What I miss about UO...

[Salya Sin]

The one thing I keep seeing over and over that I actually think the players could fix... is the towns...

The EM's do announced meet and greets... the community spotlight shows player run events that are sometimes nothing more than 'get together and do stuff' events. Why don't some of these larger guilds start ponying up some time and plan something?

Every week you meet in a town tavern... just to mess around? Weekly, the crafters meet at WBB and craft, sell, fix, and chat? I see some of the shards do that already... Instead of why don't they sell pets anymore... do a taming day every week where the tamers meet and tame for whoever needs something. FOR FREE?

I can understand the glory days... the missing seeing people hanging LIVE NOT AFK in someplace other than Luna... but there are certain misses that the players can do something about. Yes the game changed... but no one makes people stay in Luna...

What can we as players do to bring people to the towns? I know my guild is exploring options... discussing them... we have some ideas for things we'd like to try in Napa... anyone else think of anything to bring the interaction back?


EDIT- I miss Haven Monday... where everyone could go for a pet, armor, clothing, money, regs... whatever they needed. There were TONS of people there... chatting, crafting... we could still do that everyone!

 

[Black Sun]

I miss...

the days when you could have 1 account with five characters and still cover just about all skills/classes in the game with little trouble. Back in the day most people had Warrior, Tamer, Mage, Crafter, and a misc. (Theif, Bard, T-Hunter) So simple

crashing into other boats along the server line at sea while training magery

having to leave a bag behind a wall to transfer items from one char to another on your acct

taming every sheep, bull, cow, goat and bird in Delucia and gating them to the WBB and releasing them all at once

Needing 2-3 people to take down a drake

running to the cotton fields in Moonglow to pick cotton to sell at the Brit tailor for quick extra cash.

 

[popps]

The one thing I keep seeing over and over that I actually think the players could fix... is the towns...

The EM's do announced meet and greets... the community spotlight shows player run events that are sometimes nothing more than 'get together and do stuff' events. Why don't some of these larger guilds start ponying up some time and plan something?

Every week you meet in a town tavern... just to mess around? Weekly, the crafters meet at WBB and craft, sell, fix, and chat? I see some of the shards do that already... Instead of why don't they sell pets anymore... do a taming day every week where the tamers meet and tame for whoever needs something. FOR FREE?

I can understand the glory days... the missing seeing people hanging LIVE NOT AFK in someplace other than Luna... but there are certain misses that the players can do something about. Yes the game changed... but no one makes people stay in Luna...

What can we as players do to bring people to the towns? I know my guild is exploring options... discussing them... we have some ideas for things we'd like to try in Napa... anyone else think of anything to bring the interaction back?


EDIT- I miss Haven Monday... where everyone could go for a pet, armor, clothing, money, regs... whatever they needed. There were TONS of people there... chatting, crafting... we could still do that everyone!

I understand the feeling but unfortunately, I think that the deserted towns are a consequence of what Ultima Online has become : an item focused farming game..........

Quite many players do not have time for stopping in the game to chat with other fellow players and most everyone is always running around to use every minute of time to hunt for items or for gold.

The game has become, because of past choices, I imagine, too much focused on having players crave for wealth and for items.

No wonder that towns are deserted.....
Who really has the time to hang around towns when that time could be used to get a few more high end items, more gold ?

The day the balance shifted away from skills towards items was the day Ultima Online started to loose its original flavour......

For me, it is sad, sad because I have always seen Ultima Online as a roleplaying virtual world, not a factory to mass crank out items and gold points....

Yet, every Event that comes it is more items, more frenzy to get them. Then rinse and repeat with another Event.......

 

[northwoodschopper]

remember when energy vortexes were the ultimate spell? not only did they hit hard, they also use to spam harm, poison, and curse effortlessly.

i remember when a warrior soloing a daemon was a big accomplishment, and soloing a dragon was almost legendary.

i remember when horses were rare in the wild and you couldn't buy them from stables. they sold for thousands.

i remember the early days of archery, where a heavy xbow was feared, and archers could fire on the run. then came the massive nerf that made archery worthless to pvp for a number of years.

i remember when the dungeons had mobs spawn that made sense, like humanoid monsters where there were camps, and such.

 

[Salya Sin]

I understand the feeling but unfortunately, I think that the deserted towns are a consequence of what Ultima Online has become : an item focused farming game..........

Quite many players do not have time for stopping in the game to chat with other fellow players and most everyone is always running around to use every minute of time to hunt for items or for gold.

