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June 3, 2000-11:00 P.M. PST-Jackal
Today I was working one of my charcs magery on a boat. I lost connection and reconnected only to find myself in the middle of the water and the boat was gone.  I called a GM and was number 186 on the waiting list (good ol’OSI) as I waited my boat somehow (I assume it luckily made a clear trip around the world) came back and ran me over. Bam! I was back on the deck of the ship. So there you have it if you ever find yourself in the middle of the ocean just get ran over by a boat! In order to keep our close unit of friends together and carry our type of game play to other games we have decided to transform the guild known as OPP of the Pacific Shard UO into an Online Gaming Guild. This means OPP will be making some large expansions and mergers. Most of which have already taken place and will be announced soon. OPP UO will be expanding our UO force to the shards of Siege Perilous and Chesapeake. Many former OPP UO members will be joining us with their Everquest guild to form our EQ faction. Plans are also about finished for our expansion to Diablo II. Farther off plans are also being forged for Anarchy Online and eventually Shadowbane. A new, much more extensive webpage will be put up at a new location very soon which will have news from each Game and Server we can be found in. The name of the guild will remain OPP but is not limited to OPP. Obviously OPP members have been very busy setting up these various expansions and we will be recruiting more extensively for these expansions after the transformation is done (However Pacific OPP UO recruitment policy will not change). Recruitment to the New Online guild will be explained once the new webpage is active to the public. However anyone that is very interested feel free to Email me to possibly skip recruitment steps. Look for more updates on this issue in the coming week. Pacific PvP Ladder: OPP is sponsoring an allied PvP ladder. Non OPP allies may not participate so don’t bother asking! Everything on the page is pretty self-explanatory but if you have any questions Email them here. Sign ups begin today and will go until we feel like we have enough contestants to begin. At which point the first two-week cycle will begin. I urge everyone to participate in some friendly fun. Just to make it Public: We have been working together with The Shadow Legion for the past few weeks. We feel like this guild exemplifies the close group of friends/fighting unit that OPP came to form under. Their fighting ability and unity shows on the battlefield as they stomp enemies on a daily basis. Thus with similar goals, ideals, and allies I hope we can work together to run all of our enemies out of Britannia. Allies Section Updated Everyone go by the new DP website! It’s updated regularly by our friend Richard Nixon! The Black Hand[TBH]: This webpage is hysterical. It’s updated on a regular basis go check it out. Correction from Yesterdays news: Apparently when a house is placed it will kick anyone blocking under the sign of the newly placed house. I guess when the time comes for housing there will be some ridiculous rush to place. I might even go to Trammel just to watch everyone running around cussing at each other. Cowards of Pacific: Section Updated If you think I missed anyone drop me an Email with some good reasons and I might add them. Talking about cowards someone sent me this pic:  Haha, I couldn’t help but laughing. Its fitting that a chicken be standing next to Shadow Lord where ever he goes. Look for a Big Updated later tonight regarding the Future of OPP “We are currently targeting Friday, June 9th as opening day for staged house placement within Ultima Online. The first stage of house placement (castles only) will begin on Friday, June 9th during each shard’s ‘peak’ time, or traditionally highest usage time. This time frame will likely be different on each individual shard. Please note that this means house placement will not be available directly following scheduled shard maintenance on this date. The exact start time, as well as the start times and lengths of each stage, will be announced at a later date. We will confirm all dates and times at least 24 hours in advance.” More Info I got an interesting e-mail the other day about this (thus the reason I even bothered posting about it). Now in Trammel you can’t harm other player’s right? As far as I know you can’t place over the top of other players or animals right? So how in god’s name is it going to be possible to place any sort of large building? Correct me if I’m wrong since I’m assuming OSI hasn’t thought about the above issues (from past experience with just about every other patch.). I haven’t visited housing test nor do I ever plan to. Who Remembers Akira AKA Quentin? First off I want to thank Darkon for bringing this to my attention. Apparently Quentin and his horde of idiots are at it again. Hacking OSI and exploiting those hacks to make money off e-bay. Anyone that was around from October 8-10 (see OPP News Archives) saw these people delete the OPP and D&S stones. A few weeks later even took down several OPP members houses. Not that there is anything these types can do to phase us but they have the nerve on their page to challenge OSI’s lawsuit? Just to compound that they went to Lums page and began spouting out insults! Even if OSI has no proof there are still 100’s of people who saw these guys in action deleting things like crazy. WTF is wrong with some people? Allies Updated: Check out the Dead Presidents [DP] Guild Site. "We've seen many reports that warhammers are doing 70+ points of damage at times. That is simply too high. It's something we are investigating and have disucssed a few solutions already. Nothing is definite yet so I can't say when anything will change." -Calandryll More Info I have to say this time its over. After OSI patched warriors to be gods they left UO open to be the joke we play today. Huge killing fields of one day old newbies talking shit and spamming. No skill, no tactics, and definitely not the UO we have been playing for years. Groups of loudmouth brats running around with nothing knowing they have lost. Those who are still overcome with fear sit as innocents, terrified, and helping those who talk trash and exploit massive bugs. I always imagined UO going down the tubes but I never imagined this. Lets get more Specific shall we: VVV: Want to be KGB that are pretty much good at one thing: hiding. I see these guys maybe once or twice a day blue healing my enemies. I call DF and VVV leave. They’re like hit and run blue healers which makes me sick. I’ve died I think 5 times in the last month every