Classic shard.

[georgemarvin2001]

So far, it appears that nearly everybody agrees on these points:
NO Trammel
NO power scrolls
NO AOS rulesets or skills
Pre-AOS combat ruleset.
Launch through early T2A era heavy penalties for PK'ers

It looks like practically everybody here would agree on all of those items.

Then there are the items that some people want but others don't. I don't think that opinions are strong enough about any of them to really cause any major problems.

There is a little bit of minor debate about T2A vs. Pub 16 combat. Let's admit that skills and combat didn't really change much from launch through publish 16; every once in a while, they would nerf something if a template was being abused, but it didn't change enough to matter during the entire first 6 years of the game. Anything pre-AOS is fine by most of us. Launch, T2A or Pub 16 doesn't matter to most of us. NOT a deal-breaker. Any publish prior to AOS will do.

A lot of us would like the current customizable houses. I don't think anybody would refuse to play a classic shard if they are included. We actually enjoy customizing our houses; that is one of the few things that AOS did right.

A lot of us would like the current deco items. We might want an elven loveseat or bone throne in our house, or an apple tree on our patio. It's not a game-breaker either way, though. I don't think anybody will refuse to play a classic shard because they can't have an apple tree in their back yard or an elven dresser in their bedroom.

Likewise, a lot of us would like to keep the new weapon and armor types; we might want to wear a dragon armor suit and a guardian axe, or an ancient samurai suit with a bokuto. It's not a game-breaker for most players either way, though. I don't think anybody will quit because they get a vanq bokuto or samurai helm of invulnerability in the monster loot, especially if they are only on monsters on the Tokuno Islands.

Which brings up the issue of the new lands. A lot of us would like to keep Malas, Tokuno and even Ter Mur and the Abyss. Others just want the T2A era lands. I don't think it will be an initial deal breaker either way, but having more lands to play in and more dungeons to explore is always a plus in terms of long-term viability. From a Dev's point of view, it would mean a LOT more work, changing every monster's loot table in all of those new lands to match the pre-AOS era. I would suggest just doing the T2A lands to begin with, and expanding the land area over the next several months, IF enough players continue playing the classic shard to warrant the devs' time to convert them to the pre-AOS ruleset.

Most of us could care less either way about whether to include UO:R era factions. There seem to be more positive opinions of just keeping the old pre-Ren Order/Chaos system. Factions got more votes than power scrolls in my poll, but I found that a lot of the players had forgotten that it was even a part of the UO:R expansion, and even more remembered but could care less. I would say the consensus on this one is just that we don't give a rat's @$$ either way.

Talivar in particular wants a lot of brand new systems to stop PK'ers, which would mean that the new shard wouldn't really be a "classic" shard. I didn't understand why he feels that the old, severe penalties that were already in-game during T2A weren't sufficient deterrents until he admitted that he had never played during the T2A era, and only began playing after the original, severe anti-PK penalties had been completely removed by the Dev team of the UO:R era.

PK'ing in the last few months before Trammel was a problem, but it was a brand new, dev-created problem. Changing the rules to allow mass murder with no penalties caused the problem, buying the UO:R expansion and moving to the new, PvM only Trammel facet was the solution. It made perfect sense to that group of Devs. The dev-created solution was to buy an expansion and generate $20 in new revenue for EA so you could get away from the rampant PKing that they had caused by eliminating all of the penalties that PK'ers had been subject to. In the short term, it generated nearly $4 million bucks in new revenue in the 3 months after UO:R was released. But it was a bad decision in the long term. It divided the player base, and made UO a much less immersive game for the PvMers, and all of the blues left Felucca, so the PvPers lost interest, too.

 

[Morgana LeFay (PoV)]

Fisher Price UO.

 

[Morgana LeFay (PoV)]

A lot of us would like to keep Malas, Tokuno and even Ter Mur and the Abyss. Others just want the T2A era lands. I don't think it will be an initial deal breaker either way, but having more lands to play in and more dungeons to explore is always a plus in terms of long-term viability.

It's not so much that I have an issue with the land masses themselves, but you have to consider, a Classic Shard would probably not be as full as current shards. I could be wrong, it might immediately take half the populations of the existing shards and bring back thousands of old school players...but I think it would be more of a niche shard. So the population would likely be sparse enough without spreading it out over all of the area that current shards contain. The reason I advocate for the original land mass only at the launch of the shard is to try and bring the population together so there is less of what you see on current shards...dead space. I think part of the reason we lost the community we used to have is because the world is so large now that you can play for literally days, if you avoid Luna, Doom, and the new Abyss areas, and never see another player besides perhaps someone macroing or burning counts by a moongate unattended...or a script bot.

 

[Tanivar]

Morgana LeFay (PoV); My best version of a Classic Shard would be:

- Day 1/Launch land mass in the beginning with T2A added later.
- Fel only ruleset, no Trammel.
- No AoS/Pub 16 content...NONE.
- No custom housing...just the original house styles.
- House lock downs and security.
- Texas Justice system for houses.
- Reds not allowed in town besides Buc's Den.
- Stat Loss for reds.
- Bounty system that was not exploitable (bounty hunters register as such, can't be red or help reds, but do not count as murders if killed by reds)
- Order/Chaos
- Devs would need to watch the PK situation to make sure it stayed in check, and add more punitive actions if needed...but never a PvP switch or Trammel, or safe areas besides guard zones. We need a large guard zone around Britain then. There needs to be some area Crafters can go get resources very safely. Maybe just have the larger guard zone be more heavily patroled?
- No powerscrolls.
- No runics.
- No reward cloths or dyes of any kind. The original dye tub and pure black should be the only colors allowed for cloth.
- No neon colors of any kind besides the glacial staff...and that should be really rare.
- No fire beetles or blue beetles...or any beetles of any kind.
- Colored plate armor...yes, but only the original variants.
- Leather dye tubs...yes, but only the original colors.
- Duel option...neither player gets a count if both agree.
- Guildstones brought back.
- Skills and spells should function as they did originally.
- Bards go back to pre Pub 16!
- No pet bonding...but I think control slots might be needed.
- Current banking system instead of original one (held gold only...no item storage)
- Brit bank would not look like Central Park with a river flowing on top of it
- NO TRANSFERS TO OR FROM THE SHARD
- Moongates would be random again.


