A "classic" shard idea...

[Andrasta]

A post-Trammel classic shard would be crap.

Those asking/hoping for a classic shard want it PRE-Trammel. We don't want Trammel. Not for the pking or stealing... but it brings people together. They're not off in 4 different worlds and hardly ever see anyone.

Your right. Before Trammel is what we want. T2A would be good but no Trammel.

 

[Paradox_]

If any classic shard that would include Trammel would be a waste of time, then why are you posting in a thread that's specifically about a post-Trammel "classic" shard?

Nowhere do I see mentioned specifically that it would be 'post-trammel'.

More attempts by you to try and shoot this idea down.

You, and people who love post-AOS are quickly becoming the minority. I would wager that the majority would be in support of a pre-AOS or 'classic' shard, from ANY era.

 

[Bc-]

The current Reputation/Murder system wasn't the original implementation. There wasn't a grid of titles like we have today. The lowest title was Dread Lord/Lady with the highest title being Glorious Lord/Lady. 5 Murders didn't turn you red... a low karma did (and killing "blue" characters gave you a karma hit while killing red characters gave you karma). A medium-ish/low karma flagged you grey to high karma characters.

The lower your karma, and NPC's would charge you more, and sometimes even refuse you service if say, you were a Dread Lord. High karma got you discounts. NPC's would address you differently and praise you as you passed by, etc. With low karma, NPC's would speak fearfully of you.

NPC's would also talk about powerful items. Like, "Did you hear? Turdnugget is carrying an extremely powerful viking sword." And you could ask NPC's about players.

Great Lord
Great
Lord
Noble Lord
Noble
Honorable
+++++++
Neutral
--------
Dishonorable
Dastardly
Evil
Evil Lord
Dread
Dread Lord

I believe that is how the system went if I remember correctly, killing monsters rewarded you with positive alignment while killing players and stealing gave you negative alignment.

 

[Tachikoma]

I'll tell you what I miss... I miss seeing Britania!

I just reactivated my account (had it since 97) after a 2-3 year hiatus. The last new thing I did before quitting was killing Meer in some (then) new land.

I used to have a tower near Vesper, that was my home base back then. I went to the bank... empty. Went to Skara bank, empty. Went to Trinsic, Minoc, Brit... all empty. So sad!

I remember when T2A launched, I even thought those lands looked too funky, but I could at least live with a world with only T2A.

I used to be able to walk right into a house if it wasn't locked... Isn't that how it should be?

I should be able to shank someone in town and face the guard's slapdown.

I am slowly learning the new UO, I dont like it that much. I still want to hang out in Shame or Destard, but it just isnt as fun without other people.

No more townies! Splitting the populace between Trammel and Felucca was one of the most antisocial things ever done. No matter where we go, we have to deal with all kinds of people, Trammel really is the care-bear land. Getting PKd while hunting solo was a pain in the a$$, but boy was it exciting! UO doesnt thrill me anymore- it's entertainment, but I dont get the same sense of caution anymore that I would need to have when I used to solo.

Back to the townies... so fun, just BS-ing with people, watching them do the latest trick like running in place, or whatever. I miss the interaction. I go into Luna now, and while there are "some" people there, nobody talks... Everyone is crafting or showing off their "flashy" (read:gaudy) gear.

I vote for a "classic" shard.

 

[Bc-]

Also I wanted to add, please do not feed the troll. Kids like that tire themselves out pretty fast.

I have seen a lot of good ideas in this thread so far, if we keep the discussion constructive, ignore the trollers, and just talk about what we feel is the ideal situation I think it would be more helpful to the end result. It will also be easier for any UO Devs to follow the thread.


As I said before my perfect Classic server COULD be anything pre AoS, to me this was the last straw. You took a game that was skill based and made it item based. Even though Pub 16 was a bit off the wall, and powerscrolls were kind of cheesey, it still had that Old UO feeling when you played, now a days this game doesn't. Not at all.

