I feel compelled to "defend" the staff and the shard. As stated previously I have been here for over 4 yrs and have a pretty good feel for the history and ebbing and flowing of the shard. I can personally attest to the staff inquiring, listening, and implementing suggestions from the player base. There are aspect of the Pines that came into being directly from my suggestions. I am not going to dredge up 2 yr old arguments or attempt to give insight into past events and players. All I can speak to is the current state of affairs..which by the way is all that is relevant.
Unfortunately UO cannot be all things to all players. Balance is incredibly difficult and we have been struggling with it recently. There are always things that are being discussed and tested in order to bring balance to the Pines. In essence, and it may be my solitary view point, UO is what you make it out to be. If you want all the rare armour and weapons by all means search them out and use them. If you wish to rely on a Steel Steed or Bio Pet for dropping MOBS..go nuts. If you chose a path of Magery much can be accomplished in that vein. If you choose to limit yourself OSI level weapons and armour...a worthy path and one that can work. I am of the belief that the staff is here to give you a good solid piece of blank paper and big box of crayons...its up to us as players to chose the colors and put the design down on paper.
We suffer from the "chicken or the egg" conundrum. IF we had a large player base we could run events, grow a player economy and team up to tackle the higher level MOBS without using all the rare equip...all things that would keep players however we cannot implement such things without players here...
UO is dying...that is a fact. There is an entire generation that has no idea UO exists. They are the WoW players, New Republic, Halo, CoD, etc etc....it takes a different type of player to come to this 2D world. We need to attract an "older" generation. Now an older generation doesn't have several hours a day to devote to playing an on-line game. After a day of working and then having a family at night may only afford a player an hour or less to dabble. With those time constraints you have to have easy skill gains and no cap in order to get any sense of accomplishment. No one wants to spend their only hour here pounding rock to gain .5 mining. Now I enjoy a certain level of drudgery...I didn't use a macro for my first 3 yrs here...I only started using macros to raise the skills I wasn't really ever going to use like cooking and fishing. I gained all my 120s in crafting the old fashion way but that was my choice. You can easily macro all the 120s in a month ( assuming you get the Power Scrolls). So again the options to go as fast or slow is up to you.
Also, you don't always need staff around to run an event. Merch has run many many events on his own utilizing his own time and resources. Currently Ash has a hunt going. We all try to lead groups to do the champ spawns especially during the temporary holiday spawns. The "Vets" are always here to assist with any hunt you have going or champs spawn. We assist...won't do it for you...but will try to keep you alive and bolster your attack.
I don't what else to say...We are what we are and we are what we make ourselves out to be...
As with Merch I will be here as long as the lights are on and the wind Whispers thru the Pines