UO Info vs Warhammer Info. Why?

[love2winalot]

Hail: Here is part of the Warhammer newsletter we get every few weeks or so.
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Welcome to a very special edition of the Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning monthly newsletter. This is our 33rd issue and none before have been as jam-packed with exciting news and important information as this one. Believe us when we say that this is the newsletter you have been waiting for! Set aside any work you are doing and quit any games you may be playing. Let the dog walk himself and send the kids to bed early (so what if it’s only the middle of the afternoon, they are young and need their sleep!). You are definitely going to want to spend some uninterrupted quality time reading this newsletter from top to bottom!

This Month’s Newsletter Headlines

WAR’s Launch Date Announced – September 18th Declared a Day a Reckoning!
Subscription Pricing Revealed
Pack Art Unveiled
Pre-Order Program Begins
EA Mythic is Once Again Mythic Entertainment
E3 Coverage – Best PC Game of the Show!
Digging into Dungeons, and so much more

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So EA, why is everything about War out in the open, and Everything about UO all, "Soon, Maybe, We are working on it, We will let you know, Patience, Did we say soon alreay", and so on?

It is one thing not to tell us about the future of UO, It is quit another to say, "Not are we not going to tell you anything, we are also not going to tell you WHY, we are not telling you anything". Hmm, wonder what i will be doing on Sep 18th?

 

[monnie101]

I should post EQ2's monthly patch. It's a mile long in comparison to UOs. Packed with new live events, bug fixes, etc content.

UO has always been full of procrastination.

 

[Gildar]

Communication on unreleased games in late beta stages is always very high.
Communication on expansions not yet in beta stages are almost always very, very, very low (hence why we aren't hearing about Leurocian's Project of Silence).

Would be nice to hear some more from the Live team though... but I can understand some of the reluctance to talk much while Draconi was off in Japan.

 

[UO Crazed]

I don't know why people don't understand the underlying issues with UO and upgrades...IT'S OVER TEN YEARS OLD!!!!!

The spaggetti noodle of old code that you people insist on using (yes, that means all of you people who love 2D) must be a great big pain in the arse to maintain - let alone inject new content and fixes.

All of these other new games are done on modern platforms that allow the programmers to easily and readily make changes. Think about it.

 

[monnie101]

I don't know why people don't understand the underlying issues with UO and upgrades...IT'S OVER TEN YEARS OLD!!!!!

The spaggetti noodle of old code that you people insist on using (yes, that means all of you people who love 2D) must be a great big pain in the arse to maintain - let alone inject new content and fixes.

All of these other new games are done on modern platforms that allow the programmers to easily and readily make changes. Think about it.

Yeah I used to believe that was a good excuse until I had my own shard and easily added new objects and quests. Only took me a month to learn how to do it all.

Of course fixing bugs is more difficult but the fact still remains that neither does much get fixed OR added. Nothing much happens at all. In UO for the tiniest thing to change or get added it can take forever.

Let me give you an example. Planters want new cross pollonated plants. This is easy to add. Just need the simple non-animated 2d art and you can easily script it just by using the other plant code and making some minor changes.

 

[UO Crazed]

Yeah I used to believe that was a good excuse until I had my own shard and easily added new objects and quests. Only took me a month to learn how to do it all.
QUOTE]

I understand that there's some talented people like yourself that can script and even create your own shard, but adding to the complexity is the fact that they have to do twice the work - balancing old code to work with the new KR code in conjunction with everything else. Makes my head hurt just thinking about it.

 

[kennykilleduo]

Do you really think UO would release anything around the time of WAR ( can't forget WOW expansion also), don't you relise it has been one sandbag over another for the past few years. Its been almost 2 years since a real expansion , cheating at a all time high , we have been fed EVERY excuse why SA isn't done yet.

On the bright side , that is a great newsletter and I for one wish our marketing / community reps put some time into a letter like that for us..

Oh yea ...WAR is coming... :bowdown:

 

[Tek]

The spaggetti noodle of old code that you people insist on using (yes, that means all of you people who love 2D) must be a great big pain in the arse to maintain - let alone inject new content and fixes.

