How to fix UO and get new players

[georgemarvin2001]

UO is an old game, and it really needs some upkeep if it wants to last much longer. We need to make the game more friendly to new players. New player zones and faster downloads aren't the answer.

1. New high-resolution graphics. Woodsman informed me that the EC uses the Gamebryo engine, the same one that powers a lot of the newest, cutting-edge games. Unfortunately, it takes a special kind of talent to make a crappy, low-res client like the EC out of such a great engine.
2. UO really needs to hire some real artists. The EC artwork is bad. Really bad. Some of it actually hurts players' eyes.
3. Get rid of the massively overcomplicated weapons and armor system. It chases away more potential players than the graphics.
3A: Reduce the resists on armor to just "Physical" and "Elemental".
3B: Reduce the number of properties on equipment to 3 or less.
3C: Reduce the amount of info shown on equipment unless we use the Item ID skill.
4. Fix the bugs. Many have been around since AOS. NOT acceptable.
5. Stop the cheats. A new, better client may help with that.
6. Re-balance combat. Nerfing the Gimp-Template-of-the-Week just won't cut it. It shouldn't be a veterans-only experience.
6A: Get rid of power scrolls or make them all legendary and really easy to get. The skill gap that the power scrolls caused is overpowering. It makes PvP combat totally impossible for new players.
6B: Stop making new combat skills that are necessary for PvP.
6C: Get rid of the 20 skill points and 5 stat points bonus for veterans. Just bump the total skill points to 840 for everybody, cut out skills from the item properties, and it'll help a lot. Everybody will be able to have 7 skills at max again.
6D: Increase the combat values for skills, and reduce the combat value of all equipment. That will make the 500 million gold suit less of an overpowering advantage.
7. Make new dungeons where item insurance doesn't work, and make the best loot drop there.
8. Reduce the amount of junk that drops on high-end monsters and treasure chests. A level 7 chest should have 2 or 3 really high quality items. Same for a high-end monster. Make Spring Cleaning and Fall Cleaning annual events. AOS should be called the Age of Massive Amounts of Useless Junk.
9. Let new players have an extended free trial if they will start on the low-population shards. There are a lot of wasted resources maintaining shards that don't have an active player base anymore. They should be populated or closed; the skeleton dev crew is stretched thin as it is.
10. Another alternative is to just offer the few people on low-pop shards a free transfer and compensation for their houses, and close the empty shards down.
11. Fix the economy. Auction houses would be good. Gold sinks, more ways to get rid of useless stuff, etc. would be good.
12. AFTER making a great-looking 3D engine, fixing combat and making the equipment and armor systems make sense again, ADVERTISE!!! UO was once among the most popular online games. If it was run right, it could be again.

Another edit inspired by Woodsman: Auction house and in-game mail. Those additions would make UO a lot more user-friendly. Also, a way to see if friends are online, and improvements to guilds.

UO has a LOT going for it that the Devs take for granted:
1. Player housing
2. It's a sandbox, not just a fighting and leveling game. You could be anything.
3. Recall, especially pre-AOS; never understood the logic of putting the champ spawns in the Fel dungeons and making them so we couldn't recall in and out.
4. No restrictions on what we could trade and wear until ML, and only a few afterward.
5. Pre-AOS, real risk and consequences to our actions.
6. Well-developed crafting, that isn't dependent on fighting skills.

The major problems are mostly from the AOS crew:
1. Massively over-complicated weapons and armor system that even veteran players have trouble with.
2. Outdated graphics.
3. Unbalanced combat, where players with expensive equipment and power scrolls have a massive advantage. It takes months or years for a new player to acquire the gold to compete in PvP.
4. Veterans get a 20 point skill bonus and 5 point stat bonus, further exacerbating the problem.
5. Some skills are excruciatingly boring and repetitive to gain. It just isn't any fun to spend weeks picking GM made locks or making maps, etc.; making skills much harder and more boring to GM was one of the AOS crew's biggest mistakes.
6. After power scrolls, the number of skills was effectively reduced from 7 to 6; that forced us into cookie-cutter templates. Then a lot of new combat-only skills were introduced, which squeezed out the ability to make our characters more individual. Now, we use soulstones constantly because of that problem.

Anybody want to voice their opinion?

 

[Woodsman]

1. A new 3-D engine and high-resolution graphics. UO could be awesome on a modern 3-D game engine like Unreal.

UO's Enhanced Client is the same engine as Morrowwind, Obvlivion, Fallout 3, Rift, and a slew of others. The problem is not the engine - it's the artwork that engine displays.

Moving to a new engine would set UO back a ways since developers would have to get up to speed on it, plus it would require EA to spend a lot of money, which they are not going to be prone to do with Star Wars sucking up resources.

I agree about new artwork, and we are at least getting higher resolution artwork, which might help things. At least it will move things forward into the latter part of the 2000s.

As for #3, Good luck on getting rid of AOS. As much as I'd agree, there are too many people who don't.

