@petemage, it's not legitimate criticism when it's
off-topic.
@Eaerendil wins the thread IMO. Although to be fair to the scope of the problem, I've never been 100% convinced that a "one client fits all" was both technologically and financially feasible (even when there may have been resources to merit this whole thread derail; many years ago folks). In the EC for instance, the player doesn't seem to be able to feel the Y axis nearly as clearly as in the CC. Then, in the CC, the play window size is very restricted on modern native resolutions, despite lots of requests over the years to at least bring it up to 1024x768. Both of these issues may depend on portions of server code as well as client code in order to be resolved.
These problems and others have persisted across multiple teams, so they aren't signs that Broadsword is burned out, they're signs that portions of the client/server code base might be poorly documented, poorly coded, or both. When code is both poorly documented and it depends on hacks (the duct tape of computer code), it CAN be impossible to fix it without screwing up an unknowable number of dependencies elsewhere in the source code. The examples above would have been the work of Origin Systems, and in designing UO, they were doing something that had never been done before. There was no rule book.
What all of this boils down to is that a better client, capable of pleasing us all with a set of modern or classic options (that could still be made to FEEL like the CC does to CC users) might indeed require not just a client rewrite, but a
server rewrite. At that point, you may as well just make a sequel, because none of us would be able to keep our characters, or transfer them to new servers if the old ones were kept online.
Again, we're back to the
real reason player-run shards sometimes seem to get there faster. It's not entirely honest to say they do it better; and it can be totally irrelevant to say they "got there first," and I'll explain why.
First of all, player-run shard developers aren't beholden to anything but their own pet projects, especially the script-writers (those who work outside of core emulation and develop weird add-ons like transparent water or basements). They have the benefit of working with tools and streamlined code standards that didn't exist when the original shards were brought online, but they don't have to answer to a single boss or customer, and they don't have to submit anything to quality control. (Neither transparent water nor basements have actually been 100% implemented on any shard, ever.)
Most player-run shards aren't optimized for large player bases. The few that serve large playerbases require a lot of problem solving. So, bugs often persist longer than on the official shards because a lot of shard owners don't actually know how to code. Even good volunteer coders do what they want, when they want. Even core developers often only hammer out the bits of previous official expansions that they happen to care about, then get bored of it and essentially "don't come into work" for several months straight (or ever). Is this how you want Broadsword to function? No? Then shut up, frankly.
Which is why every shard that promises new expansion content is mostly lying; not a single player-run shard can give you anything in the neighborhood of 100% of any expansion beyond AOS. Anyone can look at the source code if they doubt that.
Second of all, player-run shards periodically run into the same problem UO does when facing significant source code upgrades. They can either stay within the code base "time frame" they launched in, which includes all of its general restrictions, or they can upgrade, which effectively means a
world restart and character wipe. No one seems to mention that while defending player-run shards as compared to Mesanna or Broadsword and the official shards. But this is often the cost of "getting there first" regarding feature development. There's a reason why there's not a single player-run shard as old as the official shards, despite the fact that the first emulator was actually released to the public before UO had even left beta testing. A lot of people around here are just padding their post counts with opinions that bear little or no relevance in the real world.
TL;DR
If you have zero education about what separates the challenges of the official code base from the convenience of writing new source with 20/20 hindsight, then you may as well flush your self-righteous opinions about Broadsword's development standards down the toilet.
