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Broken Mirrors
Part 1: Who's Here, Anyway?
Part 2: 911's A Joke On Your Server
Part 3: What Everquest Got Right, and What They Got Wrong
Part 4: Why Ultima Online Will Never Work, And Why You Should Play Anyway
Part 5: Conclusions
- Lum
Macroing: Punishment and Crime - Tal'Mah'Ra
The Darwin Files - Lum
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8:00 PM SMURFZAPOPPIN

*starts with a newbie in orc helm* This is the true story *blinks away to murderer in a black dress with two daemons following him* of 40 strangers picked to live in a jail cell *blinks away to an almost dead person lying on the ground* to see what happens when people stop being polite *blinks away to two players, one looking rather gruff and in full plate (sitting) and the other in his lap in a kilt (and nothing else)* and start getting real. The Real (?) World. *blinks away to an almost nude thief running from someone's pet nightmare* Ultima Online.

And just in case you thought smurfs could macro with impunity, we have this;

I have inside info that on the Atlantic shard there is a Counselor by the name of Counselor Crom, who was caught macroing, on the SP shard, rather then banning him, and removing him from the Counselor program, they decided to treat him as a dog, and make him wear a tag on his Counselor char that says "-Suspend" he cant council for 2 weeks, but has to be in irc during his shift. Shard Lead Counselor (SLC) decided to humiliate him, publicly, rather then banning him... Treat a volunteer like a animal, rather then being quiet about this, and let it slid just this once, or rather then letting him go... This was SLC Damsel's decision as to what to do with him, as far as punishment went...

Just thought you may want to know that, being this is totally a case of a Powertripped Shard Lead Counselor, using her powers, rather then doing what was stronly said about Counselors, which was, they will be banned if caught, unattended macroing...

12:00 PM EXPLAINING THE INEXPLICABLE

Well, the official explanation came from SRC Terendil;

No SRC was involved other than to stop the rogue counselor. The Counselor in question has had his account permanently banned for this. It does not matter if he was hacked or not as he is ultimately responsible for his account.

Catskills Shard extends its apologies to any affected player.

And here's what some of you came up with. By far the most popular explanation was variations on this:

They figured that everyone macroed at one point or another so they just decided to punish everyone for back crimes.

Other theories include:

Population control has been introduced into UO. Maybe the GM showed up to kill them and remove their chars from the server, thus creating a less lag free experience for everyone as these people would probably quit.

These people all willed themselves into jail. A few of them were thinking "Im bored" and then in a mind over matter incident, the server transported everyone on screen to a more interesting spot. One with walls on all sides.

It was a cruel experiment to see how players act in twisted conditions. Stuck in a jail room with 40 other people all shouting and screaming? In RL, that would be torture.

I think they just wanted to see how many corpses could decay in a single room.

It was some kind of exploit... if you piled 12 mushrooms in each corner of a jail cell, a random castle would be yours!

And my favorite explanation:

The smurfs were jealous of all the attention you gave SRCs last week...

9:00 AM WRATH OF THE HELL SMURFS

Got this in the mail:

This is without a doubt the single most incredible thing that has ever happened to me throughout the breadth of my UO career. This morning, on the Catskills server, it appeared as though the entire PC population of the Britain subserver was teleported to jail. One moment, we were all enjoying server war around Brit Cemetary. The next minute, I'm in jail with 40 other confused, irate players. After a while, myself and three others were teleported to a seperate room adjoining the one where all the other players were. All spells were disabled, so we could not recall out. A very apologetic Counselor Videre explained that he didn't know how we got here, and furthermore couldn't teleport us out. After a long while, he told us that our player names and character ID's were being written down for further questioning, and GM Lint arrived. It would appear that some SRC is going to get his balls nailed to the proverbial wall for doing it, whether it was a sick joke or just an honest mistake remains to be seen. Enclosed are pictures to help you get a better idea of the total mayhem that ensued.

I'm sure there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for teleporting 40 people to jail. And I'm dying to hear it. In fact, why don't you, the reader, help? See if you can come up with a logical explanation for teleporting 40 people to jail. The winner of this contest gets, um, absolutely nothing.

10:30 PM WUH-OH

Everquest is not having a good day.

First off, an entire guild on Fennin Ro awoke to find themselves knocked down to level 1 by the GMs. Since most were level 40+, they were unamused. Rumor has it they had found an item dupe.

Then, they patched all the servers, and for some reason it took most of the day. John Smedley's explanation was that "it was a reallly big patch."

Then, when the servers came up, some lucky tradesmen who planned ahead made about 8,000 plat. Those who didn't plan ahead found that Verant had "enhanced" pottery by making it completely useless. This reduces, as we mentioned before, the number of usable trade skills in the game to about, um, zero. But that's OK, that's not the point of Everquest. The point of Everquest, as we all know, is to camp for the cool shit.

Then, some enterprising snooper found out that one of the reasons the patch was so big was that the spell "Ultra Death" was added. Here's the description, which can be found by opening your spdata.eff file in a text editor:

Oh come on, you know that there is no such thing as an ultra death spell in this game. Come on - this is EQ - we balance things as well as we can. No tank-mages. No uber class. Etc etc. Thanks for asking though. BTW - what are you doing reading this file? - Geoffrey Z

However, Fear does have his plane. He's also apparently the reason Siege Perilous exists. Basically I'm in fear of no Fear.