I'd care. They will never stop every 3rd party program. They should never try to stop every third party program. STOP BLAMING THE PROGRAMS. Its the people that abuse the systems (gold farmers) that are the problem. The average player using a third party program to script skills does absolutely nothing to hurt the game.
Why did you have to bring up KR? This thread wasn't in danger of getting moved until now.
Since when can they not support two clients? They have been supporting 2 clients for 8 years just fine. Are you forgetting about the TD client which was actually one of the best UIs EVER in UO?
Show me numbers not hypatheticals. You ASSUME that KR is going to be the god sent to bringing an influx of new players to the game, and there is NO evidence to support that. I don't even want to play with that buggy POC and I've played UO since 2000.
I'll agree with that but not for any reason that you have actually stated.
Who said anything about screwing anyone over... were you there for BETA?.. bet not, Like KR the product is sent out, KR was distributed in Beta form to everyone... EA basicaly gave up on it after a few months of complaints.. I beta'd KR and was there on the boards, the players never gave it a chance, so EA gave up on it IMO.. cut their losses and released to the masses to see what kind of response they would get... again, I doubt you were an original UO player with your comments, us first players have lots of stories of working through the ruff stuff the first 6-12 months..galefan2004;749325 [quote said:
Your missing the point.... if EA says... here's 1 mil for UO to develop and suport it... if you use 500 on 2d and 500k on 3d, your not really using the full value of your funding to make a better game that would appeal to a broader base.. this is such a simple business plan... hope I don't have explaine this further...
Back to the business plan... Hypatheticals... it's a business plan, UO had one Long before LB had the first line of code written for UO... you don't know until after everything is done, but... fact is there is no new blood in UO.... so how do you get more people to play?... FACT is the 2D client is a turn of for most would be new players, they like the flsh of the newer games... so logic says, if these people wont play your game based on the client, then if you change the client, you may get these people to play... again... fact is that the player base is not expanding, it's contracting... to expand you have to increase the apeal of your product for a larger player base... in any case, I'm not going to try and explain this further... think business case, and hopefully you'll start to undersand, besides making un educated comments....
Sigh.........
I played since 2000. Does it make you special that you played in the first 6-12 months? The answer is no. You are making an arguement that they should kill 2d regardless of what veteran players think about that idea, so yeah you are inferring that they should just screw over all the players currently playing with 2d.
Its not that simple at all. They are designing new content then coding it to two different clients. The actual coding process takes a lot less time and a lot less money than the actual designing phase.
Keyword is MAY. There could be a million different reasons why new players don't want to play your game. I can think of many that have nothing to do with graphics. If I was a newer player I wouldn't play a game where veteran players have such a great advantage over newer players. You are hoping that people may turn to the game if KR is accelerated. You are forgetting that to draw in that new blood you are basically telling everyone that refuses to play KR to quit the game. You really think its good business sense to dump customers that have been paying you for the last 8-10 years in order to go after future customers. Not many businesses would ever try this approach.
I love how I'm suddenly uneducated when you are being moronic? The problem with your logic is you ASSUME that the KR client will bring in new players. You have NO EVIDENCE to back up thse assumptions, but you just keep making them.
You do realise that you just agreed with what the poster said right? You basically just said that they yanked the content with hopes to add it in again in the future becasue they felt it wouldn't be ready by the deadline, and in typical EA fashion they would rather release an unfinished game then push back the release date a few months.
I was going to respond to you but you seem to be lost in your world of everything must be perfect before it is released or the company is screwing you. Good luck with that one. I'll enjoy Warhammer thanks.
The Burning Crusade was susposed to be released 3 months before it was but Blizzard didn't feel it would be ready so they pushed the date back to make sure it was. WoW itself missed 2-3 release dates so that Blizzard could make sure the game was as close to finished as possible. Many other games have missed release dates so that they would be sure to be finished before they were released. I never said it had to be perfect. What I said is that they shouldn't worry about a deadline to the point that they will release a game that they want to add back elements they had previously planned on implimenting simply because those elements were not finished by the deadline.
