People's Army of Sonoma

For those that don't read Stratics, thought would share this link and summary of what I read..

Draconi's Post

Basically starts out saying the developers have been given new tools (that they should have had from day one) to distinguish between a trial account and an actual paying account.

What this means is they can start (FINALLY) to do something about people (mainly scripters) exploiting trial accounts (too bad they didn't do that before the Melissa event, all those Young chars getting free stuff drove me mad).

Some of the things they mention restricting from trial accounts, house placement, BoDs, removing age requirements for factions and housing etc. Restricting trial accounts from Champ Spawns or Peerless. In a later reply he mentioned Heartwood quest. Basically, if go on the premise that scripters operate mostly on trial accounts, then this would be a great blow to the scripters out there, of course economic 101 kicks in and the few scripters that use paid accounts will be able to charge all the more without the cheaper competition.

But the thing that REALLY caught my eye, someone asked the following question:

Does limiting trial accounts mean we could get BoS back to working how they did? Maybe not for gold, but for resources?

And Draconi replied with only one word: Yes

Of course he may only be saying 'could' not will, but I take it as a sign of hope that BoS may one day be worth having.

Yeah, I ran into a returning PAS at the Britain moongate a couple days ago and he/she (I think it was a female) was complaining that she couldn't place a house with her trial account. She had left to play WoW (as many have) but got tired of WoW's linear play and came back to UO. I can't remember the char's name now but after giving her a half mil gold, I certainly hope she fires up a paid account like she said she was going to do. If anyone knows who this is, I know of a few places where a large house will fit near a couple of my houses.

Awesome news.