And now for something a bit different

[Ox AO]

Just cleaned out my backpack ...

1.) Get rid of asinine blackrock.
2.) Get rid of asinine blackrock.
3.) Get rid of asinine blackrock.
4.) Get rid of asinine blackrock.
5.) Get rid of asinine blackrock.

Again, one of the many reasons for 3rd party programs to get rid of stuff like that.

 

[Tanivar]

Again, one of the many reasons for 3rd party programs to get rid of stuff like that.

UOAssist can do it fortunately, sadly it can't be switched off to avoid annoying nearly every Miner in the game. All to feed one rarely seen pet.

 

[Spock's Beard]

Events are not part of the game mechanics.

So? Who cares? This is the kind of non-answer I've come to expect on this topic.

 

[BeaIank]

UOAssist can do it fortunately, sadly it can't be switched off to avoid annoying nearly every Miner in the game. All to feed one rarely seen pet.

And to make two of the keys needed to summon Exodus! D:

 

[Zuckuss]

Only if they've got a way to keep the pk crowd from doing what forced them to make Trammel to save UO. I've played UO since 2000 and want to keep playing it until I take the big dirtnap, not see it destroyed by pkers as it nearly was 16 years ago.

Another argument is that UO was thriving with an astronomical amount of players compared to what is here now and that trammel was the beginning of the long slow demise of UO. Sure. Numbers peaked briefly as the introduction of Trammel was the largest expansion of UO at the time... but it's been consistently downhill from there. Six non-consensual pvp facets later, here we are today with a land-mass so large that it is impossible to police resource scripting and unattended macroing, let alone finding people. There was a time when you had ten neighbors and you knew them all for better or for worse. Today everyone must have their castles in the vast desolate corners of the world. Lands sit vacant, uninhabited and unexplored save for the idoc hunter or the nostalgia explorer.

Yes. It's a touchy subject and I am sure we could go on for hours. That's why I left it to the 5 choices and leaving it at that.

Also, anyone saying Trammel? LOL. Full-loot gankfest MMO gameplay died for a reason.

It wasn't like it died naturally. It was taken out back behind the woodshed and put down intentionally and purposely. It was never given a sustainable habitat to thrive within or a chance to succeed....aside from the first 3 years of the game which many consider to be the greatest "era" of UO and had a far more active player base that what we currently have. If we could reclaim a tenth of the population that left since the introduction of Trammel, the game's population would easily double and be pretty close to possibly tripling.

Full-loot gankfest UO wasn't as gankfest back then as it is now actually. Back then, players cooperated and worked with other players to get things done and achieve their goals. Inadvertently, the greatest virtual economy of any on-line game in existence was created. Blacksmiths, tinkers and carpenters were busy making stock that was flying off their vendors that other players actually used... as opposed today where everyone MUST have their own personal Smith, Tinker, Carpenter, Fletcher so that twice a year they can craft a round of runics or enhance that clean splinter/fireball war fork they got from Exodus. Then back on the shelf they go.

As stated above, again... this is a sensitive topic and I fully realize that there will be no convincing some, which is why I left the original 5 choices without any reasons listed. It's a 15 year old argument.

If you do want more, I could go on forever baby. Just reply.

 

[Spock's Beard]

If you do want more, I could go on forever baby. Just reply.

Yeah everyone who actually works in the MMO industry has been a fool to ignore the money and success that could have been had by making their games full-loot PVP gankfests. Their market research and metrics are nothing but lies.

Only a few brave geniuses haunting the one or two forums that still talk about UO have been clever enough to see the truth. You know, in between bouts of unsuccessfully begging a 20 year old MMO for a retro server and crying "But look how many people are on this freeshard!" to a world that has never cared.

 

[Dot_Warner]

To say that September '97- April '00, the years in which Felucca was the only choice, were UO's golden years is not only subjective, but easily disproven. Very easily.

First, UO had fewer shards during this period; 16 compared to the 27 we have now. So population wasn't nearly to spread out. Lag was also far more onerous beastie during this era, so few people played on geographically distant shards, instead of congregating on Atl.

Second, we have the chart. Yes, that chart. The one the Classic Shard supporters clearly couldn't read.



Renaissance, the expansion that obviously wasn't a mirror, dropped in April of 2000. According to the chart, UO's subscription numbers were somewhere around 140,000 in January of '99. In January of 2000, subs were still below 150K, but by July of 2000, subs were up to 190K+. They kept climbing, with a few drop offs to peak around 250K in 2003. The introduction of Trammel nearly DOUBLED UO's playerbase. If anything, Age of Stuff Shadows, released in February of 2003, is what gave UO a mortal wound...though one that took another six years to drop subs to pre-Trammel levels.