There's this company called old coffee... se they've been selling coffee for the past 60 years... now they used to be a really good coffee company... the last few years, this new company called starbduds has this fancy new coffee, with multiple blends... starbuds is taking all the market share of all the coffee companies... now, Old Coffee is not making as much money as they used too, seems as their customers get older and die off, Old coffee can't get new customers... they think about flashing up their coffee houses to attract new customers, but the old guys who sit in the back, say they will stop coming for coffee... there's no proof that by offering better coffee blends and making the place fancy that the new blood will start coming and uying cofee from Old Coffee... it's all hogwash, no proof.. business smishness.. I like old coffee the way it is.. I don't want to splash the place up, I don't want to learn again, I like things just the way they are... fresh napkins, and cleaner cups.. better fix the dishwasher, thats all you need...
You are comparing the coffee business to the gaming industry? Yeah that makes sense. Its even funnier that you are trying to make this arguement on graphics alone. I guess UO would be the old company and WoW would be the new company. What you seem to fail to realise is that WoW has MANY features that UO doesn't and graphics is just ONE of them. There is also no evidence that the old company is going to defeat the new company by trying to beat them at their own game. Its more likely that they will attempt to adapt and end up losing what customers they did have in the process, and then just finish it all with a good old bankruptcy.
Lol. I love how UO is coffee now. You honestly think that store is going to tell those regular customers to get the hell up and walk out the door cause the "fresh blood" is going to suddenly come to the old place. A new flashy Chinese place came into our neighborhood. The older place is still doing just fine. They didn't change anything to try to beat the new company. They just kept doing the same things that they were already doing better. In the end the fact that they were doing things better meant they kept the customers while thise new place started losing customers after around 4-5 months. The problem is that UO is attempting to clone WoW, and the true vision of UO is already dead, and now you want them to try to change their graphics to WoW clone as well?
The problem with that is you assume that the graphics will help the game. It hasn't yet and how long has KR been out? The majority of veteran players won't even touch KR. Hell, the majority of newer players that I have seen won't even touch KR. If you are right in your reasoning KR should have been a mega hit, and so far it hasn't been. Its already developed, so please explain why no one even wants to touch it for the most part, if you say it is the end all of making UO get new customers?
Funny thing here is that you honestly believe that. UO is losing players like every 10 year old game should. After awhile, veterans want to try something new. The thing is that UO still pays its bills. When UO can no longer pay its bills then you can claim that it is dieing. Right now its just looking unhealthy.
By all means please tell me how getting rid of about 90% of your player base (rough average of those that play 2d over KR) is going to get you more money. That is the problem with your logic. You are willing to throw away a steady source of income for the chance at getting more income in the future. You have NO proof that that new income will even come, but you can be sure that you are getting rid of income sources by driving your players from the game. That makes perfect sense to me.
You couldn't be more of a diva if you tried. The thing is that you have yet to prove that these new players will flock to the game simply because you change the graphics. You ever think that maybe people don't play UO because they don't like UO? Maybe they don't like the systems (name one other successful game that allows you to actualy lose items). Maybe they don't like the cheaters (this game has a HORRIBLE reputation in the MMO market). Maybe they don't like the graphics.
- So you're hobbled then?
That was what made me love UO, the freedom, the danger and the community it made.
This still exist on Siege but because we are so few now, the cummunity is falling apart. AoS was what mostly killed Siege, when itims become to expensive and took to much time to replace items, it made to many give up even when they love Siege.
No matter how they had done it, it would never had worked unless the new land had been on Trammel servers, where PvP only was possible in the PvP systems like wars and factions.
Maybe but many was accounts for second house in Trammel. I don't think we got more players because lots of PvP'ers quit the game at that time.
The BoD system came with AoS and players started to have several BoD runners, some had upto 20 accounts with bod runners, many had 2 or 3.
Lucky we did not get Item Insurance on Siege but we did get some blessed weapons that messed up the balance on the shard.