Those are just the big things...[/quote]

The things in purple I'm not a fan of. The green is my thoughts on that topic.

Can Kaleb & you, and anyone else in the mood to compromise, do the same to my list? Maybe we can find common points we can add to a 'Settled List' and focus on the rest. I'd love to have a proposal to put in a new thread for a more public yay/nay/'maybe change this' discussion. Even getting the possible options narrowed down would be a good thing, then let the Devs make the final decison.

 

[Tanivar]

So far, it appears that nearly everybody agrees on these points:
NO Trammel
NO power scrolls
NO AOS rulesets or skills
Pre-AOS combat ruleset.
Launch through early T2A era heavy penalties for PK'ers

It looks like practically everybody here would agree on all of those items.

Then there are the items that some people want but others don't. I don't think that opinions are strong enough about any of them to really cause any major problems.

There is a little bit of minor debate about T2A vs. Pub 16 combat. Let's admit that skills and combat didn't really change much from launch through publish 16; every once in a while, they would nerf something if a template was being abused, but it didn't change enough to matter during the entire first 6 years of the game. Anything pre-AOS is fine by most of us. Launch, T2A or Pub 16 doesn't matter to most of us. NOT a deal-breaker. Any publish prior to AOS will do.

A lot of us would like the current customizable houses. I don't think anybody would refuse to play a classic shard if they are included. We actually enjoy customizing our houses; that is one of the few things that AOS did right.

A lot of us would like the current deco items. We might want an elven loveseat or bone throne in our house, or an apple tree on our patio. It's not a game-breaker either way, though. I don't think anybody will refuse to play a classic shard because they can't have an apple tree in their back yard or an elven dresser in their bedroom.

Likewise, a lot of us would like to keep the new weapon and armor types; we might want to wear a dragon armor suit and a guardian axe, or an ancient samurai suit with a bokuto. It's not a game-breaker for most players either way, though. I don't think anybody will quit because they get a vanq bokuto or samurai helm of invulnerability in the monster loot, especially if they are only on monsters on the Tokuno Islands.

Which brings up the issue of the new lands. A lot of us would like to keep Malas, Tokuno and even Ter Mur and the Abyss. Others just want the T2A era lands. I don't think it will be an initial deal breaker either way, but having more lands to play in and more dungeons to explore is always a plus in terms of long-term viability. From a Dev's point of view, it would mean a LOT more work, changing every monster's loot table in all of those new lands to match the pre-AOS era. I would suggest just doing the T2A lands to begin with, and expanding the land area over the next several months, IF enough players continue playing the classic shard to warrant the devs' time to convert them to the pre-AOS ruleset.

Most of us could care less either way about whether to include UO:R era factions. There seem to be more positive opinions of just keeping the old pre-Ren Order/Chaos system. Factions got more votes than power scrolls in my poll, but I found that a lot of the players had forgotten that it was even a part of the UO:R expansion, and even more remembered but could care less. I would say the consensus on this one is just that we don't give a rat's @$$ either way.

Talivar in particular wants a lot of brand new systems to stop PK'ers, which would mean that the new shard wouldn't really be a "classic" shard. I didn't understand why he feels that the old, severe penalties that were already in-game during T2A weren't sufficient deterrents until he admitted that he had never played during the T2A era, and only began playing after the original, severe anti-PK penalties had been completely removed by the Dev team of the UO:R era.

PK'ing in the last few months before Trammel was a problem, but it was a brand new, dev-created problem. Changing the rules to allow mass murder with no penalties caused the problem, buying the UO:R expansion and moving to the new, PvM only Trammel facet was the solution. It made perfect sense to that group of Devs. The dev-created solution was to buy an expansion and generate $20 in new revenue for EA so you could get away from the rampant PKing that they had caused by eliminating all of the penalties that PK'ers had been subject to. In the short term, it generated nearly $4 million bucks in new revenue in the 3 months after UO:R was released. But it was a bad decision in the long term. It divided the player base, and made UO a much less immersive game for the PvMers, and all of the blues left Felucca, so the PvPers lost interest, too.

Sounds like it would work. Nothing you've listed here bothers me a bit.

Another poster willing to talk compromise.

 

[Tanivar]

It's not so much that I have an issue with the land masses themselves, but you have to consider, a Classic Shard would probably not be as full as current shards. I could be wrong, it might immediately take half the populations of the existing shards and bring back thousands of old school players...but I think it would be more of a niche shard. So the population would likely be sparse enough without spreading it out over all of the area that current shards contain. The reason I advocate for the original land mass only at the launch of the shard is to try and bring the population together so there is less of what you see on current shards...dead space. I think part of the reason we lost the community we used to have is because the world is so large now that you can play for literally days, if you avoid Luna, Doom, and the new Abyss areas, and never see another player besides perhaps someone macroing or burning counts by a moongate unattended...or a script bot.

I think if PKing is restrained so PKing is not an annoyingly common thing, the removal of AOS returning UO to being a skill-based game will draw a lot of people.

The AOS items make the PvPers who have them to powerful for those without such items to compete with. Once those items are gone, many more players can compete PvP. Which should draw those players without that uber gear, who want to PvP, to the non-AOS Shard.

Monsters won't have to be Mega-hp, do 100 hp damage per second Supermonsters because theres no uber-gear anymore. There will be more to hunt if EA adds in the expansions with the game combat formulas left as they are for t2a so the resistes & bonus's are ignored. This should draw the PvMers.

The only ones who won't likely come at first will be the Uber-gear players and those with massive item collections that need AOS to be worth anything.

 

[Tanivar]

There has to be some area a PvMer can go to and not be a target. We need PvMers for a Community.

I disagree. Splitting the community is what they did with Trammel. Instead of having areas that are not accessible to reds, or areas in which combat is impossible via some artificial game mechanic, there should be disincentive to kill indiscriminately. This is what I have been saying all along. I am not, nor have I ever been, saying that we don't need PvMers. It doesn't have to be 100% one way or the other.

What are your thoughts on #26?

