Please Don't Feed the Malevolence

My UO days are probably done... but my days on the Metropolis server are definitely done.

Me and the rest of my crew pretty much quit over a year ago after there were some very ignorant admin choices and decisions made... especially regarding the nature of what "Pre-UOR" means. Admin Zen actually and stupidly once said, "T2A wasn't pre-UOR, so it's gone." Yeah, there's a UO expert, there. Once called on the stupidity of the comment, Zen deleted it. But it happened.

I recently went to browse the Metro forums for the first time in about a year... it was a lazy Sunday, and I was bored. I was surprised to find a poll there about me and the TKV guild... someone was asking whether or not we should come back to the shard. The results of the poll were strongly toward "yes," we were missed. (I wont bother linking the thread, because I'm figuring on it getting deleted, or my comments edited.)

I created a forum account just to say hi, and engage in a little friendly banter back-and-forth, for old time's sake...

The post at the top is "Darwin," some staff member I don't recognize. What a dick, eh? Is that what you want from a server staff on which you invest hundreds of hours into an account? Yeah, me neither. As far as I'm concerned, UO server staff shouldn't engage the community at all, except rarely to garner input for this, or that. They should state the rules. They should state any changes. They should ask for feedback when they see fit, but even that should be rare, as the staff are gods and they shouldn't encourage sass that a debate must always bring.

And they should never, ever drive away players like Darwin did, and Zen before him. They shouldn't discount constructive feedback just because their buddy doesn't like our play style. No trash talking players. No engaging in stupid off-topic political debates. No swapping of recipes. Just run the server, you god damned idiots.

Anyway, I can no longer recommend to anyone that you should play the Metro server. The staff is too immature and unprofessional, and to me that smells like an idiot teenage management team.

As for my own UO days... who knows. Alex the Artist and I have loooong talked about making our own server, and actually making it pre-UOR from when UO was still fun, not a pale imitation that so many other servers, even Metro, have provided. And it would be a perfect server... I would put money on the fact that Alex and I, with our very broad information technology industry and game industry backgrounds, not to mention thousand of hours in-game from 1996 to present, are among the world's experts on the mechanics and dynamics of this game. At the very least I know why UO was the first MMORPG, but has still never been matched in playability. I'll keep that bit of info to myself, as not many people, including the Metro staff, really seem to understand it... why aid potential competition? Player-run UO server admins all seem to lack fundamental understanding of what made UO great and get hung up on questions of stat loss, mounts, and resource gathering within town borders, and these newjack MMORPG's offer nothing but 1st person eye candy; not a single one has incorporated the key attributes that UO has used to keep people hooked for almost a decade, now.

Maybe someday we'll recreate a true version of the past on a server without trash-talking admins.

"ChimaiRa" was a name that I'd seen since my early days on Metropolis in late aught-three. I'd never had much of an opinion of him, good or bad. He's always been a red, and we've engaged in combat many times. He never made much of an impression on me, he was 'just there.'. There was a several month period this year in which he was gone from the server... at least as far as I knew... but the last few weeks, he's been back. And vocal.

His new favorite word is "nigger." We, meaning TKV, will take him down... and 30 seconds he's back calling us "niggers." Actually, some time last week he called me a "nigger," "jew," and... the exact spelling was... "spick" all in about one minute period of time. Apparently, he can't decide which racial epithet to use on me. If he ever checked out the dtman home page he would see that I'm clearly Asian-Pacific (the proper racial slurs for my people are "Inter-Island Canoe Paddlers," "Coconut Eaters," and "Displaced for A-Bomb Testers").

A couple nights ago I had a fun little encounter with him, but the screen shots probably would have disappeared into my archives forgotten, until I heard today he had been banned.

As such, here is my tribute for one of the late, great mental giants of the Metropolis shard, Chimi Ra.

TKV was hunting, and had been killing Chimi on and off through the night, at various places. He'd die, and if allowed he'd gear up with 50 of each reg and head out on foot... precalling most of the time, but staying to fight if the odds looked good enough. Nothing wrong with that.

Except the second or third time we killed him, he started talking... which is the bane of most fools. Most people never know you're an idiot if you never talk... and ironically, it's only the people who talk too much that I consider to be idiots.

Anyway, we dropped him in Buc's, and when he came out crying I directed Carno to res kill him. Which happened.

Alex and Carno took off to scout elsewhere, and I hung around in Buc's to see if any other red/orange showed up. Unfortunately, I was then exposed to Chimi.

Hohoho HO! Time to start getting screenshots. There's an impending meltdown, here...

I was laughing "irl" and decided to goad him... I said, "Oh really?" as he finished his prior thought with...

I tell ya... I get told by a lot of people that "UO is just a game." What's funny is that it is people like Chimi here who say it. The people who lose the game.

He attacked me (as a new res) and ran up the bridge. I didn't want him to get away because I wanted more screenshots.

"You can't even defend yourself in a game." He completely lost me there, so I asked, "How so?"

He ignored my question and went on to say "I can't even imagine you in real life."

It was at this point another red we'd killed, "Father Hogue," ressed and ran up to say hi to me. I was telling Chimi to "try" and imagine me "irl." I wanted to see how he projected everything he hated about himself onto me. Yeah, I'm psychological like that.

I told Chimi to try to imagine what I was like "irl," but he had shut up and ran toward the bank. I figured I was going to have to prod him a little. I asked...

Now, if I was actually in the game, at the point I'd turn my head left, then right, looking for the guard zones. In fact, I can't recall any occasions at the graveyard, near the town lines, where he actually chased me to town. But there's no point in arguing with him about that, is there.

Hogue: "I would own you right now 1 on 1." I'm not sure what his 2nd line was suppose to be.

Hogue is a new res "right now," by the way. But he'd still "own me"... right now.

Chimi finds some wisdom in this, and says, "exactly." Yeah, I don't know either...

"It's nice to know you broadcast your little fantasies over the internet about a video game."

Ok, a couple things here. In my fantasies, I could never imagine such retards. I am physically and mentally incapable of making these characters up. Another thing, there he goes making fun of me for taking a game, in his eyes, too seriously. And yet... who are the geniuses saying "I would kill u irl?"

I wanted more from Chimi, so I asked him to say more insightful things while Hogue went through the list of reasons why he is so cool:

Now... now. An aside. I don't usually like bringing real-life stuff to this UO page, but I think in this case it would be ok, because I didn't initiate it. Mr. Chimi and Mr. 220 bench-presser did. So, allow me to say this: I am a male, and I am a former Marine. I'm pretty sure that 220 is what the female Marines were required to bench press.

I told Hogue to be silent, as I wasn't addressing him. This was about Chimi. Hogue was trying to steal Chimi's thunder of stupidity.

Alas, Chimi was incapable of thinking any more deep thoughts, and regressed to...

"Suck a dick." See, I wondered earlier when he would get to transferring his own foibles on to me. I think here we have it.