Thives are alive on Siege and you do not need mills to get a good suit. Some will still put alot money in a good suit, but they will have to fight well to keep it.
That's not true, the devs had done alot to stop it, changes to resource spawn, spawn that can't be done with pets and a script and making items less unique help alot too. Most scripters want to make RL money from UO, if their profite drop, they will move on.
I won't call the devs incompetent, they did what they believed was good for UO. It's almost impossible to see how a change will turn out on live shards and some players will always find ways to cheat.
Just a minor FYI, actually at UO's peak... UO had just over 250k subscribers.
Including BoD runner and house holder accounts. I think 100k players may be max UO had.
Little to no effort?
You're right, they've done a lot more than nothing. Sadly though it seems like nothing has been done since scripting is still alive and well in full swing. I was under the impression that the changes to resources, namely the wood spawns, encouraged scripting since all the resources were randomized or what have you. That was my impression anyway. I'll agree about the spawns and the reduction of artifact rarity, I'm sure it did help a good deal. The only thing that's left on the table of any value to scripters are the Val hammers and Barbed kits, but even those are going down in price immensely.
No doubt, I remember when the community collections were first being tested. Brilliant idea no doubt about it, but poorly implemented to encourage scripting. I remember there was a vocal minority of players who were against the collections because it encouraged scripting. It's a shame it wasn't reworked before being released.
Perhaps, but you run the risk of peeving most of your player base and I don't think EA will want to make that move. AOS and the item system is far too gone for insurance removal to work. People aren't used to losing their items and I don't think they ever want to experience it. Especially in today's UO. But if artifacts are becoming more and more common which is the case now, the removal of insurance might not be a big deal, but I don't think we'll ever see it removed.
You're right, Incompetent is too strong of a word. I'll alter it in the OP. Whether or not I agree or disagree with the Devs, I have no clue as to what goes on behind closed doors. I'm sure all devs loved UO when they developed it, I hope so anyway, but some ideas are far better than others.
It's tough to say what would have happened if the Devs went in another direction.
Well written. Truth to the point.After reading various threads about the topic and being frustrated by some of the hollow answers, I decided write this "book" to portray my opinions on the whole "What ruined UO" debate.
Some bits I wrote myself while others I wrote awhile ago for my column. Link
Chapter 1 - A Unique Experience
When risk and consequence was actually common in online games, Ultima Online stood above the rest for delivering an engrossing and open-ended online experience rife with danger. UO was and still is one of the rare breeds of MMOs considered to be sandboxes. In sandbox MMOs, unlike their more linear brethren, players can do whatever they want to whomever and wherever. You can place houses, run a tavern or other place of business, hunt, mine, fish, treasure hunt, kill other players or steal from them. Grind was minimal as there were no levels to achieve, but only skills to gain. The skill system was also open ended and a player could be whatever they wanted. A lockpicking thief, a jack-of-all-trades craftsman, a bard tamer or a tank mage, all options were available and hybridization was encouraged.
UO was a game that offered true consequences for your actions. If you were killed, your belongings could be taken by other players and you had the choice of either fighting back to reclaim your possessions or head back to town to restock. Thieves skulked around town peaking into people's backpacks to steal their hard-earned goods and murderers roamed the countryside looking for players to kill and loot. Nothing was safe and because of this, bustling communities developed to help protect the innocents and combat those who would do harm to their fellow players. The only other commercial MMO to offer similar gameplay is EVE: Online and it is an extremely successful game.
Chapter 2 - The Golden Age
At its peak, UO boasted around 100K subscribers. Even though this number pales in comparison to WoW and Lineage 2, where WoW has more than nine million and Lineage 2 over 14 million, it was an accomplishment during the infancy of MMOs. While arguments still rage about what caused UO's descent into oblivion, I can honestly say, as a UO member for eight years, it was a combination of events ranging from extremely poor decision making, loud-mouthed individuals demanding more items over bugfixes and just simple excuses. Sadly UO's golden age was extremely brief as game developers began to cater to players who wanted little to no risk or consequence, zero need to interact with their fellow players and items, items, items. These players no longer wanted to risk anything and the community degenerated into a gimmie-gimme mob with an insatiable appetite for items.
