I mean... Say what you will about how well done it was but VvV was catered exclusively to PvP, but okay
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I haven't played to experience the VvV, but isn't it basically like factions. The only real difference is everyone not in an alliance is orange?
Are VvV fights restricted to Fel only? If so, wow...basically they just upgraded factions. Big whoop. Dex monkey no skill item reliant pvp. Sounds fun.
Yeah, they have done a lot for the pvp community. So much the drove 90% of the pvp community away. lulz.
@Goldberg-Chessy - I agree.. Risk is involved and should be expected in transfers. But, shard shields have been out over 3 years, transfer tokens have been out since 2005 from publish 31, so 10 years in the making. There should not be as many bugs centered around these 2 items with this much game history.
The reality, we need both. Continued game improvement mixed with proper fixes, but timely fixes would be great to have. I'm on almost day 5 right now and the only contact I've received from UO was yesterday - that they are "looking into the issue..." I don't expect them to drop everything to help me, but a response when something could be changed - that would be nice. These days I just except the loss and move on due to many failed attempts at getting any help (Even verbal).
Not complaints, simply reality.
The reality, we need both. Continued game improvement mixed with proper fixes, but timely fixes would be great to have. I'm on almost day 5 right now and the only contact I've received from UO was yesterday - that they are "looking into the issue..." I don't expect them to drop everything to help me, but a response when something could be changed - that would be nice. These days I just except the loss and move on due to many failed attempts at getting any help (Even verbal).
Not complaints, simply reality.
I hear ya bud.
And I also agree with Scribbles that bugs need to be addressed.
I just know that too many people obsess over the little crap.
I see a lot of vet players do nothing but complain over non issues daily/weekly on these boards.
If you don't believe me just do a quick search and see how many toolsheds take the time to post and reply passionately about nothing more than some old objects not being cleaned up and supposedly littering their shard. Seriously?
I think they feel entitled because they have been around awhile? Kinda odd imo.
Or most likely they enjoy feeling superior because they know enough to point out the little flaws. Good for them.
If these boards are supposed to represent the game and advertise to the new players what message are 90% of the vets posting here sending?
And I also agree with Scribbles that bugs need to be addressed.
I just know that too many people obsess over the little crap.
I see a lot of vet players do nothing but complain over non issues daily/weekly on these boards.
If you don't believe me just do a quick search and see how many toolsheds take the time to post and reply passionately about nothing more than some old objects not being cleaned up and supposedly littering their shard. Seriously?
I think they feel entitled because they have been around awhile? Kinda odd imo.
Or most likely they enjoy feeling superior because they know enough to point out the little flaws. Good for them.
If these boards are supposed to represent the game and advertise to the new players what message are 90% of the vets posting here sending?
Back to when Origin customers were leaving the game en masse because they were not having fun being endlessly PKed and stolen from? Pre-UO:Ren?
Most UO players would be gone upon that expansions release. Unlike 15+ years back, there are hundreds of games to go to these days where players can go to have fun themselves instead of just being fun for others. You get what you hope for and the game we love dies from lack of paying customers.
Whoa whoa..relax I was just kidding...besides, nobody would pay for a pre-16 game. They just play it for free.
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Actually the game was game was growing exponentially during that time... My guess is that the population was somewhere in the realm of 10x the population we have now. Trammel came out and it tapered off... and AoS was released. Been in decline ever since.
Someone Duped 1000 Shard Shield Tokens!! - Lets fix this bug 1st!!
Result: Broke the entire Idoc and House System!!
Ops, We have no Idea what Happen and we will look into!
Result: Patchs + Patchs = Breaking More stuff
Like they said before, this is a 1997 Game, it is a VERY LONG, Hundreds of Thousands of Coding! and not only that How many different programmers they had? I am not taking anybody sides , but it is a hard decision!, It cant be used as an excuse as well...
We all know, UO Staff is very limited...
My entire experience on UO all these years resume in one phrase that I tell most of the People!!
"You Must Adapt, Like or Not, There is always a way around."
Result: Broke the entire Idoc and House System!!
Ops, We have no Idea what Happen and we will look into!
Result: Patchs + Patchs = Breaking More stuff
Like they said before, this is a 1997 Game, it is a VERY LONG, Hundreds of Thousands of Coding! and not only that How many different programmers they had? I am not taking anybody sides , but it is a hard decision!, It cant be used as an excuse as well...
We all know, UO Staff is very limited...
