is it good?

In other words (Gideon correct me if I'm wrong), if gold output was excessively high, then there should be a lot of groups riding the gravy train. But there's only actually a few groups. Therefore, it's not actually too high.

Maybe the barrier to entry is too high. But then again it's an end-game system, so maybe it should be.

Free fact: I liked @BlackEye more when he took his time to steal and loot people's houses and fulfill the UO:Renaissance - Thieving perfected (ongoing thread). I miss those tales.

I won't argue that the harrower itself is relatively easy - usually. Also, sometimes, it's incredibly difficult.

I've seen at least 6 harrowers get raided on UOR and the results varied across those 6 dramatically - from total cluster jobs where the spawning group got no plat to the total opposite.


I also have some experience with end game raiding in other MMOs. Once content is farm status, it's farm status. Mechanics get figured out and bosses become easy to take down - whether it requires more players, more tamers, specialized phase strategies, whatever.. it'll get figured out.


The difference in all those other games is that you eventually level beyond said content so it's no longer end game and you're put up against more difficult content to continue progressing your character and equipment. UO is very much different and UOR specifically so. I don't expect Chris to come out with more challenging end game content for us on a yearly basis like big game publishers do. And I don't expect (or want) to engage in a gear treadmill.

The Felucca style environment of UO is the component that makes Harrowers so random and challenging. How do you motivate a relatively large group of people to participate in gathering skulls when those skulls could get stolen by blues or reds? How do you motivate them to put together a complete set in the hopes of acquiring 1,000 plat to split in some way that everybody determines is fair, when said harrower could get raided by blues or reds?

The real problem is a group has figured it out. They didn't figure out the game - that's easy. They figured out the players and how to get folks to actually commit to something.

But like Cynic said, it's easy to sit on the side lines and call that group a bunch of cheaters or whatever.

You cannot sit there and say the system is too easy and that's why nobody is doing it and then claim that a fix would be something like nerfing the payout, making it harder, or making it so you can't do it as often. Those "solutions" make no sense, whatsoever. Not to say there aren't "solutions" but I don't think my idea of what the problems are match up with what other people think are the problems. I mean shit, Erl wants to remove the Fel mechanic and turn it all into an instance event.. wtf.

Well that makes a lot more sense, imho. Every time I've seen a game system that was actually legit broken, it was characterized by massive player activity rather than lack of player activity.


This is my response directly to Erl:
1. You're doing the same thing others do which is generate some hypothetical numbers to prove your point which don't match up to in game experience where shit happens - tamers die, reds show up, skulls get stolen, etc. I have never pulled anywhere close to the numbers people are generating in this thread. NEVER. Vella said at his best he pulled 500k per hour specifically milking multiple Meph spawns on tier 3. I've never gotten close to that. I believe nobody I've champed with has either. That's outrageous claims that don't help your argument because nobody believes it.
2. There is no point to this game but to build up treasure, buy items, and deco your house - in a sense. Building up 15 toons is pretty trivial. Buying properties can take some time. Eventually, though, it's pvm for lewts or pvp. Why, WHY, do you guys care if somebody spends like 10+ hours doing champs and a harrower to get a bookcase. Really.
3. No it's not trivially easy. I, like everybody else I champ with, have real life responsibilities. I can hop in probably once a week and help with a champ or harrower. I get some plat for that and if they down the harrower later I get a share. It's good cash when I can commit the time but I almost never have the time to commit 1-4 hours to champing. Some people do and they earn more than me. Am I jealous? Was I jealous of late night champs? No, not at all. I'm actually HAPPY because it means people are enjoying playing the game. Sure, they have more plat/gold than me. So does somebody who can participate in the current fishing tournament which I'd also like to participate in but cannot due to real life.

Guideon is right. There is nothing wrong with figuring out how to do something and excell at it. It's perfectly fine and legal. Nothing wrong with that.

I have always been, and will always be an advocate for more social interaction and inclusion. What sucks is that there are "exclusive" groups. And I'm not saying it is the case here, but someone brought up IDOCs. As it stands, the entry barrier into the IDOC business right now is high. As a newish player/guild, you might try, you're going to fail. It is going to need a big group of veteran, and organized players to at least challenge that group. That takes content out of the game for the people not in that IDOC group.