Chapter 3 - The Further Rise of the Game, but at the Cost of Its Community
After years of flooded complaints about being incessantly killed, stolen from or griefed, developers finally realized what had to be done, but instead of thinking things through and coming up with a solution that would benefit all players, they released the poorly-implemented Renaissance expansion in 2000. Instead of making a new land mass for players looking to escape from PKs and thieves, the developers in all their wisdom duplicated the entire game and inevitably split the playerbase in half. Trammel offered complete sanctuary from ruffians while Felucca was old UO with all the trimmings. In Trammel, there was no longer the need for players to protect each other and no longer a purpose for Guilds to form to combat PKs. Since Trammel had the safety, people concerned themselves more with controlling monster spawns over anything else while begging and pleading to reduce the risk of being scammed, griefed or looted.
Do I think Trammel was a good thing for this game? Although the expansion was very poorly implemented, I feel UO bettered in terms of gameplay and content, but in regards to its communities it was a step backwards. Trammel’s implementation reminds me of how EVE: Online currently handles its player killing systems. If you’re not familiar with EVE: Online, let me explain the similarities for you. You have the relative safety areas called High-sec where you can be killed, but your attacker gets destroyed by Concord, similar to UO’s Guards. Players in High-sec, dubbed Carebears by their pirate and pvp brethren, are a little more individualistic and are content with being left alone while they perform missions, mine or manufacture. While Trammel did not have PKing, you still ran the risk of being looted and griefed by your fellow player. And then you have the completely unsafe areas dubbed Lowsec and 0.0 where killing and pirating was encouraged. Here, the similarities to Felucca are apparent.
Admittedly, this particular expansion allowed UO to see its highest subscription numbers and gave its players the opportunity to avoid frustration. I’ll admit, I really did enjoy the ability to monster bash with my fellow players and then hit Felucca if I felt the urge for a little pvping. Due to the newfound safety of Trammel though, it helped pave the way for future players looking to abolish even more risk in the game turning UO into a Lite-singleplayer game. And then we move towards the worse hit of them all.
Chapter 4 - The Age of Shadows: All Risk Goes Out the Window
If you want the true killer of UO, you need not look any further than Age of Shadows. Dubbed the Age of Sh#t by the majority of its playerbase, this "expansion" was the final nail in the coffin for UO as all risk was completely and utterly removed. With this expansion came new and overpowering skills and weapons, on top of that the item system received a complete revamp. The transformation from a skill-based MMO into an item-based and item-whoring game was achieved. There were no longer set item properties and everything turned into numbers, percentages and resistances. Instead of having an Accurate Broadsword of Power, a somewhat powerful item at the time, you had this garbage:
I didn't know I needed a math degree to loadout my character.
With the introduction of AOS, many overpowering yet easy to acquire arms and armors were introduced. These items, coupled with new overpowering skills allowed players to solo most high-end monsters indefinitely. This allowed players the freedom to not worry about forming a hunting party to fight and farm relatively tough monsters and bosses themselves.
With every item being practically unique in its own way, making them near-impossible to get again if you lose them, the system of looting other people's stuff would obviously no longer have a place in this game. The answer came in the form of a system called Insurance. For a small sum of gold, you could insure your items so they could never be looted or stolen ever again. Considering that it went against the grain of everything Ultima and most importantly challenge, it was the dumbest addition in history.
Not only did it single-handedly destroy the Thieving profession it has allowed godly players to remain godly players. It has required many to piece together multi-million gold suits in order to compete and in many ways it has helped the individual player but in the same respect it has damaged the community as well. There is no longer a need to purchase weapons and armor from crafters when you don't have a chance of losing a specific item altogether. Items are not leaving the system because of Insurance. When I pieced together my 1400 luck suit on my tamer, I knew it was the set I’d be using for years to come. This isn’t right. Due to these reasons, UO's community has all but shattered because players no longer have to help each other to get by.