26: A pair or group of PvPers can confront each other, and 'agree to fight ' by both (most, not neccesarily all) entering combat mode. If this is the case, no one gets a murder count for any deaths. Anyone who does not enter combat mode and stays nearby is a valid target. All within this combat zone get a message informing them to leave if they do not want to fight and that thier death here will not count as a murder if they remain in that area.

I don't care for anything that is area based...it separates the population. I do support the idea of Murderer/Bounty Hunter PvP system that allows PvPers to fight without counts, I support Order/Chaos, guild wars, and a duel system in which 2 players can fight with no counts.

That word 'area' is one of your buttons isn't it.

How about:

There has to be a guard zone a PvMer can go to and not be a target. We need PvMers for a Community.

Splitting the community is what they did with Trammel. Instead of having areas that are not accessible to reds, or areas in which combat is impossible via some artificial game mechanic, there should be disincentive to kill indiscriminately.

It would not split the community. Any Red or Blue who attacks in a guard zone gets punished per 'town law' Reds & Blues can talk and mingle all they want anywhere in the game world. However in Guard Zones, attacking anyone is a violation of the law and punishable by death. Your Red or Blue hide gets immediately dirtnapped by a quick responding guard.

The only splitting is of the attackers head.

"26: A pair or group of PvPers can confront each other, and 'agree to fight ' by both (most, not neccesarily all) entering combat mode. If this is the case, no one gets a murder count for any deaths. Anyone who does not enter combat mode and stays nearby is a valid target. All nearby get a message informing them to leave if they do not want to fight and that thier death here will not count as a murder if they remain nearby the people about to fight."

Worded better? There's about to be a barfight. If someone doesn't want to take part then back away so you don't appear to be one of those involved in the fight.

 

[Sadrith Mora]

PK'ing in the last few months before Trammel was a problem, but it was a brand new, dev-created problem. Changing the rules to allow mass murder with no penalties caused the problem, buying the UO:R expansion and moving to the new, PvM only Trammel facet was the solution. It made perfect sense to that group of Devs. The dev-created solution was to buy an expansion and generate $20 in new revenue for EA so you could get away from the rampant PKing that they had caused by eliminating all of the penalties that PK'ers had been subject to. In the short term, it generated nearly $4 million bucks in new revenue in the 3 months after UO:R was released. But it was a bad decision in the long term. It divided the player base, and made UO a much less immersive game for the PvMers, and all of the blues left Felucca, so the PvPers lost interest, too.

Holy bad info, batman!

 

[Tanivar]

Holy bad info, batman!

Whats wrong with the info batgirl?

 

[Morgana LeFay (PoV)]

That word 'area' is one of your buttons isn't it.

How about:

There has to be a guard zone a PvMer can go to and not be a target. We need PvMers for a Community.

I have no issue with certain places being under guard protection. I also have no problem with the GMs making areas guard protected as needed. I think those places should be limited to towns, the areas immediately around the moongates, and areas that become extremely problematic due to rampant PKing...like the old crossroads and the bridge between Trinsic and Brit.

However, I think a better solution would be wondering NPCs that were tough, but not insta-kill invulnerable guards, that would attack reds on sight. Patrols if you will.

I'd rather see a patrol spawn added to areas with high PK traffic than those areas be thrown into guard protection...unless of course that didn't work...then they could go into guard protection.

Most importantly, I don't like any concept like the following:

Deceit is a PK dungeon, Wrong is not. The forest east of Yew is a PK zone, while the area south of Trinsic isn't.

Zones, areas, limited access, etc. lead to a split in the population. There is nothing that prevents players from entering Fel on current shards, most of them just don't bother to do so. That was never what classic UO was all about.

 

[Morgana LeFay (PoV)]

Transfers:

I think allowing any transfers on to the Classic Shard would be a bad idea. Here is why:

- Some skills have been Soulstoned onto and off of characters. These would not be available on a Classic Shard. Players could bypass this limitation by simply transfering that character onto a Tram server, with a Soulstone, and work their characters up in what some would call "easy mode" and then transfer back,

- Shard transfers lend themselves heavily to duping.

- This would remove any sense of balance at the launch of the shard.

- This would remove the need to spend time working up a character, and by extension, lead to people becoming bored faster.

A Classic Shard should be more challenging than a normal shard. I am not necessarily advocating a Siege ruleset, although I am not against that either. If they announced a Classic Fel only T2A shard that had the old Siege rules in place...I'd be there in a heartbeat. I'd rather them keep to the 5/6 character slot model, but beyond that, I think the added challenge would make the shard far more interesting. Either way, if they went with a custom ruleset, or the original or T2A rulesets, then everyone would start out equal without the ability to safely and easily work their characters up over night.

 

[Morgana LeFay (PoV)]

Can Kaleb & you, and anyone else in the mood to compromise, do the same to my list? Maybe we can find common points we can add to a 'Settled List' and focus on the rest. I'd love to have a proposal to put in a new thread for a more public yay/nay/'maybe change this' discussion. Even getting the possible options narrowed down would be a good thing, then let the Devs make the final decison.

I'd love to do that with your list...but could you condense it some?

 

[Morgana LeFay (PoV)]

Custom housing:

In theory, I have no real issue with custom housing. All three of my in game houses are custom houses on Atlantic. In practice, the custom housing has no limits to make sure that people are not populating the shard with eyesores.

I have seen some wonderful custom houses. But I have seen enough of them with waterfalls and lava on the roofs etc. to make me just want to do away with them. If somehow the tile sets could be limited to only realistic looking structures, then I would have less of an issue with it.

This is not a deal breaking issue with me though. If the choice was Classic Shard with Custom Housing, or no Classic Shard...I'd take the custom housing.

 

[Morgana LeFay (PoV)]

Reward cloths and dyes:

I really had no problem with any of these until the blaze colors and other neon stuff started showing up. If the devs could limit the choices to something matching a medieval pallet, then so be it...but these purple haired, neon orange, sunglass wearing eyesores don't look like anything out of a medieval period, but more like something out a techno club. If you want Sci-Fi, there are Sci-Fi games out there...but UO isn't one of them.


Unless of course you count that garish Todd McFarlane garbage.

 

[Tanivar]

I have no issue with certain places being under guard protection. I also have no problem with the GMs making areas guard protected as needed. I think those places should be limited to towns, the areas immediately around the moongates, and areas that become extremely problematic due to rampant PKing...like the old crossroads and the bridge between Trinsic and Brit.

