Adrick recently posted on the Team Comments some things about factions. You can go here to read them: HERE.

Before I actually get to the 5 points in his comments, I would like to make some points myself.

1) Lower the patch fixing times. I think there should be a patch maybe once a week until factions are not only balanced but almost bug free. Or, if that is too difficult, once every two weeks. This will allow more people to enjoy the system, and cause less people to quit it. Read what Adrick wrote and you can see that nothing has been done for factions since March. Thats 8 months of nothing for factions. No faction messaging and bugged horse stamina. I even remember posting about the stamina bug way back when, here is a link: HERE. So its been over 8 months since the stamina bug hit. I think a patch once every 8 months is a little too slow and has directly determined the fate of factions.

2) I think making clear and understandable statements by the workers of OSI on the message boards and in press type releases, such as the Team Comments, would greatly help not only the relationship between OSI and its customers but greatly facilitate the exchange of ideas between the two. I quit posting on the Faction board at uo.com due to a certain OSI employees ill thought out, misconceived, and badly typed post that locked a thread demanding to know what was going on with the faction patch.

3) Expand the communication to the players about ALL the changes that are going into a patch or the dynamics of an update. Such as when the stamina thing hit, was that a bug or change? Who knows? I complained, others complained, but it was quite sometime before anyone at OSI even acknowledged that this was a bug. OR take my favorite example, someone posted on the faction uo.com board asking if the statloss counter continued whether you were online or not. Adrick came back saying something like, "The timer works whether you are playing or not. Its been like that since day one." Well, well, well. Had anyone KNOWN that was the way it was SUPPOSED to work since DAY ONE, we could've told him that it was broken. And to this day, the timer still does not work if you are offline.

4) Add more people working on faction fixes beyond simply Adrick. I have a feeling that Calandryll is not the only one working on ongoing scenerios. So why is Adrick the only one working on a system that is full of imbalances and bugs?

5) Allow players to know what is going on with faction changes. About 8 months ago, Adrick said he had all the faction fixes that are now in publish 14, all ready to go. That they would be in publish 12, then they would be in publish 13, and then he said he was 'late' getting the fixes in to publish 13 so they went ahead with that publish without the faction fixes... Somewhere in there is a lie, or half truth. Then there's these odd posts from OSI employees asking us what is bugged, unbalanced, or our ideas for factions every few months. Like the first list got lost or something. And the second one was accidently shredded. The third one was thrown out because they thought it was the first one they lost and they didn't want 'old' ideas. And now there is this Team Commen: When was the last Team Comment that involved factions? I've got no idea. But there sure have been plenty of updates and comments on the 'ongoing scenerios'. Maybe Calandryll is just a more competent and harder worker than Adrick...

Anyway, on to HIS points.

1) Lowering the corruption times down to about 8 hours or so to allow more fast-paced conflict and create less of a chance that off-hour, low peak hours will determine the fate of a faction.

Sigh. Is he on some kind of medication? As you know, I am having a hard time with illogical things. Here is one. A corruption time of 8 hours would make off-hour, low peak hours COMPLETELY determine the fate of a faction. This past sunday I stole the sigils at 12am. We did not get raided until around 11am. Thats 11 hours for you time challenged people. We got completely and totally overwhelmed at least 2 times from 11am to 9pm with minor raids inbetween. Yet with an 8 hour corruption time, we would've had corrupted all the sigils without a shot fired. This change would also make it a daunting task to hold the towns for any length of time. A faction would have to reset the sigils every 8 hours or capture them every 3 days to get a break from reseting them.

I think a better corruption time would be between 14 and 18 hours. Especially since the first hour after server up is a freebie now.
Or as one player said, make the time scale with how many towns you own and how many sigils you are trying to corrupt. So a faction with no towns trying to corrupt one sigil, might only have to guard 8 hours. But a faction that holds all the towns, trying to corrupt all the sigils, would need to hold them for 24 hours or so.

Or make the sigils corrupt based on the order they are placed on the monoliths. So the first one takes 8 hours to corrupt, the second 10, the third 12, etc...

OR make each towns sigil corruption time based on the importance/value of that town. Yew might take 8 hours to corrupt and Britian might take 24 with the others scaled in between.

Of course, an 8 hour corruption time might add more fun to factions as the towns would change hands more often and guarding wouldn't be such the herculean task it is now. I just don't like the reasoning in this point.

2) Allowing guilds to form new factions, possibly as part of an alliance system.