My entire experience on UO all these years resume in one phrase that I tell most of the People!!
"You Must Adapt, Like or Not, There is always a way around."
There was an article somewhere by RG that says they were gaining people, but they were losing a ton due to the fel only ruleset. So in theory they could have had a lot more if they could have found a way to make most people happy. I'm not interjecting my personal opinion here - just what the article said.
Anyone have a link to it?
UO's population peaked during AOS release actually.Though it was more of a final explosion of glory during imminent release, rather than some stable,long enduring condition.
Some sort of a long term- glory days, population-wise , happened during Third Dawn/LBR. Early 00s.
Sure, but I believe the point of the article was they lost a LOT of people due to Felucca that didn't even come back to try AOS.
in reality they lost more people to the existence of competition. I stick to my claim that UOs population would probably be higher now as a niche game catering to hard-core pvpers than what he have now. Simply because there arent many hard core pvp games so the competiton is less, and the numbers on free shards, and comments from steam that those who left because of the changes outnumber the players who have embraced and endured the ultima-trammy version of UO we have now.
But thats long gone. We will never know how popular UO would have been if it would have gone the route of focusing on being a niche market game rather than pleasing the masses, masses ever more harder to please because that style of MMO had massive competition that UO just couldnt keep up with.
In short, i think more people left UO for wow than ever left because of being PKed.
I think it is humorous that everyone is so sure that there was a decline/incline in customers during certain aspects of the game. The simple fact remains that UO is the only one that knows for sure.
it doesnt even matter when there was a decline / incline. things were so different way back then than now. just being "online" was draw enough in 2000 for any game to be popular. and alot of people didnt even have internet when uo first came out. So many variables. any attempt to associate numbers with actual reasons is a waste of time imo when it comes to Ultima Online. I like what we had then, I like what we have now. (tho both very different) no point in trying to analyze the numbers / reasons at this point.
Most recent, and fullest, comment I know of on this was by Gordon Walton, who was Executive Producer at the time Trammel came in -
http://www.reddit.com/r/MMORPG/comments/2udqfz/gordon_walton_former_executive_producer_of_uo/
If UO had stuck to more draconian Fel only ruleset, it'd have more valid a niche in 2015 than it does now. Then again, if UO of 1999- 2002 had stuck with Fel only ruleset, changes are population would have been so small around what we know as Glory Days(tm) that game would have gotten killed off around WoW's release the latest. I hope this mild paradox makes at least some amount of sense. ;p
PvP had nothing to do with why people left for WoW. WoW being an awesome game had everything to do with it. I love UO, it is my favorite game ever. But if we get all boring and objective, it has been perfectly safe to call it massive train wreck since 2003 or so. 3 failed clients,duping,exploits, etc.
I don't know about the production shards, but Siege took a couple of big population hits. The first was after they wiped the shard (2 weeks after they launched in July of 1999) the other was after publish 16.
-Val'lyn
-Val'lyn
The expansion might retain a few of the existing playerbase and even bring a few back, but not in any great numbers. If you think an expansion to a 17 year old game with outdated graphics and a monthly subscription for the privilege will bring in new players in any significant numbers then you are deluded. This expansion is a plug to try and stop the existing player base deserting in their droves. Its designed to slow the rot. Nothing more.
Are you having a laugh? It got greenlighted more than a year ago and whwre did we get following that? Nowhere. STEAM can only save UO if it goes on their as F2P. It got slated in the greenlight comments. People wont pay the money for a substandard product with appaling customer service. Their are too many better alternatives in the steam marketplace. UO cant compete with a subscription.
I'll give them credit when they get their act together and do something that deseerves credit. The reputation they have is earned through their shoddy implementation and workmanship. Until then I'll stay on my high horse and give them the criticism they deserve.
Because the Fel/Tram thing has come up in this thread, with some claiming that Felucca was more popular than Trammel, I'm going to paste a post I did some months ago in a similar thread.
Below, "this post" in context was the post I was replying to months ago, but in this context means whichever posts have claimed Fel was where it was at and that Trammel killed the game. (There've been a few.)
-Galen's player
(re-post follows -- a little out of date, I just checked and Darkfall's Facebook actually has less likes, somehow than it did a few months ago...Not sure how that happens, not being a Facebook sort.)
---------------
If the premise of this post were true, the following list of things also would be true.
Publish 16 never would have happened. Posts from the dev team at the time said that Publish happened because most people had left Felucca for Trammel and there was a need to balance out server loads for a greater degree. If Trammel hadn't been a success, most people never would've left, and Publish 16 never would have happened.