Actually it would be easier to maintain the 2D version of the game since that’s the original graphics engine and client which the game was actually developed to run with, the KR client would require more work to maintain and integrate in.

 

[Kith Kanan]

not if they ditched the 2d client...

 

[Maplestone]

WAR is getting a lot of negative buzz lately ... it looks like they reached a decision point where they had to choose between delaying another year or releasing an incomplete game ... and they choose to forge ahead with a release. A lot of people are still really looking forward to it, but unless it's flawless, I'm suspicious it's going to hit the market with a very loud thud.

It's not the age of the UO code which I see as its biggest stumbling block (at least not directly), it's the resistance of the player base to change. Change is painful, people react with fear and distrust over almost any announcement of change so its hard for the devs to be able to have those open discussions with us. I'm not saying that all the distrust is wrong - change is always a tradeoff between old and new and there is always the risk of being caught in the noman's land where the old is lost but the new not fully realized.

I would like to know more about what's going on. I would like to see more progress. I would like to believe the devs are sneaking up behind us with a pair of cymbals. Actually, the thing I'd most like to see is the ability to hook UO's mining/lumberjacking/fishing up to a wii controller ... I'd be in much better shape

 

[Gildar]

Yeah I used to believe that was a good excuse until I had my own shard and easily added new objects and quests. Only took me a month to learn how to do it all.

Except...
1. Your shard isn't running the same codebase as EA's server
2. Your shard doesn't need to be run through extensive QA tests every time there is a change
3. The codebase behind your shard is maintained by many more people than EA's servers
4. Your shard doesn't need to support multiple language and cultural backgrounds.
5. Your shard doesn't need to get approval through a chain of management before making changes.
6. Your shard doesn't need to ensure that changes provide enjoyment for tens of thousands of people.
7. Your shard doesn't have a database containing details of billions of items and characters to slow down and add risk to upgrades.

 

[love2winalot]

None of that other stuff matters. It is a simple question. WAR is not in open beta, and has a release date, screen shots, ect. SA is not in open beta, and has nothing, zero, zip, nada. Marketing has spilled ALL the beans regarding WAR, and the last person at EA who spoke the words SA was shot in the back........twice............

Should we all be at least trying out KR, as this really is the future of UO, and any new expansions, or vise versa with 2d, or what? It is 1,2,0r 3?

1. UO will always run both clients well into the future, ie many years
2. KR will at some point become the only working client for UO.
3. 2D is here to stay, KR flopped just like 3d did.

EA Entertainment, please choose a number, and let us know. Or tell us why you refuse to do so?, and then put that person on the site to explain it to us.

 

[Ashyn]

So EA, why is everything about War out in the open, and Everything about UO all, "Soon, Maybe, We are working on it, We will let you know, Patience, Did we say soon alreay", and so on?

It is one thing not to tell us about the future of UO, It is quit another to say, "Not are we not going to tell you anything, we are also not going to tell you WHY, we are not telling you anything". Hmm, wonder what i will be doing on Sep 18th?

I'm inclined to believe the reason may be that, according to interviews by the Mythic staff, EA has left them alone to do their own thing. They're also now running as a subsidiary under "Mythic Entertainment" again.

EA does not have a good reputation for customer service and while many developers think they are getting better, customers still view them as the Evil Empire. I am curious why certain developers are giving them a chance, stating that they aren't buying out the little guy and shutting them down like they once did. That hasn't changed. On August 1, EA-Land (The Sims Online) was shut down (Maxis is the developer - EA the publisher). That tells me, while they may be leaving Mythic alone, they certainly aren't leaving Maxis alone. I'll be cancelling my pre-order of Spore (Maxis). But, I'm still going to give a WAR a chance and keep my fingers crossed that EA lets them do their own thing - alas, I still remember how well they left Origin alone (Ie., all I'm seeing is the faith developers had years ago, resurfacing).

Could write an entire history of EA and how they've handled UO, but who would care?