time to VVV or D&S blue healers boxing me in doing all they can knowing if they went grey or orange there corpses would litter the ground all over Britannia. D&S: Another sorry remake of an old guild. The “new D&S” is just loaded with talent like Tanis and Cormac who only run around with VVV when in numbers also blue healing and talking trash. Yet another useless guild that is wasting space. HH: Dupes, cheats, and bugs. The members of this guild literally get paid by the GM who buys them stuff off e-bay with RL cash. The leaders of this guild never equip other then duped blessed weapons and maybe a bandage of two. Basically IMO the sorriest group of unorganized newbies (yes I called them newbies) to ever even attempt to war. Order guilds: This is a generalization of what I see on a daily basis from order guilds. All townies maybe a 50 to 1 townie to mage ratio. All in minimal equipment terrified of any conflict. As far as I can tell the only reason they fight is to run away. So why even bother to equip? Who knows…? So what does that leave us on the other side of this mess with? A bunch of retired bitter old men who stomp the hell out of our opposition anytime any place. Seriously the OPP kill ratio must be something like 50 to 1. That’s sad and that’s certainly not challenging. OPP is a dominant guild and so is every single one of our allies. It’s like everyone else on this shard forgot how we all got here. OPP started as a dinky little 10-person guild that tried to jump PKs in shame. We worked our way up and now I see those people that helped us get here quitting in a massive UO exodus. I have played Diablo II and IMO it sucks. But it’s better then UO. I guess its time for all of us to get our lives back in order and strike up some new hobbies because UO is totally dead. Factions is to far off to even bother with (assuming they exist), Anarchy Online beta doesn’t start until at least July (assuming the choose me) and Shadowbane beta doesn’t start until November (assuming they decide to follow up and actually send out those beta accounts the promised everyone). Thanks for reading my rant and sorry if it offends anyone, actually if you’re offended fuck you too=) To anyone friend or foe that has quit UO recently (and doesn't take my ranks personally) that wants to be possibly move onto other games with us respectable pvp types from Pacific UO e-mail or icq me. Agent 00’Stink infiltrated the guild known as Guardians of Light (GoL) after several hollow threats were made at him and OPP. After a few months he was quickly promoted up the ranks to the highest possible promotable rank: Guardian.  Meanwhile several other OPP members were also able to gain entrance into GoL to support Stink. After careful planning today, Saturday May 27 was chosen as the day to reveal our selves. Knowing that the GoL GM would be offline for most of the day OPP members traveled to Trammel and began slaughtering GoL. Needless to say those threats made against OPP months ago proved to be some sort of a bluff or a joke as GoL were terfed left and right. Their obvious lack of combat skills and training showed especially when several high ranking GoL members showed up in-groups of 10+ and were quickly dispatched by 3 OPP/GoL members. 
 Perhaps one-day people will learn to keep their mouths shut until then OPP will be here to break their jaws. Here is a few Choice Quotes for the Great Honorable GoL:  "Can't kill me 1 on 1 can you cause your worthless" -Weldon of GOL See Corpses Above.  "ur mom gives good head" -PERI of GOL "I will strive to be Honest, Respectful of others, Trustworthy and Honorable in all aspects of life in UO." -GoL Law It's funny how all these idiots say anyone that PvPs is a KeWlDoOd (Whatever the hell this means?) then turn around and say stupid shit like this constantly.  "you mom sucks good dick too" "I will strive to be Honest, Respectful of others, Trustworthy and Honorable in all aspects of life in UO." -GoL Law ??? The Black Horde of MoFos Bud $mokers Only Dr.Strangelove And Skull Four Horsmen of the Apocolypse Hells Angels (KGB) The Knights of Glory and Beer The Pacific Monkeys The Virtue Guard I got the biggest shock today when I logged in: KGB DECLARED ON US! After trying to hold down my laughter I headed over to the KGB tower where Magius had been camping. I walk up and see him doing a little 2 Vs 1 with Bellis and Drake. Bellis died before I even get a spell off and Drake recalled with no life. KGB began to recall in and mass up in their tower. Mag left just as Penn and Nitro to showed up and I figured we would get a nice little fight out of this…or not…  So after sitting outside the KGB tower for awhile outnumbered 2 to 1 it became clear KGB needed more guys to take us (I guess). They made a few weak attempts to fight out the door, which ended up getting about half of them killed. So they all ended up back inside and we got sick of waiting and went to camp the HH tower (but that’s another story).  About 10 minutes into our slaughtering of HH we got the great “we can’t handle this war” message from KGB. I mean honestly WTF kind of KGB is this? At least the old KGB flooded us with propaganda, mass recruited, and put up a decent fight every now and then. What is the use of this new embarrassment calling them selves KGB? Which brings me to another subject. WTF is with people digging up corpses! You guessed it I’m talking about D&S. D&S was at best a guild that could bust out some good fights and wouldn’t recall (like every other guild OPP has warred) in 1 vs 1 situations. Now D&S is just another bandwagoning joke that has spawned some of the sorriest guild hoppers on Pacific. I don’t think a single original D&S is even on the stone. So why the hell are all these new trouble makers trying to jump into PvP by digging up names of old guilds? For mass recruiting purposes I assume but don’t these short-sited jackasses realize they are tarnishing the reputations of everyone that has ever worn those titles over their heads proudly? Everyone go check out Orion and Magius’s new Page! Post on the message board too! HH is doing what? A few of the geniuses (ya the ones that seem to flock to message boards) e-mailed me about how HH is kicking ass. Well just to clear a few things up from my perspective. HH are just about the easiest guild to kill in all of UO. Even with their bugs and bless vanqus they still drop like Alaskan Airline Flights. So to please the masses I thought I would bust out the ol’pic program and take pic of this god-awful massacre in Moonglow today (OPP took no losses).  