However, I think a better solution would be wondering NPCs that were tough, but not insta-kill invulnerable guards, that would attack reds on sight. Patrols if you will.

I'd rather see a patrol spawn added to areas with high PK traffic than those areas be thrown into guard protection...unless of course that didn't work...then they could go into guard protection..

We pretty much agree here then. The only difference is I favor a large guard zone or at least a heavily patroled guard zone around the city of Britian that includes mining, logging, leather, and wool gathering spots where PKing would carry a real risk of getting guardwhacked by town, or beat on by guards a bit farther out from town.

Most importantly, I don't like any concept like the following:

Deceit is a PK dungeon, Wrong is not. The forest east of Yew is a PK zone, while the area south of Trinsic isn't.

Zones, areas, limited access, etc. lead to a split in the population. There is nothing that prevents players from entering Fel on current shards, most of them just don't bother to do so. That was never what classic UO was all about.

I agree with this. Near towns & significant spots like Moongates, there are tough patrols to react to PKing. Away from the towns you travel in harm's way.

 

[Tanivar]

Transfers:

I think allowing any transfers on to the Classic Shard would be a bad idea. Here is why:

- Some skills have been Soulstoned onto and off of characters. These would not be available on a Classic Shard. Players could bypass this limitation by simply transfering that character onto a Tram server, with a Soulstone, and work their characters up in what some would call "easy mode" and then transfer back,

You do realize that's a forty dollar round trip? That would get expensive real fast.

- This would remove the need to spend time working up a character, and by extension, lead to people becoming bored faster.

It would also let people come into the uber-gear free Shard fully capable of giving any PKer used to his uber-gear benefits a bad time. <g>

 

[Superhero123]

I registered just to post to this one thread.

I'm currently playing on a freeshard with a small population and I would happily pay $12-$18 a month if EA/Mythic implemented a "classic" server.

I stopped playing in late 1999 in utter disgust with the direction the game was heading. I don't know what these power scrolls, and legendary items etc. are but they sound terrible.

I'd be happy with about anything preAoS.

 

[Superhero123]

You don't need a pvp switch to make pvm people feel safe in order to have a community. That defeats the whole purpose and point of "classic" UO. Indeed, I think "classic" UO supported and built communities that even PVM dedicated games like EQ etc. can't even begin to compare to.

The only bigger, more active community I am aware of is in EVE.

Your refering to these? There has to be some area a PvMer can go to and not be a target. We need PvMers for a Community. Do you have an alternative I missed when I skimmed through all the posts?

 

[Superhero123]

A point I feel the need to make:

All of you who are arguing all kinds of ways to limit pking are rehashing arguments, almost verbatim in some cases, that are more than 10 years old. We went over all this ad nauseum, even with the devs, back when you could talk to them on the forums and in UOHOC chats.

Shakkar and many others used to write multiple page essays on these topics, as did I. The murder system was probably the best system anyone could come up with for the game and it worked fantastically well to curb pking while still keeping the open and free spirit of the game alive.

None of the pvp switch arguments, or safe zone arguments etc. were ever really considered viable for UO at the time and honestly they aren't viable now for that era of the game. They are antithetical to the heart and soul of UO in that time period.

People like the ones who are whining about UO being too hard and the need to reign in rampant pkers etc. are the ones who ruined UO in the first place.

 

[Tanivar]

I now know why you wanted it condensed Morgana. <g>

1: Initially, nothing non-deco that was added after UO:Ren

2: One ruleset, Fel-based with real restraints on fun wrecking excessive PKing.

3: Houses must be refreshed once a month. This can be done by a co-owner. They can be customized.

4: Allow characters to transfer in with their skills and items. Nothing with resists or bonus's should work pre-AOS anyway. It would all be deco.

5: No insurance

6: You arrive at a moongate silently and invisable.

7: Expanded guard zones. Insta-kill guards close by the town shops, tough patrols (Ogre Lord tough melee, Lich Lord tough spellslingers, one Healer for patrol healing/rezzing) farther out, and randomly patroling the roads and Moongates. No Patrol is smaller than three members, one of each patroller type.

8: Random wandering NPCs that attack only Reds placed at PK hotspots. At least as tough as a patrol member.

9: Each town could dispatch their own unique PK hunting NPC patrols. Like Trinsic would dispatch patrols of paladins, Britain would dispatch knights, Vesper would dispatch mariner mercenaries They would have Tracking skill & forensic skill to hunt their target to make them hard to evade, but not impossible.

10: Incentives for anti-PK guilds. Perhaps specially marked clothing or titles? Have a 10 most wanted list with rewards at the town banks. Anti-PK guild members that kill PKers don't get murder counts against them.

11: Reds can go anywhere. Any attacks or stealing in close to the town shops guard zone, by Reds or Blues, gets the attacker or thief instadeath guardwhacked. By town law, such acts carry a death sentence. Attacks or noticed thievery in the vincinity of a patrol gets the criminal chased by that patrol with intent to execute him. Of course drawing away the patrol leaves the innocents unguarded. Might need to have the guards split up?


12: A red gets killed. He can't rezz for one RL day per murder he's commited since his last death. If a red is really good he'll rarely see this penalty. But it may be a really long wait until he can rezz when someone does kill him.

13: Bring back the bounty system. Have an NPC with which players can register as bounty hunters. If you are not registered as a bounty hunter, you cannot collect bounties. To register, you have to agree that if any of the characters on your account goes red, you lose your status as a bounty hunter. If your character heals, cures, buffs a red player, you lose your status as a bounty hunter...and you go red yourself for a certain period of time.

14: A pair or group of PvPers can confront each other, and 'agree to fight ' by both (most, not neccesarily all) entering combat mode. If this is the case, no one gets a murder count for any deaths. Anyone who does not enter combat mode and stays nearby is a valid target. All within this combat zone get a message informing them to leave if they do not want to fight and that thier death here will not count as a murder if they remain nearby.

15: A way to distinguish between Reds who have killed more than one blue a day and those who have killed more. PvPers who kill Reds as a rule, and an occasional griefer blue, shouldn't face the murder penalties. Those who kill more blues, the PKers, face the full penalty. Perhaps two distinct shades of red?

