What if...

[Davemustache]

Hello, my english is so so, sorry for that, but i was thinking while the chat goes red about the event of yesterday. What if Excelsior stop to exist tomorrow or never existed Ask yourself too.

I remember almost 3 years ago when i found this shard, lot of things in my life didn't go so well. I was looking for something to occupied my mind and i found Excelsior This find go over my expectations, and when i crosses the path of a young player i feel the same as i feel the first time i logged in, try to explain how awsome this shard is, all the news things (that make UOer life easier, more powerfull and open new opportunity etc) short, the work of the admins and gm. When i make my first donation a player sell me things overprice and he always want more of my Ed's even if i say No, he continue to argue, then suddently i receive a page from +V saying I dont spy on you but that came to my attention that this player harass you, do you want me to talk to him? I said no thx, i dont want to start a war and i thanks him and say i dont know what the work of a GM is but you do a real good job, i appreciate. He answer it's very kind of you. I was like wow! These people are professional. I mean in a world where some police officers stab people in wheelchair, investors fraud is clients and there nothing free etc... Wow!

So yesterday i participate to the event, in the beginning i had fun, even when the scoreboard reset because im not competitive, when the scorboard freeze at 100 i try to tell many time but it's like i was talking alone so i begin to feel a bit annoyed but finally got an answer that a GM take care of this. I get mad when i lose an essential part of my costume, a costume that take me like 15 minutes to create... So i start to let slip comments here and there ''next year my costume gonna be the invisible man'' blablabla. I dont think im on the list to be disallow from event but it dosen't matter. The thing are that i still dont know what the work of a GM is I was mad because my 15 minutes costume, how much time they put to organise this event? I forgot that part, and i feel cheap. So i ask myself, what if excelsior dosen't exist? What is the work of gm's and how much time and efforts it take to bring me all that? For free. Man i will remember this every time something goes wrong because you'll never see a shard run by me, nope. I have a good heart, but it seems it need lot more than that. Open your virtues gump you gonna find it.

Sorry for the long message i have to say it, and i want to thank all the staff for their work, past, present and future. As players we have the duty to keep this shard fun for gm's too.

Hey Happy Haloween ! Bwhahahaha

[+Requiem]

I speak only for myself, but I would like to say thank you for this post. I know Nyx put many hours into the Masquerade ball event. Much more behind the scenes than a player will see. When I was talking with her when the costumes started disappearing, she put each of those items there by hand. Now to have to re-do it with a longer time for next year, is a ton more work. She has to edit each one individually. And there are 300+ of them.

While the main building won't need to be re-done again (I don't think), it did have to be done the first time. tile by tile. How long did it take you to do your 18x18 house? Multiply that by a lot.

Add in the time it took to find the questions to ask. Making the scoreboards. Trying to keep it fair.

I'd like to just say, if you want to come to an event, just accept there may be issues. These things are complicated, and take a long time. There are bound to be mistakes and issues. Many of them you are going through for the first time. They haven't been extensively tested.

If all you want to do is complain, why bother showing up? Don't you have anything better to do with your time? It annoys me to no end, which is one of the reasons I am not more motivated to do events of my own. Nyx and Veritas are experienced at this, and make mistakes. I'm trying to learn and will make many more mistakes. I see all the negativity, and I just don't want to deal with it, so I stick to enforcing the rules instead of attempting to come out with new content.

As long as the negativity continues, you probably won't see more than a triple champ out of me every once in a while, or a grab all, or something simple. Some people even complain about those, or feel the need to cheat by not turning off scavenger, which is why i don't like grab-alls. Like most things in life, the few tend to ruin it for the many.

[Fiernocht]

I totally agree. and while I do make some jokes when things go awry, I try to be polite, patient and understanding. I love this shard and i love the staff. and +R I would love to see you get more involved in the content situation. hell i love the mistakes, it shows that you are willing to learn and try new things instead of hiding in the shell of routine. Im very proud of the staff here, even if we butt heads on occasion. Keep on doing the good work. and thank you dave for making this post.

[Yoda]

thats the thing really that gets to me about people complaining.

its a team of volunteers making stuff..
they are making stuff for a 16+ year old game..
this game wasn't designed to do 90% of what they want it to...
so many a thing including stuff like scoreboards has to be hammered in with clever trickery..

so when someone is arrogant enough to cause trouble and give grief to the volunteers in question because it didn't go perfect you feel like well.. saying a much more violent version of

"you arrogant crumb bumb, why are you expecting this to be perfect, and seriously what in the ever loving scary place is your problem".

What the original poster did here shows alot more backbone than others who likely acted out worse, in my opinion apologies are owed, the people involved know they were involved and know they were out of line. Have some strength of character, realize +v +n +r etc. are PEOPLE. Man/Woman up and reach out and apologize. Perhaps try to act better in the future as this is a game intended to be fun. Getting to the point of personal insult, or feeling the need to attempt to cheat, or whining when something doesn't go your way... Do you do this in your life outside of a videogame? Why would you feel the need to do that in a game.. you know that thing you do for fun.. Have a little human respect, and take a step to be better. Step one is perhaps realizing you were in the wrong and maybe owning up to it.

[Pariah]

Very good post. Thanks for this.

[tiggerjlk]

Thank you for the post! Very thoughtful.

Just for "fun," I have a private server for me only, just to mess around with it. The level of frustration I have when I can't get something to spawn or properly, generate, drop, etc., drives me crazy sometimes...and I am only doing those things for me!

I can't imagine the frustration of trying to get all of these events to work, for everyone equally, all the time, only to have a few people do nothing but complain.