He attempted to dismiss me and ran off, while Hogue gives me the closing line from his resume...

It was at this point I got a message that my presence was requested elsewhere, so I paralyzed and exploded both of them. I like to make a grand exit whenever possible.

As I said, rumor has it that Chimichanga has been banned, and part of me actually is sad that we'll be deprived of his unintentional comic relief.

Fortunately, the well of stupidity is very deep in the worlds of online gaming. For every Chimi you meet, there are 50 others you haven't.

Part of what makes UO so fun for us is the silly people. Be they genuinely comical, a rarity, or just not too bright, the community is often good for an unintentional laugh.

A guildmate and I were hunting elusive (non-cheating) bad guys last night, and I came across (ahem) this fellow.

My guess is that he intended to convey the message that he has a habit of bedding virgin females... but instead I am left wondering if he himself is a virgin and is really, REALLY into Catholicism.

I was shopping with my crafting character, Gordon Craftsman, when I happened upon a couple of fellows I'd never seen before, "Fagmoron" and "Kaladork." I thought their names were amusing in a self-deprecating sort of way, but didn't pay them much attention.

Until they attacked me while I was looking at a vendor, and died under 1 crossbow bolt, and 1 explosion spell. Like I said... this wasn't my fighter, it was my crafter.

I gave both of them a murder count. I noticed Kaladork had accidentally dismounted his horse during the attack. They looted all I had on me... 2 empty bags, and a newbie dagger. Fortunately, I hadn't bought anything from those vendors, yet. I expected them to kill my horse, and I heard a crossbow thump and a horse die.... but I still saw MY horse standing there...

For some reason, he never corrected his mistake by killing my horse. No idea why.

I logged off my ghost, and got on my fighter... the well known, ridiculed, and feared "Gordon."

I came through the gate, and both blues attacked me, going gray. I engaged both of them just as another blue, Chloe Veronica-something, showed up to help out. The two would-be pk's were quickly dispatched.

Chloe stuck around long enough to res my crafter. As a ghost, I saw one of the ghosts of one of the guys we'd just killed start in with the "fuck u faggit (sic) asshole fuckers." He did that crap until I told the live people what they were saying, giving us all a good laugh. The ghosts went away after that.

It was all so funny... I can't even stay mad. They killed a weak crafter with no loot on him, took counts, one guy kills his own horse by accident and then forgets to finish mine, then they get hit by 2 blues, one of which has one of the highest kill counts on the server, and get looted clean. "Woops" indeed, hehehehe.

I was bopping around here and there, helping to gank the random red with the random group of blues.

At one point I was alone near the Brit graveyard, and saw a gray guy I've never seen before... "Miko Miko Nurse," except his name is in all caps (how lame... to always spell your name in all caps...).

His trash talking started immediately... I wish I'd known how stupid he was going to be from the start, because I didn't start getting pics of his talking until halfway in.

He started questioning my sexuality, my lineage, and my skill in the game. He kept telling me how much I sucked in spite of the fact he couldn't really hurt me... he was pretty defensive. Because of that I couldn't really hurt him much either. I was offensive, he was defensive and talking too much, and because of that neither one of us got the other below 50% health. But I still sucked at pvp, according to him.

Anyway, the second time I ran out of mana, my wingman showed up. As I was out of mana, he just healed through Alex's attack too, and kept trash talking the entire time.

He didn't panic at the 2v1, and he kept us busy enough that either one or the other could regenerate mana. We couldn't quite both recover at the same time, so we had trouble coordinating our attacks at the same time.

We'd paralyze him, we'd try to meditate some mana back, he'd bandaid heal. I'm not really sure why I tried to hide in the above pic... I think I may have miskeyed. Oh, I remember. There was a bunch of random monsters I was trying to get off me. (Miko)^2 Nurse just kept talking.

"I own your mothers." I really have no idea how he managed to type so much, and keep playing at the same time. He must have taken touch typing in high school.

Eventually, Alex and I managed to get him paralyzed, and we were both looking good on mana. We were about to start our combined attack, when he said, "this is getting boring, I am leaving now faggots"

There is no doubt in my mind that if he had just shut the hell up and played the game, he'd have lived.

Speculation: I never saw that guy before, but he obviously knew (and hated) us. I'm going to throw out a speculation I have absolutely no evidence for: it was another character of "Dodgin Bullets." We defeated his guild in war recently when he undeclared (and then denied it). He is well known to have 5 different Metro forum accounts (so when he lies he can have 5 imaginary friends back him up), and at least 3 online characters that he claims are all different people. So my guess is that it's DB.

Last week Alex and I were hunting reds, as the two guilds we are warring, GMX and AA, seem to have dropped off the face of the server.

We found a couple rLt (Real Life Threat...uh huh), and dropped Juan. I don't have any kill pics immediately after Juan, so I assume the other one recalled. Don't remember.

Anyway, Juan died, and as he had never trash talked us or anything, we allowed his mount to live.

Like I said, the other recalled, so I moved off a bit to wait in ambush for the next victim. Juan ressed, and we left him alone to re-equip.

Earlier tonight, Alex and I were again hunting reds, as oranges are still gone. I won't suggest we had anything to do with their disappearance...

Anyway, Alex and I kept finding and tangling with the murderers Talon and Mo in Bucs, and before either side could get an advantage, a blue named "Incision" would jump in and start attacking us, too. It happened at least two or three times. We engage the two reds, and the blue would throw in with them and go gray trying to kill us.

At one point I had to stop for a breather to recover some mana. Up walks Mo and Talon... they start complaining about my hiding skill while I'm hiding 2 tiles from both of them.

And apparently they aren't happy with the fact that we need to duck and weave a lot because we're trying to fight a 2v3. They want us to just stand there and let them beat on us, or something. I'm not sure.

We left to get some regs, and were back within 90 seconds. Bucs was clear, so we waited in ambush. Up walks blue Incision, all by his lonesome. We took a count on his opportunistic PK'ing ass.

About 15 minutes later, Talon made the mistake of coming back to the Brit graveyard for the 3rd time... he was doing the "run in with recall precast" number. Third time's the charm for TKV.

I guess he shouldn't have assumed I was still alone. He shouldn't have stopped to fight me.

Metro in-game Private Messages. Why, oh why. Has ICQ not existed since the late 1800's? Do we really need this in-game functionality? I've never used it to PM anybody I wanted to talk to... the only time it ever gets used is when somebody I have no desire to talk to talks to me.

24 times out of 25, these messages come directly after an encounter in which the messenger just got jumped by us and killed. And the message is rarely, "Good show! You did a good job in killing me!" Nope. It's excuses and whining.

Alex engaged Yama in Buc's Den, and I came in and finished him off. Pretty routine; nothing to write home about.

