NEWS [UO.Com] Producer Letter

[Petra Fyde]

I wanted to take a few moments to fill everyone in on a few things we are doing. I have heard rumbling from the community that the sky is falling. I promise that is not true. We still have a team that is dedicated to UO and is excited about what is to come. The Event moderator program is here and still going strong.

As for the future of UO, I would like to share with you some of the ideas we have and want to see happen this year.

This is not a comprehensive list!

Question for those wanting 'shame loot' everywhere.
When you've got it, where will bards get slayer instruments?
I've not had an instrument from the re-vamped dungeons, has anyone else?

 

[mikni]

Excited about a second house on Siege. Nice to see it's still in the plans. But what about 720 cap for everyone? Sounds like something that could be implemented pretty quick. Pretty please?

 

[Berethrain]

General
2013 Apr 16 21:50 GMT
I wanted to take a few moments to fill everyone in on a few things we are doing. I have heard rumbling from the community that the sky is falling. I promise that is not true. We still have a team that is dedicated to UO and is excited about what is to come. The Event moderator program is here and still going strong.

As for the future of UO, I would like to share with you some of the ideas we have and want to see happen this year.

• New Theme Pack “The Kings Collection”
• Vendor Search
• New Story Arc
• Revamping Vet Reward – You have to be x age to get it but we are making vet rewards so anyone can use it.
• Revamping Fishing and Pirate Loot
• Adding a Gargoyle Horn Stylist
• Adding Fey Slayers to dungeon loot
• Reopening shard of the dead for Halloween
• Coming up with our Christmas and new Vet Rewards and Anniversary Rewards
• Adding new begging items for Trick or Treating
• Adding additional items to the clean up Britiannia turn ins
• 2nd House option on Siege
• Still working on High Res Art that has not been dropped, the housing wall tiles are numerous and takes a while to redo. I highly doubt we will be able to get this in game this year, we are shooting for the beginning of next year.
• Fix Bugs

I would also like to address the issue of King Blackthorns Counsel on Siege. Originally we did not put it on Siege due to the fact that the towns are Faction towns and we know griefing will happen. If Siege accepts that fact we will be more than happen to add the voting system to Siege.

Next week we will once again put Shadow Strike on Clubs for all the Stealth Macers out there.

We are putting out a publish for a few bug fixes that you will get tomorrow during maintenance:
• Players that are co-owned to a house can once again use house teleporters properly
• Orc Helms now provide the expected 3% LMC.

See everyone in game !!

Continue reading...

This is one of the most disappointing things I've read.

There are very few who care about horn art or a 2nd house on siege.

Be careful with the shard shield vet reward if you make them useable by anyone. You'll put a dent in UO's profits and probably lose another developer.

And LEAVE clubs alone, no one uses shadow strike on a club. In fact, in 13 years, I've only been hit once with shadow strike.

Really? Stealth macers? Lol.

 

[Petra Fyde]

They should make our subscription fee proportional to the amount of people working on UO and normalize it to a devteam of 30 people which is quite normal for a game like this.

30 people working = 12.99 subscription fee.

5 people working = 12.99 * 5 / 30 = 2.17 subscription fee.

After all we were made to pay 3 bucks more for the increase of the customer support team. Where are they now?

Cancelled out by annual inflation?

I'm just glad subs don't go up every year by the annual rate of inflation like so many other things do.

When the $12.99 sub was first introduced, what else could you have bought for that same price?
How much does that item cost now?

5 people working, and only those 5? No GM's? no EM's? No other support staff? No server upkeep?

 

[Pinco]

about the events I think this game is totally in the wrong way...
1) story arc:
could be nice, but those events takes months to be organized and few hours to be completed, so does it worth it?

2) EM:
the EM could be a nice extra to have DnD style with a master who lead the story and everyone follow, but it CANNOT be the main event source of this game, because you can't force the people to play only when the EM are online...

IMHO they should make small weekly events so everyone can have a bit of fun. True, UO offers a lot of sandbox contents, but those contents can be considered as "routine", while a game like this requires to keep the player busy with some special activities and the routine should be used to fill the time between the events.

Here is a random sample of event that could be fun:
every week 1 quest that gives as reward a new spell for a new magery spellbook. The first week you get the spellbook and the first spell, then the next quests will require to use a spell of the previous weeks. When all the quests are completed and the spellbook is filled there could be a final quest where you have to prove worthy of having that spells and if you complete it, you'll receive a recipe that allows you to inscribe all the spells and the spellbok.

Like this one there could be thousands of other examples, and in this way the people will always have something to do because they can join the weekly event, on the evening there could be an EM event (if you can login at the right time), and then they can always pvp or searching for a good loot.
Right now you can partecipate the EM event (if you gan login at the right time) and pvp or searching for good loot, but basically everyone is stuck with the routine and after some time you get bored to tears

 

[Tanivar]

Thats a joke.

I still pvp quite regularly so not sure what you mean when you say you cant even play your crafter anymore.

Sounds like an issue on your end bud

Problem got bad when we were moved to the Cloud and seems to track the packet loss numbers on the shard screen. The latency doesn't vary a whole lot and shy of it nearly doubling doesn't hurt play much. The packet loss number pretty much is what tells whether I'll be doing more than tend plants & a little vendor stocking once I get logged in.

I'm considering building a new computer this summer since I may wind up playing a new game. I'll make sure the hardware is good for UO when I do it though. Main question is whether I go Win 7 or 8 since XP Pro support ends in about a year.

 

[Schatzi]

"Be careful with the shard shield vet reward if you make them useable by anyone. You'll put a dent in UO's profits and probably lose another developer."
Since these are account bound I do not think they will be included in the vet reward overhaul.

 

[Storm]

I would go with 8 once you get used to it its very versatile, and sleek but it is very different from 7 or you can get a app that makes it look like 7

 

[Shakkara]

Cancelled out by annual inflation?

I'm just glad subs don't go up every year by the annual rate of inflation like so many other things do.

When the $12.99 sub was first introduced, what else could you have bought for that same price?
How much does that item cost now?

5 people working, and only those 5? No GM's? no EM's? No other support staff? No server upkeep?

Aging product, so it should get cheaper every year, not more expensive or corrected for inflation. Just like you get faster and cheaper internet every year. Almost every other MMO to date is either free to play or pay-once.

EMs are volunteers so don't cost money. GMs and support staff are shared with other games.

