The state of UO, and a suggestion to the Devs

[GalenKnighthawke]

I will admit, straight off, to having only skimmed this thread; some of the posters are actually on my ignore list, thus making it harder. It appears, however, to be another "classic shard" thread.

Wanted to quickly shoot off the following points.

1. Thanks to everyone who replied to this thread for proving the point I attempted to make in this other thread.

2. Those of you who want any kind of pre-AoS shard....You also want to re-visit, I take it, the elusive "zero spell damage" bug? Only thing that "fixed" this was the introduction of the new AoS damage system?

3. Or how about the pain-in-the-ass two damage system wherein a player's damage would be calculated in two different ways, one against monsters and one against other players? I remember reading at the time about what a pain this one was for them to maintain.

4. 100,000 + 7,000 = 107,000. Not that much difference. And that's assuming every single one of the people alleged to currently play this game for for free suddenly decides to pay for it, and that's extremely doubtful. And assuming they stick around once they realize that they also have to deal with the zero spell damage bug.

5. 100,000 = 400 = 100,400. This is an even smaller difference.

6. Neither 400 nor 7,000 players is worth the introduction of a new shard that will require maintenance, and yes it will require maintenance. (Siege has.)

7. For those of you who think that generally the game was more challenging before AoS, recall the stories of someone who would start fighting a demon, hit a bandage self macro, then minimize the window, come back in a moment, and find the demon dead and himself at half health.

8. Everyone please remember that one of the reasons AoS happened, the devs at the time stated clearly, was that there was a preference in the PvP community for player actions determining more of the outcome.

9. Anyone remember when special moves were automatic and required no mana? Deadly Poisoned katanas? The comparative usefulness of fencing weapons versus swords weapons?

10. What about pre-Healing skill, when every template had a little magery? Did you want the shard to be pre- or post-Healing skill?

11. What about when bandages were 1 weight unit each, and it was hard to carry around more than a few of them for any appreciable period of time, assuming you also wanted to loot things?

12. And I haven't even gotten into the bank box exploiting PKs roaming the countryside, able to bank your stuff through the use of exploits before you had any kind of chance to get rezzed and come back to try and take it.

13. Pre-pet control slots? When tamers could walk around with, say, 8 nightmares or 4 white wyrms?

14. Did you want the shard to be pre-big archery nerf or post-big archery nerf?

15. Anyone remember the one-hit-killing Heavy Crossbows of Vanquishing? Oh yes, one-hit-kills happened pre-AoS, pre-runics, pre-Trammel, pre-power scrolls.

A lot of people have stopped reading by now so I'll stop writing.

For those of you who are still with me, know that these threads are ultimately not about reality at all, and thus neither this post nor any other post along similar lines will matter in the slightest. I have posted this not for regular readers of or posters in this thread (or the dozens like it), but for the UO team, and for any post-Trammel readers who might buy into the romantic-sounding statements made about the old days.....Statements which bear little relation to reality.

-Galen's player

 

[Bara]

people play free shards because they are F R E E

ding ding ding

You just won this thread.

On a side note: I've read a lot of "the worst mistake osi ever did was...." and I figure I will throw my two cents in.

The worst mistake was the cancellation of UO2. :gun:

 

[Babble]

From that argument free to play games should rule and pay to play die out?

I wonder what wow does right and other games like tabula rasa do not, maybe it is quality gameplay?

 

[GalenKnighthawke]

From that argument free to play games should rule and pay to play die out?

I wonder what wow does right and other games like tabula rasa do not, maybe it is quality gameplay?

Actually there are arguments that the subscription model is going to die out, sooner or later. I actually don't believe this, but that's an argument I've heard.

-Galen's player

 

[HD2300]

The worst mistake was the cancellation of UO2. :gun:

Richard Gariott is a free agent again.

UO needs a Tram only shard. On a Tram only shard everyone wins. There are no winners and no losers, which is why PvP subscription games dont work long term.

 

[Surgeries]

It might Be EA's game but it's our communities inside it..why do we keep turning to them to "fix it" when it's us that has been letting it down all along.

The Ruby Slipper Syndrome...nicely said.

EA changes the game.

We are the ones that have the actual power to enjoy said game, or not.

Pretty simple, in theory, anyway.

I do still enjoy it, every day, indeed!

 

[Morgana LeFay (PoV)]

as someone pointed out how hard is it to thrown in a UO:R disk and start it up.

It isn't quite that simple. The server code is seperate from the client code.

Now, I am not offering this as an excuse, and I do not buy for 1 second that the devs "don't have the old code". Everything is backed up somewhere...even really old code.

I think a pre-UO:R shard would do well. No Trammel, no Malas, no Illshenar, only Britainia and the Lost Lands.

No AoS item stats...just ruin, power, vanq, etc.

No neon colors, no customizable housing, no 3D client.

There are tons of us old players that would gladly give up housing and items to go back to that ruleset...otherwise FreeShards wouldn't exist and thrive.

Just another example of EA not listening to their customers. What harm would it do to the people that wanted to remain on their present shards??

 

[Morgana LeFay (PoV)]

Actually there are arguments that the subscription model is going to die out, sooner or later. I actually don't believe this, but that's an argument I've heard.

-Galen's player

All it will take is for one good MMO to come out that doesn't charge a subscription fee.

I have been paying OSI/EA monthly since day 1...so how much have I spent on UO?

Around $1500?

Still, I don't consider that a waste. If I had bought one console game per month during that same time period, I would have spent about $8000. So I consider UO to be a value.

 

[Duskofdead]

Bull****. It wasnt because of players like me. It was the carebears and their inability to cope with getting PK'd that made trammel come along.

This argument is as mentally challenged as "it's not criminals' fault we have to pay taxes for police. It's whiny lazy helpless victim morons who complain about crime."

 

[GalenKnighthawke]

All it will take is for one good MMO to come out that doesn't charge a subscription fee.

One of the reasons I think this won't happen is that I can't see a "good" free MMO.

Let's think of the criteria for good....Support, new content periodically, game systems subject to ongoing review, etc.

No way can you get that on an ongoing basis without a subscription fee.

If a highly successful, 'good' free MMO comes out, I'll lay odds it won't last long, and people will return to UO and WoW and the others within the year.

MMO's "long tails" depend upon having that steady income.