Yama tells you:
id have way more respect if any of you could 1 on 1
Yama tells you:
but since ive known you guys you havent been able to
Yama tells you:
must sux to know you sux and need help haha
Yama tells you:
ive pvped a lot of people in my time
Yama tells you:
and you guys are about the most pathetic
Yama tells you:
just because you have to have your butt buddy to fight
Yama tells you:
pussy ass wannabe, take off hosers

Heh, he said "Hosers." We have Bob and Doug Mackenzie, here. Note he calls us "pathetic" right after we killed him. He just admitted that he's so bad at this game, two pathetic people can kill him. Hey... his words, not mine.

Yama, what did you expect to result from your tirade? Did you think you'd hurt our feelings? Did you think you'd give us some brilliant revelation, make us see the error of our ways, and change everything about how we've played UO for 7 years? Did you think it would hurt our feelings calling us "butt buddies?" Yama... I'd say that you just aren't that important to us, but the truth is that your opinion holds no sway over us in the slightest. You're just another poor loser with half decent loot. Also, name calling hasn't worked on us in about 20 years, so no dice there, either.

We'd just found a couple AA (with whom we are at war) macroing unattended in their house, and they didn't lock their upstairs door. An EV later, and we were laughing at two dead orange guys. About 5 minutes later, dead Joseph Stalin logs off, and live Tenzor logs in, and starts PM'ing me. He said..

tells you:
you kill someone while they are macroing, man that's lame. You're supposed to be an adult? You seem emotionally retarded.

That's a lot of assumption from dropping a single EV on his patio. I'm "emotionally retarded" because of it, heh. My response was, "About as lame as res killing is," because he had done that to me about 30 minutes prior.

I switched characters so he couldn't PM me any more... which is when Alex started getting PM's from Forbze, one of the guys we killed with the EV:

Forbze tells you:
Get over the reskill we only did it tiwce because Gordon tried lootin his stuff

(that could be true. we do that. but only when they actually come up to their corpse to loot, which I didn't do.)

Forbze tells you:
How old are you? Im 17, now stop acting childish
Forbze tells you:
luckily I checked on my macro lol
Forbze tells you:
next time you kill me you need to use bugs

(Because they finally locked that door. And holy shit, he's 17. I'm twice his age. I started playing UO when he was 10. I joined the Marines when he was 3. He had shitty diapers when I was graduating high school. He wasn't even born yet when I "had" my first girlfriend... oh my god... WHAT IF HE'S MY KID!!!???!!!)

Forbze tells you:
lol k quit while your ahead
Forbze tells you:
If it makes you happy, I wont res kill anymore

If they think that will drop our decision to res kill them as often as they can (because they started res killing me), they are mistaken. If they want to erase my 3 res kills from earlier that evening, it will require a public statement on the Metro forums from their GM stating they did it, it was wrong, and they are deeply sorry and it won't happen again.

I'm serious. (-: I don't expect them to do it, and to be honest I will enjoy res killing, now that they've started the new rule. Horses too. Booyah.

Joseph Stalin tells you:
btw dont expect any AA to be online tonight
Joseph Stalin tells you:
All are sleepin, I m going to sleep

When Alex told me he said that, my first thought was, "They're all asleep... together?" Heh.

There was one more to post here from Shadow in guild IDS, but this post is long enough.

1. Stop PM'ing me in the game. I don't care what you have to say and will ultimately use it to make fun of you.

The TBF war rages on, and unfortunately due to excessive trash talk and noncompliance with my rules, I had to revoke their Delucia privileges. Fuman was the first victim of this new enforcement. We told him we would not allow him to res in Delucia, and gave him directions to the Trinsic healers. He thought we were kidding. We weren't. Over the course of the evening he forced us to res kill him at least 50 times. (I really feel like we were the victims here... ;-) )

Fuman Brown of TBF wasn't the first to suffer this fate. We've had to revoke town privileges in the past, on many other people.

Three years, 2 servers, and two different countries separate those pictures... but the morons remain the same.

Here's a little episode of ignorance that happened at around the same time. TKV was enforcing Fuman's loss of Del privileges, and Fuman just couldn't accept it.

We got distracted for two seconds by more TBF, and Fuman was able to res and run to the bank... where I was waiting. I enforced the Delucia TBF Embargo. I res killed him in front of a character called "Lupus Brown," who was blue. Obviously a non-guilded friend of TBF.

Lupus let us know his/her opinion A LOT. Volunteered it. No matter how much we didn't care about his/her opinion.

Right here I told Lupus that if he/she didn't like it, he/she should call some orange people to kick us out of Del. Lupus said something to the effect of "lol wtf there are no TBF online right now lololol." I had a screen capture of that, but it corrupted. I said

He/she kept yapping. He/she suggested that Fuman would kick our keesters if we gave him a chance to suit up and fight proper. I know... Lupus is pretty dumb.

I began to grow tired of the noises he/she made. I asked him/her for silence. I told him/her that Fuman had lost his rights to Delucia, and that he'd been warned. Lupus just kept talking the trash.

I told him/her to back up the big words with action... god knows TBF could use the numbers. The old Soviet war doctrine was to overwhelm the West with quantity over quality, after all.

He/she just kept saying the same things over and over, no matter what was said to him/her.

Please. Lupus Brown, have some intestinal fortitude and get on the TBF stone. We need some kill pics of you. Moron.

We're warring a new guild now, and last night I found one of them alone in Del and attacked. We went back and forth once or twice when he signaled he wanted to talk for a second. Neither one of us was even close to making a death blow, so I paused to see what he had to say... and if I happened to regenerate a little mana at the same time, so much the better.

I think he was complimenting me, since most of the time during this war TKV hasn't been online in numbers, but I've been fighting solo (at times) anyway.

Up to this point the only other TKV member he has seen in the war was Eowyn, and she calls for reinforcements only because as of right now she's been pvp'ing exactly three days. In fact, she is under orders to not engage the bad guys without backup.

He asked if my answer meant that I gank behind his back, and my response was, of course, "of course."

For those of you who haven't seen it, here's the TKV guide to PvP. It was written a few years ago, but it still applies.

TKV had its first official guild war on Metropolis, against a group called GTG-Gestiguiste. (I did a little research on the name of their guild... all I could find pertaining to that word was a group of renfaire-type role players..."Gestiguiste is a group of people that play Dagorhir, a game of live-action medieval combat. We fight with period-looking weapons (swords, flails, spears, bows & arrows, etc.) that are made of materials such as foam and PVC tubing.") They had big numbers on most of the time, but two of us did our typical divide-and-conquer thing, and managed to slowly pick them off. We were pretty successful... in fact, the only death TKV incurred due to enemy action was when I hit a lag spike at an inopportune moment....at least five were chasing me, I was at full health... lag... lock... death. The last couple nights of the five night war we didn't find them in their previous 7-10 member groups, and we racked up big kill counts. Which is when their accusations of cheating started.

