I picked the 2nd option because there were some things I liked this year and some things I didn't like. Below is a more detailed listing of my feedback. I know some of the things I've said will probably make some people mad, but I've tried to say things as diplomatically, but still as honestly, as I can. I enjoy UO and hope it will be around for many more years to come and I definitely understand how hard it must be to make content with wide appeal with such a small staff. I also understand that when you look at what we each pay in subscription fees for one account, it really doesn't amount to much (it is more significant, however, when you realize many people have multiple accounts and plop a rather large amount annually into UO.) So I don't really want to make a big deal out of this. However, I would still like to give some honest feedback about what I thought of the additions and changes that came to UO this year.
1/18/2013 Producer's Letter -
http://www.uo.com/article/Letter-Producer-1 - (1) Moving servers onto "the Cloud." Frankly, I don't think this move has helped UO at all this year. As a player, I can't think of anything good to say about this change. It's definitely had a detrimental effect on my ability to play UO. (2) A promise to continue working on high res art. Mesanna said they were currently working on all the wall pieces and would release new high res art when all the pieces from a specific set were finished. She said it was taking 3 weeks to finish each wall set, with 45 sets to do and 7 sets finished at that point. It would be nice to get an update on how this is progressing and if it is still in the works.
February - Publish 81 - Went to TC1 on 2/1/2013; Origin and Izumo on 4/9/2013; worldwide on 4/16/2013. (1) Weapon special move changes, special move mana cost changes, and normalization of weapon speed and handedness; armor inherent mana phase and SSI debuff (was replaced in the final publish with armor inherent LMC); combat changes; armor stamina loss; armor refinement - None of these changes affected me at all (other than the collection and storage of refinement components gathered from treasure and MIB chests, merchant and pirate vessel holds) since I stopped playing warrior characters years ago because the gear and power scrolls are too expensive for me to keep up with. However, I will say that I appreciated all the time and work that Phoenix, Kyronix, and Bleak put into coming up with the changes, tweaking them, and implementing them. (2) Armor material enhancement bonus update - Very happy with this change! (3) "Duped items can no longer be put on player vendors." Great idea in concept but I think implementation has been very hit-and-miss/problematic. (4) City elections and trade deal buffs. I appreciate the effort that's gone into this, but not really being into RP or having the RL schedule or time to ever be in UO when the EMs are around, it really has not affected me. I like the idea of city loyalty, but I'm afraid that the loyalty decay that was in effect for so long really squashed my interest in it. I still haven't restoked my enthusiasm for it enough to even get a city banner on any character on any shard and I have yet to take advantage of any trade deal buff. (5) Ability to pay for addition or removal of "Mage Armor" property. Great idea! Not so thrilled, though, with the actual implementation of "removing" the effect of the mage armor property from imbuing, reforging, and enhancing processes. (6) House co-ownership is now account-based. It's not quite the change many of us requested and I think it's had some problems, but overall I guess it's been a good change. (7) Pets will be rescued if the server resets to a backup during which the pet was out in the world. Sounds great in concept, but not sure if/when it really works. (8) Added more information to the Classic client status window. I was very pleased with this change! (9) "Looting rights threshold has been lowered for all mobs." I'm rarely able to play UO with guildmates/friends anymore and am extremely leery of just jumping in uninvited to help clobber the high-hit-point mobs, so this hasn't really affected me. But from what I've read, I think some people have doubts about how beneficial this change has been for most players.
http://www.uo.com/article/Publish-810-Comes-TC1; http://www.uo.com/article/Updated-Publish-81-Notes; http://www.uo.com/article/Updated-Publish-81-TC1; http://www.uo.com/article/Updated-Publish-81-TC1-0; http://www.uo.com/article/Publish-81-Updated-TC1-0; http://www.uo.com/Publish-81-Notes; http://www.uo.com/article/Publish-81-Comes-Origin-and-Izumo; http://www.uo.com/article/Publish-81-Patch-Notes.
