15 year retrospective; biggest game changer?

[RaDian FlGith]

Things I think were major game changers, in a good way:
- Trammel (UO would have died otherwise)
- Item properties (If we were still on the same UO items 15 years later, we'd definitely be bored)
- Customizable housing (Suddenly you could design your own part of the world)
- Player races (Finally, not forced to play just humans)
- Item insurance (death does not need to be painful to make the game challenging)
- Power scrolls (6x120 is nice)
- 720 skill points (see above)

Things I think were major game changers in a bad way:
- Trammel (It killed all of the non-PvP communities and killed Felucca too)
- Customizable housing (Dear god, some people should require licenses to build their own part of the world)
- Gargoyle itemization different from everyone else's (because making arbitrary complexity is never a good thing)
- Champ spawns/Power Scrolls as tokens to the non-existent Feluccans (long, long reasoning for this opinion, not going to expound here)
- Waiting for 720 skill points (just give everyone 720... those extra 20 points can be important)
- Arbitrary linking of skills (Mysticism and Imbuing, Magery and Inscription... If you're going to tie combat to crafting, give 100 points of free, dedicated crafting)

I'm sure I'm missing/forgetting something, but it's 4am... heh

 

[Warsong of LS]

Its really the little things I miss...

my biggest example - identify wands/staves. I was always excited to pull a weapon, armor or jewelry and then rushing home to grab my stash of id wands to see what I pulled out.

A little of the excitment died for me when you can just highlight the item and know exactly what it is.

I miss my supremely accurate silver katana of vanqusihing!

 

[FrejaSP]

Tram was easily the biggest change. No Tram and it wouldn't matter what kinda armor or houses there were because the game would be long dead.

Also, like if you're tired of hearing how dead crafting is while wearing 100m worth of player crafted stuff.

The problem with Trammel is, they ruined the old shards. I played on Atlantic and Drachenfells, both was doing well without Trammel. We was alot of players and had alot of fun. There was no reason to split the community the way they did.
Yes some players wanted to play a non PvP version of UO, that's fine but they should had made new shards for them with Trammel code. I doubt it would had killed the old shards as most was happy there.
And about wearing a 100m crafted suit. I think that's to expensive and should not exist. I sell suits from 50-200k, I may craft and sell some more expensive but never near 100m.
On Siege, I believe many run in suits worth 1-2m but most use a suit with something like LRC 100, Luck 240-600, MR 6 5x70 and maybe HPR 6 or SI 42. I sell a suit of Luck 540, MR6 5x70 or LRC100, MR6, 5x70 for 80k.
I believe my own suits are worth 2-4m but I don't have the time to get resources to expensive suits for my vendors.
Suits may not be worth 100m on Siege but our economy are different, almost everything is cheaper on Siege

 

[Ludes]

Its really the little things I miss...

my biggest example - identify wands/staves. I was always excited to pull a weapon, armor or jewelry and then rushing home to grab my stash of id wands to see what I pulled out.

A little of the excitment died for me when you can just highlight the item and know exactly what it is.

I miss my supremely accurate silver katana of vanqusihing!

I still have some of those Wands of Identification somewhere.

 

[Meatbread]

The problem with Trammel is, they ruined the old shards. I played on Atlantic and Drachenfells, both was doing well without Trammel. We was alot of players and had alot of fun. There was no reason to split the community the way they did.

I've seen enough dev quotes over the years that I'm not even going to address nonsense like this anymore. The game was hurting. Go tell the tumbleweeds on Siege or in every Felucca how popular open PVP is.

Yes some players wanted to play a non PvP version of UO,

You mean a massive majority of UO players wanted a non-PVP version of UO, and they wanted it SO MUCH that they would abandon existing communities in droves to pile into Trammel, leaving Fel a ghost town forever after, right?

that's fine but they should had made new shards for them with Trammel code. I doubt it would had killed the old shards as most was happy there.

The old shards would have dropped dead in a matter of months. What's with this PVPer fantasy that more people would love playing with them if only EA would try forcing them? Listen, the audience for PVP was what it was. No one else was interested, and whether they left for Trammel, a different shard, or a different game, they weren't sticking around.

 

[GalenKnighthawke]

The problem with Trammel is, they ruined the old shards. I played on Atlantic and Drachenfells, both was doing well without Trammel. We was alot of players and had alot of fun. There was no reason to split the community the way they did.

Predators had fun. The rest of us were slowly leaving for Everquest.

That things were doing fine is a myth perpetrated by players like you. It is too dangerous to dismiss this myth unchallenged, which is why I'll quite rarely willingly let it be stated unchallenged.

Once they made Trammel most people left for it and never went back to Felucca. If this were not true, the manufacturers would not have had to create a near-unending stream of incentives to get people to go back to Felucca. An unending streams of failed incentives. I have dealt with what exactly those incentives were in other posts, and I'm kind of tired of copying and pasting it only to be told that these are somehow not "real" incentives.

Were this not true, why wasn't Trammel under-populated? Why didn't people stay if they were having fun? Why the need to create incentives to balance out server loads? Why would Siege and Mugen be the least-populated shards (as evidenced by a conveniently deleted post on Stratics made by Draconi)?

All this has been said before and is basically impossible to refute by actual facts.

-Galen's player

 

[GalenKnighthawke]

I don't know how all you Trammie noobs can say it was anything other than allowing Factioners to rez their own Faction Horses with no Vet skill. Well, maybe also the decline of houses on the LS shard named "Pimp Shack."

-Galen's player

 

[FrejaSP]

I've seen enough dev quotes over the years that I'm not even going to address nonsense like this anymore. The game was hurting. Go tell the tumbleweeds on Siege or in every Felucca how popular open PVP is.

You can't know, you can only guess. If you look at WOW, there was more PvP sservers than non PvP servers last I played (Europa shards) The game was not hurting but we was losing players to new games.

