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We all know it's true.
wonder how much longer it will last; technically it's past it's "shelf" life. they don't push it anymore really, they need a relaunch and some advertizing on youtube and facebook might get the players going in and definitely an email with incentive to come on back like they did in 06
I am thinking that sometime past the 20th anniversary they will have one of those "it is with a sad heart that we are announcing UO will be shutting down . . ." announcements
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Thanks for the share @DJAd . An interesting read!
I especially like the old school interview with Rainz here: http://noctalis.com/dis/uo/blast02a.shtml
I especially like the old school interview with Rainz here: http://noctalis.com/dis/uo/blast02a.shtml
Unless the game has become unprofitable, I don't think that would be the case. If Broadsword / EA are still making a reasonable amount of profit from it, I don't see them doing that. The latest expansion isn't even a year old and they keep adding new content. If margins were tight, they could probably reduce staffing and overhead costs even further, stop adding content, and put the game into pretty much maintenance mode until it became revenue negative. And even then, unless they saw value in the brand name, they could probably collect a nominal fee to sell the property to someone else.
There's no doubt that Ultima Online was an often broken, frequently frustrating mess of ideas, but that's also what made it brilliant. -PC Gamer
Still the same after 19 years.
Still the same after 19 years.
And they advertise *********, a free shard, in that article. More players do play there now though. Simple check out top 100s or uoportal and you can see an average of 4,000. Does real Uo still have these numbers?
Probably close but I doubt more.
Probably close but I doubt more.
As far as the "Small Community" - they were referring to "Private Servers".
Sadly, the glory days of Ultima Online are long over. There's still a small community left playing AND plenty of private servers like ****** **** ******* that are worth checking out
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Actually NO they are not. Ive bolded the AND.
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Actually NO they are not. Ive bolded the AND.
Ah, ok. Sorry, my mistake.
Well it because they don't get paid..yea that's it!!
Keep telling yourself that...
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Wish a legit prodo vanilla server could happen. Vanqs, no tram, no crap art and no tack af dino log in screen, old school midi music, old status bar, etc. Make it a ruthless world again. But as always this will be proposed and quickly met with simply "No - its too complicated".
Ok, and what's funny about a bunch of ass**** stealing everything from a fellow player and leaving a book with insults? Only some stupid teenagers can laugh about this. Everybody else sees that this is the exact reason why so many players left in that time. Including me. Sentimentality distorts the judgement sometimes, the first girlfriend was a stupid, ugly little b***h and UO in those years was a horrible mess. Brutal, unfriendly and no fun at all. UO has never been better than now and with a modern Graphics client and advertising and a company willing to push it, it would easily beat the 250k players from back then. Given, they took care of the cheats.
Anyways, I cannot laugh about people harming others and I never will. That's kinda schoolyard-mobbing and not funny. Thank god, UO is different now. I hated it this way.
Thank you for your attention.
Anyways, I cannot laugh about people harming others and I never will. That's kinda schoolyard-mobbing and not funny. Thank god, UO is different now. I hated it this way.
Thank you for your attention.
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I've been saying it for years. If the official shards shut down. UO Will live on for many years to come on the free shards that already dot the landscape. It will be the same with World of Warcraft and as it is with Lineage 2 and even Everquest. The legend titles will always live on through it's fan base.
Heh, I remember when Messanna poohpoohed all the cool stuff on free shards explaining they were able to do cool stuff because they stole the game. Makes sense?
Damn it pisses me off when every single ****ing person under the sun, Garriott included, speaks of UO in past tense.
it would be great to have some more commentary by ACTIVE UO PLAYERS in comment section of that obituary of an article. Does anyone here happen to have any idea where we might find some of those, folks?;p
Community isn't even that small. In this context, one has to treat official shards and free shards as one and the same pool. And that pool has grand total of...I don't even know, 25k-100k people? It isn't much...
..But it isn't that little either truly,not in niche genre of MMOs as whole.
Also, I'm certain UO actually brings in much more money than half of the western MMos out there. We like our game well..and honestly, pay for it dearly, heh.
