An open letter to whom it may concern.

BigRed

Firstly, I do want to thank the developers for not only keeping UO alive but also adding a lot of great content over their tenure.   Personally,  I believe the pet revamp was one of the best editions to the game all time.  It allowed a tamer to basically customize their weapons so to speak.  
Accolades aside, there are areas that are... lacking.  This forum for example.  It's an unmitigated disaster. The overall design of uo.com is dated both in optical and technically speaking.  The site looks like it's from the early days of the internet and is not even mobil friendly. 
The forums themselves are OK, however all the nonsense posts from certain malcontents dominate the posts.  I have little to no doubt that UO has lost subscribers because of this.  Why they are allowed to post nonsense for days with not much more than post lock.  Kick their ***** out.  There are only a few reasons I can think of as to why it's next to impossible to get banned here:

1. Mods just don't care - It's not this reason.  I know enough about the mods in here that I am confident they are incredibly passionate about this game.

2. Overzealous management - This has been batted around for years as the reason.  If it is then said management figure needs to become a lot more involved in these forums or they have to allow their mods to make decisions. 

3. Technical reason - These forums use our game login as login credentials here.  This leads me to wonder if it is tough or requires additional effort to ban someone here without banning their UO account.  Also by having our logins associated with game logins is not really a great idea.  At least with the EA login system there is adequate security measures.  These forums... well less certainly isn't more in this case.

Other areas of improvement include both communication and NL.  I won't beat a dead horse here but there are a lot of valid complaints and I just hope they are not falling on deaf ears.

Again, I do appreciate everything the current development team has done over the years but all those great things are being overshadowed but just silly crap!

Mariah

It is actually very easy to ban someone, technically, however we are very reluctant to take away anyone's 'voice' on the forum, even the total ****'s. We try very hard to convince people to post within the rules, some just can't, or won't. You may have noticed some of the names we get called for our efforts in that.

On a lighter note, there's a couple of posters who, if they were in physical reach, I'd cheerfully bang their heads together. They know who they are

We really, really wish you'd all [quote] Be excellent to each other [/quote]

While the forum does use your ea log in, no one other than yourself can see that information, certainly not we mods. 

Our actions as moderators have no impact on your UO account, that would require the intervention of Broadsword or EA.

MacroPlanet

Other areas of improvement include both communication and NL.  I won't beat a dead horse here but there are a lot of valid complaints and I just hope they are not falling on deaf ears.

I firmly believe that this is the cause of a lot of the issues that tend to come up. It's the lack of communication. At this point the players are left only guessing and theorizing since there is hardly a drip of information from our developers. They don't utilize these forums —or any means really— to connect with their user base. Concerns about the state of UO then begin to sprout up and it's all downhill from there. The developers communication helps bring order and ease to what is otherwise just us guessing what's going on.

Basically what it translates to —or what people translate it as— is if the developers don't care enough to communicate with the player base, why would they care about the game?

It is a dead horse, but a very important one that seems to be lacking from this development team. You simply have to communicate with your player base, especially with a live game like UO.

SaulGoodman1

BigRed said:

Firstly, I do want to thank the developers for not only keeping UO alive but also adding a lot of great content over their tenure.   Personally,  I believe the pet revamp was one of the best editions to the game all time.  It allowed a tamer to basically customize their weapons so to speak.  
Accolades aside, there are areas that are... lacking.  This forum for example.  It's an unmitigated disaster. The overall design of uo.com is dated both in optical and technically speaking.  The site looks like it's from the early days of the internet and is not even mobil friendly. 
The forums themselves are OK, however all the nonsense posts from certain malcontents dominate the posts.  I have little to no doubt that UO has lost subscribers because of this.  Why they are allowed to post nonsense for days with not much more than post lock.  Kick their ***** out.  There are only a few reasons I can think of as to why it's next to impossible to get banned here:

1. Mods just don't care - It's not this reason.  I know enough about the mods in here that I am confident they are incredibly passionate about this game.

2. Overzealous management - This has been batted around for years as the reason.  If it is then said management figure needs to become a lot more involved in these forums or they have to allow their mods to make decisions. 

3. Technical reason - These forums use our game login as login credentials here.  This leads me to wonder if it is tough or requires additional effort to ban someone here without banning their UO account.  Also by having our logins associated with game logins is not really a great idea.  At least with the EA login system there is adequate security measures.  These forums... well less certainly isn't more in this case.

Other areas of improvement include both communication and NL.  I won't beat a dead horse here but there are a lot of valid complaints and I just hope they are not falling on deaf ears.