Now, as I said, I am in no way comparing this to the IDOC group. I just think that while champing in a small well organized group is good, maybe finding a way of opening it up to the community would be more rewarding for the server. Just sayin'.

We made an open group and have run open harrowers.

They were shit on - by the players currently telling the entire server we're somehow doing something wrong.

So we made it by invite and we have 30+ members including many new players. And everybody in there has a great time without dealing with drama.

Your assessment of IDOC is accurate but PlatTrain is not. There is no barrier to entry created by our champing group to other champing groups.

They could even ask us about our strategies. I believe I posted in Markos's champ thread on how to defeat the harrower in all the various locations. But if they'd like to know more, I am more than willing to share.

Steal the bosses. Hide them in your house. Use the fact that they spawn mobs around them as gold fountains. Prevent anyone from obtaining their skulls. Ransom the boss back to IDOC. Problem solved.

edit: My point being that when faced with a clearly more advantaged group, that group has effectively no protection from under handed tactics. Get trolly. Get blackmaily. Get your game up.

Pulling champ bosses out of their spawn for nefarious intent was already done by some of the naysayers in this thread. It's been remedied, if I'm not mistaken.

Makes sense that making it public would attract the riff-raff.

I missed 2 years of action on this server, and only attended 2 harrowers before that (none since).

If it is true that it has been remedied, that is wrong and it should not have been.

Telamon has said that is fixed in the next patch (or maybe already was - he mentioned it the other day)

Abusing teleportation mechanics of champ spawns by gating away from the spawn area to kill people in their homes that would otherwise not be able to be killed, was trash and not right in the spirit of this shard. If that's right to you, I think you may have found the wrong shard.

<Telamon> UOR does not exist as a mechanism for players to grief one another. It exists so players can experience how UO used to be in 1999,
not as a sociopath simulator.


Nice try though.

Oh, you mean the blue-luring of champs away from the spawn just to crimp the progress is getting fixed? That's nice.

I suggested "blue-luring of champs away from the spawn" and into my own house. Your accusation of grief is unfounded and ridiculous.

Specifically: 1) Lure boss away 2) lure boss onto boat 3) sail back to T1A 4) lure boss off of boat and into house 5) table down the boss 6) farm ensuing spawn 7) hold boss hostage for ransom

This should never be done away with. It is not grief. It is epic.

No, it's fucking stupid. Any boss monster should have AI good enough to take itself back to its altar, should some assbag try to grief the whole champ by doing so.

Guess you and I have different opinions of how to define grief. That type of activity suits no purpose but to trash the gameplay of others because you're a sociopath.


Wanna disrupt a champ, go kill players, like the good Lord British intended.

I find it funny that you are throwing around accusations of sociopathy. That type of behavior has the legitimate purpose of farming the boss's spawn for loot. It also has the legitimate purpose of extorting the server's most well-off players for loot. None of this constitutes griefing.

edit: I have nothing further to say on the subject, it is a matter of opinion and taste, and I and am discontinuing debate on it.

If you want to farm the boss for loot, do it where it belongs, at the champion spawn. If you want to trap bosses to abuse mechanics to suit yourself, while simultaneously crapping on other players by doing so, you're griefing. Like I said, difference of opinion. My opinion is that that type of activity is garbage unsuited for this shard. Shame administration doesn't agree with you though...right?

Also not sure you understand the meaning of the word sociopath.

@Gideon Jura i am not calling you guys cheaters or anything quite frankly you placed a system that works very well for you. The only thing I am getting at is in this game harrowers are truely end game and it should be difficult to achieve/get to. My solutions:

A) limit plat that is given out per player to how it originally was 20 per person

B) make the skulls harder to get 1/25 chance of 1/50

Now honestly both of my solutions are most likely crap and, thank god I have no real say on what changes happens to this server. Do you see as the system that is in place now is uor perfected?

From what I have been told this server has not seen as much activity as it had when people were doing public harrowers. In the end I believe most of us want this server to flourish with people playing. I do not believe the current system in place allows this. I am not here to trash talk anyone i am just more curious to see what everyone's thoughts are.

Thanks for reading I hope everyone has a pleasant day.

I don't think there is any mechanic that prevents you from leading a boss away, but staff would put it back where it belonged if available and jail you. It's also pretty frowned on to bother people at spawns in general. We had two guys that tried showing up on blues looting dead players and casting offensive walls and they ended up in jail until the spawn ended.


