Ten Years Later...well....Twelve

[Jonathan Baron]

No, this isn't a You Can't Go Home Again post; it's more a how-can-a-new-guy-fit-here post.

Hadn't played UO since I worked for Origin in '99, mostly because my subsequent employers frowned on such things naturally. LOVED UO though, and rather hated the way the industry went subsequently...the leveling game mechanic drove me mad. So, a week ago I returned....oy vey!

There I am on a little island, building my Paladin guy, going up the ladder of things I can kill, stuffing coin in the bank, collecting my fighting garb and my walk around town duds. After all, it's rather crass to walk around town in plate armor with a sword or axe drawn. Killed a lot a critters, wore out a lot of axes, swords, protective apparel of all sorts, did the skill quests and grew eager to for the larger world.

So far, so, so normal. Jumped on my horse and into the Moongate.....destination Luna. HOLY EQUINE EXCREMENT!!! Felt like a kid from a little town in the Appalachians plunked into Times Square. NPC/player vendors were no longer in little shacks way up north. They line every street selling all sorts of....I dunno...imbued, embalmed, enchanted...STUFF, the use of which I could not comprehend. Just gimme decent armor, a smith to repair my weapons and, of course, black duds....loved the black duds.

Let's see....black dye alone was three hundred THOUsand gold coins for a three use bottle. Some stuff...little stuff going for over a million. Okay, a virtual world over a decade old would suffer inflation but when I calculated how many of those grunting two headed beasts I'd have to kill, each packing around 200 gold apiece in corpse loot, folks would be wearing black alright...at my funeral.

To heck with this...I'm leaving town....not smart. The first little vampire bat nicks me. WTF? Then some female NPC brigands wearing kilts start throwing fireballs at me. On fire, with little bright balls whirling around me, my red health bar vanishing, and not a wandering healer in probably miles, I fled while cursing myself for leaving my horse in the stables near the moongate. Back past the stadium throng trying to sell me a damned floral arrangement for a cool million, grabbed my horse, and returned to the appropriately named Haven.

All this to ask a simple question, a question none of the new player guides came anywhere close to answering: how can a new player, circa 2010, gain some manner of footing here? I'm not talking black capes or swords made by master smiths, much less how you make your first half million. What do you do if you can't even leave town? Rather, which town can you leave?

There are only so many skill points in the newbee bucket and precious few examples of fireball repulsing medieval Kevlar on kindergarten island.

Best stop after Haven?

Pardon the long post and thank you for your advice and indulgence.

Jonathan

 

[Beer_Cayse]

<laughs> Just friggin' wondrous, ain't it?

Did you scan the New Player FAQ here to freshen up old memories and learn some of the new? There are skill quests in Haven (the starting point) that require you to gain to at least 50 in any selected skill.

When on one of these, you gain in the skill by tackling stuff in Old Haven (the ruins) where gain is sped up over the normal gains. Rewards are pretty handy for new characters to work with.

What shard are you on ... perhaps one where I might assist you a bit. But take things one step at a time - you have a large beast to eat and only tiny little bites will get you understanding!

 

[kelmo]

Man. This post says a lot about where the game came from and where it is headed.

UO learning curve is very steep now. It is almost impossible to start by yourself. Later you may be able to solo most any thing...

But for now I recomend find a helpful crew in game. Most shards have some sort of organization in place to help out new/old players.

Continue to post any questions that come up... There is a pretty good crew here to help. The Stratics main page may answer several of your questions.

Good luck and I hope others will chime in as well.

 

[Schuyler Bain]

Welcome back Jonathan!

UO has certainly seen a lot of changes during the time you have been gone. There are many players that have been here the entire time and another large portion of us have taken breaks from time-to-time. The rest of the player base is made up of returning players like yourself that have been gone for many years and then new players.

The one thing that seems to have remained the the same over the years is the reliance on your fellow player. While these days it is a lot less than in the beginning, as a young character or new player you need the help of a guild and the guidance of a friend or two to get up to speed. That is the best advice I can give you at this point. There are plenty of guides, Petra and the Stratics team have been doing a great job cleaning up the info available here and www.uoguide.com is another great resource.

Don't know what shard you are on, but if you are not committed there are many guilds and a lot of fun RP, PvM, PvP RP/PvP, etc. on the Catskills shard and many others.

Good luck!