Servers are moved to amazon now, I've used Amazon to host the MMOs my company made, $200 per month was enough for servers to host 50.000 concurrent users - and that's walk and talk worlds with player owned spaces, not simple social game stuff. UOs servers hardly require any CPU power, since the original servers that used to run this game had less than half the power of a modern smartphone. How many active users do we have at peak hours? Maybe 500 concurrent users on atlantic, 200 at most on the other servers. They're REALLY doing it wrong if they pay more than $1000 a month on server costs.

People say DLC is bad and overpriced... but try charging 150 bucks for the meager bit of content in the initial post... oh excluding the theme pack, as you have to pay extra for that too... Now, I know that the devs are in a bad situation and they recently had to let another team member go, but it is outrageous how little of the money we spend on this game is actually spent on this game by EA's highups.

 

[Rupert Avery]

Shakkara, EMs are paid employees

 

[Oops]

Petra is indeed correct, this is not their difinitive task list. This is a sampling of in-progress, or wishful projects, and the meat of the post was simply listing things that they won't do away with this year.

Thank you for turning on the Halloween server? Thank you for not removing veteran rewards and holiday gifts?


You released a publish that flags items as duped... but there's tons of people in general chat saying they have items that are fresh that can't go on vendors? You release this over a decade after duping becomes rampant, in a fashion that only will hurt your playerbase? That's fine, that's a producer's decision, one that our producer I'm sure thought through and should be held accountable for. If it worked as intended this would be a poor idea. The fact it doesn't work remotely like it was intended makes this a debacle of unprecedented proportion.

That's what's disappointing. It's a fine idea, but they don't implement things properly. The armor refinement is a great idea, and they even listened to a lot of community testing on it. But this mockery Duping Warden they figured they had the facilities to properly test this, without community involvement and now we have a mess released across servers that are frequeneted maybe 20% by Stratics users.


I've been a strong supporter of this Dev team for a long time, when we had that Calvin guy playing in the sandbox, and you could tell Mesanna had more knowledge in her sweater about UO then he had in his whole body, and before some Suit's nephew was promoted to Community Coordinator (*pat on head*).


For all of us who have been around from the beginning, the early days, even the AOS days, you have to speak up when you feel your game is being handled improperly. We've had this happen before and we got loud, and constructive and we had change. We had new expansions, proper growth - it wasn't all pretty, but this is a hard job for people to hold, it's thankless.

With that said, I think we need a change, we need some new ideas, and some new DRIVE. Gaming space is such that if we don't create enough headway we get pullled down, there are always new games, and more agile products on the market competing with our glorious sandbox. 2 more of them are coming out this year. We need change.

 

[Lord Frodo]

The intent is to ask the specifics of this, will it relate to soulstones? shard shields? or simply ethys?
Like i said, be more specific.

It should relate to anything that is not "Account Bound". Soulstones and Shard Shields are account bound. Everything else will just have the account age requirement removed from it to use. Tubs and Ethies would prob be the big ones.

 

[CovenantX]

Excited about a second house on Siege. Nice to see it's still in the plans. But what about 720 cap for everyone? Sounds like something that could be implemented pretty quick. Pretty please?

Yea, hopefully this was a "hidden" plan with the Vet Reward Revamp.

The sooner this happens the better, 700-720 skill-cap is the one major drawback of starting a new account.

 

[hen]

This is not a comprehensive list!

Question for those wanting 'shame loot' everywhere.
When you've got it, where will bards get slayer instruments?
I've not had an instrument from the re-vamped dungeons, has anyone else?

Don't know why you are asking us, seems like deflection. However since you are asking us, I would make them craftable, we can make slayer weapons so it isn't too much of a great leap forward in common sense to make instruments the same.
OR
We could add them to the Shame Loot system.

 

[cdavbar]

General
2013 Apr 16 21:50 GMT
the sky is falling

Thats not good!

As for the future of UO, I would like to share with you some of the ideas we have and want to see happen this year.

• New Theme Pack “The Kings Collection”

I never released "My Collection". I expect full royalties.

• Vendor Search

This could be good, or bad, it all depends on how it is implemented. Suggestions: To purchase an item, the player must still be physically at the vendor, no "cloud" purchasing. If there is a "teleport to vendor feature" it needs to use the normal recall, gate, or sacred journey, and the player must have the appropriate skill, regs, LRC, or chiv points to do so, otherwise they can pull out a sextant and walk.

• New Story Arc

Don't leave this up to EM's. EM events, even for story arc's are horrid due to the new loot/drop rules.

• Revamping Vet Reward – You have to be x age to get it but we are making vet rewards so anyone can use it.

Interesting. I can see some people getting fired up on this, but I do not see why they would. However I would love to hear more about this and exactly what it means (i.e. what about "account bound" rewards, will they still function as they currently do, or will they come in a token form that can be traded and once token is redeemed they become account bound etc.)

• Revamping Fishing and Pirate Loot

Interesting also as I am an avid fisher, pirate, and treasure hunter. I would suggest at least for the fishing loot (I'm assuming you mean SoS chests) that the loot (armor, weapons, jewls) be changed to the new shame loot system that was supposed to be rolled out across the board to all loot systems but never was. The level of the chest (i.e. lvl 1 lvl 2 etc) could act as the "luck" factor that determines shame loot (example, lvl 1 chest = 150 luck applied towards loot generation etc). I would also ask that treasure map loot get a boost in armor, weapons and jewels. Im not asking for more rare(r) items such as pardons, orbs etc., instead maybe do the rest of the loot the same way I suggested for SoS (fishing) loot. As far as pirates go, I think they should have at least teh same amount of crates/chests of loot on their ships that merchants do, they are more resource intensive to take out and have far less loot than a merchant ship does.

• Adding a Gargoyle Horn Stylist

Any word on gargoyle horn dyes? I would love to see the same color as hair dyes (or just make the hair dyes usable on horns too). However if you were to make horn dyes and make them seperate from hair dyes, make them a rare drop only on teh abyss champs and mini-champs.

• Adding Fey Slayers to dungeon loot

You know those red essences that have no use yet? Heres an idea for an imbuing property. 20 Essence of Persistance, 20 Relic Fragments, 20 White Pearl = Fey Slayer. (of course amounts and ingredients are negotiable, however, lets start using some of these unused ingredients )

• Reopening shard of the dead for Halloween

Ehh, never played it, hardly enough time to play my home shard. Although maybe this year I might try it out.

• Coming up with our Christmas and new Vet Rewards and Anniversary Rewards

Please make sure that if you use Holiday Tickets for Christmas again, you put a date on them or change their color. It is kinda hard to buy off vendors without knowing the year they were unless we can trust the vednor owners description. And if we could trust all teh vendor owners, then there wouldnt have been a need for the "vendor selling dupes" prevention that just went into the game.

