I love the Newbie Champ Spawn, but.....

[Gershaw]

So, the title should say it all. I love the Newbie Champ Spawn. Love it. Absolutely adore it. I've not played UO very long at all, and when I did it tended to follow the rest of my MMO experience: I play alone or with one or two friends and tend to not really have enough time to join a guild -- and I'll be honest -- and have high standards for those I want to be associated with. When you have nothing to offer, that tends to raise an issue, doesn't it? Anyways, point being that Champion Spawns were entirely new to me, and I get why people love them having done the Newbie One a few times. It, more than anything else, has really helped Excelsior stand out to me as a place I'd enjoy playing for the actual bit of playing the game.

But, I do have a pair of questions and some concerns over it. I'll start with the former, and then flow into the concerns.

• Is the 4 hour timer from the spawn's start (creatures being spawned at Round 1) or from the killing of the Champion Monster?
• When arriving late, does only one person have to vote no to decline you entrance, or does a majority of those working the spawn?

Now then, as fun as it is I do have some irritating problems with it, and can say this from the perspective of one who hasn't been too terribly hurt by the concerns that I've had.

• Why do only the top 6 damagers get Powerscrolls from the kill? I love taming; the first thing I did here was go out and get taming to 40, then skill ball it up to 100 and get a Dagon or seven to be my own. I love using others to fight my battles, is the real thing, but regardless of it all it translates to me being able to deal out massively more damage than pretty much any other new player who tries a different approach with their skills, I think. Some New Players don't use pets, or haven't had the time to spam up taming, and most all of us do massively low damage compared to what stronger mounts can do. I see it as something entirely unfair for the person who's busy working on their own to be cast out of the Power Scroll pool for new players just because I took an option to do more damage quicker. 5-10k or so gold isn't enough of a reward, I do not think, for these guys who do help the spawn in any way they can just to have those of us running with tamed creatures -- or creatures/equipment given to us by friends -- gain the reward that is really sought after. To be clear: I'm totally okay with this in other spawns, but it seems counter-intuitive in the Newbie Spawn. Can't all just get a scroll, there?
• The gold. No, it's not the amount, it's how often some of us seem to like to run off with our un-fair share. I've heard it said that in other spawns gold is automatically split up to those who participated to ensure that the right amount is given to each, and I wonder if this can't be the case for the Newbie one as well? Now, granted, that isn't as much the "flashy" sort of fun that we all would like to have, but I personally want to be given what I deserve after killing the creature and not have someone else run away with half of it. It's only happened a few times, but those few times really got me boilin' and nobody likes it. One thought might to be, to make the display of killing the beast still more fun, to have the guy drop auto-split stacks of gold onto the ground, one for each person who helped kill the creature. Those who killed the guy first get a flag, or variable, or whatever it is UO does to keep up with things like this, that allows them to pick up one of these piles of gold in this area, and when they do pick it up they cannot pick up another pile of gold without first leaving the newbie champ spawn at all. That way the result just becomes "Watch the guy erupt into big piles of gold, go ahead and get yours, tada! Oh, and none of the older, more arrogant and mean players on the shard can steal what you've worked hard for. Well done, we love you!" While teamwork is fun and enjoyable and all, it only really is when all play by the rules.

Really, I suppose that's all I wanted to say about that condensed into two points. Again, these complaints aren't born too much out of my own worries: I've gotten a Scroll every time I've run the Spawn, and have gotten declined only twice and one of those times the last wave had already started, so I can -hardly- complain. But some of the other new ones have expressed frustration to me over it, and I can certainly understand it.