But it did happen.
Trammel never would have been created, because the discontent created by Fel never would have existed and thus there never would have been a need for it.
But it was. (Then see also above.)
Richard Garriott's Memorable Moment from UO would not have consisted of a realization, caused by an incident of one player harming another, that he had to think hard about the rules of the world he'd created.
But it was.
Link: http://www.uo.com/article/Memorable-Moments-Richard-Garriot
Starr Long would not have indicated that the creation of Trammel was necessary when he spoke at the UO anniversary party.
But he did. (There used to be a paraphrase up someplace of the talk he gave; others will remember it though not all will remember it.)
Siege and Mugen would be the most-populated shards in UO because people would like to play that way.
But they are not.
There never would have been a need to have the Siege housing gimmick as people would have played there without it, because they liked to play that way.
But there was.
The Fel Abyss spawns would be crowded with folks doing them. (The undead one in particular has a lot of cool content and good rewards.)
But they're not.
There wouldn't be posts on Stratics complaining that VvV was dead, because people would jump at the chance to PvP.
But there are those posts.
Games that came out post-UO that had more of a Fel type environment would be prospering, whereas games that came out post-UO that had more of a Tram type environment would be failing.
But that's not the case. Shadowbane is dead. Darkfall has 3,718 likes on facebook; Everquest has 62,843; UO has 26,939. (Facebook likes aren't a perfect indicator of a game's popularity but it's a much better metric than individual posters.)
https://www.facebook.com/darkfallonline
(Also note how out of date Darkfall's page appears to be.)
https://www.facebook.com/EverQuestLive
https://www.facebook.com/UltimaOnline
No like for Shadowbane because it died.
Finally, Fel would be so popular on its own that threads like these wouldn't exist.
I could go on and on but that's enough for now. Ultimately the argument of these types of threads is "Trammel failed, because failure is defined by the original poster not liking it."
There was a time when most players would see posts like these and just let them pass by, but I'm glad that time is gone. In not responding to posts like these we run significant risks of letting intense opinion be mistaken for popular opinion.
I don't expect to post in this thread again.
-Galen's player
Below, "this post" in context was the post I was replying to months ago, but in this context means whichever posts have claimed Fel was where it was at and that Trammel killed the game. (There've been a few.)
-Galen's player
(re-post follows -- a little out of date, I just checked and Darkfall's Facebook actually has less likes, somehow than it did a few months ago...Not sure how that happens, not being a Facebook sort.)
---------------
If the premise of this post were true, the following list of things also would be true.
Publish 16 never would have happened. Posts from the dev team at the time said that Publish happened because most people had left Felucca for Trammel and there was a need to balance out server loads for a greater degree. If Trammel hadn't been a success, most people never would've left, and Publish 16 never would have happened.
But it did happen.
Trammel never would have been created, because the discontent created by Fel never would have existed and thus there never would have been a need for it.
But it was. (Then see also above.)
Richard Garriott's Memorable Moment from UO would not have consisted of a realization, caused by an incident of one player harming another, that he had to think hard about the rules of the world he'd created.
But it was.
Link: http://www.uo.com/article/Memorable-Moments-Richard-Garriot
Starr Long would not have indicated that the creation of Trammel was necessary when he spoke at the UO anniversary party.
But he did. (There used to be a paraphrase up someplace of the talk he gave; others will remember it though not all will remember it.)
Siege and Mugen would be the most-populated shards in UO because people would like to play that way.
But they are not.
There never would have been a need to have the Siege housing gimmick as people would have played there without it, because they liked to play that way.
But there was.
The Fel Abyss spawns would be crowded with folks doing them. (The undead one in particular has a lot of cool content and good rewards.)
But they're not.
There wouldn't be posts on Stratics complaining that VvV was dead, because people would jump at the chance to PvP.
But there are those posts.
Games that came out post-UO that had more of a Fel type environment would be prospering, whereas games that came out post-UO that had more of a Tram type environment would be failing.
But that's not the case. Shadowbane is dead. Darkfall has 3,718 likes on facebook; Everquest has 62,843; UO has 26,939. (Facebook likes aren't a perfect indicator of a game's popularity but it's a much better metric than individual posters.)
https://www.facebook.com/darkfallonline
(Also note how out of date Darkfall's page appears to be.)
https://www.facebook.com/EverQuestLive
https://www.facebook.com/UltimaOnline
No like for Shadowbane because it died.