 

[Ashyn]

None of that other stuff matters. It is a simple question. WAR is not in open beta, and has a release date, screen shots, ect. SA is not in open beta, and has nothing, zero, zip, nada. Marketing has spilled ALL the beans regarding WAR, and the last person at EA who spoke the words SA was shot in the back........twice............

Should we all be at least trying out KR, as this really is the future of UO, and any new expansions, or vise versa with 2d, or what? It is 1,2,0r 3?

1. UO will always run both clients well into the future, ie many years
2. KR will at some point become the only working client for UO.
3. 2D is here to stay, KR flopped just like 3d did.

EA Entertainment, please choose a number, and let us know. Or tell us why you refuse to do so?, and then put that person on the site to explain it to us.

Ultima Online: Kingdom Reborn (announced in August 2006 was released June 27, 2007) .

Statements made by EA originally suggested, or appeared to suggest, that the KR client would replace the long-standing UO client. However, at the first of several EA-sponsored players' conventions referred to as "UO Town Meetings," in Atlanta, EA representatives suggested that the two clients would exist side-by-side until about 80% of the players had switched over to the new client.

The majority of the playerbase still use the 2d client. The subscriber base to date sits at around 135,000 subscribers (approximately 70,000 of whom are Japanese).

Ultima Online: Stygian Abyss (TBA, originally planned for 2007)

There's a lot to be said about the information one can obtain online.

 

[Beefybone]

WAR is a brand new high-budget MMO with millions of dollars staked on it's success. UO is a decade-old game with a handful of die-hard players left, and chances are that hardly anyone at EA even remembers that it exists.

WAR is vastly, vastly, vastly more important to EA than UO has been in a very long time or probably ever was. You know it, and I know it. I don't know what you expect to gain by daring Jeremy or someone to come here and say it, when you know they won't.

EDIT: And actually, the subscriber base sits around something like 75k and falling, not 135k.

 

[Dol'Gorath]

I should post EQ2's monthly patch. It's a mile long in comparison to UOs. Packed with new live events, bug fixes, etc content.

UO has always been full of procrastination.

Same with WoW lol.

Typical UO patch:
We fixed a tile that looked out of place.
We added a new rehued collectible item with a low drop rate to please the rares collectors.
Stay tuned "Soon" for the next new event.

Typical WoW patch:

Added a ton of new quests.
Added a new dungeon of some sort [Last patch had both a 5-man and 25-man dungeon]
A whole new zone.
several class fixes.
And as usual about a mile of bug fixes.

 

[Eslake]

I don't know why people don't understand the underlying issues with UO and upgrades...IT'S OVER TEN YEARS OLD!!!!!

The spaggetti noodle of old code that you people insist on using (yes, that means all of you people who love 2D) must be a great big pain in the arse to maintain - let alone inject new content and fixes.

All of these other new games are done on modern platforms that allow the programmers to easily and readily make changes. Think about it.

You're looking at the whole thing sideways.

The Client doesn't effect how changes are made to the game, or how long they take to make. It only limits what those changes can be.
The Client is nothing more than a messenger and window. It sends messages (action request) to the server, and Shows you what the server tells it to.

The Server source code is what matters. And many of us have seen and dealt with it - it is not nearly so messy as you might think. It is by no means a remarket-engine, but it is relatively easy to navigate and modify.

Besides which, as complicated as the game might appear to some, the entire thing boils down to a scripting engine attached to a few hardcoded subs. I could rewrite the entire thing from scratch in my spare time in less than 6 months.
Those they pay to work on it could do it much faster simply because they're more familiar with it.

Using the age of the code as an excuse for anything is like...
You get a new job. The job is to take Specific index cards out of a bix box of 10,000 of them and make changes to them, and put them back every few days.
Would you just throw back the edited cards at random?
Or would you put them back in a way that made them easy to find and edit in the future?

Even if it began as the most unintelligable, unmanagable, hodgepodge of spagetti code(which it didn't), they have had over 10 years to clean it up and make it easy to work with.

 

[Haddy G]

That's easy to figure out. One word, Money. EA is gambling that they hit it big with Warhammer Online.