You mean a massive majority of UO players wanted a non-PVP version of UO, and they wanted it SO MUCH that they would abandon existing communities in droves to pile into Trammel, leaving Fel a ghost town forever after, right?

How can you know? I was playing before Trammel and so was my friends and we loved it. Yes I know, there was some, who was standing in town, complaining about all the PK's right outside town. Sure there was PK's, but they did not stop me from do lumbering, mining or killing monsters outside town and in the dungeons.
Some would had started over on new Trammel shards but alot would had got bored and went back to their old shards. You can't compare a Fel shart to a Fel facet or Siege with all our special rules.

The old shards would have dropped dead in a matter of months. What's with this PVPer fantasy that more people would love playing with them if only EA would try forcing them? Listen, the audience for PVP was what it was. No one else was interested, and whether they left for Trammel, a different shard, or a different game, they weren't sticking around.

The day they close Siege, I will be done with UO. I had tryed to play on Atlantic on my old chars but the shard is dead for me, I can't breath there.
I believe we would have ended up with the same count of Trammel and Fel shards but sure I too can only guess, I can't know.

 

[FrejaSP]

Predators had fun. The rest of us were slowly leaving for Everquest.

Galen you and I will never agree on this subject as we are from tro different worlds. You do not understand me and I do not understand you.
Just a note, Freja was blue at that time and did only fight when attacked, but I had a hell of fun and I miss it.
I had been blue the last years on Siege too

 

[Picus of Napa]

Those that still complain about the pvp from 98-00 are the same ones that rolled over and died on mass without even trying to stand your ground. You didn't bother to try then and you are still crying about it now.

 

[GalenKnighthawke]

Galen you and I will never agree on this subject as we are from tro different worlds. You do not understand me and I do not understand you.
Just a note, Freja was blue at that time and did only fight when attacked, but I had a hell of fun and I miss it.
I had been blue the last years on Siege too

It's only about opinion and understanding to a limited degree. To a greater degree, it's a factual dispute. (All facts have some opinion laden in, I recognize that, even as most of my opponents do not. But there's still more facts than opinion at issue.)

The weight of the evidence is quite strong that you're wrong. If Felucca and the lifestyle it represents weren't a problem (problem meaning something that detracted from rather than enhanced game enjoyment for most players), they (meaning several successive UO teams) would never have had to create Trammel to begin with. They did. If Felucca and the lifestyle it represents weren't a problem they would never have had to create an unending stream of incentives to get people to Fel; people would go to Fel on their own. The players didn't go to Fel on their own, the devs had to create those incentives, which by the way long-term have all failed. If Felucca and the lifestyle it represents weren't a problem Cal would have had his way and "brought back" the "wild west" lifestyle that "everyone wants." Of course once he saw past Stratics, and posters such as you, he realized what most players already know, which is that that lifestyle is specifically not what "everyone" wants, and whatever he was planning went by the wayside, as well it should have.

Mostly waht's an opinion here, Freja, is how one feels about or thinks about all this. You like the Fel lifestyle. It's your thing, you're into it. Hence you play 1 of the 2 shards that caters to it exclusively. To most players, however, the Fel lifestyle was not their thing, they were not into it.

Hence, Trammel. Hence a long string of failed incentives.

-Galen's player

 

[Argoas]

Stupid question, why the vast majority of 'free' shards of UO are on a classic setting? (at least, no trammel, no insurance, blabla). And i dont see there only warriors, but crafters, tamers, etc.

 

[GalenKnighthawke]

Stupid question, why the vast majority of 'free' shards of UO are on a classic setting? (at least, no trammel, no insurance, blabla). And i dont see there only warriors, but crafters, tamers, etc.

First of all the free shards are actually not any kind of "classic" setting, especially the bigger ones. They are mostly hybrids of various rules sets offering additional features such as custom paper dolls and/or stuff like gigantic horde minions available as pets and/or increased GM support; stuff like that. Some have Trammel and some don't. Secondly,most of their audiences are fairly small. A few hundred online at any given time, and more-typically a few dozen.

I did the research some years back during all the custom shard nonsense. I found that most of the custom sharders' claims were easily refuted but never posted my results. There seemed little point. Like the arguments of their comrades in arms, the standard Fellies, their arguments were not about reality but about romance and reality was only of limited use in disputing their claims.

So I didn't bother trying once I'd satisfied my own curiosity.

-Galen's player

 

[FrejaSP]

Galen, there are a few thing you do not see.
Siege was made before Trammel. Alot did start and I mean alot, the shard was filled with players. Then there was a duping problem and they wipped the shard and all had to start over. That alone was enough to make alot give up but I don't know why Devs decided to changes the code so only few wanted to play there. Siege was never ever just a Felucca shard. If it had been, I promise you, it had been a success and we would had needed more shards.
Siege rules year 1999
1. No stat loss - this are gone on all shards now
2. No recall - This is not needed now where flaget players can't recall/gate
3. No gating in and out of of dungeon. - I do like this, it stop PK's from gate from PvM spot to PvM spot
4. Only one char on an account - This make alot give up Siege
5. Red and grey can't kick/ban from houses. - We lost this rule many years ago
6. Red and grey will clean the ban list in houses, they are friend of, when they use the door. - We lost this rule many years ago
7. NPC vendors take 3X the price for their wares. - They still do but not really a big problem now with LRC
8. NPC won't buy your wares - They still won't but that is a good thing as players will
9 Player vendors take 3X fee for working - They still do grrrrr
10. The murderer title is gone for good. - It is on all shards now
11. No bounty system - This is gone everywhere too now
12. Guards at the guard houses is peacefull, they do not attack reds. - They are gone now but I miss them, they always yelled at me, telling I was bad
13. RoT, Rate over Time skill gain for non resourse using skills. - RoT was bad at that time, only one gain every 20 min from 70 to 80, and the last gains was delayed one hour. It's much faster now but still bad.
14. No Trammel - That was the best part No trammel code on any facet
So s you see, this is why Siege never really become a success.

