Welcome to an anonymous Ultima Onlne complaints page. I am sure that this page will become very popular in a short amount of time. I myself, as many other people are tired and extremely frustrated with the way Origin has been handling this game, and most of all, they way the are showing any lack of respect for their customers. On this page I plan to share my own experiences as well as to PUBLICALLY allow others to express their own opinions. I will also be frequently sending emails to gaming magazines to try and get their involvement in this as well.

A Brief History in Chronological Order

January 8, 1998 Massive disconnecting problems still occur on Chesepeake. I am still getting between 10 and 30 disconnects in about a 6-7 hour gaming period. Origin knows that there are still alot of problems at MAE-East as problems as they mentioned on January 3rd and 4th, 1998. Today Chesepeake encountered massive disconnecting problems with hordes of people disconnecting a few seconds after logging in and this continually happened. As well bugs are still running rampant. The newly added notoriety query is still misfiring alot causing notoriety losses to people. Summoned creatures/monsters are not always following commands in a timely manner. As well it has been seen that summoned creatures are attacking the wrong person when commanded causing more notoriety loss. There are currently magic weapon bugs that will cause SIGNIFICANT losses to combat skills (tactics) --do not use an accurate weapon. The dumbest bug is that any house/tower can be looted regardless if you have the key to enter the place. Throughout all this we have another final straw. I have been playing this game with a friend for 2 months now. She has been saving up her money ever since she started. She has worked very hard and has been very generous in helping out new people....almost on a daily basis. Yesterday she sold some things at the provisioner and banked her money which gave her a balance of about 61k as reported by the banker. We then went to visit locations where to put a house she was going to buy. We found the location and she went to purchase a house at the provisioner. When she did this, the provisioner said she had inadequate funds. She checked her bank balance and went though everything and she then only had exactly 5900 gold. I have had a problem once where I was unable to put money in the bank unless it was directly in the box (i.e. not in a pouch). I suspect that something to do with weight messed up my friend's amount of gold. Origin what are you doing about this ? We have waited over 7 hours and not even a single response from you. You will NOT ignore our pleas for help. You WILL look into this and YOU WILL correct it. You damn better well NOT apologize and forget about it. You KNOW there is a problem and YOU WILL fix it to the way it was. We are tired of being belittled and treated like dirt by you and we will not stand for it any longer.

Origin has to learn that there are actual PEOPLE behind a character that work HARD for what they do in that game. We are tired of having months of work being erased in a single flash, yet everything, no matter what you do falls upon deaf ears. WE WILL NOT TAKE IT ANYMORE. A game is meant to be enjoyable and fun and every day it gets ruined by something dumb like this.

In game protest against Origin: We ask that the people who play on the Chesepeake server all use a spare slot in their account to create a character to protest against Origin. I for one will not wait 2 months for a GM again only to hear apologies. DO YOU HEAR ME OSI? WE ARE NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE. I ask that those who want to protest, create a bard character with MAXIMUM intelligence points (40), and for skills choose 50 musicianship and 50 provocation and 0 for the third skill. At 7:30 PM EST every day we will organize in different towns on the Chesepeake server. At the same time we will all use the Provocation skill to play the role of an evil villian to kill all NPC shopkeepers, including armories, provisioners, mages, herbalists and bankers. After all, this is a role playing game and its time that we start to be evil since being good gets us SCREWED all the time by OSI. When this is done, we will come back at 10:30pm or 11:00pm (haven't confirmed which time yet, but try to be on during these times for the 2nd wave) and repeat this. This will be our way of protesting against Origin. If an Origin representative attempts to interfere with our gaming, check your journal entry and write down the name of the person talking to you (Probably a GM or Counsellor if someone shows up). We will then alert the proper authorities and seek action against Origin in a timely manner. A class action lawsuit, which has been long time coming is in the works against OSI by other parties. Our intent is to inform Origin of the dis-satisfaction that we have about the way they are treating their customers.

