980429 - Oh my god, this is bad. Reading the piece of crap DD put out on the UO-Vault regarding the "Neil Diamond" affair made me so disgusted. Let's take apart this really bad statement into its foul smelling components

[Me] Is this the correct line of action to take out of game actions for an in-game incident? Wouldn't it be more appropriate to reverse-engineer all the damage done by N.D. and his little cheating buddies, and server-wipe the lot of them? This is a statement saying nothing but "Yes, something could happen", but has there? Really? No.

[DD] 3) This is the only case we've had in ages. I know the conspiracy theorists will not believe me, but it is the truth.

[Me] You certainly don't have to be a "conspiracy theorist" or any other derogatory attribute attached to you, to be suspicious, all it takes is plain old literacy, reading the log DON'T HURT ME provided. Hey, even the screenshots are enough. I retract that - not even literacy is needed... sheesh.

[DD] 4) A god client alone does not allow god powers. There is account control and IP address control. There is also a contract you have to sign to get said access, which holds you to very specific and strict behavior standards.

[Me] Very specific and strict behavior? Like Neil Diamond's? Don't make me laugh.

[DD] 5) N.D. was a programmer on another project who was given god client access because of the nature of his project, similarly to how I have god client access to the game because of my involvement with UO, even though in general, I can't USE it.

[Me] I'd like to see the specification on that last "in general" statement... Do that include all the occasions when OSI employees like to abuse the system and create benefits for their flunkies?

[DD] 6) You heard about this case because it was publicized before the fact. You have not heard about the GMs who were let go because of their actions, because we don't publicize firing someone. :P N.D. would have been caught anyway because of the logs.

[Me] Once again, ND's behavior clearly indicated that there are NO such things as logs, not any which are checked anyway. It's there in plain written text, just look at the conversation that took place. And maybe we haven't heard about GMs being fired because there have been no such incidents? And if there have been, why do you say in 3) "This is the only case we've had in ages ". Or am I just being branded as a conspiracy theorist now.... dear me.

That was a lot of BS for one day on OSI's behalf. It's a pity that I have to fill my diary with this. Otherwise I could have told you about my trip to Covetous today, and how I eluded the PK:ers there. I got away safely, you don't have to worry.

But I did something constructive today; I scribed scrolls for my vendors. A lot of scrolls. A very large number of scrolls, when I think about it. I also marked a number of runes in various occasions, and picked up some conveniently located escorts. Speaking of vendors, I'm thinking about reopening my magic accessories department once again and start selling wands and necklaces. But I don't know; that bug may reoccur, and I'd hate to loose a bag full of nice items. While scribing scrolls, I stood at the town-square in Vesper watching the crowd. There's always a lot to look at, like the body of Bill Gates or the torso of Jesus. Those throwaway thieves sometimes have amusing names, don't they, especially when they end up hacked into little pieces. I mean who can resist hacking up someone called Bill Gates? There was also a tame dragon in the bank, which I managed to get a little screen shot of. A screen shot of me scribing scrolls is not very interesting, a dragon in the bank looks better. Here goes...

980428 - I filled out the questionnaire today. Unfortunately all the possible answers were pre-chosen ones, can't really say what you mean. Did anyone see if it was a secure web page, you transmitted your password over? Maybe all our passwords are in the hands of "Neil Diamond" (the OSI PK:er) now? Anyway, the vendor bug resurfaced this week. Fortunately did Leafbeach manage to pick up the bag that became priced. This is terrible, they can't do anything right. I wrote a truckload of scrolls and even did some escorting today. The latter was done for the only reason to get some money to buy more empty scrolls and reagents. I also managed to complete the travel kit for my customer, Shame was still a bit too crowded with monsters for a prolonged stay, but at least I managed to get that mark before recalling away. Then I noticed I was all out of resurrection scrolls. I wrote 6 of them and showed Scherazade my tower, then the server went down. After the server went up again, I did all that tedious work all over again while visiting her guilds keep, forge and houses. As many others they have their floor covered with colored "carpets". The red and black look gave the keep a definite goth look. I don't know, I still think the stone floor in my tower looks better. I took a small snapshot of us while being guided around. Besides this I did very little worth mentioning. Here's the screen shot.