Furthermore, attempting to lump trends in play styles, such as everyone and their llama creating their own crafters, with Trammel is, in a word, silly. People did that because they wanted to, or did it because they didn't trust people enough to give them their lootz to repair. Repair deeds, introduced October 2001, are far more relevant to this issue than is Trammel.

Full-loot PvP died because it needed to happen. Garriott's wild, wild west experiment was an abject failure that even his bloated ego was eventually able to accept.

Look no further than Siege or Mugen for how well a Fel-only ruleset thrives: i.e. not at all. (Sorry, Siegers, but its true, and you know it.)

 

[kelmo]

It is not a party until the "chart" comes out! WOOT!

 

[kelmo]

Is second life even legal anymore?

 

[Spock's Beard]

If looty free-for-all PVP had a big enough audience to be economically viable then these guys would be playing games based on it and not sitting here rehashing arguments from 15+ years ago. Period.

 

[Archnight]

1) The Enhanced Client (Bring back the UO:KR client instead)
2) 25% of the dead shards
3) Luck, it's pretty much useless
4) Useless skills, either make them useful or remove them (Begging, Camping, Remove Trap, Forensic Eval, Taste ID...)
5) Nerfing, i'm all for balancing skills but feel like they went too far with Provocation

 

[Ox AO]

Who cares?.

"Who cares" if there is no game mechanics to acquire the best items in the game?
Why not just roll a dice and see if you wins the best items in the game? I mean who cares?

It's not like we're playing a GAME.

 

[Scribbles]

1. Mesanna
2. EM system
3. Imbuing
4. Legendary arties
5. The current idoc system

 

[FrejaSP]

1.) Delete Heartwood and the evil twin of the town
2.) Move all the Heartwood Quest NPC's to all over the land. Some in NPC towns, some in the old unused guard houses all over the land.
3.) Shard Transfers
4.) Elf only tag
5.) Stupid Siege rules like only one char slot, no recall, 3x npc prices and add Fel bonus to the shard.

 

[Spock's Beard]

"Who cares" if there is no game mechanics to acquire the best items in the game?
Why not just roll a dice and see if you wins the best items in the game? I mean who cares?

It's not like we're playing a GAME.

Uh, you show up to where a monster is, hit it, and pray the RNG gods favor you, just like a billion other encounters. But please, feel free to make some hairsplitting distinction nobody cares about.

 

[Zuckuss]

Yeah everyone who actually works in the MMO industry has been a fool to ignore the money and success that could have been had by making their games full-loot PVP gankfests. Their market research and metrics are nothing but lies.

Only a few brave geniuses haunting the one or two forums that still talk about UO have been clever enough to see the truth. You know, in between bouts of unsuccessfully begging a 20 year old MMO for a retro server and crying "But look how many people are on this freeshard!" to a world that has never cared.

Indeed. Look at them. Look at what all the market research did for UO 2, Star Wars, Asheron's Call, Everquest, Age of Conan and [insert many many titles here].
All the failed games to come and go over the years. If there ever was a business where huge blunders were made (market research or not)... many of which have outright destroyed their products, it's online games.

Yes. I believe that Ultima Online became something else when they turned the basic concepts of good vs. evil and the need for player cooperation into some sort of online social media ....type..... game.

 

[Zuckuss]

To say that September '97- April '00, the years in which Felucca was the only choice, were UO's golden years is not only subjective, but easily disproven. Very easily.

First, UO had fewer shards during this period; 16 compared to the 27 we have now. So population wasn't nearly to spread out. Lag was also far more onerous beastie during this era, so few people played on geographically distant shards, instead of congregating on Atl.

Second, we have the chart. Yes, that chart. The one the Classic Shard supporters clearly couldn't read.

View attachment 53479

Renaissance, the expansion that obviously wasn't a mirror, dropped in April of 2000. According to the chart, UO's subscription numbers were somewhere around 140,000 in January of '99. In January of 2000, subs were still below 150K, but by July of 2000, subs were up to 190K+. They kept climbing, with a few drop offs to peak around 250K in 2003. The introduction of Trammel nearly DOUBLED UO's playerbase. If anything, Age of Stuff Shadows, released in February of 2003, is what gave UO a mortal wound...though one that took another six years to drop subs to pre-Trammel levels.

Furthermore, attempting to lump trends in play styles, such as everyone and their llama creating their own crafters, with Trammel is, in a word, silly. People did that because they wanted to, or did it because they didn't trust people enough to give them their lootz to repair. Repair deeds, introduced October 2001, are far more relevant to this issue than is Trammel.

Full-loot PvP died because it needed to happen. Garriott's wild, wild west experiment was an abject failure that even his bloated ego was eventually able to accept.