Pre Trammel is also a good idea, one facet really adds to the whole community feel of UO. The only problem I see here is that it may be harder to attract the PvE crowd in a server where they don't have that safety net. These are all issues that need to be addressed before the server can go live, but they are most certainly not reasons to shy away from the server idea. No no no, not at all, if anything they add a whole new element to be explored.

 

[GalenKnighthawke]

Nowhere do I see mentioned specifically that it would be 'post-trammel'.

Quote from the original post in this thread:

Therefor, I think UO:R, before Pub 16 (Stat scrolls, etc.) would be an amazing server.

You still get your Tram along with WBB.

As to my ambiguous relationship with AoS there have been many other threads where I've addressed that.

-Galen's player

 

[Paradox_]

Quote from the original post in this thread:



As to my ambiguous relationship with AoS there have been many other threads where I've addressed that.

-Galen's player

My Mistake.

If it was just trammel and fel with T2A and none of the other crap, I would be happy with that.

 

[Morgana LeFay (PoV)]

My Mistake.

If it was just trammel and fel with T2A and none of the other crap, I would be happy with that.

For how long though?

The world split is what really killed community in UO. That, above all else, is what I miss about old UO. I can handle the items, I can handle the neon colored screen garbage, and I can even handle the new mechanics...but I hate that they ripped our world apart, and in so doing, destroyed the realistic living world we had grown to love, and replaced it with a plastic mock-up that was more friendly to those that were truly anti-social.

 

[Heartseeker]

Agreed Morgana.

The whole point here is that the classic shard would be one world.

The Tram/Fel monkey show would not be part of it.

This would be like it was at the beggining where we all played together.

Galen go play somewhere else.

Your trolling here is not needed and "we know" that you don't like the idea.

 

[Paradox_]

Realistically though, it would be the ONLY way to get these whining crybabies off our backs and at least not protest such a shard.

 

[System Error]

I could deal with any time pre Trammel era.

 

[truss]

mr crapstache i think you are stupid! mage duel for accounts!

 

[Bc-]

I have never been one for the stratics boards, as you can probably tell by my post count. I actually came here with the intent of starting a thread like this.. just wondering how often the UO dev team comments on posts? I see members of EA posting on this forum... but I understand those are most likely PR over Dev members..

Would be nice to get a response on this with maybe a related comment to Draconi's hint.

 

[GhostGL]

a classic shard woulda hafta be only fel. no expansions, no skill control/stat no lrc etc items etc. like the day UO first came up after beta.

 

[Turdnugget]

Ghost, I disagree with the no skill/stat control. That's one thing I hated about the old UO...having skills randomly go up/down. Same with stats. I like to be in control of what goes up/down.

Other than that... classic shard ftw!

 

[Morgana LeFay (PoV)]

a classic shard woulda hafta be only fel. no expansions, no skill control/stat no lrc etc items etc. like the day UO first came up after beta.

I agree. One world --- Sosaria. There was no Felucca, there was no Trammel. Those were the moons.

I also agree...no LRC, no item properties like that at all. Just accurate, durable, vanquishing, etc.

But I would advocate for, but not demand, skill/stat controls.

 

[slavoie]

Pre Tramm, no transfer chars, everybody starts from scratch, no new skills or items, exactly the way it was, one house per account applies.

I want my vanq spear back!

Since there is no content to add to this shard, I cant imagine it would be hard to maintain, and since the biggest problem with the server crashing back then was probally hardware, I can't see that as a problem now.

I built a dual quad core xeon serer with 16gb of ram, and 15k sas drives the other day and it asked me if I wanted it to levitate the building for ten minutes. That was a whopping 7k and 3k of that was in server 2008 enterprise.

 

[Tachikoma]

On today's hardware, with the other facets and land masses removed (pre- UOR), wouldn't that make for excellent performance?

 

[donjn]

After Trammel UO gained subscriptions all the way up to 250k in 2003.

Making a classic shard would be like EA admitting they made a mistake. And when have you know EA to do that?

However, even though I hated getting ganked I would play on a classic shard in a heartbeat..

 

[Morgana LeFay (PoV)]

Making a classic shard would be like EA admitting they made a mistake.

