Angel Island Proposal

The Angel Island proposal is what I believe the obvious solution to keeping rampant player killing in check while eliminating the need for stat-loss. Clearly, macroing is not the answer and wandering the lands as a ghost for days or weeks is enough to chase even the most dedicated PK out of the game. 

Angel Island is a penal colony where murderers serve their sentence while at the same time participating in the Ultima Online experience. 
The island is setup so as to severely limit access to and from the island while allowing the inmates many freedoms during incarceration. 

Rather than trying to sell an overly ambitious proposal, I will attempt to show how it can be phased in over time. In fact I see it being implemented in 3 phases.

Angel Island - Phase I:

In this first phase, the development team needs to solve some rather straight forward logistical problems:

• Where is Angel Island?
• How do players get to Angel Island?
• How and When do players get off Angel Island?
• How do we limit access to and from the island?

I think most of these are easy. 
Angel Island could be almost anywhere, Buc's Den is an obvious choice, but there other islands which could be used as well.
Getting to Angel Island could be an instand teleport on death or a volantary walk through a perma-gate. Upon arrival, you will be resurected without stat-loss at the Angel Island infirmary.
To leave Angel Island you would step into a perma-gate, much like the ones in the penalty box for macroers. For the gate to work, you must have a murder count of 4 or less which means you need to have stayed long enough on the island for your murder counts to decay.
Limiting access to and from the island is fairly easy. You simply disable the Recall and Gate spells on the island. (This already works today in certain places.)
The other thing which may be the only hitch to phase one is limiting boat access. 
(Haven Island is already doing something for limiting boat access, we can use this code.)
Another interesting idea would be to sprinkle boulders around the shore making docking impossible. (Call this low tide. It comes up again in later phases when we enable the fun stuff.)

That's it! Phase I is complete and we no longer need to take stat-loss, but can instead work-off the murder counts.

Angel Island - Phase II:

In this phase we start making things a bit more interesting for the inmates.
Escape is not impossible!

Help! I'm over here!
Basically, in this phase we enable some very limited access to the island from the outside and possibly some access off the island via caves etc..
Make no mistake, you are a murderer and the chances of you actually getting off the island before you serve your time is like 2-7% depending on the mood of the gods.

Here is one possible way to make this work.
Access to the island could be made by boat if special tools and items were used; telescope, compass, tarot cards, etc.. These items might indicate when there will be a high tide (remember the rocks placed around the island creating a low tide.)

Now just because you may have determined when there is a high tide, you still need to find a location where you can dock. Surly the tide won't stay this way forever and the monsters! My, these spawns are extraordinary during the high tide.

If you made it this far, you still need to rescue your friend or friends and make it back alive to your boat and hope the monsters have not returned and the tide hasn't gone out.

This scheme gives the development several variables to dynamically adjust the difficulty level to insure that a rescue is neither too difficult or too easy.

Exit stage left!
Another fun idea would be to have a cave that exists to the mainland.
The mainland side of the cave does not allow entry, so you will not be receiving any help from your buddies on this one.

The cave is very deadly and dark! Items like torches and lanterns are very rare on Angel Island (potions near impossible to get.) Probably the only successful escapes from this cave are when you can round up a a sizable crew of inmates to work together. Unfortunately, not everyone will make it out alive. (If anyone.)

Again, the developers will be able to control the spawn and availability of torches and such to closely regulate the chances of a successful escape.

Angel Island - Phase III:

So you were unable to escape and you have another week to spend with us here on Angel Island? Fear not, we have a veritable banquet of things to do.

This is the Angel Island proposal. 

Angel Island allows the punishment of player killers to be role-played. It also allows the offender to remain in the game without wandering around as a ghost for days or macroing off kills.

There other dozens of other twists you can add to Angel Island. The most important thing to remember when considering the Angel Island proposal is this:
Murderers pay their $10.00 per month for their UO accounts just like the rest of the community.
Any system put into place should deal with murderers in such a way as to not totally destroy their gaming experience while they are being punished for their crime (It should all be part of the game, and enjoyable.)

It is a non-trivial task to implement such a ‘world extension’, but I believe it would be widely accepted by both the RP, PvP and RP-PvP/PK community alike.
And besides, we're paying for it!