[Tool]

Fantastic post, very insightful and exactly how I feel about the situation. Since i've started playing the shard, only 11 days ago, the staff have all been incredibly active, attentive and helpful - inside and outside of events. I cannot thank you guys enough.

Me and my twin have had an incredibly long hiatus from UO and every time we tried come back every shard has been a major disappointment. This is the first time in years that we've come back, stayed and loved every minute of it. It's like capturing a huge bubble of nostalgia that still exists. Keep it up! You guys are doing great

[+Nyx]

Thank you guys for all your kind words and for your thoughtfulness. It means more than you know

+R said it well, any event I do I'm usually spending well over 40 hours (frequently 100+) to create them, let alone host them. Even events that are already in place have to get modified every time they run, especially if it's been a year - new stuff gets added, or the xmlgnomes have gone in and fiddled with god knows what, and something has inexplicably stopped working since last time... every...freakin...time. Yoda touched on it earlier in the thread, and Devlin once said that we are making masterpieces out of macaroni and glue, and he couldn't have been more right. It's a game that wasn't meant to do almost any of the stuff we are forcing it to do, it requires immense amounts of creative problem solving, testing and re-testing, scrapping and starting over with new methods and dozens of other frustrating steps. It can be incredibly fun, and when the event/quest is well received it's highly satisfying. I try very hard to make fun, exciting, interesting events and content for you, and sometimes the first iterations of those things are a bit bumpy, no matter how well we test things. Things are just plain different when there are 50+ players all doing the same thing, than when we are testing it, even if we test it with a group. But, we do what we can, and try to fix things as fast and efficiently as possible.

But then there are nights like last Friday, where an event which is already quite stressful to run because there are so many things going on at once becomes an absolutely miserable nightmare because of the excessively bad behavior of a handful of self-centered, arrogant jerks.

Times like that, we - like anyone - just need to take a step back and do something else for awhile, so that we can return refreshed and motivated again. It is especially difficult in those situations where we aren't 100% clear on how best to handle these troublemakers with the least amount of butthurtedness possible, and need to wait for +C to weigh in. It ends up feeling a lot like having to 'take it', because we don't want to get bogged down in red tape for having chosen the wrong punishment. Then there's always the "I'm emailing +C" drama, and having to deal with all that after the fact. We end up having to just tell +C about it then walk away and then come back in a couple days to see how the dust settled and what's going to happen with it all. In this particular case, it motivated a codex change as well as some other changes that will be handled/announced by +C soon. A good thing, but not a very good way to have to get there

I have a true and abiding love for UOEX, for what it is and what it tries very hard to be. But at the end of the day, it is also a hobby that I am not paid to do and which all too frequently involves dealing with wretched trolls and abuse of varying natures. A hobby has to be fun for me or it becomes not worth it to do at all; so when it's just miserable as all get out, well, then I'd just rather be snuggled up on my couch reading a book. I know that 99% of you love what we do and appreciate us. You guys are the ones I spend those hundreds, thousands of hours making content for.

Unfortunately that doesn't make the wads stop existing (if only!), or make me some sort of cyborg devoid of feelings and emotions, nor does it make me willing to sacrifice that much time in order to be abused by said wads. Thus, occasionally, an event may need to be canceled so we can take a break, or we might take some time away from the shard. It's the only way for a staff member to stay satisfied with volunteering here in the long-term. Imagine (or, some of you may know from personal experience, and in that case you have my deepest sympathies) if you were stuck in a job that you never got any vacation from. It's not healthy, nor does it make the employee motivated and happy with their job. And that, at least, involves a regular paycheck Sometimes, mommies and daddies just need to get away from their beloved children in order to stay sane, patient, and motivated.

Anyway, I realize I'm not really telling y'all anything those of you who've posted here didn't already know or gather on your own. But hopefully some of those troublemakers, or those with troublemaking tendencies will read all of these posts, mine included, and realize that behaving that way does not make them cool. It makes them small, and childish, and petty, and shallow-minded. Real grown-ups don't need to behave that way, and can own up to their mistakes when they do make them.

Again, I appreciate all of you, my little law-abiding, friendly shardlings. You are the only reason I am still here at all. If ever I have to cancel an event because of nonsense like this again, please do keep that in mind. I would have long since quit this place and moved on to a less stressful hobby, if not for those of you who make this place the very unique, very wonderful place that it is.

- +N

[Maze Scarlethart]

I started playing UOEX about 128-ish days ago and I have rarely been disappointed. I am amazed at all of the custom content like housing, quests and events. And I am amazed at how friendly and helpful the GMs are, even when I page about something stupid they still pop in and help me out and never make me feel like I am wasting their time.

What does disappoint me is when the GMs host a series of events like Thursday- Haunted House, Friday- Masquerade and Saturday- Monster Bash but I am at work for the first 2 and can only attend the last... which made me sad enough as it is because I really really wanted to go to the Masquerade ( the costumes looked amazing by the way, I really hope you guys have it again next year) but I was still really excited about the Monster Bash anyhow. So Saturday rolls around and I log in and the chat logs are filled with chatter about it being cancelled... why? Because players were being idiots and cheating and stressing +N out so she cancelled it! I wasn't even at the previous events so why am I being punished for something I wasn't involved in? I know that the majority of players are adults so why can't they act like adults? And why exactly do you have to cheat? Are you that dumb that you can't come up with your own answers or is your own need for enjoyment that great that you don't care if you are ruining things for everyone else? I do not blame +N for cancelling the event, I wouldn't want to deal with you guys either.

To all the GMs, you are awesome! And +N, I am sorry some people spoiled your event... I know you worked hard on it.