 

[Tanivar]

People like the ones who are whining about UO being too hard and the need to reign in rampant pkers etc. are the ones who ruined UO in the first place.

I won't bother repeating the numerous holes that have been shot in that line. <laugh> Read this thread

 

[Morgana LeFay (PoV)]

People like the ones who are whining about UO being too hard and the need to reign in rampant pkers etc. are the ones who ruined UO in the first place.

I am assuming you have read, or at least understood, nothing that has been posted here.

It's a lot to digest.

But welcome to the thread nonetheless.

I think if you will take a long read over the threads here, you will understand that what some of us at least are trying to accomplish is finding a way to keep a Classic Shard from just being a repeat of the past...while keeping it open to all playstyles including PKs.

The argument that those of us that are asking for some limits on PKing are "whining because the game is too hard" is fatuous at best. In fact, I would say it is somewhat duplicitous to even suggest such a thing. It would be the people that wish to return to unfettered PKing that are looking for an easy way out. To have to actually consider who you killed, and the risk of it vs. the reward...that is the challenging path...not just wasting defenseless miners and crafters. At the same time, for PvMers, the challenging path would be operating in a world in which PKs were present, while not just being safe in certain areas all the time.

I think what the more reasonable of us want to see is a shard on which neither side has a monopoly on the preferred style of play...and a balance that the game never really had when it was still one world.

 

[Llamfia]

I registered just to post to this one thread.

I'm currently playing on a freeshard with a small population and I would happily pay $12-$18 a month if EA/Mythic implemented a "classic" server.

I stopped playing in late 1999 in utter disgust with the direction the game was heading. I don't know what these power scrolls, and legendary items etc. are but they sound terrible.

I'd be happy with about anything preAoS.

This guy represents a large population of UO VETS.

Regarding PK's cant we just get the classic server, then if we "HAVE" to, I am all for restrictions on PK's if it gets that bad. But shouldnt we just let time tell?

But were kinda worrying ona lesser issue. The bigger issue would be setting a date on when the server would come up. AmIRight

 

[Tanivar]

This guy represents a large population of UO VETS.

Regarding PK's cant we just get the classic server, then if we "HAVE" to, I am all for restrictions on PK's if it gets that bad. But shouldnt we just let time tell?

But were kinda worrying ona lesser issue. The bigger issue would be setting a date on when the server would come up. AmIRight

This is starting to sound like a skipping record.

 

[Morgana LeFay (PoV)]

I now know why you wanted it condensed Morgana. <g>

1: Initially, nothing non-deco that was added after UO:RenI would still want to see certain limits on some of the outlandish and garish deco items as well. I have no real issue with the furniture and containers per se, but a great deal of what was released with and after AoS does not match the original look of the game.

2: One ruleset, Fel-based with real restraints on fun wrecking excessive PKing.

3: Houses must be refreshed once a month. This can be done by a co-owner. They can be customized.I see no reason to have to manually refresh houses. As long as the account is being paid, why tie someone to having to refresh a house? I knew people that had real life issues back in the old days and ended up losing their house because they couldn't log in for a certain period of time. No need for that IMO.

4: Allow characters to transfer in with their skills and items. Nothing with resists or bonus's should work pre-AOS anyway. It would all be deco.I have to say, absolutely not. This would break the economy of the shard immediately. In Classic UO, billions of gold were not necessary...and probably didn't even exist. Why allow people to transfer items on to a shard that is supposed to be non-item based? No, this one would prevent me from even bothering with the shard at all.

5: No insurance

6: You arrive at a moongate silently and invisable.

7: Expanded guard zones. Insta-kill guards close by the town shops, tough patrols (Ogre Lord tough melee, Lich Lord tough spellslingers, one Healer for patrol healing/rezzing) farther out, and randomly patroling the roads and Moongates. No Patrol is smaller than three members, one of each patroller type.

8: Random wandering NPCs that attack only Reds placed at PK hotspots. At least as tough as a patrol member.

9: Each town could dispatch their own unique PK hunting NPC patrols. Like Trinsic would dispatch patrols of paladins, Britain would dispatch knights, Vesper would dispatch mariner mercenaries They would have Tracking skill & forensic skill to hunt their target to make them hard to evade, but not impossible.

10: Incentives for anti-PK guilds. Perhaps specially marked clothing or titles? Have a 10 most wanted list with rewards at the town banks. Anti-PK guild members that kill PKers don't get murder counts against them.I'd say too easily exploited. Having been around when the bounty system was in place, I can tell you that if the reward for killing a player is too high, that the player will allow him/herself to be killed in order to collect the reward.

11: Reds can go anywhere. Any attacks or stealing in close to the town shops guard zone, by Reds or Blues, gets the attacker or thief instadeath guardwhacked. By town law, such acts carry a death sentence. Attacks or noticed thievery in the vincinity of a patrol gets the criminal chased by that patrol with intent to execute him. Of course drawing away the patrol leaves the innocents unguarded. Might need to have the guards split up?Sort of defeats the original purpose of Buc's Den. I liked the no reds in town policy because it gave reds a place of their own.



12: A red gets killed. He can't rezz for one RL day per murder he's commited since his last death. If a red is really good he'll rarely see this penalty. But it may be a really long wait until he can rezz when someone does kill him. I'd say okay here, but only after the red had exceeded a certain number of counts

13: Bring back the bounty system. Have an NPC with which players can register as bounty hunters. If you are not registered as a bounty hunter, you cannot collect bounties. To register, you have to agree that if any of the characters on your account goes red, you lose your status as a bounty hunter. If your character heals, cures, buffs a red player, you lose your status as a bounty hunter...and you go red yourself for a certain period of time.

14: A pair or group of PvPers can confront each other, and 'agree to fight ' by both (most, not neccesarily all) entering combat mode. If this is the case, no one gets a murder count for any deaths. Anyone who does not enter combat mode and stays nearby is a valid target. All within this combat zone get a message informing them to leave if they do not want to fight and that thier death here will not count as a murder if they remain nearby. Again, I am against anything that uses zones or areas. If two players wished to duel, I would be behind that, but to take certain places and exclude others from using them...not so much.

