I've been a low-key developer in UO for a shard that was always more of a personal project between friends, than anything else. As it stands it turned into something that both the owner and myself a very proud of. And it was his suggestion that I dip my toe into freelance work in UO. Since he recognised that I was a creative force and world-builder within our own shard and had an aptitude for many things (XML, design, creative writing, artistic flair and so on). Including the capacity to carry out very large projects on my own.
However, my experience of this has not been positive.
My departure from UO for the last 3 months was due in part to one very negative experience where:
And at this point I walked away from it. It was disheartening to know that this owner did not value the effort nor quality of the content I was creating for them. More so, that they felt it perfectly fine to offer nothing for it, beyond "it being great advertisement for my work" Despite this shard having a very profitable income from donations.
To me, this is unscrupulous and dishonest behavior. What made it even worse, is that when they did release. They claimed 100% credit for my work, made a minor post of it on Reddit even. Plus, to make matters more insulting, I also appear no longer to be able access/register their forums either.
I have no idea how much they were able to cobble together from what I left in their hands. But, I was outraged by this behavior, to the point where I left UO altogether.
But here's my main issue:
We have a dying game and this sort of attitude feels to be endemic. Granted, UO will never truly die, but the fact that someone is willing to commit skulduggery of this magnitude to fresh new talent was disheartening eye-opener to the state of UO today. The cherry on the cake of many things that we as a community could counter and minimalise, with a little co-operation and support.
Things such as:
These are actions that are distressingly common. All you have to do is go to Reddit/the UO fan page on Facebook and you'll see some atrociously unprofessional behavior. Some of whom have gone way over the line in their drive to be 'a successful shard' The fact is, this mindset is corrosive to the future of UO and it is not a sustainable way to ensure it's survival. We have some great shards out there, some big, some small. There is mind-blowing depth of skill, talent and creativity. And there's no reason why we, at ServUO, can't take try to these positives and constructively counter these problems and build something worthy of what is still one of the best and father of all MMORPGs.
However, my experience of this has not been positive.
My departure from UO for the last 3 months was due in part to one very negative experience where:
- An owner of a very successful shard 'hired' me.
- I talked myself into doing it for free, but was left no option to renegotiate/ignored outright.
- They designated me with staff powers that meant I was reliant on a person who didn't even know how to save XMLdialog properly, which led to losing hours of work and also track of where the project was.
- 30-40 hours in total were put into two projects. ( A lot of this dead time, due to his inability to save my work)
- 80% completion of the epic quest - and another fully automated. My requests for renegotiation or even to save my work was still falling of deaf ears.
And at this point I walked away from it. It was disheartening to know that this owner did not value the effort nor quality of the content I was creating for them. More so, that they felt it perfectly fine to offer nothing for it, beyond "it being great advertisement for my work" Despite this shard having a very profitable income from donations.
To me, this is unscrupulous and dishonest behavior. What made it even worse, is that when they did release. They claimed 100% credit for my work, made a minor post of it on Reddit even. Plus, to make matters more insulting, I also appear no longer to be able access/register their forums either.
I have no idea how much they were able to cobble together from what I left in their hands. But, I was outraged by this behavior, to the point where I left UO altogether.
But here's my main issue:
We have a dying game and this sort of attitude feels to be endemic. Granted, UO will never truly die, but the fact that someone is willing to commit skulduggery of this magnitude to fresh new talent was disheartening eye-opener to the state of UO today. The cherry on the cake of many things that we as a community could counter and minimalise, with a little co-operation and support.
Things such as:
- Server core theft (code/script/content)
- Ram-raiding forums and shards to steal player-basis (If you have people turbo-spamming on your behalf, you as shard owner can counter this, by clearly stating that this is not accepted behaviour. I've seen way too many people was their hands of this because they say "it wasn't them.")
- Excessively aggressive competitive behaviour (Muck-raking/Shard-smearing in public forums)
These are actions that are distressingly common. All you have to do is go to Reddit/the UO fan page on Facebook and you'll see some atrociously unprofessional behavior. Some of whom have gone way over the line in their drive to be 'a successful shard' The fact is, this mindset is corrosive to the future of UO and it is not a sustainable way to ensure it's survival. We have some great shards out there, some big, some small. There is mind-blowing depth of skill, talent and creativity. And there's no reason why we, at ServUO, can't take try to these positives and constructively counter these problems and build something worthy of what is still one of the best and father of all MMORPGs.
LOL
