Before you page Dante...

As you all have noticed we have doubled our population over the past few months and it is difficult to keep up with all of the pages that can easily be answered by other ways rather than directing all questions at Dante

Before you send a page, follow all of these steps:

1. Read the wiki for all custom information, help guides and shard details
www.uoevolution.com/wiki

2. Read the forums - post game suggestions or general game related questions there
www.uoevolution.com/forum

3. Use common sense, most major areas are on the gate - go explore!

4. Ask players in game, use [c to chat

5. Ask players in Discord for info, Discord Channel Invite: www.discord.gg/JwEBhPH

6. Google it!  www.google.com

7. Use the www.uoguide.com and www.stratics.com for general ultima game info

8. Send a general help page to get help from the GM online

Send a [pm to Dante only if you tried all the above options and NEED him or for a specific donation transaction or no one else was able to resolve your issues
 

When you do page please make sure you are very clear as to what you need, send all details and info so the GM can take care of the page with one response!

An example of a good page is...
"I would like to add 2 sockets to my level 5 crafted sword in my pack, the 100ed is right next to the sword, tyvm"

An example of a bad page is...
"I need a socket, dude" (no info here, no amount, no item, and ed is not in pack)
 

Please DO NOT send a page if:
1. You are requesting free items or for staff to break rules
2. Locations to rare items or monsters
3. You are just seeing if a GM is online
4. Questions that can easily be answered by other players or the wiki

Please read this again:)
 
Players have been paging me directly for minor issues, please send a general help page so any GM can help you asap

Here is some perspective...

Dante, why don't you talk with me anymore?

This is a great question.  I actually get asked this question on a weekly basis.  The short answer is that Im very busy!  Here is the long answer:)

When I originally made UO Evolution it was easy to greet new players, give tours etc. when you have 25 players online, but now with over 800+ players on daily I have had to distance myself from the personal aspects of the game and concentrate on the managing of the content, balance and economy.

It's not that I dont want to talk with every player daily, but it just becomes impossible.  I spend 12+ hours a day doing customer service, answering pages, developing, facebook, teamspeak, forums, wiki, phone, texts, pokes, pms, chat, irc the volume gets rather overwhelming especially when you have a large player base online 24 hrs a day from around the world, that wants your attention.

I sometimes get over 250 PMs a day, even if I spend 1 minute reading and responding to each one that is over 4.5 hours of my time just to give a "short" responce.

* I have answered over 23,000 pages since the revert, avg of 255 a day!
* Made over 2000 accounts, refunded every ED donated to every player from the last year
* Ive been online 12-18 hours a day, 7 days a week for the last 4 years!
* Rebuilt 1 year of deco, scripts, accts in 3 months
* Added back 1 year of missing info on the wiki, updated forums, updated website
* Made 29 Updates in 3 months to add back old content, make new content and repair anything broken

I have learned over time if you become "too" friendly with the players they expect free items, favoritism and special treatment which is very hard to keep the perception of your shard as fair and balanced to everyone.  The reputation of the shard and my personal reputation of being nice and fair is very important to me

I still make an effort to personally answer every page and have an "open door" policy with the players and allow input on the direction of the server through the forums.
At this point I seem to get to know all the negative players better that I really want to, because of their bad behavior, rather that enjoy my time with the players that make the community great!

Bottom line is that running a shard is no easy task, and if you dont have access to the top admin developer and owner, it's probably not personal, we are busy behind the scenes working hard to manage a fun world for you to enjoy!

I already though you had a lot of work but the numbers makes it much more big.

I just hope that you will not be consumed by all this work as even when someone enjoys his work and is proud of the result he may have tiredness over time or, if I may speak of a material analogy, fatigue.
In other words, don't let the burn out take you away, if one day you feel that you are really on the edge (I hope you'll not even get down to that point), let the player base know it.

I'm pretty sure that the majority will understand and let you take a rest without complaining about the lack of updates or direst answers. I sure would understand...
Yes no worries, I love what I do:)

Nope.. Dante isn't allowed to even eat dinner... haven't you heard? lol




yes I'm kidding Dante

I thought that it was Kane that was tied to his chair by Dante and allowed to eat only when he had typed 1000 code lines without any error.
Did I get that in the wrong way?

And what about the famous Kane's whip, I thought it was used on Kane, not by Kane... I'm quite disoriented now.