Well, we'd had enough. Everyone and their brother was tired of the penalty boxing and bannings for macroing. It'd been a part of UO since it's inception a couple of years ago until it became a bannable offense early this year. I posted that we were going to protest on a random shard (Lake Superior) on August 14th.

I showed up and bought as much of my normal outfit as I could and ran to Castle British. I found that there were some people even earlier than I was and they were all nice and organized! How refreshing!

At about 2:45p, the spamming starts. Eventually a a couple of counselors show up and are spammed silly by people and guards.

Eventually, I talked the people to moving to the bank to get more attention from the players of LS. I noticed that slowly but surely, less and less people were yelling "No Ban for Macroing!" as I was. I looked around sure that the protestors weren't gone and discovered several suddenly couldn't talk.

Eventually, something like 15 of the protest people were squelched. Amazingly, I could still speak. Suddenly, the unexpected. An actual gm showed up. He told us that if we wanted to talk to follow him back to Castle British. I guess since he said "back to", he had been there invisible for some time watching.

We got back to the throne room and he asks for one of us to speak for the group. Everyone gave the nod to me, so I began to give a speech.

As you can tell by the pictures, I was competing with other people talking, but I was sure that he was paying attention to me since he had acknowledged me and I was standing right in front of him. After I'm done, I stop and wait for a reaction from Ja. Nothing. I then continue on, stressing the point that banning customers for macroing time consuming tasks is crazy and then ask him for his opinion. Still nothing. I began to go into a third diatribe when I heard someone say "why isn't Nighthawk talking?" Umm... I am!

Then Ja asks for someone else to speak since I'm not talking. WTFMAN! Why can no one hear me??? I wade through the people who are all spamming for attention by now so that I can get to another spot so hopefully Ja can hear me. When Ja sees me move, he again asked me to speak figuring that I had lost connection. I begin my speech again, but Ja still doesn't respond even when I ask him direct questions. Just as I'm getting fed up with the spammers, the explosion potion tossers and thinking that Ja crashed :

Ugh... that's not good. The spamming, purple potions and such continued to the point that even if Ja could have seen what I said, it's unlikely that he would have cared. I pushed my way out of the crowd, left the main protest and had a conversation with some of the other UO webmasters that attended.

Overall, it was a good idea that didn't turn out well because we looked like a bunch of disorganized kids. *shrug* Not everything works out perfectly...

Nighthawk