One thing more, the split did ruin several communities on old shard as they now was in Felucca and their enemies only logged on their red chars, when they had the numbers, else they would hide out in Trammel on blue chars. If it had been a pure Fel shard, they had only been able to hide in town on their blue chars. I know several of this blue communities did try to survive in Felucca but Felucca become a hell after the split as all was telling them to go to Trammel if they could not handle it. They would had suvived better without the split and I believe many of them would had stayed and not moved to a Trammel shard.

 

[FrejaSP]

Stupid question, why the vast majority of 'free' shards of UO are on a classic setting? (at least, no trammel, no insurance, blabla). And i dont see there only warriors, but crafters, tamers, etc.

I don't know about their rules, I never played there but I know UO lost alot of players to this shards, players who would had played on Felucca shards if Devs had made a better choice than the split.

 

[Meatbread]

How can you know? I was playing before Trammel and so was my friends and we loved it. Yes I know, there was some, who was standing in town, complaining about all the PK's right outside town. Sure there was PK's, but they did not stop me from do lumbering, mining or killing monsters outside town and in the dungeons.

Do I need to go dig up the old quotes from Calandryll, talking on another forum long after his time at EA ended, about how subscriptions were hurting and Trammel was a huge success? Because I will. I've done it before and will again. I just need to know that people like you will SEE it this time, not just ignore it yet again and go on pretending everyone loved PK.

How do I know that the massive majority wanted a non-PVP UO badly enough to abandon their communities in a mass exodus and leave Fel empty forever? Because that's exactly WHAT HAPPENED.

 

[FrejaSP]

Oh Cal was a God, who did know everything? He was just a dev, who believed everyone wanted non PvP.
I never said all wanted PvP, I would say 50/50. When they never tryed making Trammel shards instead of the split, noone can know how it would had ended, not even EA. Disappointed custumers always crye more than happy customers.
Anyway, it's my opinion, you don't have to agree with me.

 

[hen]

Trammel came about because of housing plain and simple. The crying of those multitudes that rolled over and died came a very poor second.

 

[FrejaSP]

Trammel came about because of housing plain and simple. The crying of those multitudes that rolled over and died came a very poor second.

Yes and alot did lose their house at that time. If a thief stole their key, the house was lost. If someone got in the door, he could loot everything, there was no lockdown and secure.
Now noone can lose their house or stuff in secure. Also they have insurance now, so Fel shard would had done well.

 

[MalagAste]

Obviously Freja you've never tried to do much in Fel on some of the other shards ...... This is how it basically is on MY home shard:

You go to Fel... You see no one for hours on end... You decide hum..... lets try a champ spawn... The largest guild on the Fel shard watches you.... hidden of course... They roll in when you are near done kill you at 15 to 1 odds and take everything... No one stops them much...

You go to Fel Yew Gate.... listen to your fill of Smack Talk and boring dribble and non-sense about who's cheating, hacking and crybaby housefighters.... blah blah... try to do some PvP there..... they use some sort of speed hack and move at rates unknown to the average person..... Pop in from out of nowhere at warp speed hit you with a bokuto or something to paralize you over and over while doing some kind of packet push and hack to run through every blocking item in game... chase you down reveal you out of stealth.... hit you with arrows while you are hidden... call you a newb... tell you to go back to tram insult you and your entire family...

You think Oh.... I will mine/lumberjack..... whatever in fel...... You see no one for hours and hours...

You think about doing factions.... they put people in your faction to kill you from inside your own base while they keep you from fleeing out the front while you try to defend...



Yes this I find fun and appealing... NOT. Very occasionally you find a few decent folk in Fel who will duel with you without cheating or having their friends jump in and kill you when you are down.... or that don't have their friend healing them while you are beating them... but those times are very few and far between. More often than not Fel is a complete ghosttown or full of cheaters and Zergs.

Most everyone knows that the largest Fel guild there for many many years pretty much controlled all the champs for ages... they made 100's of thousands of dollars doing so .... the "top" few of the guild did.... most the normal "players" didn't get squat but pretty suits and arties usually duped or bought with ill gained gold... and held a strangle hold on the shard.... most times the DEV's think it's cool to put things in Fel only what they are basically doing is just adding more money to line the pockets of the few who control the wealth of Fel... because most all the normal players of our shard go to other shards to do Champs and the like where we don't have to deal with all the hacking, cheating and other things.

And of course it's those few who make a four or five figure or more income off of UO that scream the loudest if you try to put an end to all that.

I believe a long while back a "defector" of sorts left one of those said guilds and gave an insightful and damning review of what it was like... and how it really was... This put an end to EBay selling infact... but that aspect of UO has not stopped... they are still making 100's of thousands of dollars off the game..... and do you think for one second that they will want that to change? NO.


As for free shards I never pay them much mind.... in my experience from old friends that either tried free shards, ran free shards or still play free shards... it's pretty much a gamble.. if you aren't friends with those who run the shard you can safely bet that you'll run into their friends and will get squashed quickly... if you ran a free shard you pretty much can't come back to UO because you know what "could be" but never will be... and if your still playing one it's because you know who's running it and you get all the favors you want... many who've tried them also complained the lag is bad... they randomly shut down whenever for however long... they are highly unreliable and you are at the whim of their host with no other recourse... but to return to a more stable paid server.

 

[FrejaSP]

Obviously Freja you've never tried to do much in Fel on some of the other shards ...... This is how it basically is on MY home shard:

I know it is that way now, it was not that way before Trammel and it would not be that way on a Fel only shard. I know how it was in old days before Trammel and how it is/was on Siege.
As I said, you can't hunt them down as they only show when they have the numbers. On an all fel shard, you could hunt their blue too. Sure guilds would end up with some red guards but it would work.

