So what is next?

[JDs]

After the triumph of ToL what is the next planned expansion? I personally hope they concentrate on removing all the non functioning quest stuff and clean up the existing game before working on more expansion's.

And I am not being sarcastic, compared to high sea's ToL was a brilliant success, I have seen more players return to give this a go than other expansions.

 

[TimberWolf]

After the triumph of ToL what is the next planned expansion? I personally hope they concentrate on removing all the non functioning quest stuff and clean up the existing game before working on more expansion's.

And I am not being sarcastic, compared to high sea's ToL was a brilliant success, I have seen more players return to give this a go than other expansions.

Comparatively ToL is a huge success...which really speaks volumes about the past garbage because I dont think anyone would call TOL a must have expansion

 

[Deep Ellum Dan]

Not a must have for me at all but I do like the masteries. I prefer the other champ spawns over the turtle and the land of Eodon is meh.

 

[Slayvite]

[playing Devils advocate]
Lets not forget that ToL was free if you had a subscription whereas the other expansions you had to buy, so no wonder it looked like more people used ToL.
2 months in though and where are we? back to the same place as before launch with even the Turtle spawn quiet most of the time.
There is just no actual content involved in ToL. Lot's of tribes that do nothing and lots of land wasted.
1 "Dungeon" only used now for chance at new arties and most people don't even bother and just buy the arties with there vast billions of pointless gold.

Brilliant success? others would say different.

 

[Merlin]

My guess is that future publishes and add-ons will create more playable content in Eodon. They're certainly not done there yet. If we wanted to wait for them to fill the facet completely, we still wouldn't have the expansion. For me personally, the Roof encounter alone has made the expansion worth it, so anything else they add on will be a bonus.

 

[Lorddog]

personally I like the tier quest with 1-3 levels (perhaps even expand them to 1-5 levels)
if they add some quests - should do them as tiered levels

 

[Uvtha]

After the triumph of ToL what is the next planned expansion? I personally hope they concentrate on removing all the non functioning quest stuff and clean up the existing game before working on more expansion's.

And I am not being sarcastic, compared to high sea's ToL was a brilliant success, I have seen more players return to give this a go than other expansions.

I would expect the rest of this years content additions will probably be spent adding to dino land. At the rate they usually put out content, I wouldn't expect another expansion for at very least another year, probably more like two. That is, of course, assuming we can expect another expansion.

I personally have to disagree about ToL, Shadowguard is nice, but the masteries are very uneven in terms of usefulness (some are very useful, some are completely pointless) No reason to hunt turtle if you aren't a tamer, and the rest of dino land is empty save for a bunch of low level pointless monsters, as well as being visually unappealing. No lore, no quests... I expect thats' where most dev time will be going. I honestly had no reason to go back to dino land after around a week.

 

[Uriah Heep]

Let's skip the next expansion, and make:

1. A turn in reward system for bods, similar to clean up. If they make the points right, and the bod scaled properly, even the small weapon bods would be worth doing. If the reward points is set too high, it will be another system ingame that no one uses.

2. Allow a "fill from container" button on bods, like the fill from pack on trade quest chests. Make it only search in the container containing the bod. That will protect your main pack from being accidently looted by the bod

3. FIX THE BANK CRASH BUG!!! The last two days I have been trading gifts, and it is God-awful. On Baja it crashed EVERY SINGLE TRADE.

4. Redo bod books to work from the floor, like SoT/SoA books.

5. Make turnin points/bod turnin points shardwide per account, like you did gold.

6. Stack refinements, simply stack em, like everything else does.

7. Fix the shard transfer problem where when I go to Atl or somewhere shopping, everything I buy and bring home won't stack with what I already have!

8. My veteran reward sewing machine still won't work as intended.

9. My veteran reward lathe still won't work as intended.

10. On champ spawns, t-maps, etc, remove the "dead skills" from the list the RNG picks from to drop scrolls (Item ID, Taste ID, you know the ones)

Add in what you would like to see in future publlishes.

 

[Uriah Heep]

oh, and

11. Repair the devs internet connection, where they have internet access and can come to stratics and UO.com to communicate with us.

 

[sablestorm]

I figure next their focus will be on getting UO onto Steam.

 

[Fogsbane]

After the triumph of ToL what is the next planned expansion?

Martian Dreams, perhaps?

 

[Kyronix]

3. FIX THE BANK CRASH BUG!!! The last two days I have been trading gifts, and it is God-awful. On Baja it crashed EVERY SINGLE TRADE.

