Joy of Villainy News Archieve

February 1999

Friday February 26, 1999
New Editorials

Three new editorials have been posted (in the Editorials section). I normally wouldn't post other people's viewpoints in there, but Greybeard and Brules made some fine points about the recent patches and upcoming updates.

3:10pmEST -Nighthawk

Patches & UOHoC Chat

I'm amazed at OSI's stupidity. I mean, I've tried to give them some credit because they seem to have their heads on straight some of the time, but man they sure can be stupid sometimes.

After I returned to UO yesterday, I discovered they had patched resist/eval in my absense. That was great for me now that I have 90+ resist for the first time ever (macroing my ass off the past week with everyone else). Ok, I thought it would be great for me. Actually it turns out that I can't resist mana drain/vamp at all. Ok, so they're going to fix that. Fine.

Brules ICQs me and says "I hope you have Eval Int". Well, I do on my pks, but on my main? Of course not. "well, come over here and ebolt me a few times and you'll see why I mention it." So, I head over to Brules' place and drop my you're-fucked-now combo on him (normally does 70+ points of damage on anyone with less than 65 resist). Brules stands there casually with 53 resist as I explosion/flamsetrike/ebolt him - he took 41 points of damage. OH. MY. GOD. Ok, they nurfed Magery... damnit.

Ummm, no they didn't. Brules has 94 Eval Int and hit me with two ebolts (bear in mind my 90+ resist) and they both did a 30 points of damage... each. Hmmm... I guess I'm droping Archery after all. So, Eval Int isn't just enhancing your Mage, it's damn near a requirement if you want all that expensive Magery training to be worth a shit.

Then in last night's UOHoC chat there were two significant comments made - both about this new Evil class. Here they both are :

Glamdring> *Ensign* I think like the upcoming Evil Pker patch. Just one Question: if a Red (Evil) Pkiller kills a character, what will happen to the things the deceased had with him. Will they ALL remain on his ghost? If not, what will keep a dishonorable Pkiller from staying near the body and killing the newly ressed player over and over, while the things on his body decay?

DesignerD> The items would stay with the ghost, except in the case of paladins, whose stuff would stay behind (that's the price you pay for being anoted killer of evil scum)

Glamdring> *GoldDust-NV* About being evil. If I am evil, and a blue player initiates combat against me and I come out victorious. Will I be able to loot him, seeing as he chose to start the fight?

DesignerD> Nope.

Jesus Christ. So, if I'm "Evil", I never get loot even if someone attacks me? What I laughed at was DD's quote of "The kind of PvP that is going away is rampant blue PKing." I don't foresee many blue pks giving up loot just to be able to have a kill count. Morons...

9:23amEST -Nighthawk

Wednesday February 24, 1999
Vapor Makes Fast Update

Heres the deal. This is Vapor doing a minor update for Nighthawk (who will prolly get mad at me for doing this) but hes in some real life shit and for reasons left unsaid cannot update for possibly a while. I will not do updates i just want to keep you all informed so you don't go into withdrawels over missing your daily dosage of the JoV, later yall

5:34pmEST -Vapor

Tuesday February 23, 1999
Killing with Ron

Besides madly macroing my resist in town, the only thing I've really been doing recently has been killing with Ronald McDonald. He's on a mission to reach 1000 kills and I'm more than happy to help/join him in reaching his goal. Personally, I think we should shoot for 2k just because that hasn't been done since the good ole Dread days, but I guess 1k is a good start. I think the kill count is somewhere around 250, but for full details, hit Ron's site.

11:39amEST -Nighthawk

Stories Posted

In case you hadn't gathered, I'd been posting infrequently until recently. Well, I'm out of my rutt and (obviously) posting like a madman.

I posted 8 stories today. The stories by Dave Gahan and Coeus are two of the best stories submitted in recent memory. If you want to see how you can actually be a miner killer and still be smooth or just want to read a great funny story - definitely check those two out.

10:21amEST -Nighthawk

Great Idea by Shai'tan

Shai'tan from Dr. TwisTer's posted this great idea on how to make the game stat loss free by only allowing experienced targets (non newbies/merchants). Take a look :

First of all with all respect we love UO and want to make it better for everyone. I got a little out of hand the other day by professing to PK newbies for OSI to listen...thus I have decided to try to be more productive and compromise with DD. Here is an improved idea in keeping with OSI's Innocent Blue color, and is well loved by everyone.

1. How do you solve the Good vs. Evil problem? Merely make combatants (say 80 skill) a new color (say yellow or purple). These people can be subjected to penalty free attack by Dreadlords (or equivalent) ONLY. Attacking blues results in the Dread getting 1% or 5% stat loss cumalitive upon death. Simple yet attractive hehe

2. How do you stop Blue PKs? As in real life...ANYONE who attacks a blue instantly becomes "dread" and is subject to stat loss. ANYONE who attacks a "purple or yellow" see above" is now flagged Red with a VERY slow rate of murder atrophy. This means also that Glorious Lords are stripped of their title and become infamous murderers instantly uopon killing.