15: A way to distinguish between Reds who have killed more than one blue a day and those who have killed more. PvPers who kill Reds as a rule, and an occasional griefer blue, shouldn't face the murder penalties. Those who kill more blues, the PKers, face the full penalty. Perhaps two distinct shades of red?

There was/is a certain count limit before a player went red for PKing. I think tweaking that number would address this adequately.

 

[Morgana LeFay (PoV)]

Well, for some reason the software won't let me edit that last post to fix the quoting...looks like we broke the board

 

[Morgana LeFay (PoV)]

This guy represents a large population of UO VETS.

Regarding PK's cant we just get the classic server, then if we "HAVE" to, I am all for restrictions on PK's if it gets that bad. But shouldnt we just let time tell?

But were kinda worrying ona lesser issue. The bigger issue would be setting a date on when the server would come up. AmIRight

I agree. I firmly believe that measures that were used in the past could curtail PKing, if they were all implemented at the same time. And if not, then more could be added...as long as we didn't get Tram!

 

[Tanivar]

4: Allow characters to transfer in with their skills and items. Nothing with resists or bonus's should work pre-AOS anyway. It would all be deco.I have to say, absolutely not. This would break the economy of the shard immediately. In Classic UO, billions of gold were not necessary...and probably didn't even exist. Why allow people to transfer items on to a shard that is supposed to be non-item based? No, this one would prevent me from even bothering with the shard at all. I should have said no gold, I just didn't list it. I agree, no gold comes in. Sugar Shortage, there's stuff on Luna Vendors on Chessie priced at 100 million gold plus.


10: Incentives for anti-PK guilds. Perhaps specially marked clothing or titles? Have a 10 most wanted list with rewards at the town banks. Anti-PK guild members that kill PKers don't get murder counts against them.I'd say too easily exploited. Having been around when the bounty system was in place, I can tell you that if the reward for killing a player is too high, that the player will allow him/herself to be killed in order to collect the reward. KK. Good point. May just want to go with a title then.

11: Reds can go anywhere. Any attacks or stealing in close to the town shops guard zone, by Reds or Blues, gets the attacker or thief instadeath guardwhacked. By town law, such acts carry a death sentence. Attacks or noticed thievery in the vincinity of a patrol gets the criminal chased by that patrol with intent to execute him. Of course drawing away the patrol leaves the innocents unguarded. Might need to have the guards split up?Sort of defeats the original purpose of Buc's Den. I liked the no reds in town policy because it gave reds a place of their own. How about Bucs Den having no guard zone? You go there at your own risk, particularly if your a blue. It's a lawless place.

12: A red gets killed. He can't rezz for one RL day per murder he's commited since his last death. If a red is really good he'll rarely see this penalty. But it may be a really long wait until he can rezz when someone does kill him. I'd say okay here, but only after the red had exceeded a certain number of counts
How many counts you have in mind? This was to be the big thing to make PKing a less popular occupation. How about my idea in purple with each day the PKer doesn't kill a blue taking off one of the murder days? The Pker kills 5 blues the first day, then no one for two days, then gets killed during his next PK attempt. He would have to wait 5 (kills) minus 2 (no kill days) minus 1 (he died, not a victim) for a two day wait to rezz.

14: A pair or group of PvPers can confront each other, and 'agree to fight ' by both (most, not neccesarily all) entering combat mode. If this is the case, no one gets a murder count for any deaths. Anyone who does not enter combat mode and stays nearby is a valid target. All within this combat zone get a message informing them to leave if they do not want to fight and that thier death here will not count as a murder if they remain nearby. Again, I am against anything that uses zones or areas. If two players wished to duel, I would be behind that, but to take certain places and exclude others from using them...not so much. It doesn't say certain places or excluding anyone. The confrontation is wherever the confrontation happens, in town, on a road, a trail, the local public restroom, wherever. The fight happens there and anyone who stays there could wind up involved. It's dangerous staying where a fight is happening. Why spectators give people fighting plenty of room.

15: A way to distinguish between Reds who have killed more than one blue a day and those who have killed more. PvPers who kill Reds as a rule, and an occasional griefer blue, shouldn't face the murder penalties. Those who kill more blues, the PKers, face the full penalty. Perhaps two distinct shades of red?[/quote]There was/is a certain count limit before a player went red for PKing. I think tweaking that number would address this adequately. I want to see a distinct difference between PvP and PK on this. Red vs red should not carry anywhere near the penalties that red vs blue does. If it carries any penalty at all.

 

[Morgana LeFay (PoV)]

I should have said no gold, I just didn't list it. I agree, no gold comes in. Sugar Shortage, there's stuff on Luna Vendors on Chessie priced at 100 million gold plus.

I'd still vote no on transfers. Just start fresh with everyone even.

How about Bucs Den having no guard zone? You go there at your own risk, particularly if your a blue. It's a lawless place.

That's exactly how it was back in the days...and exactly how it should be again in a Classic Shard.

How many counts you have in mind? This was to be the big thing to make PKing a less popular occupation. How about my idea in purple with each day the PKer doesn't kill a blue taking off one of the murder days? The Pker kills 5 blues the first day, then no one for two days, then gets killed during his next PK attempt. He [/COLOR]would have to wait 5 (kills) minus 2 (no kill days) minus 1 (he died, not a victim) for a two day wait to rezz.

I always thought that the short term/long term count system was too complicated. Just track kills. If the player kills a blue, its a count, after 5, the player goes red. After say 5 more, they start getting into punitive actions such as what you are suggesting. I say above all, keep it simple, but make it effective and impossible to skirt like the current system (UMing by a moongate).

I want to see a distinct difference between PvP and PK on this. Red vs red should not carry anywhere near the penalties that red vs blue does. If it carries any penalty at all.

When a red kills a red, there is no count given...never has been. I think Order/Chaos...guild wars...and the bounty system I suggested would provide plenty of outlets for PvP...as in consentual PvP. And since a player could kill up to 5 blues without any repercussions, I think it allows plenty of wiggle room for pasting the occasional loud mouth

 

[Argoas]

A red gets killed. He can't rezz for one RL day per murder he's commited since his last death. If a red is really good he'll rarely see this penalty. But it may be a really long wait until he can rezz when someone does kill him

Seriously, this is a hard rule. I'm not pk, but use your empathy: ¿really a good pk is almost "invulnerable" ? Imagina that you are a pk, finally comes weekend, and by a lost fight you have to wait 1 day to play again (unless using a ghost is considerer playing). Many pk's wouldn't play, and many others would fear about this hard rule. Finally, you will only get pvp from factions, guild vs guild...