-Galen's player

 

[Duskofdead]

This thread has wandered all over the place (great posts, btw, it's amazing how many of us older players all hit some of the same conclusions and ideas about things) and I wanna hit on several things. I'll try to keep it by topic but it might get messy.

1) Regarding a classic shard, my suspicion (beyond all the other very valid concerns such as budget, level of support, inadequate service as-is, etc.) is less an issue of they won't as they can't. I don't know about many of the rest of you, but I do have my original UO cd as well as my original T2A cd. Those were the only two cd's/expansions in use at the time that I was playing, and left, UO. When I came back just a month or so ago, I tried to install just off the plain original CD. Now, this is anecdotal and I'm no programmer. But the thing wouldn't even *try* to load in a modern, WinXP system. For me anyway. And I just imagine the nightmare of trying to get the classic programming to run on any wide scale today for large numbers of players who have upgraded their PC's since '98. This is not even mentioning all the bugs which were present for years in the old code which presumably have been fixed or overwritten in the patches and changes throughout the years. I think if you're talking about opening a classic shard, but with all the "goodies" (such as bug fixes and such) which came in later publishes, you're practically talking about nearly writing a new game anyhow, and they'd rather put that towards expansions and Stygian and such rather than something which.... I hate to admit, would just be a pander to us old schoolers and probably not attract any substantial new/return playerbase to the paid servers.

That said, don't get me wrong. Even WITH bugs, I would love to play on a classic shard. In fact, if I knew of a free one that left the game INTACT (i.e. didn't redesign Britain as a hedge maze city with bird vendors) I would play on it if it had an okay population size.

2) To the people who mentioned D2 similarities or WOW similarities, yes you are correct. And really when you talk about "being similar to D2 / WOW" you are talking about the same thing, because despite how fanbois of Blizzard bash me for saying this, after playing D2 for several years and then reluctantly trying WOW (and getting addicted for a few years) it was blatantly obvious that WOW essentially is designed like D2: The MMORPG. It even steals class names and class abilities from D2 which to my knowledge didn't exist in previous Warcraft games. The overall feel and design of the game is extremely similar, and is, in essence, a lottery rate drop farming/gear-hunting and heavily item-based PvM treasurehunting game. Both games, to "legitimately" advance your character, requires ENORMOUS time investments as well as considerable amounts of luck (you have no control over what items will drop, and the best stuff may require you to do a 1-4 hour dungeon to kill a boss that has a 0.8% drop rate of a particular nice item) and much of it requires you to do things in large groups of players, particularly in the endgame. In both games, gear differences are SO enormous between "normal", "sorta okay", and "godly", and in both games players having the best gear has been assumed in much of the late game design to such an extent that it is difficult, if not impossible, to have an enjoyable play experience without the best stuff. Both PvM and PvP, for instance, in World of Warcraft AND Diablo 2 are completely dominated by the same perhaps 5-10% of hardcore players who have the very absolute best of everything, and cannot be seriously competed against by a more casual/typical player.

Problem with adding tons of differentials in terms of ability levels, equipment quality, and neato exclusive items? The main one is that if you add stuff that is super-cool and useful, you essentially make it a necessity. Those who do not have it, will be collecting the scraps next to the players who do have it. They will be outperformed in most every regard. Let's take, just as an example, someone who refuses to pay a couple million gold in-game for all their power scrolls, and instead chooses to stay as a 7xGM character in the old style. Will they be as good a tamer? Caster? Fighter? Healer? Will they survive as well in combat? Will they be able to solo mobs just as difficult? Will they be just as useful in damage done, spells cast and battles won in groups or guilds? Excluding large skill differences between the players, the answer is no. The exact same thing can be said of players who have "Enigma" runeworded gear in Diablo 2, or players who have (it changes over time) the at-the-moment best tier of raiding/PvP gear. In fact PvP in World of Warcraft, as structured as it tries to be and "fair" (the battleground system matches players of similar level in equally sized teams of 10, 15, 20, etc.) is little more than a showcasing of gear because even relatively slight differences in gear quality will result in lopsidedly uneven fights where two same-level players will engage and even the player with better skill or a surprise advantage can wail away doing little damage only to be killed in 2-3 shots by their opponent. I would go near so far as to say skill is almost insubstantial in heavily gear-based RPG's such as all the Blizzard ones I've ever tried, because skill simply doesn't compensate for uneven footing where someone has a godly weapon that can 2-3 shot you, or a godly set of gear that lets them survive 30 of your hits in a row.

That brings me to...

3) The E-Bay problem. When you add a lot of exclusive farmables to a game, especially if they are essential to player performance, yet rare and difficult to acquire, you exacerbate the demand for third party online purchaseables and cheating. Whether we're talking about selling of established accounts, power levelling services, buying gold, or however players can turn to third party providers in order to acquire what are basically fundamental essentials in the game in order to compete and have fun, without devoting their life to the game. I have always felt that the best design was the most like OLD UO---- make everything relatively easily accessible, in-game, player-created or player-supplied or easily gathered or purchased. If you add Godwin's Merciless Matriarchal Bow of Deathly Enigmatic Lich-Death with +69 to all stats and allows you to levitate for short periods of time, which only drops from some uber-hard dragon that spawns once a week, that's all fine and good. But all you have done is created PK's no one can cope with once a couple get said bow, and a whole lot of players who want it and can't get it except by paying real life money for it, or for the in game gold to buy it. And you've made the game a less enjoyable, harder, less fun and welcoming place for the new player who isn't even aware of said bow or how to get one, but is going to wind up being told he needs one---- or killed by someone who has one.

4) PvP should be accessible and enjoyable for everyone. I'm not going to get into Tram vs. Fel. But I think item-based games make PvP only enjoyable for the most hardcore players. I think old UO had the right idea, where really, you could go to any player's vendor and pick up affordable items which would at least place you within the ballfield of any PK in terms of gear preparedness. That isn't the case today. Item insurance of course makes itw orse because crafters can't sell anything (and what they can make is trash next to nice drops anyhow) and the people with the best gear will have it forever, no matter how much of a PK chode they are in game and no matter how much players may band together to kill them. I do not believe the world would have perfect player justice even without item insurance; it never did. But I believe the combination of massive gear inequalities introduced with the D2-style system combined with item insurance basically makes PvP in this game absolutely equivalent to WOW's, where bored hardcores gallop around waiting for a noob to pop their head out of the moongate and show them how big their PK balls are.

