The gut reaction by many people against stat-loss for one reason or another after seeing these pics is: how is this PROMOTING the removal of stat-loss? Getting a huge pack of pk's together and killing everything in sight is, if anything, showing stat-loss is NOT ENOUGH. What FRICKEN IDIOTS!!

Well, let's take a look and actually analyze this attitude before jumping to conclusions, as many people of the pvp community have a hard time even comprehending their argument.

There seems to be two general types of reaction in UO after being pk'ed: 1. those who die, cry, get angry and turn off their computer and 2. those who die, say "THOSE ASSES!", icq up all their friends, go shout from the bank-tops and get a group together to go back and GO KICK ASS! Pvp'ers almost exclusively fall into the second group. When they see those pictures they don't see death, failure, and inevitability . . . they see an opportunity for some of the greatest fights they'll have in a long time which they'll remember for years. Just think for a moment what would've happened that night if there had been no stat-loss. In Shannara they were eventually prepared for our return with a mass of dragons. They WANTED us to come back so they could kick our asses. And they MIGHT'VE kicked our asses. Because of stat-loss we'll never know. After the run in Deceit there was a wildfire of icq's being shot all over the shard (many of us receiving icq's from friends to come join a group that was forming to go kill us!) If there had been no stat-loss we would've hit Deceit over and over and over again, we would've stayed as long as we could before eating dungeon floor. Because of stat-loss however we were forced to hit it and leave, avoiding any confrontation that was deemed too dangerous. Without stat-loss, there would've been ENORMOUS masses of blues coming in and fighting to reclaim the dungeon, killing or driving us all off. And yes, we WOULD'VE died and been driven off. A blue group of 30+ is far easier to create than a red group of 25, stat-loss or no. People from friendly and not-so-friendly guilds would've banded together. Random people met as a ghost from earlier raids, while at the bank, while on the way to the dungeon would've all been added to the pack. A HUGE mass of blues, who under the current guild cliques and isolated irc channels would've never talked to each other in a million years, would've joined together to fight a common foe. Enormous groups of blues would've formed and swept us out. We would've re-equipped and swept them out.. Battles would've raged back and forth ALL NIGHT LONG. EVERYONE would've won repeatedly, and EVERYONE would've lost repeatedly. This is the kind of spontaneous warfare that guilds, and soon to be factions, COMPLETELY LACK. The kind of warfare that overcomes mere cliques and immediate groups of friends to literally turn one entire side of a shard against the other at any given moment. This is what the pvp'ers see. They see the potential for battles. The potential for fantastic, glorious battles. The Barney's fixate on the initial 20 on 1's, cry, say its unfair and quit. ALL BATTLES ARE UNFAIR to one-side. That's why we have winners, and why we have losers. The only fights that are completely fair are those that are completely pre-arranged. Pvp'ers realize this, take their lumps and work to turn the tides in their favor.

Pvp'ers realize that with the pvp+/pvp- lands the time for stat-loss has passed. Anyone who tries to compare what life would be like in the pvp+ lands without stat-loss with the Dreadlord days IS A FOOL. In the dreadlord days the red characters were almost exclusively better characters than their blue counterparts (how many 60 strength blues are there now with 85 swords and 40 magery?). Now blue 7x GM's are EVERYWHERE! More importantly than this however, the dreadlords had INFINITELY more fighting experience than the blues. The only fighting experience blues EVER got was exclusively the 10 second fights they'd have against dreads right before dying. The dreads, however, fought constantly and continually improved. That is no longer the case. Blues have been fighting each other in guildwars and chaos/order fights for a very long time now and if currently they are not completely experienced they at least still have the venues available to practice and become so. In the dread days if a blue attacked anyone other than a red in any context they TURNED RED. OF COURSE they had absolutely no idea how to defend themselves against red groups. This is no longer the case. These two things almost remove the need for stat-loss by themselves. Now let's add into our little equation the fact that the MAIN REASON we had stat-loss in the first place will soon be COMPLETELY GONE. Stat-loss was implemented for reds because the rampant merchant/miner/newbie/dungeon rompers were unable to defend themselves and died repeatedly. With the PvP- lands these people are 100% safe from reds. Comparing the dreadlord days to what no stat loss would be like in the pvp+ lands is absolutely absurd, yet I see people posting it repeatedly as some kind of evidence for their point. This only suggests to me these people have NO CLUE what it was like in the dreadlord days or have completely forgotten.

If any more needs to be said for convincing, I can only assume the reader (or game developer) had made up his/her mind far before even beginning to take an objective look at the problems. With PvP+/PvP- lands it's obvious what the result would be if anyone has the courage to look. Those who DON'T like to PvP WIN, those who DO like to PvP WIN.

-Absolute Zero, TLC