As for #4 and #5, fixing the bugs, etc., UO would be set back with a new engine - best they keep working out the kinks of the current game engine, plus let Pinco do his thing.

9. Let new players have an extended free trial if they will start on the low-population shards. There are a lot of wasted resources maintaining shards that don't have an active player base anymore. They should be populated or closed; the skeleton dev crew is stretched thin as it is.

10. Another alternative is to just offer the few people on low-pop shards a free transfer and compensation for their houses, and close the empty shards down.

Actually they don't take up much hardware resources anymore, not with them moving everything to blades/clustering. If they were taking up expensive resources, they would have been closed years ago - see Warhammer for what happens when you have expensive hardware and not enough players.

Plus you'd make a lot of existing players really bitter if you closed their shards, and if you happen to get an influx of players, re-opening or creating new shards would then take up resources.

Seriously, if they were a drain/not paying for themselves, they would have been closed long ago.

I'm still up for an auction house of sorts, especially since it would require a new in-game communication system that we desperately need. That's one thing I think you left off - we need something beyond global chat and mailboxes and bulletin boards tied to houses.

Make the mailbox actually function as something other than a dropoff point. I should be able to create a letter/book, put in a player ID on it, drop it in my mailbox, and have it sent to another mailbox somewhere else.

 

[HD2300]

1. A new 3-D engine and high-resolution graphics. UO could be awesome on a modern 3-D game engine like Unreal.
2. Even if we don't get a really good new engine, UO really needs to hire some real artists. The EC artwork is bad. Really bad. Some of it actually hurts players' eyes.

Yes and Yes.

3D engine and Free To Play with restricted gameplay such as no housing/100 point cap per skill.

Wasting time revamping the new player experience without 3D and F2P is just a unproductive waste of time. Seriously what is the point of converting 75% instead of 50% of new players to regular subscribers, if only 100 new players per month will try out the game because the graphics make you vomit and there is no risk free F2P trial like LOTRO or EQII.

Far better to have a F2P option which will bring in 10000 new players per month to try out the game, and even if you only convert 25% of them to regular subscribers, 2500 is greater than 75.

It is actually worse (more unproductive) then spending 2 months making a video when you could spend 5 minutes posting a yes or no forum post. Worse in that this also ties up developers too, instead of just a producer, to something that will have minimal impact... unless UO is going F2P. Sometimes you have to question the judgement and leadership when dodgy marketing decisions, such as the 12 month dangling of the Classic Shard carrot, divide the community instead build the community.

 

[Zosimus]

Moving to a new engine would set UO back a ways since developers would have to get up to speed on it, plus it would require EA to spend a lot of money, which they are not going to be prone to do with Star Wars sucking up resources.

100% right

As for #4 and #5, fixing the bugs, etc., UO would be set back with a new engine - best they keep working out the kinks of the current game engine, plus let Pinco do his thing.

Agree with you on that also. Pinco makes excellent mods.

6D: Increase the combat values for skills, and reduce the combat value of all equipment. That will make the 500 million gold suit less of an overpowering advantage

.

Skills should be > then equipment but as we have it its more equipment then skills sadly.

I'm still up for an auction house of sorts, especially since it would require a new in-game communication system that we desperately need. That's one thing I think you left off - we need something beyond global chat and mailboxes and bulletin boards tied to houses.

Make the mailbox actually function as something other than a dropoff point. I should be able to create a letter/book, put in a player ID on it, drop it in my mailbox, and have it sent to another mailbox somewhere else.

Warhammer has the auction house style system. Works very well and hopefully they can do this in UO. I will say maybe they can but not sure if they could utilize mailboxes like they do in Warhammer. UO and War are both Bioware so maybe they could get a code to work in UO. Just if they can code it in UO. War system is a public mailbox at each war camp since there is no housing. So it may be easier if they did it in cities then individual homes if they could.

3. Get rid of the massively overcomplicated weapons and armor system. It chases away more potential players than the graphics.
3A: Reduce the resists on armor to just "Physical" and "Elemental".
3B: Reduce the number of properties on equipment to 3 or less.
3C: Reduce the amount of info shown on equipment unless we use the Item ID skill.

To late to dump AoS properties. It also would make imbuing and the SA expansion usueless if they did. With crowded templates now days Item ID is hardly a used skill anymore and most wouldnt want to have it back.

6A: Get rid of power scrolls or make them all legendary and really easy to get. The skill gap that the power scrolls caused is overpowering. It makes PvP combat totally impossible for new players.

What would PvPers be doing in fel then? Yew gate only? Factions are used mostly for faction arties and until they decide to rework factions pvpers have to have something in fel. Champ spawns wil stay in fel same as power scrolls.

8. Reduce the amount of junk that drops on high-end monsters and treasure chests. A level 7 chest should have 2 or 3 really high quality items. Same for a high-end monster. Make Spring Cleaning and Fall Cleaning annual events. AOS should be called the Age of Massive Amounts of Useless Junk.