* These simple changes will make EVERYONE happy! Newbies, merchant, non-combatant mages will be safe.

* The old Dread vs. Anti wars that EVERYONE loved will be back.

* Blue PKs will no longer be an issue becaue they wont be blue :)

* Lastly, a TRUE system of a balanced Good and Evil will be present. All this and you have one hell of a game that satisfies 95% of the players.

I think it's a great idea. I'm all for it. I don't get off by raging on newbies, miners or lumberjacks - so this wouldn't change my gameplay at all. Personally, I think the combat-ready level could be raised to 90+ in any combat/magery skill and would still be fine. As a matter of fact, the new highlighting system would help me avoid raging on people who are not prepared for such an encounter.

Wow. An evil guy with morals. Weird huh? No, I just want people to fear PKs for being bad ass, not for being dicks.

8:23amEST -Nighthawk

Monday February 22, 1999
More Commentary

Being a pk has been a real pain in the ass. I do it because I love to kill people, the loot is good and it's one of the most fun things to do in UO. Why has it been a pain in the ass then? You would think it's because of being attacked everywhere, until recently having to carry a rune semi-near my house with a key, or something as simple as a 10 second lag bubble ruining a perfectly good character. Well, it's not.

What makes it a pain in the ass are the other PKs that give us hardass reds a bad name. We're forced to hunt in packs (generally), so when we kill a lone person - it's not some big accomplishment. Unless the person was a moron or an asshole, I can't really think of a reason to say anything to a ghost that you just gangbanged.

Speaking in KeWl h@k0R speak leaves me at a complete loss. What's strange is although I've seen people post like that on message boards when you have plenty of time to type all that shit out, I've only seen one or two people speak like that in UO. So, I don't have any idea where the "stereotype" that all PKs are Kewl Dewds comes from.

I will still continue to be a pk. It just drives me up the wall that idiot miner pks, newbie hunters, shit talkers and other such low level pks give us that do it well a bad name.

12:40pmEST -Nighthawk

Sunday February 21, 1999
My Thoughts on the Evil Guild

This whole evil guild thing is fucking stupid. Anyone who buys into that is a moron. If you think that the Evil guild thing is a good idea, let me explain why it's such a bad, bad idea.

First off, you're red and attackable by anyone and everyone. You can access town, but most importantly you cannot loot anyone you kill. A RL friend of mine, Darkness, and I were discussing it as I was explaining this new system to him. He has a murderer and he was trying to figure out if he should enter this new guild. After I explained it all to him, this is what he had to say :

"so now you have...
Grey thieves
Blue roleplayers
Blue pks
Red roleplayers
And big mean bad mother fuckers who don't give a god damn about stat loss and will analy rape everyone including RP red pks"

Well put!

2:48pmEST -Nighthawk

Thursday February 18, 1999
I *AM* on Abyss

Most people that see me there ask, "Are you the real Nighthawk?" After I saw yes, they normally accept that. I had some dickweed named "PhantasMagoria" no only told me that I wasn't me, but he was a complete moron to boot.

If you're going to accuse someone of being (or not being) someone, at least have a small clue. Anyhow, if you see a Nighthawk JoV on Abyss - it's probably me.

2:13pmEST -Nighthawk

Wednesday February 17, 1999
Lack of Updates

Sorry about the severe lack of updates recently. Frankly, I've had a really shitty week in RL and nothing overly interesting has been happening in UO. Ok, that's not completely true. I've been doing a lot of pking with Ronald McDonald recently (even though I'm not on his Murderers' page), but "we killed a lot of people" isn't too exciting of a story, thus why it wasn't some big update.

They're pretty close to cutting the balls off of thieves, so I turned my tank rogue red. Pretty frustrating to see 180 skill points (100 stealing and 80 snooping) go to waste. *shrug* Oh well, better than not using the character I guess.

For those of you that have been asking : No, I haven't been on Abyss since it's return. I've been killing so much on Baja that I really don't need Abyss. Maybe if I take a stat loss I'll head over to Abyss to blow off some steam. Of course, we still need to have a JoV gathering there at some point...

Anyhow, the site will continue to get updated as soon as I can get out of this rut I seem to be in.

1:01pmEST -Nighthawk

Thursday February 11, 1999
I love this Dev Team

Read what SunSword posted last night and you'll see why:

From: SunSword @ HOME
Date: February 11, 1999 at 12:48 am
In Reply to: Hmmm can I post a gripe to?

Subject: Well, I would expect some changes soon

to Buc's Den to make things easier on you. And I commend you for playing as a Red. That impresses me. (We're talking about a reverse justice system on the Island)

Unbelievable. A reverse justice system! Holy shit. Not only are we getting a bank, but a PROTECTED bank. An actual red city. I'm stunned that this team not only compliments someone for being a murderer, but is planning on making such a major change to the game.

