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Captn Norrington
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I hope so, but it seemed imminent when they got UO greenlit on Steam 5 years ago too, and then nothing happened.
It won't help much even if it goes on steam. They are at the very LEAST 10 years late with drumming up interest at this point. I would love to be proved wrong though.
If they hit steam better be classic client only. As an EC user its not ready for any modern gamer. Same bugs today as launch. Naked people everywhere, 0HP mobs all over champ spawns affecting targeting macros..... not good
Not to start a client war, since nothing good comes from it, but the classic client has just as many if not more bugs. They're just different bugs.
I doubt any modern gamer would play either client on steam...
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someone asked Mesanna in one of the meet and greets about UO comming to steam and she flat out so no its not happening, its on one of the transcripts from 6 months ago or maybe a little longer
Who cares, UO's not going to lose subscribers because people on steam don't like it, if its on steam people will try it, I don't really see a negative if UO went on steam.
Getting obliterated with steam reviews has ended games literally. It can be very hard to bounce back from even once you improve the game. Luckily they added a recent reviews section as well which helps a little when games improve.
I see what you're saying in the sense people wont leave the game. The idea of going to steam however would be to bring people into the game which all i'm saying is the EC will not do. The exe is still unsigned and registers as a virus on norton after years since release. Wisp statues show 3d and 2d wisps simultaneously. mounted players appear naked running at super speed.
UO would get demolished. These bugs have existed for over a decade.As for people not playing the classic client on steam. I'm saying its a better bet. Pixel art games are released with great reviews every month on steam.
That was my first thought when I heard about the blessed houses wipe. It's one step closer..
Nope.. I bet that the announcement will be to allow CERTAIN SHARDS for accounts to own more than one house, in all likelihood 2 houses/homes but not 2 castles, maybe one castle and one regular home equivalents. EJ's excluded of course.
This (in their mind) may have hopes of bringing some players back to the dead shards, or even move to a dead shard. That is you can keep your atlantic custom keep or castle etc, but now you can go to origin and own a home.
Other things they may be considering possibly may pertain to reducing the bite of pet stables, like allow consignment pet vendors, i.e. not to charge daily but 4% when the pet is sold. But this is not a change of magnitude they imply, since it pertains to a limited part of the game : Taming.
Or..a complete surprise. Hopefully for the better. For ALL players, not just the rich and prominent.
But..Who knows? Only they know what they are planning. We can only guess.
This (in their mind) may have hopes of bringing some players back to the dead shards, or even move to a dead shard. That is you can keep your atlantic custom keep or castle etc, but now you can go to origin and own a home.
Other things they may be considering possibly may pertain to reducing the bite of pet stables, like allow consignment pet vendors, i.e. not to charge daily but 4% when the pet is sold. But this is not a change of magnitude they imply, since it pertains to a limited part of the game : Taming.
Or..a complete surprise. Hopefully for the better. For ALL players, not just the rich and prominent.
But..Who knows? Only they know what they are planning. We can only guess.
Shard merges would kill UO.
How do you decide which shard's residents get housing precedence?* What do you do with all the stuff of the newly homeless players? How long would you store it? How would they temporarily access it so they could play? What about the still-extant communities that exist on several shards? How many months of complaining, angry emails and rage posts do you want to put up with?
At what point does ebolting yourself in the foot become the better option?
*No, simply making each shard have multiple versions of the same facet is not a workable solution.
How do you decide which shard's residents get housing precedence?* What do you do with all the stuff of the newly homeless players? How long would you store it? How would they temporarily access it so they could play? What about the still-extant communities that exist on several shards? How many months of complaining, angry emails and rage posts do you want to put up with?
At what point does ebolting yourself in the foot become the better option?
*No, simply making each shard have multiple versions of the same facet is not a workable solution.
I agree with you @Dot_Warner. This is pretty much what I said a few weeks/month ago too. Merging shards means some people get the short end of the stick and that would do nothing but lose subscriptions. If we think there is drama with the RMT/Housing issues now (proven or not), merging shards and limiting the housing would essentially create a monopoly on the housing market and even more people would complain/quit.
There can be serious nuclear fallout from a shard merge. I wonder if they would be willing to deal with the aftermath..
A shard merge would be the final nail in the UO coffin.
Having shards other than Atlantic that actually have people playing.