LMAO. This I have to totally agree with. The best part of your post

 

[Novak(Caci)]

UO need to be advertised trouhg internet and
as box inside stores.
And uo needs a friendlist with in game email system.

 

[Aran]

Classic 2D client is the only client. Anything else, get out, go play another game.

 

[G.v.P]

UO's Enhanced Client is the same engine as Morrowwind, Obvlivion, Fallout 3, Rift, and a slew of others. The problem is not the engine - it's the artwork that engine displays.

Seriously? It's the same engine as Rift? Wow. Well the spell animations and explosions and such look sweet, just that the characters don't "pop," that's always been my main complaint. Too bland and not sharp enough.

 

[Uvtha]

1) Make new game.

I agree.

 

[georgemarvin2001]

@Woodsman: WOW. They're using Gamebryo to make such crap as the EC???? I didn't know they were using an expensive, high-end 3D engine to make such a crappy 2D EC client. I just assumed some 3rd rate hacks had made a really crappy in-House engine. It takes a special kind of talent to make such utter crap as the EC with Gamebryo.
Rift artwork:
RIFT - Screenshots
Games using the Gamebryo engine:
Gamebryo | Industry-Leading Cross-Platform Game Development Engine

I'm editing my first post. They do NOT need a new engine, they need to fire all the totally incompetent oafs who have managed to make pure crap using a great engine. It's like turning monkeys with wrenches loose on a brand-new Ferrari engine.

An auction house and in-game mail system would be great. I'm adding that to my edit, as well. With proper credit to you, of course.

@Zosimus: The new dungeons would be no insurance; high risk and high reward. They would naturally be in Felucca. That would bring a lot of people back to Felucca without forcing them to join factions.

 

[Thunderz]

When a new account is started if its kept paid for for 6 months it recieves 100mill gold [below the market value so it wont be profitable for gold sellers and might even put them out of business as the gold to $ ratio will plumit making there gold worth nothing] so they can then get upto the level of everyone who plays now with respect to kit and scrolls they need as in 6 months they should of comfortably hit GM in a noob handmedown suit.

Thunderz

 

[Woodsman]

@Woodsman: WOW. They're using Gamebryo to make such crap as the EC???? I didn't know they were using an expensive, high-end 3D engine to make such a crappy 2D EC client. I just assumed some 3rd rate hacks had made a really crappy in-House engine. It takes a special kind of talent to make such utter crap as the EC with Gamebryo.

EA uses Gamebryo for Warhammer, Camelot, and the UO EC. EA probably got a pretty decent deal on Gamebryo. They may even be using it with Star Wars, since UO/DAOC/Warhammer aren't the only titles EA is using it for. It's probably one of the smarter things EA has done with their MMORPGs, given that the developers can share information about the client between projects.

I'm actually wondering if EA will buy Gamebryo or the parent company Emergent since Emergent is up for sale (or at least most of its IP including Gamebryo).

Other than a desktop crash in two specific locations, I've enjoyed the EC since coming back - Pinco makes it awesome. Come to think of it, I don't think I've had a crash since the last update, because I've went by those two places several times without a hitch.

It's just a matter of the fact that we are displaying old artwork through it, and unfortunately that artwork is 2D and somewhat optimized for 800x600 displays.

I'm editing my first post. They do NOT need a new engine, they need to fire all the totally incompetent oafs who have managed to make pure crap using a great engine. It's like turning monkeys with wrenches loose on a brand-new Ferrari engine.

I don't think you understand how it works. We could have had a really smooth-running engine long before now, but the problem is that the UO dev team is pretty barebones compared to what it used to be. When you have things like the bloodbath in 2009 where a lot of Mythic employees were laid off, well you lose knowledge of the client.

If UO, Warhammer, and DAOC all had big dev teams, there would be a lot of knowledge about the client and they'd be able to help each other, because there would be developers who were allowed to do nothing but work on the client. Instead they get pulled off to work on other parts (High Seas anyone?) or other projects (Star Wars), and then have to turn around and pick back up where they left off.

The UO dev team is very small for what they do. High Seas pushed them to the limits of what they can do with the amount of staff they have.

You want to insult them, whatever, but put yourself in their shoes - the developers are all doing several different things, and at various points were pulled into work on Star Wars and Warhammer in the past. They are also stuck with the limitations of the 2D artwork.

It would drive me nuts to have a decent 3D engine to work on, and then laying old 2D artwork on top of it.

 

[Cear Dallben Dragon]

UO is an old game, and it really needs some upkeep if it wants to last much longer. We need to make the game more friendly to new players. New player zones and faster downloads aren't the answer.