• Adding new begging items for Trick or Treating

Time to dust off my begger!

• Adding additional items to the clean up Britiannia turn ins

Pixel Crack!!!!!!!!!!! I can never get enough!

• 2nd House option on Siege

Would be nice, I'm currently hiding under a tree, NE of YEW gate somewhere hoping that I don't get killed while playing on Great Lakes .

• Still working on High Res Art that has not been dropped, the housing wall tiles are numerous and takes a while to redo. I highly doubt we will be able to get this in game this year, we are shooting for the beginning of next year.

Here is my thoughts, explained nicely by Hannes Erich:

Not just a face lift.

Don't throw out the EC, re-imagine it from the ground up. Make it or break it. Don't treat this like just a face lift. Treat it like building a new game on top of an established one. Create black moon gates within the old servers and charge players a discounted, one-time purchase price to copy (not move! one-way trip!) their characters and items to "Ultima Online 2", the way it should have always been built--built on top of Ultima Online, retaining all of your subscribers characters and items. This will end interdependence (new items, races and facets with zero duplication requirements), it will easily bring your old players back--and after 15 years you have the lion's share--and encourage existing ones to move forward; it will begin the new era.

Spend several million on this. Introduce an extensive and optional quest system into the middle of your sandbox (maybe sell story arc packs in the store),

There is absolutely NO reason to build another ARPG from scratch. Ultima Online has GREAT systems and features in place. There's your foundation for something bigger. You know it, I know it. But the art doesn't compete, and that means you're not competitive. So stop doing what you're doing, take my suggestions (they're free!), and make yourselves some money.

Competitive means competing (the face lift)

HD, HD, HD! If the environment art pixelates too much on a close zoom, you're doing it wrong. Build this for contemporary specs. You're doing this for new customers, and to bring back all the customers you've lost to better looking isometric RPGs! Don't just hire a superb artist and animator. Hire a team of them.

LONG LIVE ULTIMA ONLINE.

Let's save UO, let's do this, let's make EA a crap ton of money, create some jobs, beat UO's peak record, and give birth to the next era. All over again.

Oh, yeah, and offer Pinco a job! He could do wonders helping to create a "complete client"

• Fix Bugs

Please fix the Pirates and Merchants that cannot be damaged. This was supposedly fixed after HS came out, but in essence, never was. It is annoying wasting precious cannon resources just to realize the ship I'm attacking is bugged, and at times to sail around and find five in a row that are bugged, ANNOYING.

I would also like to address the issue of King Blackthorns Counsel on Siege. Originally we did not put it on Siege due to the fact that the towns are Faction towns and we know griefing will happen. If Siege accepts that fact we will be more than happen to add the voting system to Siege.

I don't think Siege should have ever been left out. Anyone who plays there knows the risks, the ruleset, etc. Don't punish the whole for the asinine acts of a few.

Next week we will once again put Shadow Strike on Clubs for all the Stealth Macers out there.

Wait, what?!?!?! There's still macers?

We are putting out a publish for a few bug fixes that you will get tomorrow during maintenance:
• Players that are co-owned to a house can once again use house teleporters properly
• Orc Helms now provide the expected 3% LMC.

Hmm, teleporter bug never got to me, or the issues with house co-owners people are seeming to have.

See everyone in game !!

Don't tease us its not funny.

 

[hen]

Maybe 'The King's Collection' is a set of gears for Dawn's Music Box? I would put on my 'blue suede sandals' for that theme pack!

 

[Viper09]

The intent is to ask the specifics of this, will it relate to soulstones? shard shields? or simply ethys?
Like i said, be more specific.

I anticipate that this will relate to those rewards which are not naturally "account bound" such as Shard Shields and Soulstones, which can't be used regardless of whether or not someone is old enough if they did not claim them.

 

[chise2]

This is one of the most disappointing things I've read.

There are very few who care about horn art or a 2nd house on siege.

Be careful with the shard shield vet reward if you make them useable by anyone. You'll put a dent in UO's profits and probably lose another developer.

And LEAVE clubs alone, no one uses shadow strike on a club. In fact, in 13 years, I've only been hit once with shadow strike.

Really? Stealth macers? Lol.

Actually judging by the amount of people we have seen come to Siege just from the past couple of announcements a lot of people are interested in a second house on Siege, maybe not the majority but quite a few. I just hope that this time they come up with a date and actually stick with it.

 

[Zosimus]

Aging product, so it should get cheaper every year, not more expensive or corrected for inflation. Just like you get faster and cheaper internet every year. Almost every other MMO to date is either free to play or pay-once.

You are exactly right 100%

Servers are moved to amazon now, I've used Amazon to host the MMOs my company made, $200 per month was enough for servers to host 50.000 concurrent users - and that's walk and talk worlds with player owned spaces, not simple social game stuff. UOs servers hardly require any CPU power, since the original servers that used to run this game had less than half the power of a modern smartphone. How many active users do we have at peak hours? Maybe 500 concurrent users on atlantic, 200 at most on the other servers. They're REALLY doing it wrong if they pay more than $1000 a month on server costs.

Im very glad you have said that. Many other MMO's out there have stated the same thing. GW1 devs stated years ago about companies making the subscriber believe that servers costs was out rageous but in truth they are not.

People say DLC is bad and overpriced... but try charging 150 bucks for the meager bit of content in the initial post... oh excluding the theme pack, as you have to pay extra for that too... Now, I know that the devs are in a bad situation and they recently had to let another team member go, but it is outrageous how little of the money we spend on this game is actually spent on this game by EA's highups.

Another great point. many here believe that UO makes million s a year and if true then there would be no reason to let go any developers. Let me add nothing really done with any upgrades or expansions. Boosters is a pure sign of maintenace mode. EA cover the costs of UO while any extra money made goes into more important projects where they cash in quick on the consumer.



If anybody has read any news on EA in the past few months since January they have been closing servers for a few titles. Not a good sign and people from those games are not happy. This includes with EA facebook games they are dropping.


http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...he-sims-social-simcity-social-and-pet-society

EA shuts down "older" Facebook games The Sims Social, SimCity Social and Pet Society
SimCity Social to close after just a year online.

ByWesley Yin-PoolePublished Monday, 15 April 2013

EA has announced its intention to shut down Facebook games The Sims Social, SimCity Social and Pet Society.