Finally, Fel would be so popular on its own that threads like these wouldn't exist.
I could go on and on but that's enough for now. Ultimately the argument of these types of threads is "Trammel failed, because failure is defined by the original poster not liking it."
There was a time when most players would see posts like these and just let them pass by, but I'm glad that time is gone. In not responding to posts like these we run significant risks of letting intense opinion be mistaken for popular opinion.
I don't expect to post in this thread again.
-Galen's player
i dont think anyone said it was more popular at the time of the split, what i said was UO would probably have more success NOW if it had those players who prefer a more hardcore game. Would it had been worth the sub fees / popularity of UO in its hayday to have a larger population currently? from an economic standpoint probably not. (siege / mugen is an invalid comparison because the game there was designed from a tram standpoint, not specifically designed over the years to facilitate a rewarding full loot game experience)
^ People to whom PvP aligned world without safety nets was a major charm in UO are mostly long gone. So pointing at nearly empty Siege shards(in a game where all but one shard is nearly empty anyway, heh) is pretty backwards approach. Us Trammies who enjoy building museums and filling vendors and building gardens and chatting with friends are more or less all that is left. And small wonder, at least on some of those fields, UO remains either unique or at least a valid option among MMOs, even today. That doesn't mean such life is all that there ever was.
Many of the people Galen keeps referring to haven't stopped playing UO. They've just stopped playing on OSI. It seems pretty safe to assume UO is the only MMO where amount of people playing on some shady, unofficial server is actually greater than amount of people playing on officially maintained server. These are the people who voted with their feet.
EA didn't have to loose these few thousand people playing UO at this very day to shady, unofficial shards.
But they did.
It wasn't necessary to have a slightly surreal situation develop, where shady, unofficial shards have more hype and visibility than game maintained and published by EA:
But it did.
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I think the first story here is as fine an example as any of the beauty in lack of safety nets. Such world comes with loads of flaws, frustration and beauty. Most importantly, such world is very good at creating stories for people involved.
Imagine if this first story had tried to happen in Trammel.
Story involving The Girl, Garriott, and The Thief would have gone something like: New player goes about her business. She does not meet a thief, she does not contact Richard Garriott, she does not get het stuff stolen. Instead, she kills couple of skeletons in brit GY. The end. Do you think this story would leave all three involved a better, more memorable encounter?
Almost all of us know the first story behind the link your provided; It is a very popular story. I've read it from pages of at least few gaming magazines. Garriott loves telling it. And has done so for almost two decades, heh. Small wonder, it is a good story. I'm sure Garriott used to tell it so often for same reason official Eve Online site likes listing " greatest scams pulled by players" on their front page during PR campaigns: it makes the world appear interesting, strange and enticing to people who don't play the game yet.
New player killing skeletons in Brit GY. You can turn that to a good story, too. But managing to do so takes a pretty good author. That is a story for a good author to write. Not for game, community and related rulesets&dynamics to create. No matter how many flaws an MMO has, how broken it is..it'll always have hope if it is good at creating stories for/with people.
Almost every single popular, well known story or anecdote about UO has something to do with if not PvP, then at least with danger aspect of the world. It is a big deal in it's own way. Eve Online has benefited,in tremendous measure, from stories caused by it's own lack of safety net. Besides obvious and frequent mentions in gaming press, Eve's battles, faction warfare, ponzi schemes and " guild" drama has made circles in places like BBC, CNN etc. Can you imagine how awesome situation that is for any older MMO? It has been - insanely good- PR and visibility for the game.
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This is because the developers of EVE Online treat PvP like an integral part of the game's design, not some side-game or "end-game" or optional activity pushed to a section of the map. PvP is absolutely fundamental to the design as well as the game's economy. I can't even imagine just how flat and boring that game would be if it did not have non-consensual PvP.
The moral of Garriott's thief story is that it's the rules of the game, or the game's design, that govern the course of how players play the game. So instead of adjusting the rules to decrease the risk for the victim, or increase the risk for the thief so that both playstyles could continue in a balanced, competitive way, they just threw open a game of Candy Land down next to an unfinished game of Risk, and let the players move their Risk pieces onto the Candy Land board. Drastically altering the rules of the game midway through the game in some desperate bid to gain subs strikes me as lacking vision.