2/4/2013 - Ask & Answer 14 - Phoenix said the following: "We are not 100% happy with how crab and lobster fishing works. At its core is a game of risk and reward, but we think that it is not well balanced. We would like to make some real improvements to this system, but we always have battling priorities." I was happy to see this, but the reality is that Phoenix is gone and we're down to one dev. I'd love to read that this is still in the works, but I have my doubts at this point.
http://www.uo.com/article/Ask-Answer-No-14
2/11/2013 - Ask & Answer 15 - In response to a number of questions from Magister_Returns regarding the Davy's Locker vet reward, Phoenix said: "We do agree that the usability and interface for the Locker can be better. We have it added to our list to address in the future." Again, because Phoenix is gone, I have my doubts about where this issue stands. I hope it is still in the works.
http://www.uo.com/article/Ask-Answer-No-15
2/14/2013 / 3/17/2013 - Valentine's Day and Easter gifts - I will say this as politely as I can: While I loved the rose bouquets, I was not happy with how they and the golden goose statues were made available, i.e., the limited amount of time (compared to previous year's) for getting these and the problems many people had with getting them because of how/where the EMs placed the clickable statue and the lack of information on where to find the statue. I realize that the threads we created here to help each other find them were helpful and provided a small sense of camaraderie. But I have to wonder just how many people who don't visit Stratics or perhaps Japanese fan sites were completely in the dark about what was going on. I also wasn't thrilled to see yet another concession to the "everything new, nice, or desirable must be ultra rare" crowd by making these only available one per account per shard. It's an aspect of UO that seems to be becoming more prevalent as time goes on and I think having it rubbed in our faces, especially for holiday items, is eroding many players' fondness for UO. Overall, it just feels like someone being stingy/mean/unpleasant just because they can be.
3/19/20 - Ask & Answer 17 - Gheed suggested to adjust reset time for once-per-day puzzles and quests to reset at server up or an established daily time. Mesanna agreed and said a bug would be put into the system for a future publish fix. Mesanna also said that she hoped to have the vendor search in-game by October. That was good to read and kept me hanging on through the summer. But we're past October now and I'm not sure how much longer I want to keep hanging onto that thread without seeing something official from the dev team that describes how it is going to work and when it is expected to arrive in UO. I appreciate R Traveler poring through patches for new text strings, but the skeptic in me wonders if the stuff regarding vendor search that he's pulled out of the last two patches is just there to keep us paying on our subscriptions just a wee bit longer while nothing is really being done.
http://www.uo.com/article/Ask-Answer-No-17
3/25/2013 - Kyronix responded to a question regarding the possibility of being able to buy spellweaving scrolls from NPCS with: "Adding them to NPC’s would undermine the content of the game but I do understand your position and we will give you other options such as finding scrolls in treasure chests in the future." I hope this happens!! Other things in this A&A that I was happy to read: Misk said that a future publish should fix things so blessed items are automatically re-equipped when you click on your corpse. Mesanna also said that they would add more New Haven skill quests to the list of future publishes. She also said they would add to that list the concept of tagging/labeling reforged equipment to identify what was used to enhance it.
http://www.uo.com/article/Ask-Answer-No-18
4/15/2013 - Departure of Michael "Phoenix" Moore. I'm still bummed out about this!
4/16/2013 - Producer Letter - This is the most recent producer letter we've seen from Mesanna and I'm really concerned that we haven't seen another one since then. I know Mesanna did a video interview in October with Stratics, but I'm not sure how many people bother to watch videos and I think their usefulness as something you go back to occasionally to check on what was said is very, very limited. The three things in this letter that I was especially pleased to see were (1) revamping fishing and pirate loot, (2) vendor search, (3) still working on high res art. However, it's eight months later and there's been no official update regarding their status. I understand staffing is limited and you can't always get stuff out as quickly as you might have hoped. However, I really miss the quarterly producer letters and am deeply concerned at their apparent suspension or possible discontinuation.
4/24/2013 - Publish 81.0.1 - I was happy to see how excited many Siege players were over the prospect of being able to have city elections on Siege.
http://www.uo.com/article/Publish-8101 .
May 2013 - Apparent discontinuation of Ask & Answer bulletins and the Ask the Devs forum. This concerns me. A lot.
6/13/2013 - This publish was tested and rolled out in record time. (1) The new King's Collection theme pack included some items which were lovely to behold. However, I just couldn't justify spending money on it at this point to update any of my accounts. There just wasn't anything in the collection that really reached out and grabbed me and said to me, "You MUST have this item no matter what!" (2) This publish also included the change that read, "Healing now applies aggression towards target's aggressor." I thought that change was going to be the end of UO for me. I was happy when it was removed not long after the publish went live. (3) New amulets for gargoyles. Haven't made any of these yet. However, I'm not sure why they can't be reforged and I don't understand why there are no material bonuses applied when crafting them. (4) Made 720 the default total skill cap for all players. Great change! (5) Second house on Siege. I wasn't sure about this change originally, but so far it seems to be working out all right and I've enjoyed placing houses on other shards with my accounts that have had Siege houses on them for a few years.