 

[Percivalgoh]

It's all in the planning. Other players can help you out a lot but if you want to figure things out for yourself then you need to learn how to train yourself. If you are gaining skills then it is very likely your gear is need of upgrading. Back when you played before gear was all the same but now there is a huge difference in what you can do based on the gear you have. Don't worry about what the players with too much time and gold pay for things but find your own nitch or join a guild or make friends with more knowledgable players.

 

[Jonathan Baron]

Wow, that was quick....thanks guys.

Yup, did all the pertinent skill quests, got all those blessed things (what they're called, not the figure of speech), maxed the points and then rearranged them by sticking the pointers up and down (bled off my fencing points, for example, when I realized it was a matter of fence or sword...er...that came out wrong), grabbed all sorts of corpse loot with bizarre properties, fought for the resistance in the spells wars against the creepy floating gals in the blue capes, killed many a brigand - none of whom set me on fire - and felt appropriately odd when I'd hear one shout in a female voice as she died and turned into just a corpse in a bikini, killed a herd of two headed things and made as many lizard guys hiss their last.

Lost track of the number of slain zombies, skells, mongbats, and those froggy things that spring from the ground and leave a corpse that looks like home plate in baseball.

Escorted all manner of NPCs to all sorts of establishments in town, save the brothel which I could not find....yeah, it's not on the map and there's no sign for it but every island with at least two towns has one. Imagine writing the NPC script for THAT request. I'll find it eventually.

With a hundred and fifty grand in the bank and high hopes I found I was half way to that bottle of black dye....crap, gotta get off that black clothing thing. Grew up watching the original Paladin you see....yeah as if you couldn't tell if you click on the sig link, though it needs some changes in the lyrics.

In short I did EVERYTHING that all the tips pages noted. Plus I do recall the basic game....hell, I worked on the Renaissance release, though I contributed nothing useful to it. And THAT was a long, long time ago.

But that's really it. The game has become a unique ecosystem and culture with terms and systems that evolved to a point where they would make no sense at all to the uninitiated.....but I digress.

So....go forth and find those rare and wondrous souls who like to help tyros in the game itself. Until then....a knight with plate armor in a savage land....

Shard, location suggestions? Dunno where the hot spots are these days.

Again, many, many thanks!

Jonathan

 

[Jonathan Baron]

Oh, forgot to add, my game name is Luscombe in case you come across me and show me mercy Been playing on Chesapeake.

 

[Beer_Cayse]

Good grief! I watched that show as well - you & I must be darn close in age.

Brothels were forced to go "underground" however should you deliver the proper sooper-dooper-damn-top-sekrit handshake to an Innkeeper they may show you the hidden doorway to the pleasure palace! Then again you could end up shanghaid to a pirate frigate for jollies on the high seas.

I should mention black dye tubs are Vet rewards if you choose to stick it out long enuff. If you are on Lake Austin, I have one I'm more than willing to let you have. I never use the darn thing ennyhoo.

 

[kelmo]

I know some fine folks on Chessy...

 

[Percivalgoh]

If you think that the stuff you get from newbie quests or off low level monsters is so great, you are mistaken. Those are generally only good for the new player. Once you want to go do something else then you need better gear. However you can do a lot of things with that gear but what you need is a different approach to it and better skills. If you really want help you should list what your skill levels are for the various skills you have since template is of great importance in deciding what kind of gear you need and where to go to train and have fun. If you want to get black clothing, you might be able to find someone with a black dye tub (veterans reward)that could dye your stuff. The expensive dye is probably natural dyes created from black plants and can be used to dye your armor and weapons. If you want to have black clothes there is likely a way to accomplish it without the black dye. So where to go depends on what exactly your skill is.

 

[LordDrago]

Welcome back Jonathan.

I am on Chessy, so if I see you I will give you a hand.

Most likely I am on a character named Sarcon. Or, look for someone in the CAT guild and ask for me. If I am on, they can reach me

 

[Basara]

A note for safety's sake:

The Brigands that cast spells are ELVEN brigands (which they sneaked on us in Mondain's Legacy when they introduced the playable elven race), and they mostly cast spellweaving spells. They usually only spawn in Ilshenar and Malas, as far as I know.

 

[Jonathan Baron]

Wow....it's so gratifying to head out there and come back to all this.

As the bard said, the game's the thing. I had a blast this evening but, as usual, it had nothing to do with supernatural apparel.

The best of the where-do-I-go-from-here pages on Stratics said to head instead to old Britain, head north and go into a dungeon whose name escapes me....Dismal...distal...ah, Despise. Brought my horse along this time, for the journey at least. As the Scots would say it was a soft day...drizzle and the soundtracks were far more interesting and not horridly repetitive as in Haven. The sad part was seeing so many homes in disrepair. I take it you still have to put an effort into maintaining them, or perhaps the owners of the forlorn ones ran out of money at roughly the fifty million mark...dunno how much they cost. To me they're simply vanity plates or proof of many hours lost forever.

