With today's news on top of the latest Letter from the Producer...

[Dermott of LS]

...

I think I must also take a step back from UI modding. I haven't done much over the past couple of months to keep things updated, but by the same token, what concrete evidence of an attempt to really bring the EC up to where it should have always been (see the old thread in my sig which is still very much appropriate if I posted it today) have we been given from the devs?

With the feeling that there is little support, there is lessening desire to keep working on my end as well especially since I'm doing such in my own free time and not as an employee of UO. When it felt like the client was being supported and promoted, it made it easy for those of us who did UI modding to work with the client and add in our own little touches.

But right now, that seems to have all changed. So like my actual playing time, I'm stepping back, watching, waiting, and hoping. I'll be putting together over on the UHall another post regarding what I believe the Team MUST do from this point forward to reverse the less than quality direction it seems the team is taking.

I've stood/sat by and watched as the modders I worked with over the net to create and polish the UI themes, packs, and ideas get discouraged and abandon their efforts. Most often the reason has been a perceived lack of commitment from the devs. While this is probably not the case on the devs part, it's what gets shown when bugs are left in-game for months if not years at a time and highly desired and anticipated updates get shelved.

I hope to see the improvement I'm waiting for sooner rather than later, at which point I'm certain the modding community will pick up either with returning modders or a new batch of people and then I will join them again. Until then, I simply don't have the desire to put the time into modding.

Thanks to everyone who have been a fan of my work as well as to all of the other modders from Pinco back to the Exchange and B-LAU during KR. Not saying I'm quitting completely or leaving UO, just that I don't feel the encouragement from the UO Team itself (which may be unintentional on their part, but it's still that way) to want to play around with modding for the time being.

Anyway, take all of that however, I had seen rumours earlier and then the news/announcement today and it's just been chewing away at my mind.

 

[Pinco]

...

I think I must also take a step back from UI modding. I haven't done much over the past couple of months to keep things updated, but by the same token, what concrete evidence of an attempt to really bring the EC up to where it should have always been (see the old thread in my sig which is still very much appropriate if I posted it today) have we been given from the devs?

With the feeling that there is little support, there is lessening desire to keep working on my end as well especially since I'm doing such in my own free time and not as an employee of UO. When it felt like the client was being supported and promoted, it made it easy for those of us who did UI modding to work with the client and add in our own little touches.

But right now, that seems to have all changed. So like my actual playing time, I'm stepping back, watching, waiting, and hoping. I'll be putting together over on the UHall another post regarding what I believe the Team MUST do from this point forward to reverse the less than quality direction it seems the team is taking.

I've stood/sat by and watched as the modders I worked with over the net to create and polish the UI themes, packs, and ideas get discouraged and abandon their efforts. Most often the reason has been a perceived lack of commitment from the devs. While this is probably not the case on the devs part, it's what gets shown when bugs are left in-game for months if not years at a time and highly desired and anticipated updates get shelved.

I hope to see the improvement I'm waiting for sooner rather than later, at which point I'm certain the modding community will pick up either with returning modders or a new batch of people and then I will join them again. Until then, I simply don't have the desire to put the time into modding.

Thanks to everyone who have been a fan of my work as well as to all of the other modders from Pinco back to the Exchange and B-LAU during KR. Not saying I'm quitting completely or leaving UO, just that I don't feel the encouragement from the UO Team itself (which may be unintentional on their part, but it's still that way) to want to play around with modding for the time being.

Anyway, take all of that however, I had seen rumours earlier and then the news/announcement today and it's just been chewing away at my mind.

You're not the only one... I think they fooled me for too long with all those promises. The truth is they don't care about the client, they just want the 13 bucks/month.
Adding new items, events, etc... all useless without a decent client. The "great change" of the 15th anniversary is the last chance I give them to set the things right, if they don't I'm out...

 

[Daga Taga]

I just want to say I really appreciate what the both of you have done. I know it's not enough and that it won't fix the issues, but I feel it needed to be said. I also see where you are coming from on this issue, and don't blame you guys one bit.

 

[Woodsman]

I really appreciate the work you all have done as well. When I came back, I had been used to other MMORPGs, and dreaded having to work with an antiquated interface. You all made it a pleasure to play.

I do not feel any confidence either, and looking at the producer's letters after Cal, I do not get a sense that they are concerned about advancing UO or UO's future. It truly feels like they are trying to just keep UO limping along with as little investment as possible. It's very upsetting to me because of the loss of Grimm, and because I felt that with the move to BioWare, things would improve greatly.

 

[Dermott of LS]

...