Yes this I find fun and appealing... NOT. Very occasionally you find a few decent folk in Fel who will duel with you without cheating or having their friends jump in and kill you when you are down.... or that don't have their friend healing them while you are beating them... but those times are very few and far between. More often than not Fel is a complete ghosttown or full of cheaters and Zergs.

I do not say all would find a Fel shard fun but it would be very different from the Fel you know. Did you ever try out Siege? If you did, did you then see the same problems on Siege as in Fel on your shard?

Most everyone knows that the largest Fel guild there for many many years pretty much controlled all the champs for ages... they made 100's of thousands of dollars doing so .... the "top" few of the guild did.... most the normal "players" didn't get squat but pretty suits and arties usually duped or bought with ill gained gold... and held a strangle hold on the shard.... most times the DEV's think it's cool to put things in Fel only what they are basically doing is just adding more money to line the pockets of the few who control the wealth of Fel... because most all the normal players of our shard go to other shards to do Champs and the like where we don't have to deal with all the hacking, cheating and other things.

This is Devs fail, instead of only spawn PS in Fel they should just had made 2x the spawn in Fel as the risk is bigger there. On Siege there was that problem. Sure the large guilds got most scrolls but they did resell to a fair price and every newbie on Siege was offered 110 scrolls for free, only the mage scrolls was a little harder to get for free. On Siege some of the largest guilds was blue.

I believe a long while back a "defector" of sorts left one of those said guilds and gave an insightful and damning review of what it was like... and how it really was... This put an end to EBay selling infact... but that aspect of UO has not stopped... they are still making 100's of thousands of dollars off the game..... and do you think for one second that they will want that to change? NO.

I believe it would be different with Trammel only shards and Fel only shards. The fights on the Fel shards about the spawn would not effect the Trammel shards. On the Fel shards, it would not be so easy to dominate the shard as the shard would join up against the trouble makers, we had seen that happen on Siege.

As for free shards I never pay them much mind.... in my experience from old friends that either tried free shards, ran free shards or still play free shards... it's pretty much a gamble.. if you aren't friends with those who run the shard you can safely bet that you'll run into their friends and will get squashed quickly... if you ran a free shard you pretty much can't come back to UO because you know what "could be" but never will be... and if your still playing one it's because you know who's running it and you get all the favors you want... many who've tried them also complained the lag is bad... they randomly shut down whenever for however long... they are highly unreliable and you are at the whim of their host with no other recourse... but to return to a more stable paid server.

The problem is, they don't have EA Fel shards to go back too.

 

[Argoas]

Oh Cal was a God, who did know everything? He was just a dev, who believed everyone wanted non PvP.
I never said all wanted PvP, I would say 50/50. When they never tryed making Trammel shards instead of the split, noone can know how it would had ended, not even EA. Disappointed custumers always crye more than happy customers.
Anyway, it's my opinion, you don't have to agree with me.

Yeah, i suppose that because EA wants to earn money, that was well done. For me, it's like you enter to play minecraft (for example) because you enjoy sandbox games and it turns to counter strike because "everyone wanted pvp". The essence was lost because of what everyone wanted, and a unique game became popular at the cost of lose part of its personality.

 

[Woodsman]

This is what I know based on observation:
* On every normal shard, Tram is many times more populated than Fel.
* Subscriptions increased after Tram
* The UO teams over the years have had to offer incentives to get players to go to Fel. Even then, most players just bought those incentives from people who farmed in Fel.
* Ultima Online 2 was going to be primarily consensual PvP. Some of the people working on UO2 were big on PvP, but they still made that decision to make it consensual for the most part.

With the exception of a few such as Darkfall and EVE Online, all other mainstream MMORPGs that came after UO made the decision to make PvP consensual. Many of these companies employed ex-UO devs who knew UO and knew the PvP situation better than anybody in this thread.


Freja - you cited World of Warcraft as evidence to back up your argument, but what you forget is that World of Warcraft is still consensual PvP. You cannot be forced onto a PvP server. Also, trivia note: Blizzard refers to the PvE servers as "normal"

If non-consenual PvP was what gamers wanted, then the majority of MMORPGs would be non-consensual PvP, but they are not. That is why so many people relish EVE Online - it is the ultimate in PvP - you can lose everything to somebody else and you can win everything from somebody else. It's also why EVE Online only has 400,000 subscribers though - many people do not want to risk that much.

 

[Woodsman]

You can't know, you can only guess. If you look at WOW, there was more PvP sservers than non PvP servers last I played (Europa shards) The game was not hurting but we was losing players to new games.

In North America, there are more non-PvP servers. And WOW constantly loses players to other games, only to see them come back later when they get bored, or when a new expansion comes out.

Freja, we can disagree over the popularity all day long, but I can go on any regular shard and see with my own eyes the differences in active populations.

Also, most of us would not argue with you that the Tram/Fel split was not the optimal way to go as far as separating PvP and non-PvPers. I think the Tram/Fel split did a lot of harm because so many people chose Tram, which destroyed many close-knit communities. I would have preferred people be split out into different shards instead of facets, with free transfer tokens of some sort for people to move where they wanted to move. At the very least, I would have liked there to be a toggle of sorts.

 

[FrejaSP]

This is what I know based on observation:

* On every normal shard, Tram is many times more populated than Fel. Yes but that because they are on same shards. I'm saying, there should be Trammel only shards and Fel only shards. Both should have all the facets
* Subscriptions increased after Tram. Yes and it would have increased too if they had let the old shards alone and made new Trammel shards instead, maybe even more.
* The UO teams over the years have had to offer incentives to get players to go to Fel. Even then, most players just bought those incentives from people who farmed in Fel. They never tryed to make a Fel only shard with insurance and every facet there is on, like Siege but without the stupid Siege rules. You can't have the two ruleset on the same shard as you force two kind of players to play together.