980427 - Today I had a lot to do with my shop filling it up with scrolls and runes. I got a special order on a very large rune set, and this took a long, long time to complete. I correct myself, I didn't manage to complete it. When you are marking the dungeons, the thing to watch out for is PK:ers, normally. But today in Shame something different jumped me. My normally very safe arrival spot was crawling with monsters, I saw four earth elementals, two giant scorpions, a large snake and a couple of slimes, all attacking me the same split-second I recalled in. Before I even knew what was happening I was down to a fraction of my life, only very, very good luck, and lightning reflexes on my Recall, saved the day and I managed to arrive back at my shop very badly hurt. For all of you hack'n-slash type of characters, I can tell you Shame could use a good house-cleaning right now, there are monsters for everyone. Anyway, I didn't manage to either outmaneuver or otherwise elude the creatures so I just couldn't mark that dungeon; I'll try again later. And, no, I don't have time to take screenshots when my life-bar is receding faster than OSI's trustworthiness, but it sure looked weird I can tell you that, never seen such a gathering of monsters in Shame. At least I got my shop back in good working order, but I still don't dare to begin selling magic weapons, there might be more bugs. Speaking of bugs, the expected notoriety patch is supposed to be due today. I really don't look forward to it, anticipating it to be horrible broken in a number of ways. Not even what they say will be in, can be trusted to be so. I still remember what they said about vendors and containers, and how it all came out in the end...

980426 - I'm still keeping my shop in good order, it would be unfashionable otherwise, but nothing else will get done. The incident where an OSI employee was running an invulnerable god-mode Dread Lord helping out his little buddies is just too much. It's a scandal beyond belief, and please note - nothing has been done about it. Were the in-game consequences of this incredibly bad behavior reverse-engineered, and the victims of this abuse reimbursed? Correct answer - no, nothing at all has been done. Maybe you remember that infamous notoriety-wipe where good players were punished and cheaters got away with it? OSI urinates on decent gamers - always - no exception! It is not possible to enjoy the game anymore. Therefore I've taken a decision to terminate my account as soon as the current period expires. Before I go I will throw a party in my tower and give away all my belongings to those who still want to play. I cannot, however, supporting a thoroughly dishonest company like OSI is against my principles. When I've conveyed my decision to many of my friends in the game the reaction has invariably been "No, please don't quit", but I'm sorry, don't tell me not to quit, tell OSI they are doing a worse than terrible job. Go tell them. I don't care very much anymore. I will keep my diary active until the very end, and probably write my own eulogy afterwards:) But after that you will find me someplace else, I guess you know which game I'm talking about. I hope I'll see my friends there instead. Note, once again, the decision to quit has nothing to do with rampage PK:ing or horrible bugs. It has to do with how UO employees exploit the game and destroy it for their paying customers, I can hardly think of a worse way of marketing. If you don't get mad about this, you probably haven't understood the implications. If you read up on the popular message boards you sometimes see posts defending the crappy service and rampant PK:ing as an interesting "social experiment". Often the posts are well written, but crap nevertheless. This god-mode Dread Lord incident has proven what it's worth. Nothing at all, it is all BS, foul smelling to all that. I, for one, did not support the lawsuit against OSI, but I've changed my mind. There is obviously no other way to get them to behave decently than Real Life legal action. This, in itself, is of course very, very sad, and further proves just how low OSI has sunk.