5) Nope the ability to PK anyone you feel like does not inherently make a better game. It's how it's used. RP Pk'ing never killed this game. But it was also miniscule in terms of number of player-caused deaths and not traumatic or humiliating to the player who experienced it. (At least if they got into the spirit of things a little.) Plus, frankly, an RP-PK didn't emote urinating on your corpse and then start talking about doing things to the eye socket of your mom's skull all typed in l33tsp33k. Nor was the purpose of an RP-PK to get rich and buy out the shard by profiting from all the work of non-combat crafter miners and lumberjacks they could find in the wilderness, and make a fortune off it. Once those things began to constitute "most PvP", the player outrage was not just loud and widespread, but it was totally justified. I'm not in this game to make you rich by looting my corpse so you don't have to earn money any other way. I don't care if you do it once, I care if you, your friends, your guild, their little brothers, and 18 guys from Vesper all spend their whole day doing that, and nothing but that, to go buy a castle or keep that I would never be able to afford despite doing honest work in the game. And being corpsecamped and foulmouthed by l33tsp33king 13 year olds from some corn field in Illinois who have no other way to feel tuff and gangsta is not something I would pay 13 dollars a month to enjoy. That's what PvP has largely become in the last decade of online gaming, and why people don't enjoy it, and why complaining about it and the popularity of PvP-restrictions will never go away no matter how much bitter old Pk's complain that it's the whiners who ruined their games. If you spent more time killing people who killed noobs and spent an hour mockin gthem and cursing them out, and less time killing people's pack horses, Trammel wouldn't have happened.

My 49 1/2 cents.

 

[TheScoundrelRico]

It isn't quite that simple. The server code is seperate from the client code.

Funny how many player run shards have been able to be created...la

 

[CORRECTUO]

This argument is as mentally challenged as "it's not criminals' fault we have to pay taxes for police. It's whiny lazy helpless victim morons who complain about crime."

There is a drastic difference between the need for police in real life and people wanting more protection for their actual lives, and a bunch of whiney, sniveling wimps who cant handle their character getting killed in a game. If you cant see that difference, then you have no right to call anyone mentally challenged and need to get a grip on reality, get off your deformed high horse, and back on the yellow bus.

Open PvP wasnt the problem with UO. It was the people who couldnt handle it. Instead of ruining the game for those of us who could, you could have just simply left.

And if they should put retro shards in, no one said you had to play it. You can stay on your post AOS servers and let those of us who enjoyed the real UO play our servers. Simple as that.

The only reason EA wont put in retro servers is because they know they will succeed and their post AOS servers will fail, thus proving what has been know for nearly a decade now, UO was fine the way it was. All it needed were a few bug fixes and nothing else.

 

[HD2300]

Open PvP wasnt the problem with UO. It was the people who couldnt handle it.

Exactly. In an Open PvP game only a minority can be winners. The rest are losers. Long term, who would keep paying to play a game if they are a loser in the game?

 

[CORRECTUO]

Where in my post did I say I needed my hand held? Did I give you any indication that I could not take care of myself? Wake up!

Your hypocracy in your last post was indication enough. You claimed that you hated the PvP, but then you turn around and say you learned how to survive and such and enjoyed the game. You contradict yourself. You hated the PvP, yet you loved the game? Now, either you're a raging hypocrite, or you're lying. Im guessing its the latter.

The problem was that people felt like they were being taken advantage of, and they were right to feel that way. This game is a business. Letting all those people who did not want to deal with the perverts who got off on taking advantage of others leave the game would have been a stupid business decision.

It would have been better for the game to lose the few players who disliked the PvP, than to alienate the majority who liked it and force them to leave.

Being taken advantage of? Bull. People knew what they were getting into with UO. If they couldnt handle PvP and disliked it so much, then why did they even play the game to begin with? Every player who logged on knew they were logging onto an open PvP game and could be killed at any time by another player. No one was taken advantage of, they just got their asses kicked and couldnt handle it.

UO was never made for the faint of heart. It was made for mature people who could hanlde a tough game.

Most players don't want to deal with PKs. They choose not to PvP. That is why Fel is dead. I go to Fel sometimes do so with the knowledge that I might die. It is my choice. In the old days, if one played UO, there was no choice.

Fel is dead because PvP is pointless. Its imbalanced and unfair, favoring the cheaters and people with the uber gear. Thats why fel is dead. Fel was still going strong right after the split. But as PvP became more and more imbalanced, and more item dependant, people began to leave.

Yeah, there was a choice, it was called leave. If they couldnt handle open PVP, then why did they play the game in the first place? It wasnt the games fault, or the PKs, or the PvP, it was the player who couldnt cope with the difficulty of the game. UO was a game of survival. Either you learned how to survive, by utilizing your skills, or you were dead, that simple.

The great thing about UO is tha ability to choose how you want to play the game. You seem to be saying that everyone should have to deal with PvP or not play UO. That game would be dead already.

Oh yeah, because UO is thriving now, isnt it? Pfft.

The game is dying now and is nearly dead. What few remnants remain now are a shadow of the living, breathing, vibrant world UO once was.

Someone in this thread mentioned Darkfall. Go take a look at Darkfall's forums. There are over 40k players who are waiting to play that game. A large number of them are former UO players. They are waiting for Darkfall because they want a game that offers a UO like experience. Not post AOS UO, pre trammel UO. A lot of those players would gladly come back to UO if there were T2A servers.

As far as your comments about res killing, she came back to her body because it was eaiser to not have to go buy new tools. The only reason for res killing her was the sick thrill of it.

Riiight, because the 5 gold for new tools was sooooo expensive. I mean, its not like she could have trash picked some items off of the ground around the bank and sold them to the NPCs for some quick extra cash. I mean, perish the thought that she actualy try and think of alternative ways of making money. No, no, that might have required her to be clever or use her brain....

She could have denied that PK his sick thrill by not going back to her body. Simple as that.

I think it is unethical to expose people to that sort of treatment without their concent.

Concent? The second she logged into the game, she were concenting to whatever the game had to throw at her.

Like I said before, people knew it was an open PvP game and that they were going to be able to be killed by other players at any time. What did they think? That they were going to be exempt somehow? No one was exempt for getting killed. It happened. The mature players got over it and kept going.

 

[CORRECTUO]

Exactly. In an Open PvP game only a minority can be winners. The rest are losers. Long term, who would keep paying to play a game if they are a loser in the game?