It was a couple nights into the war when the score was TKV 10, GTG 1. Karac, GM of GTG, starts a thread saying they were here, they were ready to war, they were invincible, etc.

In spite of the photographic evidence that we were piling up the GTG corpses like Napoleonic soldiers in Russia, he says we "blow." I responded:

GORDON:
If you say so, chief.

Go here, and in the enemies section you'll find all the GTG death pics. The five from last night aren't posted yet, as of this writing.

It's been great fighting you guys with us outnumbered 7 to 2, and we're scoring the kills.

Too bad we "blow."

Oh, by the way, get out of the cemeteries. Our loot chests are overloading with all the GTG bone armor. It isn't like we can resell this crap. Try to think of our needs, for once.

Almost every GTG corpse we looted was carrying a full set of bone armor. The off person carrying plate mail was generic NPC vendor plate.

Reality still beyond his grasp, Korac decides to start another trend... "making things up."

Korac:
You still get murdered 7v2. It doesn't matter if you randomly kill somebody before you get ganked.

You can kill dexer newbies in GTG 2v1 or maybe if you are lucky 1v1. We have members that joined the server 3 days ago.

I dont recall you ever getting a kill in on me and Ive (sic) gotten 1v1 kills on you and your 1 other guildmate Ive(sic) seen.

Your bowl of ass guild only has 3 members. You don't even deserve to post on a guild chatter thread.

So here he is saying that even though we kill them when we're outnumbered 2 to 7, they still kill us, so it's OK for them. Then he says the only people we've killed were their "3 days" old newbies. Then he says he's killed both me and Alex 1v1. All of those quotes are either wrong, or fiction. I said as much to him in my response to him:

GORDON:
Now you're just making things up, chief. You killed Gordonopolis ONCE. You, nor any other GTG, have ever killed any other member of TKV.

I'll eat my words if you can provide the kill pictures, like I have been. I feel safe saying you don't have any, because it never happened.

Oh, and if you don't want your newbies bringing down your war kills, get them out of the guild. What's the point of warring if you aren't going to keep track of who's winning? And my figures say you're losing the war 10 to 1, even though we "only have three members." And YOU are the ones starting the "GTG is invincible" thread. And yet you're having you ass handed to you by a guild with "only three members."

You're delusional AND stupid.

Notice I didn't start questioning his intelligence until he started making things up.

Alex Artist:
hehehe I love the warped sense of reality the defeated have. . . The only death TKV has suffered so far has been in Cove when Gordon got covered by about 5 GTG members. Hardly a 1v1 as you are claiming. NO other TKV members have died in this war. You can't go kill 3mo people, and then come here saying you are killing TKV. Doesn't work that way.

And your numbers game. We can manage to kill one before getting ganked? or something? No idea what that means.

You killed us in 1v1's. Indeed.

GORDON:
And I just want to reiterate the bone-armor-thing. Please start carrying loot we can recycle or resell.

Thanks.

Since up to that point I'd never fought him 1v1, I'm pretty sure he's embellishing his fiction with the mace fighting stuff. In fact, I only remember fighting one macer on metro ever, and he was red.

And by the way Korac, I know you're reading this... you're making up a story about killing me with a 1x GM? Hate to break it to you, but the mage I've been killing you with STILL doesn't have GM magery, a week after you undeclared. Make up a better lie next time.

Metro forums have heavy anti-profanity filters in place... but the kids still say things like "duck you," even though it makes them sound 8 years old, because they aren't clever enough to figure out how to insult someone without bumping into the profanity filter. Like I do.

At this point another member of GTG, "Silence," spoke up. He was honest, accurate, and polite, so I will not be making fun of him here. He mentioned that he's never taken kill shots in UO, because he has nothing to prove. I said,

GORDON:
As for pics, it is your own GM starting a thread talking about how unbeatable gtg is. I'm calling him on it, and presenting evidence. I'm providing proof that he is full of it. He is making crap up about multiple TKV kills, which is fiction. He has no evidence to back up his claims. I would get on my knees and beg him for screen shots, if I thought it would help. Because none exist. Because what he says never happened.

Hey, here's some help for you: Razor has a handy dandy screenshot utility. Very simple to use... even a trained monkey could figure it out. Use it and show how many TKV kills you get.

Korac:
Most of gestiguiste/GTG is relatively new to the server but we all pumped out dexers asap so we could start warring immidiately. (sic) Weve (sic) had a few excellent established players join as well. We run in packs of 5-10 during wars and are looking for wars with more established guilds. I think around 20 names are on the stone.

I stand firmly by my previous statement. We are unbeatable in guild wars. Bow down.

He just said he was unbeatable in guild wars, again. What kind of person has that tenuous of a grasp on reality?

Alex Artist again, helping Korac with the difference between reality and fiction:

Alex Artist:
How come a guild that is beating you, doesn't belong here? You talk about how we are a 'chump' guild, yet, we are beating you. Think about that a minute, and see if it can't sink in.
.
.
.
.
Need more help? We've killed members of GTG 13 times. GTG has killed TKV members 1 time. You out number us 20 to 3 (your numbers) and we kill you 13 times more than you kill us. You claim your are unbeatable. But, we've killed you 13 times more than you've killed us. You say we are chumps, but we've killed you 13 times more than you've killed us. You say we don't belong here, yet we've killed you 13 times more than you've killed us.

Any of this sinking in yet?

TKV = 13 GTG kills
GTG = 1 TKV kill

In what universe does that = GTG winning and unbeatable? Someone PLEASE explain this to me!!! Cause I just don't understand.

Winning doesn't come from living in denial. You actually have to BEAT your opponent.

More of the 3rd Grade language filter, and more of calling his own guildmates "newbs." What a leader. And he challenges us to fight him on their own turf in Jhelom. This will be important later.

Alex Artist:
Real member, shmeal member. So we have classes of members now and some don't count? Whatever. TKV kills GTG and GTG doesn't kill TKV. If you have crappy members bringing you down, do something about it. But "They aren't real members so they don't count" crap isn't going to work.

We've never been to the GY, so, that's not us killing your 'newbs' there.

We have made SEVERAL trips to Jhelom. Check the pictures. Many are right there in the streets of Jhelom. Not sure what else we can do. I guess you just want us to run to the bank and spam WE'RE HERE!! WE'RE HERE!! over and over and let you kill us. . .

And, if you haven't noticed, there have been some severe issues with lag the last couple of days. You might not have noticed, but the rest of the players on the server have. Call it an excuse if you like. .. but it is reality.

And finally, read our website. http://www.dtman.com/tkv It's there for a reason. It's not simply for us to brag. It's to have proof of what's happening for when morons that simply can't comprehend reality start making stuff up.

GORDON:
1. So, there's real GTG, and fake GTG? Do the fake ones know they aren't real? Is it a different shade of orange? How can we tell them apart?

2. My dear old Uncle Abduluh (twice removed on my mother's side) in Afghanistan used to say, "In battle it is better to send five lions than five hundred sheep."