EA said it took the "difficult decision" to "retire" what it described as its "older" Facebook games after witnessing the number of players and amount of activity for each title decrease. "For people who have seen other recent shutdowns of social games, perhaps this is not surprising," EA said in a statement.

These games, all made by the EA-owned social developer PlayFish, will go offline on 14th June. In the case of SimCity Social, it won't make it to a year online - that game launched on 25th June 2012. The Sims Social released on 9th August 2011. Pet Society launched on 8th August 2008.
EA offered more detailed statements on each title - they're all the same, but with the name of the game in question swapped in.

On The Sims Social, it said: "We had to make the difficult decision to close down The Sims Social so we can reallocate development resources to other titles that we hope you'll have just as much fun playing. We hope you have gotten many hours of enjoyment out of the games and we thank you for everything you've added to the community."

The Sims Social hit the headlines last year when EA accused The Ville, run by bitter social game rival Zynga, of ripping it off. The two companies eventually settled the dispute out of court.

Players of these games have reacted to the news in anger. Naomi Szwed, from Australia, wrote on Facebook of SimCity Social's closure: "I only play ONE game on Facebook. and this is it! It is the ONLY GAME I PLAY. You really know how to make customers happy. I will boycott anything EA if you remove this. Sorry."

Reacting to the closure of The Sims Social, "patty.switzer.1" wrote on the Playfish forum: "As of now I will not be playing Sims anymore. I would like to be reimbursed for the remaining 92 Sims Cash. My reasons for leaving now is I will not put anymore money, time or effort into playing a game that is ending."

EA said it will continue to deliver popular titles for Facebook, and pointed to PopCap games Bejeweled Blitz, Solitaire Blitz and Plants vs. Zombies Adventures.
It vowed to make a special offer to introduce those who have played the games being taken offline to PopCap games. "You're a valued fan and we want to make sure you get a smooth transition to PopCap," EA said.

So with EA reputation and cutbacks no game under their power is safe. I will stick to that comment. I am the one of many millions that have boycotted buying EA products or support them. I can always play Madden when my buds buy the game. Saves me $$$$ while EA loses out.

 

[Lady Storm]

Dear Dark Lady;
Thank you for the short but sweet list.
This I am sure you can do very well and am glad to hear the Game is in good standing. (P.S. glad to hear the EM program is safe)
Nice things I will be sure to look for, but may I request a look into doing a few things that might help a tad bit more while your in that code section anyhow?

Under Vet Rewards:
I dont know about most but I have over 200 to 400 reward dye tubs (perhaps more I gave up counting, and other rewards are in simular shape in my house's storage)... way too many. Might I request a way to say turn them in for a new item? 1st year for 1st year.... etc... Perhaps a NPC Reward Exchange ?
Oh and my younger characters say thank you too for the idea of all being able to using them!!

Under the Loot:
It's kind of odd we have all other mats in the chests an ships but for the ML items... could you consider adding some? While your revamping stuff that is.

Adding items to the Turn in Chest:
We are well past the 12th thru 14th ann gifts and those years christmas items.
Talis's They were in the previous Clean up..

We do know the team is now smaller.
We also understand time is not on your side when the code is being a fussbudget.
I am sure most of us here wish you and the team good luck and are antisapating the new pack and all you plan to put out.

Thanks a bunch!!

 

[sablestorm]

This is one of the most disappointing things I've read.

There are very few who care about horn art or a 2nd house on siege.

Be careful with the shard shield vet reward if you make them useable by anyone. You'll put a dent in UO's profits and probably lose another developer.

And LEAVE clubs alone, no one uses shadow strike on a club. In fact, in 13 years, I've only been hit once with shadow strike.

Really? Stealth macers? Lol.

I use Shadow Strike on clubs all the time and I know many others who do too.

 

[Shakkara]

If anybody has read any news on EA in the past few months since January they have been closing servers for a few titles. Not a good sign and people from those games are not happy. This includes with EA facebook games they are dropping.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...he-sims-social-simcity-social-and-pet-society

So with EA reputation and cutbacks no game under their power is safe. I will stick to that comment. I am the one of many millions that have boycotted buying EA products or support them. I can always play Madden when my buds buy the game. Saves me $$$$ while EA loses out.

I know all about that. I was in the running to become Lead Creative Designer of the Hyderabad studio for EA. What they were doing was taking all the social games that were made by the London studio Popcap, and transfering them to India because programmers in India are paid only 500-1000 a month, compared to 2500 or more in the UK. Three western people would join them to lead them, I was going to be one of them and my first assignment would have been to make another expansion for The Sims Social. TSS was still making pretty decent profits, they have released a pets-based expansion last year and it brought in crazy amounts of revenue. They wanted me to design another expansion of that magnitude to rake in more cash. But they also said that TSS and all other games ending up in Hyderabad would get minium dev effort - the objective was to milk the players for as much money as possible with the least amount of money/resources invested. Until the game would become unprofitable, or when there would be other games with better metrics that surpassed the old ones. When that happened for the Sims Social and Sim City social, they would be discontinued but there would be other games that would be taken to the Hyderabad teams, they assured me.

Apparantly there was a change of plans, as I didn't hear anything from them anymore after February. And now the games are cancelled alltogether. I only know they had some ideas to make some additional games in the Sim City franchise as the brand name proved to be very profitable.

 

[Assia Penryn]

I am not looking forward to the vet rewards change. The value of the items (and thus cost) will sky rocket and the availability will plummet as the ethereal horses did when they made those able to be used by first years. While everyone will be able to use all the rewards, I'm not sure they'll be able to afford them. Just my concerns.

 

[Gidge]

• Players that are co-owned to a house can once again use house teleporters properly
• Orc Helms now provide the expected 3% LMC.

Are those the few bug fixes? or was there more?

I am always interested in what has been fixed. I don't mean big game stopping, account banning things. little or important been around since the beginning of time bugs like oh........please fix the gates in shame kinda bugs?

 

[budman23]

I anticipate that this will relate to those rewards which are not naturally "account bound" such as Shard Shields and Soulstones, which can't be used regardless of whether or not someone is old enough if they did not claim them.

Garden sheds for everybody?

 

[Viper09]

Garden sheds for everybody?

Heck if I know, I already told you what I would anticipate. Assuming the garden shed will be able to be used by everyone, the answer to your question would depend on how many people who are able to claim them will choose to spend one or more of their vet reward options on them for the purpose of selling it...

