The Reputation System

        The installation of the reputation system was something long anticipated by many, but was also (allegedly) big let down for many.  Although I am not included in that many who were unhappy with the new reputation system, I obviously have some complaints about it because nothing is perfect.  My first one is regarding criminal flagging.  I feel that criminal flagging should occur only to those who witnessed the crime.  If Joe attacks Bob outside of Britain, why can the people at the Britain forge all surround and rape Joe after he comes back to town fleeing Bob?  If two people were to get into a fight in real life and a bunch of spectators showed up who didn't know the two people, they would either try to break up the fight or they would just not interfere instead of all jumping on top of one guy because he was gray when they move their target cursor over him.  Then comes corpse highlighting.  I've noticed that if you've been flagged criminal *ONCE* throughout an entire "life", your corpse will be gray to everyone... why?  All those people didn't witness the crime, nor did you do anything to them, why can they freely loot your stuff?  Now lets talk about guild warfare.  There's a big bad guild war in town between the AbC and the xYz, it's a long brutal battle but the AbC come out victorious.  As they go to loot the warm corpses of their rival guild, little Jack jumps from the shadows and screams "GUARDS!"; thus, killing ALL of AbC and then being free to loot all of AbC's corpses (because they were criminals.)  Problem OSI?  Why can't guild members loot the corpsese of rival guild members?  Oh, guild members can't loot each other's corpses either.  They are free to attack each other, but not to loot.  Durrr...  Let's go back and talk about criminal flags real quick.  Why am I flagged criminal PERMANENTLY (until I die) to a person if I steal from them, but someone isn't flagged criminal PERMANENTLY (until they die) to me if they attack me? (assuming I'm an innocent.)  Since when has thievery become a more serious crime than attempted murder?
 

Bugs

        Let's touch on the subject of bugs.  Bill is shot by a mugger in real life, the mugger flees cause he's scared and he doesn't take anything from Bill.  Along comes Frank who hides himself (in plain sight mind you, he vanishes into thin air) then he goes through Bill's pockets and takes his wallet, and a pack of gum (all while remaining completely invisible.)  Sound like bullshit to you?  Yep, me too.  So why is it that someone in the middle of a dungeon can hide right next to a corpse and pick it clean without being revealed?  Simple, because it's a "bug" according to OSI.  Let's see... back when the "True Black" bug occured (which wasn't a real big deal, people running around in black... oooooh scary) OSI came up with a fix in less than a week.  Back when the money bug involving bags came, OSI fixed it in less than A DAY.  Now please be so kind as to explain to me WHAT IS SO HARD ABOUT FIXING LOOTING WHILE HIDING?  Just make it so whenever an item is removed from a corpse by a player the player is unhidden.  My God I just started learning C++ and if you handed me the UO source code I could fix that shit in less than an hour.  Monster gating:  OSI tells everyone "Don't do it, it's a bug, it's not allowed."  Yea yea bitch whine cry complain threaten, but in the end if you do nothing about it who is going to listen?  I have never heard of OSI banning, jailing, or penalizing ANYONE for gating monsters.  I'm sitting around in Deceit the other day minding my own business, suddenly my HP drops to half and I suspect that it's probably a poison elemental or a lich getting ready to kill me.  If it's not a lich or a poison elemental then what is it?  IT'S A FUCKING DRAKE.  A drake from DESTARD.  Cool, I didn't know that drakes could leave dungeons and fly over to Deceit, YEA GO OSI!  Yet another bug that's easy to fix.  if (thing !=(does not equal)  player ||(or) npc) { itCan'tBeGated(); } So simple it's pathetic.  Now let's talk about recall (it's not officially a bug, but it should be.)  Why does it take like 20 seconds for someone to summon themselves a little bear or walrus, but someone can almost INSTANTLY recall out of certain death?  OSI said long ago that recall was supposed to be a means of transportation as opposed to an immediate escape... well, it doesn't show buddy.

Lag

        The final topic of dicussion, lag.  I won't say much about this since I'm not thoroughly learned in TCP/IP and internet bullshit.  The thing I do know is that for the 90,000+ people who bought UO, there are only about a dozen servers.  Where is all our money going?  Please don't tell me it's being divided up to pay all the programmers, because even for a doctor or lawyer all that money would be too much.  What's so hard about putting up a few more servers to reduce the lag?

        I end this editorial with three words, one question... "What's so hard?"