I wish devs wouldn't treat free shards as such gigantic insult or taboo or what not. You could easily make the accusation Mesanna did, of them stealing the game. It'd be very benefical to return the favor; there are plenty of really, really good ideas to be found among rulesets and mechanics of free shards. Ones that would do well go get looked into/borrowed/stolen. It is a huge mistake from BS' part to think nothing of the free shards. Their (depressing..)popularity alone is a strong hint of something very relevant taking place in many of them. Almost every single person playing UO is in their mid to late 20s, the youngest. These are not some kids playing for free because bla bla daddy's credit card bla bla.
it would be great to have some more commentary by ACTIVE UO PLAYERS in comment section of that obituary of an article. Does anyone here happen to have any idea where we might find some of those, folks?;p
it would be great to have some more commentary by ACTIVE UO PLAYERS in comment section of that obituary of an article. Does anyone here happen to have any idea where we might find some of those, folks?;p
Community isn't even that small. In this context, one has to treat official shards and free shards as one and the same pool. And that pool has grand total of...I don't even know, 25k-100k people? It isn't much...
..But it isn't that little either truly,not in niche genre of MMOs as whole.
Also, I'm certain UO actually brings in much more money than half of the western MMos out there. We like our game well..and honestly, pay for it dearly, heh.
I wish devs wouldn't treat free shards as such gigantic insult or taboo or what not. You could easily make the accusation Mesanna did, of them stealing the game. It'd be very benefical to return the favor; there are plenty of really, really good ideas to be found among rulesets and mechanics of free shards. Ones that would do well go get looked into/borrowed/stolen. It is a huge mistake from BS' part to think nothing of the free shards. Their (depressing..)popularity alone is a strong hint of something very relevant taking place in many of them. Almost every single person playing UO is in their mid to late 20s, the youngest. These are not some kids playing for free because bla bla daddy's credit card bla bla.
it would be great to have some more commentary by ACTIVE UO PLAYERS in comment section of that obituary of an article. Does anyone here happen to have any idea where we might find some of those, folks?;p
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Unfortunately the community is quite small these days, if it weren't for the need for multiples of accounts it would be shut down..it's just the way it is.
As for easy to implement, some things are yes but most are not the code is so convoluted with 8,000 people piecing things together over the years, which is part of the reason why fixing one thing breaks another. The client created for free shards is very very basic C# that makes is super user friendly and easy to alter. Look up developers coding actual systems on YouTube it can get quite complex and the hours of man hours it would take to do some of those things would cost EA $..which is why they don't approve it I assume. Never mind the fact that everything they put into the game has to be written twice for CC and EC..that sure doesn't help. 100's of sprites different animation renders all sorts of malarkey...puts them in some sort of conundrum, scrap the CC. Lose players. Scrap the EC, lose players..it's lose lose. If they made the EC open art source many would switch. I know I would switch if I could alter tiles. Something permanent not something I'd have to alter every patch. That would open up a big community of people exchanging new art, fixed animations..save the devs time, EA money..and probably let them focus on developing thought provoking content over half baked quick patches to meet a deadline, or appease the masses. For example, Pinco's has saved the EC for many, he doesn't get enough credit for basically single handily making 100's of people's gameplay better. If the EC art went public there would be fully patchable CC look a likes within weeks.
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I read the article when it came out. I had a full collection of PCGamer and Computer Gaming World. They combined when that stupid internet thing got popular. A flood destroyed all my magazines in '98.
The original article was not helpful to UO.
The original article was not helpful to UO.
It wouldn't be worth the dev hours. They'd waste the hours on it, the pkers would go there, and finding no sheep to slaughter for their jollies, the pkers would leave. A dead server that was a waste of time to make.
As I recall from a strong request like this some years back, it was stated that the actual code to support such a move had been deleted/written over by the newer versions that had come into play since T2A. At that time, I believe the servers used for shard support were smaller and did indeed have space that was limited enough to actually make this a possibility.
I know from my business years in IT that there were instances that we archived off software or even whole out-dated homebrew apps to make room for newer versions of them or replacement apps that absorbed them. After 5-8 years even the archives were destroyed. It may be the same in BS/EA-land for all I know.
And yet the freeshards somehow manage to find code that will do this.
I'm betting a lot of them have the base code from years back and that is what they have built on. I'm not saying BS/EA is full of ca-ca, BUT corporate management of MMORPG code and the management by a small dedicated group are hugely different. Typically the larger the organization, the more lax they become about asset protection/saving.
Besides, when the decision was made they most likely figured "no one will EVER want to go back to the old days!" Yup ... that's my bet. I'm only playing Devils Advocate on this as I sometimes wish it was back then as well ... even tho I hated getting nailed.