Could you forward some details on this issue to QA so we can get it fixed in the upcoming bug push? Need to know which client you are using, if you are using any custom UIs or 3rd party programs (like UO assist) and the exact steps that lead to your crash. You can forward this information to [email protected] or [email protected].

Thanks!

 

[Capt. Lucky]

I have a gut feeling that their contract with EA requires an expansion a year. Actually have nothing to back that up My wish for an expansion wouldn't be another land mass. It would be focusing on features like a good mail/message system. Searchable auctions. Deco items. Fix the high vendor fees. Stuff like that. I'm really very tired of the entire "new land mass" thing. If it were a land mass to place castles, or another large Luna type city, maybe. Really about everything that's of the medieval time era is covered. Armor, castles, ships, etc. I fear they get a little more bizarre with each passing update. Hopefully they don't open a moongate to modern day New York or something, lol.

 

[Ansel]

To echo my post in the getting new UO player's topic, revisit the original design of New Haven and at least restore it to being an actual, functional new player experience with NPCs that interact with you, train you, help you.

Without actual new players there's little point in anything else.

 

[It Lives]

I Always like bug fixin but would like some content added, some crafter type quests with alternate ways of getting some of the new recipe.

 

[SugarMMM]

My wish for an expansion wouldn't be another land mass. It would be focusing on features like a good mail/message system. Searchable auctions. Deco items. Fix the high vendor fees. Stuff like that. I'm really very tired of the entire "new land mass" thing. If it were a land mass to place castles, or another large Luna type city, maybe.

This is exactly how I have felt for a good 10+ years!

Back in the day everyone hung out at WBB and then they added more land which lowered the amount of people that were hanging out at WBB. Then the next hang out spot was Luna which pulled more people from WBB and now it is a ghost town. Spreading the population across soo many land masses takes away from the community feeling that the game had back when it was just Felucca.

I used to play Diablo and even D&D and it always amazed me how the dungeons were different every time I played. I have always wondered if in UO they could add some new dungeons in existing land that could pop up and change once a week to keep people interested. You could really mix it up by changing the monsters and the floor plan of the dungeon to be different every week.

IMO what I think could help/save UO would be to figure out a way to have a place like battle grounds that you could go to from any server. Once there it would just be PvP team A vs team B and no item transfers, no looting and no talking/chatting between teams. I think having something like this would make it so everyone doesn't have transfer to one server because there is a bigger population there than on other servers. If this was successful you could later add a area that you could get to from any server that was special dungeons and again no item transfers and no looting. Anything item/armor/clothes that came with you has to go back with you.

I'm just basing all of this off of things I have read and things that I think people are wanting and asking for. I am a fisher, miner, lumberjack, crafter and hoarder and have only been to 3 dungeons so I don't know if I'd even use any of the areas I mentioned above. Hehe

 

[Uriah Heep]

Could you forward some details on this issue to QA so we can get it fixed in the upcoming bug push? Need to know which client you are using, if you are using any custom UIs or 3rd party programs (like UO assist) and the exact steps that lead to your crash. You can forward this information to [email protected] or [email protected].

Thanks!

Done! Hope ya find the prob! =)

 

[arkiu]

I'm intrigued by SugarMMM's idea of having a pvp server where everyone can transfer to. This seems like a solid idea to revitalize pvp and would likely have no impact on the rest of the player base. I unfortunately also agree with Capt. Lucky in that each pub gets more and more bizarre. I'll add that the artwork also gets more and more bizarre with each pub. ToL was fun for a few days, but I doubt I will revisit too much until they add more content. It is simply an incomplete landmass with far too much wasted space.

My hope is that the devs will revisit older content (please dont alter to artwork! I'm sorry but most of the new artwork looks pretty bad). There is so much content in this game that simply isn't utilized at all. I could make a list but I'm not feeling it right now.

 

[Varingian]

@Uriah Heep You may know this already, and I'm pretty sure you aren't an EC type but....You can auto-fill BODs in EC with Pinco's add on. Might be worth giving it a shot and maybe using it when you are going craft/BOD heavy. Pinco's has several other features that make the BOD process less painful as well.

 

[FrejaSP]

1. A turn in reward system for bods, similar to clean up. If they make the points right, and the bod scaled properly, even the small weapon bods would be worth doing. If the reward points is set too high, it will be another system ingame that no one uses.

