UMP of Lake Austin UO

First of all, let me just say I am posting this to my fellow UMPers in a purely non-official capacity. I have no authority to tell anyone what to do - Emmisaries are simply recruiters. For guild leadership, we look to our GM, Garion. I am just a fellow UMPer who is concerned and want to bring this issue to everyone's attention.

Consider this a heads-up for all UMPers who enjoy doing peerless hunts, and have been tempted to do them with non-guild or mixed "pick-up" groups of people who don't really know each other well. We've have a few incidents of late where non-guildies who go on a peerless hunt with one or more UMPers complain bitterly later (to us or to anyone who will listen) that UMP is "screwing people" on peerless hunts. Complaints range from the ridiculous to the even more ridiculous, but we need to be aware that these things can affect our reputation and standing on the shard.

Complaints I've heard just in the last few days include:

"UMP takes newbies on peerless who are not prepared, have no armor resists, and inadequate skills, and then leaves them to fend for themselves."

"UMP hunt leaders loot the body and keep the special and best loot for themselves."

"UMP's GM (they didnt know the GM's name, apparently) screwed me on a peerless hunt."

"UMP camps peerless sites in order to keep other groups from doing peerlesses."

I have also gotten a couple complaints this week from people who have complained about non-UMP characters that they loosely associate with UMP because they see them hunting and interacting with us fairly regularly. They normally don't know these players also have characters in UMP. These complaints are usually pretty petty, but some are valid. UMP is not responsible for the actions of non-guilded characters, but we should all be aware that even our non-guilded characters can reflect well or badly on UMP once people start noting your associations with the guild.

Our guild policy is - that for guild hunts, we limit guests to people we know very well and can personally vouch for, or people who have hunted with us in the past. They should know how we do hunts before the hunt begins. You can refer them to the UMP Peerless guide on our web site to get them up to speed.

I also suggest that when we are out on our own, we be very careful about joining or organizing "pick-up" groups thrown together semi-randomly just to get the bodies necessary to do a peerless. Such hunts rarely turn out well, and can easily result in very bad publicity for UMP.

Just my two-cents worth. There will always be someone out there ranting about something they don't like, but we should all do our best to avoid any drama or ugliness associated with UMP if we can.

Labels: complaints, guests, hunts, peerless

posted by Xcentric @ 8:24 AM