980425 - Yesterday I did almost nothing. Real LifeÔ Friday night seems to be occupied with other things than UO. Today however, I put out some scrolls and runes. A test showed that the Terrible Vendor BugÔ was fixed, but I still refrained from grouping items in bags. This of course limits what I can display with my vendors, and I apologize to my long-time customers for this since they have come to expect excellence in performance from me - hmm - now where have I heard that phrase before? Anyway, it can't be in connection with OSI, I'm still really mad about the god-mode dread lord incident. The GM Staff has put out a very lame excuse on several news pages - saying it will not be repeated again with this particular individual. Now what does this mean? That they will be more careful cheating the next time? And were his actions reversed? We don't know, all we get is corporate BS unfortunately, I am not amused at all. One of Leafbeach characters got a full set of 8th circle scrolls from me today. In return I expect a heap of logs to redecorate my Main Office, never did that after the break-in. But I declined his offer that his carpenter would manufacture the new furniture, I still haven't figured out how to decorate the place in a neat manner, so the logs will do for now I think. Speaking about decorations, my tower is getting a bit messy. I dropped a lot of those useless scrolls on the floor of my library. It sure looks like a work-area now, all messy and in severe need of a cleaning. But that is actually to my liking, this is not where I invite my guests, instead taking those either to my private dining room, my front office or even up on the roof where my big ballroom is located. A work area is a work area. Starson gave me another nice crystal ball today, my collection grows larger by every day. I had some plans dedicating an entire room in my 2nd story building to my collection and renaming the house "Crystal Palace". But I don't know how much work I find it amusing to do, OSI's behavior is so goddamn bad that it really takes all the fun out of it. And I still don't trust vendors to be bug free, my guild stone isn't despite repeat promises of the opposite...

980423 - After closing down my shop and getting all my scrolls and magic weapons out of reach from the looters, I got an interesting little tip from a friend how to actually make money from the looters that exploit the vendor bug. I bought a number of keys, made some copies of an old key I had in my bank box (and which used to fit a now-decayed building but is now useless), and put them out one after the other with my vendor, pricing them 1000 gold each. Then I hid nearby. Sure enough, one hour, and 5 keys later I had made 5000 gold from idiots who thought they bought my real house key. Oh I labeled all the keys "Sandralene's Lingerie and Curiosity Shoppe" - ain't I a stinker.... ? ;) Anyway, now that I've recuperated my perceived value on my lost rune box, I have to start to think how to arrange items now. It's still possible to have some items for sale of course, but this bugged patch has made selling even more difficult. I simply refuse to offer my goods in one big heap, that is not a fashion statement at all. But I do wish to thank the morons who bought worthless keys from me, there is always a way to profit on greed. I also heard that the loss of my rune box was a small thing compared to some people who lost 20000 gold worth of reagents that they sold at their vendors. Ouch, that really must hurt. Marking runes is tedious work but not very expensive, loosing bags full of reagents is downright depressing however. Oh, I do wish OSI's employees would test some aspects of their patches instead of running around with their god-mode PK:ers and kill paying players. However, I did have some fun today on the expense of players who thought they had fun on mine. Don't say UO can't give you a good laugh every now and then too, as a matter of fact, I don't think I've laughed this much since the "Conan the Bloody incident". And I'd like to say thank you to the person who gave me this tip, hilarious...

980422 - I suppose you all heard the sorry and confirmed news by now. An OSI employee was running his own Dread Lord with God powers, invulnerability, walking through walls and, worst of all, helping out his little buddies, and then while discovered trying to cover it all up. Even though it has been assured from the company, that this type of behavior won't be repeated by this particular person, it is still another nail in the coffin for this game. Would you buy another on-line game from OSI, I sure wouldn't, credibility is a vital issue. Oh the guild stones aren't fixed yet, but hey what's a promise anyway... Getting sufficiently annoyed with the escort spammers today, I dressed up in a noble dress, taken from one of the evil NPCs I killed, and went to the ever so popular main street in north Jhelom. I saw a macroed idiot running back and forth in one spot yelling the fearsome "I will take thee" once every 10 seconds, followed by half a dozen escorts whining "I am already being led". I tried to gate him to Shame but I only managed to gate out some of his prospective escorts. That was a pity, I really wanted him to have perished inside the dungeon while being away from the computer. Finally I gave up this attempt, and I walked to the other end of the street where I stood absolutely still, facing north like a real prospective escort. And as soon as some idiot arrived yelling "I will take thee", I replied with my own macro. "Lord Idiot!" (or whatever his or her name was). "I desire peace and quiet. Possibly you could give me some by shutting up. As a reward I could give thee a quick Corp Por to the head". Not everybody found this amusing, but I sure did so. I will do it all over gain again later in some other spot. It takes a while to set up such a large say macro and I'd hate to waste it on one single occasion. The only way of getting back at the spammers is by harassing them back, unfortunately some of them were so stupid that they tried to pick me up repeatedly, obviously not literate enough to read what I said. Yes I know I've been very obnoxious today, but on the hand who isn't annoyed about those morons, who, by the way, are of the same type that chants "Vendor buy bank guards" in the city squares. I didn't start this, but I sure like to hand out some payback, however minor it is... That noble dress looks very good on me as obvious from this picture.