I plan to play it myself at least for a month or so and that's because I love the Warhammer universe.

 

[monnie101]

Except...
1. Your shard isn't running the same codebase as EA's server
2. Your shard doesn't need to be run through extensive QA tests every time there is a change
3. The codebase behind your shard is maintained by many more people than EA's servers
4. Your shard doesn't need to support multiple language and cultural backgrounds.
5. Your shard doesn't need to get approval through a chain of management before making changes.
6. Your shard doesn't need to ensure that changes provide enjoyment for tens of thousands of people.
7. Your shard doesn't have a database containing details of billions of items and characters to slow down and add risk to upgrades.

That's just a bunch of excuses. UO has undergone code upgrading many times. They have gotten a ton of money a number of times to rebuild and they wasted both time and money away. They milked it and their were a couple of interviews where they admited it. Yes it is very tough to get anything out of these guys but once in a while they slip a sentence and you can piece those slips into the real story. You make it sound like it takes a miracles and Gods to move anything in this game because that is what it seems like.

It's all a bunch of bologna. The people running UO are just horrible at it.

I have honestly gone thru a number of stages in trying to figure otu why UO has the most horrible customer support, empty patches, longtime bug fixing. So I'm not one of those people who throw around blame carelessly without research. I've been playing tons of MMOGs for many many years. All kinds. I've been around them in all kinds of ways. I've gone thru tons of articles including ones that have been with devs that worked on UO.

With that said I've come to the conclusion that basically, honestly, UO is just very badly run. These guys just aren't good at what they do. When I say that, I don't mean every one person. I mean the team and the people in charge. I mean everyone all together is just a bad combo. Hey not every football team is good. Someone has to be at the bottom. I'm sorry to sound offending but not everybody and not everyone is good. I used to think it was EA corp to blame but they have given tons of money and chances to devs and the devs have wasted the money in stuff and scrapped stuff that cost a lot of money to make. I think their is enough blame to go around.

Who I feel sorry for most of all is the players. I feel really sorry for you guys but you guys just sit there and take it like an abusive relationship. You guys honestly think that UO is the only good game even when its longtime been a bad game.

Seriously though, this game has the most horrible everything. It's almost hard for me to believe that it's so bad. They delete houses and accounts before even going thru any appeal process. How many times have they found people to be innocent and then they have lost all their stuff? Sometimes if they are lucky a GM has remade a few items they had proof of owning but that's it.

It's too bad that a lot of you are closed minded about 3D games and cannot afford PC's to run anything new. I honestly think some are addicted.

Their is only 1 reason that this game is alive. It has unbelievably dedicated player base. The playerbase is so addicted and crazed on UO that almost everyone owns anywhere from 2-12 accounts, some own 20-50, they don't mind being treated like dirt from both the makers of the game and the crude infested sociopath players that prey on them.

Seriously, the makers of the game can do ANYTHING to mistreat it's players and 95% WILL NOT QUIT! If UO were a real life abusive relationship, the players would be the wife that gets smacked around all the time and stays.

I also feel bad for people like Jeremy who loves UO but is virtually forced to hold back the angry mob and make excuses for all the procrastination. And I feel bad for you all that keep the game alive with your addiction to the game and willingness to absorb the worst service I have ever had the displeasure of experiencing.

 

[Ravenspyre]

UO is ten years old. Sorry people, but it's not a market seller anymore. The money goes into a title that has potential to get costumers. UO lost it's chance, esepcially considering when UXO, the last title attempt at a new version of UO on the market, and potential competitor was canned because of EAs boneheaded maneuver.

Reallity is, UO is a 10, almost 11 year old product, now. It struck some pioneering edges, but the people cling to the 2d client, and always will, no matter how revolutionary any new client addition will be, citing issues whether true or imaginary. UO is also un-intuitive, clunky, and just not player friendly at all. Majority of the MMO gamers world will not even know what UO is, I'm sorry to say, and saying market UO is not going to actually be any more of a boon than it is now. Esepcially now with the proliferation fo cheating, exploiting, and duping going on.