1. New high-resolution graphics. Woodsman informed me that the EC uses the Gamebryo engine, the same one that powers a lot of the newest, cutting-edge games. Unfortunately, it takes a special kind of talent to make a crappy, low-res client like the EC out of such a great engine.
2. UO really needs to hire some real artists. The EC artwork is bad. Really bad. Some of it actually hurts players' eyes.

ignorance, pretty interesting.

 

[HD2300]

UO is an old game, and it really needs some upkeep if it wants to last much longer. We need to make the game more friendly to new players. New player zones and faster downloads aren't the answer.

1. New high-resolution graphics. Woodsman informed me that the EC uses the Gamebryo engine, the same one that powers a lot of the newest, cutting-edge games. Unfortunately, it takes a special kind of talent to make a crappy, low-res client like the EC out of such a great engine.
2. UO really needs to hire some real artists. The EC artwork is bad. Really bad. Some of it actually hurts players' eyes.

ignorance, pretty interesting.

Yeah Like the KR Client was So Awesome. Why not replace the current graphics in the EC with graphics that were in the KR client? It will be like super duper. Like the graphics in the KR client was so awesomely successful 4 years ago, like when they do this, like millions of new players will be rushing in to play UO again. Really.

 

[G.v.P]

An auction house and in-game mail system would be great. I'm adding that to my edit, as well. With proper credit to you, of course.

We actually used to have an in-game mail system. But then they got rid of it for some reason. And we got virtues.

 

[RavenWinterHawk]

UO is an old game, and it really needs some upkeep if it wants to last much longer. We need to make the game more friendly to new players. New player zones and faster downloads aren't the answer.

1. New high-resolution graphics. Woodsman informed me that the EC uses the Gamebryo engine, the same one that powers a lot of the newest, cutting-edge games. Unfortunately, it takes a special kind of talent to make a crappy, low-res client like the EC out of such a great engine.
2. UO really needs to hire some real artists. The EC artwork is bad. Really bad. Some of it actually hurts players' eyes.
3. Get rid of the massively overcomplicated weapons and armor system. It chases away more potential players than the graphics.
3A: Reduce the resists on armor to just "Physical" and "Elemental".
3B: Reduce the number of properties on equipment to 3 or less.
3C: Reduce the amount of info shown on equipment unless we use the Item ID skill.
4. Fix the bugs. Many have been around since AOS. NOT acceptable.
5. Stop the cheats. A new, better client may help with that.
6. Re-balance combat. Nerfing the Gimp-Template-of-the-Week just won't cut it. It shouldn't be a veterans-only experience.
6A: Get rid of power scrolls or make them all legendary and really easy to get. The skill gap that the power scrolls caused is overpowering. It makes PvP combat totally impossible for new players.
6B: Stop making new combat skills that are necessary for PvP.
6C: Get rid of the 20 skill points and 5 stat points bonus for veterans. Just bump the total skill points to 840 for everybody, cut out skills from the item properties, and it'll help a lot. Everybody will be able to have 7 skills at max again.
6D: Increase the combat values for skills, and reduce the combat value of all equipment. That will make the 500 million gold suit less of an overpowering advantage.
7. Make new dungeons where item insurance doesn't work, and make the best loot drop there.
8. Reduce the amount of junk that drops on high-end monsters and treasure chests. A level 7 chest should have 2 or 3 really high quality items. Same for a high-end monster. Make Spring Cleaning and Fall Cleaning annual events. AOS should be called the Age of Massive Amounts of Useless Junk.
9. Let new players have an extended free trial if they will start on the low-population shards. There are a lot of wasted resources maintaining shards that don't have an active player base anymore. They should be populated or closed; the skeleton dev crew is stretched thin as it is.
10. Another alternative is to just offer the few people on low-pop shards a free transfer and compensation for their houses, and close the empty shards down.
11. Fix the economy. Auction houses would be good. Gold sinks, more ways to get rid of useless stuff, etc. would be good.
12. AFTER making a great-looking 3D engine, fixing combat and making the equipment and armor systems make sense again, ADVERTISE!!! UO was once among the most popular online games. If it was run right, it could be again.

Another edit inspired by Woodsman: Auction house and in-game mail. Those additions would make UO a lot more user-friendly. Also, a way to see if friends are online, and improvements to guilds.

UO has a LOT going for it that the Devs take for granted:
1. Player housing
2. It's a sandbox, not just a fighting and leveling game. You could be anything.
3. Recall, especially pre-AOS; never understood the logic of putting the champ spawns in the Fel dungeons and making them so we couldn't recall in and out.
4. No restrictions on what we could trade and wear until ML, and only a few afterward.
5. Pre-AOS, real risk and consequences to our actions.
6. Well-developed crafting, that isn't dependent on fighting skills.