Look no further than Siege or Mugen for how well a Fel-only ruleset thrives: i.e. not at all. (Sorry, Siegers, but its true, and you know it.)

Before we begin our facepalm memes, let's examine this nearly 10 year old chart without a listed source and try to agree on one thing.

In Jan. 2000, according to your own posted evidence we had nearly 150 subs give or take.
Trammel was introduced.
Today we would be stretching it to call it 40k, but let's just do that for the sake of your own argument.

During the times of a singular facet, the game had never experienced a drop in subs (according to the information you yourself have volunteered).

So given the above, we are working with 110k subscriptions less than what we had before Trammel began. I don't see why you bothered posting that chart at all. In fact, I never said that Trammel had "destroyed UO" or anything of the like. My argument is to refute the claim that felucca did. There is no amount of data that can back up that claim... if fact the data we do have backs up the opposing claim. Your own submitted data shows the loss in player numbers since the introduction of Trammel.

Am I saying that Trammel alone was the cause for that drop? Absolutely not, but your own posted chart does not lie. =/

 

[Spock's Beard]

Indeed. Look at them. Look at what all the market research did for UO 2, Star Wars, Asheron's Call, Everquest, Age of Conan and [insert many many titles here].
All the failed games to come and go over the years. If there ever was a business where huge blunders were made (market research or not)... many of which have outright destroyed their products, it's online games.

That list includes, among other things, the most successful MMORPG in the western market up until the release of World of Warcraft, so I'm not sure what sort of point you think you're making. Furthermore even the biggest commercial flop on that list made infinitely more money than Shadowbane, or Darkfall, or Mortal Online, or any of the other "oldschool UO revisited" games that nobody showed up for.

Yes. I believe that Ultima Online became something else when they turned the basic concepts of good vs. evil and the need for player cooperation into some sort of online social media ....type..... game.

Nobody cares. Literally, nobody cares. The PK types have been bragging up their freeshards and trying to blame every problem with UO on Trammel for 15+ years and whatever they hoped it would accomplish just plain did not happen. Multiple games have been made trying to do what you're talking about (see above) and nobody cared. Nobody played. It's been decades, history has been written, the part where the other side is vindicated on the full-gank PVP thing isn't happening.

 

[Zuckuss]

That list includes, among other things, the most successful MMORPG in the western market up until the release of World of Warcraft, so I'm not sure what sort of point you think you're making. Furthermore even the biggest commercial flop on that list made infinitely more money than Shadowbane, or Darkfall, or Mortal Online, or any of the other "oldschool UO revisited" games that nobody showed up for.

The point I was making was pointing out the blunders of "market research" that you sarcastically referenced in your prior post as to counter my counter-argument to the release of Trammel... remember?

The list was meant to (despite successes) show us where we are today with who is alive and active in the MMO world. I disagree that any of the final three you listed were anything close to UO. I think we are simply looking at what UO was.... differently.

Nobody cares. Literally, nobody cares. The PK types have been bragging up their freeshards and trying to blame every problem with UO on Trammel for 15+ years and whatever they hoped it would accomplish just plain did not happen. Multiple games have been made trying to do what you're talking about (see above) and nobody cared. Nobody played. It's been decades, history has been written, the part where the other side is vindicated on the full-gank PVP thing isn't happening.

I think you might have incorrectly surmised that I was blaming all of UO's problems on Trammel. I did however post a counter argument to the claim that Fel was ruining UO and in my counter-argument I actually presented some sort of tangible or at least referable information to back it up.

I don't think anyone here was lobbying for "full-gank PVP."
I'm lobbying for a massively multi-player online game that actually has a "massive" amount of players in it. If that means that you don't have six worlds where you can mine freely without any sort of potential harm, and occasionally experience the need for the small amount of player interaction required to overcome another group of players trying to kill you then so be it.

 

[Dot_Warner]

Before we begin our facepalm memes, let's examine this nearly 10 year old chart without a listed source and try to agree on one thing.

In Jan. 2000, according to your own posted evidence we had nearly 150 subs give or take.
Trammel was introduced.
Today we would be stretching it to call it 40k, but let's just do that for the sake of your own argument.

During the times of a singular facet, the game had never experienced a drop in subs (according to the information you yourself have volunteered).

So given the above, we are working with 110k subscriptions less than what we had before Trammel began. I don't see why you bothered posting that chart at all. In fact, I never said that Trammel had "destroyed UO" or anything of the like. My argument is to refute the claim that felucca did. There is no amount of data that can back up that claim... if fact the data we do have backs up the opposing claim. Your own submitted data shows the loss in player numbers since the introduction of Trammel.

