What about thievery?

[OneGuy]

Hi, i have been playing on hybrid for 2 years or something like this. Now i wish to try this shard. I'm interested on thieves, are there many? it is easy to skill up? Could you tell me something that a newbe should know? THanks

[Oswald]

Thieves are/were kinda shitty in the t2a era because they introduced the lame 'thieves guild' system without any of the perks that later came (like stun and disarm).

You can't steal from other players without being a member of the thieves guild, get kicked out if you get a murder count, and have to wait 7 days after character creation to join the thieves guild.

[OneGuy]

oh, it hurts. Anyway, it is necessary play much time to learn skills?

[MatronDeWinter]

It's relatively easy (just as any other skill here is) to macro the skills up to a usable level.

The theives guild serves a good purpose, to put a restriction on thieves, and penalty for their actions.

That being said, I think the thing people do not understand about stealing is that it is a social skill. (No, I'm not kidding). The skill itself is almost usless, it requires YOU to do some work, and put yourself into the right scenarios that it can be used effectively. If you just GM it then run around "Using it", you will not profit, die alot, and likely never see anything outside of brit.

Thieves are/were kinda shitty in the t2a era because they introduced the lame 'thieves guild' system without any of the perks that later came (like stun and disarm).

What? Thieves are awesome here. What makes the "theives guild" system lame? It only prevents you from being a murderer, and giving murder counts. You actually do NOT have to be in the guild to steal from players, provided they are grey/red to you.

You can still force someone to disarm, and stun them with magery.

[uofuntime]

When I first joined this shard, I noticed how rampant thieves were. They are everywhere. It seems to be an extremely popular class to play. I know of people who only play thief chars and have alts with different types of thieves. I do not know of any other era that was in favor of thieves, maybe pre-T2A but only slightly. Being a thief or PK seems to be THE class to play here.

I've been talking to my thief friend about training a thief, and it not hard at all. True, it's 1 week before you can steal from (blue) players, but that'll give you time to train up your thief. If you're in a guild, you can start training stealing immediately on a pack horse if I'm not mistaken.

You can also steal from monsters early on right?

[MatronDeWinter]

When I first joined this shard, I noticed how rampant thieves were. They are everywhere. It seems to be an extremely popular class to play. I know of people who only play thief chars and have alts with different types of thieves. I do not know of any other era that was in favor of thieves, maybe pre-T2A but only slightly. Being a thief or PK seems to be THE class to play here.

I've been talking to my thief friend about training a thief, and it not hard at all. True, it's 1 week before you can steal from (blue) players, but that'll give you time to train up your thief. If you're in a guild, you can start training stealing immediately on a pack horse if I'm not mistaken.

You can also steal from monsters early on right?

all correct information.
I dont see thieves being an extremely popular class to play though. It's more like "everyone has a thief" (because well, we have 15 characters), but most only play it at the bank for a few days and quit. Then other players make their "thief" and fill that void. It's an endless cycle.

[Hicha]

When I first joined this shard, I noticed how rampant thieves were. They are everywhere. It seems to be an extremely popular class to play. I know of people who only play thief chars and have alts with different types of thieves. I do not know of any other era that was in favor of thieves, maybe pre-T2A but only slightly. Being a thief or PK seems to be THE class to play here.

Thievery isn't for everyone, but everyone usually tries the class anyway. You have 15 character slots to try whatever you want in UO, why not try everything? There are only a handful of fulltime thieves, everyone else is just comes and goes. There is a lot more to playing a thief than "I STEAL EPIC LEWTZ", and if you don't have the time and/or patience for it, its not gonna be for you.

Bank thieves, by far, will be around to the point where stealing 10 regs or runes isn't getting them anywhere and move on to an entirely different class.

[nightshark]

Also note that thieves here have an accurate mechanic, where stealing basically makes you an aggressor to your target. If you steal from a blue, you can't kill them for 2 minutes, even if they attack you first - or you will be accountable for murder.