Ya, there was so many corpses I had trouble getting them all in the pic. Dragon Family D&S OriMag E-Mail Me Jackal@opp.iwarp.com "For those of you worried about housing and the faction system, I am happy to be able to tell you that testing on both of these systems has started already. The Test Center shard for housing is currently available and the faction system Test Shard is up, but internal at the moment. We expect the faction system Test Shard to be available by the weekend." Best regards, Calandryll Manager of Community Services Looks like we'll be able to at least test Housing and Factions this weekend. More Info from Calandryll Check out Lum's e3 Coverage After turning order today HH thought they would try to test their luck in Occlo. After several attacks and tons of HH deaths they went back to ressing and attacking new ressed over and over. I guess it’s frustrating for HH to know they don’t have anything it takes to win. Even with vanqu weapons and odds they consistently loose battle after battle. Maybe one day these pathetic cowards will learn and put up a good fight. Until then I guess they will keep mass recruiting: “BTW HH have been public now anyone can join HH.” -Avatar GM of HH and new res fighting. I just hope they put up a few good fights before they get banned. D&S Undeclares Again: After a few days of off and on warring D&S undeclared OPP once again.  After dropping down to 10 members and almost dropping out of existence DoH has gone standard and undeclared most wars. Accord to the OSI page they now have 1 war. Links Section Updated. Veni Vidi Vici Shadowbane News: A lot has been going on over at Wolfpack recently. A lot more info has been released and more to come here very soon. Check it out. After nerfing the hell out of PvP as we knew it they are planning on removing skilled PvP from UO. In concept OSI is planning on giving every veteran account 2 bless deeds. Imagine everyone and their brother having a blessed vanqu weapon. I see hordes of HH type lamers running around new ressed with nothing but a bless vanqu and 2 blue healers. So who exactly will these bless deeds help? As far as I’m concerned they will help those people who are afraid of conflict, aren’t prepared for war, like to talk trash, lack pvp skills or player skills, and are afraid to loose items. If this goes in I see PvP become on big vanqu fest, a joke, a waste of time, and the end of PvP in UO. I can honestly say out of everything OSI has done over the years this one change alone will make me quit. What is the point of UO if there is no sense of achievement? Please e-mail OSI and tell them what you think. Recent Victories: We've had so many guilds undeclare in the last few weeks I've totally lost track but I'm going to try to put up a list: 1 man show 666 Attack on Society Bananna Republic The Beer Clan Clan Gib The Conclave of Power D&S Danni's Empire Denmark Dr.Double D's & Company Killer For Money Knights Of the Purple Horde Legion of Darkness. Naked Playa's oUTLAWS OWN overdose on blood Revenge of Blood Rip the System Sage Puppets Sorcerers Of The Black Dragon Spirits of Darkness Tyrannical Anarchy Vengeance Virtue Guard TSL accepted the DoH war declaration at 8:15 on Thursday May 4. DoH tossed in the towel less then an hour later after getting slaughtered:  “TSL accepts war with DoH at about 8:15 pm... DoH undeclaires at about 8:35 pm same night.” -Porthos of TSL Obviously DoH was in over their head from the start but still tried to cover their inadequacies: “I expected that TSL would have some balls and go without dragons and such. WE will redeclare soon as we have annihilated OPP. When we are standard we can make it one big happy fight, right now we have bout 200 ppl orange to us and dragons aren't needed.” -Cpt Nemo of DoH “you got as many people on your stone as you could then you waited till you had a good 15 guys to declare back. We arent warring the whole shard at the same time. We have enough OPP and DF to deal with. After we are through with Chaos then we can go 1 on 1.” -Beast of DoH TSL has used dragons in their last handful of wars. Nemo’s response is either an excuse or just a gigantic lack of preparation for the war. DoH has said numerous times that OPP are newbies, hiders, etc yet when faced with less then half the wars OPP has DoH runs with their tails between their legs making excuses as they go. I assume this means DoH members will be shutting their mouths in the near future since obviously they aren’t in the same league as OPP. At least Beast admitted DoH is in over their heads with just OPP and DF. Still at the end he tries to save face by offering the infamous “1 vs 1” (I would like to draw every ones attention to OPP News April 18). I’ll repeat this for everyone that missed it the first time. The majority of DoH are townies using what is according to OSI a bug in the system (war hammer) and massive armies of blue healers (while denying it). They immediately want to fall back on "Duel me Newbie" as their last line of defense. Lets face the facts here: DoH is in way over their heads and their member will be the first to say it, DoH is in the process of undeclaring wars to cover their tails, and DoH is becoming less active as each day passes. I wonder how long until DoH toss in the towel on this whole idea? War has evolved yet again; taken from the falling of all guilds opposing OPP in recent weeks a new shinny guild has popped up, DOH. Banded together with old leadership and new guild hoppers DOH has more then tripled its membership and is now the only OPP enemy seen on a daily basis. You might ask how is it possible!? Haha… They have a tactic that not only saves them from loosing anything valuable but also gets them kills from time to time. By mass recruiting every townie that would still stand against OPP and allies and using mass blue mage healing they have maxed out the UO guild war system. Basically they attack with minimal armor (if any), a weapon, and maybe an Order shield. Easily killed when alone (which never happens because they whole guild is made up of second charcs. They simple log in at the same time, attack, and then log out) but decent when grouped with VVV and @SS healers. By using minimally equipped townies with massive blue healer support they have dropped the risk of war down to nothing. Even if they loose (which they pretty much do every time) they loose nothing and are back in the fight instantly. So I thought I would say this one more time: To all guilds that wish to battle OPP in any way shape or form: Declare on us, come out of hiding, go to your stone, and declare war on OPP. Don’t be like these people. Better to die as a hero then live as a coward. No More Wars? There has been a sudden lack of warring on Pacific. Maybe it’s that everyone is beat, maybe it’s that everyone is gone, or maybe it’s that everyone