Counselor Blues (Elder edition)

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.. UO Stratics - Counselor Blues ..

Posted by Elder Counselor Bakura on March 15, 1999 at 18:53:54:

"Hail fair citizen. How may I help thee?"

If I have ever answered your call for help on Chesapeake, then you should know that phrase well.

I guess that many of you that check this page regularly have noticed the lack of posts lately. Apparently, this is not supposed to be a board for us to come and let you in on some of the humor that we see in our daily jobs of helping the players. Although, I have had many of you approach me and tell me that you come to the Counselor Blues page daily to read some of the posts for a good laugh. I am honored and amazed that so many of you recognize me on site because of my previous posts, and I am sure that the other Counselors feel the same way.

I wanted to give you something to read so that this board will not become dull due to the lack of posts lately. I would like to enlighten you on my experiences as an Elder Counselor and let you know some things about us that you may not already know.

I love to counsel. It is like a whole new game to me. Why do I love to counsel, you may ask? Because I love to help people understand more about what has been probably the most influential thing in my life... the Ultima universe. I am very happy that I can now actually be a physical part of that universe thanks to Ultima Online. Now I can share my interest with others in real time.

You can usually find a counselor in the Britain Counselor Guild Hall, which is located between the North Side Inn and the entrance to Blackthorn's Castle. We are there to answer your questions, or even just to chat if there are no questions to be answered.

There are a few common questions that I get that I would like to share the answers to with you that may save you from calling and waiting for a Counselor to arrive. They are as follows:

First off... hehehe... no, you may not have my robe. I can not remove it due to the fact that I would get cold, and we all know how often it snows in Britannia. :)

Counselors will not take you to the "Jail" (the bad one) just to show you around. This is not a play area or a place to go on a tour. If you are taken there, then it is very often not a very nice experience. If you would like to visit a jail, then I would like to point out that Nujel'm, Trinsic, and Yew all have very nice jails that you may visit.

Counselors usually do not know when new features in Development and on the Test Center will be published to the regular shards.

Counselors are not OSI employees. We, as well as Seers, are volunteers. Many people ask, "why are you doing so and so with the skills?" or "you need to fix this," thinking that we work for Origin. Counselors are only "hint-masters" and generally will not have much knowledge of Dev Team decisions. If you have any questions, suggestions, or complaints about why something has been done that is not answered at http://update.owo.com, then another good alternative is to go to http://www.owo.com/mail.shtmll. Here you may send your concerns directly to Origin via a very nice web form that will direct your comments to the appropriate department so that it may be answered in a timely manner.

Counselors can not assist in the placing of a house and do not have any special knowledge of available areas to place one. Since we travel to each location via "magic", we do not get to see nearly as much land as you do. If you have found a location that you do not understand why a house will not fit then we will be happy to help you figure out why. Currently, the requirements for placing a house are that there must be five tiles of unobstructive space free in front of and behind the house, and one tile free on each side. One tile is equal to one step.

Another common question is "How do I become a Counselor?" There will be a permanent Counselor application going up on www.owo.com soon. I am sure that there will probably be a message on the main page when it does. The www.owo.com web site has been totally redone, and I must admit that the web designers have done a very good job at it.

If you are having technical problems with Ultima Online, a good place to start is the UO Technical Support web site located at http://support.owo.com/tech_0.html. A lot of work has gone into this page recently and can answer most of the technical support questions that you may have.

If you call a Counselor and either you can not hear the Counselor, or it appears that the Counselor can not hear you, it may very well be solved by disabling your Translation Server in your Options menu. When this happens, please do not think that we are ignoring you or do not want to help you. This can be very frustrating for us because it is very hard to tell you how to fix it if you can not hear us.

Lastly, I would like to direct you to a very good resource that will answer many of your questions that may involve a GM. The GM Support Page is located at http://support.owo.com/gm_role.html. This page explains many answers about the capabilities of a GM. It also explains the procedure of what to do if someone is harassing you or if someone is using an exploit. It shows many of the guidelines that GM's must adhere to. There is also a list of FAQ's there that GM's receive. I can not stress how useful a tool the GM Support Page is. I go there often and always come out knowing more than I did before.

Nobody knows the answer to EVERY question (not even the almighty Counselors... hehehe). Quite often, if a player asks me a question that can be easily found on a web site, then I will direct the player to that site. If I know the answer, I will happily offer it. I do this because it is how I learned much of what I know and it also helps the player due to the fact that he/she can now go directly to that web site instead of calling for a Counselor and waiting for the Counselor to arrive. This in turn saves the player time in the future and allows other players a shorter wait time for their questions. An example of this is... I do not know what taming skill you need to tame a llama, but I can surely tell you where you can find that information.


I hope that my post here will help many people. I have enjoyed sharing my thoughts and knowledge with you. I look forward to seeing many of you on Chesapeake in the future. If you see me, let me know if my post has helped you understand things a bit better. If so, then I have set out to do what was intended. :) Thanks for taking the time to read this post that is definitely a bit longer than I intended it to be when I started typing. I really enjoy sharing some of the amusing times that Counselors have during their daily duties and I hope that that will once again be acceptable posting here. Even I enjoy coming here to read the amusing posts of the journeys of other Counselors.

Fare thee well my friends!

Elder Counselor Bakura
Chesapeake Shard

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