The major problems are mostly from the AOS crew:
1. Massively over-complicated weapons and armor system that even veteran players have trouble with.
2. Outdated graphics.
3. Unbalanced combat, where players with expensive equipment and power scrolls have a massive advantage. It takes months or years for a new player to acquire the gold to compete in PvP.
4. Veterans get a 20 point skill bonus and 5 point stat bonus, further exacerbating the problem.
5. Some skills are excruciatingly boring and repetitive to gain. It just isn't any fun to spend weeks picking GM made locks or making maps, etc.; making skills much harder and more boring to GM was one of the AOS crew's biggest mistakes.
6. After power scrolls, the number of skills was effectively reduced from 7 to 6; that forced us into cookie-cutter templates. Then a lot of new combat-only skills were introduced, which squeezed out the ability to make our characters more individual. Now, we use soulstones constantly because of that problem.

Anybody want to voice their opinion?

A point to explore would be nice.

 

[Nexus]

Where to start...

UO is an old game, and it really needs some upkeep if it wants to last much longer. We need to make the game more friendly to new players. New player zones and faster downloads aren't the answer.

1. New high-resolution graphics. Woodsman informed me that the EC uses the Gamebryo engine, the same one that powers a lot of the newest, cutting-edge games. Unfortunately, it takes a special kind of talent to make a crappy, low-res client like the EC out of such a great engine.
2. UO really needs to hire some real artists. The EC artwork is bad. Really bad. Some of it actually hurts players' eyes.

The problem isn't the artists or the clients graphics engine... I feel it's the server side coding, it's an archaic backbone for all that is UO, and a new Coat of paint isn't going to do anything but hide flaws. Sometimes you have to work with what you have, and that's what they are doing, if the back end can't support a 3D environment without a major overhaul which they don't have the resources to preform, guess what you don't get a 3D engine, no matter how good the artists are you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear....

3. Get rid of the massively overcomplicated weapons and armor system. It chases away more potential players than the graphics.
3A: Reduce the resists on armor to just "Physical" and "Elemental".
3B: Reduce the number of properties on equipment to 3 or less.
3C: Reduce the amount of info shown on equipment unless we use the Item ID skill.

UO's system is simpler than many modern MMO's All you need to track are skills, resists, and a handful of mods, mostly LRC, LMC, DCI, HCI, and MR that's less much much less than most games. It's extremely simple if you use the "Character Sheet" page in the Enhanced Client to view your stats and mods...

4. Fix the bugs. Many have been around since AOS. NOT acceptable.

This I will agree with.

5. Stop the cheats. A new, better client may help with that.

If nothing else a new client will facilitate cheats. Let me put it this way, newer modern programming languages are simpler to make work for developers easier, it has spawned a whole new craze of hobbyist some of which are very good, with open API's available in many games for the "Mod" community, which has become the norm it's an open door for invitation to cheating. Other games combat this with a strict "Seek and Destroy" stance on cheating, or through methods like Punkbuster. Blizzard won a suit against the makers of a Cheat Engine for WoW to the sum of $6 million for example.
The reason you don't see rampant "Cheating" with the EC is because no one cares, why build a new cheat engine and new "Scripts" for the EC when you just use the old 2D client. If they closed the CC down tomorrow, next week there would be a cheat engine for the EC.

6. Re-balance combat. Nerfing the Gimp-Template-of-the-Week just won't cut it. It shouldn't be a veterans-only experience.
6A: Get rid of power scrolls or make them all legendary and really easy to get. The skill gap that the power scrolls caused is overpowering. It makes PvP combat totally impossible for new players.
6B: Stop making new combat skills that are necessary for PvP.
6C: Get rid of the 20 skill points and 5 stat points bonus for veterans. Just bump the total skill points to 840 for everybody, cut out skills from the item properties, and it'll help a lot. Everybody will be able to have 7 skills at max again.
6D: Increase the combat values for skills, and reduce the combat value of all equipment. That will make the 500 million gold suit less of an overpowering advantage.

A: I agree with
B: You decide they are necessary not the developers.
C: I partially agree. Give everyone 720/+5 is fine, not 840 skill points. That would counter mine efforts to "balance" as now you can split templates up even more.
D: Why is anyone spending 500mil on a suit? I can build an LRC, LMC, MR, FC/FCR capped Corpse proof suit for around 3-5. If you are spending 500 it's because you choose to not because you have too.

7. Make new dungeons where item insurance doesn't work, and make the best loot drop there.

I believe Siege already does this... Next

8. Reduce the amount of junk that drops on high-end monsters and treasure chests. A level 7 chest should have 2 or 3 really high quality items. Same for a high-end monster. Make Spring Cleaning and Fall Cleaning annual events. AOS should be called the Age of Massive Amounts of Useless Junk.

Unravel the junk and Imbue good stuff, oh that means "System working as intended.".

9. Let new players have an extended free trial if they will start on the low-population shards. There are a lot of wasted resources maintaining shards that don't have an active player base anymore. They should be populated or closed; the skeleton dev crew is stretched thin as it is.

And the number of players lost if they closed shards would be detrimental to all the shards. After 10+ years for most shards no one who is a long term vet on them would be able to justify loosing everything they spent the past decade doing even if it is just a game. These low population shards generate Revenue, just like the high population ones. Loss of a good portion of that revenue won't help anything.