How do you walk the fine line of staying true to say the 1999 version of UO and then keep it fresh with updates? It would seem like a lot of new content wouldn't mesh with the old content unless you devoted a lot of time to make it work for that one shard. Are you just gonna go the vanquishing route and ignore all the new weapons and armor that the new dungeons and such are based on? It all seems to get confusing real quick. If you just made the old pre-Trammel server and left it at that, wouldn't that get old fast without updates? As was said the sheep wouldn't go there and it all seems like it would fall apart. People are starting to complain there's been a seeming population drop on Atlantic, so I'd think this new shard would be wonderful but a pipe dream. I wouldn't complain if the team wanted to try this just to shut some folks up lol, but I think you'll need a time machine to ever get that same feel again. When the world was new....
I would call BS but I could see it happen as one team moves in and and others moved out. It seems insane but I imagine each new team probably cleaned house and threw some old junk out. Personally I can't imagine anyone tossing out back ups of major world changes in a situation like this though. Maybe in the early days they never dreamed the game would stray as far from the original game as it did. EA in general isn't able to keep an MMO active very long
Who'd have guessed we'd still be playing this that this would be a topic?
As I recall there was a lot of talk that at some point with the move from Austin to CA that a bunch of stuff got lost... and such...I would call BS but I could see it happen as one team moves in and and others moved out. It seems insane but I imagine each new team probably cleaned house and threw some old junk out. Personally I can't imagine anyone tossing out back ups of major world changes in a situation like this though. Maybe in the early days they never dreamed the game would stray as far from the original game as it did. EA in general isn't able to keep an MMO active very long
If that is what I recall I'm pretty sure that's the story we were given.
Now I for one am sick and tired of hearing how if they built a pre-tram shard everything would be all peaches and cream and thousands of players would come back etc... etc... etc... which IMO is all a bunch of mallarky with a capital M... Because first off the only reason that things were so peaches and cream was there weren't any other games anything similar to UO at the time..... there was no WoW or EQ or anything like that... and the sheeple had no where to go but to be fodder for the PKs and thieves and such. But NEWS FLASH today there are a 100+ other games to draw players all with graphics and pretty shinnies and quests and such to lead the sheeple by the nose rings... the only ones that would come back would be the PK's and Cheaters and Thieves of old looking for that old school feel of dominance.... that they would not find... because without sheeple... it's all nothing but others ready to do unto you...
So no.... that era has come and gone... it's died like it should have...
To bring new players back well... I don't know that UO will ever again see those days... with horrible graphics and an artist that obviously doesn't care that what he adds to the game looks completely out of place... either too big, lacking all detail, or out of perspective... and a Producer that thinks it's good and acceptable... they just keep plugging away and we just keep paying for it... decades old bugs still plague the game, and the attitudes are still there as well... you have no idea how many people have returned only to leave again because first off there are a bunch of "fun" sucking scum in the game... who feel the need to ruin everyone elses gameplay by scamming, cheating and hacking... and NOTHING is ever done about it... People get frustrated when they page a GM and get no response for hours on end or get the canned comment of "we have investigated the issue..." and nothing gets done... or whatever... where in a toxic environment people are allowed in the game to personally attack other players... with verbal assaults and even the naming of houses, pets and guilds in ways to personally attack other players... They harass and further torment victims of scammers and cheats... and this behavior is allowed to continue creating a toxic environment that is worse than a correctional facility... and they wonder why players leave in droves and won't return???
Not a shock or surprise to me... Yet people still and this is what really baffles me... continue to look upon this stuff with nostalgia???
What I miss and wish we could get back is the people who came together to play... to make something wonderful... those who built the RP towns of old and defended them... those who gathered each day and each week to rally together to delve into the depths of some dungeon for an adventure with friends ..... not for some object to sell for as much gold as they could so they could make their weekly/monthly quota of RL dollars selling the gold...
Those who enjoyed playing Orcs and asking for Shinnies... those who brought the Dark Elves to life and let you drift into a fantasy realm with them at the tavern on a Friday night... Where if you were not careful you could start a brawl... but nothing was lost or gained but friendships and stories... and a few bumps to the ego perhaps...
That is what I miss... but that I'm guessing is also long gone and no pre-Tram or Pre-AoS shard is ever going to bring that back. Because for starters anyone wanting to get back to UO is going to have to suffer the Account Mis-managment system and perhaps struggle to wade through all the BS at Origin to get the updates and upgrades they need at extremely over-inflated prices for a near 20 year old game. And they are going to moan and groan and decide it just isn't worth the bother.
Don't dance around. Just tell us straight what ya think!
Where? Maybe it's based on your browsing history, hmmm? Comments aren't advertising.
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He is correct that they advertise a particular free shard in their article, not just the comments section. Look at the very last paragraph of the article, the free shard's name is highlighted as a link.