And then came that little update they had promised. What a disaster it was. They priced EVERY bag with the sum of the in-game values of the items. I lost my entire bag of runes naturally. I was just so lucky I didn't get bought out on my magical weapons and scrolls the same way. I quickly pulled every object from the vendors. This is one really, really bad piece of work from OSI. They can't get anything right, not a single thing. Once again they're hurting serious business owners with their incredibly infantile mistakes. No, this is not working out at all. This is just too darned pathetic. I can't write anything more today, OSI's incompetence and stupidity is just too much...

980421 - I met my friend Adunaphel in Magincia today. He had noted that escorts are always facing north when ready to be picked-up. After some experimenting I found out that he was correct, good to know, even if I don't do that much escorting myself. I also have another person living in my tower, my younger sister Twiggy; she is the alchemist of my family and caretaker of the tower when I'm absent. I'll let her introduce herself to you in her own words.

"Hi there, I'm Twiggy, journeyman alchemist and Sandralene's younger sister. My sister has graciously let me have a small room in her huge tower where I can practice my craft. She is also very kind bringing me all the raw materials I need, and even supply me with some magic scrolls, for I too practice witchcraft when I can spare the time. Here you see me in my room; the antechamber of her library, just in the process of creating a nice little explosion potion that I know my sister will like. Since she is so kind to me, I advance very quickly in my craft, it will not be long until I can make those greater heals with some consistency, right now I still have trouble making them, but I do manage to do so from time to time. If you pass the tower when I'm there and my sister is not, I'm sorry, but I'm not allowed to invite anybody to come in. Sandralene has said she'd throw me out on the street if I did so, and since she is so kind to me, I will not make her disappointed. You are much better off if you can find my sister in front of her shop in Vesper. I'll let her speak to you again now, bidding you farewell for now."

Well, as you may see I was also compelled to create some better clothes for my sister. I can't have my next of kin walking around in those dirty red robes alchemists tend to like. But she tends to get those fancy dresses all dirty and stained. Alchemy is such a messy business. But I'm glad I don't have to take the time to try to create all those potions, I really don't have much skill in that area and at the same time it would be nice to be able to keep a small supply of greater heals on my travels. Who knows, maybe one day my sister will be skilled enough to create deadly poisons and greater explosion potions. If so, my investments in her will pay off, and I do notice that she is making tremendous progress now that she has virtually unlimited supplies of whatever she needs. Ah those were the days, when my inscribing and magery increased in leaps and bounds visibly like her alchemy does for the moment. Nowadays I just do some old shop keeping and restocking, not very interesting I'm afraid, but very necessary, I sell a lot of scrolls and runes. I was thinking about selling some of my sister's products in my vendor. At least until the time comes when I can figure out how to price magic items correctly now that they have become much rarer. As you might have noticed, I no longer re-supply magic weaponry, not that I don't have any, I still do, I just haven't figured out the correct new values of the items yet. But at the same time I refrained from marking up prices on existing objects, so if you see Dulcie, my arms dealer, she might still have one or two neat things for sale at very competitive prices.