is training? Whatever the reason is OPP has lost over 20 wars in the last 3 weeks. Even with new wars coming in everyday OPP can’t keep our other wars from undeclaring. With VxG loosing members and falling off the face of Britannia along with TDP, ???, and almost all active Orders OPP is left again with nothing to do except to bash newbies that carry just a sword and a shield knowing they have no chance of victory. I was reading this gigantic post over at Lum's Board and it got me thinking about what really made UO great. Something that most of the people playing UO now can’t even begin to imagine. Something that made me play this game for almost a week straight when I first got it (eat, sleep, school, UO). I can’t imagine playing UO for more then an hour or 2 at a time now, not only because I would fall asleep do to boredom but because there is no sense of responsibility or accountability, no economy, and worst of all no need for friends and companions. I think the best way to describe this is my by talking about my first few weeks on UO (yes I still remember them pretty vividly). I was sitting in a Warcraft II chat over on Kali waiting to get a few more people and some guy popped in and started telling us about this great game he was beta testing called Ultima Online. After talking to a friend at work that had just bought the game I rushed down to Best Buy and bought UO. With 3 friends over we literally played for about 8 hours straight, trading off but never missing a beat. None of us had ever played a game that had so much to it. After testing UO out for a day some of my friends were interested in trying out, so along with my brother and some of his friends we all started playing UO. After a few days on UO trying to figure out WTF I was doing I stumbled across an outpost west of Britain that my friend Blade/Bob/Cpccz has told me about. This place has always PACKED because it had 5 chests that spawned full of weapons and armor every few minutes. Conveniently next to these chests were 2 training dummies that we used to raise our STR and skills while we waited for the chests of endless loot to re-spawn. Soon we were all there: DA GREAT HOUDINI, Mcwop, Aragon, Shag, Style, Malius, BLADE, and I. In our black robes (well almost black since true black dye didn’t exist), blood red capes, plate armor, bows, viking swords, and heater shields. By today’s standards the sorriest group of newbies to ever set foot in Britannia but back then we were formidable to say the least. With our 80 swords and 50 magery we would kill hordes of orcs that spawned at the orc fort just West of the chest spawning Outpost and sometimes walk over to shame to killed orcs, liches, and pks. Not only did we need each other to be successful; it was all but necessary for our survival. There very few PKs (contrary to popular belief) but everyone knew who they were. They were smart and skilled but more importantly understood UO (something most people were still not even close to grasping). I can remember sitting in Shame, as 5 antis would run by yelling “PKS RUN FOR IT” with only 2 pks chasing. That was what made UO great! Not the fact that the PKs were superior but the fact that they were Dread Lords. The fact that they were confident and acted without thought or compassion. People feared them and when you left a guarded zone there was always that pesky reminder in the back of your mind about that a Dread Lord that might attack. Not like today where 10 reds pile out of a gate and gang everyone in sight. Back when a Dread would simply hide in the middle of the forest and wait. Maybe for 15 minutes or maybe for an hour for their victim. When you could role-play true evil or true good. When UO gave an adrenaline rush and you felt like you could trust your friends (not because you perhaps knew them better but because you needed each other!). When gold was actually valuable and when people traded items rather then just buying 50 and stock piling their castles. When people planned attacks on the antis that would sit outside or inside dungeons waiting for pks to kill. When antis would sit at Trisnic and Britain bank waiting for word of a PK attack so they could gate into action and battle. Not for loot or ego boosts but for fun!!! When there was full events role-played out everyday on MSG boards and guild pages. When there was no grey area, no looters, no npks, and no one getting away unpunished for their actions: good or bad. You were either good evil or running for your life to either side for protection from the other. UO was unpredictable and totally new. Not because the game was new but because there was so much going on that one could never keep up. That was UO, it was harsh and people died a lot. They lost everything they owned when they died, cursed the people that killed them, and vowed revenge. The weak were simply pushed to the side and often found them selves playing miners or mules hoping one day to gain a full understanding of what UO really was. Sure there were massive cheats, dupes, and bugs but all the mistakes were over shadowed by rich economy and player interaction. Honestly I hardly noticed, nor did I care. Very few people older then a month would complain and UO was IMHO the best game ever. It went miles beyond any other game because more then anything it was new ground. It was being made not only for profit but to realize a dream that an online community can survive and people would log in every night after work to take part. The moment that dream was lost UO was lost. The moment people sell out they are dead. Every game after UO and the UO we know today has been all about immediate profit at any ones expense. Look around, the new UO is made up of everything the original UO stomped out. When you cheated, exploited, looted, or just generally acted like an ass you were hunted down. Those antis who would work so hard to protect you would forget to and those pks who might have let you escape slaughtered you. When stat loss came in it wasn’t because the miners didn’t want to get PKed, it wasn’t because PKs completely controlled the world, and it certainly wasn’t because there wasn’t enough antis (there was actually way to many): it was because people wanted to be able to do whatever they wanted whenever they wanted with no consequences. People always look for the easy way out (that’s a fact). Stat loss was the easy way out for a lot of people who would have other wise quit UO because they would have had to actually work to achieve greatness. Someone once said: “It’s not the trophy itself, it’s what that trophy represents that makes everything worth while.” After stat loss was put in I saw most of my friends leave. I myself almost