Enough said. For a definition of roleplaying on Dark Age II, see roleplaying rules.

Use the [] brackets to enclose any OOC text, and use it only when nescessary and when you cannot use .msg. No chit chat in OOC, you will be warned with a gump if caught. A counter is kept and continued offenses will be met with more severe punishment. Anything you do or say to another character ingame is to be treated as ingame talk, and acted upon. This is a roleplaying game.

Killing players for no better reason than loot will get you banned. Your character concept better explain your actions when people complain. You will be banned for this. All combat MUST be preceeded by RP, *ALWAYS*. Any combat initiated without RP is considered PKing, and will be dealt with. Assassinations are just that, and can be explained thus by the hiring party and need no RP immediately prior to them for obvious reasons. Assassination just because you are an assassin is lame and considered PKing without RP behind it. Shouting “DIE!” and charging at the person or “I hate !” and running to the slaughter is not considered RP either. We assume mature RPers will have better reasons for PvP than just base hatred for a race or person. Talk a bit, then fight.

Even if at war, gloat a bit about how your city/faction/race is superior before killing the other. Otherwise he may have grounds for a PK charge. Note: Stealing/Snooping a person or provoking them with some other action is considered RP and is justifiable as a reason to attack. Your character’s concept may be compared though, and if your character is a lover of life, then goes berserk when someone calls him fat, and kills them.. well.. Use common sense.

For clarifications regarding some specific PvP interactions that may occur, read the Rules of Engagement.

We do not have a rating on DA as far as explicit content. However, if you go into what would bring an R rating in a movie, you must have the permission of all the persons involved, including those watching, or have the permissions of all involved and be in a well-hidden place. We believe that is clear enough.

• Do not do explicit tortures in public.
• Or sexual scenes.
• Or rape.
• Do not do explicit tortures to someone who has not agreed to it.
• Or sexual scenes.
• Or rape.

Permission can be attained with .msg or through other means. Complaints will be treated in the same way as OOC hassling.

Also, to enforce that some things are kept in private roleplay situations, all players should, when roleplaying is brought to an R-rating level, use mechanics to make sure they stay that way. The textcommand .whisper or the UO-default ; whisper command should be used at all times in these situations.

A player may hold only one account, with two character slots, and ALL characters need to be applied for via the application form, and approved by the staff.

Characters who have been deleted (with the exception of automatic deletion due to inactivity) may not be remade, reforged, or restored.

Posts in the roleplay boards may only be made in the name of characters who are currently active in-game. For a character to be considered active, he must not only exist (i.e. not be deleted), but also be able to report on his recent roleplay.

Anonymous posts on the RP boards detailing events that happened in public places must be preceded of said events in-game. Posts detailing events such as public speaking or posting of messages in public places will fall into this category.

Non-compliance will give staff freedom to provide adequate roleplay in-game to reflect what should have happened in-game, such as facilitating an investigation, without consulting the player in question. Repetitive non-compliance may make you incur in punishment.

This rule is not retroactive, but is in effect immediately.

Tamed animals are not to have uncool names such as ‘a’ or ‘b’ or ‘a1’ or anything remotely resembling them. Animals should be named properly, and even three letters is better than one or two. Any tamed critters found with names like that will be instantly killed by GMs.

Character names, including Dual Identity names cannot be racially/religously/etc. offensive to other players. Also, they must be RP and realistic, names such as ‘a thief’ or ‘a warrior in plate’, even for Dual Identity names cannot exist. The shard does a lot of things by name, and having names like that will create a large number of problems, not to mention is a tad silly when you look at it in an RP perspective.

Report bugs and exploits and do not use them. Have respect for the game and its balance for the simple fact that we do it for fun, and if you go out to spoil that fun, you will be banned. The Bug forum board is there and bugs do get addressed as soon as we can get to them.

Unattended macroing is forbidden. Anyone caught will be given an appropiate punishment, most likely the skill being macroed lowered to 0 and so on. If you macro, be there to respond and RP.