Not really...it would be like EA admitting that OSI made a mistake...and allowing Mythic to fix it.

 

[donjn]

Not really...it would be like EA admitting that OSI made a mistake...and allowing Mythic to fix it.

Didn't the change take place in 2001? If you think OSI had free reign think again. OSI was EA's puppets..

 

[Morgana LeFay (PoV)]

Didn't the change take place in 2001? If you think OSI had free reign think again. OSI was EA's puppets..

OSI was the developer. EA was the publisher. I seriously doubt that any design specifics came from EA proper. And no, the Tram/Fel split was in 2000...and AoS was 2003.

 

[Bc-]

After Trammel UO gained subscriptions all the way up to 250k in 2003.

Making a classic shard would be like EA admitting they made a mistake. And when have you know EA to do that?

However, even though I hated getting ganked I would play on a classic shard in a heartbeat..

Uhmmmm...

Bossiney cluster
602
Ector(Classic)
Gareth(Classic)
Lamorak(Classic)

Source: http://www.camelotherald.com/news/index.php

It can happen guys, it already has for one of EA's games.

 

[Tachikoma]

So, I see a lot of the same names in this post...
I know we say/think that there is a lot of support for a movement like this, but what should we do to motivate, and also, how do we know that a solid majority (or a least a very large base) of players would participate?

 

[Tachikoma]

Oh yeah, would we want to have walkthrough like we do now, or make it such that you cannot "push" through people/mob?

 

[Morgana LeFay (PoV)]

Oh yeah, would we want to have walkthrough like we do now, or make it such that you cannot "push" through people/mob?

No walk through in my opinion. Having a high dex used to mean something, even for non-dexers.

 

[Tachikoma]

yeah, its true, no walkthrough is a part of real UO.

 

[CORRECTUO]

I remember having to "push" people out of the way. It actually made the combat more dynamic as having people block entrances make choke points very effective in both PvM and PvP. Not to mention, it was an interesting way to detect hidden players. Anyone remember this?:

"Being Perfectly rested, you shove something invisible out of the way"

 

[CORRECTUO]

So, I see a lot of the same names in this post...
I know we say/think that there is a lot of support for a movement like this, but what should we do to motivate, and also, how do we know that a solid majority (or a least a very large base) of players would participate?

The reason you see many of the same names is because a lot of people are under the assumption that the UO devs dont read the boards, much like every other game out there. Also, while there are many players who would love to come back and play classic servers for UO, they dont believe it will happen. Countless players are under the belief that because of EA, UO will remain the items based WoW clone it has become. There were a lot of hard feelings and bitter resentments left in the wake of AOS. Thats how passionate people were about UO.

After AOS made pretty much had everything other than chilvalry and necromancy gimped (RIP my tank/mage that was a sad day when I had to choose between pure mage or pure warrior for you), a lot of people felt cheated. All of the hybrid templates that players put hours upon hours of hard work into, not to mention their crafters, were undone with one expansion. After one day, all of the years of hard work and fine tuning people had done to their charatcers was rendered moot.

The best way to get the old school crowd to step forward is for EA to announce that they are releaseing retro servers. And Im not talking about just announcing it on the UO forums here or on the UO site. They have to really get the word out. Annouce it on MMORPG.com or IGN.com, some place that is frequented by many online gamers. The players will return. You'll see the boards on here flooded with supporters. The UO'ers are out there. They just need to know the game they loved is coming back.

 

[Tachikoma]

I remember having to "push" people out of the way. It actually made the combat more dynamic as having people block entrances make choke points very effective in both PvM and PvP. Not to mention, it was an interesting way to detect hidden players. Anyone remember this?:

"Being Perfectly rested, you shove something invisible out of the way"

Yeah, again, going back to the issue of making UO a skill based rather than item based game.

 

[Kula]

It's most likely a matter of money; how much money do you want to sink into something like this? How many people will actually return to UO to play?

I have a feeling that there could be quite a number of people that would return to play, but nothing worth the investment needed to create such a shard. Perhaps people that ask for such a shard should state whether or not they'd be willing to pay extra just to use the shard?