Truly, someone must be under some sort of influence to have this idea and/or express it this way. How can anyone even consider letting a guild become its own faction or to make an alliance system for factions? True, this would bring some guilds into factions because they didn't want to join factions and lose their 'guild identity'. But the only outcome I can see in this is that the faction system turns into a guild war system.

An alliance system for factions defeats the purpose of factions in my eyes. If you want an alliance system go with order/chaos.
Actually, I don't understand this point at all. Further explanation of what this point entails needs to be conveyed before I can even begin to think about this anymore.

3) Expanding the control factions have over Felucca by looking into dynamic spawns of monsters and resources.

I guess the haze is still on him from the previous two points. I think factions has a pretty good amount of control over felucca now. Unless the idea is to make factions all encompassing in Fel. Then sure, add more control. But I think adding even more control would just upset those in Fel who dont play factions. The flawed town tax, as it is now, has driven quite a few away all ready. The tax system is idiotic. You raise the tax and you make more silver. You lower the tax you and don't make any silver. Does not matter how many players buy or sell things in that town, the income remains the same. Therefore there is no direct faction reward to not have the tax jacked up as high as possible.

I can just imagine the nightmare for non factioners in any system that would expand the control of factions over Fel.

4) Adding more political elements to the leadership of a faction beyond simply voting. This would include putting in some checks and balances to ensure that the commander and those who he appoints are doing a good job in the eyes of a majority of the faction. Also, as part of this, allowing players to vote to remove other players considered a spy by a majority of the faction.

Maybe he is coming off whatever it is he is on but still groggy. First off, trying to get a majority of a faction to just VOTE for leadership is nigh impossible. The only way to handle this would be to kick everyone out of the faction that did not vote by the end of a voting or polling period. This would help take care of the permanent resident of Trammel faction member also.

But what a 'majority of the faction' means right now, is the largest guild in that faction. Last election for Commanding Lord in the Ches. SL's, really just boiled down to IC! having the most members and voting one of their own in. Of course, if the active numbers in factions went back to what they were in the heyday of factions, this might be a moot point.

I truly fear putting the power of kicking players out of a faction into the hands of the players. There would have to be some serious checks implemented here.

5) Allowing factions to have control over both the town and surrounding area (follow up to item #3). An idea here is that all resource gathering could be taxed by the controlling faction.

Man, I reiterate what I said to item #3. Having an all ready faulty tax system cover even more, will just drive more players from Fel. Why would a lumber jack chop trees in Britian if he knows a third of the wood he chops is going to a faction he plays no part in? And that the income for that town would not rise or fall whether he chopped trees day and night or not at all.

Maybe faction town taxes should only affect faction players. And/or the taxes should work in a more realistic yet simple way. Lets imagine if Texas put a 30% tax on everything sold in its state and Florida put a 30%-off tax. Texas would turn into a ghost state over night and get no income from its exorbitant tax. I mean, 390 bucks for an Xbox? When the people in Florida are paying 210 bucks? Who wouldn't move?

I realize this is a general simplification of real world sales taxes but I would prefer something better than what is currently in UO before it encompasses even more areas.

First off, check the specs of your computer. You can play decently on a 128 Megs of RAM, 400 megahtz processor, a 56k modem, and atleast a 16meg video card.

Second off, check the shard you are playing on. Use UOTrace, and ping your shard. If it’s over 150 ms, and even think about PvP or even extreme PvM, find a new shard. After you find a decent ping, then use the poll feature and send about 50 packets. Hopefully, you'll have no packet loss. If you do, either call and complain to your ISP like mad, or just pick another shard you ping decently to play. (Pick another shard, ISP take forever) Also, you might want to ping the shard you are thinking about playing on at a couple different times: early morning, afternoon, and night, to make sure your connection doesn’t deteriorate later, at a different time.

You also might want to see if you can improve your connection by tweaking it, and if you are on broadband, I suggest you visit one of the best broadband sites on the web, the Nava's Cable Modem/DSL tuning guide (http://cable-dsl.home.att.net/) There you should be able to tweak your modem and settings to improve your connection, or at least make it more stable.

UPGRADE!! If you can afford it, upgrade your computer, especially if you’re going to play UO3D. If you’re already at about 1000 megahtz, 256-512 Megs RAM, and a 32 bit video card, then your good to go. A cheap upgrade that will pack a punch is RAM. A stick of 128 meg SDRAM will run you about $17. You don't need a top of the line Q3 killing box to play UO. All I play on is a 450 megahtz processor, 128 meg RAM, 16bit video card, and a 56k modem. I still can RUN, that's right, on foot, faster than some people on horseback. I can do decently in factions, and never lag out, just from an OK computer and smart gameplay. Here is a list of suggested upgrade priorities by Prime, and are VERY good. (Thanks Prime!)

