I've played this game for a few days now and I've come to realize a couple of things. First and most importantly, I'm not very good at gaining levels. I'm direly short on information on where an archer/life mage gets good exp besides Crude Monougas outside of Zaikhal. Needless to say, any suggestions are welcome from you 20+ lvl mofos because it's obvious that these things aren't going to get me past 15th level without being mindnumbingly boring.

I've also noticed that people don't like to fight other folx if they're close to the same level. Maybe the reason is that it's such a huge pain in the ass to heal in combat. If you're even slightly outmatched, your only hope is running or waiting for the inevitable. I don't understand why they made healing in combat so difficult... maybe Microsoft in it's "consume every company" mindset thinks that the bigger dog should always win. All I ask for is that every pvp match doesn't end up with someone having to run like hell before finally being cut down.

Another thing, if you're in war mode and you're moving, don't plan on arming or disarming anything. That's 90% of why healing for non-pure-mages is so homosexual. "Here, let me stop, take off my bow, change stances, put on my wand and then I'm finally ready to cast when I needed to heal about 10 seconds ago... oh wait, I'm dead". Having to arm a wand to cast a spell seems somewhat stupid.

BTW, anyone who tells you that there aren't "dex monkeys" in AC is lying their ass off. Obviously, that thrills me. :/

On the upside, it's not a bad game at all. It looks great and is certainly a challenge to be on the pk shard. Its cool to hang out with Ron and Vapor like back in the old days of UO and God knows that no stat loss is certainly appealing. I've played it plenty this past week, so I would definitely say it's a good quality game. If not for the couple of negatives mentioned above, it'd be a great game. The biggest upside, of course, is that OSI doesn't have a goddamn thing to do with it. No item decaying houses, no "oh you wanted to KEEP your vendor" patches, and no bullshit promises like alchemy and necromancy. I never thought I'd say it, but, "Thank God it's a Microsoft product."

Well, now that I have a sec to actually update other than to squash people who have no sense of sarcasm (see previous update), I figured I'd post about the weekend.

It really was great to meet Jason in rl. He's exactly as I expected him to be since I'd seen his pic on McDland and had hung out with him virtually for quite some time. It's good to see he's just as funny and sardonic in person as he is in game and on the site. He also had two of the best shots on 8 balls under pressure... down a game and not being the first one to shoot at either of the 8 balls, the boy is the comeback kid. The boy has nerves of steel...

Got to meet Nyar from OMFG. Funny guy who is completely insane - so, we got along great. Thanks to the UO accounts being banned and losing a bet with Ron, Nyar's thankfully been there to teach my newbie ass Asheron's Call. The only problem with that guy is that it's a pain in the ass to type "Nyarlathotep" in a "tell" in AC. For some reason, I just can't remember that...

Anyhow, was a sad time when Grey didn't show, but many drinks, video games and laughs were had all around regardless. Was good to see J again as well as meet Ron/Nyar. Never thought I'd find a reason to go to Ohio... =)

A warning to anyone who is thinking of playing Asheron's Call : there is a LOT of running in this game. The good news is that there is an "autorun" key so you don't have to hold down a key or a mouse button and you don't run out of stamina from all the running. However, the bad news is that the people running away from you never have to stop unless you kill him. Judging by all the running people do, I have no idea why I bothered to have swords since it's going to be pretty hard to slash at someone at a full sprint.

Another great thing about AC is that people can log out in 7 seconds - even in the middle of a fight. So, all that running you just did just to keep your target in sight was wasted because he'll just logout when he figures he can't lose you or kill you.

Not that I'm any threat to anyone. I've might be the baddest ass 2nd lvl newbie on the shard, but that sure isn't saying much. The only good part of AC so far has been hanging out with Ron again... hopefully, it'll improve.

Oh yeah, whoever took my name on the PK Shard - fuck you.

I forgot to mirror this post here when I made it on the main page on Nov 20. So, for those of you who don't know I'm in Asheron's Call, now you do.

People are amazingly sensitive in this game - OSI most of all. This sensitivity has again gotten me banned. How humorous... the irony of putting off my "last run" is not being able to make it.