Sparring with NPCs that cannot kill you and when you cannot kill them for free skillgain is prohibited. NPCs will report you to GMs, and action will be taken, mainly, the punishment will be the lowering of the skills you are trying to increase in a lame way. Furthermore, you are subject to any punishment a GM comes up with for such activity should the above not suffice. Additionally, any situation whereby an NPC is unable to do any damage to a player due to it being blocked by something between it and the PC, and where it would otherwise run away if it had any ounce of intelligence, is considered AI Abuse if the player proceeds to attack it. An example of this is standing across a river firing a bow or magic at an enemy that cannot cross and attack back, or standing on a boat a little way from shore where the NPC is unable to get to you and damage you. Trapping it with a ward or vines on the other hand is perfectly reasonable, if it’s trapped it is unable to run away anyway, whether it would want to or not. The way to decide is to put yourself in the position of the NPC; clearly any of us wouldn’t stand there and take damage being unable to attack back if we could help it. Player/Player sparring is also not allowed when both opponents cannot harm eachother and there is no chance of health loss from either.

Leading NPC monsters into a town to kill the guards is prohibited. Doing so is considered exploiting the AI and going against the play nice rule. You can be banned for this. This rule excludes anything your character can lead using Leadership (i.e. Barbs and Ogres and Half-Orcs and Ettins, etc). If you can’t lead it by using leadership, you are exploiting. Leading guards out of town one at a time is also exploiting AI. The AI is dumb, we cannot make it smart without making the game extremely slow, so do not exploit it. Use common sense, if you are unable to do something to a creature in real life, you should not be doing it here. An example is getting a drake chasing after you, running around a corner and having the drake try to reach you ineffectively while your friends pound on it.

Wrestling guards/tamed NPCs, getting KOed by them, getting ressed by someone else, and repeating the whole process time and time again so that the NPCs may become more Experienced (and thus a lot stronger), is utterly unacceptable. It is a complete violation of the NPC Experience system, which is supposed to mirror extensive training of the NPCs.

Blocking of access to areas using locked-down items is forbidden. Said items will be destroyed immediately by GMs and repeated offenses will be dealt with more harshly.

If you are caught creating multiple chars on the same slot for the purpose of muling items gotten from Character Forge, you will be banned with no questions asked. Everytime a char is created, it is all logged. We can track this and find you. Don’t do it. All characters that are created MUST be pre-approved through the application form. If you are found playing an un-approved character, the character will be deleted and you stand a good chance of being banned. Also note that a character may NOT be recreated without specific GM approval.

Muling is a bannable offense, and is defined as the exchange of items between any two characters that you play. The sharing of property, real estate, rooms, access or information is prohibited. There should be no clear or established link of any kind between your two characters. It is forbidden for players to have both of their characters in the same organizations/families/related in any way that would lead to excuses for trading of items.

Muling Rules Explained and Detailed

IRC is not to be used for In Game discussions. If you want to make a deal or discuss plans for anything, do so ingame. It’s uncool to act as if you are telepathic, and makes those who go out of their way to spy on you waste their time. Anything that belongs IG, is to be spoken IG. This is a roleplaying game, so roleplay. IRC can be used to organize meeting people somewhere, but that’s all.

The official chatroom, much like the faction chatrooms, is a place where we want to gather our players, not only to chat about DA-related matters (roleplay, events, seeking GM assistance), but also to create a friendly and healthy environment for the shard. As we all know, a mature OOC community stimulates better RP interactions, which result in fun for everyone - which is why we are here in the first place. In light of this Staff will not hesitate to kick and or ban you from the chat for lewd or out of line behavior.

Metagaming is strictly prohibited in any fashion. Metagaming is defined as the use of any knowledge garnered in an OOC fashion, IRC, ICQ, AIM, and non-roleplaying Dark Age boards in an IC context that directly affects the actions of your character. Intentional use of metagamed knowledge in order to plan your character’s actions is a sign of not only poor role-playing, but also of irresponsibility of the player. If a player is found to be using this information they will be punished accordingly. Examples of this would be using all names, or looking on the UO client and seeing that a person is home in game, and therefore not attempting to break into their house, when in all reality your character wouldn’t know that without metagaming. Similarly if you know that a player is sleeping, at work, at school, or merely AFK, you are not allowed to plan your actions around their schedule, especially when the actions are against that player.

Do not harrass, do not pester and do not be a pain in the ass towards another player. Roleplaying is one thing, OOC hassling will get you banned.

Staff will not give you any items, stats, skills, nothing. We are going to great lengths to make sure that everything ingame can be obtained via the myriad of crafts available. Decorations that are not craftable will be available for sale through an NPC.

If you have ideas, we want to hear them. Use the Suggestions board freely. We may not reply, but we read them. Make the shard more fun and unique, post your ideas and suggestions.