This also makes it really easy to grief thieves, by forcing them to deal 1 damage to you with a punch, then committing suicide - hence kicking them out of the thieves guild for 40 (or 8?) hours playtime.

I have met some extremely annoying thieves on this shard who do a good job of playing their template - who will sneak up on you in dungeons and steal your reagants/valuables and leave you rather helpless. Though I think there is an inaccuracy on thieves here - it seems they are able to steal during combat. During T2A I'm sure thieves could not steal whilst they were attacking/being attacked.

[Oswald]

The Thieves Guild bullshit confined the thief skills to an extremely narrow role - you couldn't be a PK because of the murder count nonsense, and you had to jump through a lot of hoops just to get to steal from players.

I played before the change went in and it was fine. The whole system was just a knee jerk reaction to all of the rampant bitching and crying about the thieves - the same kind of thing that brought us trammel in the next expansion.

[nightshark]

The Thieves Guild bullshit confined the thief skills to an extremely narrow role - you couldn't be a PK because of the murder count nonsense, and you had to jump through a lot of hoops just to get to steal from players.

I played before the change went in and it was fine. The whole system was just a knee jerk reaction to all of the rampant bitching and crying about the thieves - the same kind of thing that brought us trammel in the next expansion.

Yeah, it is one of the very few "trammelising" nerfs that were in T2A - the other being stat loss for murderers. It really makes no sense for you to need permission from a "guildmaster" to steal. It's not like you need to be in the mages guild to cast spells, or the warriors guild to have a permit for your halberd.

But, it is what it is. Blame OSI

[Oswald]

Stat loss for murderers only ensured that any red you encountered was at the LEAST using UOA if not UOE - absurdly stiff penalties like that simply encourages cheating :/

[Horvik]

Actually thiefs guild and statloss where 2 nerfs that made the game more balanced so that not everyone would play a murderer or thief, where is the fun in that. Tramel was an overkill nerf to entire uo concept if osi where smart back than they would have just made few extra servers with tramel only and left regular servers as they where.

[OneGuy]

I understand. I dont see a bad thing the thieves guild, nowdays many people would make a thief without trainning him only for fucks. Isn't an eternity waitting to be accepted.

That being said, I think the thing people do not understand about stealing is that it is a social skill. (No, I'm not kidding). The skill itself is almost usless, it requires YOU to do some work, and put yourself into the right scenarios that it can be used effectively. If you just GM it then run around "Using it", you will not profit, die alot, and likely never see anything outside of brit.

I like this concept, but for me seems really difficult to strike up because many people are focused on pvping, garthering, pvming... not time to speak.

About trainning, how much time usually takes a thief?

[Oswald]

Actually thiefs guild and statloss where 2 nerfs that made the game more balanced so that not everyone would play a murderer or thief, where is the fun in that. Tramel was an overkill nerf to entire uo concept if osi where smart back than they would have just made few extra servers with tramel only and left regular servers as they where.

Not everyone was playing a murderer thief before these changes. They were just kneejerk nerfs done to appease the whiners - and it still wasn't enough, which is why they came out with Trammel.

The only thing the thieves guild did on Chesapeake is make sure that nobody played a thief anymore. After the change I can count on a single hand how many times someone tried to steal from me.

Stat loss didn't balance anything - it just made reds cheat so they wouldn't get killed.

[Hicha]

Actually thiefs guild and statloss where 2 nerfs that made the game more balanced so that not everyone would play a murderer or thief, where is the fun in that. Tramel was an overkill nerf to entire uo concept if osi where smart back than they would have just made few extra servers with tramel only and left regular servers as they where.

Trammel brought UO to a whole new genre of people who weren't comfortable with total loss from death and the risk of having your home dry-looted.

It spurred a new change in MMOs, catering to players who didn't like the extreme risk-versus-reward Felucca brought. Think about it: how many MMOs developed recently can you think of that employ the same extreme risk of loss when dying? Imagine WoW being a dry-loot system, how long would you have played knowing items that took you months to farm could be picked off of you upon death?