10. Another alternative is to just offer the few people on low-pop shards a free transfer and compensation for their houses, and close the empty shards down.

How do you put a price tag on community? Old shards still have some of their community kicking around. How about instead complaining about the low pop shards you buy a transfer and go there.. that will increase their population that's as reasonable an answer as what you are saying and the arguments for or against it are just as justifiable and in some cases are the same.

11. Fix the economy. Auction houses would be good. Gold sinks, more ways to get rid of useless stuff, etc. would be good.

You try changing the laws of economics.... The UO economy is working just the way it should it is driven by supply and demand... The only real solution isn't a valid one. You see UO has no "Fixed" economy, there is always new gold generated.. You can't force it out of the system they've tried with gold sinks and they are less than moderately effective. If they switched to a static economy where only (X) amount of currency is in circulation it would destroy any chance at success for new players, as vets would horde all the funds.

12. AFTER making a great-looking 3D engine, fixing combat and making the equipment and armor systems make sense again, ADVERTISE!!! UO was once among the most popular online games. If it was run right, it could be again.

First they have to get UO taken seriously by gamers again, outside it's community UO is almost a joke.... It's that old bug riddled game full of cheats. A pretty client won't fix that, neither will dumbing down an already simplistic equipment system...

Another edit inspired by Woodsman: Auction house and in-game mail. Those additions would make UO a lot more user-friendly. Also, a way to see if friends are online, and improvements to guilds.

Those I can agree with.

UO has a LOT going for it that the Devs take for granted:
1. Player housing

I can name other games with player housing, not all of it is Persistent, but in LOTRO for example you have limited customization ability.

2. It's a sandbox, not just a fighting and leveling game. You could be anything.
3. Recall, especially pre-AOS; never understood the logic of putting the champ spawns in the Fel dungeons and making them so we couldn't recall in and out.

Well that wasn't "always" the case Champs spawns are Pre-AoS. Initially they were in Ilshenar and only Ilshenar. They weren't added to Fel until 2002 to boost Fel traffic and PvP. It was the same publish that introduced GGS, nerfed Bards, and Taming Control Slots. The No-Recall was put in so people couldn't run a Spawn then recall out as soon as the scrolls dropped, you had to fight your way back out!

4. No restrictions on what we could trade and wear until ML, and only a few afterward.

You'll never be able to wear Gargoyle Gear, the "Slots" don't line up because the character models are different sizes.

5. Pre-AOS, real risk and consequences to our actions.

Honestly that's not exactly true... Reds have less consequence now than they did then, Blues well as soon as UO:R arrived the idea of "Risk" went out the window. Sure you lost some armor and weaps here and there, but nothing you couldn't replace easy enough.

6. Well-developed crafting, that isn't dependent on fighting skills.

Dependent on Fighting?? Let me tell you a little story, Pre-AoS I GM'ed Tailoring, Carpentry, Blacksmithing, Tinkering, Inscription, and Alchemy. Never once did I purchase Regs, Chop wood, I mined to GM for smelting, but that wasn't enough ingots for GMing the skill, I never bought scrolls, I never farmed leather... I acquired everything on a Mage. The back room at Brit Bank was a wonderful thing, A stealth Mage could make a fortune there and I did. By using my "Fighting" skills nothing has changed except now you have to kill a few monsters and get some gold while doing it.

The major problems are mostly from the AOS crew:
1. Massively over-complicated weapons and armor system that even veteran players have trouble with.

It's still simplistic compared to many other games you have less "stats" to track.

2. Outdated graphics.

Write a new Server Side engine for them to take advantage of a new Graphics Engine.... UO Was good at it's release no one denys that. Time advanced and unfortunately it's not always "Simple" to keep up....

3. Unbalanced combat, where players with expensive equipment and power scrolls have a massive advantage. It takes months or years for a new player to acquire the gold to compete in PvP.
4. Veterans get a 20 point skill bonus and 5 point stat bonus, further exacerbating the problem.

I kinda agree here.

5. Some skills are excruciatingly boring and repetitive to gain. It just isn't any fun to spend weeks picking GM made locks or making maps, etc.; making skills much harder and more boring to GM was one of the AOS crew's biggest mistakes.

They removed the "Anti-Macro Code" that well helped some skills hurt others, regardless your examples are moot, I can GM Cart and LP in 24 hours by hand....

6. After power scrolls, the number of skills was effectively reduced from 7 to 6; that forced us into cookie-cutter templates. Then a lot of new combat-only skills were introduced, which squeezed out the ability to make our characters more individual. Now, we use soulstones constantly because of that problem.