 

[Zosimus]

I know all about that. I was in the running to become Lead Creative Designer of the Hyderabad studio for EA. What they were doing was taking all the social games that were made by the London studio Popcap, and transfering them to India because programmers in India are paid only 500-1000 a month, compared to 2500 or more in the UK. Three western people would join them to lead them, I was going to be one of them and my first assignment would have been to make another expansion for The Sims Social. TSS was still making pretty decent profits, they have released a pets-based expansion last year and it brought in crazy amounts of revenue. They wanted me to design another expansion of that magnitude to rake in more cash. But they also said that TSS and all other games ending up in Hyderabad would get minium dev effort - the objective was to milk the players for as much money as possible with the least amount of money/resources invested. Until the game would become unprofitable, or when there would be other games with better metrics that surpassed the old ones. When that happened for the Sims Social and Sim City social, they would be discontinued but there would be other games that would be taken to the Hyderabad teams, they assured me.

Apparantly there was a change of plans, as I didn't hear anything from them anymore after February. And now the games are cancelled alltogether. I only know they had some ideas to make some additional games in the Sim City franchise as the brand name proved to be very profitable.

I wasn't directing the part you quoted at you personally. I typed it for all just to clarify. I pretty well knew you knew information because of your profession

the objective was to milk the players for as much money as possible with the least amount of money/resources invested

Gah! I so your posts.You speak the truth. The sentence above I quoted, even though it's a great business model to rake in tons of quick cash also has it drawbacks. Angry customers may not buy future products from sh companies.

 

[Berethrain]

I use Shadow Strike on clubs all the time and I know many others who do too.

 

[sablestorm]

:loser:

 

[Adol]

Well, I believe I can see the overall aim of the development goals; it's user and new player retention. With Ultima Online hitting 16 years soon, the chances of a new player ever seeing half the rewards is vanishingly small, likewise the arcane trade system is incredibly offputting for people used to in game Auction houses, being off-site in UO, at the naughty places. These changes will remove some of those challenges, and hopefully encourage new players to feel part of the game. Veterans will still control the market for the rewards, but now you won't have to play over a decade to ever get any use from them, if you purchase from a veteran. That's a good thing for the health of the game I'd say.

Likewise, fixing the last expansion, High Seas, and making pirate fighting and fishing more worthwhile gives more bang for the buck for people who have yet to invest in that; I must admit, I haven't really fought pirates since I got my own ork ship, the stress of making cannon resources for 10k gold was just too much. It's also good to see Fishing being tackled, as outside of Osireadon, it's largely a horrible, rewardless grind... I personally was happy chasing the Legendary Fish, but summoning Charybdis is an insane set of requirements, and it's rare to see anyone share him when they meet them; I've tried to host them for Europa but even I've ran out of bait now.

So too the housing on Siege; it's an attempt to keep the minority playstyles alive, which I generally support too; hopefully with homes on Siege more people will give it a try.

The town council mechanic, I'm holding a cynical detachment from. Likewise the next narrative arc, the last one was also horribly grindy and considerably inconsistent in tone (sometimes brilliant, sometimes clear time filler), but it's good to see they are trying to keep what makes Ultima Online unique, that is a developing world plot the players can (sometimes) influence.

Overall then, mostly good news for me.

 

[Berethrain]

:loser:

 

[budman23]

alot of speculation by players that this
• New Theme Pack “The Kings Collection”
is directly related to this
• 2nd House option on Siege

or basically this IS the theme pack

 

[Theo_GL]

Pardon me if I'm a little underwhelmed...



• New Theme Pack “The Kings Collection” I don't play for pixel crack nor would I ever pay for it. This is a blatent attempt to get more $$ knowing you aren't doing anything to attract new subs.
• Vendor Search About time? Should have had it last year. My issue is I'll bet you screw it up and don't allow people to search across shards or make it easy to buy the item. We will give you feedback during beta that you will ignore and it will fail and we will still use searchuo instead.
• New Story Arc I've never enjoyed the 'stories'. It just is a mad grab for items by other people who don't care either.
• Revamping Vet Reward – You have to be x age to get it but we are making vet rewards so anyone can use it. What is the point of being a vet?? This is idiotic. Only 16 year olds can get a drivers license but everyone can drive a car. What? What you SHOULD be doing is allowing people to buy vet time at the cost of $1/month. You want all your characters to be 720 skill cap on a new account? Pay $48 (48 months) and you are there. Boom. Revenue.
• Revamping Fishing and Pirate Loot Good for the 10% of the population that does this. I didn't pay for the pirate expansion after hearing how stupidly annoying it was to fire a cannon. Sounds tedious with poor rewards.
• Adding a Gargoyle Horn Stylist Horray! Huge advancement. - Said noone ever.
• Adding Fey Slayers to dungeon loot Why is this even news? Like 4 lines of code? How about making them craftable instead since no one uses any dungeon loot anyways because you can only imbue up to lower cap.
• Reopening shard of the dead for Halloween Great. No effort. Why announce it?
• Coming up with our Christmas and new Vet Rewards and Anniversary Rewards This is expected every year - why announce it? This just in!!! We will celebrate Jan 1 as New Years!! Don't announce expected things.
• Adding new begging items for Trick or Treating Awesome. The 5 beggars on our shard will be thrilled. I'm sure this will drive new players to the game
• Adding additional items to the clean up Britiannia turn ins Good I guess. Not much there is useful now. Not going to bring any new players in.
• 2nd House option on Siege This would have been helpful about 5 years ago before the mass exodus of 'classic shard players'. It may breathe some life into Siege - but don't expect players to come back to UO for this.
• Still working on High Res Art that has not been dropped, the housing wall tiles are numerous and takes a while to redo. I highly doubt we will be able to get this in game this year, we are shooting for the beginning of next year. If I played for the art - I'd play a different game.
• Fix Bugs Real bugs or ones like 'NPC's no longer spawn with manish features'? How about the bug of blessed items not re-equiping on death? How about the bank box closing in 2d whenever you get off your mount? How about flagging issues after you killed the monster keeping you from logging? THose are real issues/bugs. Please get a focus group to classify the most annoying and widespread and leave my cross gendered NPCs alone. Here is a tip - if the average player reads the bug fix and never knew that was a bug and has to log into the game to hunt for the bug (Male NPCs) then you just wasted your time.