December 10, 1997

I started playing Ultima Online in October 97. This game costed me $85.00 with the first month of online gaming free, after that for $9.95 a month. I started on the Chesepeake server because when you run the game, it tells you that the best server for you is probably at the top of the list. I played this game for about 1 week and became very frustrated. My main complaints were that the servers were constantly being taken down, as well as bugs in the software that were running rampant. Those who knew of these "bugs" were able to exploit them and do things in the game in a very short time what would normally take weeks of effort. I did not buy a game to use any form of cheating. Unfortunately I learned about this the hard way. My first time I tried to venture close to a dungeon, I was killed for no apparent reason. I was simply walking and then died, there was no one on screen attacking me and there was no magic attack on me. Unfortunately as I played as a ghost I finally saw someone, of course I was looted and left with nothing. I called a GM to report this but after many many hours there was no response. Because of this and the fact that at that time only money could be stored at the bank, I had to resort to attacking animals in the forest with my bare hands to try to earn money and skills. I spent approximately 1 week doing this. All of it was fruitless. Quite simply back then and to this day, there is a serious overpopulation problem of people, and an underpopulation problem of creatures and monsters. I became very frustrated and I spent time stealing items from chests because I could never find any creatures to kill. Eventually I was able to afford new items and I once again tried to venture forth. Unfortunately alot of what I had was stolen from me in town in an instant. Unfortunately, the person who stole from me was killed beside a wall and my items fell into that wall and I was unable to get them back. Once again I called a GM. I ventured out into the forest and because of my stealing, I was a marked target for attacks. Eventually I was attacked by a person, of which I killed quite easily. After killing him and taking his things I proceeded to walk away, when for no reason I died, with only 1 hp loss from the battle. I played as a ghost only to find a Game Master (GM) standing above my body, trying to help from the items lost in the wall. Unfortunately, Game Counsellor Scurvy Joe inherently killed me, whether it was a bug in that patch or not. Not only that but I was looted once again from those passing by. As is always the case that I have come to known with this game, no one affiliated with Origin can help you, including GMs. They simply "apologize" and sympathize wtih you to keep trying "Things are getting better". Well I continued on from that, stealing and finally being able to get to kill a few monsters. Eventually I got my notoriety to dishonest, before a new patch wiped everyone's notoriety to neutral. This kinda bugged me cause I wanted to get to this on my own. Unfortunately what came to follow in the next few weeks was even worse. When I first started playing UO, I only noticed lag problems when banking/alot of people on the screen. As time went on, lag problems seemed to get worse and worse. Eventually I did manage to contact a GM while playing online. The GM specified that there were approximately 6X the number of people playing than expected. Quite disconcerting I must say. Eventually since I didn't know anyone playing, I had some friends over to demo the game to to try to convince them to start playing. I demo-ed to the game to them for about 3-4 hours. Unfortunately it was one day when lag was terrible and when respawn was not functioning....that day we did not see a single creature or monster. Needless to say my friends won't be purchasing the game and they have been trying to convince me to stop wasting my time with it. To skip alot of time...I am currently a Master Warrior/Expert Mage/Journeyman Ranger on the Chesepeake server. What has me really annoyed is the following:


  • I have come to belive that software stability and quality is not a top priority at Origin. Clearly, if you look at the game patches you will see that they are adding new features where bugs still exist. Not only does this mean you are playing with bugs, but alot of these new patches have introduced more bugs.

  • This game is now costing $9.95 a month since the free month of playing time is expired. How can I play the game with so many bugs, with server downtimes and with those exploiting bugs ? Why in God's name am I paying Origin to beta test their software ? Clearly their software is NO WHERE close to the release stage in a typical software development lifecycle.

  • Rudeness and belittlement coming from Origin's technical support or lack of technical support. Clearly I have never been treated so rudely or told such jibberish in my life from a company. Most of the emails I have sent have went unheard...I simply receive a few of the same macro responses from different people at their technical support department. Origin will not take the time to deal with someone on an individual level for serious concerns. They have suggested I try playing on different servers, yet when I ask them the transfer my character, I get a reponse such as "That may not be possible because the way the servers are configured". So let me get this straight, you want me to throw away 2 months of gaming because you are too lazy to find out or put an effort into finding out how my character can be transfered. I guess I really am getting what I payed for right ? It seems that customer satisfaction is not a priority at Origin. Well I guess they can get away with that, they have already taken our money from just buying the game, now we are just a bunch of suckers to them.

  • Biased and incorrect information posted at www.owo.com: I for one was laughing when I read from a link that was posted on www.owo.com that quoted an Origin rep, saying that the average response time for a GM was 15 minutes. Does 15 minutes mean 5 to 6 hours to you ? Wake up! What really gets me riled up is the fact that they pronounce they have NO SERVER PERFORMANCE PROBLEMS. I believe this to be incorrect. Let us take December 9, 1997 on the Chesepeake server. The servers were all down in the evening (EST). They eventually came up and I was able to log in fine and play with excellent performance. I proceded to do a UO trace while connected and it told me my link was "GOOD". About 30 minutes later my lag fell significantly and I was being disconnected. Then UO trace said I had an average connection.

  • System backups are not working: 2 Weekends ago the Chesepeake backup system was not working properly. On Saturday morning I logged in and played for a while. About 5 hours later I was disconnected and the servers went down. When the servers went back up I found myself where I was when I first logged in that morning. Clearly I myself and others included, are tired of starring in the Movie Groundhog Day. I think right now they have made about 1000 sequels.

  • Respawning and overpopulation problems continue. A problem from day 1 with UO is the creature population and the rate at which they respawn. There is clearly an overpopulation problem of people on the server I play on. It is very annoying to go to a dungeon to see 20-30 people waiting at a respawn point for 2 trolls that come out every 20-40 minutes, meanwhile there are numerous monsters stuck on edges of the walls. It seems it doesn't matter how much we complain, Origin has still not seriously looked at these spawning problems. As well this game is reaching its peak in terms of the number of people playing on the servers. Just wait until the Charter edition starts selling. Soon there will be NOTHING but people on the game. And you wonder why there is a "Rise of antisocial playerkilling " --quoted from www.owo.com. It's because theres NOTHING but people on the damn game! And wait until the server lag kills you with all those extra people.