Upgrade Priorities (In Order of Price/Performance):
!!!If you don't have an optical mouse, get one. No more ball cleaning for ya, and makes UO more enjoyable. No more crappy ball movement.!!!
1) If you are still using a 56K, spend the extra money (if available) and get a DSL or Cable. It is worth it's weight in gold.

2) RAM - No doubt the cheapest boost in performance (BTW SDRAM is about $17 for a 128mb stick and $35 for a 256mb)

3) Lower end processor/motherboard - AMD Duron 800/900 and ECS K7S5A (SiS 735) $100+
(and if you want to spend an extra $30-50, 256mb DDR Ram)

4) Lower end graphics card (Raedon 32mb SDR, GeForce2 MX400 64MB) - Performance is going to be better, but it is a little more costly in terms of price/performance ($50-60).

5) 7200rpm Low seek HDD - Worst price to performance but will improve computer load times (40GB - $90+)

I have built many computers and the cheaper ones with lower-end parts have always surprised me as to how well they perform against the "big-boys" (Athlon, Althon XP, Pentium 4).

A note on broadband,no matter what people say, some people can't get it. I live in a town of 70,000 and still can't get it simply because I live more than 3 miles from the box. The signal loses intensity over distance, so DSL isn't a viable option for everyone.

So, to those stuck with 56k, you have a few options. First, go into the modem controls (Start>Settings>Control Panel>Modems) and and go to the properties. Turn up the max speed to as high as it will go. Also, update the drivers for your modem. Test this and see if it helps any. If not, try and switch to a better ISP.

*Note* Updating drivers for most devices will increase the performance for that device, ie. video cards, sound cards, etc.
The more expensive, top of the line rigs always seem to disappoint. The performance is great, just not as good as I thought it was going to be.

To change your packet size, go into the Networking part of your control panel, and go to the dial up adapter, advanced, IP packet size and change it to small.

A word on FIFO buffering. To adjust them, the higher you go, the more info the buffer can hold, but there's a chance it can get lost. The lower you go, the more it has to communicate with the CPU, slowing it down and slowing down the ablity to fill back up.
If you feel like playing around with the settings, change the recieve to 14 and transmit to 16. (I believe these are defaults). If these help, keep them, but if they interfere, change them back, or slowly lower them.

In UO, you don't need much in terms of rig to really move around well, but I would suggest more than a P2 400mhz (had one for a while) to play now.

Ingame, you can change a few settings to play faster too. I like to turn off music, and all the sounds in game. It usually helps me out with less lag. Also, be smart. You know more about your connection and computer than anyone else. If your having a laggy day, say no to factions, or taking out your 5 WW to the ancient wyrm spawn. And, at no time, take anything out of the bank you can’t afford to lose. That means no 200 of each reg, or that vanq axe. Play it smart and follow these guidelines, and you’ll be lag free, or at least not bunny hopping on a 14.4k modem.

20 You can no longer heal a faction guard if you aren't a member of its faction.

23 Faction titles will no longer display in trammel.

26 Players flagged as aggressors to another player, or criminal for any reason, will not be able to use public moongates.

27 Sigils will not be stealable for 1 hour after a server starts.

33 Corpses will now hue the correct color for looting - a corpse that is orange is lootable (meaning you did damage), while a corpse that is blue is not lootable (it will include enemies you didn't damage). Grey and red corpses are lootable.

1] Lowering the corruption times down to about 8 hours or so to allow more fast-paced conflict and create less of a chance that off-hour, low peak hours will determine the fate of a faction.

2] Allowing guilds to form new factions, possibly as part of an alliance system.

3] Expanding the control factions have over Felucca by looking into dynamic spawns of monsters and resources.

4] Adding more political elements to the leadership of a faction beyond simply voting. This would include putting in some checks and balances to ensure that the commander and those who he appoints are doing a good job in the eyes of a majority of the faction. Also, as part of this, allowing players to vote to remove other players considered a spy by a majority of the faction.

5] Allowing factions to have control over both the town and surrounding area (follow up to item #3). An idea here is that all resource gathering could be taxed by the controlling faction.

Salt Wrote

Guess what, your locked chests got nerfed as well, GM Locks are now 100% success for 73 lockpicking skill, never fail, never break a pick, no gains.

I think they are lvl 1 locks...