ORIGIN GETS ONE RIGHT [Author: wirehead]
Here’s a followup to the story we posted earlier on the macroer/AFKer cast into the pits of Bucs Den:
Some time ago, I heard about a story of abuse on the part of GM Clyde. It seems a character named THC was spotted “macroing” and sent to the location commonly referred to as “macro jail” – a room full of gates to various locations. THC is a red murderer due to his creation of trapped chests. His efforts had earned him GM status in tinkering, as well as at least 2 other skills. He also liked to walk around in his tower wearing his full set of Ranger Armor, under the theory that wearing it made it much harder to be looted while he was offline.
Anyway, he returns to his PC to see GM Clyde say, “Hmm perma red, GM tinkerer, full ranger set. Let’s see how well you do in Buc’s Den”. THC was then teleported into a fracas in Buc’s den where he was a quick kill due to the armor he was wearing. He paged Clyde several times, and did eventually resort to inappropriate language to the GM (fueled by anger and frustration). GM Clyde never responded.
When I heard about this, I immediately emailed uoconcerns@uo.com and within 24 hours, I was contacted via email by William Leverett at Origin. He promised to pull the server logs and investigate this matter, but was reluctant to promise anything until a review could be performed. I continued to keep THC’s wife (a UO friend of mine) up to date on the situation. Days later, Mr. Leverett emails me again and confirms that GM Clyde did in fact act outside of the guidelines for non-interference with the shard and its players – and he asked if I would have THC (or his wife) contact him.
Contact was made, and Mr. Leverett called them personally on the telephone to ask what he could do; the result being that THC will find himself, at the next login, alive and well in his tower, with a full set of ranger armor. Mr. Leverett apologized for the incident, and said that it had been reported to the GM leads and the full GM staff would be briefed on this issue.
Because I was not the account holder for THC, he would not divulge to me whether the character was actually macroing or not. THC swears that he was simply afk and not using any skills – we may never know.
My point is not to bash GM Clyde publicly, nor is it to rub mud in the eye of the GM staff. Rather, I think this story is a victory both for Origin as well as the players of UO. If you have a question or problem with the actions of any GM, there are people at Origin who are not only happy to assist you, but will go out of their way to ensure that the situation is investigated fairly, and restitution are made when appropriate.
I think I feel just a tiny bit better about UO than I did before, and I wish we had more people like Mr. William Leverett working at Origin.