I would love to see this and it would make BoDs much more useful for new players, who don't have a large house for storing of Bods.
I would also like to see large bods changed, so they works like the fish quests. The part of trading small bods to get the right one for a large bod is a pain and take up a lot storage. It's fine you can get small bods too, but the large ones should just be an order with 4-6 lines. Maybe add a few new ones for carpentry, tinkering, alchemy, scriptning, cooking and fletching.
Delete Heardwood and move the quest givers to the Umbra, Zento, Ter Mur, Luna, Umbra and non Virtue Fel/Tram towns.

 

[MalagAste]

I would love to see this and it would make BoDs much more useful for new players, who don't have a large house for storing of Bods.
I would also like to see large bods changed, so they works like the fish quests. The part of trading small bods to get the right one for a large bod is a pain and take up a lot storage. It's fine you can get small bods too, but the large ones should just be an order with 4-6 lines. Maybe add a few new ones for carpentry, tinkering, alchemy, scriptning, cooking and fletching.
Delete Heardwood and move the quest givers to the Umbra, Zento, Ter Mur, Luna, Umbra and non Virtue Fel/Tram towns.

I would say just make it not stink to get in and out of there... and move the Spellweaving Quest and all to New Haven and let people chose the stinking skill from the start.

 

[Ansel]

In short, expose the astonishing depth of this game early, and in a manner that doesn't make a new player's head explode.

Oh, and one more thing....knock off the part where Ettins loot the gold from noob corpses. We lose a lot of people with that one

 

[Uriah Heep]

@Uriah Heep You may know this already, and I'm pretty sure you aren't an EC type but....You can auto-fill BODs in EC with Pinco's add on. Might be worth giving it a shot and maybe using it when you are going craft/BOD heavy. Pinco's has several other features that make the BOD process less painful as well.

I have the archers set up on EC, for one reason and one reason only. And if they would EVER give us the same options in CC I could delete the EC.
But for spawning, EC lets me attack nearest...but set the switches to ignore friendlies and pets. CC won't, it just attacks my friends lol.
In CC I can tell it to select nearest hostile, problem is a mob 3/4 screen away aggro'd on me and thats the one it selected, ignoring the dozen or so standing next to me beating me to death. So that is ruled out.

EC has it's moments, yes. But for me its a bit clunky, small items in pack (yes, I know I can stretch it out...but I'm not playing on a 55" television!) picking stuff up off ground isnt as smooth, etc. Not bashing anymore, it just isn't for me at this time with this machine.

Tried crafting in EC a few times, but everything in the pack is so small it's just painful to deal with. Whether grid or classic style. List view makes me nuts scrolling up and down constantly. Yeah, I'm that picky...

 

[It Lives]

In short, expose the astonishing depth of this game early, and in a manner that doesn't make a new player's head explode.

Oh, and one more thing....knock off the part where Ettins loot the gold from noob corpses. We lose a lot of people with that one

I do not think that the depth of UO has ever been a secret, in fact that depth IS the draw to the game. In many of our minds UO needs more GAME realism to keep our interest.

whats wrong with a monster looting your stuff? It is what they should do, (immersion). I believe the problem to be more of a generational thing than any real problem with the game, Patients, cooperation are the two things I see lacking theses days.

THIS game should not be so ergonomic that it can be PLAYED with one key stroke and WON in a night. lol

 

[Ansel]

I do not think that the depth of UO has ever been a secret, in fact that depth IS the draw to the game. In many of our minds UO needs more GAME realism to keep our interest.

whats wrong with a monster looting your stuff? It is what they should do, (immersion). I believe the problem to be more of a generational thing than any real problem with the game, Patients, cooperation are the two things I see lacking theses days.

THIS game should not be so ergonomic that it can be PLAYED with one key stroke and WON in a night. lol

There's an old saying, allegedly first spoken by a now forgotten programmer, "It was hard to program; it should be hard to play." Easy to see why the person didn't last long in the business

It's not just UO's depth that's a secret, the game itself is a secret to better than 99% of contemporary online gamers. I can say that with confidence because my line of work forces me to play every new online game, no matter how horrid it may be. The irony is that, although UO may have introduced online gaming to the mainstream, it was never a mainstream online game.

Were any new online game to debut with Ultima Online's player numbers AT THEIR PEAK it would be deemed a failure and would likely die young. In fairness, though, you cannot release any subscription based online game today. Heck, you can't even charge up front for a mobile game, but I digress.