But the game's the thing.

So into the dungeon with my faithful horse, Bellanca, standing outside. [extra credit for those who know what a Luscombe or a Bellanca is ] No fun. Just rock monsters and those two headed things, both of which regenerate constantly (the two types of creatures, not the heads on the one). Killed a bunch and left. Dungeons are for groups, as you know. I recall one night, long, long ago when I fell in with a Portuguese guild to hit dungeon after dungeon. None of them spoke English but such matters are trivial in PTSD inducing battles. Play games long enough and you know what to do in a fight. Simple.

Went to Orc...again, nobody. Bad luck. Headed for Yew and the Moonstone ride to playpen island. Again, though it feels like a frontier town, plenty of folks were selling all sorts of stuff at ludicrous prices. Hell, even bandages had a heavy markup. No bolts of cloth or scissors in Yew.

Then an act of mercy. Some guy in a hurry at the Moonstone actually stopped when I asked him where I could buy some slightly better armor (no, I didn't mention black clothes). "Wait here for a sec," he says as he vanishes into the glowing egg. In moments he returns with a sack load of stuff which HE JUST GIVES ME and vanishes once more into the egg. Didn't matter that most was all stuff for the Samurai folks, and I had no idea what most of it was. It simply felt wonderful that he did it, and some of the odder bits - rings and bracelets - had extraordinary powers to drive your enemies before you and hear the lamentations of their women....before they turn into spread eagle corpses clad in white bikinis....sorry to mention that oddity twice.

Ah, but the game is the thing, and back on Haven I ran into a slick mage who'd smite those two headed things with stuff that zapped and went boom to the accompaniment of Latin phrases. We went to work like those Sword of Truth novels: me the steel on steel guy and she the magic on...well...wasn't magic but it was a splendid hour of flash synchronicity. I'd do the bait and drag, pick up the double team, the slaughter was...oh hell, you know what it is. It's the juice, million dollar home furnishings be damned. We would have cleaned that damned dungeon and swept away the bones.

As I logged I knew it was going to be okay. Yes, I am an old guy....ancient. Ah, but I've been making and playing games longer than many of you have been alive and the yearning for that rush of complimentary skills combat never diminishes....not even a little. Don't need supernatural armor or a black cape for that. Just gotta round up a posse. They don't need to be dressed all fancy; they simply have to know what gaming is.

And, yeah, Michael Mann's Last of the Mohicans was a masterpiece Gotta love Magwa. Dances With Wolves gave Wes Studi a heck of a film career.

Now I just have to learn all those places like Lake Austin. Much bigger world.

Jonathan

 

[Silverbird]

Just to confuse you more ....
One kind of expensive black dye can be crafted by player characters. But it takes SOME time for its preparations. For you it would be around
- learn about plantgrowing in UO
- learn about the 'naturalist'-quest
- farm seeds/grow plants until you can supply yourself with green thorns
- do the naturalists quest for the rare seeds
- grow up your black seeds into black plants
- learn about the new staining-system

Really a lot has been changed in UO over the last 10-12 years. Plate armour today is not really better than leather armour. The whole armour system got revamped a few years ago. Today it can be compared to that one from Diablo2 (if you have played that, too.) There are special resources that give a whole lot of different boni to armour parts and/or weapons. (9 different metals, 4 different leathers, 7 different woods) It is really hard, if you want to learn all about them ingame. Depending on the information, I am looking for, I usually switch among 4 websides around UO: uoherald, stratics + forums, uoguide and tower of roses.

 

[Beer_Cayse]

Top level of Despise is only Lizardmen that supply spined leather when carved. If you can hook up with a tailor in training, I bet you can make some cash selling the spined leather as you train up.

Make use of commodity deeds whenever you can in sales. You can buy these for 5gp (I think) at the bank. Have the unfilled deed and the items you want on it in the bankbox top level. Double-click the deed, point at the stack and if it can be deeded, it will be. The deed will then tell you what the item is and quantity on the deed.

Later on, should you have a house a Commodity Deed Box is a reward - I want to say 1-year but not sure. This allows you to fill and redeem deeds in your house and not require the bank.

