Back for RTB, a returning vet's impression.

[Amren]

Welcome to EA's UO. It's nothing compared to Origin's UO.

 

[Uvtha]

Welcome to EA's UO. It's nothing compared to Origin's UO.

You do know that EA owned UO since its inception right? rolleyes:

 

[copycon]

You do know that EA owned UO since its inception right? rolleyes:

True. But I think he/she is referring to the development focus rather than the actual IP.

 

[Amren]

You do know that EA owned UO since its inception right? rolleyes:

Wow. You're right. Apparently , EA bought OSI in 1992. UO was released in 1997.

So then , why did the game get WORSE (imo) after 2000....

I always thought OSI had control of this thing till about UO:R.

 

[Uvtha]

True. But I think he/she is referring to the development focus rather than the actual IP.

EA was always in control of development. The only difference is that a) the people who created both the world and those who translated that world into UO left the game and the company ages ago, and b) the landscape of large scale mmo's and general online gaming which UO helped to pioneer has evolved over the years, and UO had to evolve with it.

I think UO has done fine personally. The main reason UO was so amazing 98-2000 was the novely to the concept and experience. That kind of game didn't really exist before UO. Now its common place, kids have grown up with it. The novelty of a new gaming medium has dissipated. Its pretty much impossible to avoid the vacuum it leaves for those like myself who were there to enjoy it, but the game has held up very well for 13 years imo.

 

[Babble]

Don't know.
From what people say of the sports games EA sucks there now for years too with once great games are now buggy rehashes.

Most games seem to fall short on quality these days.

 

[Uvtha]

Don't know.
From what people say of the sports games EA sucks there now for years too with once great games are now buggy rehashes.

Most games seem to fall short on quality these days.

I'm no great EA fan, but sports games are pretty much rehashes in nature. Fans want current rosters, updated graphics, and are willing to pay yearly for them. Even the best of sports games (Mlb Road to the show for example which is excellent) are very derivative.

EA does put out good games though. Dead Space off of the top of my head was an awesome game, and that was straight up EA.

 

[Yalp]

Post typed on the fly as I walk around.

* Brit bank is redecorated, rather tastelessly, but no one is there. Great Lakes has become one of those Luna shards. Population has plainly declined substantially.

* Wanted to see what sort of armor everyone is wearing these days, but apparently there are robes with stats now. I have yet to see an unrobed player character.

* Wanted to see a gargoyle, but there are zero among the Luna bank people. Other than Luna bank, I have no idea where I would go to see another player. Were these a total flop? Does anyone have gargoyle characters?

Welp, Great Lakes is a ghost shard, let's go hit Atlantic.

* Hey there's a reasonable crowd at Luna, all standing on top of each other spamming. Someone is trying to sell his stuff on another shard for stuff here, so clearly this is where the population is condensing.

* There are a whopping one or two characters among the crowd not wearing a stat robe. There are a couple of gargoyles, and I wondered what their armor looks like, but they're both in robes.

* Brit bank is dead even on Atlantic. The age in which Brit Bank was "the place" in UO is officially over. There was one guy there, forlornly spamming for some event.

* Hey at least Haven has a bit of a crowd. Every last one in robes.

* Is that a general chat channel? Nobody is using it except for like one guy. How do I talk in it? Comically, the Mythic playguide tells me that this feature exists, but offers no instructions on how to use it. My macro list says alt+T is chat, but hitting that just makes it say "You are already in channel help". Asked a guy in sweet gear who looked like he knew what he was doing. He didn't know how to talk in it either, never uses it.

* Oh well, let's go look around Luna and see how expensive crap is. The usual bunch of 16,000,000 gold leather armor pieces, check. Bloodwood Spirit 3,000,000 gold? Huh? Oh well it's Luna, I'll probably find another 3 screens away for 50k.

* Pigments of Tokuno seem cheaper than I remember. Competition from those crafted dyes I think I heard about? Wonder where those are.

* How the hell do I turn this chat off? I don't want to hear those two guys spam each other with what they're selling to infinity.

* Natural dye is 350k for 5 uses? Either it's hard to make, or the people who can make it are just gouging, or the economy is so blown out that anything worth anything is worth at least 300.

* Well that's a quarter loop of Luna. Wish I could remember that site that catalogs Luna with scripts, because this is bullcrap. Game needs an Auction House.

Meh. I threw or gave away everything last time I quit. I'll never make enough money to be worth anything again. I could kill a thousand dragons and be 10% of the way to buying a pair of gloves.

So, it seems your personal tastes are that you don't like Luna, you don't like robes and you don't like the costs associated with vendors on atlantic?