Where the secret of UO's depth hits me hardest is on game developer forums. I've lost count of the times a clever young game designer announces their brilliant "new" innovation that has existed in UO since forever. And, so far, I've managed to avoid channeling the late Christopher Hitchens and instead have gently corrected these eager young guns while suggesting they try UO

As for the matter of the Ettins of New Haven, yes, I laughed the first time a new player - a genuine new player - proclaimed the moment their corpse was looted by an Ettin as their breaking point over the Help channel.

And, to be fair, this was always preceded by a long list of utterly bewildering events prior to the Ettin encounter. The Ettin was always the last straw.

Thus even if they didn't loot the young something else, such as killing your first mount by accident, getting lost for the zillionth time while trying to find the right NPC's head to drop gold on, getting killed by an accidentally targeted Wandering Healer, or the countless other ways the new player experience not only fails to measure up to those in other games but fails to make any sense at all would provide that same breaking point as our greedy two headed friends.

 

[Uriah Heep]

I know one reason we don't have as many players, and why lot's of new and returning players from years ago don't hang around. It's the territorial and know-it-all attitudes of some of the vets playing now. Just this week, the wife (recently returned from a long hiatus) was building a garg thrower/mystic. She asked in general chat if anyone had a training suit they were selling, she really only had to have 100% LRC and all 70's. To which one of Atlantic's finest replied she needed to make up her mind what she wanted, all 70s wasn't a training suit, it was a hunting suit. Really? Guess he thought she was gonna beat a golem all day, dunno...

Smooth out vendor search a bit, she got lost trying to find a throwing weapon (cheap one to train with) that was SC too. Typing in boomerang or soul glaive in the search line, and under the mods check spell channeling, all it gave as results was someone in Ter Mur selling a pack of weapons for 175 mil. Really? So I got on and searched for garg spell channeling (all in search line, nothing else checked) and got a big list of them. Bought a nice multi mod SC boomerang for 5K. Why didnt it show up in original search? I have no idea.

Guess the rambling point I am trying to make is: Bugs, gameplay issues, etc., we have no control over. If there are workarounds, we can try to tell the newer peeps how to get by it. But the one thing we do have control over, is attitude. No one wants to steal your turf, so be more helpful and less territorial. I know controllin knowledge is a form of power-share it and use it for good.

[/ramble]

 

[It Lives]

There's an old saying, allegedly first spoken by a now forgotten programmer, "It was hard to program; it should be hard to play." Easy to see why the person didn't last long in the business

It's not just UO's depth that's a secret, the game itself is a secret to better than 99% of contemporary online gamers. I can say that with confidence because my line of work forces me to play every new online game, no matter how horrid it may be. The irony is that, although UO may have introduced online gaming to the mainstream, it was never a mainstream online game.

Were any new online game to debut with Ultima Online's player numbers AT THEIR PEAK it would be deemed a failure and would likely die young. In fairness, though, you cannot release any subscription based online game today. Heck, you can't even charge up front for a mobile game, but I digress.

Where the secret of UO's depth hits me hardest is on game developer forums. I've lost count of the times a clever young game designer announces their brilliant "new" innovation that has existed in UO since forever. And, so far, I've managed to avoid channeling the late Christopher Hitchens and instead have gently corrected these eager young guns while suggesting they try UO

As for the matter of the Ettins of New Haven, yes, I laughed the first time a new player - a genuine new player - proclaimed the moment their corpse was looted by an Ettin as their breaking point over the Help channel.

And, to be fair, this was always preceded by a long list of utterly bewildering events prior to the Ettin encounter. The Ettin was always the last straw.

Thus even if they didn't loot the young something else, such as killing your first mount by accident, getting lost for the zillionth time while trying to find the right NPC's head to drop gold on, getting killed by an accidentally targeted Wandering Healer, or the countless other ways the new player experience not only fails to measure up to those in other games but fails to make any sense at all would provide that same breaking point as our greedy two headed friends.

Well I do not have time to address all of that as I am at work in between moments. I will say that UO is an time investment and people who invest their time and money generally want depth.

You can not compare today's games in fairness with UO they totally Lack the depth and freedom.

Uo is a generational niche game for those who are not worried about mind blowing graphics with little to no depth.

Oh if a game could surpass UO in depth and sheer coolness I would subscribe as many others would.(has yet to happen)


Ultimately it is a open world sand box and one can spend as little time or all their time as they choose. There is no doubt that the new player experience could be enhanced.