Umm, minority of winners? Have you ever seen the screen shots of old Britain bank? There were tons of 7x GM characters there. Not to mention all of the people who had houses, successful vendor shops, successful guilds, etc etc etc, out side of town.

The only people who were losers were the ones who couldnt adapt, and they were the vast minority.

You clearly have no idea of how the game was back then.

 

[HD2300]

Umm, minority of winners? Have you ever seen the screen shots of old Britain bank? There were tons of 7x GM characters there. Not to mention all of the people who had houses, successful vendor shops, successful guilds, etc etc etc, out side of town.

The only people who were losers were the ones who couldnt adapt, and they were the vast minority.

You clearly have no idea of how the game was back then.

There was no other competition then.

 

[Hannes Erich]

Funny how many player run shards have been able to be created...la

Player-run shards (also referred to as shard emulators or free shards), are not only against UO's TOS, but discussing them is also against UO Stratics forum rules.

You might want to make sure your own mods know the forum rules.

(Are the forum mods on permanent vacation around here? How do you even manage to retain EA/Mythic's support for "official forum" status?)

 

[Magdalene]

Discussing free shards in theory and in general is not prohibited and has never been.
Advertising free shards by name, linking to their webpages and/or giving clear directions how to access one are the not welcome details.

 

[Hannes Erich]

Discussing free shards in theory and in general is not prohibited and has never been.
Advertising free shards by name, linking to their webpages and/or giving clear directions how to access one are the not welcome details.

Okay awesome, I'm sure all my forthcoming threads/posts about free shards will be great for the community and for UO!

(Just kidding of course, but I had to get my digs in after face-planting like that LOL.)

 

[Duskofdead]

This argument is as mentally challenged as "it's not criminals' fault we have to pay taxes for police. It's whiny lazy helpless victim morons who complain about crime."

There is a drastic difference between the need for police in real life and people wanting more protection for their actual lives, and a bunch of whiney, sniveling wimps who cant handle their character getting killed in a game. If you cant see that difference, then you have no right to call anyone mentally challenged and need to get a grip on reality, get off your deformed high horse, and back on the yellow bus.

Open PvP wasnt the problem with UO. It was the people who couldnt handle it. Instead of ruining the game for those of us who could, you could have just simply left.

You almost got it right. Well, not almost. You were sniffing in the right ballfield, at least.

Open PvP wasn't the problem with UO. It was the people who couldn't handle PvP against other PvP'ers, and instead treated PvP as something to habitually force onto players/characters who clearly did not want, or were not capable, of PvP'ing to defend themselves.

With that little correction in mind, yes, we can agree, open PvP by itself wasn't the problem anymore than the gun is the problem and not the guy off his meds who bought it and took it to school at Virginia Tech.

This refusal to accept any responsibility for the individual actions of so called PvP'ers which created the huge outcry for PvP restrictions, while being more than happy to ladle individual blame on players who couldn't even level a crafter or set foot outside of certain town gates without getting killed, reeks of a double standard. Especially since Trammel would never have been needed or created if PvP'ers had, generally, stuck to PvP'ing with other players who wanted to engage in it.

PvP is entirely separate from PK'ing. PvP'ing is two relatively capable (or at least WILLING to engage) combatant players fighting each other. PK'ing is stalking and lurking in areas you know you will find players completely incapable of defending themselves (newbie areas, right outside town gates, near rockfaces or resource gathering points, stealthing near NPC healers to wait for newly rezzed people) and persistently working that area, while avoiding real challenges. The former has always been relegated to a few select locations such as Fel Yew or the Britain graveyard in the old days. The latter was prevalent through the whole rest of the gameworld outside those few areas and abused enough that nearly every non-habitually-PvP'ing character got sick of it.

Open PvP was a privilege, not a right. And it was abused. And it was taken away. And if it hadn't been, UO might have pleased players like yourself and lost the 7-10 nonsociopathic players out there for each player like you, who were minding their own business and didn't feel like paying 10 bucks a month for you to loot their corpse over and over was any sort of fun.

It would have been better for the game to lose the few players who disliked the PvP, than to alienate the majority who liked it and force them to leave.

It's funny because, in your selfish attitude that the game entirely revolved around open PvP and people's apparent "right" to force nonconsensual PvP'ing (or let's call it what it is, PK'ing helpless non threatening players on sight as a playstyle), you go around attacking the people who didn't like getting habitually ganked and call them selfish. And, incidentally, you make up conclusions which bear out virtually none of the facts out there. Please name a pay-to-play game out there with open PvP whose numbers surpass the pay-to-play games with PvP restrictions. The largest and most popular game out there, World of Warcraft, which dwarfs everyone else, has very restrictive conditions on when you may engage another player in PvP... even on the so-called PvP shards. So your pure straw grasping here that UO would have been numerically better off pleasing the PvP MINORITY over the majority who were just trying to play the game without getting murdered every 11 minutes falls pretty flat.

P.S. There still pretty much are wide-open avenues for PvP. Join or create a guild and declare war on as many other guilds as you can find. Or join a PvP guild and attack your guildmates on sight.

You just can't go camp some miner's body for 3 hours. If that has "ruined the game", dunno what to tell you. Maybe take up serial killing as a hobby?

 

[Morgana LeFay (PoV)]

Funny how many player run shards have been able to be created...la

That's true...but they are not using the same server software, or hardware, as the production shards.

 

[Morgana LeFay (PoV)]

Exactly. In an Open PvP game only a minority can be winners. The rest are losers. Long term, who would keep paying to play a game if they are a loser in the game?

OSI had 2 options at the time that UO:Ren came out:

1 - Find a way to make ganking and rampant PK'ing risky enough to curtail it to the point that it would only be done in the face of great reward.

of

2 - Split the world into Tram and Fel.

They went with option 2 because it was the easier of the two.


What should have been done is this:

- Any player killing an innocent player that had more than 30% less total skill points than the attacking player should have been given a special count. 5 of them, and you become perma-red.

- Worse stat loss for killed reds.

- Good vs. Evil system implemented that circumvented counts if good killed evil or vice versa.

- Roving bands of blue NPC paladins that were as powerful as today's Elite Ninjas or Ronins that would attack reds on sight.

- Large bounties offered by the game itself for the 'most wanted' reds on the shard.

- The ability for reds to take over towns, similar to factions.

- Some kind of system to ensure that blue players aiding reds were flagged and received counts as well.