quit but instead found myself reeking havoc on anyone and anything I saw. I found myself getting involved in huge guild wars in an attempt to regain what was ripped from me. Now I find myself closely surrounded by good friends and outside that completely surrounded with absolute idiocy. The same people that everyone, antis and pks alike had worked so hard to remove from UO ruling the lands, controlling the game, and trashing the vision of UO. Ultima Online can’t be and never will be what it was because of the player base and general attitude of everyone. I find myself at that crossroads I was faced with almost 2 years ago, I find myself the only remaining member of the Original Thugs, (which is now known as OPP). My friends are once again leaving UO and this time I don’t think its worth my time or effort to start over. OSI still has only patched 3 servers with the beginning of UO: R. It seems to me that they were under such pressure from the players they patched early and are now frantically trying to fix all the bugs and cover their asses. Well like I said before there is a lot in the works over at OSI other then what is listed at UO: R so relax, wait, and continue to post on the Dev Board over at COB. Inactive Warring: I think I’ve seen a total of about 10 oranges in the last week. Need less to say warring is way down for all guilds, OPP included as everyone changes skills and prepares for Factions and other rep changes. Links Section Updated:  Please Don't Ban Me, Thanks :) [DBM] Worker's Coalition If you want your webpage linked here e-mail me. I was about to make another post about how UO: R had been delayed and remembered it actually hasn’t been delayed this time! Yes that’s right after the server returns from its scheduled maintenance UO: R will be active! Well, not all of UO: R but at least some of it. Factions have been delayed indefinitely while bugs are worked out and Housing won’t begin till sometime next week. Hopefully this will be the beginning of something happening in UO again. More Info OPP and Factions: OPP will be joining the faction wars along with our allies. At this point it looks like we will be joining the Minax Faction (although we would like to be on the side with the least amount of people so this might change). As of right now everyone is frantically trying to change skills around so there hasn’t much warring if any. Basically a lot of people will be off and on the stone with all different characters testing them out in preparation for the Factions. This was sent out on 4-20-00: “Join our new guild designed to kill chaos hoe townies!!! Cormac is GM right now... msg him if you wanna get on stone... we're putting the stone at our new tower when new lands come in... and we'll go order then. SO JOIN NOW.... and we'll put the whoopin on the townie sluts from OPP, CH... just to name a few... JOIN JOIN JOIN... msg me or cormac if u wanna get in now!!!! we are MoD” This from UOfun, 4-22-00: “JOIN MY GUILD HERE IS INFO Guild Name: Messaggeri Della Morte (Messengers of Death in Italian) Guild Colors: Blue (Very dark or Very Light), and White, Black Purpose: To Destroy the Chaos ring (DF, CH, OPP, GF etc.)” This from UOfun, 3-20-00: “A new guild hath been founded! Townies only allowed the guild is called Attack on Society, OPP CH all those Chaos bitches will die and because they never come out of Ocllo town where magery works We go to them with townies.." We all know that Cormac has been just about the number one guild hopper on Pac but now he is making it public. I was just thinking back trying to remember how many guilds this guy has been in and got an ICQ asking everyone to join this months shinny new bandwagon (even though no one will join). Anyone that can name all the guilds Cormac has been in gets a…umm…I donno, I wonder if Cormac even remembers. A post on UOfun got me thinking about dueling. What is the real purpose of a duel and in the end what does it mean? I’m sure there are a few people out there that like to duel because they just like to duel but I think the majority of the people in UO (specifically any that talk a lot of trash about duels) duel because: they have very few friends, aren’t good at group conflict, count on connection speed instead of skills, and will do anything to save face. Even if they loose there is always an excuse: “I lagged”, “hit wrong button”, “you cheated”, etc. Something else I’ve noticed lately, specifically in the TDP war is that most of these “save face” type people will run away from the general public so if they do loose they can deny it or even say they won. In my opinion there is no real test of PvP skill in UO other then longevity. Any idiot can run up and do an explosion, e-bolt, hally combo to win a fight but not many people can handle constant fighting on a daily basis for any extended period of time. It’s funny how some folks consider a duel the sole test of “newbieism” when there are so many outside/luck factors that can and always do throw the duel. In a perfect world every spell would do the same damage and everyone would do the exact same thing but UO is about as far from perfect as any world can get. Between he lag, bugs, and randomness no duel or fight can ever be a legit test of anything. So in the end what does winning a duel mean? To me it means a few things: a) You have the skills to defeat the other person (although the other person may have those same or better skills, and yes PvP does take reflexes and skill). b) You had the luck of the random UO code on your side. As more and more people are involved the luck factor is reduced and can provide a better "test" but still not a true test. In a buggy and generally screwed up system/game no one fight can determine anything. And I didn’t even mention other things it takes to win: like leadership, communication, etc. So why do so many people use duels as their testing platform? I still don’t understand it…. In my opinion the main purpose of a duel is to make up for past shortcomings and in the end it means absolutely nothing. I wish more people could just fight for fun and except defeat. No one can win all the time and when you loose it doesn’t necessarily mean the other people were “better” or deserved victory. UO: R Where Are You? We now have everything we need for UO: R to run but it’s still being tested on Sonoma. From what I’ve heard Pacific will be patched sometime in the next 3 days and housing will start at the beginning of next week. Still no word on the faction system. Do to the fact that nothing worth talking about has been happening in UO I haven’t been updating. It finally looks like OSI is going start to patch UO: R which was scheduled for Friday, then delayed to Saturday, then