I'd say the "3" TKV lions are making a better showing than the "20" gtg sheep.

But oh yeah, they weren't real gtg. *yawn*

By the war, Karnack, it's cracking me up that in a single thread you're saying that your guild is unbeatable, yet full of no-talent newbs.

You've got a touch of multiple-personality disorder showing.

Again and again, we provide evidence that GTG really isn't that good of a guild. In fact, from all of the guilds we warred on the Great Lakes server, almost all of them would hit GTG like the armored divisions of Germany in the spring of '41.

Korac:
Ok gordon. Im (sic) clearly not actually insane. You from your profile however look pretty damn stupid.

You arent (sic) a real guild master. You havent (sic) killed but 3 newbies in the guild repeatedly that I dont (sic) even give a duck out.

Your guild is a pos and my guild is bored with them frankly because you arent (sic) around to fight. You just talk poopy-poop on forums. Come to Jhelom and talk poopy-poop.

I'm starting to think his keyboard is missing the apostrophe key. In this last post he did the 8 year old profanity, 8 year old insulting from my "profile," whatever that is, and 8 year old spelling, and reality from the perspective of an 8 year old. "I got you! No you didn't!" I'm seeing a trend, here. And again with the challenge to hit them at their stronghold, Jhelom. (And I honestly think he has issues with recognizing reality.)

Alex Artist:
Ok. Let me get this straight. We provide pictures as proof refuting every one of your comments. We don't go to Jehlom? Yes we do, here's the pic. We don't kill GTG? Yes we do, here's the pic. We explain in a logical manor how we ARE beating you and GTG is losing the war.

And the best you can come up with is:

I don't care. You guys suck.

You're good.

GORDON: (January 15th)
I bet they undeclare because we "suck too much."

I give them... I don't know. Wild ass guess.... a week.

So far Korac has done everything except accuse us of cheating. But guess what...

Yeah, he accused me of using something called "See Hidden." Because I tracking-skilled him to the doorstep of his house while he was hiding, and began casting Reveal. Never had a chance, because he logged off. In a 1v1 situation. He logged off rather than face me and my mighty SEE HIDDEN.

I really fucking hate being called a cheater. Men HAVE gotten punched in the face for that. And that was just during a card game.

Alex Artist:
Oh. . . . AWESOME!!!!!

First of all, we have two shots of you dead. . . . IN JHELOM. . .

Second of all. . . cheating. That's just cracking me up!

It's going to be fun destroying you. I just can't wait to join in. . . .

moron. . . . complete MORON!!!!!

I think reality is trying to FORCE its way into your world. . . but you are resisting. . . 'cheating. . . they MUST be cheating. . .'

Face it. TKV is better than GTG.

GORDON:
"See hidden?"

"See hidden?"

Yeah... there's no possible way to figure out where someone is hiding without cheating, right? I can't believe what a poor UO player you are.

Karnac, I still had a small amount of respect for you before tonight. But, tonight showed you're nothing but a little worm. You talk trash here. You ran from me when I was alone. You died twice, both times extremely fast. You had crap equipment. You zombied. Then you accuse me of cheating, because SOMEHOW, SOMEWAY, we were able to find you in spite of your GM Hiding.

GTG would be a lot better off without your "leadership." Worm.

And "decay," be silent. I haven't given you permission to speak.

Here's invincible Karnac, dead at my feet.

More dead Karnac pictures can be found here in the enemies section.

Karnac is the worst pvp'er I've seen in years, no contest.

Korac called me a cheater. KORAC CALLED ME A CHEATER. It really makes my blood boil. But we went ahead and explained it to him, because it never occurred to me that someone could be so ignorant as to not know how tracking works. The thread would have died by this time, had the worm not called me a cheater.

Korac:
You did kill me 2 on 1. There was a miscommunication on guild speak and I thought my guys were already fighting you at jhelom bank. They were fighting somebody in trinsic bank and I ran to the wrong one. woops.

I still stand by my previou (sic) statement that you are a cheating homo. I logged on once hidden on the front step of my house and you recalled straight there and casted reveal on me.

If that isnt (sic) obviously cheating I dont (sic) know what is.

And duck you.

Since he didn't seem to believe us, a random person steps in to try to teach him the skills in UO:

Isn't that awesome? Accuses me of cheating, gets schooled, and then calls me gay? What an honorable opponent.

So, by now we're in the last night of the TKV/GTG war, but we don't know it yet. It's January 17th. TKV has been crushing GTG in Jhelom for hours, and at one point we pull back to dump loot, reequip, go pee, etc. We hit the forums during this break:

GORDON:
GTG vs. TKV, 3 vs. 2........ AND GTG HAS BLUE HEALERS!

The pics are great. We'll let you know when they're posted.

Current score tonight, 7 GTG deaths, 0 for TKV. But the night is young.

Alex Artist:
That's the best you can come up with? Losing sucks, don't it.

Ok, now that was a 3 on 2, right? You which one of you three were the 'real' members? We see that Jelly's already had enough and quit the guild. And you have at least one GTG that's afraid to log on as his orange and is blue healing for you. All that talk about being unbeatable, etc. And it takes two TKV members to take 3 of you down, with your blue healer in tow. That's adorable. And the best you can come up with is calling us homosexual. Seems like some one here has issues. . . and it ain't us.

Anyway, send us a message when you are done zombi'ing and have some equipment worth taking. Cause you throwing yourselves at us and trying to eak out a kill gets boring. I would have expected more from an 'unbeatable' guild. You know, like skill?

I say again. . . losing sucks, don't it. But you're just gonna have to get use to it. Until you undeclare that is.

We're back to Jhelom within 30 minutes. I'm camping the bank. A blue runs up... holy crap, it's Korac. I think, "Did he resign his guild?" NOPE, he still has the GTG guild tag. Holy crap, he surrendered his entire guild. The man who just days before said he was unbeatable, was beaten.

GORDON:
I was wrong. 2 days. They undeclared.

Everyone, avoid GTG like the plague. They suck in general, but they're such a poor (money-wise) guild that they aren't even worth killing for loot, unless you like bone armor and plate mail from the NPC vendors. All they do is zombie and dull your bladed weapons.

On a related note, TKV needs a new guild of morons to fight. Any takers?

Alex Artist:
TKV won. GTG undeclared tonight. But of course it's because we 'cheat'. I invite any admin to watch us fight, and beat GTG just as we have been to verify we aren't cheating. They can name the date/time/etc. Would like to meet them in Jhelom to keep the test accurate.

It's too bad they couldn't just accept reality. And that is. . . TKV is better than them. They underestimated us, and GREATLY over estimated themselves.

I just wish they would have stayed warring us longer so we could have made more of their members leave their guild. Oh well. We still won.

He'd accused of us cheating, and had gotten schooled by the entire community. "Will he now admit he got beaten by a guild with better UO skill?" I wondered?