Again, I do appreciate everything the current development team has done over the years but all those great things are being overshadowed but just silly crap!

This sounds like troll bait, and also includes profanity please close the thread. ty

Arnold7

In general UO needs to be more empathetic to the legitimate needs of players. This is just a game not life or death.  But it is a game that is more than just a game to many of the players.  To often see strings of angry discussions generated simply because of an arbitrary decision made by someone working for UO without regarding the legitimate need of a player and no explanation as to why this need was ignored if the decision was justified.  Simple examples I have seen are $10 creatures from bought from the Ultima store being deleted and players being told sorry about that just buy another, players with houses that were stupidly, or intentionally, placed so they interfered with game play, being threatened with the house being condemned when a simple move of the house appeared available, and, requiring players making an honest mistake, like giving characters on the same account the same name, to pay $10 per character to correct the situation.  When I had a problem, EM came out timely and told me what a needed to know and then, without any provocation, told me he would not answer any game related questions???  Last I looked this is a game.  Had to deal with people a long time ago and learned that learning empathy was an important problem solving skill and that the same solution did not apply to everyone.  A certain amount of understanding was required.  Starting to see a little of this from UO like in the response above to this thread.  I did not always find solutions acceptable to every one in real life, but using empathy and judgement found them much more often.

BigRed

@Mariah the above post is obviously someone who has been previously banned.  Yet here he is, now for days, spewing forth his vitriol and nonsense.  This is why some wonder if there is other unforseen circumstances for not banning people.  As for the profanity @SaulGoodman1 I self masked the word punks.  What you thought I was referring to is your problem, not the community's.  This appears to be a distinction that you have great difficulties in dealing with.

*edited for clarity.

Grimbeard

Soon the apologetics will come singing the developers praises and that no communication is perfectly acceptable 

EpicLuteGaming

Why doesn't anyone ever tell Saul to kick rocks? That kid is obnoxious here and in gen chat...

Anyways, I agree with most of Red's post and I really do stand behind the whole communication thing. Like I said on stream last night, at this point, the silence is just unprofessional and is worrying the player base.

JohnKnighthawke

EpicLuteGaming said:

Why doesn't anyone ever tell Saul to kick rocks? That kid is obnoxious here and in gen chat...

Anyways, I agree with most of Red's post and I really do stand behind the whole communication thing. Like I said on stream last night, at this point, the silence is just unprofessional and is worrying the player base.

Negative and insincere posters seem to me to be quite popular and have many supporters. I can imagine the E-Mails Mesanna gets every time one of them is actioned against, much less on those rare occasions when they get banned. Then I can imagine the E-Mails the mods get from Mesanna! Most of us just want to play the game and discuss it sincerely. So we're at a big disadvantage.

This is actually one of many problems UO has that seem to be utterly endemic to the game and its community. Sad, but true in my experience.

SaulGoodman1

BigRed said:

@ Mariah the above post is obviously someone who has been previously banned.  Yet here he is, now for days, spewing forth his vitriol and nonsense.  This is why some wonder if there is other unforseen circumstances for not banning people.  As for the profanity @ SaulGoodman1 I self masked the word punks.  What you thought I was referring to is your problem, not the community's.  This appears to be a distinction that you have great difficulties in dealing with.

*edited for clarity.

I don't think you are referring to me, but you are in clear breach of the TOS of the forums. k, ty

SaulGoodman1

EpicLuteGaming said:

Why doesn't anyone ever tell Saul to kick rocks? That kid is obnoxious here and in gen chat...

Anyways, I agree with most of Red's post and I really do stand behind the whole communication thing. Like I said on stream last night, at this point, the silence is just unprofessional and is worrying the player base.

Did you have a pet rock as a kid that bit you or something? 

NL is only weeks overdue (see my previous post uo update) and it was only an alpha release scheduled. Posting such inflammatory comments is a breach of the forums TOS. k, ty 

Lord_Frodo

  

AmberWitch

Many weeds have medicinal properties. But when a weed proves to have no medicinal properties and only thrives to poison everything around it there's no benefit to keeping it in the garden. 

Skett

Yoshi

"don't put yourself down like that @AmberWitch

I'm sure one day you'll make a valuable contribution"

SaulGoodman1

AmberWitch said:

Many weeds have medicinal properties. But when a weed proves to have no medicinal properties and only thrives to poison everything around it there's no benefit to keeping it in the garden. 

Change the strain of Marijuana you are growing/smoking.