Checks (or checques) are another neat feature. Get inside a bank, open your bankbox. Check your balance. Got 215000 in gold but want to get rid of some of the stacks? Say "check 200000" and a yellowish deed-like thing appears in the bankbox ... a check for 200K gold. There will be a 15K stack of gold. Reclaim the 200K by double-clicking the check as it sits in the top level of the bankbox.

Oh yeah ... bankbox is limited only in number of items - 125 as before. Weight limits were lifted quite some time ago.

Lake Austin ... small shard, good folks. I started there when I returned a few years back. Prior life I had played Pac and Atl.

 

[Jonathan Baron]

Wow, that's Grad school level stuff guys, but extremely fascinating. Plate's no good, leather is better? I think the French discovered that at Angincourt....and Crecy.

Jonathan

 

[Beer_Cayse]

As to armor ... it used to be Plate > Chain > Ring/Studded > Leather. Now with the Mage armor mod, runic and ASH ability to up resists, etc ... a really good plate set with mage armor ability can be as good as what we experienced in leather only! Oh yeah ... add Imbuing into the mix where you can direct what to add/improve as a mod.

In fact, the "Diablo-like" Age of Shadows expansion that allowed us to see modifiers, the destruction of the above > chain in armor and other factors drove me away for just about a year.

You really do need to take all this in baby steps with good guidance from folks. Oh, you do realize Resisting Spells really doesn't resist much like it used to, right? <nods> Uh huh ... it ain't like the "good ole dayz".

 

[Percivalgoh]

This game has many options. You chose what you want to do, where you want to go, what equiptment you use, what skills you have, how you interact with others. There is no real great up to date beginers guide. Stratics is about the best place for that (or join a guild). There used to be books written about how to play UO but before they are published they are out of date because the game changes a lot. I'm 56 years old and probably not the oldest here but I was playing when you played a long time ago and have played ever since then.

 

[Beer_Cayse]

I'm 61 ... started Dec 1998 until AOS then returned a year after that and played since. Played the original U1-4 on Atari 8-bit systems even before EA had control of Origin.

 

[Jonathan Baron]

Yup, I'm older than you, Percivalgoh, and began playing online games since the '80s. I believe The Island of Kesmai was a better game in many ways, with several elegant and fascinating systems, many of which we're only seeing again now (no institutional memory in the online games industry), but it cost six bucks an hour to play on CompuServe at 300 baud (the acoustic coupler modem days). This was before regular folks had access to the Internet, apart from usenet which could only be accessed commercially through Delphi. But it was a text based game. It wasn't until Air Warrior came along in '86 that full graphics in online gaming arrived.

MMOs were pretty hardcore in the days of the Island. You had thousands, some had tens of thousands, of real world early '80s dollars invested in their characters and death was initially permanent. Thus, when someone came to your aid they were putting a lot more at stake than simply the possibility they would fail. This created communities unimaginably tight by today's standards, though the reasons for this were just dreadful. Naturally, no PvP.

You had to build skill in language to communicate with other races. You'd type something but the fellow from the other race would only answer you in Sanskrit until you developed the proper skill level. No, this didn't mean you actually had to learn Sanskrit. Yep, the game's creator was a scholar, which made for all sorts of interesting oddities. Eventually they simply created an underworld when you died, you'd have your little adventure getting back to the land of the living, and your buddies would guard your stuff until you emerged.

One important point we at Kesmai learned from this was the power of change, even minor change, to create intense and very emotional disruption among players, even when those changes are good and important, such as an afterlife and the ability to overcome death. This devaluated the investment of players in their characters but it made the game viable to a huge, fresh audience. I recall this sort of religious debate among the UO dev team during the creation of Renaissance. Yes, it violated something important to many players but the number of players nearly doubled not long after its release....well, that and the mass bannings of all manner of cheaters.

Just so long as it's not change for the sake of change.

I can just imagine how what you said came to pass. Magic users p*ss off a squatload of steel on steel players, devs try to nerf magic with spell resistance, spell resistance pisses off the magic folks, the devs nerf resistance. And people still think that working for a game company is fun...silly, silly people

So I can set my spell resistance arrow to down?

Pardon the rambling recollections of an old guy. I simply continue to find it all fascinating and coming back to UO certainly shakes up my neurons. At least five Kesmai guys landed at Origin, you see, because that's where the opportunity (money to make stuff) was. We'd labored long without breakthrough resources and UO was the first breakthrough. We didn't create it but we worked on it enroute to other projects at Origin. But UO was created nearly in secret. Once EA noticed its success, they jumped in and killed off every promising subsequent project. Meanwhile Sony was so convinced that Everquest would fail miserably that they sold off the studio - 969 was its name...I think - that created it, only to buy it back when EQ was a hit. Game companies didn't get MMOs and, in many ways, they still don't.