Freja - you cited World of Warcraft as evidence to back up your argument, but what you forget is that World of Warcraft is still consensual PvP. You cannot be forced onto a PvP server. Also, trivia note: Blizzard refers to the PvE servers as "normal"

Nor should you be forced to play on UO Fel servers, you could choose UO Trammel servers. I did choose to play on a WOW PvP server, I also tryed a PvPRP server, I liked that alot

If non-consenual PvP was what gamers wanted, then the majority of MMORPGs would be non-consensual PvP, but they are not. That is why so many people relish EVE Online - it is the ultimate in PvP - you can lose everything to somebody else and you can win everything from somebody else. It's also why EVE Online only has 400,000 subscribers though - many people do not want to risk that much.

We can almost lose everything on Siege, we like it that way. That is not what make players leave Siege. They don't like "no recall", "one char slot", "no ACT" and slow skill gain, that's what make them give up. Also the facts, that they have to give up their house on old shard is a problem, they need to be able to have a small house as long they do login to the shard.
There would need to be some diff in the spawn of resources if the Fel shards should be without item insurance. If you risk to lose your gear, you should be able to affort a new suit. On Siege AoS almost killed our shard. Before we could PvP in GM made armor. Now with imbuing, it's going much better, we just need 2x resource spawn to balance it vs the shards with item insurance.
I think most would like the Fel shards to have item insurance even when I think it would be better without.

 

[Magdalene]

Pssst... let's not turn it into yet another Tram/Fel dispute. What's done is done, we can all agree it was a dramatic game changing event, and let's leave it at that.
(you may consider it a watered-down general warning).

 

[FrejaSP]

In North America, there are more non-PvP servers. And WOW constantly loses players to other games, only to see them come back later when they get bored, or when a new expansion comes out.

WOW do have a great look, but it do not have the deept UO do have. You do get bored after a while.

Freja, we can disagree over the popularity all day long, but I can go on any regular shard and see with my own eyes the differences in active populations.

You can't compare a Fel facet to what a shard with Fel ruleset would be. I challenge you to make a char on Siege and try to compare Siege to your Fel facet. Look at the community, look at the way the players act, both the red and the blue. Then tell me your observation

Also, most of us would not argue with you that the Tram/Fel split was not the optimal way to go as far as separating PvP and non-PvPers. I think the Tram/Fel split did a lot of harm because so many people chose Tram, which destroyed many close-knit communities. I would have preferred people be split out into different shards instead of facets, with free transfer tokens of some sort for people to move where they wanted to move. At the very least, I would have liked there to be a toggle of sorts.

That's what I was trying to say
I had been thinking of a toggle too. It could work on Trammel shards but not on the PvP shard. Faction could be your troggle on the Trammel shards, just let it work on all facets as it do on Siege. It do effect the count of reds on Siege as alot just will join factions to find someone to PvP with. We do not have alot of reds on Siege and some of them we do have is cool guys who may kill you but not to grief you.

 

[FrejaSP]

Pssst... let's not turn it into yet another Tram/Fel dispute. What's done is done, we can all agree it was a dramatic game changing event, and let's leave it at that.
(you may consider it a watered-down general warning).

OK, I will take it to PM if that is better.
An old word say, it's never to late.

 

[georgemarvin2001]

There have been a lot of big changes to UO over the years. AOS, Trammel, item insurance and power scrolls were the biggest mistakes. That dev crew decided to make UO a lot like Diablo. Unfortunately, Diablo 2 was free to play online, so most of the Diablo 2 fans just kept playing it, and a lot of us UO players hated the changes, so they left. Other sandbox games like EVE, the old Star Wars Galaxies, etc. took in massive numbers of former UO players, as did the free shards. If I remember correctly, UO went from a subscriber base of 300k the day before AOS came out, to about 150k the next time EA released subscription numbers, and has kept falling slowly ever since, even though the crews in recent years have done a lot to fix some of the worst problems created by AOS.

A list of the good, the bad and the whatever changes I've seen since 1999:

The Good:
1. Customizable housing
2. the new dungeons and playable content
3. New lands, even if some of them aren't all that popular
4. Imbuing
5. New skills
6. Secure storage in houses

The Bad:
1. AOS
2. Power Scrolls
3. Stat Scrolls
4. Making weapons and armor TOO complicated. Even EVE's dozens of possibilities per slot is downright simple in comparison to UO's Random Number Generator based system.
5. Item Insurance
6. AOS made good items so expensive that insurance is mandatory. The days of the naked mage or a warrior using simple GM crafted armor were no more.
7. Trammel, as it was done. Making new shards that were Trammel rule set would have been fine. Splitting the shards was a disaster.
8. The 720 skill point vet bonus. It gives new players one more reason to NOT stick around.
9. Vet rewards that give the vets a tactical advantage over new players. Cosmetic stuff for vet rewards is fine, but they shouldn't affect combat.
10. At times, skills have been extremely hard, to even impossible to gain through normal game play. After they ended Power Hour and implemented GGS right after AOS was the worst. The ONLY way to gain some skills was to get the daily GGS for a couple of years there. I liked it better in the pre-trammel era when you could buy skills up to a reasonable amount at the vendor in the tunnels below Bucs Den, and train most combat skills easily.
11. Useful items that you have to buy in the store
12. No copies of UO on the store shelves; everything is download only these days
13. This is more a lack of change: Nobody has made the CC high-def, and the EC graphics are decidedly sub-standard.
14. Also a lack of change: Some of the bugs created by AOS way back in 2003 are still alive and well today.
15. BODs: They were far too complicated and random.

