2000-07-30: Why the colored names...

Why the colored names...

I am posting this on behalf of Calandryll:

In the past, players were able to have special items in the game (special hues, names, etc). When the seer program was created the volunteers had trouble convincing players that they were in fact seers, because in those days players were afraid of being lured out of town and killed. The solution to that, was to give seers special items (clothing, weapons, armor, etc) that were hued and/or named. This caused a new problem, because those players that had access to the original special items were able to trick players into thinking they were a seer and did in fact lure players out of town to kill them. So the solution for that was to make unique items only available to seers.

We are no longer satisfied with that solution. Players should be allowed to have these items.

But, if we want to make special items available to players, we need another way to clearly identify seers. The purple name change is the solution we have chosen. We fully understand the issues this may cause for seers and we did consider their concerns. However, the benefits to making these special items available to players outweigh these issues in our estimation. Just because we do not change our plans, does not mean we did not listen. In addition to the ability to make special items available there are a number of other good reasons to do this:

• Visibility. For all of you who have ever said, “I don’t think I’ve ever been in an event before.” this will be your way of knowing for sure.
• Impersonation. Even now, we still have players impersonating seers. They will not be able to do this if seers have purple names.
• Seer abuse. Nobody likes to talk about it, but in rare cases it does happen. More often than not, the reports we get are not true. With this change, you’ll know for certain it that monster is a seer or not.

We did not tell any volunteer group about the special items that players are finding before we published them. We wanted to make sure that these items were found by players to generate a sense of discovery. All one has to do is read the boards to see the excitement that these items generated.

-Calandryll Manager of Community Services

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Players were puzzled of why we would change names of volunteers. It directly involved being able to give players the new items. It was more then just spoiling a suprise that was involved. We want to continue to add items to the game. We don't want to announce them, nor give out all of the information about them. Many players have said how cool it is to be discovering and how they were not announced. We expected this, and kept it a closely guarded secret. So far players have enjoyed it being a secret.

Melantus
Online Community Coordinator
Ultima Online
[email protected]