I realize it is easier to be critical than come up with your own ideas.... so here is my producers letter IF I ran UO:

* Bribe Lord British for fame and status - For $1/month you can increase your account age. If you just can't wait another 10 months to ride a polar bear or use a weapon engraving tool - you can buy up veteran status on any account at the cost of $1 per month.
* Vendor Search - Able to search for items within shard and across shards. Give co-ordinates of shop and allows direct recall to the shop or purchase immediately for 1% gold fee. Able to search by item, mod, etc. Sort prices lowest to highest.
* Single Numeric currency - Stored across characters and able to draw against at any time. No more gold checks - gold goes immediately into the bank when you pick it up. No more chance to be scammed on 125m+ trades.
* New Player Shard - Free to play shard for new players only. Accelerated skill gain for up to 2 character slots. Numerous quests that allow for quick skill gain like retrieve the pelts of 10 heavy boura and gain 5.0 swords. Shard will be trammel only and permanently staffed by a new player EM helping players learn the game. Each night of the week will be a different 1 hr class on how to build one of 6 key character types. Skills will be explained and training expeditions led by EM's and player helpers. Once players skills have GM'ed at least 3 skills on their avatar - they can transfer for free with no items and 1m in cash to any production shard (except for siege/mugen). New Player shard will be freely accessible by any trial accounts but you must pay once for subscription once you transfer to 'production shard'. There will be no housing on this shard.
* New Dungeon Encounter - Similar to Dungeon and Dragons games of the past, we will dedicate one dungeon to randomly regenerate. It will include several 'puzzles' to complete and require multiple person effort to complete. The spawn will be heavy and once it is killed - it will not be respawned again until the entire dungeon is respawned. Players will need to fight their way through to the end - gaining points and rewards along the way. Crafting supplies, imbuing ingredients, pink scrolls, ToT artifacts, and other surprises will drop on higher powered creatures. Gained points will go towards a revamped community collection program that will allow the purchase of a wide array of useful items such as tangles, cintures and other difficult to obtain items. Players will have up to 4 hours to complete the dungeon. The boss at the end will provide the highest rewards and points. The dungeon will respawn in the same format for 3 days upon which time a new random template will be generated. So you will have 3 days to figure out how to solve/beat the dungeon. At the end of the 3 days - a new template with new puzzles and monsters will be created.
* Enhanced Faction System - Faction system will be changed back to allow for easier acquisition of faction gear for faction players. This gear will only work in faction battles and useless for normal farming/play. New faction battles will require faction teams to 'register' on a stone. Once even teams are set - fighting will begin and be limited to 30 min. Players and teams will be tracked for number of kills, number of deaths and the ability to hold control of a faction town. Special rewards and titles given for winning factions. (Needs lots more detail here but some sort of system to encourage/reward/track mass battles would be very entertaining and is completely impossible in UO now).
* Crafting Enhancements - All bods reverted to 15 quantity bods (10 and 20 move to 15) making it easier to complete. Bod reward tables adjusted for difficulty of ore. Ring/Chain Valorite larges for example will all give high end hammers. Bod books now take 1 lockdown like Scroll of Trans books and have alphabetic sort and price all functionality. Imbuing intensity will be increased to 625 intensity for all items - however, you may only imbue an item 3 times such that you will never be able to imbue more than 3 special properties to an item. You will need to create the others properties first through reforging or runics that takes bods/runics. Old imbued items will still maintain existing limit.
* Loot revamp - Loot will be adjusted to remove the bulk of cursed/brittle etc items. Less items will spawn but they will be more useful/powerful. Items will be imbueable up to normal crafted item limits. Special armor 'sets' will be added to the loot similar to the Virtue armor. This armor will be 6 pieces and combine to provide a middle of the road suit for newer players or vets playing different shards - Example would be sampire suit providing 20 HP increase, 20 Mana increase, Stamina 30, 68 resist across all attributes and LMC 24%. Pieces will spawn with 90 durability and will not be POF-able.
* Gold Sinks - In order to further limit the expansion of gold in the game - all imbued/crafted armor can only be repaired by an NPC at a cost of 500gp per peice per repair. All creatures drop 1/3 as much gold including champs. Any dungeon looted armor can be repaired by normal crafting methods. Other special 'buffs' or blessings can be purchased from NPC's that will fade over time. Example - Gain 5% HCI for your character for 12 hours for 250k.
* Bug Fixes/Issues Resolved - Migrate community collections to the turn in points or spring cleaning. In fact, why not combine all of them? The community collections are really quite stupid. No one is going to turn in 8 million spellbooks for a pair of glasses. If you could turn in 10 doom arties for a pair of mace and shields - then fine - that would work. I'd revamp/fix those broken systems by simplifying/combining. I'd fix UI issues like house placement, bless items not re-equip upon rezzing, monsters that speedhack/follow you after you have recalled in/out and they were agro'd on you, I make everything under the sun stackable, If you recall to another server or kill the monster agro'd on you - your logout timer is reset.

Ok, this isn't my job and thats just 10 min of typing up some ideas (I haven't spent 40 hours this week thinking about this) but I think this list would provide:
1 - Incentive for some returning players (factions, new dungeon encounter, return of some 'hunting)
2 - Incentive for new players (new player shard with dedicated training help, insulation from PvP crowd to start, NO COST to play starter shard)
3 - Nice enhancements for existing players (crafting changes, bug fixes, single gold balance, vendor search, accellerated vet rewards/status for a fee)
4 - Progress towards game issues (Gold sinks for taming out of control economy/money growth, loot revamp to promote hunting, crafting revamp to promote more randomness to putting armor together, faction fighting revised to provide purpose, dungeon addition to provide new content and changing content from day to day to keep players engaged).

Maybe not perfect but a little something for everyone. That is how I would like to see our dev team spend their time:

1/3 on things that would help bring old players back
1/3 on things to attract new players to the world
1/3 on things the existing playerbase can enjoy

All things focused on simplifying gameplay, focusing more on fun and adventure and less on tedious tasks and updating/enhancing existing systems and balances.

If whatever they are planning on adding does not fit into one of those 3 categories above - then ask yourself - why are we doing this?? With a shrinking staff you need to question everything you spend time on and focus on the most bang for your buck. Adding refinements to the game to make it useful to use dragon scale armor does not fit in any of those groups. Will new players come because of this? No. Will old players come back because they can now wear dragon scale armor? No. Are existing players excited? No. Then why in the world was this EVER a good idea??

 

[Theo_GL]

• Vendor Search - You want to spend the time of the 5 people on this game to reinvent the wheel? What happens when your search is released and they improve their functionality past yours? Are you going to continually put hours of 5 people into going against gaming companies with more people then you have? This seems like the dumbest of all of the ideas.

No, EA should have done the vendor search from the start because they have a competitive advantage. They CONTROL/OWN all the data. The current search systems have to script gather all the information into a searchable database and this is out of date as soon as it is loaded. Its frustrating to search for an item and by the time you find it - its gone.