Korac:
We dont war packet pushing cheaters or people that use external programs to see invisible targets

I like good pvp. You guys are lame ass.

Its unfortunate that I wasted my guild's time on cheaters.

We will war any guild that doesnt (sic) cheat.

We got repeated kills against odds on another guild that doesnt (sic) cheat after you left. The lag went away after you 2 girly-mans left.

Go cheat on diablo 2.

Gordon, you are old and stupid looking, I am not. I also banged a 17 year old today. I win.

Nope. It has to be because we cheat. Now we're "packet pushers," and he is still on the "See Hidden" kick. I'm now starting to wonder if he's brain damaged... we TOLD him how to "see hidden" without any external programs, but he just doesn't understand.

And then he said it was all good for him because he "banged a 17 year old." Holy crap.

I'm still fuming at being called a cheater again, so I responded with this and stopped to collect my thoughts:

Alex Artist:
I just hope people are still reading this stuff.

Pack pushing. See hidden still. He's been TOLD what we are doing, and he's still calling it 'see hidden'.

You got repeated kills because you have a huge speed advantage over them.

There's just no words for this.

GORDON:
And the guild he said he beat after we left... I talked to them a bit. Nice people. But they admit they're kinda new.

Way to go, gtg.

jdrane, late to the party, tries to school Korac one more time with his "See Hidden" theories:

jdrane started strong, but he gets ignorant later. He may still redeem himself if he admits he was wrong in the accusations he is about to make in this thread.

"YeOldeBastard," a much more honorable GTG member than Korac, says he is pissed we are no longer warring.

GORDON:
We were more than willing to keep up the war, so talk to your glorious leader who "wins" because he "bangs 17 year old" boys.

I bet the TKV GM would re-declare if we thought the challenge would be accepted.

Well, actually, maybe not. Your underage-boy "banging" GM calls us cheaters all the time. That's not cool. Unless Korac and Doodler admit they were wrong to accuse us of cheating, I think my response to GTG is no.

Warning to other guilds: If you war and beat GTG, you'll be accused of cheating.

My guess is, the answer to 1 is that he "needed a break," and for the answer to question 2, there's 2 possibilities... either he never really thought we were cheating, or he and his guild are now "packet pushing" and they think they can compete.

GORDON:
This is the thread that wouldn't die.

I don't know what the point of warring a guild is when they call you cheaters when you spank their bare asses.

Korac has no honor, and he admits to having sex with underage boys. I'm voting no... we're looking for a good guild to fight that doesn't cry "TKV HAS SEE HIDDEN" when they lose.

I'll see what the rest of the guild thinks.

It took me awhile to figure it out, but "female doges" is how the kids circumvent the profanity filtering of the word "bitch." It's extra funny because they spell it wrong, every time. But do you see the insanity, here? He undeclared the war, and then calls us "little bitches" that can't maintain a war with them? It's insanity. INSANITY.

Now, again, the entire conversation would have died at this point, before jdrane takes control of the car and heads toward the cliff at full speed:

To translate, he saying there is photographic evidence, on our own webpages, with us using UO Extreme in the past. Just wonderful. I know such pictures don't exist, because it never happened. Now, whether it's true or not, fuel is being added to the TKV-cheats-fire.

Yeah, I remember reading all about it. I also remember than when you used it, on your screen you couldn't differentiate between hidden and non-hidden, and the OSI GM's used that to entrap people in dungeons when Joe UOE-user would attack the hidden fire elle while the GM's watched.

Alex Artist:
Never have used is, never will. And PLEASE. PLEEEAAASSSEE!!!!! Post the links to those pictures. I want to know what you are talking about.

GORDON:
Feel free to post those pics here, from my own server. Since they don't exist, since it never happened, I'm pretty sure you're ill informed.

Korac... we can't maintain a guild war? YOU undeclared. You are truly insane.

Same as jdrane, unless he provides the pics he claims are on my page.

I kept wondering why jdrane was thinking he saw me using UOE in my screenshots. Then it occurred to me... in a lot of my screen captures, I am there hidden. He is seeing me hidden in my own screenshots, and he thinks I am illegally seeing other people.

I shouldn't have insulted him at this point, because so far he's just confused, but it really burns my ass to have to defend myself from accusations of cheating.

Alex Artist:
POST LINKS POST LINKS POST LINKS POST LINKS POST LINKS POST LINKS POST LINKS POST LINKS POST LINKS POST LINKS POST LINKS POST LINKS POST LINKS POST LINKS POST LINKS POST LINKS POST LINKS POST LINKS POST LINKS POST LINKS POST LINKS POST LINKS POST LINKS POST LINKS POST LINKS POST LINKS POST LINKS POST LINKS POST LINKS POST LINKS POST LINKS POST LINKS POST LINKS POST LINKS POST LINKS POST LINKS

You. . . are a moron. You accuse someone of cheating, you SAY you have proof, yet REPEATEDLY fail to present it. He went on a rampage because YOU ARE A MORON FOR ACCUSING SOMEONE OF CHEATING WHEN THEY DIDN'T. NOTHING you said refuted Gordon's claims of you being a moron.

GORDON:
I'm done responding in this thread. It's becoming obvious to me that these gtg morons are just talking about me cheating as much as they can to try and get us banned. They keep saying they've seen screenshots. They keep failing to provide them.

Warning to other guilds: if you war gtg, either let them win or this will happen to you, too.

Korac, jdrane, either provide proof for your accusations, or prove you have no honor.

I'm done responding the the baseless accusations of angry children.

I wish I could say I was really done responding to them, but then jdrane actually does post pics he claims show me cheating:

These pics are from the April 4, 2000 post. I was highlighting the usage of UOE on an enemy guild's page. They posted pics of themselves killing a few TKV, and using UOE at the same time.

Warning to anyone who dares war GTG: If you win, you WILL be accused of cheating. The fact that he is a poor leader and isn't really that knowledgeable about the game never crosses Korac's mind. If you win, you must be cheating.

When you're a (vocal, opinionated) part of the UO community for six years, you tend to make both friends and enemies. Two nights ago we met some of both.

A guy named "getanewaccounth" ran up to us while we were hunting orange, and started in, unprovoked, with the hate.

Ahh, he's in the guild 3MO. I don't know what 3MO is short for. 3MO was fighting against GTG, a guild that TKV is currently whipping bare assed with a hickory switch. 3MO got beaten by GTG. TKV is creaming GTG. Now 3MO wants to war TKV.

I told him that I didn't know TKV and 3MO were currently on hostile terms, and he reiterated why he wanted to war us...

It was at this point I got bored with him and left the area to scout for GTG... but my guildmate stayed behind, and he was there to see this guys new character, and got a shot of it... that's Taran wearing TKV green and carrying the heater.