Do any of us play UO as our main game anymore? I just keep it out of nostalgia but mainly play modern stuff. I tried Final Fantasy 14 lately, and it is amazing! FF 14 is basically "the floor is lava online" (all the mechanics seem to be about staying out of various AOES) FF 14 has GREAT storytelling, cut scenes, and quests. It's the first time in decades I have played a game where I actually enjoyed the quests and storytelling. I played a lot of World of Warcraft and they have extremely poor story telling and quests, horrible ones...as in go steal candles from Kobalds and it never really gets any more interesting than that.
So many good games out there! Even Stardew Valley on Steam has UO beat hands down for fun. Try Darkest Dungeon! UO just has good memories at this point.
Tired of yelling about how UO needs to improve, it's not going to, ever improve... moving on but keeping UO sub going out of pure loyalty.
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I do. Only game for a long time.
Just to put the final nail in the coffin to shard merges.
Even if all houses and contents are moved directly over to new (bigger)shard, people would:
A: Get new housing spots at random location)
B: Have a lag fest.
Remember UO has players all over the world, where would you put the server? America? Europa? Asia? it will be lag for two /third of this groups.
So you decide to have 3 different servers, one for each location? well thats hardly a shard merge as people are still spread over 3 places.
(although you could argue going from 26shards to 3 would help) Looking at the shard maintenance times on uo.com thres even more than 3 different shard maintenance timezones, so 5-6 different places.
Like I said, final nail that that discussion.
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The people who would really miss UO are the ones who have never played any other game, yes there are quite a few of them and they tend to be older people who started playing UO in their mid/late 30s or 40s (or even later!). My sister was close to 50 when she started playing UO, but that was back in 2006/7 and she hasn't played for a long time. Then of course there is always the option of the free shards when UO closes but some of the players here are getting on a bit and they might not like having to adapt to a different way of doing things....
Shard merges won't happen here, unless they instanced housing and since some people think open world housing is the best thing about UO it would be a big mistake to take that away.
Shard merges won't happen here, unless they instanced housing and since some people think open world housing is the best thing about UO it would be a big mistake to take that away.
While it's the only game I really play these days, I'd agree that the time I spend on it now is much less than it used to be and I can relate to keeping my subscriptions open simply for nostalgia.
That said, I do up my time spent in UO when they actually drop some new stuff to do like last year when they released the tritons and even the treasure hunt changes (yup I worked up remove trap!). Sadly, I haven't played much this year because of the lack of new content. It's kind of ironic because there were times I'd be home for a random vacation/sick day and literally just play UO for hours...for the past 4 months or so with the pandemic I kind of have that chance (working from home) and there are several days a week I just check stratics and don't even bother logging in to UO
Pretty much agree though I still won't play FF14 that's my sons game... I been playing PSO2... which is fun... Still playing No Man's Sky which I really enjoy... play several games on my phone including Gumballs and Dungeons... and Pokemon Go. Also recently acquired FlowScape (for PC) but I wouldn't categorize that as a game... it's more of a glorified paint program that is awesome if you like to play with 3d model outdoors stuff.Do any of us play UO as our main game anymore? I just keep it out of nostalgia but mainly play modern stuff. I tried Final Fantasy 14 lately, and it is amazing! FF 14 is basically "the floor is lava online" (all the mechanics seem to be about staying out of various AOES) FF 14 has GREAT storytelling, cut scenes, and quests. It's the first time in decades I have played a game where I actually enjoyed the quests and storytelling. I played a lot of World of Warcraft and they have extremely poor story telling and quests, horrible ones...as in go steal candles from Kobalds and it never really gets any more interesting than that.
So many good games out there! Even Stardew Valley on Steam has UO beat hands down for fun. Try Darkest Dungeon! UO just has good memories at this point.
I plan to drop several of my UO accounts in the nearish future... But I will keep a few active... not out of loyalty to UO out of loyalty to friends.
Same here. UO is the only one for me too. UO with all its quirks, PK's, Thieves, Bugs, Gimps, Sub-par graphics, all the good and all the bad things. Also the mostly good folks, the rude trash talkers on Atl gen chat, the ripoffs, scam artists, and the famous Avatar spamming their RMT messages. It is a true universe complete with honor systems, and messed up economies, and its underworld. I also like the grumbling players, the complainers, the nay-sayers, and doom predictors, even the toxic ones with a little salt. I even love the folks that threaten to quit UO because they got Trolled in game!! You got to love ALL of these parts of UO otherwise you would not have anything to do with it. It is a true society with some good some bad and some ugly parts. Its a place that dysfunctional folks like me can call home.
In a strange way it would not be UO without these things, it would be something else. It is all a part of the package.
Also its aging Devs, making snail-pace, limping with a cane or walker, improvements that take decades to complete.