Nice thing about being away a long time is that the changes are so vast that you can't be annoyed....only stunned and amazed....as I was when standing next to a Moongate and a guy comes through riding a GIANT yellow insect.

Interesting world you have here....

Jonathan

 

[Jonathan Baron]

Oops, forgot something amid my ramblings. What's the Focus thing? It very suddenly went to 99 as I played. Can I tone it down without significant penalty so that I can build stuff that seems, on the face of it, to be a tad more important....you know....like swordsmanship?

 

[Percivalgoh]

Oops, forgot something amid my ramblings. What's the Focus thing? It very suddenly went to 99 as I played. Can I tone it down without significant penalty so that I can build stuff that seems, on the face of it, to be a tad more important....you know....like swordsmanship?

Focus is a skill that helps you regenerate stats faster. You may or may not want it depending on what you want to do. Skill template is important to consider. If you wnat to be a warrior go to the STRATICS Warrior forum and discuss the type of player you wish to be.

 

[Luna du Selene]

Holy cats, I've stumbled into the Witty Geezers Club! Someone please show me to the liquor cabinet

 

[Beer_Cayse]

<hands over keys to booze closet> Here ye be ... only rule is if ye finish the bottle, ya replaces it (with a full one!!).

Jonathan ... I played Kesmai a bit on Compuserve ... when rates were like $25/hour at 1200 baud! Good grief that was a nasty bill! I hung out in Atari forums a lot then.

Also, skills set to decrease ... see the little arrow next to them? If it is upwards, skill gains, double-click it for down (decrease) and double-click it again for lock. One more double-click and you are back to gain.

If you set a skill to down, it will not start dropping until you reach your skill cap total then the next gain will force the "down" skill to lose accordingly. Stat lock are controlled basically the same via to stat gump when it's open.

Oh yeah ... another stat gump feature - Classic client. See the blue gem in the upper left? It toggles a buff/debuff bar that will show icons of (de)buffs you have on the character.

A bit more on "Mage armor" ... for a character with Meditation, a plate, chain, ring or studded outfit with all "Mage armor" pieces will allow active Meditation usage without removing anything.

Focus at GM level on a Mage/Scribe with GM Meditation can regain 160 Mana in just a few seconds. Focus adds a noticable regen to active Med but at the sacrifice of some other skill that you might want.

 

[Jonathan Baron]

Hahahahaha - *that* is what you certainly did, Luna Nifty part is that I know if I yield to this sort of rambling, I'll flesh out hidden brethren. Online games select for campfire bards....everyone else is playing [fill in the most intense stand alone game of the day], which is fine, but it attracts many folks who WISH they'd find themselves witty geezers one day. Not that I knock those games....played Call of Duty 2 on the second generation X-Box a year or two back and, DAMN, that was brilliant! Extremely involving emotionally, but in an entirely different way. Online gamers either want to connect with folks or create stuff folks will admire. Point is the "other folks" part. That, friend, is the difference.

So, Beer, you discovered why Island devotees played at 300 baud did ya With text based games 300 baud is just as good as thrice that, and they charged you per baud back then. Oh, how I'm glad those days are over.

Now, some [most] of the readers [folks who don't post but like to read, often referred to in the pejorative as lurkers but I HATE that characterization] must be wondering, "How in blazes can you get as - or more - involved with a test based game as we do with the now indispensable element of graphics?" Simple. That's all that was.

Your mind created the flavor and details of the world much the way reading a novel does. This is why people who read have more interesting brains than those who don't: they have the capability to create intense, detailed experiences in their minds based solely on cues delivered in words.

But do I think text based games were better? HELL NO!! UO and EQ drew their designs from text MUDs but THANK GOD they made them graphical. The picture I paint in my mind when I read is simply too different from your own. It's personal. Graphics help make them universal. Yojimbo aside, we see similar things. This was a huge advance. When I said I thought elements of the Island were better I was only talking raw game mechanics missing from games now, and I'm not talking about including Sanskrit [cough].

WoW took the best bits and did them slicker. But their lineage is text, even if Blizzard does not know it. Why should they? Doesn't matter.

Back to the topic. The skill sheet was the engine in days past. You couldn't become a tank. This led folks to a Tribes-like motivation to collect specialists to make tank teams rather than tank individuals. I fret about focus, let's say, and then stumble across some piece of apparel that gives me FIVE FULL POINTS of focus if I wear it. Not increments of .01 of focus but FIVE POINTS simply by putting it around my neck. Throws things out of kilter.