EA's data can be real time updated and always show available items.

IMHO they completely missed the boat years ago. They should have had a vendor system that is like Diablo III. Searchable/findable gear with no cost to the person listing the gear. They could have made it buyable with gold or $$. If the person spends $$ - the person selling gets the gold.

Example - assume a gold to $ of $1 per million. If you see a tangle on a vendor for 20mil - you can pay 20 mil gold or $20 to EA to buy it. EA pockets the $20 and the player gets 20 mil for the sale. Yes, its like printing money but EA could make a killing doing this and could have done it for years. Blizzard is making money from the auction house from running a game that costs nothing to play after the initial $50 purchase. Brilliant. If you don't want to participate in the auction house - fine, no loss. But if you do - EA can make extra revenue.

Diablo III is incredible for gearing up by getting gear from other players through auctions or buy it now 'auctions'. EA has no concept of these and hasn't for 15 years. That is really fairly sad for such a heavily item based game.

 

[startle]

You had me at Vendor Search, the rest is just (some really nice) gravy....

Reopening shard of the dead for Halloween

Ok, remind me what that means... Is that where we got bone containers with the name of the deceased? If not, then please consider doing that again. It was a blast... The container on my steps is "Yo mama's bones"...

 

[popps]

Heck if I know, I already told you what I would anticipate. Assuming the garden shed will be able to be used by everyone, the answer to your question would depend on how many people who are able to claim them will choose to spend one or more of their vet reward options on them for the purpose of selling it...

That is why I do not want an exchange program for Veteran Rewards. It would be a very bad idea for UO, IMHO, to allow existing low years Vet Rewards to be turned in in exchange for points or picks that would them flood the game with tons of high end Veteran Rewards making their appreciability to oldest Veterans of the game who supported the game for so long be devalued greatly.

No thanks.

In order for the program to even have a meaning, the top rewards need to be scarce and limited as the oldest active age accounts are. Creating an exchange system that would make them common would just, as I see it, make the all Veteran Reward program moot and just useless.

And even allowing exchanging them for same year or lower year would be a very very bad idea, IMHO. Commodity boxes are a mere 1st year vet reward. Wanted items like seed boxes as well as others are also low age rewards and even the Davies' Locker Table is only an 8th year vet reward. Even only allowing the exchange for same or lower year would flood the game with tons of commodity boxes, seed boxes, Davies' Locker Tables etc.
Not to mention, that hardly anyone would need to buy any longer a Legacy Token to get a full Soulstone since this vet rewards exchange would at the very least make it possible to get into the game a whole lot of 1st Year full Soulstones....

No thanks, please leave the Veteran Rewards Program just as it is, NO EXCHANGE for existing rewards already into the game.

 

[DJAd]

* Bribe Lord British for fame and status - For $1/month you can increase your account age. If you just can't wait another 10 months to ride a polar bear or use a weapon engraving tool - you can buy up veteran status on any account at the cost of $1 per month.
* Vendor Search - Able to search for items within shard and across shards. Give co-ordinates of shop and allows direct recall to the shop or purchase immediately for 1% gold fee. Able to search by item, mod, etc. Sort prices lowest to highest.
* Single Numeric currency - Stored across characters and able to draw against at any time. No more gold checks - gold goes immediately into the bank when you pick it up. No more chance to be scammed on 125m+ trades.

+1

 

[Picus of Napa]

Theo, why don't they just listen and add one or two of the good ideas while not bothering with the "shard of the dead" and such. We all know it's just going to have a one hit kill weapon and no one is going to bother playing it anyways.

 

[NuSair]

Shakkara, EMs are paid employees

No, they are not paid employees.

They are paid ($10/hr max 20 hours a month) INDEPENDENT CONTRACTORS.

 

[Lord Frodo]

That is why I do not want an exchange program for Veteran Rewards. It would be a very bad idea for UO, IMHO, to allow existing low years Vet Rewards to be turned in in exchange for points or picks that would them flood the game with tons of high end Veteran Rewards making their appreciability to oldest Veterans of the game who supported the game for so long be devalued greatly.

No thanks.

In order for the program to even have a meaning, the top rewards need to be scarce and limited as the oldest active age accounts are. Creating an exchange system that would make them common would just, as I see it, make the all Veteran Reward program moot and just useless.

And even allowing exchanging them for same year or lower year would be a very very bad idea, IMHO. Commodity boxes are a mere 1st year vet reward. Wanted items like seed boxes as well as others are also low age rewards and even the Davies' Locker Table is only an 8th year vet reward. Even only allowing the exchange for same or lower year would flood the game with tons of commodity boxes, seed boxes, Davies' Locker Tables etc.
Not to mention, that hardly anyone would need to buy any longer a Legacy Token to get a full Soulstone since this vet rewards exchange would at the very least make it possible to get into the game a whole lot of 1st Year full Soulstones....

No thanks, please leave the Veteran Rewards Program just as it is, NO EXCHANGE for existing rewards already into the game.

So this post boils down to nothing more than popps does not want his Vet Rewards devalued so he can sell them for mega gold. Allowing any aged account to use (not claim) any Vet Reward is a good thing, this helps all UO players. Having a Vet Reward turn-in program helps older Vets way more then younger Vets because of all the new items that have been added to the Vet Reward Program.
Rewards that have been added that we are now required to use high year picks to get
1st yr
Red Soulstone - An unlimited use soulstone that is account bound when claimed
Commodity Deed Box - Allows players to fill and redeem Commodity Deeds in their homes.
Crystal Portal - Allows players to teleport directly to a bank or moongate by speaking a vocal command.
Corrupted Crystal Portal - Allows players to teleport directly to a dungeon by speaking a vocal command.
4th yr
Seed Box – This box will identify all seeds put into it, up to 500 seeds.
5th yr
Metallic Dye Tub - Dye metal armor a variety of colors
Metallic Leather Dye Tub - Dye leather armor to metallic colors
8th yr
Davies' Locker - A House Addon that can store up to 500 treasure maps and/or SOS bottles, based on a real-life glass top table containing a three-dimensional map of Britannia, created by Alan Davies.

You talk about supporting older Vets but your post does nothing but punish older Vets by requiring them to use high year Vet Reward picks to get these items or pay inflated prices for them. Way to support your older Vets there popps.
Soulstone Ultima Online™ Legacy Token Code $9.99 (UOStore)
Commodity Deed Box 5-8M
Crystal Portal 5-8M
Corrupted Crystal Portal 5-8M
Seed Box 26.5M
Metallic Dye Tub 7-11M
Metallic Leather Dye Tub 7-11M
Davies' Locker no price found but would guess at around 25M if not a lot more.

