MORE FROM SUN
Discussion on the SUN bannings continues. Vapor of drtwister.com posted why he wouldn’t post the dupe, immediately followed by Dr. TwisTer of drtwister.com who said he would. (Check the twisted site for details.) What do I think? Well, it’s obvious, since I know what the dupe was (yes, Dr. TwisTer, I do know, I’m not lying about it, and believe it or not there may actually be a dupe out that you don’t know about) and I haven’t posted it. Essentially for the same reasons that Vapor posted. I can understand why Twister would say what he would – what’s a bug site that doesn’t post bugs?
On that same subject, Soldier SUN writes:
This is my first public speaking about the incident to date. Ive had a few impersonators, but thats another story.
This is all real funny, I think so anyway. First and foremost, I think Lum the Mad and DrTwisTer’s people, and all of the other anti-social, bug, powergaming, alternative, and PK sites that have badmouthed SUN are hypocrites, not to mention biased and two-faced (Lum this ones for you :)). You *know* you really did something special when your fellow lackies are pointing the finger at you and saying ban (anyone remember when DrT’s website was straight bugs for the people? nothing held back? screw OSI? ahh.. good memories). But honestly, had Vapor of DrTwisTer’s site discovered the bug, he’d be duping right now, even though he thinks it was so horribly wrong. 99% of CoB discussion board would dupe if they could or accept duped items, if they knew there wasnt a good chance of getting caught. Thats where the irony is. Not one of you out there in UO land, except the most dedicated roleplayers, can truthfully deny this. But its okay.. no really, everything is just fine.
The bannings.. well, the bannings were interesting. Last I heard I believe 40+ accounts have been blocked/banned. Three people actually participated in duping. 15 or so people have used the duped items. This adds up to .. 22 innocent people banned. Possibly more if you consider people who used duped items without knowing it (on the contrary to what you may believe, none of the SUN members knew or saw the castle(s) or the plethora of regs [except for the few who exploited]. The most *I* saw, was a few thousand regs and a tower, which all couldve been legally bought [not saying it was], and definantly lied about to fellow members in a believable way.) To those who dont believe it couldve been earned, im sure there’s plenty of SP players that would admit to seeing us in levels 2-4 of Shame nearly all day. Not to mention 5 red members that had been amassing quite a fortune from PKing (30k arrows? oh thats about.. 90 archers looted? in 3 weeks? VERY possible.. with even 1 PKer). My point? Most members like myself didnt think it was duped, especially since we had been working our butts off in Shame together since day 1. So when we were lied to, we:
a) Didnt suspect we’d be lied to by our own guildmates.
b) Didnt consider a dupe since we never saw half of what was duped (including castles and mountains of regs).
c) Figured that it was all paid for. Lies included all of the SP gold on the eBay market being bought for real money, all of the PK loot being invested and sold for gold, and all of our guildtrip hunting money saved (which was quite a lot i might add), and a combination of all 3.
*IF* You would have bought all the SP gold on the market (I was told a SUN member owned a business and bought it all), sold all the PK loot youve recieved (countless suits of GM armor selling at 1k for 2 sets, not including magical weapons and armor that can sell for 10k by themselves), and all of the guildtrip money (6k per person per 45 minutes, 5 hours a day, 5 days a week, 1 week after the shard being official, 20+ members participating), you’d have quite a bundle of cash. Probubly easily enough to buy a tower at 3x the cost and a couple thousand of each reg. And this is what we were led to believe. Did I suspect a dupe? The idea floated around in the back of my mind once or twice, but I figured that it just isnt possible to do such a thing anymore, and I knew the guild wouldnt lie to itself (or so I thought). So what we have here isnt SUN whining because they got banned, but because they simply didnt even know what the hell was going on. Honestly, I was standing in the tower with a few people and suddenly I’m told to resign and next thing I know everything’s being destroyed and everyone’s going nuts. No one knew what had happened until they saw the pics for themselves, needless to say, we were suprised. (To this day no one captured a screen shot or location of our SP tower.) Did I get banned/blocked? Yes. I’m currently under suspension .. will it become a ban? who knows.. who cares.. not me. Again, more irony. I thinks it’s pretty funny that the unaffected people are getting more bent over this subject than SUN themselves. I can speak for myself when I say I honestly dont care what happens. I also know many of the other SUN honestly don’t care what happens, or if they got banned. UO is a dying game for me anyway .. SP was the only reason I had reactivated my account to begin with, same goes for most of the other SUNs. If my account doesnt get banned permanently, I’d probubly quit playing anyways, although I havent decided.
Who laughs last? Good question. If the masses werent screaming “KILL EM ALL!” and waving their pitchforks in the air I’d probubly feel sympathetic if/when the shard gets wiped. But of course I’m spit upon for knowing someone who decided they should dupe, can’t really say I expected anything different. One thing remains true, and that is that SUN has recieved so much negative attention that we’re going down in the UO history books as the most infamous guild ever. Cant really complain about that you know.. what more could a PK guild ask for. From recieving this much publicity to watching OSI try to deal with the problem effectively only to fail horribly, its all been a great laugh and a good read. Even the UO addicts pressing for real life lawsuits crack me up. Talk about too much UO.
The bottom line of my entire arguement is simple, theres 2 parts actually.
40+ players whom had little or no knowledge should not be banned for the actions of 3 people. 2 cybercafes in denmark should not be blocked because of the actions of 3 people; the owners of those cafes should not be forced to go out of business because of these actions. OSI is heartless and stupid,their methods of dealing with this are incredibly moronic, so stupid that you can’t help but laugh.
And secondly, we really just dont care. Yes, believe me, you are spending more time reading about our actions and consequences than we are. Yes, you are posting more messages about it on the boards than us, and yes, you are spending entirely too much time on the subject(directed to everyone). People like me basicly have it the worst off out of everyone, since we havent done anything yet are recieving punishments as if we had. Common sense will tell you that if someone hasn’t commited a crime, didnt help someone commit a crime, didnt knowingly (keyword) accept and use the items recieved from a crime, and didnt know a crime was being commited, they shouldnt be liable for a crime. Me and quite a few others are innocent, the actual dupers arent speaking, and youre looking for someone to blame, someone to attack with your misguided anger. Well, It isnt me.
I had fun.. what about you? Goodbye now!
– formely known as Soldier SUN
A lot of good points, and probably the first word from SUN that doesn’t make me laugh uncontrollably. I tend to believe this guy when he said he had no idea what was up. Should he be banned? *sigh* Probably. Even though he didn’t dupe, he benefited directly from it, as did everyone in his guild. Knowing or not, that is a bannable offense. Sorry.
He does say one thing that I have a problem with, and it’s something that SUN and their allies have been saying all along… “everyone would do it if they could”.
No.
Everyone WOULDN’T do it. Not everyone is a theif. Hell, there’s even folks like me who didn’t dupe in Diablo, and duping in that game had far less impact on others than in UO (and was far easier). Some folks are actually… I know it’s hard to believe… fundamentally honest.
“Character… it’s doing the right thing when no one is watching.”
— Rep. J. C. Watts