delayed again to Sunday. Think they’ll delay it again? Basically the first few patches will be the party system, change of art, and the other world. After a week or so we might see Phase One of housing. As far as faction are concerned OSI has been considering a few changes to the basic Reputation set up of the PvP world. These changes could include a few things that could make a lot of us very happy, then again they also could include a few things that could make a lot of us very angry. I’ll just say that PvP in UO will be very different in a few weeks, hopefully for the better. Things will definitely pick up very soon and the updating will be rolling in again. Combat Changes: The combat changes will do a few things: promote group fighting because everything is much more powerful and make connection speed a lot more important because of the dex delay changes and the aggressor recall. The balance between fighters and mages in an attack party will become very important and we will see less and less “soloing”. Hopefully these changes will diversify PvP and speed along the necromancy patch. *Gets ready for a whole new set of bugs* “In Other GAME News: CH Is it Dead or Alive? DEAD IT IS! Constant Asswoopings by the combined forces of Andrea and myself making raids on all Chaos hang outs makes it hard for a player to leave for 1 sec to even take a piss nowadays. Other Chaos Guilds are also dying. Now that we got Mages AND Townies there is no place OPP, CH, and DF can hide. Out of town our mages are way better In town our townies are way better WE WIN WE WIN! If you want to join the fight against the shit eating fools aka. CHAOS” -Cormac of ? (Wait, he has been in about 15 guilds in the last 3 months, so what is the guild of the week Cormac?) Aftermath is Cormac’s townie. Why did he make this townie? Who knows? Has he actually killed anyone with this townie? I doubt it. You would think he would finish his mage first but maybe he just got sick of getting his ass kicked and wanted to be able to attack with just a sword and a few bandages. Or maybe he was to embarassed to show his face on his main anymore. Either way this post is laughable to say the least. CH is dead? Well actually Nightmare hasn’t been playing much and even though the CH GM is inactive I still see groups of CH fighting enemies on a daily basis. OPP, CH, and DF hiding? That’s a first since Cormac (and whatever guilds he is in this week) and Andrea (who I haven’t seen in weeks) are the first to run like hell when they see OPP coming. Where does this idiot get off bashing people who he has no prayer of beating much less even standing a chance against? ODB is dead and any guild Cormac bandwagons to is right behind them. Like a wise man once said: “I feel sorry for anyone who has to deal with your ignorance on a daily basis.” Now Cormac, go crawl back into your hole, you’re a joke and you disgrace any guild you join. Do us all a favor and disappear. Help! Get the Dragons! As our enemies switch modes from fun warring to revenge warring I can’t help but laugh. Today after killing 4 PR8 (or whatever they’re called now) dragons (outnumbered and without dragons) our enemies came back with more people and 5 Dragons.  OPP really appreciated all these compliments. Honestly if it takes 5 Dragons and about 20 oranges to take down a group of about 10 combined OPP and OPP allies I think that says a lot. Maybe one day our enemies will be able to face us straight up but until that day I guess they will just hide behind dragons. Our enemies finally found the OPP weakness: we like to have fun challenging wars. Why do you Blue Heal? Is it because you are just scarred? Is it because you are “lagged”? Is it because you can’t play your main? Or maybe your reason is the same as this guy?    After a few weeks of fun warring and OPP wins TDP has gone back on several statements about several aspects of war. Yesterday OPP occupied the TDP hometown of Moonglow all day despite the massive blue support. The fighting came down to one big battle for occupation of MG: OPP gated in just outside town and slaughtered Order/NPK/TDP forces and retook the town. After that battle TDP and NPK forces were ressed and asked to leave at which point several NPK and Order townies grabbed weapons and tried to pick off OPP members. After chasing townies for about 20 minutes OPP forces were unorganized and dispersed. TDP then gated into MG with two tamers and started with the para/”all kill” routine on the mixed up OPP forces (which I take full responsibility for). I believe OPP lost 5 and TDP lost one, which is a definite victory for TDP. OPP moved back to Occlo to regroup and TDP stuck around to res kill (even though OPP had just ressed them in the previous battles) and carry on the TDP hypocrisy which is illustrated in one TDP members words “TDP doesn’t res kill unlike lame ass OPP” . After being res killed about 30 times 
 and being called every name in the book TDP moved onto Occlo (Eric of NPK stayed behind to res kill) where the fighting continued but not full out because there were 5 OPP in MG being res killed. Here is the point: When this war started I was under the impression this war would be a fun war between skilled PvPers. Last nights fighting was a perfect example of what the majority of TDP truly is. Trash talking, immature, hypocritical, cowards who play on fast connections and think that automatically earns them respect. I’m suddenly reminded of VxG and KGB. X-Roads Assassins Return: The OPP thief guild is back in anticipation of the new thievery changes. The OPP thief guild known as XRA was founded back in the spring of 1998 but was scrapped after the thieves were nerfed. We hope this time OSI will get it right and continue to bring back the art of stealing. Allies Section Recent Victories: 4-Horsemen of the Apocalyse Night Riders Church of Zoroastrianism Smiths of the Light Angel Eyes “Attention All Avid Pacific Ultima Online Players. The guild of ODB is looking for members to battle the guilds of evil which are overtaking our shard. These guilds are TBH, OPP, CH, and DF. We need members, and we need them fast! We are a well organized guild (Of SKILLED PvPers) that I personally feel has a LOT of warring potential.” This was sent out yesterday by members of ODB in an attempt to mass recruit anyone in UO. Last weeks guild of the week DR$ has already bombed and the fall out is heading to the shinny new bandwagon called ODB. I can’t help but notice this line: “The guild of ODB is looking for members to battle the guilds of evil which are overtaking our shard.” Ummm? So the guild formally known as overdose on blood is a “good” guild now? Since this new reformed ODB is such a great