Yes, the guy started a new character by name of "FuCkTvK." Alternating caps, misspelled name, the whole nine yards. Taran asked him, "Why should I care about a guild called 'TVK?'" There was a pause... you could just see the guy verifying the guild name... and he said "God dammit," And walked away.

A few minutes later I returned from an unfruitful scouting expedition, and was just in time to see Taran schooling yet ANOTHER character of the same person, this time with a name insulting the correct guild.

I was amused by how much time and energy this guy was expending to try to goad us into a fight.

But we don't inspire only hate... we ran into some of our fans from our Great Lakes days, the same night.

I was scouting Minoc for orange, and ran into a couple blues between town and the moongate who appeared to be looking to go red. They seemed to be tag-teaming other blues. "Bunchies Jr." said to me, "Hey, Damn the Man! Love your page!" I was surprised at the recognition. I thanked him, and moved on... praise makes me uncomfortable. ;-)

About 45 seconds later, Taran scouts through the same area. I wasn't around for this conversation, but the picture above is from Taran's log. "Oh Snap" started casting on Taran, but Bunchies Jr, the TKV fan, stops him. Bunchies tells Snap, in so many words, that TKV rocks, he is never to attack TKV, etc etc.

Update 20040114 - I've been contacted by the Guild Master of 3MO, and he stated the person in the above story DID NOT represent the management of the guild. He was a rogue operator. The GM assured me he has no beef with TKV, and was polite and courteous in general. Good on ya, 3MO.

I cancelled my UO account near the end of 2002. Feluca, the PvP side of the game, was deserted. Rules were being changed to favor the people without skill. Everyone had unlootable blessed gear. The game was being altered so that nobody could ever "lose..." not taking into consideration that the game could also no longer be won. So I quit with the only regret that OSI had destroyed the game I loved, even though they still had paying role playing customers.

In late November/Early December of 2003, I learned that there was a fairly expansive community of privately-run UO shards, with rulesets as varied as the geography of the servers themselves. I learned this when one of the bigger UO fansites of its day... wtfman.com... now had their own player run server in operation. Back in the day, wtfman.com got famous by publicly spitting in OSI's face, but in a humorous way. They made an art of pk'ing other players, and had the screenshots and stories to prove it. They were funny because they acted like punks, bucking authority at every turn.

I thought long and hard about jumping on their server... on the one hand, they claimed they were going to put the ruleset at the approximate 1998-1999 timeframe... when UO was still fun. The big hesitation I had was that it was a wtfman.com server... being run by punks. It's one thing to laugh at the comic hijinks of punks... it is quite another to devote time building characters on a server controlled by punks. I was hesitant, but jumped on anyway.

They had made a couple changes favoring pvp... though which I disagreed, I could live with. But then they put in changes which completely killed the possibility of making money doing anything besides monster bashing. It was at this time I voiced my displeasure on their forums (which was all deleted), and quit after a week.

I played the Legacy server for one night. Good ruleset, but it all had the vibe of being run by a kid out of his parents' basement. I didn't want to hitch my wagon to a star that shaky. I went to the Metropolis the night after, have been on it for about three weeks now, and am happy.

A week after I left the wtfman server, they imploded. One of the server admins felt like he wasn't being treated fairly, and left... but not after stealing all the player donations, and releasing everyone's login information on the web. Character hacking began almost immediately, I've heard. They had wiped the entire server within 24 hours... the outgoing admin screwed them beyond repair. Everybody's efforts lost.

A week after that, they cut down all connections to one per internet address... this means that people sharing an internet connection, like husbands and wives, could no longer play together. I tell yah... they are a nickel and dime operation run by punks. I submit this project won't make it 9 months before the remaining punk admins get bored.

But anyway, we're on the Metropolis server now. Building characters, reviving TKV, and getting our collective shit together. Pics and stories coming soon.

We went ahead and went to war with some tards near Yew, "R@B." We actually went into the war cautiously....we were even a tad apprehensive the first time we saw them in numbers....but we were laughing at ourselves when we saw how quickly they died. At several times during the fighting one of us quipped to the other, "My god...these guys are incredibly bad." Then we'd laugh and loot.

Last night was like other nights. At least a 4:1 kill/loss ratio, them house hiding 95% of the time, trash talk, and blue healers. But we didn't care....they had some regs we needed. Blue healers appeared on their stone as orange to quickly die and disappear, and players who were orange when we first went to war surrendered when they saw they could not exist in the presence of the jolly green giants striding the world like moody gods and smiting those we wish. I meant us, TKV.

At some point during the fighting...I can't remember the precise situation, but another group of blues and a gray caught our attention. Over the course of the night they were looting our kills and sheltering our enemies in their villa, and the blues were randomly casting on us, so the exact cause of the umbrage escapes me.

But at one point there were no oranges in the area, but there was a gray Dinitrotoluene (For you non-chemistry majors, "dinitrotoluene" is used in a number of industries. Exposure to high levels may affect the nervous system and the blood. Both are known to cause cancer in laboratory animals. These substances have been found in at least 69 (2,4-DNT) and 53 (2,6-DNT) of the 1,467 National Priorities List sites identified by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Both 2,4-DNT and 2,6-DNT are pale yellow solids with a slight odor. They are two of the six forms of the chemical called dinitrotoluene (DNT).).

But anyway, there he was flagged a criminal and we were otherwise not occupied. He was with at least three blue healers, but we were bored, so we attacked.

You can see above that his blue healers were trash talking instead of keeping him alive. STUPID STUPID STUPID dumbasses. But anyway....

The fight went all over. At one point he almost even got me, but some quick ducking and weaving and I was good. His groupies casted nonstop to keep him alive, and even neglected their duties to throw out more trashtalk in between. STUPID STUPID STUPID dumbasses. But anyway....

His healers were too busy yapping to do their jobs, and we managed to cut him from the herd, and look what happened...

Meanwhile, the enemy guild's GM got her shit together and went right into the house. "Safely" in the house, she started telling us how bad we were at this game, or some such. Alex Artist tried to give her some advice about running off at the mouth...

She didn't really care for the advice because she kept yapping. So, we silenced her.

Retards of a feather flock together, and as such enemy guild member "GasNapalm" started taking refuge in Dini's (pale yellow with a slight odor) villa with his band of idiots.

GasNapalm, feeling safe in the big house surrounded by all the big strong people to protect him, decides to yap a bit...

In retrospect, I imagine there was some furious ICQ'ing around now, because GassyNapalm and all the blues pretty much attacked at once. We were locked on Gassy, so he was the first down.

"Alyssa" locked on me next, so she was the next down. I was seeing the pattern emerge at this point so I locked on the next closest gray, who happened to be Dini (pale yellow with a slight odor). He hauled ass immediately to the safety of the house. After all, there was three of us, and they only had five. It is funny because it's true.

"Vegetto" and "Emperor Jay..." with whom we have a grudge going back years (with Jay, that is), attacked next. Vegetto was trying to fight and ban at the same time, and he ended up getting away. Emperor Jay was not so lucky....a delayed blast explosion spell caught him as he was diving under the bed.

