Nok

*RTLFC*

Actually... it did. About a week and a half ago. A datacenter burned to the ground. Another undersea cable failed. Chinese students launched a Denial of Service attack against CNN (for a comment said on-air). And there were other major, but unrelated outages on 4 continents. It was a bad couple of days or so for the Internet. Things happen.

This isn't to you Adri, but just to the whole direction this topic moved around in. To everyone... I'm pulling out the soapbox because I feel a rant coming on, so bare with me.

First whether it is in business, sports or communities... never speak ill of one's "competition" (especially when they are in a tough spot). Stratics is in a tough spot right now, but they are still Stratics... the big dog in the UO pound. Stratics is much more than just UO Stratics... they have a lot of sites, forums and games they support besides UO. They are having an outage. It happens.

Banks & companies lose customer data like credit card numbers and social security numbers. Governments get hacked or lose a laptop with "eyes-only" secrets. A bridge collapses. A storm kills thousands and wipes out entire cities. A server fries and the backups fail. Life happens.

We're human, we know bad things can happen... and as humans we take steps to minimize it. But that doesn't stop it from happening.

Moving on. Could the UO Team do things differently? Surely. And as paying customers we have a right to buy into the experience... or not. But that doesn't mean it is appropriate to go after the team with as much rancor and vile as too many in the community believe they have a right to. Just like the rest of us, they have the same issues as the rest of us. Trying to do their jobs and all that goes with having and keeping a job. Marriage. Babies. Getting the kids to school. Divorces. Take care of sick children, parents or themselves. A graduation or death in the family. And... putting up with us.

Speaking of us. The UO community... famously loyal, famously a PITA, and notoriously divided. This September UO will be 11 years old... after that long, we (the UO Team -and- the players) should have a stronger and better developed community tools & relations between ourselves than we do. We are not as big as we used to be, and we need to stop with the cliques and mini tribes.

And things aren't as bad community-wise as I or anyone else makes it sound... there are examples of cooperation. Just a little example... Jeremy does post community stuff to the Five on Friday just by asking her, and rides the ether with the best of the forum warriors. UO Stratics announces it when Adam posts a UOForums interview. JC The Builder put -countless- hours upon hours into UOGuide. Flutter posts on The Lost Lands about everything UO. Whispering Rose Radio not only fronts the cost of streaming a station for our community, also the costs & hassle of getting to and putting on live shows from town halls. I post everything I can from wherever I can find it for my sites and put LOTS of time into toolbars for our community and others (don't even ask when I actually hunted with my guildies... I'm on the KOS list if they see me again! ). Point being, we all feed from the same trough.

The community is small enough, we need to work together better than we do.

Again... this isn't pointed at any one single person, but all of us. In the words of Reginald Denny, "Can't we all just get along?!".

*steps down and pull up a chair in the back of the topic again*

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