In the short time I have been here, I have seen a lot of requests from people to have the shard staff put their focus into providing more and more training wheels to make things easier and easier on people, or jonesing for even higher end items than what already exist in the game like that next hit is going to make them so much more hardcore than they were before. "Man, if Dante would only make that super double KrazyG slayer with 200% hit surface to air missiles that I wanted for my birthday, I could pwn this whole shard!"

A lot of folks would rather the game mechanics sterilize every individual task for them, then conveniently put it into an in-game push-button macro; maybe even put a little pretty bow on it. I do not mean to sound like grandpa that had to walk by himself up hill, both ways, through the sleet and snow, but things are already incredibly easy on us here. There comes a point where the only way you're going to get better is by expanding your own knowledge base and becoming more proficient at putting that knowledge to use.

Razor really is your friend. In fact, it is overpowered. "Gasp!" People complain about it, but the only time Razor messes up is when you mess it up. It is like getting behind the yoke of a plane without going through the process of getting your pilot's license, then possessing the audacity to blame the plane when you crash it into the ocean. It requires some real life skills to do it incredibly well. You know the kind of real life skills I am talking about, the kind that cannot be macro'd. We do not want to have so many training wheels that the game is completely devoid of that most human capacity for failure and success. The human element made Ultima Online such a rare gem in the world of MMO. It is the reason why it still grips hold of passionate fans the world over.

Lets all face it, Ultima Online is a dinosaur. It falls far short in harnessing modern technology or the capability of cutting edge programming platforms. The graphics engine is laughable at best. The sound effects and music are straight out of a 1980's clip art style, drag and drop sound library. Most of us exhausted the provided story line years ago. What is it that really keeps us here? The only thing it really can be is the human element. Something is uniquely appealing in a virtual world that can mimic the constructs of our own reality in such a grand way. Lets face it, in both real life and UO, the Creative Forces that Be have provided us only with a certain set of parameters in which we can operate, then drops us off into the deep end and says, "Ok. The rest is up to you."

What is success without achievement; to possess the most beautiful fruit in the world, but to find that it lacks all taste? It is by the very limitation of the tools we have been given that we are able to achieve a sense of satisfaction in the fruit of our labors. It is because of our limitations that we are all forced to Evolve.



^{Viva la Evolution!}

Your Friend and Shard Mate,

Lord Soronume

I like this VOTE HIM^^2016

Pibb,

Or should that be Mr. Pibb? Thanks, mate.

Your Friend and Shard Mate,

Lord Soronume