It's not about the warrior I want to be, but the role that suits me on a team. When I find a team...I'll know. Thanks, folks, for answering my questions, I'll be able to do that I want/need to do when I find one.

In the meantime, you want some cigars to go with that whiskey, Beer? Got me some 18 year old Cusanos....better than Cohibas. 18 year old cigars, 18 year old whiskey, can deliver enormous pleasure, unlike 18 year old people in the sense I mean Oh how I wince when I remember those days.

Jonathan

 

[Kallie Pigeon]

Well Johnathan your recollection of what happened is incorrect. Players learned to create the most powerful characters they could regardless of the changes created in the game . This happened because none of the changes addressed controling antisocial play styles well enough and in fact many of them encouraged it. From the very begining there were groups of players who attempted to create the most powerful groups of players that they could. That never changed. But changes to the rules made it so that groups were no longer necessary for having fun. Also the wearing of armor that gives skill bonuses doesn't throw anything out of kilter unless you suffer from OCD. It just raises your skill while you wear it so don't worry.

 

[Jonathan Baron]

Well, that's the hell of it, isn't it, Kallie? Been struggling with that for a long, long time.

So I ask, and I'd really love to know, what would you have done to address this?

Jonathan

 

[Beer_Cayse]

Ahhhh, text games ... the true roots of computerized RP. Your mind developed scenes of where you were and all that surrounded you. Know that one well.

If you recall there was a place called Kymer (WorldsAway) on Compuserve once. I was member of that place - graphical chat world really, but social experiment by Fujitsu on viability of graphical worlds as a whole. Based on Randy Farmar and Chip Morningstar Habitat notes. I'm thinking a branch of that tree was the genesis of graphical gaming as we know it now. Kymer still exists by the way.

Ennyhoo, some of us from that place actually started and maintained a MUCK with a SciFi theme, puzzles, all sorts of RP and in effect a small area of planets in a loose confederation. Have I mentioned that I hate MUF code?? We made it almost 4 years before meandering off to various places around the web and the world. Made some wonderful friends along the way and more than a few journeyed through various worlds together ... 4 of us landed in UO. I'm the last of that group in the virtual arena AFAIK.

Also played Redwall MUCK at the time as an aged but wise Fox that had a tendency to lead the younguns (dibbuns) into mischief. rolleyes: The Abbott was always on my case for allowing so-and-so to toss the rotten apples in the fishpond, etc. I actually patterned character traits and actions on a pair of ferrets a friend had.

And I only handed off the booze locker keys. My name isn't because I actually drink the stuff, you know! But seriously ... if you decide to try Lake Austin, holler in here. Basara (Moderator) is on the shard as am I ... I'm sure we can round up trouble for you with all sorts of alacrity!

<thinks ... how fast can a Greater Dragon chew the sprite up?>

 

[Beer_Cayse]

<sees yawning chasm with a sign: My name is Cliff ... drop over some time>

You are asking for it you know. But this forum may not be exactly the right place to pursue that one. <shrug>

 

[Jonathan Baron]

The fun part about WorldsAway was stealing people's heads....though I forget how that little bug worked. Didn't it end up as some silly MUSH, Beer, where you just had a virtual world where folks built stuff....even amusement parks, but that was it. You...just...built...stuff. No weapons of any kind, no way to blow up all that crap folks built. In short, the very epitome of pointlessness. More boring than Facebook.

It had a cult - and I mean an eerie, eerie cult - following, all this peaceful activity nonsense. They just didn't get it. You need ludicrous levels of violence in cyberspace so that you can work out your aggression and thus have less violence in meat-space.

Just kidding....well...mostly.

Jonathan

 

[Percivalgoh]

Well, that's the hell of it, isn't it, Kallie? Been struggling with that for a long, long time.

So I ask, and I'd really love to know, what would you have done to address this?

Jonathan

I don't really have the information necessary to realistically address that problem. My best guess is to create characters with a limited number of deaths. These characters can exist after that but without being able to pvp. Or make it so that if a red is killed by a blue they will be unable to pvp for a period of time like a week or more. Same with thieves if they are killed by a blue then they will be unable to steal for week or more. I think a month would be about the right amount of time. This would allow for players to actually do good in the game by keeping thieves and murders from committing crimes. Of course now soulstone complicate that problem so that would have to be addressed. ETA: It could be made so that the length of time is greater the more crimes someone has committed since last being killed.