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Well said! They remind me of me doing home improvements... I think about the project for a month then I say it out loud and talk about it for about 3 months then I start it and it takes a month and within the first hour of it being done my wife tells me something is wrong so I deny it's wrong and then I notice it's wrong so I talk about fixing it for a month and then the next month I finally fix it.... damn picture frame is still a little crooked... but hey it's up and the project is complete!!
I pretty much only play UO. All the FF games are just corny stupid trash. Only other games I like are NHL 2014 (last year of the ragdoll physics), the NCAA football games (sigh), and rando stupid phone games that I play when I'm taking a dump. I've played fortnite (lame af), pubg (slow and boring), COD/BF, and they all have their pros/cons.
UO is the only one where you have complete control over your build and can do what you want. The people I see bored the most with UO are the ones that are afraid to get away from the cookie-cutter templates. They don't make new chars, diff chars, or adjust their chars at all. Then they bish and moan about UO getting boring and it's just the same thing everyday.
Get in a guild, get in a discord channel, drink some beers, talk some ish........UO is still the kang.
UO is the only one where you have complete control over your build and can do what you want. The people I see bored the most with UO are the ones that are afraid to get away from the cookie-cutter templates. They don't make new chars, diff chars, or adjust their chars at all. Then they bish and moan about UO getting boring and it's just the same thing everyday.
Get in a guild, get in a discord channel, drink some beers, talk some ish........UO is still the kang.
I know how that is. I have gotten quite a few procrastination awards myself..Well said! They remind me of me doing home improvements... I think about the project for a month then I say it out loud and talk about it for about 3 months then I start it and it takes a month and within the first hour of it being done my wife tells me something is wrong so I deny it's wrong and then I notice it's wrong so I talk about fixing it for a month and then the next month I finally fix it.... damn picture frame is still a little crooked... but hey it's up and the project is complete!!
Phantasmagorian
Sage
Could go either way...kinda.
Not in the least. If this does get a Steam release, which I doubt, the community on Steam will tear this game to shreds. A) They don't like EA. B) You can't go to any player things without running smack into the fact that players have cheated and scripted and used bugs for years. C) The clients are both very poor at this point. D) No support in game for a big population of people. D) The server lag and server lines. E) The Endless Journey implemented a not fun banking system. And finally F) Players these days won't sit to figure out some of the things like /say Bank or the way the chat is.
And the account management system.
Phantasmagorian
Sage
A competent team could iron out and upgrade the worst of these things fairly quickly.... A few proper weekly scrum sprints...
I'm not going to speculate on what can happen. What has happened for the last twenty years shows you're wrong.
That would be true if there wasn't 20 years of antique code. With systems built on systems of code with no documentation.
What needs to happens is the entire backend code be rebuilt form scratch and properly annotated.
Keep the UI for the EC, but give a toggle option if you want it to display the CC or EC art files.
Phantasmagorian
Sage
I am wrong about what? Whether a competent team could iron out many issues? I am in game development myself and I get that the code is bad, but the last 20 years shows they managed to build new clients and many other things atop of it, plus third party tools fixed and changed many things as well. So I suspect a significant aspect is also that the team is either not that competent, not that willing or is lacking resources/motivation/vision. With all due respect to the team.
Ultima Online could have a true rebirth with the right vision and investment of resources. No doubt it would at least have a shot.
So you're competent enough to know that a 20 year old game can be fixed and you're a game developer. What game have you developed?
Phantasmagorian
Sage
I'm really not interested in this sort of combative exchange. In any case, my point stands.
<sarcasm>
One positive is that Mesanna and crew would not be causing so much grief to players. There wouldn't be any.
</sarcasm>
That's the best I could do on short notice. Sorry.
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Valid point. Well that, AND the fact that the gold sellers/RMT people would FREAK THE F#$% OUT!!!
You used your experience as validation for your opinion. I wasn't being combative to ask for more than "I work in game development."
What's going on with vendor search just shows that there is no competent team to begin with
Phantasmagorian
Sage
Okay, sorry, well, I've had people before on forums act like it's the rarest thing in the world to be a developer. It's tiresome. I'm actually a CTO now and currently we're developing a management game, originally EDU, but also going commercial.
Anyhow... I've always maintained UO still has boatloads of potential. Personally I'd ditch the EC client and pimp the hell out of CC, because the art is unique while EC just looks like terribly dated 3D. With some extra game play elements and lots of love, it could have millions of people playing again. I have some marketing ideas too. People don't go for just shiny stuff nowadays. Oh well..