will quit/badmouth the server)
This method of attempting to direct the servers administration in a manner you deem personally acceptable will never be effective. If anything this will ensure that whatever your argument is, it is been rendered immediately invalid by your threat to quit and/or try to damage the servers reputation because of your failure to get a change/action/ban administered on request.

We have been extremely consistent in the administration of the Renaissance server in the past 2 years and will continue to do so in the following years. While we are human, and make mistakes we always take extreme care and consideration in all actions.

If you want to express dissatisfaction with an aspect of the server, or action of the staff the best method if via a conversation on irc/forums.

If you choose to threaten to quit, not only will your argument be immediately discarded the staff will consider you to have quit and will no longer engage you in discussion. Our time is reserved for our player who wish to help make Renaissance the best server in a constructive environment. You can yell at me, cuss me out, tell me I am wrong, argue with me, think I am an idiot, rage, bitch, moan etc and I will still engage you in conversation. Until you threaten to quit.

I have precious little time to babysit children and if you want to throw a tantrum I recommend you do it in the Walmart Toy Isle like all the other 4 year old's who are told no by their parents.

I would much rather spend time with our players who appreciate what we provide for them and who wish to make the server a better place through constructive engagement.

3. Former Staff
This is an irrelevant topic for discussion and/or speculation. Any player wishing to discuss staff conduct in this manner is welcome to contact me directly rather than making vague accusations.

Renaissance has been lucky enough to have several players donate hundreds if not thousands of hours of their time to help make the server what it is today. These are the current staff members. Darkwing (Moderator, Senior Counselor), Samorite (GameMaster) and Myself (Developer).

If a staff member is no longer with us it its because their either retired, or there was a violation of the conduct expected of the staff position on the Renaissance server. In the case of a violation of policy I direct you to the #1 topic in this post. I am extremely grateful of anyone who donates time as a counselor, volunteer, tester, decorator and adviser to the server and without those people we wouldn't be here today. However everyone is human and makes mistakes, sometimes those mistakes make it clear that you can no longer be an impartial staff member.

If you have an issue regarding the current staff or volunteers on Renaissance you are always welcome to bring it to me directly. However we will not tolerate players slandering our staff with unfounded accusations. We hold our staff to unreasonably high standards and are grateful for the players who make that commitment.

4. The IDOC guild
Last week this guild had one of their houses looted, as this is part of the Felucca world we play in this kind of thing will happen from time to time. 7-8 players were co-owned to the house in question. In this situation within a few hours I was contacted by the players in question. I was informed that they suspected account hacking or illicit access to one of their players accounts. I was even informed which member, and which of this members friends was suspected because "They have access to the accounts".

The situation was reviewed, the items in question were located and the players involved were jailed for a discussion. In the process of this discussion a few things were admitted. Player one admitted to accessing an account belonging to another player (two). Player two admitted to allowing someone (player one) access to his account. This was verified by the logs as being the only time this had happened between the related accounts. When questioned about the purpose of accessing the accounts player two indicated that both players were involved in looting the house in question, during the process the account sharing happened. Both players admitted that it was a team effort and they were both involved in the process. Their accounts were reviewed, neither had ever been warned for an offense in the past and the account was accessed only once on the day in question.

However since the account sharing could have been a factor in the ability to obtain the items in question the items looted from the house were seized and placed in administrative review. Based on the conversation and statements by both players the account sharing assisted in what happened but was not the sole cause. During the whole conversation with everyone involved the stories also changed 4-5 times as they attempted to socially engineer the punishment they deemed acceptable.

In this situation rather than banning the players in question for the offenses of 1 offense of brief account sharing, and 1 offense of providing another player with your account information they were warned in detail and directed to the code of conduct as is our policy. Since we could not determine to what degree the sharing assisted in the house looting we decided to allow the house with the items in it to decay, in a similar manner to how it would decay if the players were banned. Since both players in question indicated that they had planned to loot the house, and the account sharing simply made it easier (per their own statements) this was deemed an acceptable and fair solution.

Decisions in situations like this are never easy, and the logs only provide so much detail. And referring to topic #1 we are very careful to take action when there is no proof supporting stronger action. Just because player two in this situation changed his story several times during a 5 hour period does not mean we simply pick the story that the player offers last. While speaking to me this player indicated he was online and assisted in looting the house. The fact that he changed his story multiple times after this admission is irrelevant. In the end this situation looks like a case of looters remorse. The thought of looting a house outweighed the value of friends, and once faced with the aftermath of that decision the narrative was changed to shade it in the best possible manner. If player one simply accessed player two's accounts without permission or pre-approval then does it make sense that a large amount of items are looted from a very specific house very quickly? Common sense would lead you to believe that player one and player two had discussed this course of action and enacted it as a team. Our actions as staff were based on this conclusion. The facts supported it. Common sense supported it. And the staff agreed on the action to take. If either player in this situation violates a posted rule going forward they understand that it will be the end of their time on the Renaissance server.

If during the 24 hour period that this act occurred and if the logs did not show that briefly player one accessed player two's account this matter would not involve any staff action, although I suspect that the actions/statements/posts of everyone involved to this point would be the same.

While we wish that all players remain on the server, generally when a house is looted everyone involved quits. This is part of the felucca ruleset in which we live in. Banning someone to make other players happy, returning the items, taking action arbitrarily will never help. (per topic #2)

In closing we wish any players that are unhappy with our standards the best of luck in all their Ultima Related endeavors.

For our players that enjoy playing on a server where the staff is involved in the game world as minimally as possible we promise that we will continue to hold ourselves to extremely high standards, never jumping to conclusions, take action without evidence and never letting emotions or threats direct our decision making process.

If anyone has any questions about the 4 topics posted here you are welcome to contact me via forum conversation. Otherwise this topic is now closed.