Ultima X Odyssey would of definitely put Ultima back ont he map, and honestly, wish EA would dig the code back out of mothballs and get it ready again. It had vast potential and from all ex-UXO dev interviews, was practically ready for beta.

 

[Uvtha]

So EA, why is everything about War out in the open, and Everything about UO all, "Soon, Maybe, We are working on it, We will let you know, Patience, Did we say soon alreay", and so on?

Let see... new flashy game likely to draw huge numbers > old forgotten game and its diehard 100k(?) players that will keep playing no matter what happens.

That's my guess.

 

[Mitzlplik_SP]

You guys honestly think that UO is the only good game even when its longtime been a bad game.


It's too bad that a lot of you are closed minded about 3D games and cannot afford PC's to run anything new. I honestly think some are addicted.

I think you`ve got alot of rediculous opinions. You think your the only one who can afford a decent comp? You think thats why peaple play UO? Your a lil tarded if ya do.If you think its a bad game,fine go away.No one cares what you think,expecially with your condicending attitude as to why peaple still play,LOL @ Joo!

I have played AoC,didn`t like it,way to linear.I played DAoC and recently just killed my 2 accounts there due to 50`s PvP sucking so bad.I`m now part timming in WoW when I`m bored with UO.I make plenty of money,like alot of other players.I can afford to play multiple titles and keep boredom from settling in to much in all of them.UO will always be on my HD and I`ll enjoy playing it every time I log in. Warhammer? sure I`ll try it,might play it for awhile,but rest assured,I`ll still be logging into the mighty Mitzlplik of LS to wtf pwn anything I feel needs pwning.

So go away,you don`t play UO anyways,so why are you trolling Uo`s forums?

 

[Ravenspyre]

I think you`ve got alot of rediculous opinions. You think your the only one who can afford a decent comp? You think thats why peaple play UO? Your a lil tarded if ya do.If you think its a bad game,fine go away.No one cares what you think,expecially with your condicending attitude as to why peaple still play,LOL @ Joo!

I have played AoC,didn`t like it,way to linear.I played DAoC and recently just killed my 2 accounts there due to 50`s PvP sucking so bad.I`m now part timming in WoW when I`m bored with UO.I make plenty of money,like alot of other players.I can afford to play multiple titles and keep boredom from settling in to much in all of them.UO will always be on my HD and I`ll enjoy playing it every time I log in. Warhammer? sure I`ll try it,might play it for awhile,but rest assured,I`ll still be logging into the mighty Mitzlplik of LS to wtf pwn anything I feel needs pwning.

So go away,you don`t play UO anyways,so why are you trolling Uo`s forums?

He actually has a point. The oft most complained about thing are people saying they don't want to upgrade their machines for any new versions of UO, and no matter what the devs do, unless it is that sorry excuse of a client known as 2d, no player will bother changing. No matter how horrible or crappy the graphics keep getting or what have you.

And quite frankly, UO players live in some heallcious drug induced fantasies to. Your world is over. UO has long since been out of the spot-light since the third generation,a nd games like WoW only cemented that fact home. Yea, stories can keep getting told, but all in all, UO was not designed to be changed from it's inception, which was a bad choice to begin with.

The fact it continues to this day, isn't a testament to the staying power, it's a testament to the stubborness of the playerbase. That's all it boils down to. UO has a playerbase that is not only more vile and outright insultive, the vitriol and bile this community of old farts rivals even the most flame induced discussion that can be found on the WoW forums. And that's pretty sad. Considering UO community was best on the planet, and now it has fallen to the point that everyone lives in some fantastical dream that make believes they even have a chance on a market place with marketting that demands bigger and better, that they are so deluded to believe that UO will do anything to spark the imagination of the average gamer in this day and age.

I'm sorry to inform you, UO is not the flagship of the EA fleet anymore, and it's obvious it was retired sometime ago.

 

[Vyrquenox]

lets see. yada yada old farts, yada yada vile and insultive, vitriole and bile etc etc. how about I beat the brains out of some guy while screaming at him his big problem is he is too violent.