That's what i think, think about other rule to make them harder, but this is too much.

 

[Tanivar]

And since a player could kill up to 5 blues without any repercussions, I think it allows plenty of wiggle room for pasting the occasional loud mouth

<laugh> That could be a good thing with some people.

:gun:

<dives a weary grin and calls it a night>

 

[Tanivar]

A red gets killed. He can't rezz for one RL day per murder he's commited since his last death. If a red is really good he'll rarely see this penalty. But it may be a really long wait until he can rezz when someone does kill him

Seriously, this is a hard rule. I'm not pk, but use your empathy: ¿really a good pk is almost "invulnerable" ? Imagina that you are a pk, finally comes weekend, and by a lost fight you have to wait 1 day to play again (unless using a ghost is considerer playing). Many pk's wouldn't play, and many others would fear about this hard rule. Finally, you will only get pvp from factions, guild vs guild...

That's what i think, think about other rule to make them harder, but this is too much.

Ah, but imagine the dirty rotten tough as nails PKer with a hundred blues dead at his hands... He'd be out of our hair for 14 glorious weeks. <g>

 

[Morgana LeFay (PoV)]

I'd be okay with that sort of thing, as long as the number of kills to get into that sort of trouble was really high.

The idea is to limit PKing, not prohibit it completely.

I would also advocate for trying other things first...and then adding that sort of thing as a response to out of control PKing rather than a rule at launch.

I think even the most blood thirsty reds would agree that something like you are describing would be better than Trammel.

 

[Argoas]

ok, better than trammel is even world of warcraft....

But i mean this system is somewhat inaccurate, because kill many blues doesnt mean being an *******. You want that, even being a dangeorus world, not many people suffer under pk's attacks. Many good pvpers pk's wouldnt play much because they kill many blue's pvpers, while the rest of pk noobs killing blues miner's and other innocents players.

Why not damage reds according to their victims? Not the amount, but the quality.

Dont know if this could be possible, but imagine. There are a "penalizer pole" of 100 points. Killing blue characters with points on figthing skills would penalize less than killing blue characters without figthing skills. Each murder penalize you by 10 points. So if you kill 10 players, you could get jailed at dying/whatever. But if your victim had points on fighting, this penalize decrease. Each 10 points on a battle skill (as tactics or archery) decrease 1 penalizer point. If you fight against a guy with 100 of fencing, you get no penalizer points, because is considerer that this guy can protect himself. To make it short.

Killing a guy without fighting skills -> got +10 penalizer points
Each 10 points victim had on a fighting skill -> -1 penalizer points to the initial 10 points (you never can reduce your real pole, except with time perhaps)

If your penalizer pole reachs 100 ---> you get jailed after dying/whatever
If not ---> you keep with red ruleset.

 

[Morgana LeFay (PoV)]

I like the idea...but I too wonder if it would even be possible.

 

[georgemarvin2001]

@Tanivar: Talking about putting a lot of new stuff that has never been part of UO into a classic shard, which would assure that it would NOT be a classic shard, to fix a problem that didn't even exist until the Devs removed all of the penalties for turning red, is just sidetracking the whole discussion.

You didn't play UO during the T2A period. All of the dozens of brand-new anti-PK systems you're wanting to implement aren't necessary; you didn't play until after the devs had made PK'ing both legal and profitable.

I can see from your last post that you don't even know how the murder count works. I'm going to explain how murder counts worked during T2A.

First, there is a system for seeing your murder count. Just say "i must consider my sins" to see your murder count. It's 8 hours short and 40 hours long per BLUE player that you kill. There ISN'T a count given for killing another red, a gray character, or a thief, even though the thief is blue. After you kill a thief, anybody, even blues, can freely loot his corpse, as well. If a thief commits even ONE murder, even though he is still blue, he is expelled from the thieves' guild, and can't steal from other players until he waits 40 hours for the long count for that murder to go away.

During most of T2A, before they removed stat loss, if you had committed 5 murders, you would turn red. That automatically put you into "stat loss": If you died while you had 5 short-term murder counts, you either had to stay logged in as a ghost until your murder count went below 5, or take a 20% skill penalty to all of your stats and skills.

If you got killed, you would have to wait 8 hours of IN-GAME time for the SHORT count to go below 5 before you could rez without stat loss, but you wouldn't turn blue for another 32 hours, when the 5th LONG term count expired. If you waited out that 8 hours, rezzed and killed 5 more players, then died again, you would have to wait 40 hours WHILE LOGGED IN before your murder count would be back below 5 and you could rez without stat loss, but it would be 200 IN-GAME hours before you would turn blue again. During that 200 hours, you could be rezzed and play the game, but you would still be red and would suffer all of the other penalties of being red. Blue players could attack you without penalty, but you couldn't attack and kill a blue, or yet another 40 hours would be added to your long-term count, and it would be another 8 hours before you could rez without stat loss again.

20% stat loss was a really big penalty by itself. A PK'er with dozens of murder counts had to choose between losing 20% of all of his skills and working a week to build them back, or have to keep the game logged in but couldn't do anything but wander around as a ghost for several hundred hours.

There wasn't a need for perma-death; in that era, when a character with massive numbers of counts died, the player would usually just delete the character, rather than have to keep the red character logged in 24/7 for weeks or even months before they could play it again, and years before it would turn blue.

But that wasn't the only penalty for becoming a PK before the UO:R Dev team "fixed" it and removed all of the reasons why only the best players would even think about becoming a PK: There was the fact that somebody would have the head of the Dread Lord Whatshisname displayed proudly on their front steps. And all of his stuff, even the newbied rune books, would fall to his corpse when he died. And he couldn't go into towns, except Bucs Den. And he could only rez at the Chaos Shrine. And he was constantly hunted, and anybody could attack him without penalty, anytime, anywhere.

