(1) Secure house trading
Yes, I do a lot of third party brokering. Yes, it's quite profitable and yes, I enjoy it. However, there are still a lot of poor trusting people who get taken in by scammers. Secure house trading should have been put in the game last January after the big housing patches.

(2) Crack down on scammers
OSI bans people for duping (good for the game) and bans people for macroing (BLAH, is all I have to say on that point), but still coddles scammers. I'm not talking about role-playing con artists (psst - want to buy a viking sword of vanq for 5k?) - I'm talking about people who scam others out of their life savings and who couldn't care less about how horribly it affects the way the other person feels and how it destroys UO for many. These scammers use ICQ and email to perpetrate their scams, often impersonating others (do an ICQ search on Zamboni or Zamboni II - some of them even use my real name in the info section), which, in my legal opinion, makes them guilty of real life fraud. I've caught scammers myself, I've reported scammers to GMs and OSI, hell, I've invited GMs and Counselors to watch "stings" on scammers - but every time, I get the same answer - sorry, that's just part of the game.

Duping is evil, and people should definitely be banned for it, but it isn't as personal an offense as scamming is - no one ever swore for 3 days and then quit UO because they heard that someone else was duping. Scamming, on the other hand, has a huge negative impact on those who get scammed - for many UO players who get scammed out of a house, it's an extremely emotional experience and can be traumatic (it's just a game, but to many people it's much more). Wake up, OSI, and start punishing the real criminals in UO.

(3) Stat Management
We have skill management, which is wonderful. Now it's time for stat management, the next logical step in character management. Here are a couple ideas:

(a) stat locks - we have skill locks, why not stat locks? I'm working on an adventuring rogue character (I'm converting a PvP fencer/healer for the job). In 15 minutes of training detect hidden, I gained 16 int and lost 16 strength - that's not even remotely realistic and makes the entire experience painful for the character. Now, if I want the character to have a decent strength, I have to work on a strength-raising skill that I don't need.

(b) Stat gain with character age - Have characters start with 165 stat points, to distribute as the player chooses. Every real life day, the character gets 1 more stat point. Using this system, a character hits the stat cap at the ripe age of 60 days. Furthermore, let players switch up to 5 points per day among the 3 skills - at that rate, it would take 15 days to go from 100/25/100 to 100/100/25 - and no macroing would be necessary. Of course, with this system in place, there would be no stat gain from skill usage.

(c) Magic stat-altering food - I can't claim credit for this idea, but it's a good one. Give high-level chefs the ability to cook magic food - there should be 6 different kinds, the effect of each would be to increase one stat by one and to decrease another by 1 (so, the 6 kinds would be +1 str/-1 int; +1 str/-1 dex; +1 int/-1 str; +1 int/-1 dex; +1 dex/-1 str; and +1 dex/-1 int). This change would make stat management easier and would also be a nice boost for the cooking skill.

(4) PvP Balance
I'm not hoping for a radical melee/archery/magery rebalance here - just get rid of the damn double hit bugs and broken combos. The simplest fix for most of the problems would be twofold - first, put in a delay to equip weapons and second, have equipping anything other than a spellbook disrupt spell casting.

(5) Money Sinks
OK, maybe this wish should have been #1 on my list. There is WAAAAY too much gold in UO and nothing on which to spend it. Here are some suggestions (some of which are mine, some of which I've "borrowed" from others):

(a) Luxury Items - this is the simplest money sink to add to UO - create a few very high priced items for sale. Normally I'm a big fan of the player economy, but these items would have to be NPC only (if players could make them, it would defeat the purpose of a money sink, since no gold would be taken out of the system). Items could range from the slightly expensive (more paintings, 10-25k; small rugs, 10-25k) to the moderately expensive (medium sized rugs, 50-100k; urns, vases, braziers - 50-150k) to the ridiculously expensive (large persian rugs - 100-500k; tapestries - 100-500k; home landscaping - 500k-1M; house painting - 500k-1M). Items could also be produced in limited quantities and sold at special NPC bazaars that traveled the land on rare occasions, to make things more fun.

(b)Titles - How many wealthy merchants and craftspeople are upset because no one can see their skill title (GM Carpenter, GM Smith, GM Merchant and so on)? Create a system of mercantile titles available for purchase for 100k-1Mgp (more gold, more interesting title) and have anyone who has bought such a title also display a skill title of his or her choice (so if you're a multi-GM, you can choose which title shows on your paperdoll).

(c) Pardons - Make it possible to buy your way out of murderer status or being red. Set up a corrupt offical of the government in Buc's Den who's willing to help you out for the right price. It should be extremely expensive (for example, 5k for the first murder count, 10k for the next, 20k for the next, 40k for the next, 80k for the next and so on). Further, the official only has so much power - if you ever get reported for murder again, you revert to your former status (and the official keeps the gold as a souvenir of your attempt to go straight). This system would allow penitent murderers to go straight and would keep them on the straight and narrow.

(d) House Renovations - the most expensive money sink of all, a house renovation would allow one to add an extra story on to one's house (or perhaps build a basement). With such a renovation, the number of secure containers and lockdowns for the house would also increase. Small house renovations would start at 100k (not much work in adding one room to a house), while renovations on larger buildings would start at 500k (adding another floor to a castle would cost upwards of 2.5M gp).

(6) Fishing Changes
In my opinion, nothing has hurt the player economy as much as have the changes to the fishing skill and the scourge known as MIBs. Overnight, fishing changed from something to do while you're bored to the money-making skill of the century. The market was flooded with magic items and gold and macroing probably tripled overnight.

I don't think that MIBs should be eliminated, but they need to be radically reworked. Have monsters spawn to protect the buried treasures (so they take more than 30 seconds to pull up and require some work to retrieve). Also, rework what you get in the treasure chests - more "rares" - paintings, body party, pillows and other items - and no more magic items, gold or scrolls. Removing current-style MIBs from the game won't fix the damage that's been done to the economy, but it will help to stop the bleeding.

Well, that's enough of a wish list for now. As always, intelligent responses are welcome and I'm happy to engage anyone in enlightened debate. Happy holidays!

- Zamboni Driver