Needless to say, we were all so loot heavy at this point that we went back to the Keep to dump it off.

Will people ever learn that pvp isn't really helped by trash talk? Probably not, because that would require a brain structure capable of creating new memories. It's been my experience that these people are incapable of learning.

After a seven month break, I'm back on the shard. Getting my characters together, relearning my hotkeys, figuring out the latest patches to the game. There's a lot new (what happened to power hour? Why is my strength stat going over 100???), but there's something that hasn't changed:

So...in getting our shit together as a team, we started hunting the one place where you're guaranteed tards: Buc's Den. We never had to wait long. Lots of factioners hunt there, and where you find the pvp'ers, you find the parasitic thieves...which were our main targets most of the night.

One of our first victims was "M-C Hammer." If I recall correctly, he stole in front of us and hauled ass, but after much chasing and server boundary crossing we managed to take him down. Damned thieves.

I don't really recall if he talked much trash during the chase, nor if we silenced him with res kills. He ran and ran, taunted, hopped server lines. Basically did everything possible but actually recall, which he should have done when outnumbered three to one. But, this is what he reduces himself to:

"rofl irl" is my fave. Like he is really in his Mom's basement laughing because he got killed. Mmmm hmmmm. Liar, liar, pants on fire, Hammer. You're pissed and you know it.

Later that evening, Muse put herself in the same situation. Stole in front of us (or possibly from us), and the chase began. I distinctly recall her trashtalk..."Can't kill a girlie thief with your whole guild?" was one line she kept repeating over and over...

After we killed her (hehehe), she kept coming up to me saying, "Where's my panties, you perv?" She kept saying over and over how she's a girl, she has sex with men, etc etc. It was somewhat disconcerting.

Not much later, she was following me everywhere, "Duel me." over and over and over. At one point I broke silence and said, "We are through with you now. You may go." She had something surly to say, but she pretty much stopped talking to us after that and soon after left completely.

Before she left she was talking briefly to someone named "Mushroom Head." For the record, I'd just like to say how impressed I am by people who manage to slip a drug reference into their UO character name. It implies intelligence and creativity. But anyway....I didn't have a clue who MH was until he mentioned the guild CIA....which proved their idiocy in the past which was celebrated on this very webpage...so my guess is that MH is our old idiot friend "Breanna." See previous posts.

Side note....some of them kept revealing over and over, burning regs. I just kept hiding for free. Hehehe...I win.

One person we chased on and off the entire night was "Drowned God." We used to tangle with him on and off during our Faction days. After the first time we chased him he disappeared and we soon had a guild message that his guild had declared on us. We'll probably end up warring them, but for the time being we're getting back in the groove. Anyway, DG came back immediately with his formal invitation to war, as detailed in "Robert's Rules of Order:"

One of us asked what he was babbling about, and he expressed his desire for formalized combat.

We never actually said anything, but I guess the voices in his head were answering for us, because apparently he got an answer. Don't know. I couldn't hear his voices from where I was.

Near the end of the year 1996 and the first week in which Ultima Online became a going concern, a large forge was placed by a character named Rand Al Thor in the forests near Yew. He formed a guild around him consisting of Kronos Templar, Za, Hurin, Boone, and Trevor Ironforge, among others. Then Leisher. Then in early 1997, Taran and Gordon joined the scene. The founders of the guild were mainly about anti-PK PvP, but soon all of them either left the game entirely or moved on to other things elsewhere in Brittania. The guild and guild HQ were handed down to the "Newbies," who went on to try and make a name for themselves, and their guild, on the Great Lakes server.

The first year and a half of their UO lives were spent getting killed by PK's a lot. As all of our PvP experts had left for the big pvp guilds of the day, SiN and the Eldar, for example, we newbs had nobody to jumpstart us into the player versus player aspects of the game. We spent a lot of time monster bashing and becoming tradesmen. Monster bashing back then was a study of futility: house owners would trap monsters inside of their houses and use them to train. Back then there was no monster-decay code, nor was there anyplace outside the dungeons to farm loot (besides escorting). This meant you could spend hours wandering the countryside and not even find an orc. Hunting in a dungeon was asking to get jumped by a Dread Lord, which almost always happened.

We in TKV were never roll players, but we eventually got tired of, as we saw it, the griefers pking the innocents. Innocents being tradesmen, and....uh....us. So right before our second year ended, we started teaching ourselves pvp. Our forge was our main training area as long as we didn't mind the occasional lich wandering by. This bothered some of the craftsmen in our guild who envisioned the forge a Brittanian version of Wal-Mart, but they eventually saw it our way and left.

We decided we were ready to begin cleaning up the shard and had our first guild war versus OOT. Battles were fought at their home and ours. We got beaten our first battle but won every battle after until OOT surrendered and became a roll playing guild, TUR.

The following several months saw many adventures and good times at our home, The Forge. Even if I play UO another 10 years, our large forge will always be what comes to mind when I remember UO. It will be missed.

Our big news for the last month would be, of course, our formation of a CoM Faction guild, the Knights of Vindication - Factions. In three weeks we've gone from being confused Faction newbies to being ranked among the best Faction guilds on the Great Lakes server.

In addition to that, a couple of us are actually amongst the top personal players. Alex Artist and Gordon, to be specific.

This ranking is a bit deceiving, as it appears to be a semi-common practice to use a "point mule," which is a cheese ball way to not risk your personal points in combat. Hypothetically, the best pvp'er on the shard could use a point mule and run around with zero personal points....so in the case of a death he will have risked as little as he can. We considered using this method ourselves....it seemed relatively harmless. But we decided that it just wasn't honorable. So we declined, and we will lose 3-8 points, occasionally. Integrity intact.

Probably the toughest guild we've faced is the R<A guild, in Minax Faction. Although they do hide in their tower north of the Yew Moongate more than is cool, they have the "teamwork" thing down pretty well....as well as the blessed vanq spears.

Good points, bad points: They house hide a bit much. But they have good teamwork. Most of them carry they own points. A lot of folks on that screen are in the 70-110 point range. And they rarely trash talk....but...right after that death pic was taken, I think it was Vegeta who said, "Gordon is a little queer." I have no idea where that personal anger comes from, as to my knowledge I've never said two words to him. Oh well. I'll live.

Contemplating making a CoM page here on dtman, with its own forum. I see a lack of a CoM internet HQ....a nice centralized place to list who the blue spies are, who the CoM traitors are, etc. Yes, I realize other factioners would read the boards, too....but it would still be a good idea, I think. Any thoughts? Does something like this already exist, somewhere?

I've fixed the forum link in the left column, so if you tried to get there before and couldn't, you can now.

Once...in the Marines...I was in Haiti distributing food to starving children, and that was the most depressing thing I'd ever seen. But then I found out Vegeta didn't like me.....