PSA on Town Killing

After 5 years of relatively lose rules on the subject the staff has finally made a decision that most of the abused methods in which players use to kill each other in town will be removed.

While we do understand there will always be situations in which killing someone in town is applicable to felucca some players simply refuse to show respect for the server and our players. We have tried a variety of edge case fixes to address the negative behavior but players continue to find ways around it to avoid consequences related to murdering players.

Now our focus is not the single killing of a player in an insecure location. Our focus is on players who despise the server and its players so much that they want to make sure that macroing is interrupted, players who expect some common level of protection from town are disappointed and who have zero interest for the items a player might be holding.

They simply want the players dead, they despise the players in question, they hate that they are trying to develop characters and show off some new anniversary items they got, and they believe that the logic of "fuck you, its felucca i can do what I want" applies. While this might not apply to some people engaging in this behavior the sheer dedicated to these acts calls the behavior into question in most of these cases we reviewed.

We did not exhaust ourselves running the anniversary event and handing out gift bags to our players to watch a bitter veteran players return to the server after a year, collect their gift bags and then proceed to use whatever method possible to kill people just returning to the server as they try to get started for a 1st or 2nd time.

This is the exact situation I watched play out in the last 24 hours and on a moral level as the administrator of the server this behavior bothers me. I have said many many times in the past my goal here is to run a Classic Renaissance era UO server. I will not, I refuse to, and I will not tolerate running a sociopath simulator. Period.

There is a line between playing in a classic world, with a difficult ruleset where we murder each other, steal each others items and loot each others houses where you can still have respect for your fellow players. This respect between players is what has allowed us to keep as many felucca rules as we have while still being approachable to new/casual players. Sadly in this case this mechanic is simply being used by players as a way to negatively affect the experience of other players for no other reason than their dark satisfaction. Not to loot items, not to kill someone they don't like, not for any reason that would make sense.

The town guards should provide common sense protections to players who are in town when direct negative actions are directed at players.

Using any of the following methods will result in your accounts being jailed until the next patch.
- Luring monsters in town in a way that the NPC's ignore so that you can kill players far from the guard limits.
- Luring released tames into town limits in a way the NPC's ignore so that you can kill players far from guard limits.
- Luring summons that were summoned by a murderer into town limits using another character so that the summons aggro onto players in a way that would not normally be possible.
- Using area of effect spells in town limits to kill players in locations that would otherwise be considered safe (banks/ high traffic areas)
- Killing multiple players in town with a 7 day old character and then deleting the character before the players have a chance to report you.

As you can see none of these methods have any standing in the classic ruleset or even felucca (other than field spells to a degree). Attempting any of those the methods listed would almost certainly result in you being banned from the production server in 1999. Additionally OSI worked to fix these same problems over time eventually giving up completely and implementing the trammel facet. While we have zero intention of ever adding trammel we have, and always will, fix the problems that have led to the creation of trammel.

To be clear if you are caught abusing these methods your accounts will be jailed until the next patch. It is sad that the staff has to pull resources from developing the patches everyone is looking forward to (moats, cub, faction/guild change) to focus on these issues. But if we do not focus on the appeal of the server with new players, and in the case of this event, returning veterans any growth we are experiencing will be limited. The server has a great chance to expand the playerbase going forward and we do not want to miss this opportunity. These same type of things happened with our last phase of growth and we sat back as the same things happened than that are happening now. This time we will be making a change.

Note: This thread will be locked as we are past the point of discussion on this issue. The only discussion to be had will be the methods in which we are going to implement to address these issues. The discussion thread will be started in the appropriate sub forum and linked here once it is ready.

To be exceptionally clear the staff is not concerned about a random player a kills player b situation. For months we have found things like this when reviewing the logs. Days and days of repetitive behavior with a focus of discouraging players from enjoying the server simply because edge case mechanics allow it. I could post 50 images showing examples of this behavior in the last 3-4 months. We have actively been working to fix these issues in line with current patch development. Our primary focus for the next patch will be resolving this type of behavior by fixing the problems that allow for these things to be successful.

Watching people show up for the first time in months/years and collect their gift bag and then immediately move to mass town killing was the final straw for our patience.

In today's situation a player who last played in 2016, whos house had decayed, who rarely logged in for the last 9 months. Returned for the anniversary event, collected their bags, figured out what the current most effective method to kill players was, and then mass murdered everyone in ocllo.

Another example is this log from a single player that was tracked over a period of 3 months in which they killed 5-15 people a day, every day, without fail.

(Some information has been masked to protect the players identity)