UO in the News

[Petra Fyde]

This week Brianna Royce of ‘Massively’ waxes lyrical in her article Working As Intended: The forgotten fields of Green Acres Personally I feel she’s under something of a misapprehension. The contact she’s regretting the loss of is still very much there in our game with our active EMs, frequent visits from Mesanna and the recent […]

Read the whole post here.

 

[Spiritless]

Firstly, here's a link to the article in question which is annoyingly not accessible from the OP.

In losing Green Acres and the gaming environment it represented to the decay of time, we lost a lot more than a patch of digital grass: We lost a fertile valley of creativity and camaraderie that bound players and staff and designers together and fostered the communities, with their good and their bad, that so many of our MMORPGs desperately miss today.

Poignant quote.

I think the article does capture a lot of why the old UO was so captivating at the time, and probably why people will always fail when they go looking for the "next UO." Times have changed, the genre itself has changed and evolved and it would be hard to recreate the "raw" feeling of how UO started which was so attractive to many as it was something new, fresh and unchartered.

 

[Petra Fyde]

hmm, sorry the feed didn't pick up the link. It is active in my original posting, from the link at the bottom.

 

[azmodanb]

Good read

 

[MalagAste]

Hum....

I remember Kazola. Spoke with her on a number of occasions. Loved her. Very sad about her place that was supposed to be "blessed" falling. Very sad indeed. For years had a link to her UO website where there were many awesome pictures of her place. Including one of King British hanging a plaque there. Awesome times those. I honestly still feel that people that do things for the community on a shard ought to get recognition and reward. Perhaps then more folk would put some effort into community again and stop the selfishness. But maybe that's just me. Yes I know people cry favoritism and foul but you know what.... who cares. If those folk put as much effort into the community as they do complaining then they would get rewarded as well. That's just my thought. I also think the EM's ought to get some sort of reward for all they do. But maybe that's just me.

As for GM's saw one last week. He came to fix my talisman that quit knowing me after I transferred to another shard and back. Kinda needed that crafting talisman. Was fun to see a GM actually in person again. Course I had filed the request like 2 weeks prior so was rather a shock to log in and expect to be doing some RP with a friend on a totally different character and get PM'd by a GM out of the blue. But issue is resolved so I'm happy.

 

[RockoNV]

Hum....

I remember Kazola. Spoke with her on a number of occasions. Loved her. Very sad about her place that was supposed to be "blessed" falling. Very sad indeed. For years had a link to her UO website where there were many awesome pictures of her place. Including one of King British hanging a plaque there. Awesome times those. I honestly still feel that people that do things for the community on a shard ought to get recognition and reward. Perhaps then more folk would put some effort into community again and stop the selfishness. But maybe that's just me. Yes I know people cry favoritism and foul but you know what.... who cares. If those folk put as much effort into the community as they do complaining then they would get rewarded as well. That's just my thought. I also think the EM's ought to get some sort of reward for all they do. But maybe that's just me.

As for GM's saw one last week. He came to fix my talisman that quit knowing me after I transferred to another shard and back. Kinda needed that crafting talisman. Was fun to see a GM actually in person again. Course I had filed the request like 2 weeks prior so was rather a shock to log in and expect to be doing some RP with a friend on a totally different character and get PM'd by a GM out of the blue. But issue is resolved so I'm happy.

EMs are not paid staff? Surely they must have some sort of compensation.

 

[Skunk]

Great read, kinda made me sad though.

 

[drcossack]

EMs are not paid staff? Surely they must have some sort of compensation.

Doesn't make sense that they don't (if that is indeed the case), but that's just me.

As for this article: I dunno. The "sense of discovery" it had/has (depending on your experience) is unlike anything I've ever experienced, as well as the social interaction. I've found that to still be present, after a 7 year absence from being active in day-to-day events on Lake Superior. The people are great, even if the shard is "dead", and the EM is fantastic - while she enjoys the idea of killing us a little too much (though the players have even given her ideas on making things tougher), I do like that her current event arc doesn't have fights that are a walk in the park. EM Falcon is also popping into general chat on a regular basis & holding lots of other events, like a monthly meet & greet, a darts league, and the usual stuff like the king's meeting.

As I remember, I wasn't around for the two previous EM's, but the one LS had back in 2003-2005 (Glamdring/Thomas Winters) didn't do anywhere near as much as our current one. Events were few & far between, and there were always WAY too many idiots.

As far as Green Acres, I never visited it, but two of the PvP'ers on LS did (I wanna say sometime in 2004), way back - they managed to get stuff out of there, as well as tour the place. One of my friends figured out how to get there using a Teleport Ring.

 

[Emil Ispep]

Lets clean this one up a bit, shall we?

"...I don't know how the first player got there. Initially, only gamemasters and their ilk should have had access..."

-- When T2A was first released in the fall of '99, it created a chunk of land similar to 'green acres' and the dungeons of the time (an area off the map that could only be accessed by a teleporter... a teleporter like when you step into a dungeon, or say down the ladder at the Britain sewers... you get teleported to this area of the map) If you had T2A installed, you could run and sail to the north-eastern most part of the landmass. If you had your map open, youd see the edge of 'green acres' in the distance. Once you made it as far as you could reach, log out, uninstall T2A and log back in. *Poof* you were now in green acres.