  • The Final Straw: The final straw happened on December 9, 1997. Origin had released a patch on the public servers. One of the functions was to limit the amount of items you could put in the bank. I for one have been buying magic supplies daily for about 3 weeks so that I could eventually start training in magery. This is no easy task I can assure you. The magic shops are always out of reagents, and the fact that monster respawn and populations are SO LOW compared to people population it is very difficult to earn money (Yes I have stopped stealing, I currently am noble). I bought magic supplies daily and had stored a surplus of supplied ranging in minimum from 350 to 650 maximum of each reagent in the bank. Why did I do this ? Simply I was using little magic to get me to places where I could start practicing. This week of December 9, 1997 I had planned to do nothing but train on magic. My bank was overloaded mainly because of these reagents, and I could not put my money in the bank. I was going to hand off my large collection of reagents to a friend to put in his bank while I cleaned up my own bank. Contrary to what Origin tells you, I was not able to even put money into my bank because it was overloaded. I went to take out the magic supplies to put them into my characters inventory. I picked the pouch up and dragged it onto pouch in a character window, and heard a click like your normally do when you put an item in your pouch. About 20 seconds later I was disconnected from the server. I was able to reconnect instantly and that pouch was not in my inventory and it was not in my bank. I had 2 friends beside me who watched and they said no one was beside me while I was disconnected for that short time. That's 3 weeks of work, over 40 hours a week put into those supplies. There must have been 15 to 20k gold pieces worth of reagents in there easily. I was extremely frustrated and called a GM. About 30 minutes later I received a msg from a GM that said "You must be more specific." Now listen, you give a person ONE DAMN LINE of text, HOW can you be specific in one line of text. I call another GM who finally shows up, but is invisble. I told him of an item (pouch of reagents) which disappeared with this new patch. The GM won't make himself visible and will not give me his name. He says to "Hold on". I wait for over 5 minutes and I eventually get disconnected. I was not able to connect after that for about 2 hours. At that point I sent a very nasty email to Origin, and I made a challenge to them: Do not send me back a macro response, I WANT YOU TO GO TO YOUR BACKUPS AND LOOK AT MY CHARACTER AND FIND OUT WHY WITH THIS PATCH THINGS ARE DISAPPEARING. For once I would like to see Origin deal with someone in a professional and timely manner for a change. Clearly they are still having major problems. All I have now is the money from the sold items as well as what I was wearing. This is truly pathetic. You work so hard to get by and it gets taken away from yet more incompetence from Origin.....I've become accustomed to this from this game.....it is something I should have expected....

    My Conclusions

    After 2 months of playing this game, in my opinion I conclude the following:

  • We, the customers, are paying Origin to continuously beta test their product that is still in development. I have contacted Origin many times to find out if there will be some sort of compensation for all these problems. Every time I ask I get the runaround from them. Cleary I believe they have no intention of compensating anyone or anything.

  • Servers are too crowded, monster populations are too low: I think almost anyone will tell you this. Now I wonder, what will happen this holiday season when the Charter Edition starts selling ? Is Origin going to lock the number of people on a server ? Of course not, they won't make any more money. It has been over a month and still there has been nothing done regarding monster respawn rates and populations, yet the population of people keeps skyrocketing. Even the GMs in games say that there is a problem with this and that it was not anticipated. I also believe that eventually there will be a problem with just the sheer size of Britannia vs. # of people. Its just too small a world for so many people...

  • Server Performance: In my opinion I believe they have performance problems with their servers. December 9, 1997 was just an example of the many times I have seen this. You are fine once the server goes up, but give it time and you will experience problems. I never had such poor performance my first month playing. For the last two weeks I have not been able to play the game over an extended period of time with good performance. Sure, they are going to blame the net as always...it seems to be an easy cop out for them.

  • Customer Satisfaction is not a priority at Origin: Clearly from all the complaints and all the emails, Origin does not believe in customer satisfaction. Technical support is simply a bunch of people who send out macros like a bunch of lab rats. They don't take the time to deal with people's individual problems, nor do they really care about getting them solved. Its quite clear when you send in a question or complaint and get a macro response back that has nothing to do with your original email. All these emails, suggestions, complaints seem to fall upon deaf ears. Remember folks, we are paying for this service. Are you really getting what you payed for ? Do you think you are getting the treatment you deserve ?

  • The game described on the box is not the game you actually play.

    Origin Staff Email & Telephone Number Contact List

    I have found the contact names, telephone numbers and email addresses of those who maintain the various game servers at Origin. It seems that our voices are never heard and that this may be the only way to get a response from Origin. I will be posting this information very shortly. I can be reached at [email protected]. I will be working on making a complaints board, which I will then be forwarding to all the major game magazines around the world. I believe that consumers need to be informed about this, and theres no better way than using the web. If you have received any interesting emails from technical support or what have you, forward them to my email address above. I am sure most of us have the same emails.

    TO ORIGIN

    With so many complaints I'm sure you get, I challenge you to respond to all these problems in a more detailed fashion and put it up at www.owo.com. Keep us, the customers informed: Tell us what is being done, and what is going to be worked on in further detail. Most of all, treat your customers with respect, integrity and honesty that you have not shown so far.

    Voice your Opinion HERE

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