The funny thing is lead developers at the time came out and admitted they were heavily influenced by Diablo 2 and WoW when it was in development. So instead of coming up with something original, the developers decided to copy off existing games. Subscription numbers plummeted after this and UO has never been able to fully recover since.
Chapter 5 - Inaction
Currently UO is plagued with cheaters and scripters who are crippling the ingame economy while forcing many players to quit the game, but developers have done next to nothing to solve the issue. Scripting has affected the community in many different ways, it has completely made the honest resource gatherer obsolete. It has put many legit player ran vendors out of business since Scripters can control the market on select products. Finally, it has jaded the community so much so that everybody thinks everyone else is scripting or cheating. And perhaps these accusations are quite true. Suggestions to help fix the myriad of other problems have otherwise been ignored and most players believe they are just being milked for all their worth while EA shifts its attention to Warhammer Online, which is currently going through its own problems at the moment.
One sure sign of this came when UO reached its 10-year anniversary. A stunning achievement for any game especially MMOs, but all players got in return for their commitment was a stupid gift rehash. That's some dedication for ya.
Chapter 6 - The Great Game that Could Have Been
Ultima Online could have stayed as one of the most unique MMOs on the market if a vocal minority and an incompetent dev team hadn't messed it all up. UO once offered a truly unique experience, but tried too hard to please the masses and be like all the rest. What we're left with is a hollow husk of a game that is best left ignored to die. It really pains me to say it as UO was a big part of my life for a long time, but it's just not the same game it once was. Any remnants of Old UO have all been lost to the sands of time. What a shame.
I beg your pardon? EVE online has been going on for 5 years, it has almost the same number of subscribers that UO had at his peak, and the subs are still rising after 5 years. I am curious to know your definition of "successful".
I am guessing WoW like numbers.
+1
That was AoS release and if you didn't realize it was from folks purchasing up tons of accounts for rewards, housing etc.
That's not what he said. In fact if you derived this I suggest rereading. Removal of danger and any risk at all killed the communal aspect of this game, the result was the slow entropy of the active player-base.
This portion illustrates your total failure to read a brilliant post. Please keep it friendly or reread the content of the OP
UO was never just that simple unless you lost more than you won. the most basic skill a dexer had was the ability to predict the path his enemy would take and intercept him.
And I suppose new games don't cater to pvp?
You took the words right out of my mouth. Thank you for simplifying this whole thing down to what really counts.
QFT.
, although I am certain that further down the page we will likely see someone that will claim it's just not true...it most certainly is. Most certainly.
How old your information are? It is close to 250K (UO's peak). As you say, it is currently the highest it has ever been: after 5 years it shows no sign of peaking or decline.
Uh, where do I get the armor or weapon that gives me the Power for Lust?
You can say the same thing about Star Wars Galaxies. It is agreed upon by the majority of its playerbase that the NGE upgrade was the biggest step backwards ever. Several media sources such as The New York Times, New York Post, CBS and Wired criticized it for its reduced depth and complexity. Players left in droves because of it, making it one of the biggest player departures in MMO history.
You like the game just the way it is, don't you Connor.Uh, where do I get the armor or weapon that gives me the Power for Lust?
I'll start the bidding at 100mil.....
As players didn't leave in droves at any given point other than the period prior to the implementation of Trammel, I'd have to say UO Devs have done something right. I've never played, nor even looked at SWG, so can't say anything about it.
As they say here in Texas....Eyup....I shore doo.
Prior to the recent influx of [young] players due to the latest quest, I saw [young] players just about every day. We've been hearing "The Sky Is Falling" since the beginning of UO. Now is no different than then. Hell, if I'd played UO prior to there being an option for consentual PvP, I would have been one of the ones that quit before Tram came about.
And UO's numbers have been slowly declining since AoS, from 250K to around 75K. Lower even than what it was before Trammel.
Well I'm not sure how credible MMOGChart is so please take this information with a grain of salt.
You're forgetting to take into account that now we're dealing with an entire new generation of gamers with a whole slew of new generation games.
Nah,
