EM Events are such huge part of UO (regardless of your opinion otherwise) – and yet, we almost never see open discussions of the content at all levels, such as improvement and issues. Aren't you curious why. So, here it is:
Topic category:
- Scheduling
- Event handling
- Boss fight & Rewards
- Cheating
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Here's my input:
- Scheduling:
Currently there are 3 places where schedules can be found: UO webpage, in-game towncryer, and shard EM's blogs. Previously I thought Mesanna made it clear that UO webpage is the main place that should at least be updated. BUT, in the past several months, Asian shard events sometimes dont get updated here at all. How about just yesterday (4/30 Hokuto, not on UO page), and this has happened a couple times at least on a monthly basis for Japan shards. Maybe because there are new EMs?? Anyway, please fix it.
- Event handling:
Lets take 4/27 Mizuho as a most recent example of what disaster can look like. It was sea related, and so EM put a boat and expected everyone to just jump on it. For the next 10 minutes, the crowd was trying to find way to board the ship: HOW? Do you click somewhere? (ropes by now are blocked by 50 players/pets) Finally a gate is opened. Then, everyone got shipped to a SMALL island to fight some scalis. Great. No place to run. Many players got killed and res-killed. Then we got shipped to the main land...by this time the event already took 60 minute and no one knows what's going on. Everyone is PISSED. It seemed the EM wanted everyone to board ship to the sea where he would summon the boss. But he made no effort to communicate in English as well. So, finally he summoned the boss next to the shore to get it over with.
After the boss fight and we got back to the EM hall, you bet everyone gave very "direct" feedback to his face, if you take my meaning. It seems after many years of eventing, EMs dont learn from their experiences and mistakes. Anything thats to do with boats is general a bad idea. Same thing with fighting in a tiny area.
Another thing thats usually seen with Japan events is the EMs "intention" to lose crowds: EM would tell players to go to some places (in Japanese ONLY) and you see the local players recall off right away and leave non-jpn speakers all confused. Japan EMs would finally tell you where IF there were enough players yell help in chats. But man, their intention to lose extra crowds is so obvious that they simply dont care about user experience. THIS NEEDS TO BE ADDRESSED: Anytime you ask the crowd to meet at the next spot, EMs must also use English. But I guess they innocently didn't know.
- Boss Fight
In the past I've seen bosses spawned with very high resist and high regen, and this made the boss un-killable because the crowd spent an hour to just take down half its HP, and the EM had to abort. This was rare but happened a couple times in the past 2 years.
Also, no boss should be killed in one or two minute or five. By now, shouldn't EM's already know how to design a proper boss stat that last at least 10 minutes? Currently, if you die once and get res'd, you might just miss the kill, not to mention sometimes there are no fking HEALERS.
4/27 Formosa boss also spawned half-life. EM was not sure why.
And lets take a moment to talk about "grabbing HP bar" thing. Some players still prefer using CC, and giving players a chance to grab the boss HP bar is really important. Some EMs are decent to know this and would always allow a countdown, while some EMs simply dont care. Even in EC, necro critters can show as "murderer" and this can add to our confusion. AND at times I've seen bosses with other HP color bar. (For events, I only show "murderer" or red HP bar, but occasionally we still see grey event critters) This is annoying.
Let me stop here. As you see, we have a lot to talk about.