As others have pointed out, you can easily go farm your own ingredients, find an imbuer willing to do a suit for you if you supply the ingredients. want some dye without paying gold for it? Go farm seeds, plant them, grow them and make your own natural dye. Cheap and easy. Farm gold. It still works. And in the course of farming, you might wind up with a nice artie so you can spam its sale on general chat. Don't like the high prices of luna? shop elsewhere.. or even better, use that general chat to let people know the price you are willing to pay for an item. Need help? Join a guild. Let them know you are returning and need help getting up to date on the game and gear.

You left the game, a game which didn't freeze in time, it evolved and changed and morphed. Some for the good, some for the worse. It's up to you to find those things which entertain and capture your imagination. Good luck.

 

[Skrag]

So everyone left the bank because they're all in chat? This chat right here at the bottom of my screen? This chat that's mostly silent except for a handful of Yew Fel smacktards occasionally screaming obscenities at each other about who sucks at PVP?

And I looked at bank populations on a weeknight. Oh noes. Clearly I could not be comparing them to when I played on weeknights of old.

Routine items costing more than the loot of thousands and thousands of monsters combined means the economy is good and healthy, bla bla bla, fanboy defense, bla bla bla.

 

[UOKaiser]

So everyone left the bank because they're all in chat? This chat right here at the bottom of my screen? This chat that's mostly silent except for a handful of Yew Fel smacktards occasionally screaming obscenities at each other about who sucks at PVP?

And I looked at bank populations on a weeknight. Oh noes. Clearly I could not be comparing them to when I played on weeknights of old.

Routine items costing more than the loot of thousands and thousands of monsters combined means the economy is good and healthy, bla bla bla, fanboy defense, bla bla bla.

1)Well everyone left brit bank because venders came to be and luna became the hot spot. The last holders left after the invasions in britan happened for a while after that they never came back.

2)There was a recent ban session last month that at least cut the population to a very noitceble amount. There have being a couple of a these sessions in the last few years. Eveytime the shards population drop and doesn't recover as there is not enough new players that stay around to ofset the ones that are banned.

3)Introduction of imbung made almost all loot and crafted items worthless. So you only going to see the same items worth alot to recover the loss of hundread thousands of combinations of items.
Also some time after the introduction of imbuing many trammel vets left as there is not much a challenge or goal left to accomplish. PVM hunting is worthless for players that being fighting these creatures for years and as they are not interest in PVP then they moved on from this game.

So a combination of that is proabably why you see what you see.

 

[Lord Chaos]

So everyone left the bank because they're all in chat? This chat right here at the bottom of my screen? This chat that's mostly silent except for a handful of Yew Fel smacktards occasionally screaming obscenities at each other about who sucks at PVP?

And I looked at bank populations on a weeknight. Oh noes. Clearly I could not be comparing them to when I played on weeknights of old.

Routine items costing more than the loot of thousands and thousands of monsters combined means the economy is good and healthy, bla bla bla, fanboy defense, bla bla bla.

Its mostly silent because you have to JOIN the chat before you can see whats being typed in that chat, there are several different ones.

As people no longer stand around all night, yes, population late night is going to be lower, not to mention the recent Luna invasion drove even more people away from towns.

Artifacts are NOT routine items. You can get good gear much cheaper now with imbuing. While somewhat inflated, the economy is still good.

 

[Feenicks]

Interesting....

I finish my degree in about a month... to celebrate I'm thinking of logging in for the first time in ...years now? ... it'll certainly be interesting to see the changes...

 

[G.v.P]

* Hey at least Haven has a bit of a crowd. Every last one in robes.

lol I like how much you focus on people wearing robes, as if robes are these great barriers that you cannot comprehend. anyway, there's this little thing you can do, it's called talking. if you get good enough at talking, you might even be able to persuade someone to disrobe. try it out sometime, it's quite fun.

 

[Budwieser]

Oh I can get enough gear to function, sure. Then I can use it to farm for the next 40 years in order to buy an upgraded gorget or something. The economy appears to be completely hyperinflated to death. Gold seems almost worthless now, certainly not worth looting off monster corpses.

What can a poorly geared new or returning player expect to find/farm in order to sell and make enough money to care about?

Also, do people really pay hundreds of thousands or millions for crafted dyes? I have zero chance of not looking like the typical artifact clown once I get geared.

Your a half empty glass kind of guy. Don't return to UO. it's too hard for you.

The Bud.

 

[JC the Builder]

I agree with you on this. However, I think it would be very difficult (if not impossible) to solve the inflation problem. New players should receive a more valuable and useful starter pack. Instead of starting out with 1000 gp, they should get 20,000. And some useful armor.

Originally you started with 100 gold. What did that buy you? Two potions, a mage scroll, maybe a piece of leather armor. New players were never given anything to start with. Increasing the amount of gold does not help the new player experience.

The whole point of UO is you start with nothing and make your own way.