Thinking about returning

[Zylex]

Hi all,
I left UO around 5 years ago and have played many MMOs since then, but I'm getting increasingly nostalgic about the old UO days and am thinking I might give it another try...

How's the PvP these days? Balanced class-wise? Busy? Still around champs/harrowers or has something new come along?
What's the deal with gargoyles? Reading up about them as an old PvPer, they sound like they'd overpower everyone else. Do you need to play one to be competitive in PvP or is the balance ok?
Do you still need to drag status bars from mobs/people in order to see them?
How long does it take to level skills? Is gaining still based on the 8x8 tile system or has it become more random?

More shard specific, how's the economy? Anywhere it is less inflated/easier for a newb to get started? My old account (as well as my stratics account, though I can't recreate the old name ) seems to have been purged at some point in the last few years - I'm pretty gutted, but then again it might be fun starting from scratch! Any shards with plenty of Fel housing space? How's Europa for these things?

I probably have tons of other questions but can't think of more at the moment. Anything else I should know about? Or any good threads/resources you can link?


ETA: It seems the account is actually still there, though I can't see my characters on MYUO. Is that because they haven't logged in for a while? I'm going to have a bash with the free trial before reactivating anything, but the chances of me deciding to return would probably increase if I knew my toons were just hiding from me rather than having disappeared! ;-)

 

[Basara]

Hi all,
I left UO around 5 years ago and have played many MMOs since then, but I'm getting increasingly nostalgic about the old UO days and am thinking I might give it another try...

How's the PvP these days? Balanced class-wise? Busy? Still around champs/harrowers or has something new come along?
What's the deal with gargoyles? Reading up about them as an old PvPer, they sound like they'd overpower everyone else. Do you need to play one to be competitive in PvP or is the balance ok?
Do you still need to drag status bars from mobs/people in order to see them?
How long does it take to level skills? Is gaining still based on the 8x8 tile system or has it become more random?

More shard specific, how's the economy? Anywhere it is less inflated/easier for a newb to get started? My old account (as well as my stratics account, though I can't recreate the old name ) seems to have been purged at some point in the last few years - I'm pretty gutted, but then again it might be fun starting from scratch! Any shards with plenty of Fel housing space? How's Europa for these things?

I probably have tons of other questions but can't think of more at the moment. Anything else I should know about? Or any good threads/resources you can link?


ETA: It seems the account is actually still there, though I can't see my characters on MYUO. Is that because they haven't logged in for a while? I'm going to have a bash with the free trial before reactivating anything, but the chances of me deciding to return would probably increase if I knew my toons were just hiding from me rather than having disappeared! ;-)

Can't answer the PvP questions too well, as I don't PvP... but I'll give it a shot.

for PvP, there's a lot more different champs added in the last few years, most of them in the Tram ruleset, though (but two big Fel ones in Stygian Abyss).
Tram spawns drop scrolls of Transendance, which give 0.1 to 0.5 boosts in a random skill (up to cap).
Fell Spawns have the SOTs as well, at 0.6 to 1.0 skill, taking place of half the 105 drops during the spawn.
All Spawns now drop replicas of some of the old EM items that got duped to death.

Gargoyles are tremendously UNDERpowered currently, but changes to Mysticism and Gargoyles currently on Test Center are sopposed to change that.

Dunno about the status bar thing, but a new targeting system was added in, if you want to use it.

8x8 is dead, thank god. And, a fix was made to make gains after 100 skill come easier. With SoTs from the spawns, it's a bit easier to level skills than before.

As for your old Stratics account, try contacting Petra (our admin). We had a catastrophic failure 2 years ago, and your old account might still be in the "imported_name" list if it wasn't lost.

Your characters are still on your old account. There's not been a non-cheating account intentionally deleted in 10 years, though there's a small chance your belongings might have disappeared. MyUO only shows characters active in the last 4 weeks.

When you activate your old account, you probably want to spend the extra $30 and upgrade to Stygian Abyss (the gargoyles, etc.) Without it you can't use the stuff from the expansion. However, all the stuff from the expansions you missed have already been added to all existing accounts (and trials).

Building a PvP suit might be a little easier with the Imbuing skill from SA. It allows you to build just the properties you want into gear, but you can't quite get the maximum total effect on the items that a runic would theoretically create (as material type and exceptional bonuses count against the imbuing cap). On the other hand, elemental damage on a weapon doesn't count as a property anymore, either, for crafting (it's a freebie if it occurs). The Replicas from the champs mean that some of the EM stuff in legal, non-duped form are now available (though they blew up the vine cord dupers, and deleted every one of those sandals from the game). So, there are now things like fully legal Lt. Sashes to be had as spawn drops. There are also pumped up Faction versions of existing artifacts that can be bought with silver, and only used by the owner. Last year's events wiped out the Shadowlords, but the faction artis have caused a bit of a resurgence in factions (along with rules about faction/non-faction interaction being relaxed, and the ability of a factioner to rez their own faction steed)

Runic hammers and sewing kits also had their minimum intensity boosted, and all of them can now create 100% intensity properties. Arms lore adds up to 5% more DI to exceptional weapons or 5 more random resists to exceptional armor. And, if you ever did BODs, there were several changes made between 2005 & 2008 that you need to see the Craftsman forum for (the ability to get replacement BODs, and a random bonus to raise the reward level on high end BOD turn-in, making the high end runics more common).

They also massively pumped up the gold from champ spawns (not to mention making the bosses tougher), so if you have a blue that can solo an Ilshenar spawn (most of those types are bushido/necromancer melee builds), you can probably get enough gold to start buying stuff quickly. Gold also weighs 1/3 as much, so most characters with strength over 100 can now carry 60k on them (400 stones) if lightly equipped, or if human.

Welcome back, and have fun relearning the game.

 

[Zylex]

Thanks for the comprehensive reply! Sounds like there have been lots of positive changes recently

That's great news about my characters - I gave all my stuff away when I left so I'm not really expecting any valuable/useful belongings to remain anyway, maybe just some junk if anything has survived at all. My main is well and truly red (if she'd been logged in the entire time I was away she might just have been on the verge of blueness by now, hehe) so I'll probably have to work on one of my alts for a while to get re-established. Thank god 8x8 is gone, I wasn't looking forward to that!

 

[The Doctor]

To help with your shard specific questions, I returned to the game on Europa a short while ago, and whilst the shard is not as busy as it was, it's still quite populated.

Housing spots are relatively easy to find unless you want a tower or bigger. Most of the cities have an RP guild that has taken up spots around the walls, but further out in the sticks there are good spots. Felucca looks pretty empty of souls, but there is still quite a bit of housing. Nonetheless, I expect you could find a tower spot.

To me, the economy looks over-inflated. There are very few vendors that I have found whose owners actually keep them updated, so the ones that do this regularly have a good clientele - and seem to put the prices up to match. People seem to think that everyone is a multi-millionaire.

However, the RAA Shop just down from Skara is an excellent, fairly priced place and there's a shop just over the Umbra west bridge with very good stock and prices. Luna is just Lunatic, though you can find some runes there from time to time for out of the way vendors of quality.

 

[Zyle]

Thanks for the info I decided to come back to Europa, even though my only fully developed character is on Legends. Since she's naked, red and has an outdated template, I can't do much with her at the moment. I guess I'll move her over at some point once I can afford to equip her.

(Oh, and I got my stratics account reactivated, yay! Thanks Trillian! )