Well, besides for giving you links to information already available, I truly have nothing to add to any of this. All of this has gotten way out of control. The only reason I'm posting the below links is to save everyone else time looking for the information and deciding to ask me directly. Not to say that I don't like email. I love email - I just would prefer answer everyone at once on my stance and what information I have rather than individually.

The Official OSI News Story on the termination of one of their support team. Personally, I think what they did and how they came out first admitting the issue is commendable.

Dr.TwisTer's Page has a news story with further info. His site is currently down, but I'm sure it will be back up soon.

Lum the Mad has more news about all this than anyone. He posted a quick "that's not mine" screenshot I sent him and a couple of quotes on my tower situation.

Hopefully, between those three sites, you should be able to remain completely informed. As I said, with all that info out there, I really don't feel the need to get involved. I'm just here to play a game. =)

A good friend of mine in rl made this movie about dex monkeys. I'll have to find a permanent link spot for it (and hopefully other movies), but for now you can just use this link : The Commando Movie.

New poll about how many people you normally have in your pking group when you go killing. I guess if you don't pk, there's no use voting. Should be interesting to see the results...

Just to let everyone know, The Dr.TwisTer Network is going through some
changes. Currently we are establishing a connection with our own dedicated
server. The volume of players that visit both our Ultima Online and
EverQuest sites has risen beyond expectations and as a result, this change
was necessary.

The dedicated server will be able to bring you faster, more reliable
service, as well as a whole new list of options for your entertainment.

Hopefully this delay in service will only be a short time, and the domain
will be back up soon. Please continue to visit and thank you all for your
support of www.drtwister.com.

Thank you again
Dr.TwisTer
The Dr.TwisTer Network

Thanks Twist. Hope yer back up soon, bro.

48% have or will get UOA
48% use UOE/UOP instead
4% are opposed to 3rd party apps

I expected more people to be against 3rd party apps, but of the 178 people that voted, only 8 chose that option.

"Man, I'm getting kinda tired of UO, I think I might quit."

"But, dude, EQ sucks!"

Ummm... what does one thing have to do with the other? When I eventually quit playing UO, I guarantee that I will not be going to EQ just because it's another online RPG. As a matter of fact, I may go back to not playing computer games at all. It's not like I don't have anything else to do with my time and I'm sure that a lot of people are the same way.

Anyhow, just thought I'd point that out.

OSI has potentially cost me a lot of money. Not silly UO money, I mean actual cash. Since I haven't gotten my tower back and I have several roommates, I may have to shell out rl cash to get the tower back (since it was my banning that left them homeless).

As you casn tell by this EBay auction, that would end up costing me over $700 if I wanted to buy one. I mean, it's unheard of to punish me in this mannor for saying the word "jap". Lets be honest, they admitted they made an error with the banning by reversing it. I would think they'd replace the tower since obviously it shouldn't have been removed to begin with.

I've emailed a ton of them, but all I've gotten back is one email from uoconcern@owo.com that said something to the effect of "consider that part of your 72 hour penalty box punishment". *sigh* Great customer service....

Musashi makes me laugh. He makes me laugh out loud and for long periods of time. He needs to move to Baja so I can hang out with him more. =)

Mu did three write-ups and one story over on his site in the Musashi Chronicles. If you want to see a rundown of what happened at the "Unban Nighthawk" protest, his story Musashi Versus the MAN is a great take on the event. I wish I could have provided entertainment in a way other than getting banned, but at least the protest was good quality humor.

BTW, I'm obviously back in town. My team got 2nd in the national championships for Q-Zar (lasertag). We lost in the last half of the last game to a team we'd just beaten 30 minutes before. *shrug* Oh well...

To answer a lot of your emails, yes I was at my own "unban Nighthawk" protest last night. I was there as the character Shinji. Ironic that I was there on a friend's account who's best blue character had an Asian sounding name. Nonetheless, I really appreciate all of the things that you people said. I did speak to a lot of you off to the side, because when I tried to take center stage to say thanks, I was quite spammed out. Oh well, thanks either way.