http://www.uo.com/article/Publish-82; http://www.uo.com/article/Publish-82-Updates
7/3/2013 - Stratics post to announce "in concept" design for a new PvP system ("Virtue vs. Vice) to replace factions. I wish that instead of just dropping factions completely, the dev team could just "fix it." Easier said than done, I guess. When I start thinking about this change for too long, it just makes me sad. I'm no PvP goddess, but I had some great fun times playing on my dorky little faction thief/tracker/detector/trap remover characters. I'm sorry that they likely will have little use in the future. But what makes me even sadder is thinking about how this is going to affect my friends who've been involved in factions for years and years, even during the years when most other players had given up on it because they felt there was no real reward for participating in it.
http://stratics.com/community/threads/in-concept-virtue-vs-vice.301505/
8/1/2013 - The massive (8,000+) duping of mythic and advanced character tokens. It was very discouraging to see this happen. 'Nuff said.
http://www.uo.com/article/Mythic-and-Advanced-Character-Tokens
8/26/2013 - Official announcement to confirm you need to adjust the formatting of codes received from the Origin store before you can use them. It is discouraging to see that EA apparently doesn't care enough about UO subscribers to let this happen in the first place and to leave the situation unresolved now nearly four months later.
http://www.uo.com/article/UO-Patcher
8/30/2013 - Publish 83. (1) 16th anniversary gifts. I appreciate the time that went into developing, creating, and delivering the gifts. (2) I was extremely disappointed to see soulstones added to the cleanup system. I really feel like it sends the message that it is no longer important to EA to attempt to get ex-players to return to UO and gives some unscrupulous/mean players a way to really discourage other people from playing. To me, it's just one more change in UO that seems to say that all UO is anymore is a collecting game and it's stupid to do things to make other players, current or former, feel like their actual presence in the game is more important than the items they might collect and someday leave behind for someone else to salvage. (3) I have yet to attempt the "Exploring the Deep" quest and encounter. (4) Halloween content...I took a real hiatus from UO in October and November after seeing the 16th anniversary story contest and the dev heads on spikes. (5) Refinement amalgamator - A necessary addition, but I think they need some additional tweaking. (6) Glad to see more dungeons added to the corrupted crystal portal. (7) I was kind of sorry to see the change affecting the sound made by gamans. It was one of those quirky UO things I liked.
http://www.uo.com/article/Publish-83-TC1-August-30th-2013
9/9/2013 - 16th Anniversary Party - I know I will sound like a grinch for saying this, but I'm tired of the contests that introduce ultra-rare items into the game. I'll be somewhat blunt in saying that the story contest made me queasy. It's hard to say this without offending someone, but to me, I really would have rather seen the anniversary commemorated with some nice letters from Jeff and Bonnie thanking all the players and their team members for sticking around for another year. I know some people went through a lot of effort to arrange the party, judge the contest entries, etc. and I don't want to downplay that. But it just seems like so many players are overlooked and left out when anyone tries to arrange a one-shard, one-time event and that there was little to no attempt made to compensate for that fact this year, other than a mass "thank you" engraving on pixelated cards that many probably quickly discarded in pixel trash cans.
10/15/2013 - Publish 84 - Town invasions. I mostly missed out on this. Just wasn't enticing enough to make me care to log in more than once to try it out.
http://www.uo.com/article/Publish-84-TC1-Patch-Notes .
11/14/2013 - Publish 85 - (1) Castle Blackthorn Dungeon. I've visited the new dungeon a couple of times on Origin. I'm glad we can recall out of there now. But the requirement to walk in, your pet being auto-stabled, and the terrible grind to get anything worthwhile just don't make it appealing for me right now. Maybe I'll concentrate on it more later if I find more time to play. (2) City election changes. I'm mind-boggled by the change to let you only vote once per account per shard. But I wasn't really participating in this system, so I really have no reason to pitch a fit over it. (3) Holiday gifts - I appreciate the time that went into making sure we received these. (4) Lighthouse vet reward sounds like a nice item and maybe I'll get one or two after they've been in use for a while and any bugs with them have been worked out. (5) Golems from the gadgetry table seem to have limited usefulness. (6) Ethereal tiger mount. I dunno but I'm still scratching my head over these as I don't think UO has ever had tigers. (7) Haven't gotten around to really trying reforging, but I was glad to see that tinkered items can now be reforged.
Currently UO is a game for vets. the new player experience is dismal at best. some 12 year old kid who hears about the game somehow doesnt stand a chance unless he or she has a parent playing who can supply him with startup needs, spends around $200 on gold or UO store items, or is willing to start a long and hard journey that will take at least a few years.