No players went "Cookie Cutter" because they were forced, over hybridization and desire for competitive advantage did that. No one is forcing you to go 6x120, you choose too, because that is what makes you competitive. Heck about half my "Combat" characters don't run 6x120, they have 7 or 8 skills with split up points to make them more effective. It's not "Cookie Cutter" that is causing what you are thinking about it's hybridization and desire to compete. Soulstones are a great thing though, with the number of skills available you simply can not experience even 50% of what UO has to offer with out them if you can only afford 1 account, You'd be constantly deleting and building new characters. Besides, say you had 120 swords and decided you wanted to switch to fencing... would you want to throw away the 120 swords, or save it and just scroll up a new character and save hours of skill that horrid dull skill training....... Besides look at inscription, you need the casting skill to make better books... So put Inscribe, Magery, Necromancy, Mysticism, Meditation on a character and try to figure out something "useful" for the other 160 points....

And what combat only abilities? I use Necromancy for IDOC's that's not "Combat" I use a Horde Minion to hoover up stuff when the house drops as I load up a packie or two. I stick Chiv on crafters just to SJ around since I don't need LRC for it, I've put Necro on some for Recalling with Wraith Form, it takes less skill than the Recall Spell with Magery and never fizzles at low skill as long as you are in Wraith Form. Bushido was always intended for Dexxers, Ninjitsu I put on a Thief that doesn't "Fight" he runs....that leaves what? Throwing the Gargoyle replacement for Archery. Imbuing which well, is a craft, Spellweaving which is Combative, and Mysticism, which is also Combative like SW and Throwing. So no I can't agree that intent of the new skills are only "Combat Related" only about half of them have no real use outside combat situations.

 

[Lord Frodo]

When a new account is started if its kept paid for for 6 months it recieves 100mill gold

$60 USD for 100M gold. Everyone will just open accounts with 6mo game code and then close them. Just adds more gold into the game and makes it even more worthless. Flooding the market with more gold fixes nothing.

 

[phantus]

1.) Make a new single player Ultima that doesn't suck. The name is no longer recognized.

2.) Create EC only content for free to get more people to start using it thus get more support for it by the developers. Develop the EC into something that doesn't suck.

3.) Make PvP games or scenarios, instances etc


I don't like counting above 3. Makes posts seem too long.

1.) Don't dumb the game down. New players are smart and can handle item properties and hybridization.

2.) Put restrictions on properties based upon skills like would make sense. A warrior should not get LMC. A mage should not get HCI. (and no this would not make a class system either. Think outside your tiny little box...just about too small to see but I watched it waay too long it was pulling me down ...)

 

[Dermott of LS]

...

A warrior should not get LMC

Why not? Melee class use mana just as any mage class does... or did you forget about special attacks on weapons (and of course there are the melee-based "mage" skills such as Chiv and Bushido that require mana).

 

[georgemarvin2001]

@Woodsman: I can just see EA trying to move the Gamebase staff from Seoul, South Korea to California. It's a good, modern engine, but there are several other game engines that are as good or better. But with their development staff located in Korea, there are all sorts of problems, including the language barrier. They are opening an office in North Carolina, but that isn't much closer to California than Korea, both geographically and culturally.
About Us | Gamebase Co., Ltd.
It would be yet another attempt by EA to try to integrate a company that just doesn't fit. Remember the attempt to move from Texas to California? And the people in Texas spoke the same language.
There's also the fact that they really can't afford it. It's possible that EA would buy Gamebryo. They have the cash on hand right now; that's the one thing they have an abundance of. But EA is consistently losing $650 million a year. They have a TON of cash, something in the range of $2.7 billion in cash and liquid assets. But they also have a lot of debt that is due NOW; their current liabilities have increased from $1.1 billion in July to over $2 billion last quarter. Also, they had $1.04 billion in sales last quarter, but $1.37 billion in expenses. That's a $303 million operating loss in the Christmas quarter. If you add in their other liabilities which are due in the next couple of months, they have $2.37 billion in current debt, so they only have about $330 million in AVAILABLE cash to play with. And another big quarterly loss could wipe that out entirely.
Cash flow is also pretty bad. The last quarter was the only positive cash flow in years, but that was just because they deferred $334 million in taxes. They have consistently bled over $200 million in negative cash flow every quarter for a year.
If I was running a business with such a massive negative cash flow, but tons of cash on hand, I wouldn't try to buy out a foreign company whose sales are mostly to Asian markets, which often pay a fraction of the licensing fees that US companies do.
Gamebryo 3D Engine Widely Adopted in Asia - PC News at IGN
Instead, I would be looking at buying some cash-flow-positive smaller companies with real assets and without language barriers, that I could integrate seamlessly, to bolster the balance sheet. I would NOT spend maybe $100 million to buy a company with $44 million in debt, no real assets, which is losing $10 million a year, whose game engine tech is rated below the industry leaders, and which probably doesn't have the resources to improve it to the point where it becomes the industry leader.

I would expect that EA will either build an in-house game engine, or just continue leasing the rights to Gamebryo or another engine. The cost-effective approach would be an in-house engine, which could lease a few core technologies from each of the major manufacturers.