Well in theory Grimm will be replaced by a new (or current) dev team member who we may or may not know. However, in practice, what we lose, especially from the EC point of view was someone who understood what direction the client should have taken and if given the reins could have given us something big (bigger than what he already has anyway). Now we'll be left with... ummm... ??? to carry the torch in the manner that Grimm and many he worked with up through SA did... that being communication with the players themselves.

And that to me means going beyond simply "touring the shards"and appearing at little events, it means getting involved in our various debates, taking those debates and using them to help move the game forward. Otherwise all of our posting on this board and the UHall is simply academic and left to the trolls and complainers. The posters that actually TRY to come up with answers no longer have any reason or purpose to do so.

Two big things came to light for me today...

1. Grimm's soon departure shows that the Management of the Team holds little interest in increasing communication (a BAD direction we've been going since Draconi left and Cal took over)

and

2. What little active, visible advocacy we had left for the EC seems to be leaving or gone. First Supreem now Grimm. Again, a BAD direction because regardless of what anyone thinks of the Classic Client, it's simply not bringing in or going to bring in new or returning customer bases.

Until these two things change, what's the point of putting all of the effort and time?

 

[Doubleplay]

Please take heart. Your disappointment, disillusionment, and frustration is shared by millions in today's world. Ask anyone who works for any corporation who has sat in meetings to plan safety, production, quality or any other corporate project. Those with perhaps great ideas and much enthusiasm are constantly beat down and ignored, growing disillusioned when they finally find out that those in charge are not interested in solutions to corporate problems, but rather are very concerned that the meetings themselves make a corporate statement of support for the issues in case of a future lawsuit, or government subsidy application. It is the meeting that is important, not the ideas.

This is NOT an anti-corporate rant. It is just a convenient example of the modder's situation. Similar examples can be made with enthusiastic politicians, education reformers, charity leaders, and on and on. Be aware that you have made a lot of people happy with your work. I can't communicate to you regularly the fact that every single day I play UO, I am thankful for the work of the modders. This is no exaggeration. Please don't look to the "system" for satisfaction. That is a certain disappointment. You have earned respect from the users of your work, and we hope you can take solace in that. The only hope for the customer is that you champions somehow realign the source of your satisfaction.

 

[Petra Fyde]

Question: Did you do your modding for the benefit of the dev team? or the benefit of the players?

Because I do the playguide info on
UO Stratics *New* for the players, and as long as at least some of them appreciate my efforts and find what I have done helpful to them, I shall continue to do it.
Look not for the support you might or might not get, but to the support you give. Find your appreciation and 'job satisfaction' there.

It won't stop you worrying about things. Uncertainty is, in my view, one of the worst of emotions, and there's a heck of a lot of uncertainty surrounding our game at the moment. It will help you feel what you are doing, and have done, was and is worthwhile.

 

[Pinco]

Question: Did you do your modding for the benefit of the dev team? or the benefit of the players?

Because I do the playguide info on
UO Stratics *New* for the players, and as long as at least some of them appreciate my efforts and find what I have done helpful to them, I shall continue to do it.
Look not for the support you might or might not get, but to the support you give. Find your appreciation and 'job satisfaction' there.

It won't stop you worrying about things. Uncertainty is, in my view, one of the worst of emotions, and there's a heck of a lot of uncertainty surrounding our game at the moment. It will help you feel what you are doing, and have done, was and is worthwhile.

I just do that to makes the things better, but everything is getting worse everyday so there can't be any satisfaction, especially when the whole thing is becaming a giant scam where they promise something to keep people playing while they know very well that they are not going to do anything.
For a game like UO I expect graphical and contents improvements (an evolution in both sides), but like now they are keep adding more and more contents while the client is rotting in hell...
If they like just content, they can send us paper and pencil for 1$ so we all can play dnd by reading the story in the home page. If they want to keep UO as a videogame, is better they start to think much more about the client then.

Now is no more a matter of satisfaction, just a matter of principle because if you pay 13€/month you should have something well done, and not a bunch of things thrown there just because they have to do something to shows to their boss that they are doing something which worth the monthly pay...
During this dark times I'm doing lot of sacrifices to keep paying for UO (and I'm not the only one), and it's a real shame the way they treat us...
A wise man once said: if you don't care about a drop of water getting lost, don't complain when you will die of thirst. Actually they are losing all their drops and if they are not going to do something smart they will die of thirst very soon

 

[Dermott of LS]

...

Question: Did you do your modding for the benefit of the dev team? or the benefit of the players?

