New to UOSA--a few questions: mounts, trash talking, etc

[Campbell]

Hello!

First of all, I'd like to express my thanks to Derrick for putting this together. Like many of you here, I always considering UO to be one of the greatest game experiences I had back in '97-'98 and onward, and felt that OSI royally screwed it up as the years went on. Can't tell you how effing awesome it is to be playing old-school, classic, "Golden Age" UO again, and amongst such a robust and active community of players. Cheers all around.

So I'm fairly new to the servers (been macroing for several days, though you'd never know it with the luck I seem to have with connection losses and the like :/ ), and I have a few questions regarding the mechanics of the game and also the UOSA policies.

Mounts:
It seems to me that there's no upkeep associated at all with keeping a mount. No need to feed it fruit, no chance of it bucking and deciding to hit the bricks, etc. I woke up this morning to find my character dead in Britain stables (macroing) for who knows how long, and my horse was still hanging out right on the spot, and was ready for me to hop on as soon as I rezzed. So the question is, if I invest ~750g in a horse, is it pretty much smooth sailing from then on, unless the horse is killed?

Harassment:
I'm not one to cause trouble, but as mentioned in the main page, UO is a game where griefing and frustrating situations do come up. So I guess I'm just looking for a brief breakdown of what the rules are on trash talking, etc. in game situations. Are there triggers that might get one banned? Profanity, general behavior, etc? Also, are there warnings before being banned? (*I know it sounds like I'm one that's looking for trouble right off the bat, but I assure you I'm not; just really stoked on having UO back in the mix and wanting to make sure that I don't get in a situation where I might jeopardize that.)

Macroing limitations:
I decided to create a fisherman character to eventually drudge up cool items, but fishing so far has been unproductive and slow to gain, to say the least. I came up with a plan to buy a ship and construct a somewhat complex macro to practice in deep water, but then read that gathering macros are prohibited. The question is, if I'm sitting here playing on my "main" and occasionally checking in on my fisherman, would this still be grounds for banning? Again--would one first be jailed as a warning before being banned outright? I don't want to rock the boat or break the rules, but I do like the idea of a fisherman character (as was said: the freedom of UO is one of its strengths), it just seems punishingly dull to get it to GM the old-fashioned way. I would just worry that if a GM rolled up to my fisherman and I was caught up on my other client long enough not to respond to the GM's dialogue, that I'd be thrown in the clink.

I think that's all for now. Again, huge props to Derrick and I'm happy to see so many out there who want to have UO the way it was. Derrick, expect a donation in the near future, sir.

Thanks for reading this long-winded rant, and to any who reply!

[WiseOne]

Mounts:
It seems to me that there's no upkeep associated at all with keeping a mount. No need to feed it fruit, no chance of it bucking and deciding to hit the bricks, etc. I woke up this morning to find my character dead in Britain stables (macroing) for who knows how long, and my horse was still hanging out right on the spot, and was ready for me to hop on as soon as I rezzed. So the question is, if I invest ~750g in a horse, is it pretty much smooth sailing from then on, unless the horse is killed?

Yes

Harassment:
I'm not one to cause trouble, but as mentioned in the main page, UO is a game where griefing and frustrating situations do come up. So I guess I'm just looking for a brief breakdown of what the rules are on trash talking, etc. in game situations. Are there triggers that might get one banned? Profanity, general behavior, etc? Also, are there warnings before being banned? (*I know it sounds like I'm one that's looking for trouble right off the bat, but I assure you I'm not; just really stoked on having UO back in the mix and wanting to make sure that I don't get in a situation where I might jeopardize that.)

As regrettable as it may be, it seems that even behavior such as blatant racism (in game) is pretty common. As far as I know the GMs will not intervene. If someone is harassing you simply put them on the ignore list but that is about it I think. There is a Trash Talk forum for everything else ignorance related but even there some things are not allowed. Each thread has a guideline to what is acceptable.

Terms of Service: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=26357
Trash Talk 'guide': viewtopic.php?f=26&t=12231

Macroing limitations:
I decided to create a fisherman character to eventually drudge up cool items, but fishing so far has been unproductive and slow to gain, to say the least. I came up with a plan to buy a ship and construct a somewhat complex macro to practice in deep water, but then read that gathering macros are prohibited. The question is, if I'm sitting here playing on my "main" and occasionally checking in on my fisherman, would this still be grounds for banning? Again--would one first be jailed as a warning before being banned outright? I don't want to rock the boat or break the rules, but I do like the idea of a fisherman character (as was said: the freedom of UO is one of its strengths), it just seems punishingly dull to get it to GM the old-fashioned way. I would just worry that if a GM rolled up to my fisherman and I was caught up on my other client long enough not to respond to the GM's dialogue, that I'd be thrown in the clink.

If a GM comes to your boat they will signal you and as long as you have game sounds enabled you should hear them. They will also wait for about 5 minutes as far as I have read before. So if you check on them every 5 minutes you should be okay.

I learned so much from the wiki and it is useful even for UO veterans: http://wiki.uosecondage.com/

[Cousteau Calypso]

If a GM comes to your boat they will signal you and as long as you have game sounds enabled you should hear them. They will also wait for about 5 minutes as far as I have read before. So if you check on them every 5 minutes you should be okay.

I only hear the sounds of my active instance of UO. If I have an alt macroing in the background, I cannot hear sounds it should be making. Only from the instance Im actively playing on. I dont know if you can change this with razor or not.

[Kaivan]

Hey there, and welcome to UOSA. Let me give you some answers to your questions:

Mounts

As of right now, your mount will not go wild due to loyalty concerns. This is something that should be changed, as it is not functioning properly for the era, but for now this is how it operates.

Harassment

We tend to largely stay out of the way of player interactions. This is because we view UO as a living world where player interactions have consequences among the other players. As you can imagine, there are many cases where some might be this is a problem, and that GM intervention should occur. However, we expect players to attempt to find solutions to their problems without our help.

Macroing Policy

Here on UOSA, we do not allow unattended resource gathering. This includes skills such as fishing, lumberjacking, and mining, as well as shearing sheep. The way that we handle these situations is to check up on players who are gathering resources to see whether they are AFK. These checks are done whenever the GM decides it is a good time to do so, and when we check up on a player, we make ourselves visible to that person, and give them a period of time to respond to an inquiry. If they do not respond within a certain period of time, the player is placed in jail, their resources are confiscated, and depending on prior offenses, they are given a warning, jailed for 3 days, or they are permanently banned on the offending account (that account still counts towards their 3 accounts).

[Desdemona]

Running a fishing macro attended while playing another character isn't that tough. I have my fisher running full-screen with my journal and my health bar on the left side. I then have my other character running 3/4 screen on top to the right so I can see the journal and health bar. If a GM comes aboard, I will see his name on the journal. Likewise, when it's time to move my fisher I will see the system message. If she gets attacked, her health bar will go down. I've been visited by 2 GM's so far and it hasn't made any difference that I can't hear them appear.