When I looked over the specs for Gamebryo, I saw that one of its biggest selling points is that they can change artwork on-the-fly, without having to recompile. Which means that they could have an artist insert the dragons with proper colors in a matter of seconds. Click the color you want; each color of dragon will have a separate hash code, so you would only change the ones that are the right color in CC but the wrong color in EC. Run a 100 kilobyte patch to insert the new artwork into the EC. Voila, red and green dragons in EC. Less than a minute, you've taken care of one of the biggest gripes of the tamers. Same goes for a lot of the artwork that just looks bad, or actually hurts our eyes. Toning down those bright white spell effects to yellow or other colors, with a lot less intensity could be done in a matter of minutes. Making the earthquake effect less annoying would take a little more work, but it wouldn't be a huge programming chore, either.

 

[Uvtha]

The problem isn't the artists or the clients graphics engine... I feel it's the server side coding, it's an archaic backbone for all that is UO, and a new Coat of paint isn't going to do anything but hide flaws. Sometimes you have to work with what you have, and that's what they are doing, if the back end can't support a 3D environment without a major overhaul which they don't have the resources to preform, guess what you don't get a 3D engine, no matter how good the artists are you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear....

You got it. I don't see why more people don't understand the inherent limitations UO faces. If you want a big fancy 3d world even one with a isometric prospective you really just have to make a new game, with new rules for moment and terrain design.

Most of the graphics for KR were good honestly. If they had been developed for a non stone age game they would have been much more impressive in action.

 

[phantus]

...

A warrior should not get LMC

Why not? Melee class use mana just as any mage class does... or did you forget about special attacks on weapons (and of course there are the melee-based "mage" skills such as Chiv and Bushido that require mana).

Didn't forget at all. I don't think a warrior should be able to chain special moves without diversifying. It's not a popular idea but I don't like the fact everyone has suits with all max properties. You should be made to make sacrifices in certain areas based on the skills you choose and not get all the benefits from everything. At least they should be limited. I've always felt this way since the beginning of AoS. Skill > gear. Like I said, it's not a very popular idea.

 

[Jean-Loot PKard]

There is only one way to fix this game imho and that is going "free to play". There will never be enough new players for this ****ty engine with the ultra bad graphics. We oldtimers love this game and we love the graphics. but no new players will fork out 13€ a month to play a game with such a bad graphic engine. (hell I am myself considering after 12 years if this game is still worth it, since I am not even playing)

On the other hand, millions of people play games with ****ty graphics, since they are free to play. Just do it and keep a subscription model for us old guys who like the game like it is. Beside that, open the game up....

 

[canary]

On the other hand, millions of people play games with ****ty graphics, since they are free to play. Just do it and keep a subscription model for us old guys who like the game like it is. Beside that, open the game up....

Well, to be perfectly honest, most of the F2P games have far superior graphics than UO.

 

[HD2300]

There is only one way to fix this game imho and that is going "free to play". There will never be enough new players for this ****ty engine with the ultra bad graphics. We oldtimers love this game and we love the graphics. but no new players will fork out 13€ a month to play a game with such a bad graphic engine. (hell I am myself considering after 12 years if this game is still worth it, since I am not even playing)

On the other hand, millions of people play games with ****ty graphics, since they are free to play. Just do it and keep a subscription model for us old guys who like the game like it is. Beside that, open the game up....

this.

Well, to be perfectly honest, most of the F2P games have far superior graphics than UO.

No but if they revert back to KR client graphics, it is going to bring in millionz of new players, just like it did 4 years ago. Really.

 

[Nexus]

Well, to be perfectly honest, most of the F2P games have far superior graphics than UO.

Most F2P games, at least those with good graphics were released in the past 4-5 years. They aren't building on an archaic server code like UO is.

 

[canary]

Most F2P games, at least those with good graphics were released in the past 4-5 years. They aren't building on an archaic server code like UO is.

Well yes, if you read my post above I was just refuting what someone said in that F2P games have poor graphics. The 'age' thing had nothing to do with my disagreement what they said.

 

[Thunderz]

$60 USD for 100M gold. Everyone will just open accounts with 6mo game code and then close them. Just adds more gold into the game and makes it even more worthless. Flooding the market with more gold fixes nothing.

Thats what i said in my post, you can buy it off a broker for 25-50 cent so it wont be profitale to open a new account todo that.

Also knocking a "0" of every check in the game would bring everything down.

Inflation is gona happen look at human history with currency, $10 100 years ago is the equivilant of like $10000 now.

Thunderz

 

[Aran]

Inflation is gona happen look at human history with currency, $10 100 years ago is the equivilant of like $10000 now.

Thunderz

What cost $10 in 1909 would cost $235.80 in 2009.

Also, if you were to buy exactly the same products in 2009 and 1909,
they would cost you $10 and $0.42 respectively.

The Inflation Calculator


Wrooooooong