- One character on your account is red, they all are...guilt by association.



These changes to Pre UO:R UO would have gone along way in making a PK think twice before just randomly slaugtering just anyone he or she saw chopping wood along the road.

The problem in old UO was not open PvP, it was inconsequential open PvP. If there had been a social reason not to PK an innocent player (real threat of being hunted down and killed as a red and entering severe stat loss, being potentially jumped by powerful NPCs at inopportune moments...the same way a red would jump a blue, your blue mules going red, etc)...a mechanical, and completely unrealistic, method would not have been necessary.

As for AoS...it basically finished what UO:R started...in turned UO into an average game at best, instead of the living world that it once was.

 

[Duskofdead]

- One character on your account is red, they all are...guilt by association.

You win this thread, Morgana.

This would have been a great fix. There was NO consequence to murdering players for fun or profit because even with stiff stat loss, the PK would just park his character away in his house and go get out his blues and come out and mock you. Or use his blues to do all his crafting , supplying, PvM, banking and trading.

So where, exactly, was the lasting consequence, other than having to avoid death or manage your murder counts over time? None really. There was a simple workaround for everything and you could always just keep a red character as your ganker and go back to playing as normal, accessing everything as normal, on all your others. Plenty still do this.

 

[TheScoundrelRico]

Funny how many player run shards have been able to be created...la

Player-run shards (also referred to as shard emulators or free shards), are not only against UO's TOS, but discussing them is also against UO Stratics forum rules.

You might want to make sure your own mods know the forum rules.

(Are the forum mods on permanent vacation around here? How do you even manage to retain EA/Mythic's support for "official forum" status?)

ROFL...really?...la

 

[Morgana LeFay (PoV)]

You win this thread, Morgana.

This would have been a great fix. There was NO consequence to murdering players for fun or profit because even with stiff stat loss, the PK would just park his character away in his house and go get out his blues and come out and mock you. Or use his blues to do all his crafting , supplying, PvM, banking and trading.

So where, exactly, was the lasting consequence, other than having to avoid death or manage your murder counts over time? None really. There was a simple workaround for everything and you could always just keep a red character as your ganker and go back to playing as normal, accessing everything as normal, on all your others. Plenty still do this.

It was a hot button issue right before UO:R came out. I cannot take credit for the idea...although I espoused it back then and still do.

It really was the lack of consequences for players actions that led to Trammel.

Ask any old school red, if you can still find one, if they would have preferred my solutions posted above...or the Fel/Tram split. Most will tell you, if they didn't just quit, that UO is nothing like what it was back then, and not in a good way.

The constant struggle of good vs. evil, blue vs. red, added a diminsion to the game that cannot be simulated or recreated through any artificial mechanisms. It actually relied on the individual's sense of community, morality, and even their ability to play a character, rather than just a game.

We will likely never see another game like it that lasts. I know all about Darkfall, but they are setting themselves up to fail because they are not learning from the mistakes that UO made up front...no consequences.

 

[Duskofdead]

Agreed and in my opinion, there is simply way too much overhyping of how much Darkfall is going to be the Promised Messiah to lead us all into the MMO promised land to possibly live up to. People said the exact same thing about both Vanguard and Tabula Rasa. Where are those games now? I'm even old enough to remember everyone in UO saying the same thing about Everquest 1, leaving for EQ, and then... four months later... returning.

If they do truly open world unrestricted PvP, I give them 3, 4 months before all the kiddies who've flooded into the game from backgrounds like EQ and WOW to start demanding changes and demanding them now.

Building on the idea you set out, Morgana, what about something like this: if you are a blue character, you may only perform open world hostile acts on red characters. If you try to steal from, or kill, a blue character, you must permanently become a red character. Blue characters may do anything to red characters and red characters may do anything to anyone, but suffer the usual consequences (NPC's not dealing with you, no item insurance, or other suitable penalties for choosing to violently dissociate yourself from the civilized social world).

To prevent griefing, I would also like some form of restriction on rapidly repeated hostile acts on the same player. Say you can't kill the same player within a five minute span twice. Or something.

Still have open world PvP, but with consequences, and moderately restricted at least so that you can't sit there and kill someone at their corpse 31 times in a row.

 

[Morgana LeFay (PoV)]

what about something like this: if you are a blue character, you may only perform open world hostile acts on red characters. If you try to steal from, or kill, a blue character, you must permanently become a red character. Blue characters may do anything to red characters and red characters may do anything to anyone, but suffer the usual consequences (NPC's not dealing with you, no item insurance, or other suitable penalties for choosing to violently dissociate yourself from the civilized social world).

To prevent griefing, I would also like some form of restriction on rapidly repeated hostile acts on the same player. Say you can't kill the same player within a five minute span twice. Or something.

Still have open world PvP, but with consequences, and moderately restricted at least so that you can't sit there and kill someone at their corpse 31 times in a row.

I don't think that a player that kills one smart mouth should be red for life.

UO got it right with the counts idea, they just made it too easy to get rid of the counts.

Think about it like this:

In real life, if you killed someone, you might actually get away with it once (see OJ Simpson). But when things like that happen more than once or twice, it starts to become pretty obvious that you are a murderer (see Jeffery Domer).

Also, I always thought that detectives should have had a better role in the game. For example:

A blue player that kills a blue player should not automatically get a count. Only if someone reports the murder should they get a count. If the killer was using a disguise, or incognito, then the player would not be able to accruately identify their killer...so no count.

Enter the detective.

If the player that was killed could find someone to use Forensic Evaluation on their fallen corpse, then based on the skill of the detective, the true killer could be found. On success a gump would allow the detective to report the real killer, giving him or her a count.

Of course, a witness to the murder should have a chance of recognizing the killer (kind of like how stealing works).

As in any endevour, there should be some chance of getting away with it...but there should also be a chance of getting caught.

There are many ways that OSI could have made PK'ing an integral part of the game, rather than just a pain in the a$$...if they had tried.

 

[Hannes Erich]

ROFL...really?...la

ROFL...Oh hai no not rly...la, la la la, laaaaa. (No offense but it's like you're doing a cute girly curtsy at the end of all your posts lol.)

 

[Magdalene]

ROFL...really?...la

ROFL...Oh hai no not rly...la, la la la, laaaaa. (No offense but it's like you're doing a cute girly curtsy at the end of all your posts lol.)