-- GMs were wayyy more plentiful back in the day. Nowadays, if you make a page, you have to wait sometimes days for a reply... but sometimes they pop up within a few minutes. Really a tough one to judge. What is also very nice, Mesanna is doing more than her part to help out players; since EA doesn't have a clue how to run a corporation. Mesanna will gladly help with account, billing, character issues and more.

-- I feel the community is stronger than ever. We have dedicated event moderators, who have been running events now, longer than the seers of old ever did. Even better, the events have a schedule, and each server has a website detailing the events and fiction behind them. Back in the day, we got events at random, and a paragraph on the town crier website.

 

[MalagAste]

EMs are not paid staff? Surely they must have some sort of compensation.

They are paid... ..... don't think it's nearly enough for what they put up with. But that's beside the point... point is they do an awful lot for what they get.

 

[Lady Storm]

I disliked this post of hers.......
UO has always had small quirks like the entry to the Green Acres of GM heaven.
The ways in were something the dev didnt think of... but found out and fixed.
AS for the comment about coruption being all over the game, and especially the GM's and Counselors and our Ilk.......
I am as mad as a wet hen over that one.... Yes there was a few found and delt with.
Those who escaped detection by the rest of us were just damn lucky.
She made it sound like UO has been put in the ground and the grave is been covered with dirt.....

 

[Uriah Heep]

And everyone knows you don't put a rock on a key to macro hiding...you break a matchstick and wedge it in, sheeesh.

 

[Cupid]

I don't know, her emphasis on green acres seems overwhelming, unless I missed a lot cus I was there and found it underwhelming and boring. It was what it was, nothing.

 

[azmodanb]

And everyone knows you don't put a rock on a key to macro hiding...you break a matchstick and wedge it in, sheeesh.

Duh or a pop stick or a penny. Rocks are for noobs.

 

[drcossack]

I don't know, her emphasis on green acres seems overwhelming, unless I missed a lot cus I was there and found it underwhelming and boring. It was what it was, nothing.

If I'm remembering this right, the friend I mentioned earlier got some pretty rare stuff out of there, and took screenshots of stuff. There was...ice white cloth, some weapons made by the developers for testing, and other stuff.

The pics were all posted in a private group on Facebook, but one of the items was a sword called "Justice": it was blessed, with +100 to Str/Dex/Int, 20 HP Regen, 125% SSI, 300% Damage Inc, 100% Physical damage. The area (which, btw, is HUGE) is/was mainly used for testing things out, since it's normally inaccessible.

 

[Norrar]

Duh or a pop stick or a penny. Rocks are for noobs.

Or a credit card

 

[Spiritless]

You guys need to upgrade your training techniques and join the pros:

 

[Adol]

The problem with the article is the problem with human perception; make something rare, it's valued. Make it common, it's valued less. People don't have discipline and continue to take until rare becomes common. Make it when you're young, it's valued. Unavoidably get older, and you can do things less, and look back more fondly.
What the cheating (and the PvP) in UO lead too wasn't a balanced sense of rarity and fun, but an eventually toxic community because it was everywhere, which was especially painful for those coming in Young, because that became the experience they looked back too... and they hated it. Whilst those there who enjoyed it to this date still can't let go, and try and make every game like it now. The reason we've got MMOs locked down so hard is because players weren't able to find the balance on their own. Even though we've still got an EM program they're so hobbled by people still talking about (and abusing claims of) corruption (as the article references) that to keep even the current level of interaction is difficult because some of the playerbase actively works to destroy it. That doesn't excuse the author of the linked article not knowing there is such a program... but she's dealing with nostalgia for her lost youth, as so many are, so that awareness would actually weaken her real central point.

On the wider topic, I think I briefly went to Green Acres on Europa in 2001-2002 maybe? I don't remember much except it being completely empty then, and later discovering someone was giving out the runes and then reporting the players trying to get them banned; I was lucky and just ran through briefly, got a thrill from being somewhere new, and then heard about potential consequences and so didn't abuse the rune too much. It later stopped working, but I always wondered if that was part of it...

 

[Bellerophon]

Oh, I think not, I think she misses the getting away with it feeling of some-one knowingly using an exploit to their advantage and then being a bit chagrinned at getting caught, and mused in wonder why at least the main perp didn't get banned. At the time I believe Origin ran the game but had to get permission from EA to do something like banning everyone with an illegal house, as that would cause a major revenue loss. UO was a very difficult game to play and advance in without a house, and the "legal" spots evaporated quickly until later expansions. Nothing was secure from thieves and murderers, unless you took extreme precautions loose your house key and you could loose it's entire contents before you could rez and get back to it. What she was wistful about I don't miss at all

 

[Ludes]

Duh or a pop stick or a penny. Rocks are for noobs.

I like Spiritless 's bobbing bird .. I gotta get one..
And Bellerophon.. them days were fun in their own way.. I kinda liked living in them times..

 

[old gypsy]

Duh or a pop stick or a penny. Rocks are for noobs.

My daughter used to do that back in the day -- when orcs sometimes spawned in houses on Ice Island. She didn't do that very long. lol