 

[Jonathan Baron]

Oops, forgot something, Beer. I forgot why it is, but I have to create an entirely new character if I try a different shard. Makes it tough to take a tour of the shards to find one that suits you. Man, that's going to make things different because, one day, I image they'll have to consolodate shards to keep the game viable....all that housing, all that investment would potentially be lost.

I'll take a few more runs through Chesapeake and see if I can find a fun group before dumping my character there. After all, what's the point of continuing with a character if you're not having fun playing him?

 

[Beer_Cayse]

don't dump characters ... ignore mebbe. I have one on Europa, I think one on Pac and perhaps Cats. None are really developed at all, but every so often I like a change of scenery.

 

[Beer_Cayse]

No, you're right on the cult-like feel of it. I was in a couple "groups" and actually had some good fun trying to "capture" miscreants who stole stuff! When I actually had enuff for a turf, I was in ecstacy. Now, that's a drug! <sigh>

The real fun part was actually meeting some of those folks IRL. One of the zaniest and most distressingly fashioned avatars was the most beautiful RL redhead I can ever recall meeting. Solid person and just good fun, at that time sold securities for Prudential.

One makes fun whereever (and however) they can - even 20 years ago or more. Your cyberspace aggression remark may be why PvP in UO is so competitive - gear-wise and tactically. I don't indulge due to poor coordination, but definitely can respect those who enjoy it.

 

[Jonathan Baron]

Sorry, Percivalgoh, your post got surrounded by the banter of Beer and I.

Raph, the original designer of UO lamented once that the problem was that they had not given the good guys the ability to win. I knew what he meant, of course, and it strikes me that that's what your mean, but I've never been keen or good at sorting folks into good and bad guys.

Fundamentally, I don't know nearly enough about the game as it exists today to fully understand the problems you mention, much less the solutions. Heck, I don't know where the PvP areas are, I've to encounter a thief, plus I have no notion of how griefers deliver grief these days.

 

[kelmo]

Do you see Siege Perilous on your log in menu? We are still here.

 

[kelmo]

Oh... and Siege is not classic by any means. It is just different.

 

[Jonathan Baron]

Now THAT is a most vivid name, kelmo, that conjures the earlier English syntax of The Forrest Primieval

I may have seen it on the list but, as a new guy, the only way it could have felt more terrifying is if it were called, Die, Newbee, Die!!

 

[Beer_Cayse]

Kelmo and others on SP can help you there. It's a different skill gain system than even what you recall. One character allowed and other rules. The Siege Forum here can introduce you to how it operates. I believe a guild called NEW operates there to assist newcomers for a period of time (30 days I think). All facets (Felucca, Ilshenar, etc) on SP and Mugen are Felucca ruleset - thievery and all that.

The UO of old - updated to all the gearing of present day ... it's the Felucca facet. Accessible via the public moongates, pick Felucca in the facet list at the left and then the gate you wish to go to in that environment. Terrain is littered with bones and stuff and no foliage is on trees. Cursor will be silvery hue. The litter and foliage can be solved with a tweak in uo.cfg file. Thieves and non-consentual PvP exist in that facet only on production shard.

We do tend to hijack perfectly good threads, don't we? Suggest that if we wanna discuss online stuff like we have that we do it in UHall OT Forum. Okey-doke?

 

[kelmo]

*blinks* I hope I did not hi jack this. If Jon is searching I just wanted him to know all of the options. Siege does not show up on new player's choices. *bows*

 

[Jonathan Baron]

Heck, Beer, you know - and most folks accept - that any active thread quickly turns into My Dinner With Andre before too long.

Besides, I agree with Kelmo's assessment that it was stuff this newbee would find useful.

 

[kelmo]

*smiles*

 

[Beer_Cayse]

No sir ... no hijack on your part. I ws referring mainly to he and I and the "old geezer" ramblings about things.

 

[Beer_Cayse]

oh sure! side with the bruiser that has the big damn axe on his shoulder! yeesh.

 

[kelmo]

We will ramble on then... *sets axe down*

 

[kelmo]

No matter what shard Jon chooses... I find this thread fascinating. A very unique opportunity. I hope Jonathon keeps this running journal going.

 

[Beer_Cayse]

agreed. I've had a blast resurrecting (can we say "An Corp"?) some of the memories I've accumulated of things that he's also experienced.

I just won't mention how I got a 22 MB hard drive hooked onto an Atari 8-bit 130XE in 1985. <shrug>

 

[kelmo]

Don't let us run you off Jon. No demands. Just stay in touch as you explore this old/new game.