There's a lot more to it than that but I really don't care to get into it.

The bottom line is - the harrower was once an event that involved the entire community and now it no longer is. That's what the server lost when it changed to this system.

No, nothing is preventing others from joining. Gideon's idoc group is doing nothing wrong by benefiting from it. Of course they shouldn't be punished. They changed their schedules to play at 7-9am when noone is on and that's exactly what I watched my guild's opponents do on Baja 13 years ago. Anyone can show up to their harrowers if they are willing to play those hours. Anyone can do their own spawns if they are willing to put the manhours into it.

We were doing harrowers with 4-5 people and walking out with over 200 platinum per person multiple times per night and turning around and giving away blessed runebooks to new players because it had lost so much value - and the hardest part of it all was finding 4 guildmates who weren't so bored with it that they'd log on to put their pets on the harrower and recall home until the plat was delivered at their house. Xeg and Kane are still sitting on multiple harrower sets.

I don't care about monopoly money and never have. If you think this system is a shining metaphor for the hard working american who gets super rich because he worked hard and didn't mix with those poor people of color than that's great. All I see is a system that used to be a natural community event that didn't require a GM to log on and bribe you with statues to show up. It was changed under the guise of platinum entering the economy too quickly but platinum has gone down in value since this change. The only difference is that same plat goes into 5 pockets instead of 50. (Yes yes, I get it that you want me to believe that you are a 25 man operation. In our case we were 4-manning harrowers and splitting it evenly so this certainly held true for us.)

The platinum output is excessively high. Three man a champ spawn in an hour, walk away with 15-20 plat and 35k gold if you only loot via scavenger. Times vary of course. If it was the rat spawn you'd be done in 20 minutes but you need to do the others to get each skull. You might struggle for as long as two hours on Oaks with three people. If Gideon's group doesn't make these kinds of times and earnings it's because they haven't enough experience or efficient razor usage yet. I could drop my tamers in a champ spawn and they'd run themselves until the last third of the spawn where I'd want to group up with the rest of the group. I typically cooked, cleaned, ran errands, or watched tv during the first half of champ spawns. Once you had each skull you could knock down a harrower in a half hour for a ~1015 platinum split. Note that at uorenaissance.com on the left hand side there are 5 top lifetime monster killers and they are all in my guild.

Why aren't you doing two harrowers a week @Nightwolf , @Pirul , @Heretic ? It's not because you couldn't find something to do with platinum. You just don't care or don't have the time to spend on this kind of thing. You don't even want a ride on the gravy train, there aren't enough people on the server that care about it these days. I'd even wager that Gideon's group is getting bored with it since the site says a harrower hasn't been done in two weeks. They seemed to be doing two a week for six months. The value of this system has just plummeted in the last year. And the most important thing we need to recognize we lost is the guild activity and the public events. The days where everyone old and new came out to fight the biggest monster in the game are long gone. The days when guilds like [UO] and [PwN] were active and taking part in this system daily are long gone. Today there's only two types of players - solo farmers or packs of reds. Group pve activities have declined. And while you can sit on this forum and say that anyone can take part in this system - the reality is that platinum access is asymptotic in the bounds it approaches for the player who games this system and the player who does not. I can give away more platinum without any consideration than the average player will gather in his entire career. If you ever see someone ask why they don't see any players outside of occlo - this is one of the reasons. The divide between overly wealth veterans and players entering the system is extreme and they move on once they realize it.

Exclusive groups are part of this game, they are better known as guilds.

Certain aspects of the game are excellent as a public undertaking. Other aspects are more enjoyable in a controlled or private environment.

Fations have been controlled by TT for years, it is what it is. Complaining that they make the threshold into entering factions unattainable or difficult is silly. You either compete, try to compete, or dont.
The same applies to collecting rares.
Running vendors.
Collecting nightmares or rare spawns.
Or running idocs.

Certain areas of the game take a considerable amount of invested game time. If you can't invest your time, money, and/or motivation into those areas then you can't complain when seeing others succeeding. I can't invest time into bods or Rares anymore but I don't bitch that Captain Morgan is blowing everyone out of the water in both those areas.

Captain...water....I see what you did there!