These boards are meant as a place for players to meet friends and discuss UO, and a place for developers to gather useful information that helps them make better choices for UO's future. To achieve that, we work hard to keep these boards helpful and on-topic, and to prevent them from being a rant forum.
Failure to follow the following guidelines can result in warnings or further disciplinary action, depending on the severity of the transgression, so please read carefully!
1. You must have an active UO account to post.
- Your board and game accounts are linked.
- One offense will result in a warning from our moderators. Two offenses will result in the permanent suspension of your board posting privileges, and will also result in a mark being placed on your UO account.
- Our naming guidelines can be found here.
- For security reasons, choose a name other than your UO or MyUO account names.
- Once you've chosen a posting handle, it cannot be edited!
- Posts containing profanity, obscenity, insults, personal attacks or accusations, or abusive language will be deleted, and can result in a warning or suspension.
- Using asterisks or other characters to get around the profanity filter is still considered profanity, as well as abbreviations used to stand for profanity.
- Post titles are subject to the same restrictions as post content. Even if the post content is not objectionable, posts can be deleted if the title violates those guidelines. If others have posted in reply, and all the replies feature the same offending title, then the entire thread may be removed.
- Racial, religious or sexual slurs may result in immediate suspension.
- This includes any kind of personal attack, flame, or targeted harassment.
- "But he flamed me first!" is NOT an acceptable reason to insult another poster. A flame war is a flame war, and it doesn't matter who started it. If you have concerns about the treatment you are receiving at the hands of another poster, don't respond in kind - notify a moderator.
- Argue someone's ideas, not their intelligence; feel free to debate, but don't take it to a personal level.
- Rants will be deleted, and may result in a warning or suspension.
- A rant is defined as "violent or extravagant speech or writing that incites anger or violence." Posts classified as rants include:
- Personal attacks and insults against OSI or EA
- Rude or threatening posts
- Conspiracy theories
- Protest campaigns
- Misleading and unfounded exaggerations
- Posts made for no other purpose than to incite anger
- Angry posts in all caps
- Constructive feedback does not necessarily need to be positive - negative feedback is very useful when it is civil, and backed up with examples and facts. Constructive feedback includes:
- Telling us what you like
- Telling us what you don't like - and why
- Telling us how you think it could be better
- Threads not directly concerning Ultima Online or the UO community will be locked or deleted, or may be moved to another forum. This includes advertisements, links to third party boards, chain mails of any kind, eBay listings, and discussions about other companies' games.
- If a post is moved, locked or deleted, do not re-post it or post a new thread in protest. To discuss the reasoning behind any moderator actions, please email Greywolfe@uo.com.
- This includes posting the same post multiple times in a forum, repeatedly posting on the same topic in different threads, or posting the same post in multiple forums.
- Multiple posts, whether on the same boards or different boards, will be deleted.
- For privacy reasons, we do not publicly discuss details regarding specific accounts. Since our GMs can't come out and publicly defend themselves against accusations of wrongdoing without violating our players' privacy, GM names should not be posted in complaints on the boards. Complaints containing GM names will either be deleted or edited to remove the specific names and details.
- If you question any action that was taken in-game by a GM, mail gmreviews@uo.com with the time, date, shard, GM name, and details of the incident, and your situation will be evaluated by our Support Leads.
- We can't go into details on pending cases, or defend ourselves or anyone else publicly without legal consultation. Legal issues should be handled privately, and public posts dealing with these matters will be removed.
- Please refrain from posting any personal information about other players or employees, such as phone numbers, addresses, or descriptions.
- Detailed reports of exploits, third party programs, bugs, or links to sites that describe them, should not be posted on the boards.
- Bug and exploit reports should be mailed to uobugs@uo.com (or tcbugs@uo.com if the bug was found on Test Center).
- Unverified rumors of exploits or problems should not be posted here, since they can cause a panic for no reason. If there is indeed reason for concern, and you have knowledge of this, then please send the details to the addresses above so that we can repeat, verify and address it!
- When sending a bug report to our QA department, it's important to include the following:
- Your UO account name (do NOT include your password!)
- The time, date, shard and facet of the occurrence, and sextant coords if you know them
- The UO character name that experienced the bug
- What steps you took that led up to the bug
- Any third party applications that were being used? (UO Assist, etc)
- Whether or not you tried to repeat the bug, and if you succeeded
- If you're reporting an exploit, please note where you learned of the exploit, and if it's a third party program, where that program can be found (if you know).
- Posting messages with irrelevant content for the sole purpose of keeping certain posts near the top is called "bumping". This causes other posts to scroll off the page faster than they should, and raises board traffic unnecessarily.
- Multiple responses to a thread are welcome, as long as they add to the topic at hand.
- Bumping threads can cause threads to be locked, and can result in a warning.
- Many arguments cannot be won, and simply end up scrolling all the other posts off the boards. When disagreements resort to "Since you seem to be slow, let me repeat my points for the tenth time..." then it's a sign that the argument is going nowhere, and the thread will be locked.
- Sending offensive private messages to someone through our boards system can be considered harassment or a personal attack, and will be subject to the same discipline.
- Signature pictures must be kept under 20K in file size, and be no larger than 468 x 125 pixels (similar to a banner ad).
- Using the .jpg or .gif format for screenshots, rather than the .bmp format, helps reduce the file size. If you don't have a graphics program capable of compressing file sizes, you can do it on the web for free here.
- Fantasy art is fine, but highly sexually suggestive art is not. Since sometimes there is a fine line between the two, please understand that we will have to use our own judgment as to what is considered acceptable.
- All files and content linked to from the boards are subject to the same content guidelines as those posted directly on the boards.
- Players are welcome to post screenshots or other pictures within posts, but the file size of all pictures included within the post should total no more than 80K, and be no more than 480 pixels wide (anything wider can stretch out the threads and force people to side scroll).
- Use the search function or skim the post titles to find answers before posting repeat questions.
- Always check to see what's new on the Read-Only FAQ board! Also be sure to keep up on the latest topics by reading the patch message when you log in to the game, the Concept, Development and Testing sections under the Update Center link, and the FYI section at UO.com.
- Instead of post titles like, "a question for U" or "GREYWOLFE READ THIS!!!!11," try more descriptive titles like "Crafting fail-rates increased?" or "Question about treasure maps". Those sorts of titles are much more likely to get good responses.
Often, posters will be notified when posts are deleted, but due to the high number of posts, this will not always happen. If you feel a thread or post has been deleted in error, please email Greywolfe@uo.com - please do not start new threads to protest the deletion of old ones.
We usually work between approximately 9:00 AM - 6:00 PM CST, and typically don't work weekends, so responses may be less frequent during nights, weekends, and holidays.
For the official list of our Rules of Conduct, see them here.
Thanks for reading, and refer back to this any time you need. We hope that these guidelines will help keep these boards a comfortable and productive place to be, and we look forward to meeting you!