The Whatever:
1. Massive amounts of low-resolution eye candy
2. The EC, just because it's never lived up to its potential. We should all WANT to switch to it; it should be bug-free by now.
3. We still pay a premium price for subscriptions, despite the fact that the dev crew is just a fraction of that of other premium-price games. Even a lot of FTP games have a lot more resources devoted to them than UO does.
4. The bright colors are ok, but nothing we couldn't live without. And some of them are downright garish.
5. Malas. It should have been done differently, but due to the fact that everything is convenient, it replaced Britain as the go-to town if you want to spam that you're buying or selling something. Unfortunately, that very convenience means that it's always crowded and laggy, on Atlantic at least.

 

[Driven Insane]

I ignore Seige players. I played there for years. That shard is freaking dead and the few people that play it all run around with hiding/stealth either cowering in the corners or waiting to gank whoever comes along and as much as they talk about what a great community they have, they talk as much crap as anyone on a production shard, if not worse.

Also if they did make Fel/Tram only servers I'd quit tomorrow. I like having access to both playsets on my chars.

 

[GalenKnighthawke]

Pssst... let's not turn it into yet another Tram/Fel dispute. What's done is done, we can all agree it was a dramatic game changing event, and let's leave it at that.
(you may consider it a watered-down general warning).

Freja ignored your warning.

I therefore have no choice but to also ignore it.

-Galen's player

 

[GalenKnighthawke]

Galen, there are a few thing you do not see.

...
Siege was never ever just a Felucca shard. If it had been, I promise you, it had been a success and we would had needed more shards.

And a few lines later:

14. No Trammel - That was the best part No trammel code on any facet

So s you see, this is why Siege never really become a success.

So it wasn't a Felucca shard, would have been more successful if it was, yet it had no Trammel, which was the best part, yet the best part was why it didn't become a success.

The seriousness most of your posts can be taken from this basic conceptual contradiction.

You have, at the end of the day, nothing but faith in a fact pattern that was not, and has never been, and never will be, in evidence.

-Galen's player

 

[GalenKnighthawke]

OK, I will take it to PM if that is better.
An old word say, it's never to late.

You say you will take it to PM after you post.

Convenient.

-Galen's player

 

[GalenKnighthawke]

* On every normal shard, Tram is many times more populated than Fel. Yes but that because they are on same shards. I'm saying, there should be Trammel only shards and Fel only shards. Both should have all the facets
* Subscriptions increased after Tram. Yes and it would have increased too if they had let the old shards alone and made new Trammel shards instead, maybe even more.
* The UO teams over the years have had to offer incentives to get players to go to Fel. Even then, most players just bought those incentives from people who farmed in Fel. They never tryed to make a Fel only shard with insurance and every facet there is on, like Siege but without the stupid Siege rules. You can't have the two ruleset on the same shard as you force two kind of players to play together.


Nor should you be forced to play on UO Fel servers, you could choose UO Trammel servers. I did choose to play on a WOW PvP server, I also tryed a PvPRP server, I liked that alot


We can almost lose everything on Siege, we like it that way. That is not what make players leave Siege. They don't like "no recall", "one char slot", "no ACT" and slow skill gain, that's what make them give up. Also the facts, that they have to give up their house on old shard is a problem, they need to be able to have a small house as long they do login to the shard.
There would need to be some diff in the spawn of resources if the Fel shards should be without item insurance. If you risk to lose your gear, you should be able to affort a new suit. On Siege AoS almost killed our shard. Before we could PvP in GM made armor. Now with imbuing, it's going much better, we just need 2x resource spawn to balance it vs the shards with item insurance.
I think most would like the Fel shards to have item insurance even when I think it would be better without.

It should be noted that almost everything Freja cited as an advantage of Siege, the reason they like it, has been at one point or another been the subject of a removal request by a Siege player.

-Galen's player

 

[GalenKnighthawke]

Oh Cal was a God, who did know everything? He was just a dev, who believed everyone wanted non PvP.
I never said all wanted PvP, I would say 50/50. When they never tryed making Trammel shards instead of the split, noone can know how it would had ended, not even EA. Disappointed custumers always crye more than happy customers.
Anyway, it's my opinion, you don't have to agree with me.

The interesting thing about this post is it shows the degree to which Freja does not consider any source authoritative unless it agrees with her, more or less completely.

The mere fact that Cal (the old dev, not the Producer from more recent times, I think she means) saw the fact pattern as it was means he can't be believed, because it contradicts the "50/50" figure that she has made up out of thin air.

-Galen's player

 

[Black Majick]

Left out a reply to someones post. Gonna keep thread on topic.

Biggest game changers for me

Tram/Fel
Removing Order/Chaos
AoS Item Mods

and then the most recent faction changes. It put the lid on PvP for alot of shards.

BTW...Why do no guilds war anymore?

 

[Meatbread]

She also wants to imagine Calandryll as some sort of evil carebear, when I know for a fact that he played a red before he joined OSI. Hold on I'll just post little selections from his posts.

The thing PKs need to understand is that their playstyle was driving people out of the game - in droves. It was also the source of a LOT of really, really bad PR.

(...)

In fact, my character was “red" for most of the time I played UO from killing looters, fire-fielders, and other people who abused the notoriety and reputation systems to PK or loot people without incurring a penalty. We used to joke that the only way to actually be virtuous in UO was to go Dread. But that’s a different story.

Anyway, from my personal perspective, I didn’t see PKing as that big of a deal. Until I came to OSI and saw the effect on UO's subscribers and saw just how many people were in fact upset about and quitting over it.

(LINK)

You'll need to register if you want to see the thread. That same site suffered a mini-invasion from Stratics a few years ago when Mark Jacobs got caught posting about UO there and not here. So yeah, Freja, a frormer UO developer who had access to actual subscription data, speaking informally with no axe to grind, years after leaving EA.

You never get to have this argument again. It's over.