I would also like to thank the OSI staff for actually listening to the players. I don't know what turned you (OSI) around : the player protest, the large number of emails, or what. I can only imagine it was a combination of things. In any case, I'm estatic that you not only listened to your customers, but admitted that there was an error that you were willing to correct. Honestly, it both surprised and thrilled me.

Good job everyone. Lets not forget that people like Stretch, BLUE PEPPER and others were banned under very similar circumstances. I know that it wasn't everyone goal to just get me off the hook, but to speak out that banning over petty things will not be taken lightly.

OMG! Just checked my email! OSI working overtime!

From: "Ultima Online Account Administration"
Subject: MX0000012714 Your UO account named ''
To: qzar@mindspring.com

Richard,

We have re-examined this case, and have transferred your account to the 72 hour penalty box. It will not be permanently banned, and should be accessible on 6/13/99 after 9pm. Please make sure that you are very careful of your language in the future, and do not say anything that might be construed as a racial slur by any group.

72 ban baby! SWEET! Granted I lost my tower, but at least I'm back!

A huge thanks to all of you who showed up to the protest tonight and all of you who sent in emails. I read some of your emails and I have to say you guys made better points than I did. =)

Again, thanks! I'M BACK BABY!

Well, at least this banning is giving me a lot to say.

Anyhow, a lot of you have been asking WHO to shoot an email off to if you were going to email. The correct folx to contact (and be nice to) are uoacctadmin@owo.com.

Again, thanks for your support and well wishes. It means a lot, honestly.

For those of you who wanted to see what my tower looked like after it decayed, here is a pic. Thankfully, zero/Jesus came home in time for us to save all 60k stones of the stuff. BTW, I don't keep crap, so everything you see there is filled with NICE stuff.

Thanks to Jesus, Charley, Vapor, Raven, Rampaugh and Setzer for helping get all the stuff secure. If I can find a tower on Baja, I may try to rebuild. Otherwise, I'm not. If you know of one, lemme know.

I appreciate all of your help. I don't know if it'll do anything, but thanks.

Do remember to be courteous, not rash or rude. Bear in mind that a fine word to describe this situation is "hypersensitive". I mean... "jap" is not necessarily a derogatory term. Maybe a penalty box, but not a perma ban situation.

BTW, Stretch of 7 was also banned on Baja last night. He paged GM Boo when two non-english people were spamming him with "FUCKER" and "Your Mom costs $1". When the gm got there and saw Stretch ask "Is that supposed to be Jap humor?", BAM - he go byebye.

I think OSI needs to look very carefully at the bannings of this new GM.

Welp, I got my email. I'm gone for good apparently. I had ONE note on my account and that's what I was banned for. Here's the note :

Your account was closed for the following:

6/10/99 7:04:45 PM
Character: Nighthawk (6575800) World: Baja
This player was paged on for harassment. This player was caught saying:
(Wed Jun 09 15:22:48 PDT 1999)(Nighthawk) (492052) (6575800): i love bashing jap healers
This player was penalty-boxed pending further action.

So, the long and short of it is, when you don't type out the whole word "Japanese" when referring to wanting to pound on one of their blue healers, you're going to get PERMA banned even if that is the only note on your account.

How gay...

Well, folx, I wasn't planning on going anywhere, but apparently I have overstayed my welcome. I have been banned from UO as of 8:00pm EDT. Honestly, I have no idea why. I had two people who were with me (Brules and Brianna) when I got jailed and they have no idea why I got banned. GM Boo simply said, "Check your email and you'll see why you were banned."

Even better news is that an hour later my tower insta-decays. I again am clueless why this tower decayed, but it was placed well before the housing patch and I don't even think a small house can be placed where that tower was. Maybe it's karma from me raging on that emailer who took so much offense to the "do you think i give a shit" comment. Maybe I killed one too many people. Maybe the GM decided that of the 30 people waiting for that house to decay (where I was jailed from), I was the one being naughty. I don't know.