ROTFLMAO

 

[Duskofdead]

ROFL...Oh hai no not rly...la, la la la, laaaaa. (No offense but it's like you're doing a cute girly curtsy at the end of all your posts lol.)

srsly. bai bai. ...la

 

[Hannes Erich]

srsly. bai bai. ...la

Oh, I'm sure a big tough PvP thief manly man can take some forum joshing. I'm not worried about it (unless I hurt his feelings, of course).

 

[BloodstoneGL]

Oh, I'm sure a big tough PvP thief manly man can take some forum joshing. I'm not worried about it (unless I hurt his feelings, of course).

I woudn't worry about it even then. I find it annoying as it gets....it's like I'm forced to read the la and it makes me mad everytime.

 

[Hannes Erich]

I woudn't worry about it even then. I find it annoying as it gets....it's like I'm forced to read the la and it makes me mad everytime.

Okay from now on when you read it, picture him in a pink ballerina outfit, saying "...la" *curtsies*

Instead of getting angry it will make you laugh.

 

[Duskofdead]

Okay from now on when you read it, picture him in a pink ballerina outfit, saying "la..." *curtsies*

Instead of getting angry it will make you laugh.

That avatar face thing, wherever that's from, creeps me out. Now I imagine IT, in a pink dress, saying ".... LAAAA!"

 

[Hannes Erich]

That avatar face thing, wherever that's from, creeps me out. Now I imagine IT, in a pink dress, saying ".... LAAAA!"

It is possibly a descendant of the Achura bloodline in Eve Online.

Since that creeps you out, picture him instead dressed up in the too-tight Peter Pan outfit that (fully grown) man became infamous for on the Intarwebz a while back. LOL?

"...la *curtsies* *kicks a leg up* look what I can do!"

Edit: Oh crap, this was like, someone's thread. We should stop.

 

[Babble]

It was a hot button issue right before UO:R came out. I cannot take credit for the idea...although I espoused it back then and still do.

It really was the lack of consequences for players actions that led to Trammel.

Ask any old school red, if you can still find one, if they would have preferred my solutions posted above...or the Fel/Tram split. Most will tell you, if they didn't just quit, that UO is nothing like what it was back then, and not in a good way.

The constant struggle of good vs. evil, blue vs. red, added a diminsion to the game that cannot be simulated or recreated through any artificial mechanisms. It actually relied on the individual's sense of community, morality, and even their ability to play a character, rather than just a game.

We will likely never see another game like it that lasts. I know all about Darkfall, but they are setting themselves up to fail because they are not learning from the mistakes that UO made up front...no consequences.

The one red all red was still one of the stupidest ideas I heard of UO.
Get some counts with a fieldspell and forget playing for a few weeks, while any decent pvper would have a red account for pvp and a blue to either fight reds or get people red.

And yes I used systems to get people red or deeper into statloss

And it will be very interesting if the upcoming 'open' pvp games have consequences or take heavy damage from a very small mmorpg community.

 

[Duskofdead]

The one red all red was still one of the stupidest ideas I heard of UO.
Get some counts with a fieldspell and forget playing for a few weeks, while any decent pvper would have a red account for pvp and a blue to either fight reds or get people red.

And yes I used systems to get people red or deeper into statloss

And it will be very interesting if the upcoming 'open' pvp games have consequences or take heavy damage from a very small mmorpg community.

A no-consequences open PvP MMO will stay small.

If a big influx of people join the game at launch, consequences/restrictions will be overwhelmingly popularly demanded.

Much to the apparent shock of online sociopath equivalents, it's not fun for people to pay their monthly fee to just get ganked left and right while trying to play a game. (Unless ganking without having to go around spending days/weeks getting skills and gear is the whole point of the game.)

 

[Babble]

A no consequence pvp MMO can be very big .. Warhammer tries, WOW is one...

Just an MMO with no consequences is not that interesting in the longer run. Is why it will be interesting to see how other companies handle it as ea/mythic do not bother.
EVE has a nice system and almost 300k customers, so there are workable systems, just is the company clever enough to think of them ....

Definitely not the no mirror guy

 

[Duskofdead]

A no consequence pvp MMO can be very big .. Warhammer tries, WOW is one...

Just an MMO with no consequences is not that interesting in the longer run. Is why it will be interesting to see how other companies handle it as ea/mythic do not bother.
EVE has a nice system and almost 300k customers, so there are workable systems, just is the company clever enough to think of them ....

Definitely not the no mirror guy

You are NOT following what everyone else means by an open, no consequence world PVP game.

WOW is not one. By any stretch.

There are very controlled circumstances under which you can "freely" kill an enemy player in the wild, even on the so-called PvP shards. You can't loot anything on them whatsoever. And unless they are near your level or higher you get no honor kill points.

PvP is heavily structured and the only real reason to do it whatsoever is to farm gear. It's basically just hopping into a little obstacle course where you can fight other players for points to buy gear with. And if you die you lose nothing and you're back up in 10 seconds.

 

[Lore Master]

I made a come back to UO recently, urged by an old friend. I was excited, hoping to find the same level of fun and excitement the game once held. However, I was sadly disappointed.

Long ago when the game was released, there was only one world. And within this world, you were free to do whatever you wish. There wasno such thing as "leet" items, in fact, most everything people used was GM made. There was no item insurance, so death had a real meaning. You die, you lose what you have. Having a thief could be lucrative, being a PK extremely profitable. In time, some people who couldn't compete began to become spiteful. OSI was bombarded by people whining about other people killing them or stealing their items. This led to the release of Ultima Online: Renaissance, and marked the beginning of the end for UO.

The thing that made UO so great was that it was different from any other MMORPG. No other game offered you the freedom UO did, or the level of excitement. With the introduction of Trammel, UO took its first big step towards becoming another Everquest (Which was released after T2A and was immensely popular. So, OSI tried to copy some of their ideas to pull more players). Felucca was left mostly for the PvP'ers, but was still PACKED. I could go to Yew gate and find 2 dozen or more people there at any given time, easily. Now, you're lucky to find one.

Then UO realeased Third Dawn, and Lord Blackthornes Revenge, each time taking UO further and further away from its roots. We (The old school players, mainly in the PvP community) responded, and warned OSI that they were killing them game. They didnt listen. Then came the introduction of power scrolls, which completely threw off the balance of PvP. Then as soon as AoS launched, I called it quits and shipped off to bootcamp.

