Hogwash.
Pure, utter, hogwash. The fact that UO has gone in a more item oriented direction does nothing to stop UO from going back to a more traditionally Feluccan style of play.
You are right. The fact that the devs realize that a Fel only style of play would cost them way too many subscribers is what stops it from happening. The item oriented aspect is just the reason why people like me, and many others, don't enjoy UO pvp anymore. Couldn't agree with you more there.
Trammel is what makes it impossible to embrace the Feluccan ideology.
Wrong. See below.
Case in point... Item insurance. The game has been tweaked and tailored to it. You have to grind grind grind grind grind to get the suit you want.
Right. The game needed item insurance BECAUSE of the fact that the devs made it so item based. Which, in turn, made anti item based players take part less and less in pvp.
this is why so many people have complained about how crappy 99.9% of the loot drops on Tram shards are.
It takes killing a high number of lady mel's in order to get ONE crimson cincture. It is set up to make you succumb to a ridiculous investment of time and energy in order to get a piece of the suit jigsaw puzzle players are trying to piece together.
I never had to kill Mel even once in 98 to get a crimson cincture. Not once. Hmmm.
It is a treadmill and it is one you ride for a LOOOONG time. Collecting sets, suits, rares, whatever... you grind grind grind... because if you do not set it up this way, the Trammel player gets BORED and quits. There has to be a seemingly endless chasing of the carrot to keep them engaged.
For you maybe. To me, the grind aspect of the game sucks. It sucked in SB. It sucked in WoW and it sucked in SWG. Its just not fun to me. If it is for you, more power to you.
For there to be no item insurance, there would need to be a drastic change in the way items (loot) drop from NPCs. If Treasures of Tokuno were turned on permanently. If killing a doom boss guaranteed you a [cursed] artifact as well as a chance at the real thing. If lvl 6 maps had [cursed] artifacts on them. If ancient wyrms and high level monsters dropped (regularly) items with 5 properties at high intensities. If Peerless and ML named creatures dropped ML arties every time you killed one... as well as 10+ of each ingredient (instead of just 1-3 of a few.)
Making it easier to get items in an item based game, for people that don't enjoy item based games, doesn't really help. Less item based pvp, that would help. You seem to miss that part over and over.
Not just loot from monsters, but crafting would need attention to. For example: runic kits would need 10x's the charges on them.
You would see Felucca born again.
Give me 10000000000 val runic hammers and guess what? I will still not enjoy having to piece together 'the perfect suit' and spend even two minutes calculating each and ever stat that can possibly exist in order to compete with all the people that DO enjoy doing so. Its not fun. I don't like it. Its not fun. I don't do it. Not sure why you can't grasp that.
Players who enjoy PvM, would be out hunting (in a variety of places and not just the hot-spot of the month) and then turning around and SELLING those items to others.
Sure. Some people would. Definitely. Many more would be the same as they are now though. Bored by the math and moving on to a game with less grinding.
Players who enjoy crafting would be out crafting constantly to supply those who die and lose their items.
Players who enjoy PKing would be out hunting the hunters.
Players who enjoy PvP would be out PvPing.
Players in factions would be factioning (more often.)
They added a bunch of nasty items to factions. Isn't it fixed now? Doesn't faction gameplay pretty much dominate the activity on every shard now?
Obtaining a suit to PvP or PvM with would be inexpensive. There would be an abundant supply that allowed for players to just suit up and play.
You know what allowed people to be able to just suit up and play? AR as opposed to several resists. Vanq instead of +abc, -pdg and +rem that you have now. Math is fun for you. Not me. Especially not in a game.
You see... the whole point of Felucca is interacting with eachother. Whether it's role-playing, PvPing, so on and so forth.
I do all of that in Trammel. With much less griefing. Much much less. Why do I need Fel for what I already do in Trammel?
Items flow fluidly through the playerbase. Items are lost and replaced endlessly... the whole point of it all. The ULTIMATE gold sink.
You are right. But, that doesn't mean that item acquisition is fun. Its not.
You see. Felucca and Trammel simply cannot coexist, properly. One is a sandbox and the other is a themepark.
You mean one is a sandbox and one is a mostly empty ghetto? Gotcha.
And those talking about item PvP... wake-up. You are more than 6 years living in the past... UO has evolved into the PvP we have and you need to get over it. There are player-run servers if you want to experience 'classic-so-easy-a-caveman-can-figure-it-out' Ultima Online.
This coming from the person trying to go back to Pre Trammel days? Very nice. And yes, I did get over it. I did so by not taking part in PVP. Worked for me.