The game has become, because of past choices, I imagine, too much focused on having players crave for wealth and for items.

No wonder that towns are deserted.....
Who really has the time to hang around towns when that time could be used to get a few more high end items, more gold ?

The day the balance shifted away from skills towards items was the day Ultima Online started to loose its original flavour......

For me, it is sad, sad because I have always seen Ultima Online as a roleplaying virtual world, not a factory to mass crank out items and gold points....

Yet, every Event that comes it is more items, more frenzy to get them. Then rinse and repeat with another Event.......

I definitely agree with you that the focus is on items and gold... although honestly? I love to do the peerless spawns... not for the items because I never get any... I just enjoy playing with as many guild members (most are family in RL)/alliance members that we can get together and conquer something that can't be fought alone (for 99% of players anyway). It brings people together as a group... and afterwards... you feel so thrilled that you pulled it off. YAY US! We did it! lol...

On the other hand... I have to say... that UO may have altered things but they didn't alter the people playing. No one MADE us spawn and buy and farm... we could all make the effort to move past that and bring a treasured element back to the game. That was mainly my point... what can we as players do to move a bit more towards being a community of players vs solo individuals along for the ride..

 

[Trebr Drab]

I definitely agree with you that the focus is on items and gold... although honestly? I love to do the peerless spawns... not for the items because I never get any... I just enjoy playing with as many guild members (most are family in RL)/alliance members that we can get together and conquer something that can't be fought alone (for 99% of players anyway). It brings people together as a group... and afterwards... you feel so thrilled that you pulled it off. YAY US! We did it! lol...

On the other hand... I have to say... that UO may have altered things but they didn't alter the people playing. No one MADE us spawn and buy and farm... we could all make the effort to move past that and bring a treasured element back to the game. That was mainly my point... what can we as players do to move a bit more towards being a community of players vs solo individuals along for the ride..

It's not up to the players. It's up to the developers. If they make a game that has such value on items, that's what the players will play. They need to add value to other aspects, to recapture Trade skills and buying/selling in a more basic form (reduce the Walmart syndrome), add mystery to explore, give guild wars more meaning, make NPC vendors more important, place clues to mysteries in the city libraries and elsewhere, etc.

 

[Potgut]

Not so much that I missed all of these things, but I remember:

-Server down wars, me and my friend would stay up all night for this
-Recdu rescu
-Bloody bandaids when you failed to heal
-No runebooks
-No pet resurrection
-The option to resurrect yourself with penalties
-Using the World Wide Web to search for UO information, guides, and tips, was considered cheating
-Being chased into town while spamming "Guards"

However, probably the main thing I love about the new UO is customizable housing. I guess because it lets me express my creative side, which is often hungry. I wouldn't trade my 18x18 plot for any keep or castle.

 

[sablestorm]

I think everyone could still afford the 600 gold even back then.

You started with 100 gold which you wasted buying things like a sword and a bit of armor. Don't even get me started on the 10 of each reg that spawned each time. Watching the mages fight over them was like watching the old cabbage patch kid craze where insane customers were battling each other to get their hands on them. Anyway, you waste this measly amount, head out of town to do your part to fight evil and promptly ran into pkays patrolling the borders of the town. So often you died and lost that pitance amount you had or you ran back to the safety of town and didn't make any money anyway.

This was actually why my first character was a tailor/warrior, so she could make money in-town by sewing clothes and selling them. It is also why it was ingrained into me to pick up everything you see on the ground and sell it, a practice I still have hardwired into me to this day.

 

[Black Sun]

It is also why it was ingrained into me to pick up everything you see on the ground and sell it, a practice I still have hardwired into me to this day.

Glad I'm not the only non-newb still doing this. Just last week I was so happy over finding 3 bags of wooden shields some carpenter in training dropped in haven. The 1200 gold I got from them made me happier than the 500k I took off my vendor that same day.

Somethings just not right there.

 

[Kazar]

1)Getting my first horse (which I still have)
2)Power hour
3)Finding blackmoor and not having a clue what it was for
4)Mining and finding a spot that had valorite and having to run to the cave
because I didn't have magery to mark a rune
5)Get my first 100000 gold and feeling "rich"
6)Fighting imps and wondering how come they were so tough(they were meaner than daemons then)
7)PVPing for 20 minutes with someone and both of us calling a truce

 

[Amren]

pking people and looting them dry. I also loved looting their houses, and hear them QQ as I killed em again. Then I would corpse camp.