Because I do the playguide info on

UO Stratics *New* for the players, and as long as at least some of them appreciate my efforts and find what I have done helpful to them, I shall continue to do it.
Look not for the support you might or might not get, but to the support you give. Find your appreciation and 'job satisfaction' there.

It won't stop you worrying about things. Uncertainty is, in my view, one of the worst of emotions, and there's a heck of a lot of uncertainty surrounding our game at the moment. It will help you feel what you are doing, and have done, was and is worthwhile.

Back when KR was first released we were seeing significant weekly patches to help bring the client along in terms of quality and functionality. Granted this was because the client was released several months' worth of work earlier than it should have been, but still. Anyway, after a couple months of this, the patching slowed or stopped. They opened up the UI to the players to mod as they saw fit, first only graphically, then fully. I asked a few people on here at the time a simple question... what could we do to patch the client ourselves... in a thread I believe I called "The Players' Patch Project". Out of that grew the Modder's Exchange which lasted into the EC. Then Pinco stepped up and blew everything away with Pinco's UI which I ported over a couple of UI themes of my own to work with.

The thing is though, that at least for me and via the reasons why other modders I worked with by chatting and/or swapping files back and forth over ICQ to tweak graphics and code quit modding or UO itself entirely was that while we were actively modding it was a time when we felt like the client was being supported and promoted by the devs. Yes, we did the work as much for the players and/or ourselves, but there was this feeling that the devs were taking an interest as well in the client. We sent in bugs, we helped build the bug list on this forum and the KR forum, we helped people get used to the new client and so on.

There was always the unspoken feeling that we were doing it to promote the client because we thought it was the best way forward for the game technologically. The problem starts when the message starts coming through (regardless if it's accurate or not) that the devs no longer care or are promoting the client. A lot of that comes from the removal of the devs who were active in working on the client that actually communicated with us. Supreem, Axel, and Grimm and no longer having that voice. The next nail in that coffin was seeing the High Res update, which is the biggest visible problem the EC has, being put on the back burner and not even mentioned in the latest "Letter from the Producer".

Finally there's the Producer herself. Mesanna may love UO and the Ultima mythos and I won't take any of that away from her. People may enjoy the fun she brings when she visits the shards, I won;t take that away either. However, remember that she was the one shushing Cal all the time on the dev videos and Cal really started the trend of clamping down on providing any real solid information regarding the future of the game, Mesanna takes that even further even though we've been practically screaming that we should have more communication, not less.

It all builds up to the thought that if the Devs themselves aren't showing support for the new client, then we modders in the end are wasting our time because there's only so much we can do both in terms of client access and because we're not paid employees, we do this on our own time.

I've taken a lot of satisfaction in the responses people have made over the years about how they use one of my UI themes or packages and how they enjoy the game better because of it. That hasn't lessened, but that isn't the problem. The problem is that if the devs don't seem to support the new client and that gets discouraging.

 

[Gha'val]

I would like to thank you all for the EC. It was one of the reasons I returned to playing. And the only reason my wife and several other new people to UO even tried the game. Keep up the good work! it's more appreciated then you know.

 

[Pinco]

I would like to thank you all for the EC. It was one of the reasons I returned to playing. And the only reason my wife and several other new people to UO even tried the game. Keep up the good work! it's more appreciated then you know.

yes, but unfortunately EA doesn't care about the client side...

 

[Dermott of LS]

...

yes, but unfortunately EA doesn't care about the client side...

I would say "doesn't seem to care" because behind the scenes they might have devs that do care and are working on improving the EC, but it's something that for whatever reason we don't see or know about, so we're left with the perception that they don't care.

 

[Pinco]

...



I would say "doesn't seem to care" because behind the scenes they might have devs that do care and are working on improving the EC, but it's something that for whatever reason we don't see or know about, so we're left with the perception that they don't care.

what you see is what you get

 

[Dermott of LS]

...

Yeah, but I do like to be a bit careful in my terminology when I can

 

[Pinco]

...

Yeah, but I do like to be a bit careful in my terminology when I can

They can always proof me wrong if they don't like my terminology

 

[Madrid]

I just do that to makes the things better, but everything is getting worse everyday so there can't be any satisfaction, especially when the whole thing is becaming a giant scam where they promise something to keep people playing while they know very well that they are not going to do anything.

This is the modus operandi and UO Propaganda machine.

Promises Promises and then..."we had to put that on hold in favor of...(insert more lies here).

With Grimm leaving and Messanna not even mentioning anything about the high resolution upgrades I think it's finally time to close down my last account for good.

Enough lies already.

At least come out and say no were not going to be doing the high resolution at this time or any time in the near future. No...instead they remain silent and collect your $15 + subscription fee.