 

[drcossack]

I used to play Diablo and even D&D and it always amazed me how the dungeons were different every time I played. I have always wondered if in UO they could add some new dungeons in existing land that could pop up and change once a week to keep people interested. You could really mix it up by changing the monsters and the floor plan of the dungeon to be different every week.

I can't speak for Diablo's different dungeons, but I have played games where those are a thing (Lufia series.) I'm sure you know it already, but there's a set # of possible configurations; however, even in the Lufia games (Lufia 2 in particular) I haven't seen all of the possible layouts for said dungeon. If they changed regularly & didn't cycle through...let's say 20 different layouts, I'd be fine with it.

 

[Ansel]

I know one reason we don't have as many players, and why lot's of new and returning players from years ago don't hang around. It's the territorial and know-it-all attitudes of some of the vets playing now. [snip]

... Bugs, gameplay issues, etc., we have no control over. If there are workarounds, we can try to tell the newer peeps how to get by it. But the one thing we do have control over, is attitude. No one wants to steal your turf, so be more helpful and less territorial. I know controllin knowledge is a form of power-share it and use it for good.

This....very much this. I may have laughed when the new player quit due to a looting Ettin but I didn't type "LOL" over the help channel. Some, however, did and do.

It's luck of the draw though. Often you'll get EXTREMELY helpful and generous players on Atlantic help. At other times it functions as some sort of veterans chat channel where new player questions go to die. This, in my experience, is not always due to indifference. Guys like ROMP and Will Silver are really good folks, often holding court in humorous fashion while providing good, short answers to new player questions. But the banter can run fast and continuous, requiring a new player - already feeling awkward and at a disadvantage - to be persistent, patient and, most of all, aggressive.

 

[Ansel]

Well I do not have time to address all of that as I am at work in between moments. I will say that UO is an time investment and people who invest their time and money generally want depth.

You can not compare today's games in fairness with UO they totally Lack the depth and freedom.

Uo is a generational niche game for those who are not worried about mind blowing graphics with little to no depth.

Oh if a game could surpass UO in depth and sheer coolness I would subscribe as many others would.(has yet to happen)


Ultimately it is a open world sand box and one can spend as little time or all their time as they choose. There is no doubt that the new player experience could be enhanced.

We understand each other pretty well actually. No redesigned new player experience will ever make learning Ultima Online easy or make the game vastly popular.

But if I had to pick one flaw both common and ruinous in the thinking of online game developers it would the belief in perfect later, not better now. Perfect ain't coming...perfect is Godot

 

[FrejaSP]

Where the secret of UO's depth hits me hardest is on game developer forums. I've lost count of the times a clever young game designer announces their brilliant "new" innovation that has existed in UO since forever. And, so far, I've managed to avoid channeling the late Christopher Hitchens and instead have gently corrected these eager young guns while suggesting they try UO

That made me laugh

As for the matter of the Ettins of New Haven, yes, I laughed the first time a new player - a genuine new player - proclaimed the moment their corpse was looted by an Ettin as their breaking point over the Help channel.

My first death in UO was to an Ettin but that was long before New Haven and Help Chat. I remember running around as a ghost, not knowing how to res and why noone saw or did hear me. First when I did meet an other ghost, he told me to follow him and we ressed at the healers in Britian. My newbie clothes was still with me not sure what else I had.
That was Dec 1997 on Atlantic. I would not had found back to my body in time, so it did not matter if the ettin did loot

 

[Acid Rain]

Guys like ROMP and Will Silver are really good folks, often holding court in humorous fashion while providing good, short answers to new player questions.

Just got around to reading this thread. Wow.... thanks man, really thanks
Will, myself, and a few others try ta help out whenever we can no matter the situation.
I never really expect anyone to notice much (unless your the person being helped), let alone call us out on it.
Thanks boss.

 

[Mervyn]

A fel shard would bring in a ton of subscribers, and keep the non fel players happy as the fel players wouldn't bother them anymore.

 

[Yadd of Legends]

Tried crafting in EC a few times, but everything in the pack is so small it's just painful to deal with.

Don't understand this, since you can use "Toggle Scale Mode" to make your backpack and thus items as big as you want
Also, do you have "Enable Advanced Crafting" disabled (unchecked) under Options? It's just a clunky mess if you don't

 

[WootSauce]

A fel shard would bring in a ton of subscribers, and keep the non fel players happy as the fel players wouldn't bother them anymore.

"In the United Kingdom the ton is defined as 2,240 pounds"

So you think a fel shard would bring back about 7 and a half subscribers?