role-playing guild I look forward to many role played battles in the future. Give Back my Table! The Tale of a Blue healer: I thought this was kind of funny: Yesterday after chasing 2 ODB into a house NE of Occlo one of them tried to unlock tables and chests then relock them in order to trap himself in the corner so we couldn’t loot him after we killed him. Unfortunately for him we got him while he was saying, “I wish to release this” so we nabbed a couple colored tables and promptly donated them to the newbies of Britania. A short while later the owner of the house (who just happened to be one of the blue cowards who has been healing our enemies for about 2 weeks) came and accused us of using bugs to take his table (ya know, we know all these great bugs and we use them to steal tables). Today after visiting the house we found a locked down book on our doorstep (which is next door) that said, “give my table back”. I felt it my duty to offer him a brand new table dyed any color he wants for the low price of 40K. I guess that upset him and this is what he had to say:    So I thought it would be interesting to take pics of his little threats and then submit my log to a GM so lets all keep our figures crossed and hope he messes with our stuff. I like seeing cowardly newbie exploiters banned! The reactive armor and protection spells will be under going changes to make them more useful in protecting the mage. This was definitely needed and still may not be enough to counter all of the Warriors buffing that is going in. More Info Blue Healer Squads: Last night a combined group of T$M, AoS, -_-, iLi, and HH numbering over 15 attacked Occlo and brought along 9 blue healers. As much as OPP loves a good fight I have to say this has gotten out of hand. We’re outnumbered to begin with and the only enemies that have anything worth looting are blue. In response to this OPP might be forced into a repeat of the OBM war where we all took out our tamers and slaughtered them until they undeclared. So basically this is a threat to all the guilds that only attack when they have massive blue healers. OPP has a lot of tamers which we don’t use because they are amazing unbalanced but if this continues we will use them to over come the blue healer factor. I only hope it doesn’t come to that. We enjoy large scale fighting, however we do not enjoy fighting blues. VxG? A band of newbies that popped up a few weeks ago seems to think they are going to gain or deserve some sort of fame by making up stories about OPP. This war started as an order war which of course VxG backed out of and now only attacks when with other guilds who have done the same (S-P, PR8, etc). Why do people think getting their asses handed to them daily will earn them some sort of respect? I do respect those that have the guts to put up a fight BUT that does involve actually fighting. If it didn’t I could go join P^H and run around all day recalling and running from every orange I see and be the biggest bad ass in Pac! Maybe all of this is just beyond me because I’ve never been one to spout out BS I couldn’t back up but every time I see it I can’t help but laugh and think about how far UO has dropped. Where do these newbies get off saying they are all this when they have no credit to their stories and no respect for anyone? Ohh, well, who knows…? Cowards of Pacific Recent Victories: Allied Immortalz Inside Connection The Iron Vine Kiljox's Ruff Ryder's! LOL Revenge Of Blood TiCal -_- How much does a blue healer count for? Does connect speed effect a fair fight? Well these questions have finally been answered. Today in Occlo we fought a group of 3 townies with 3 blue healers. They would die, res and come back (god knows how many heal regs the blues used). Point is the 5 OPP had a hard time taking them down (4 of us were mages) then afterward we earned the title of gang banging lamers. So because we didn’t use blue healers and because we were using mages in town we’re gang banging lamers. Today in Moonglow Fire finally decided it would be fun to stay on the same screen as me for more then 5 seconds and fight. Combo: explosion, hally, weaken, weaken, weaken, hally, explosion, hally eb, weaken, weaken, then comes the help in the form of Gwen who starts tossing ex para into the mix. Of course this wasn’t enough to kill me but the thing that got me was they were both talking huge amounts of trash about how much I suck (which is probably why I lived, the pauses they had were no doubt from typing). So I go to combo Fire and Shadow Lord (a blue healer) heals him. TDP the guild that begs for duels proved they are total and absolute hypocrites. But wait! I’m not done yet: Sir Jason of OPP came along and jumped in the fun. Good finally a 2 vs 2. We heal through their mana and start to attack. Combo Fire and Shadow Lord heals again. Fire at about 30% life runs for it while Gwen sticks on me. I go after Gwen, and then Shadow Lord heals Gwen, so I head over to Jason and attack Fire again hoping that the 2 of us could over come the blue healing. After running around chasing Fire for a few minutes I catch a bad combo from them and die. Shortly after I returned new ressed to find Shadow Lord killing my horse and he immediately starts calling me a newbie lamer with no skills. After a bit of trash talking from 3 BLUES who of course either don’t war or are afraid to log on oranges I get res killed by Gwen. Lets review here: Blue healers count just as much as an orange. Concentrated healing for a townie is almost better then having another orange. People who talk a lot of trash about fair fights are basically full of shit. Most of these people have T1’s or cables and spend most of there time doing weaken over and over or the ever so effective Explosion, Eb, Hally, run combo. Welcome to UO: land of immature, trash talking, hypercritical, idiots. In Conclusion a fair fight is one where the numbers are close to even and there is no blue healing at all. A fair fight is one that stays in one general area and doesn’t lead 5 screens away because someone with a good connection can’t take the heat. Do these type of fights happen? On the rare occasion of OPP loosing a big fight I see our corpses very close to each other. Maybe this is just luck or maybe it’s the reason why we don’t loose very often. But then again OPP is just a band of gang banging newbies, right? Probably the sorriest group of newbies in all of UO has spoken out again. According to TL members OPP are just a bunch of newbies. After defeating this guild in our last war it seems they want to go round two. Unfortunately their leader says we’re too good…to bad he can’t keep control of his members. I wish even if for one day all these spoiled