I come back 5 years later, and all of the predictions came true. UO is a wasteland, a dying game barely struggling to hold on. In order to maintain, OSI has upped the montly fee, and offered a ton of new perks for you to pay for with real cash. They have made UO just another run of the mill MMORPG by trying to be like the others. Its pathetic, really.

Devs, do you realize how many people are playing free shards that mimic T2A and UO:R? Literally over 7,000. I personally know of at least 400 that would come back to an OSI server if they put one up that was UO:R ruleset, prior to the introduction of champ spawns. Thats a big chunk of change back in EA's pocket.

Heres a few screenshots, just so you get an idea of what it used to be like. There would be faction sigil raids with over 300+ people participating. They would go all night, and the fighting was exhilirating. Think about it OSI, how hard would it be to take an old UO:R disc, and put up a shard with it? I can assure you, it would bring back a LOT of business. I'm willing to bet on it.

Nice screen shot but must admit i am glad i diddn't play back then not my idea of fun to pvp but seeing that many players at one time is quite refreshing. my thoughts on no insuance, no blessed items, and a pvp only facet is my idea of a UO nightmare i for one am glad for the changes.

 

[Thav12]

The simple fact that UO has moved on, with its player base, and that the game is still enjoyed by so many people means they did something right. I don't think it is a debate about PvP vs PvM, nor is it a debate about items vs craftables, it is a debate as to who do you want to play with and what do you like to do.

Turn some of the arguments around: it is amazing this game is still alive and so well after 11 years. Cheats are rampant, because peopl still want to compete so badly in this game. Despite changes, we all come here and debate and are passionate about a go dam game!

Differences are always going to be there. But, at the risk of trolling, I would hate to play with people that disrespect others and call them names, want to put them into their place and tell them that they are stupid simply because they do not "get it" they way they "get it" I rarely post because I think most of what I would have said is being said in some way or another. However, it is when reading posters like Correctuo that arrogantly dismiss other people in a disrespectful way, calling them kids, son, and infer a need to grow up, that I am glad at least some of those type of people have moved on to the next game. I enjoyed playing this game under every ruleset over the past decade. Each ruleset added something and took something away, but i still don;t like playing with people like that. PvP red, blue, thief, trammy all good with me. Brilliantly annoying ...la cracks me up now for years. I am however paying to enjoy myself and not to have myself insulted, and that is why there was such an exodus in the beginning. Now we are just all a bunch of nostalgic oldtimers that are keeping a great game alive with our monthly contributions and our emotional investment on forums like this. I will defend it however against anyone who thinks it is fun to come to a sandbox game to be "the man" they so can not be in their real lives, because they manipulate game mechanics to the detriment of others. The OP is correct in noting that there are less people now in this game than in 2002. But he is wrong in asserting that this implies a weak game. The fact that he is still here writing about it, and playing the game is an absolute unique aspect of this game and should vote for the unbelievable capacity this game still has despite its age, its out dated graphics, its numerous changes and its obvious flaws. Hope to be playing it in what ever form for another decade!

 

[Morgana LeFay (PoV)]

The one red all red was still one of the stupidest ideas I heard of UO.
Get some counts with a fieldspell and forget playing for a few weeks, while any decent pvper would have a red account for pvp and a blue to either fight reds or get people red.

And yes I used systems to get people red or deeper into statloss

And it will be very interesting if the upcoming 'open' pvp games have consequences or take heavy damage from a very small mmorpg community.

It's pretty obvious that you didn't read all of my posts. That's okay, I am known to skim sometimes as well...

But if you go back to what I was actually saying, you will see that under the system I purposed no one would go read from 1 instance of someone walking into their field spells. It would take much more than that.

Also, if a PvP'er wanted to pay for two accounts in order to have blues and reds...so much the better!!!! That's more money in for the game! But as soon as that person aided a red, and got counts, they would have two red accounts.

Either way, it's win/win.

 

[MalagAste]

I'll say this...... if things went back to the old days...... I'd quit......

NO consequences PvP is not my cup of tea..... Infact rampant PKing would tork me off pretty fast..... I pay to play .... I'd rather play alive than a ghost..... I don't care to have to have a Posse every time I want to go out on my crafter... and I don't care to have to be subjected to a bunch of Punk talk either....

If there were some sort of consequence for actions that might help.... but as well as that there needs to be some rewards as well for following Virtue.....

This is something that I find irritating about UO and the Current Dev Team.... It seems to me that by being "evil" you get tons of rewards..... but if your "good" and follow virtue you get nothing..... Take Magincia for instance.... If you were devious you would lure the light demons into town and get all sorts of "rubble"..... but if you were "virtuous" and tried to save the town.... not only did everyone want to kill you..... get you killed and not rez you.... but you got NO rewards.... and the town was destroyed anyway.... regardless of you trying to stop them...

Again folk could turn in blackrock to the "strangers" near Haven.... but if you were good and refrained you got nothing..... and the town was destroyed anyway.....

So.... if your a jerk and a PK you can trash talk get a bunch of them together and it's a Gank Squad and who's going to stop them and why???? As it stands right now in Fel they can basicly go anywhere and do about anything they have zero consequences and what's to stop them???? Where is the incentive to be good??? There really isn't any....

They used to have a nice bounty system until that became abused.... which was a shame... I don't see much of a way to stop that from happening again now...... Unless they take the bounty directly from the PK.....

One of my thoughts was to make the PK do jail time if they were "Killed" ... They would be teleported to jail corpse and all.... insta-rezed there by a "jailor" npc.... and then they would be stuck in that cell for a full ingame hour.... to "contemplate their actions".... logging out and back in an hour later would not get you out of it..... I had thought to make it 10 min per "count"... but that could be a hecks age for hard core murderers..... Or they could chose to pay a fine of "x" number of dollars depending on their kill count.... Money collected would go to the jail and those earning "justice" by killing folk would be able to get "points" in a collection at the Jail for time served and fines collected.....

I think another thing that could help would be a return of Seers..... I like the EM thing but I"m getting terribly fed up with asian shards always getting free stuff and all sorts of "bonus's" that we don't get as well they have obviously people that care much much more about the aesthetics of their shards and they get all sorts of meaningful nice additions.... which truly IRKS me.... I think all shards should be afforded the same things.

I'd like to see a bunch more events.... The trouble with things is.... everyone seems to not want to participate in anything if they don't "get" something... which is a shame.

