The lack of civility and humanity
As you might know there are a lot of things you have to think about as a shard administrator and one of the biggest problems I have to deal with is the lack of civility and humanity in our players.
Why is it that gamers on our servers feel like it's their god given right to be verbally abusive to players, hack accounts and disrespect the people that have built this server?
Over the years we've been through a lot with UO Gamers. We've built the most successful "player run shard" ever, he biggest ever and by far the highest quality free game server ever. However we have seemed to attract the worst of the worst when it comes to some of our players. While it is getting better to some extent it's still far out of control.
A lot of you run around saying things to people in game that you'd never say to another human being if you were face to face with them. Why is that? Do you feel like some sort of superhuman in the game because you can die and resurrect as many times as you want?
I'm not quite sure what it is that gives people the right to talk to other players like this. I know why those of us who do not do this put up with it... we put up with it because the reality is UO Gamers is the best shard ever. We like playing here and we realize that some of the players are prepubescent children that like to use curse words as though they are something you'd say to your mother every day.
Last night I did some spectating of factions and I can't tell you how many times I saw racial slurs used or the word "newb" in some form or another used. I cannot understand why it's so rampant. The reality is to police this would take far more time than anything else so I am going to simply appeal to you, our players to clean up your act. I cannot force you to do it, but I can force those of you that I see to lose everything you have in the game.
I'm asking you to remember that we have young kids and family's that play this game and they deserve to be able to play it without having to hear these racial slurs. A lot of thing things you say in this game could land you into serious trouble outside of the game. I don't quite understand where the thought process comes from that makes you think it's O.K. to do this.
Sure go ahead and blame me and say that it's the games fault for allowing it... or try to toss around the whole 'free speech' argument but the bottom line is that it's unacceptable. I'm not going to start banning every player I see do this but I'm asking you as a community to tone it down. Let's remember that this server started out with 5 users online a long time ago and now it's up to 1000+ online average. In order to continue to grow it the environment has to be a fun and comfortable one and if you don't provide that on some level you're going to push people away from this shard... and for what? To inflate your "e"go?
It's your choice where you go from here and I know that I'm wasting my breath and this won't make a dent but hopefully I can reach a few of you... hopefully I can continue to have some sort of impact on the direction this server takes in the regard of civility.
Thanks,
Ryan
As you might know there are a lot of things you have to think about as a shard administrator and one of the biggest problems I have to deal with is the lack of civility and humanity in our players.
Why is it that gamers on our servers feel like it's their god given right to be verbally abusive to players, hack accounts and disrespect the people that have built this server?
Over the years we've been through a lot with UO Gamers. We've built the most successful "player run shard" ever, he biggest ever and by far the highest quality free game server ever. However we have seemed to attract the worst of the worst when it comes to some of our players. While it is getting better to some extent it's still far out of control.
A lot of you run around saying things to people in game that you'd never say to another human being if you were face to face with them. Why is that? Do you feel like some sort of superhuman in the game because you can die and resurrect as many times as you want?
I'm not quite sure what it is that gives people the right to talk to other players like this. I know why those of us who do not do this put up with it... we put up with it because the reality is UO Gamers is the best shard ever. We like playing here and we realize that some of the players are prepubescent children that like to use curse words as though they are something you'd say to your mother every day.
Last night I did some spectating of factions and I can't tell you how many times I saw racial slurs used or the word "newb" in some form or another used. I cannot understand why it's so rampant. The reality is to police this would take far more time than anything else so I am going to simply appeal to you, our players to clean up your act. I cannot force you to do it, but I can force those of you that I see to lose everything you have in the game.
I'm asking you to remember that we have young kids and family's that play this game and they deserve to be able to play it without having to hear these racial slurs. A lot of thing things you say in this game could land you into serious trouble outside of the game. I don't quite understand where the thought process comes from that makes you think it's O.K. to do this.
Sure go ahead and blame me and say that it's the games fault for allowing it... or try to toss around the whole 'free speech' argument but the bottom line is that it's unacceptable. I'm not going to start banning every player I see do this but I'm asking you as a community to tone it down. Let's remember that this server started out with 5 users online a long time ago and now it's up to 1000+ online average. In order to continue to grow it the environment has to be a fun and comfortable one and if you don't provide that on some level you're going to push people away from this shard... and for what? To inflate your "e"go?
It's your choice where you go from here and I know that I'm wasting my breath and this won't make a dent but hopefully I can reach a few of you... hopefully I can continue to have some sort of impact on the direction this server takes in the regard of civility.
Thanks,
Ryan