 

[PlayerSkillFTW]

The biggest gamechanger i can think of, besides the ones already listed like Trammel/AoS, was when GMs (Game Masters) became Extinct.

 

[Sauteed Onion]

The biggest gamechanger i can think of, besides the ones already listed like Trammel/AoS, was when GMs (Game Masters) became Extinct.

I went through a stint where I couldn't get any type of GM interaction over some things that were clearly game breaking problems to things that were slight nuissances, but in the last year I've had a few positive experiences.

 

[FrejaSP]

When we got rid of the limit for co-owners, that made it so much easier to friend someone who needed access to a secure chest when we could make our own accounts co-owners. On Siege we do have alot players who can't place a house. This little changes/fix was great for Siege.

 

[Lord Frodo]

Control Slots for Tamers. Gone were the days of the Mage/Tamer and thier Dragon Pack. SAD! Was a sight to see when Mage/Tamers walked around (anywhere they wanted) and people parted the ways or ran screaming (PKs). LOL

 

[RaDian FlGith]

If you look at WOW, there was more PvP sservers than non PvP servers last I played (Europa shards) The game was not hurting but we was losing players to new games.

These are from a rough count of all available World of Warcraft servers:

PvE: 108
PvP: 95
RP: 17
RPvP: 6

Now, does World of Warcraft have a higher ratio of PvE vs. PvP servers? Yes. But you should note too that WoW did a fantastic job of introducing people to PvP from the mindset of "you start here, the 'reds' can't touch you," and they ease you into it. Me, personally, I play on a PvP server myself.

However, just blindly saying, "Look, WoW has more PvP servers!" without taking a great many things into consideration would also be silly.

Ultima Online was derived from Ultima. Ultima was never in any way, shape, or form a multiplayer experience prior to Ultima Online (unless maybe one of the Ultima Dungeons thingies was multiplayer, but I don't think it was, and even if it was, it wasn't significant).

World of Warcraft on the other hand was derived from Warcraft, a game that had limited playability as a single-player experience through its life, but which was openly embraced the idea of pitting players against players in an RTS.

This is to say that in 9 Ultimas not counting expansions and side treks, there was never any player vs. player confrontation. In 3 Warcrafts, while the storyline was important to the game, they were built (particularly successive to Warcraft (I)) with player confrontation in mind.

Additionally, World of Warcraft uses a PvP flag on its PvE servers, and then with PvP, it's pretty much free for all no matter where you go. Sure, that kind of thing sounds "sweet," but then you fail to make another observation:

World of Warcraft is a directed experience. I won't use the word "never" because that would be silly, but most frequently, if you are in an area for lowbies, you're going to encounter other lowbies, and will rarely encounter someone just sitting around to smash you. This is because if you're a higher level character, you have things that have been directed for you to do. You're not going to go mining Pyrite in Ashenvale because Pyrite doesn't exist in Ashenvale. High level materials are in high level zones. High level instances are in high level zones -- and even if they weren't (since it doesn't matter anyway because you can queue up for them) you still would never encounter a lowbie. PvP via the battlegrounds never matches an 85 against a level 20. In fact, so sacred is the idea of "even fields" that they break them off in groups of 10, and the highest level players (ie: level 85s at present) all fight against each other. You won't even find an 84 in a level 85 battleground. This is because Blizzard -- knowing that WoW is a level-based game -- created a directed experience.

Ultima Online is an open world. Valorite spawns ANYWHERE. In fact, it might not spawn in the same place twice with this new random screw with the crafters to spite the scripters who in no way feel spited method of determining resources. You're as valid a target to a red if you're walking out of Britain as you are as if you were walking through the middle of the Abyss (Siege and Mugen being our PvP servers). It's a whole different experience. And, unfortunately, thirteen years of handling PvP in the manner that it has been handled on production shards has shown one thing: most people are not interested in PvP in Ultima Online.

And now to the question of the day: Are Siege and Mugen so overcrowded that there is a need for new PvP servers?

We both know the answer to that.

 

[RaDian FlGith]

When we got rid of the limit for co-owners, that made it so much easier to friend someone who needed access to a secure chest when we could make our own accounts co-owners. On Siege we do have alot players who can't place a house. This little changes/fix was great for Siege.

Can't place because of crowding, or can't place because they can't afford it?

 

[FrejaSP]

Can't place because of crowding, or can't place because they can't afford it?

Can't place because they not yet are ready to give up their house on their old shard.
I can't reply on the PvP debat as there is a warning from Magdalene in this thread and I respect that

 

[Sevin0oo0]

In more recent of times I'd say Housing ownership changes and banning the sale of virtual items

 

[RaDian FlGith]

Those that still complain about the pvp from 98-00 are the same ones that rolled over and died on mass without even trying to stand your ground. You didn't bother to try then and you are still crying about it now.

So as the guild leader of the largest anti-PK guild on Great Lakes back when there was a need for anti-PK guilds, am I allowed to say that the game is better now for a vast majority of the game's interested players than it would have been had Trammel never come along? No one in my guild rolled over and died. We were founded from blood and ashes, and we fought tooth and nail every minute of the way.

The idea that one "rolled over and died" because they didn't feel like fighting another player is silly. Most of the developers, including the Lead Developer of the game, understand that the "police yourselves" vision for UO was a failed experiment. But on a monthly basis we get to hear from those who wish it was still "go kill whomever you want" about how the last thirteen years of Trammel killed the game, all proof against that being ignored.

Look... I enjoyed playing UO during the first two years, no question. There was a rush to it that doesn't exist now, I'll agree. But I would rather that a majority of the people were able to play UO without needing me to go kill whomever killed them so that they could get their stuff back because they got ganked while trying to explore a dungeon than to go back to those days.