I did take screenshots of the entire conversation with GM Boo. It was brief and I was squelched and frozen the entire time except at the very end where it appeared that I could speak for a brief moment before being kicked. Anyhow, here are the pictures.

Anyhow, to everyone that made this game great to me, I'd like to take a minute to say thanks:

Ronald : You were da man. The game honestly lost a shitload when you left. Whoever didn't know you missed out.

Vapor : You were my partner for a long time in thieving, pking - hell, anything that you can do in this game we did. I couldn't have asked for anyone more loyal.

Charley : Goddamn I hated you. I don't have any idea why, because you turned out to be one cool ass mofo. Thanks for killing so many people with me and damn near everything else in the game that was do-able.

Temptress : I'm sorry that things went south between us. The long and short of it is that I was a dick and for that I'm sorry. What I did was wrong and if I could take it back I would.

Grimace / Bray : You two were the shit. If it weren't for yall, I would have been the worst player of all time. Thanks for hand holding me when I was a newbie and for being bomb ass partners when I was a hardass.

Zero : I'm so sorry I got you hooked on this game. =) Glad the fun shit we do in RL transferred over so well to UO.

Brules : From just a casual friend from the JoV board to one of the my most trusted friends. Thanks for everything.

Raven : I'm sorry you got so much hell over that night. You sure as hell didn't deserve such negative attention. You made my last few months in UO very worthwhile.

Everyone else : In general, thanks. I've hung out with some damn cool people in this game. I never thought that something as simple as an online game could be so consuming of time and effort. It wasn't because of the game though, it was because of the friendships I'd built up with some of you over the past 19 months. If I didn't remember your name, it's because it's been a helluva shocking night - so I hope you'll be understanding.

I will try to fight the banning, but since I have no idea why I'm banned - I have no idea how difficult of a battle it'll be. If things so well, this goodbye will be shortlived. But, I wouldn't hold my breath...

J. submitted a great editorial that explains the 7 Hard Truths of UO. You can use that link or go through the Editorials section to find it.

I am about to take off for a long weekend. I have a Q-Zar (lasertag) tournament this weekend in Huntsville, AL so I won't be back until Tuesday. So, no updates until then.

Wish me luck and have a good weekend.

I finally got around to posting the all of the stories (that are worthwhile) that I've received until last week. I posted a total of 8 stories. Two are by Lord Cool, and one each from Firepunk, Anon Omis, Ash, Gandalf, Sir Fain Flinn and Warnhack.

Thanks for the contributions.

BTW, here is a story that I was sent in by a complete ass. He used his employement at an ISP to log off a guy he was dueling so that he could win. As far as I'm concerned, if you have to do something outside of the game (hacking, icq bomb, ping storm, etc) to excel IN game, you suck. Obviously, this is not going to make it to the stories section, but I thought some of you might play Napa and would be able to pass on to this guy that he's a tool.

I guess this was a response to my post about people whining about harassment. These two were enough to make me laugh a bit, so I thought I'd share.

Date: Tue, 08 Jun 1999 21:13:26 -0700
From: Deb Mills usall@home.com
Subject: mwahahahahahahaha

Hail and well met friend,

I am an ultima online the second age player and I am a gm warrior a gm tailorer a gm mage a gm miner and a counciler thats the funny part I`m only 12 years old so I think that the people in mexico working as gm`s are to dam drunk and hung over to care about any of this shit but if you think that if someone is to yough to play then go bom yourself and bom is german for fuck ashlook

My reply was short and sweet:

Here's a simple question for an obviously simple person :

Do you think I give a shit?