 

[Jonathan Baron]

Well, Beer, prior to '90 we supported three types of home computer, all of which played on the same host, for Air Warrior: The Mac, the Atari ST, and - best of the lot by far - the Amiga. Grudgingly the IBM PC was added, painfully given its numerous shortcomings, memory restrictions, inability to play digital audio, and so forth and so on. The reason? Fujitsu paid for it. They wanted a version of AW to run on their FM Townes computer: the first multimedia PC.

The Amiga's multi-tasking OS was so advanced that guys would brag that, while they were shooting you down, they were also running a spread sheet, a word processor and, oh yes, defragging their hard drive - all this in a game where frame rate was life.

Now....who the HELL could have predicted the ultimate winner of THAT contest?

Reading threads like this, I often consider the online game types that existed in those days and wonder who the HELL could have predicted that the cumulative character, persistent world game would win the MMO war.

Although, by far my least favorite template for an MMO, here I am on this forum, eager for information about just such a game, grateful to have it, and I'm typing this on PC.

Occasionally I think I'm going to wake up to discover that the last 20 years were only a dream. I'll turn on a wonderful example of home electronics that has the gaming power of a console while it runs every conceivable useful application. It won't act like a two year old, constantly acting up and demanding my attention, telling me crap I don't need to know while refusing to do what I want it to do.

And, also after the nightmare ends, I'll logon to an MMO that does not require me to perform repetitive, tedious tasks in order to earn the right to continue to perform repetitive, tedious tasks. The game world will reset at regular intervals because, PERSISTENT WORLDS ARE IDIOTIC. We're stuck with one in meat-space that we are mucking up just fine, thank you. Why make the same mistake in the virtual world where you can do anything?

The players will welcome me. Why? Oh, for all sorts of reasons....maybe the game is all about fielding large numbers of players and even new guys can contribute something that's better than nothing. Perhaps the game involves crewed ships with some crew positions requiring almost no skill, others requiring more, but the more the better. There are any number of game mechanics that make new players such a precious commodity that newbees are sought so eagerly, vets get into fights over who saw them first.

In such a game all the stuff is right there for the taking if you can round up enough people to take it. Two people, fine. Ten people, better. And character powers? Some powers are earned, others can only be bestowed. None require trial by tedium or hours of repetition.

The game would be a guitar - easy to play a simple tune, nearly impossible to master. As I played it, the game I'm playing would change. There would be rites of passage marking these changes, and the most veteran players would be playing a very different game than the new guys.

The game would reset. This doesn't mean the world would have to end...it could simply shift to another theater of operations, another corner of the galaxy, whatever. Persistent groups, persistent characters, but no persistence of the world or anything more than the clothes on your back.

Such MMOs did exist in the past. I'm not just pulling this stuff out of my backside. They proved themselves. One featured a series of joint operations with multiple instances, each supporting nearly 1000 players participating in the same event in the same virtual place at the same time, each with a sense of place and purpose, and that was before UO was first released. So strong were the bonds formed by this shared experience that the newsgroup created to report bugs for these events still exists today, long after the game was killed by EA.

The PC of gaming won, but UO has something few games have ever had: charm. There's an ineffable quality to it which is why I returned.

Please don't get me wrong. I'm enjoying myself, and enjoying playing all the more due to all the help everyone posting here has provided me.

So don't let me run you off either with my off-topic ramblings

Somewhat on topic, but no use as a topic-save: how does one rise above visitor status on this forum? I registered, filled out my profile, even uploaded a profile picture. Did the forum software somehow sense that it would want me to leave before long?

 

[Basara]

I remember being part of an Atari users group (in fact, I was still using an 8-bit Atari 130XE up until 1995, when some idiot stole it, and didn't take any of the peripherals or even the power supply).

The ST had built-in MIDI, which made it popular (like the STacy portable featured prominently in the band gear of the Arsenio Hall Show), and there were emulator cards made for it that allowed you to emulate the era's PCs and Macs (and with a little case modding, you could put both in the same computer - the PC Ditto cards were HUGE).

One of my favorite stories from that era was hearing of a STacy owner in TX that took his computer with one of the Spectre Mac emulator cards to a Mac user group meeting, and getting thrown out after his machine out-performed one of that group's brand new, TEN THOUSAND DOLLAR, Macintosh portable, when running Mac software.

Oh, if only Atari & Commodore hadn't been so mis-managed back in that era.... (and I still miss my Atari 5200 console, and its controllers)