What you folks don't seem to understand is that prior to Trammel, vast areas in the game were largely unexplored by the majority of the playerbase. Most players were afraid to go to the dungeons because doing so meant losing everything and starting from scratch. "Go mine and craft," you say. People were afraid to run along the mountains because they knew their hard earned mining was subject to being whisked away. Go mine in groups then? Yeah... some of us did. But really... most players were getting tired of it all.

I will always agree that the way PvP vs. PvE was implemented was a mistake. But it's 13 years too late to do anything about it. Even if they turned off Felucca tomorrow and just made the whole world one big PvP flag for non-Siege servers, it wouldn't suddenly make players come back.

And it wouldn't change the other PvP fact that is what killed PvP in general in UO. For fifteen years, PvP has been a haven for cheating. Even back in the day, there were certain names on Great Lakes that, while not indestructible, were indeed much harder to kill (with groups of people) because they were exploiting in a large number of ways. That legacy remains today. Even people who enjoyed PvP for the challenge of PvP have left PvP altogether because EA has never been able to plug the holes that allow the unnamed group of programs to function. There are solutions, but not easy ones, and not cheap ones.

It's been a long, long road, but as someone who's been on both sides of the fence, I believe I'm qualified to compare both sides. And Trammel, while not optimal, was necessary.

 

[GalenKnighthawke]

OK, hopefully it was obvious that I was just joking about the resurrection Faction Warhorses and the decline of houses named pimp shack.

The biggest game changer can't really be Trammel, because that's been with us so long that it can no longer be seen as a game-changer: It's the reason the game still exists at all! The biggest game changer can't be the AoS game systems, because all that really did was change the method of play. It is entirely conceivable that, if all that had changed was the method of play, within a year everything could have been back to how it was just before AoS, with noticeable but comparatively minor adjustments.

The biggest game-changer was something that changed the game on a societal level. It happened as a result of AoS, but it's not AoS itself. It's something I literally do not think I've ever seen anyone point it out before. So I'll do it now.

As a result of the AoS changes, the effectiveness of PvP characters in PvM increased greatly. These changes included the Chivalry skill, the institution of special moves, the institution of hit area effects on weapons, and several others.

Before AoS, red guilds typically allied with PvMers in some fashion in order to work spawns. Either they were in the same guild, or through informal alliances (before the guild alliance system was instituted). Either way, the result was that reds would insure no outsiders came to a spawn, and the blue PvMers would work it. PKs needed tamers, bards, and other kinds of characters to actually work the spawn. Some PKs surely could work the spawn on their own but alliances with blues were usually beneficial.

Under AoS, though, templates associated with PvP such as battle mages and dexxers could suddenly own in PvM as well. Who needed tamers or bards when a couple of dexers or a couple of mages could pound their way through most champ spawns with comparative ease?

And, since champ spawns were and remain the only (OK, just to be sure I'll change this to "one of the very few") high-end PvM situation where rewards are actually guaranteed (as opposed to merely being a strong possibility), that is that. Suddenly one of the few guaranteed rewards were in the hands almost solely of Player Killers.

Now don't get me wrong, those same changes also enabled classic fantasy archetypes to fight high-end monsters, which was not the case before to any great degree, so there's a positive side to those changes as well. I once read a thread on either PowerGamers or Stratics, wherein someone proclaimed Chivalry to be "the savior or archery." One could also say it was the savior of every weapon skill when it came to PvM!

But, taken together these changes had the important side-effect of making PKs more self-sufficient, and those who don't typically like the Fel lifestyle less self-sufficient. Now, add in the effect of things like no stat loss for reds; no more removal from Fel dungeons upon death; the ability of both reds and blues to keep their stuffs upon death through the insurance system (remember how blues could keep their stuff if they died in the Lost Lands in Fel or in a Fel dungeon?); etc.

Take all these together and you went from random blues' situation in Fel being merely difficult to it being unsustainable. And that meant that one of the most-consistently rewarded high-end PvM systems was, in effect, out of the reach of those players who most-enjoy PvM.

-Galen's player

 

[RaDian FlGith]

Yes and alot did lose their house at that time. If a thief stole their key, the house was lost. If someone got in the door, he could loot everything, there was no lockdown and secure.
Now noone can lose their house or stuff in secure. Also they have insurance now, so Fel shard would had done well.

Umm...

Not to challenge your wisdom, but... lockdowns were introduced into the game before Trammel. They came because the developers came to agree that you shouldn't have to fear losing your house because of a lost key. In fact, you had to claim your ownership of your houses by being (1) the person who placed it, (2) having the master house key, (3) being on the friends list, or (4) having a key to the house in that order of importance. This was done pre-Trammel, by roughly a year if I recall correctly. It was part of the big 1.26.00.1 client update if I remember correctly that also introduced targeting reticules and was a pre-cursor to things like advanced alchemy and necromancy that were in the works on Test Center. But it was all definitely pre-Trammel. Maybe post-T2A, but definitely pre-Trammel.

 

[RaDian FlGith]

Can't place because they not yet are ready to give up their house on their old shard.
I can't reply on the PvP debat as there is a warning from Magdalene in this thread and I respect that

That's not an inability to place then, it's a decision not to.

 

[RaDian FlGith]

...As a result of the AoS changes, the effectiveness of PvP characters in PvM increased greatly. These changes included the Chivalry skill, the institution of special moves, the institution of hit area effects on weapons, and several others...

You know... that whole post is a great observation. I hadn't really looked at it that way before, but it's an excellent point. I remember the earliest days of spawns it did, indeed, take a large group of people to complete spawns, and it was exactly as you state... a bunch of reds either allowing the blues to progress the spawn to a manageable level before jumping in and taking it for themselves, or reds and blues mixed together in defense of it. But reds did not typically fight the spawn.

In my brief time in the guild that shall not be named (I can't bear being beaten down for it again by my respected RP comrades), a whole 3 of us were able to take a complete spawn. That seems... strangely divergent from the intent of the spawn system.