 

[Duskofdead]

However, it is when reading posters like Correctuo that arrogantly dismiss other people in a disrespectful way, calling them kids, son, and infer a need to grow up, that I am glad at least some of those type of people have moved on to the next game. I enjoyed playing this game under every ruleset over the past decade. Each ruleset added something and took something away, but i still don;t like playing with people like that.

Agreed regarding players like CorrectUO.

I think part of the problem here, really, and it exists in all the MMO's I've tried, is that PvP'ers tend to be really cliquish and want to play the game in a certain, pure-PvP way. They tend to get very easily bored and sick of PvM, and seem to want to just quickly and efficiently farm the things (skills, items) they need in order to get into PvP'ing full time, and never look back. The OP honestly I get the impression belongs to this crowd. The people who hang around Fel Yew belong to this crowd. And almost everyone who has a red/PK they log serious time on belongs in this crowd.

This "PvM vs. PvP" split camp bickering goes on in World of Warcraft, a much newer and bigger game. It's everywhere in the online RPG world, as far as I can tell. If it lets you kill monsters and lets you kill players, there are people there arguing PvP should be controlled and people arguing PvP should be more rewarding and more open.

Personally, and this is just my own, subjective, personal thought... I do not understand why people whose sole flame of excitement is fighting and killing other players come to RPG's at all. There are SO many competitive, PvP-oriented game genres out there which deliver pure and undiluted PvP (war games, first person shooters, real time strategy games online, etc.) that I do not understand what draws some of them into online RPG's, where they seem to proceed to get very unhappy about the "pandering to PvM only" and then resentful and enter a siege mentality about how PvP is not supported enough, rewarded enough, etc. Personally I do not believe it is in the spirit of an RPG to have totally separate, equally complete paths to everything through either exclusive PvM or exclusive PvP. That has been demanded over and over and I think it puts a lot of strain and imbalance into MMO's when they try to cater to this demand by creating, essentially, two whole different games and rulesets and sets of goals and rewards within the same game for different camps of players.

I believe PvP is part of an RPG experience. And I believe PvM is a huge part of an RPG experience. I think the most complete RPG experience is to have both and for PvP to be occasional and related to story, events, guild wars, personal vendettas or duels, or role play. I think supporting a "playstyle" of ganking noobs outside of town to loot them and use the gold to buy your gear and consumables to keep on PvP'ing is something that existed in old UO, is missed by PK's in "new UO", but I do not believe such a playstyle was ever intended to be supported as a full-time occupation in game.

That said, of course, not everyone likes to play the same way. Some people like to craft and PvM and never PvP. But what seems to remain constant is that there's always a very tight, very loud knot of PvP people in any given MMO, who feel that the game should cater entirely to the PvP playstyle and that everyone else's perogatives should be expendable towards that end (i.e. if a PvPer chooses to kill your craftsmen all day, stop complaining and go do something else, you only get to craft if I'm not around or I choose to let you live) or, failing that, that a completely whole PvP avenue to the game should exist for rewards and gear and goals so that they do not ever have to interact with PvM crowds or get away from PvP'ing.

Couple problems. UO has tried in many forms to provide this from Felucca facets to Fel Champ drops to item insurance (never have to go back and farm up more gear if you die in PvP.) But all I hear from PvP'ers is that UO PvP has been murdered, dead, gone, it sucks now, UO was way better before. I don't know what was better about 8, 11 years ago except that you could kill anyone you wanted to, instead of people who could fight back, or wanted to fight. This is the contradiction I see with PvP crowds no matter where I go. They swear they want to live and die and breathe and sleep PvP. But they always seem to be unhappy with just PvP'ing with others who wish to PvP. There always seems to be the perception that they are forgotten, neglected, being mistreated, unsupported, nerfed or having their game ruined, if they may not force it on others or grief others.

I don't envy players who try to make their whole game in Fel. But it is a choice. And it's a choice that a majority of players do not wish to follow and join you in. The same is true of every other game, it's not EA or the ruleset changes that did this. When MMO's give people a choice, most people's choice is not to be surprise killed on the road and looted every 20 or 30 minutes.

Why do some PvP'ers seem bitter, hostile and jaded? Honestly, my answer would be that I think many of them have deep misconceptions about the RPG/MMO genre, especially if they only ever tried or played them for PvP, or find nothing else redeeming in them besides PvP. They want full support for a playstyle that was never meant to be more than part of an MMO experience. This isn't Quake.

 

[Draconi]

They have released one version of a "classic" server, so I know Mythic isn't outright against the idea of retro shards. However, they continued to add content from new expansions to the classic servers, kind of defeating the point.

Right, if UO had a classic server, we would *have* to exclude expansion content and ongoing content from the normal shards. This would be massively different than how we handle Siege and Mugen, for example. (I wouldn't rule out a separate and involved set of content fitting in-line with that shard, however).

Now, admittedly, I'm a personal believer in the T2A expansion for a classic shard. It felt like a real add-on to the original game, and not a replacement or "update."

 

[Phaheela]

If you wanna play pre trammel, there's still SP to look at. I mean I was around during the hay day too but I really don't think they plan to create any new shards. They don't wanna run the ones that are up now.

Even siege taint what it used to be when it first started up, the uber item & PS trashed the life & fun out of siege too, but thankfully siege has a community & most of which keep the fun & risk factor going strongly.

 

[BloodstoneGL]

Right, if UO had a classic server, we would *have* to exclude expansion content and ongoing content from the normal shards. This would be massively different than how we handle Siege and Mugen, for example. (I wouldn't rule out a separate and involved set of content fitting in-line with that shard, however).

Now, admittedly, I'm a personal believer in the T2A expansion for a classic shard. It felt like a real add-on to the original game, and not a replacement or "update."

PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO IT!!!!!!!!

 

[Duskofdead]

PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO IT!!!!!!!!

Seriously Draconi... this topic practically comes up twice a day. Please do pass along that a lot of us old timers want it. I would think it would be so much cheaper to entertain us really old players with a classic shard or T2A shard than to create all new content that a lot of people end up complaining about.

 

[BloodstoneGL]

There is a reason that there is a healthy combined player base on freeshards....and it is not because they are free. People miss the old UO and they are settling for as close as they can get right now. There are more that don't play those free servers because they are so biased, but would come back in a heart beat if there was an official Classic shard.