The moral of Garriott's thief story is that it's the rules of the game, or the game's design, that govern the course of how players play the game. So instead of adjusting the rules to decrease the risk for the victim, or increase the risk for the thief so that both playstyles could continue in a balanced, competitive way, they just threw open a game of Candy Land down next to an unfinished game of Risk, and let the players move their Risk pieces onto the Candy Land board. Drastically altering the rules of the game midway through the game in some desperate bid to gain subs strikes me as lacking vision.
I'm replying to this because it raises a substantive argument that wasn't directly addressed in my post: that of free shards.
I did some pretty good research on free shards a few years ago, and the results were that their numbers were greatly over-stated by posters here -- and that's assuming that the number those free shards reported even were accurate, which I have no way to verify. Further they often have additional features (such as unique pets; increased customer service; taking a very hard line against scripting or sometimes the exact opposite, depending on the shard; niche content; idiosyncratic hybrid rules sets; etc.). In other words the fate of the free shards is not at all dependent exclusively upon PvP.
Further relying on free shards, even taking their best possible numbers, runs right up against what went on in the actual game. If the pre-Trammel play mode was that popular, Trammel never would have happened, and/or wouldn't have been gone to if it had happened. And yet both happened.
At the end of the day, the pro-pre-Ren arguments rely more on faith than fact. And there's just no way to counter faith with fact. Or, they rely upon "it benefited me, I liked it." And preference, in this context, is tantamount to faith in terms of the inability to counter it with facts.
There's plenty of things I like that aren't popular but I do my best not to impute my own preferences to everyone else, barring evidence.
-Galen's player
Here is a pretty decent field research topic for ya:
Go to, say, half a dozen busiest UO hubs in Internet, besides Stratics, where people who play UO today talk about UO. Check where they play it. Check what rule sets places you come up with have in use.
In 2015, few different free shards are more talked about and more alive than most OSI shards. Most popular free shards have PvP ruleset ver similar to pre-Trammel. No matter how much mental gymnastics you'd apply, I'm not sure if they are enough to take you over this particular wall.
Fuzzybunnybna
Visitor
ITS FUZ, FROM BNA HMU!!!!
So the top one boasts 664 players on 1 shard, do you know what UO would be like with just ONE SHARD I am sure we have more than that many people playing UO, could you see UO maintaining everything on just $6.640 a month, I think not. #5 on the List boast 97 players, now that is a boat load of players, NOT. The 2 main draws to those shards is #1 they are FREE and #2 the owners make RL money doing your chars and making custom gear/weps. Now could you see what REAL UO would look like if you could have the DEVs make you custom gear, NO TY.
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That logic didn't exactly work so well for High Seas, Time of Legends, etc...
Fuzzybunnybna are you practicing Thread Necromancy? Last post was May 5th 2015 when this thread died!
There are one more very importen diff. You can be in guild with non VvV. It'd not the guild, that is VvV but each member who decide to join or not. I really hated faction splittle guilds and you could not allie non faction.
Also stat loss are only 5 min and you can use a stat loss remover potion each 20 min.
Unless you play Siege, I believe VvV are blue to each others outside Felucca, very sad in my opinion.Are VvV fights restricted to Fel only? If so, wow...basically they just upgraded factions. Big whoop. Dex monkey no skill item reliant pvp. Sounds fun.
They are working on PvP balance and I do believe they want to improve VvV too. If done right, VvV can be a perfect PvP switch but I believe a few changes will be needed to Trammel ruleset.
Ok respectfully you're wrong. The top 2 (just preaos ren shards) have 1,400 on right now. That's excluding the dozens of other preaos shards. Listen I'm not trying to argue make pre AOS again! But the way the algorithm works is to count by IP not accounts. As for Devs and GM's making gear for players...should I link you to some items that were made by GM's on OSI illegally..don't forget legal items by events today. Be realistic! The items they make are vanity as well..top items are vanq and invuln don't forget..all I'm saying is there's a bigger free shard base then OSI. It's actually good for the game because most of those people play OSI as well like myself. It's just a change of pace every now and again. Especially after scouring the top 4 OSI shards and finding no fights of substance.
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So that is their max population during peak hours and that would be what 14K in subs a month or 168K a year wouldn't even come close to running UO. I am sure UO has a lot more people on than that during peak hours, it looks less because we are spread out over different Shards and remember UO has what 4 or more peak hours.
Wha kind of a monster advocates killing threads!! #Necro'dThreadsMatter***OLD THREAD***
Look at post #76 and let this die already lol
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