Am I saying that Trammel alone was the cause for that drop? Absolutely not, but your own posted chart does not lie. =/

Indeed, the chart is of dubious provenance (I believe it came from mmodata.net, presumably around January of '08). In fact, I tend to ridicule the people who trot it out...though mainly because they fail so spectacularly at interpreting it. Unfortunately, we have few representations of sub numbers, aside from a couple of press releases and a lone, out of context, EA shareholder report from over a decade ago.

There have been old devs, such as Designer Dragon, who said that sub rates were slipping prior to Trammel, mainly due to the PK problem (as in people were tired of dealing with them). Hence Trammel was conceived. Why that isn't portrayed in the chart is anyone guess.

This is why I responded with the chart:

Another argument is that UO was thriving with an astronomical amount of players compared to what is here now and that trammel was the beginning of the long slow demise of UO. Sure. Numbers peaked briefly as the introduction of Trammel was the largest expansion of UO at the time... but it's been consistently downhill from there.

So you did correlate the introduction of Trammel with UO's demise/destruction.

if fact the data we do have backs up the opposing claim. Your own submitted data shows the loss in player numbers since the introduction of Trammel.

Actually, no, it doesn't. The downward trend doesn't start until July of '03. Three. Years. Later.

Fel only: 9-97 to 4-00 ~3 years
Trammel+: 5-00 to 1-07 ~7 years (to present ~ 16 years)

The chart only shows UO numbers until Jan of '07, ending somewhere around 110K-115K subs. From the time Trammel was introduced until '07, UO retained more subs than it did with just Felucca. Extrapolating a continued downward slide in sub numbers is the logical path, but you can't possibly connect that to Trammel. It can, however, be attributed to the age of the product, lack of advertising, a lack of care and disorganization at the corporate level, and the explosion of the MMO market in the last decade.

Anyone who argues that Felucca killed UO can be summarily dismissed due to the simple fact that Fel started UO. Since the game didn't immediately perish, the argument is moot. The game probably wouldn't have continued for very many more years though, either due to sub fall-off or UO2. At the time, UO persisted in spite of Felucca and in spite of EA not knowing WTF to do with it.

 

[Kirthag]

Well....

not so much getting rid of things, but focusing more on the core...
--get rid of EC
--get rid of VvV (bring back bounty system)
--CONCENTRATE on making the CC a fabulous client! (quit spreading resources too thin)
--get rid of "old skool thinking" in development cycle (what i mean is, think outside of the box/game and improve the existing content)
--MARKET THE HELL OUT OF THE GAME!!! You want more subscribers, give them a _reason_ to subscribe and TELL THEM about it! Get out of the ivory tower, mingle with the norms, and actively send the message out in as many channels as possible.

*edited to clarify

 

[Spock's Beard]

Look, you said this.

All the failed games to come and go over the years. If there ever was a business where huge blunders were made (market research or not)... many of which have outright destroyed their products, it's online games.

Full-gank PVP in the mold of oldschool UO died a long time ago and the part where anyone but a tiny kook fringe on a couple of forums gave a crap never happened. You can whine that sometimes game developers made mistakes despite market research and the like, but in this case who cares? We have a whole string of actual "Bringing back the magic of oldschool UO!" gank games that nobody played, so apparently any market research to that effect was pretty much correct.

 

[Zuckuss]

who cares?

You do. You've been going on about it more than anyone else in this thread.

 

[Spock's Beard]

You do. You've been going on about it more than anyone else in this thread.

Way to quote two whole words completely out of context. The question is, in the context of free-for-all MMO PK, who cares about your assertion that game developers make mistakes?

I mean it's not like this is an open debate where anything new is going to be learned. There isn't going to be some miraculous MMO renaissance where we all discover that the couple of kooks still whining about Trammel 15+ years later were secretly right all along.

They made the gankfest games, nobody played them, nobody cared. If anyone ever were going to care, we'd have known about it a decade ago.

 

[PwnySlaystation]

When I came back from a 6 year break from UO and saw the state of Magincia I felt physically sick. So ****ed up.

 

[Capt. Lucky]

1) The Enhanced Client (Bring back the UO:KR client instead)
2) 25% of the dead shards
3) Luck, it's pretty much useless
4) Useless skills, either make them useful or remove them (Begging, Camping, Remove Trap, Forensic Eval, Taste ID...)
5) Nerfing, i'm all for balancing skills but feel like they went too far with Provocation

Hey! I use begging at Halloween. And it's not the easiest skill to learn A few more cool begging items added to the list wouldn't hurt though. Who doesn't love the lanterns that stay lit on vendors?

 

[The Craftsman]

1. Shard Shields: They've damaged a revenue stream for UO

No, they damaged a revenue stream for EA ... big difference.