I have a feeling that the UO dev team is busy working constantly on new patches and keeping the current game alive by giving us expansions almost on a yearly basis. A decision to work on a shard that people may or not use would have to take into account the fact that the team would have to spend a number of months on this project rather than working on SA and future expansions.

How do you tell everyone currently playing that you're going to stop supporting the current game for a bit while the team works on implementing a new shard that maybe 10% of the population wants.

 

[Surgeries]

Since when did serving your customers become "wasting resources"?

When the ROI is not enough. That's when serving <not enough> of your customers <to warrant the cost based on current data> becomes "wasting resources" in my book.

You, me, nor anyone on these forums knows that equation...no one, except someone that has access to the financial data.

That is why I stated quite clearly (but you must have missed it) that I am actually For the idea, if it helps the game, overall. I am not for it if it wastes resources...and now, hopefully, you understand my meaning, on that phrase.

What I am not for is spending funds that will not produce the ROI needed to make the higher ups happy. That would be a "waste of resources"...short term gain (for the people that want a shard like this), and long term failure (if the costs don't warrant the return on investment).

There you go!

 

[Dakkon Blackblade]

I believe the only fair way to handle it is to have the devs setup a poll however they like and ask people to vote. The problem with each person suggesting this or that era is they always want to tack their own personal customizations onto it.

Original Release means just that Original as it was out of the box, with whatever new code they are using. Same goes for any other era, I would personally love to see T2A release as that is when I had the most fun.

Bring back my Order/Chaos wars and I will surely become a loyal subscriber once more. :gun:

 

[Bc-]

The resources to make a server like this would pale in comparison to those of a new expansion. Mythic was able to create their Classic servers in the same year they rolled out a brand new expansion, I don't see why it couldn't be done again.

IF there is a classic server I wouldn't expect to see or hear anything about it until after SA releases, we are talking down the road, but I still feel it will become a reality eventually. I think that UO has a bit more stability than DAoC does in terms of subscriptions, obviously to last this long you have to have some type of loyal player base.

But once you reach a certain point of progression you start looking back at the game and thinking alright, where might we have went wrong? What point did we start losing the most subscriptions? That is what Mythic did when they decided on their classic shard, they saw that the majory of their subscriptions and playerbase issues with the game came around the ToA expansion which introduced ARTIFACTS and MASTER LEVELS. Basically it dramatically increased the playing time and monster bashing required to be a competitive player in the game. Very similar to the release of AoS, which many people consider the death of old UO..

Eventually they have to look back and say alright we lost X amount of subscriptions here, lets see if we can try and draw some of those players back. Especially for a game like UO that has a hard time attracting new customers as it is.

 

[Vortimer]

Im glad that so many people are in favor of a classic shard being put into play. If only EA would take notice and put some effort into putting this idea into realization........

 

[Turles]

yup

 

[Dixie]

/signed.

I agree with most of what was discussed above: Before the tram/fel split, skill based (not item based) with reds and blues and no walkthroughs, when gold had actual value, etc etc.

Basically, give the game some goddamn teeth again.

 

[Harlequin]

So, I see a lot of the same names in this post...
I know we say/think that there is a lot of support for a movement like this, but what should we do to motivate, and also, how do we know that a solid majority (or a least a very large base) of players would participate?

We shall have a Stratics vote!

*Expecting a mod to come in here to hit me on the head any minute now*

Seriously though, we also need to know what kind of things to include. Some want pre AOS, some want pre Tram, some want skill locks etc.

Perhaps once they have some free time after SA, maybe they can do a prototype TC like what Drac did during xmas previously to gather more input.

 

[Kaleb]

Simply what they need to do is base it off the most popular free server, there are more people there then even pacific, Its based around UO:R pub 16 but... no power scrolls except for crafters they like their bod's, champspawns only in t2a and only drop corpse loot and 420k gold when finished, custom housing w/ old houseing rules EG: can enter any unlocked home become grey and attackable by the owner, pre aos items/combat, no stat buff items all stats can only be 100 unless blessed or on pots, Chaos/order, no insurance, tram, ish, malas, tok, heartwood, no skills released since AOS, no item blesses only clothing blesses. this shard is almost like what UO would have been if there was no split or AOS item/combat code minus landmasses of course. If the devs modeled the Classic server after this it would be crazy full just like the PRS counterpart.