little brats would have to face non stat loss Dreads. I miss the days when you knew your place and if you stepped out you had a whole world of trouble on your ass. I guess UO is better with a bunch of early teen kids running around cussing and spamming though. WTG OSI! After constant complaining to OSI about the bias moderators at COB OSI has decided to open up message boards of there own. Well I would like to think everyone complaining had something to do with it. Anyhow there will be new message boards opening up around the same time as the UO:Renaissance Patch. The actual purpose of this is unknown other then to: “provide a forum for communication with novice and veteran Ultima Online players alike”. I just hope they take down that god-awful Dev Board on COB, get some real moderators, and put up an OSI run Development Board. More Info Global Center Lags! EA (OSIs parent company) has worked out a deal with Metromedia Fiber Network, Inc and its subsidiary AboveNet Communications, Inc. to put together a: "Superior Fiber Optic Internet Infrastructure”. So what does all this mean? Well, hopefully it means sometime in the near future EA will be giving GC the boot and maybe just maybe UO won’t lag so much. Then again, maybe not. More Info WTF is with the New Ressed Townies? For the last couple of days there has been a constant stream of new ressed townies running rampant in Occlo with nothing but a weapon and a blue healer. If the only way you can win is to use blue healers and unequipped unskilled newbie townies you have some serious problems. I wish that our enemies could get their act together and put up a decent fight. So far our only enemy that has been out equipped orange is TDP. Of course that war rages on and has been a blast! It’s been awhile since OPP has had the opportunity to kill mages that don’t have line of x-oranges (now blue) healing them. DR$? Huh? The trash talk continues but still no action from DRS. Clearly outmatched in all 5 of our previous wars DRS have taken to the message boards. Every time we see a DRS there are comments either calling OPP lamers or newbies. So here is my simple question: Why not war this ridiculous horde of newbie lamers you talk so much about? Hopefully sometime in the near future DRS will stop hiding behind their blue status and put up a fight that lasts more then 2 hours. Guilds like this make me wonder how and if the Faction System will actually work. We all know they will be to terrified to get involved. Cowards of Pacific OPP policy is to res kill all enemies who we believe are trying to re-equip and continue to fight. This could include anyone in any town (including Bucs). However we will not res kill without a reason. If an OPP member breaks this policy I would appreciate an email with a pic and the circumstances. DO NOT GO COMPLAIN ON THE MESSAGE BOARD. This has been the scene the last few days any time OPP die:   Spider of PR8: "This is fun" Nightwolf of PR8: "I hate OPP" Taz of PR8: "Mother F#@kers" Res killing in the healer shops is totally uncalled for and just shows the true enemy OPP is against. Its obvious our enemies encourage this type of action and it clearly shows how far UO has come in 2 years from honorable warriors to a bunch immature kids who get off on res killing and cussing. Stat Loss Poll on COB: Yes: 614(54%) No: 477(42%) I don’t care: 33(2%) Seems 54% of the people that actually care about what happens believe stat loss should be removed in consent areas. Will this poll alone change anyone’s mind? I doubt it but it did peak curiosity in what people really want and another poll has been posted regarding stat loss (this is a record BTW, COB admins are strictly for stat loss in all forms so we need to take advantage of these polls because of their location). Go Vote! Be Heard! Diablo until SB? Well as the informed folks know the Diablo II beta sign up was yesterday and OPP did sign up. They are only selecting 1000 people so who knows if any of us will even be chosen BUT if the game is good it MIGHT be a decent substitution until SB release which has been pushed back again to August and will no doubt be pushed back again. Order Guilds Defeated: In the last 2 weeks every order war against OPP undeclared Order in an effort to team up and single out OPP. Not that this is a problem for OPP but lets face it when our enemies all group up in grouped of 25+ we’ll just stay on away and pick off stragglers. It’s not the most exciting thing to do but it keeps us equipped. I wish our enemies could group up and take on enough guilds so we can put out equal numbers and have big wars. A growing list of guilds that couldn’t handle being Order: PR8, S-P, AYE, VxG  Ok, well, not really but there was a lot of people there. A lot more then this pic shows (unfortunately I can't upload large pics because restrictions from iwarp). All these people came out and lagged the hell out of Britain for a protest against stat loss. The COB board has been pelted with posts about the removal of stat loss in the new PvP lands. I have a feeling this is just the beginning of the protests and I hope to have advanced warning of these events in the future so I can let everyone know. The stat loss poll is still up over at COB so if you haven't voted yet Go Vote! When are Factions going in? I heard from several reliable sources that they will start patch portions of what will be the faction patch next week (of course this isn’t confirmed). The last few things were moved to the In Testing section of the Update Center a couple days ago. How drastically will these changes effect PvP? Go see for yourselves but my advice would be get those warriors finished up. I’ll keep everyone updated on this one as often as possible. Well this seems to be the complaint of the month so I think I’ll give my 2 cents worth. All guilds attack in-groups because they want to have the advantage. Those people whom: a) don’t have any friends because they are idiots b) friends are cowards c) just plain have no pvp skill or charc skills use “gang banging” as an excuse to make up for the above reasons. Lets face it if you see 5 names coming in you recall. Most smart non-lagged people will never die to a gangbang. The other reason to use “I got gang banged” as an excuse is when your friends get beat down and you are the only one left running from a group of enemies. THIS IS NOT A GANGBANG! Haha, I mean honestly when I do a 4 vs 4 and I’m the last one left I try to grab what I can and recall. I don’t sit there, die and then cry “gang banging lamers” all day. Basically it’s just an excuse people use to help them vent their anger that normally would be directed at themselves because they screwed up. S-P Backs Down: |