Sound to me more like you want to keep your gold train going and provide more support for those no-named sites selling UO items for RL $. UUMMMs wounders if there is a reason for this.

 

[Shakkara]

No, they are not paid employees.

They are paid ($10/hr max 20 hours a month) INDEPENDENT CONTRACTORS.

Ok my bad, thanks for info.

They're still getting paid less than the minium wage in my country ($11,10) though. Got paid roughly 3-5 times as much when I was a contract worker for CCP/EVE Online to make missions and tutorials (was paid per job not per hour).

 

[Lord Frodo]

No, they are not paid employees.

They are paid ($10/hr max 20 hours a month) INDEPENDENT CONTRACTORS.

No they are not paid employes but yet they make $10 an hour. UUMMMM very strange.

 

[Shakkara]

No they are not paid employes but yet they make $10 an hour. UUMMMM very strange.

Employees = EA pays the insurance and social security etc. In non-anglosaxian countries you also get some job security or at least benefits from the state for up to several years if you're fired/laid off/involved in bankrupcy, etc.
Contractor/freelancer = You pay the insurance and social security and sort everything out with the taxes. You get contracted per job/task/project, so no guarantee you still have an income once your work is done. That's why contractors/freelancers usually get paid at least double than normal employees. Not so for EA, it seems.

I've been both employee and freelancer and I typically get $25-$30 per hour as employee, and I ask roughly $50 per hour if anyone wants to hire me for freelance jobs. But the more security they give me (contracts for longer-running or more prestigious projects) they better rates they get, as it gives me much less secondary hassle if I'm sure to have work for 3-6 months on end. While just hiring me for a 1-2 hour lecture is much more expensive.

 

[Lord Frodo]

Employees = EA pays the insurance and social security etc.
Contractor/freelancer = You pay the insurance and social security and sort everything out with the taxes. That's why contractors/freelancers usually get paid at least double than normal employees. Not so for EA, it seems. That depends on how your contract is done. US government uses a lot of independent contractors this way and they are still considered employees.

Did I say anything about how much or how thier contract is writem, no. Alls I questioned was how some one could get paid by EA for doing a job and not be a paid employee. There are many ways to hire a person and pay them but they are still employees of the company writing them a check.

 

[lucitus]

No revamps of champs and peerless this year i see, iam out i think for this year. UO is booring without cool fights and there is nothing to fight, fighting air elementals with thousands of hitpoints is booring and useless, a really skyfalling state .

 

[Shakkara]

The thing that just disappoints me is how EA handles UO and how it could be handled.

Just compare EVE to UO. They got 300 people working on that game and deliver free expansions roughly every 6 months. There have been several succesful graphics updates. The game subscriber base grew from 80.000 players to 300.000 a few years ago and recently it sharply increased to 500.000. And that game was made in 2003, so it's already 10 years old. They just keep it running and keep expanding the devteam and keep delivering complimentary products like physical games and soon that new console shooter that ties into the EVE world. The game economy is relatively healthy and there is no item-inflation: Ships from the first installment of the game are still more or less valid to use. Former subscribers get a newsletter every month or two with all the new updates and frequent deals to return to the game at a discount rate. Reactivation is hassle free. The team continues to add tutorials and maintains an on-site wiki with all the things you need to know...

Meanwhile we have UO with two failed client updates and a third so-so client that probably never gets finished. The dev team has shrunk from 50 to 5 people. There are hardly any meaningful updates, and most expansions and content updates have to be paid for seperately. The economy is a mess and there is severe item inflation; crafted items, looted items and artifacts get increasingly more powerful, to the point where everyone can now easily reach the caps of several key stats. Now they devs take it further by letting people mess with the statcaps themselves. The playerbase is in slow but constant decline. Account and payment system is a mess, making it very hard for former players to return to the game. There is very little outward promotion and almost nothing to keep former players involved in the game. The game is so complicated that it is almost impossible to get in to, and the tutorials are severely out of date. There is a decent wiki, but it is maintained by third parties...

Now which game has the best chance to live another 10 years?

 

[cdavbar]

• Vendor Search About time? Should have had it last year. My issue is I'll bet you screw it up and don't allow people to search across shards or make it easy to buy the item. We will give you feedback during beta that you will ignore and it will fail and we will still use searchuo instead.

No, just no. Do not allow people to "search across all shards. If you are on Great Lakes, and want to buy something from Pacific for example, get your transfer token, and go to Pacific. Allowing cross shard trading as you (and a few others) have suggested, would destroy the economy of every shard more than they already are. I shouldn't have to compete with every shards prices to sell my goods, only with those on my shard. The idea of searching accross shards would require people to undercut their prices severely to match prices on cheap shards, causing complete chaos. Since demand for items like Slithers and Tangles will still be high, those prices wouldn't lower much if at all, making it harder for players to buy an item they need/desire.

 

[Frarc]

Now which game has the best chance to live another 10 years?

Yours, i can't wait to play that one... i just hope i don't have to wait another 10 years for it!

 

[Picus at the office]

No, just no. Do not allow people to "search across all shards. If you are on Great Lakes, and want to buy something from Pacific for example, get your transfer token, and go to Pacific. Allowing cross shard trading as you (and a few others) have suggested, would destroy the economy of every shard more than they already are. I shouldn't have to compete with every shards prices to sell my goods, only with those on my shard. The idea of searching accross shards would require people to undercut their prices severely to match prices on cheap shards, causing complete chaos. Since demand for items like Slithers and Tangles will still be high, those prices wouldn't lower much if at all, making it harder for players to buy an item they need/desire.

And this doesn't happen now?

 

[MalagAste]

No, just no. Do not allow people to "search across all shards. If you are on Great Lakes, and want to buy something from Pacific for example, get your transfer token, and go to Pacific. Allowing cross shard trading as you (and a few others) have suggested, would destroy the economy of every shard more than they already are. I shouldn't have to compete with every shards prices to sell my goods, only with those on my shard. The idea of searching accross shards would require people to undercut their prices severely to match prices on cheap shards, causing complete chaos. Since demand for items like Slithers and Tangles will still be high, those prices wouldn't lower much if at all, making it harder for players to buy an item they need/desire.

Hate to say but people have been xshard trading since before you could transfer. It won't stop. And I wouldn't want it to. However there are some things that really shouldn't be xshardable. Like EM items.