 

[Old Man of UO]

Simply what they need to do is ...

... lock these threads.

 

[Theo_GL]

Screw the classic shard...

How about one that gets wiped every 12 months?

* Every char starts with advanced char token
* Every char starts with ethy
* There are no xfers to or from it
* You cannot use vet rewards here
* Your housing here does not affect normal servers


So every 12 months, EVERYONE starts anew.

Having a beginning and an end would make it interesting.

They could have some sort of storyline and some sort of yearly rewards. Like best PVPer gets special award sword on their home shard. Most champs completed gets award on home shard etc.

Keeping it fresh would get people interested in starting there every year.

 

[Old Man of UO]

Screw the classic shard...

How about one that gets wiped every 12 months?
...

How about a hardcore shard where all your skills and stats would get reset to beginning after 3 deaths. You bank and houses and possessions would all remain, just have to start rebuilding the character.

 

[The Home Guild]

I love how all the people that don't agree with the shard put thier 2 cents in..
if you dont care for it don't play it or complain.

 

[o2bavr6]

Screw the classic shard...

How about one that gets wiped every 12 months?

May as well just play test center.

 

[Old Man of UO]

I love how all the people that don't agree with the shard put thier 2 cents in..
if you dont care for it don't play it or complain.

I see what you are saying, except that to create such a shard will take Developers time away from other shards. So it does affect players from every pay shard.

 

[Morgana LeFay (PoV)]

... lock these threads.

Is someone else expressing their opinions really that much of a threat to you?

Is it somehow against the forum rules to discuss wanting a classic shard?

 

[Turdnugget]

I don't see how/why this would take much extra effort/money to develop as there are countless free shards out there that have done this because they ENJOY classic servers and they do it for free... why can't EA do the same?

I'm pretty sure a classic server would be the most populated server.

I say no to champ spawns. There were other methods of getting money before the whole T2A champ spawns.

I think it's funny that you say that devs working on a classic shard would take away from other paying shards... a classic shard would take FAR LESS effort than regular production shards. Less pixel crap to deal with. Less expansions to deal with. Devs wouldn't have to deal with new bugs every new patch because the last patch they put in with new items/rewards/skills now has more flaws/bugs that people are exploiting and people complaining about gimp templates and nerf this nerf that.

 

[Old Man of UO]

...
Is it somehow against the forum rules to discuss wanting a classic shard?

Yes actually, it was supposed to be!

 

[MatrixCubed]

I alreqady posted this above but for those who missed it...

Okay, so why was Siege made in the first place? Yeah, exactly...problem is those of us that would like a 'classic' (pre pub 16) can't even get that experience from Siege now that everyone one there is joining factions for the uber items. And isn't that the whole problem? Isn't that why some of us 'old schoolers' are disenchanted? The game was truly about skill not items...that's all we really want...7x skills..everybody has access to the same equipment...no super rich we control all the ps's & items guilds and players. A classic shard would be a lot less work than trying to keep inventing new pixel crack for the 'newbies'. (Read 'newbies' as anyone post Pub 16) yeah and I have six accounts I pay for and have almost since the beginning. I spent a lot of money on this game over the years, enough so that I should get a classic shard as a reward for my loyalty. And the reason we don't have a larger palyer base is no one other than the existing players has heard of UO. EA hasn't spent dollar one on advertising UO in at least 8 years! As far as Statics...I rarely come here like 3/4 of the UO players...EA send em's to all your account holders and poll whether we'd like a classic shard...let's not leave it to the same old posters on some minimally read threads....Okay..let the sh*t fly!

 

[MatrixCubed]

Yes actually, it was supposed to be!

Against the rules??? Awful lot of posts here on the subject...who specifically said it was against the rules? It's a topic many of us have discussed and continue to discuss.