Again, I was a racist mofo with the deadly word "gook". Nevermind this was in response to being called a "nigger", which I laughed at and didn't feel the need to report. What amuses me even more was that BOTH times I've been reported for harassment, OSI's own harassment policy was not followed except the "capture a log" part.

Although ORIGIN cannot control the conduct of other players, we do not condone their actions. However, Ultima Online is a role playing game which encourages various play styles. These play styles are not in themselves harassment. For example, harassment does not include: Player killing Stealing Combat WHAT TO DO If another player is harassing you in the game, there are several steps you should take to protect yourself and inform ORIGIN: Ask the offending player to "Please stop what you are doing, it offends me." If possible, move your character away from the offending player.

Report harassment to the ORIGIN Game Masters (GMs). To do this double-left click on your in-game character to bring up your character's paperdoll, then left click on the Help button. When the next screen comes up, left click on the box "Another Player Is Harassing Me" and report the offense to the next GM who comes to assist you. Make sure that you include the name of the offending player and the harassing conduct.

In case you're looking for it, that was taken directly from OSI's HARASSMENT POLICY on their website. The bold/yellow portion about asking the player to stop/let them know your offended and LEAVING THE AREA comes before reporting to a GM. Anyone else notice that? My lawyer did. =)

Anyhow, thankfully, I know what a bunch of whiner listeners OSI is, so I planned ahead in case of such an event happened. I'd moved all of my real estate and gold from my characters (except for 300k or so) to my gf's account. I'd just started working on a new character (on another account ironically) to make a 7x GM specifically for pking since it looked like my last run wasn't going to happen. Thankfully, between me and my ex-roommate, we still have enough accounts to stay in game if we choose. Even more thankfully, we both have enough rl cash to make this a pain in the ass for OSI by getting fun lawyers involved.

I'm amused by OSI's continued lack of standing behind their own policy, encouraging the "whining = results" theory, and the fact that they did indeed turn out ot be Nazi'ish in their policing of the game. I guess Ron's movie Know Your Enemy hit the nail on the head....

So last night, my good friend Kusinada (also known as Jesus H Christ/Zero) loots a body in shame. DING DING! There's a key and rune! Yay team! So, he goes there, loots a couple hundred of each reg until he's ol, kills the owner again when he puts up a feeble attempt to defend his home, and icqs me when he starts to get outnumbered.

So, I go to an out of town spot that he has a rune to and walk through his gate. I find myself standing near the front steps of a public tower with 5 to 6 people inside and one outside. Many of them have the guild initials (VX). Gargamel starts screaming the kush looted his body and tried to loot his house, yadda yadda yadda. Well, so far in my book, Gargamel made three crucial mistakes. One, he named his character after something from the Smurfs. Two, as if #1 wasn't bad enough, he carried a rune and key to his house into Shame. Three, he died with said rune and key.

As soon as I show up, I guess it was obvious to them that only 6 people was not enough to handle Kush and I. They bravely screamed the words "Kal Ort Por" and "I BAN THEE" with such vigor you'd think they were their battle cries. *sigh*

In the end, they had to bring in a white wyrm to do their dirty work for them. Even though I was red and knew I'd be the target, I didn't pussy out and recall. So, given my fun connection recently, I died. Big deal. Anyone who can beat a white wyrm with 400ms pings is a better man than I am, I guess.

Anyhow, the long and short of it is that JoV challenges VX and/or the dreaded VX Elite to one or several of the following : 1on1, 2on2, 3on3, 4on4, 5on5. Hell, I'm even willing to wager up to 50k on any of those duels against any current VX member. I'll even go one step further, I'll even accept a 3on5 duel (where we're the 3, obviously).

Does VX have the balls to fight without a white wyrm? Do they actually stand behind their charter, "To Fight evil"? Are the just a bunch of pussy roleplayers? My guesses are no, no and yes... prove me wrong.

Every three weeks, OSI Dev team members get in an IRC chat to blow smoke up our asses and listen to UO whiners in real time. Since the recent one was just posted, Migfubar from Baja posted a nice "reading between the lines" interpretation.

If you didn't see the most recent HoC chat, this is a fine example of how to understand what they're really trying to say.

