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Comment by aasasd | Hacker News Reader

I continue to be burdened and mystified by a memory from an article circa early-mid 2000s, about UO or a similar game, if there was one: that in the game, when one was being robbed or beaten, they could summon some wunderpolice, whose representative immediately teleported to the scene and instantly killed the culprit. However, if the alarm was false, then the supernatural officer killed the player instead. The implication, as I understood it, was that the divine entity was operated automatically by the game.

It's possible that the story went through a bad case of ‘broken telephone’—and my few feeble attempts of finding the truth in more recent years were unsuccessful. Still I wonder: was there such a thing as described above? Did it work? Was the ‘police’ really an NPC?

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Yeah it worked like that. Saying "guards" would instantly summon the guards if any criminal was present and subsequently murder the criminal(s). Nothing about incorrect summoning though.

Most people had a macro invoking "guards" "bank" abd "vendor buy" all at the same time. The interface was mud like and the first (?) command in a statement that was valid would execute.

Thanks, I now found a wiki describing these mechanics, and it turns out that UO had an entire system of markings for players who committed illegal activities. This clears things up a bit.

Idk where the ‘killing the player’ part came from—though local game journalism at that time was quite, uh, idiosyncratic. But, as the workings of these guards were somewhat hazy in my mind, they gained an ominous air.

I think I know why you have this hazy memory! Oftentimes these robber groups patrolled around the edges of the "safe zones" where it's possible to call guards. When there were battles, it was often chaotic with multiple characters moving and mauling each other. Sometimes an innocent player would be attacked near the border, they would defend themselves and accidentally do some action which marks them as a criminal (for example, moving inside the border of the safe zone and defend against an attacker who is outside the safe zone and not marked as criminal). The innocent player defending themselves might call "guards", but because they've accidentally made some particular action, the guards would treat them as the criminal and kill them.

Though at the beginning the guards didn't teleport and instakill you, instead they would have to chase you - I don't remember if their hit was an instakill but I do remember a before/after of when suddenly you could not escape the guards.

Originally they were just standard NPCs. They did not instakill. And while quite tough, they could be defeated. So a strong enough group could go in and clear out the guards until they respawned. At which point the town became lawless. I think the shift towards effectively being deities smiting criminals was complete by the end of Beta test though.

As an avid player I can confirm that all commands would execute. So if you were next to a vendor, you'd see the buy menu, but also if a criminal was nearby they'd have the guards summoned on them at the same time.

In ultima online players were split into 3 categories:

Blue Gray Red

and later Orange

Blue = "good". If you are in a "guard protected zone" and you attack someone "blue" guards will come and murder you instantly. As long as someone says "guards"

Gray = "criminal". You commit a criminal action, you are gray. If you attack someone gray, no consequences will be made against you. Only thing is if I am gray, and you are blue, and you attack me, you turn gray _only to me_. Gray expires in 5 minutes.

Actions that cause this: stealing, healing someone gray / red, attacking someone blue but not yet killing them.

Red = "permanent criminal". You are red as long as you have any player kills registered to you (they decay 1 kill per 8 hours I believe. A PK is only counted if you kill a blue player or participated in killing a blue player.

There were a few fun exploits:

You can transform into a creature. This meant you turned gray without any crime. Well if someone attacks you, you can attack back. So it was a scam we used to pull where there would be occasional attacks against the town, I'd run around screaming that I'm a noob and need someone to get a monster off me, and the monster would be a friend.

Well the friend had a nearby tamed dragon that can now freely attack the guy who flagged himself against my friend without consequences. And anyone who assists now has a dragon to fight (killable, but lots of resources spent, and usually would take a few people to do, AND my friend was a competent mage, so now you also have a mage gunning for you). We didn't always succeed but it was fun. I think we got suspended a few times for it. lol.

There were some tricks to getting people to attack the wrong target and thus flag themselves in town and get the guards to kill them. But it wasn't commonplace. Maybe during beta there were problems.

Oh yeah, orange. Orange were players participating in guild wars. Orange players can attack other orange players. It is basically permitted criminal activity among those participating in a guild war. And in Order vs Chaos you also got the best shield in the game for free for being on either side.

It sounds like it could be the guards, inside the cities, of UO.

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