7:21pmEST -Nighthawk

Wednesday February 10, 1999
Bug?

Sorry I haven't been updating much. I've been having RL issues that I won't go into, but they've been hindering my ability to update as much as I would like. I do have several stories to post, I'll try to get to them tomorrow. Sorry about the delay.

Anyhow, I died in the strangest manner recently. Weird enough for me to post about. I was fighting someone in the lich lord room in Deciet after I went grey from my EV attacking a person instead of the LL it was right next to. *shrug* Anyhow, we're fighting along and I lead him outside the room for a bit of archery and magery.

We're both at full health again by this point when suddenly a gate opens where he's standing (not cast by him - he had a bow in his hands). BAM! Next thing I know his regular bow kills me in one hit - from 91 hp. The people coming in from the gate were friends of mine, so I ended up being ok, but it was weird that I was killed in one hit.

I later linked up with the person who killed me, Brianna II (maybe it's a female?). S/he opened the conversation with "what is you STR?" I guess s/he thought it was funny that they killed me in one hit. Between the two of us, we couldn't come up with an answer except maybe that the gate had something to do with it.

Anyhow, that should give yall something to play with. I'll sent it to Twister and see if his bug testers can come up with something.

7:21pmEST -Nighthawk

Monday February 8, 1999
Goddamnit Greybeard

Holy shit, that fucker makes me laugh. Over at the Warcouncil, Greybeard posted this take off of the new Thieving Guild changes proposed by OSI. Go there and laugh your ass off.

2:32pmEST -Nighthawk

The Search Begins

I have begun trying to get together some of the biggest names on Baja for a screenshot. Here's the message I've posted on a couple of Baja websites :

Ok guys, I want to take a screenshot of all of the BIG names on Baja. We have some of the most famous people in UO on our shard and some awesome pvp'ers. I mean hell, we have Greybeard (EiG), Zander (Warcouncil), Ronald & Cich McDonald, Macros, Sin, Xander, Cherub, Pearl, Tricor, etc all on Baja. We can get old schoolers from LAPD, Patryns, LoD, etc.

Granted, I would take a couple of pics so people's names wouldn't overlap, but since we're all not going to be here forever, I think it'd be a cool pic to have.

I'm looking for the truly elite here. If you're one of them, email me.

Nighthawk
JoV Webmaster

Should make for an interesting pic if I can gather the big names together. Hopefully, we can get together before we all quit. :)

1:45pmEST -Nighthawk

Wednesday February 3, 1999
Don't Macro on Blade Spirits

Blade spirits now do MAD damage whether you attack them or they attack you. They hurt. They hurt like hell. I was going to macro my murderer and I nearly shit when I saw how fast my HP were dropping.

Why is that important? Well, boys and girls, here's why. Now that you must do damage to gain skill, you can't just sit there and let a polar bear (or whatever) whack on you to gain skill. Since you have to do damage, you would wail on the polar bears and be using a lot regs healing bears. Now that BS do massive damage, you can't just beat on something that you summon that you know has an assload of HP.

Macroing up to GM melee and/or Tactics is gone. They snuck that in this patch yesterday. If you're not already GM whatever, you're stuck doing it that hard way (fighting monsters). Yanno what that means for PKs that get stat loss? You're fucked because there's no way you're fighting monsters peacefully, of course.

Because of this, I've removed the BS macros and the section descripting it's use. Guess they're kinda worthless now.

6:19pmEST -Nighthawk

Tuesday February 2, 1999
Murderer Bank?

You bet yer ass! There is now a bank that acknowledges murderers in Buc's Den. On Baja it's just southeast of the healer - I can't imagine it being elsewhere on other shards.

I just found out this last night. My bank box was just as I'd left it many months ago. What was weird was that the banker treated me like a criminal after I attacked a blue ("I will not deal with a criminal"), but after my agressor flagging wore off he opened my bank box happliy.

Good job OSI! Now Buc's Den won't be a dead city anymore. Granted, we're gonna have to be careful for traps around our bank, but I can live with that for a red bank!

1:03pmEST -Nighthawk

Patch Day

Supposedly today is patch day. A list of things that might be in today's patch can be viewed here at update.owo.com. I know that the Resist/Eval Int changes are not going in and the Combat changes are probably not either. Hopefully, Meditation will come out - that will make my PKs life extremely happy.

Either way, today is just like any other patch day... no one knows what to expect.

10:19amEST -Nighthawk

Monday February 1, 1999
Abyss Story

I finally posted my newest story about some of the events from the Abyss shard. I'm still kinda ill, so if my writing isn't as good as it normally is, try to cut me a break.

1:02pmEST -Nighthawk