980420 - Let's start today's entry with a small discussion on Virtue guards. Obviously my shorthand reasoning a few days ago was misinterpreted by a large number of people, so let me clarify some issues. First of all I want to make it absolutely clear that I think that the average Chaos guard is as bad as the average Order guard is, as noted I claimed that the dreaded "Guilt by association factor" was equal. On more than one occasion when I've been standing in the city square in Vesper talking to my friends and wearing the shield, I've been attacked unprovoked by Order guards. On one occasion I even got attacked while resurrecting a ghost. Now if anybody care to even have a look at me before they attack, they can see that I am neither carrying weapon nor armor, and, being a mage, I can't use my offensive spells in town no matter what. But I'm darned fast recalling away, only to return fifteen seconds later with the shield unequipped. This behavior is of course seen with many Chaos guards as well, but differing from the teachings of Lord Blackthorn, Order guards are supposed to follow the Virtues. Now let me ask you this, where is the Honor or Valor for a heavily armed and armored knight in attacking me? If they really want to fight that bad, why do they not take the time to issue a challenge before attacking, and maybe go outside the town limit? Who knows, I might oblige them if I'm in a foul mood? Anyway Chaos and Order Guards are equally bad, but at least the Chaos guards aren't hypocrites about it. I cannot stand hypocrites at all. So maybe you're still wondering why I wear the shield at all? For fashion purposes, that's why, don't underestimate the value of that. At least I know I don't. And, yes, I am fast with that Recall spell if need be. I have heard some people whine "but those shields were created for PvP-ing". I'm just saying "Get real, aren't there enough PvP-ing (a.k.a. PK:ers / nPK:ers) already?" Some stupid power-gamers/munchkins just want to have it all, don't they? They want both the safeties of the cities and the protection a good notoriety gives you and at the same time want to indulge in excessive PvP-ing. I've said this before; at least the Dreads dare to show their true colors (red I think...). *Shakes her head and curses both OSI's and the munchkins' stupidity*

I tested out a few things today to see if stupid people really are that stupid as I claim them to be, and the result once again turned out a resounding "Aye, they are extremely stupid". More specifically I tried out a small scheme, off-hours to annoy as few other players as possible, that I often seen. I ran back and forth the main street on the northern island of Jhelom yelling "I will take thee" at the top of my lungs. After doing so for about 15 minutes I had gathered a small, well maybe not so small, herd of escorts, most of which I had no idea whatsoever where they were heading for, since they answered me out of my hearing range initially. I even attracted attention from escorts within the theater there. Obviously they can hear me yell, but I cannot hear them reply, not until I enter the building do they spurt the "I am already being led" phrase (Yes, yes - but where to?). Out of 10 escorts I managed to deliver 3 to their correct destinations. 2 of the remaining ones were evil and therefore killed in the jungle west of Maginica. The other 5 I just dropped off somewhere by recalling away, since I couldn't figure out where they wanted to go, and they were lagging me incredibly bad. Is this a waste of resources and a very stupid behavior? My test shows that it is. It's not very productive or profitable, and it lags everybody, other players as well as you. It is generally obnoxious in every way, in the same manner some animal tamers herd 24 rabbits all named "Fluffy", "Bugs" or, so help me God, "a" through town and deposit them all in front of the bank or on the middle of a narrow bridge in Vesper. The escort scheme works much better, and other player will be much happier, if you try to pick up those escorts one, or maybe two, at the time. I hereby promise that this was only done as a test and will never be repeated again on my account now that I am convinced that idiots still are idiots, and that they aren't holding any secrets that might be profitable. And I still recommend any Adept mage out there to go escorting, if done in a sensible way you will both earn good money and magic experience (from all those gates), just please, please be reasonable about it. You are not earning money faster by gathering huge herds of escorts, quite the opposite really, and you will annoy other players less if you refrain from doing do.

I'll be back with more news at the situation warrants. Until next time - stay safe from PK:ers

Even a tailor can walk around semi-nude in UO

/Sincerely