Twice in two days Dr. Twister has posted information on two different guilds belonging to GMs at OSI. One was GM Lint's one man guild with 100 for every skill and the other was GM Gabriel's KKK guild. The only reason I mention these is because both of these guilds were changed (Lint's guild was deleted and the KKK guild name was changed to explain it's purpose) on the Guild Page so fast that it's obvious that OSI religiously reads Dr. Twister's site.

I'm glad that OSI wants to keep it's finger on the pulse of the players, I just think that it's amusing that they use a bug site to find what they need to do to cover their ass. Maybe I should get my statloss system suggestion posted there... =P

There's been a lot of talk about people selling accounts on Ebay and then months after receiving payment calling OSI to get the account back. This is not a surprise to me and anyone with a little bit of brains saw this coming back when selling accounts for rl cash started.

Probably the most important obvious thing to say is Caveat Emptor - let the buyer beware. If you buy an account, you need to understand that you're not the real owner as far as OSI is concerned. Yes, you can change the information on the account, but OSI will still keep the original info in case you're a hacker. So, if after receiving payment the seller wants to get the account back, he can - period.

Now, since you can lose the account back to the original owner, you can consider everything you own in game gone if the seller decides to dick you. What can you do? About the in game stuff, nothing. The only thing you can do is call OSI, get the guys info and call your local police and the FBI about computer fraud and theft. When the guy cashes your check (you did send a check, right?), but later takes the account back from you, then he stole that money from you. You can get him thrown in jail, sue for your money back, but the time you spent on the items in game and such are lost unless you're really lucky.

Basically, this is just a warning just in case you haven't seen it elsewhere. My ex-roommate has purchased two accounts off of ebay and has had no problems in 6 months. This is not a wide-spread problem, but since people are stupid enough to think since they can scam in game that means that they can in rl, you should be aware of it if you're in the market for an account.

I don't know if OSI gives a shit, but I've been posting on my stat loss perspective on the Dev Board as well as emailing the few Dev Team emails I have. Basically, what I sent to Sunsword, Runesabre, and Calandryll is this.

Let me say first that even though I have a pk character, I am not against stat loss. It has done exactly what it was designed (and was needed) to do - reduce the rampant pking. However, there is an overlooked problem with this system that hopefully could be resolved in many different ways.

The problem is that if a stat-loss murderer lags or loses connection, he could die to something as simple as a ratman or ogre. This is an extremely harsh way to receive stat loss. I can personally attest to that because I've died on my stat loss pks several times due to bad timed lag or lost connection. I guess part of that is because I'm not into hunting with big groups, so I don't always have someone else there to heal/invis me if I have connectivity problems. Lord knows the Internet is an unstable place and all aspects of it can't be controlled. Anyhow, here are my two suggestions for a solution:

1> If the pk doesn't receive 50% of the damage from a player or player controlled entity (ev, demon, blade spirit, etc), then he doesn't get stat loss.

OR

2> If the pk's head is not removed, then he does not get stat loss. Naturally, bounty hunters would remove the head to collect the bounty/give stat loss. However, the body not being chopped could lend to several conclusions. Either the pk died alone with no player involvement, the player(s) who killed him wanted the kill and loot but not to destroy his character or that the pks companions successfully defended the body for the 10 minutes it takes to decay.

I personally am I big fan of #2 and I can't think of any reason why this shouldn't be coded and implimented. It can't be exploited in any way that I can think of, adds options to now pre-determined outcomes and adds a better amount of playability to an already extremely hard character to play.

Anyhow, that's my take on it all. Comments, arguements, or whatever are welcome both via email or on either the JoV Forum or the WTFMan main Forum. If you feel the need to email OSI your thoughts, the Dev members emails are linked above.

Momaw/HamBurger posted an update on My Ten Bucks about new lyrics to the gatorade "Be Like Mike" song. The new title is "Be Like Night", so naturally, I like it.

On a side note, I'm finally sharing happiness and joy in only the way that I can. I've been pking every minute I'm online with an account of a friend that quit. So, I haven't taken my main perma yet, but at least I'm out doing what I like. I finally got to hunt with Eternam and Balinor, as well as having a couple of good runs with JoV guys. Anyhow, it's nice to be killing again.