Date: Wed, 09 Jun 1999 16:39:12 -0700
From: Deb Mills usall@home.com
Subject: go to hell

ok you mother fucker I am a counciler on baja and I will have your accountr suspened for that

It's people like this who amuse me. No punctuation, no english skills and certainly no intelligence. I mean, if you're a counselor, you would think you'd be able to spell "counselor".

Anyhow, I just thought I'd share how stupid some people are, how they lie and how easily they get bent out of shape and make amusingly false threats. This person is a classic reason why people complain about "kids" in the game. Thankfully, they're not all like this, but this is the stereotype.

I almost forgot I had a Polls section. So, to dust it off I posted a poll about the new UOA "UO Pro" approval. I'm curious how this unexpected approval will affect other players.

OSI approved it! Read about it on the OSI News Page.

So, don't like me unequipping while running? Last target? Targeting self? Selling all my stuff all at once without having to deal with vendor menus? Tough - it's legal.

If you want UOA now that it's legal, get your $15 ready and go to UOAssist.

Here's what you do. Put the fucking person on ignore and/or leave the area. I'm tired of all the pussy bitches who can't handle a little vulgarity in an 18 and over game. If you can't handle it, leave. Tuck your tail between your legs like the little bitch you are and recall.

"My 12 year old sister was in game and people called her a cunt." Tough shit. The game is for 18 and over. If she thinks she's mature enough to play the game, she'll either be proven wrong or she'll handle it like any mature person would. Anyone who clicks on the GM Paging for Harassment button because someone said vulgar words to them shouldn't be in this game. Period.

Pics of my least favorite GM actually dying in game and getting looted. Check it out in the Pics of the Week section just above this news area.

We all need to be careful about our shittalking in game. Was over at Dr TwisTers and saw this letter about a user being banned. I knew that OSI kept logs of things that GMs see and do, but I'm not sure if the GM was present for this guy's ranting.

I know it's hard not to talk shit to people who just gangbanged the shit out of you, trust me - I know. But, it's not worth being banned for. Basically, you should be careful when saying anything and anytime. Fuckin big brother is here and he's listening.

Not really a serious update, but I recently got an item that got me thinking. I just got a Durable, Accurate, Silver Crook of Vanquishing. A crook. I mean... it's a fucking crook. I suppose I could be the badest sheep herder in the land - ph34r me!

Seriously, if that had been a katana, hally, or qstaff - it'd be worth a ton of gold. But no, the game spawns one o fthe crappiest weapons in game with the most ungody characteristics. How gay.

Also in my collection of vanquishing weapons is a butcher knife and a pickaxe. I have no idea why I kept them other than they're vanq. I mean, I couldn't sell them but to the most hardened of cooks/miners.

Just figured I'd point out another reason that the game is aggrivating.

I've been hearing a lot about GMs working toward giving better customer service. well, naturally, I didn't believe it. I bought a new house a couple of days ago, but it had a guildstone on the steps. Well, I paged a GM and I'll be damned if the stone didn't magically move to the nearby woods within 5 minutes. Yanno what else? GM Boo actually said, "There you go. And sorry about the wait." HOLY SHIT! Five minutes is so long of a wait that I get an appology?

So, after picking my jaw up off the ground, I continue with my evening. Yesterday,I get to Deceit and find that 10 or so AAR (korean guild on Baja) have all set a couple of animals to guard some of the doors. Unfortunately, a friend of mine didn't notice, opened the doors and god whacked. GMs said they wanted to know about exploits and since I'm such big fans of AAR, I figured I'd call a GM. Unfortunately, I called under the Harassment queue instead of the "I'm stuck" queue. I got an email today that said that I was wrong for reporting this with the Harassment option, not to do it again, yadda yadda yadda.

So, they went from great service one minute to bitching at me (the customer) for them not having a "someone is exploiting me" option. *sigh* Oh well, I killed the two guarding rabbits when most of AAR was chasing someone else down, killed one of them who attacked me and sucessfully avoided the other 5. But, as far as customer service goes, they still have things to work out in my book.