There is NO need whatsoever to add a bunch of new penalties to the massive number of reasons why most players were extremely careful not to become reds until the devs "fixed" PK'ing by removing every single penalty. It was fine before they "fixed" it. And their solution to the problems they caused was to sell everybody a copy of UO:R so that they could move to Trammel and escape the suddenly rampant PK'ing that removing all the penalties had caused.

There's nothing to fix about the T2A guard zones, either. You can't mine inside the guard zone in Britain, but if you go to the T2A entrance north of Minoc, you will be able to mine quite safely within a guard zone. Or, for that matter, you can stay in the guard zone and mine most of the big mine to the East of Minoc, over the bridge. If you make a tour of the Trammel cities, you will be surprised to learn where some of those guard zones extend to, and what resources you can gather from the safety of various guard zones. The game was designed so that players would have to figure out where they could gather each resource safely for themselves. Just because you can't get a resource in complete safety in one city doesn't mean that they are all equally devoid of that resource. If you need leather, try Delucia. It's not hard to harvest resources safely, if you're a little resourceful.

@Morgana: Remember T2A's Power Hour, and gaining from just watching people working their skills? Remember casting a few blade spirits and getting GM parry, anatomy and healing in a matter of hours? Or casting a few energy fields and getting GM resist in minutes? Or going to the Jhelom pits and GM'ing swords, tactics and anatomy in just a couple of days? Or gaining from fails in magery? Or GM'ing EI by evaluating your pack horse's intelligence for a few hours? Or gaining from crafting items with just a 1% chance to fail? Or buying over 80 skill in hiding and theft from the vendor hidden under Bucs?

You seem to think that skills were hard to gain back in the T2A period. You have forgotten that the old skill gains system that had worked from beta through most of UO:R made the core combat skills so easy to GM that people could actually effectively compete in PvP in less than a week of gameplay.

Then Evocare, the guy who brought us AOS, "fixed" it in October 2001,.

Here's when he began making all of the anti-macro code, the 8x8 code, made skill gain only work for a very small range of fail rates, and could only gain on a success, removed power hour, and basically made it so that you would spend 10 years trying to GM a skill if you gained in that skill by actually PLAYING the game.
http://uo.stratics.com/content/interviews/evocare.shtml

Before Evocare decided to do his usual fix-it job, animal taming, cart and lockpicking, blacksmithing, tailoring, etc. took a LOT longer to gain than any combat skill. Magery took longer to GM, but a mage was pretty effective in combat at 80 magery and EI, and you could get to that in about the same length of time that it took a warrior to GM his fighting skills. Back then, some of a mage's most effective spells were level 1 through 5. A flamestrike took 40 mana out of a pool of just 100, and there weren't any mana regen items, so you couldn't afford to spend all of your mana on a couple of high-end spells anyway. Besides, that warrior you were attacking probably had a little magery, and had magic reflect cast, so your flamestrike would just bounce right back and hit you for 50 damage in your leather armor. A much better choice would be to hit him with harm to get rid of the reflect, then para and spend 20 mana for a e-bolt/explosion combo and throw a couple of explosion pots. If that didn't kill him, it was time to run and recharge. Most of the high-level spells cost so much mana that they were better used for PvM, not PvP.

A true classic UO shard would change skill gains back to the old formula before the AOS crew "fixed" it. In the classic period, combat skills were very easy to GM. Only crafting, taming, treasure hunting and high-end magery were really hard to GM. Of course, t-hunting and taming were EXTREMELY profitable, and nobody messed with a GM tamer with a stable full of dragons. Especially before they outlawed taming Ancient Wyrms.

 

[Morgana LeFay (PoV)]

Oh, I remember Power Hour quite well. I GMed taming when that was going on...but that lasted beyond Ren. I can't remember exactly when GGS replaced it, but it sucked when it did. I liked Power Hour. That's just me though.

You are very correct that back then some skills were really easy to GM. I GMed archery using a Troll trapped in one of the upstairs bedrooms by crates by standing in front of it with a bow with no arrows in my pack!!

No one ever said that Classic UO was perfect!

I also remember when you could gain in carpentry by using a carpentry tool, but canceling the window because the game made the check before the gump came up!!

I also remember when bard skills were not skill based, so even a novice bard of say Journeyman level could solo Destard.

I still say that all of that is preferable to the crap we have now.

Also, Tanivar might not have been around back in the T2A days, but I was...so I know what the PK situation was, and you are making light of it. I don't know what shard you were on, but on Atlantic, PKs were a problem from day 1 until Trammel was introduced. When I say they were a problem, I don't mean that they were a constant nuisance like they were in the first 3 months or so, but they were still problematic...otherwise PoV would have found other things to do besides hunt reds!

I think you are probably right that pre-existing rules concerning PKs could be enough to curtail the out of control PKing that the game once saw...but there is no historical precedence to back that up. Quite the opposite in fact.

I will admit that drastic steps like perma-death and Trammel or a PvP switch are not preferable...but at the same time, I stand by my opinion that if EA ever did green light a Classic Shard that was a Fel ruleset, that we would all get 1 chance and 1 chance only, and if the shard didn't succeed in retaining a strong population, it would be shut down or converted to a Tram shard...

...and then we would never see another instance of Classic UO again on EA servers. We probably won't anyway...but I would rather see a Classic Shard that was given a chance to succeed rather than a Classic Shard that was just a bone thrown to the old school players, specifically reds, that was meant to do nothing but shut us all up.

 

[Superhero123]

I did, and in return I won't bother pointing out all the holes in your ideas either. Read the hundreds and thousands of threads/essays from the era, many of which I authored. You want to sacrifice the purity of the game Garriott envisioned with your own version of what he created simply because you do not wish to take steps to prepare yourself for the possibility that someone might want to kill you and take your stuff. Or, maybe they just want to kill you and don't care about your stuff...

Where you folks are wrong is this isn't about money, or subscriptions, or anything else. The real issue is based on principle. It is somewhat fallacious to say so, but you cannot argue any point without first accepting as true that you have to argue from principle. The reason for this is that Garriott is the only person who has any legitimate claim to truly know the vision of this game as it was and as it was intended to become. He made it very clear he was against almost every single type of artifical method of controlling pvp that has been proposed in this thread.

I really don't understand who you people think you are to argue with the creator of the world you claim to love so much. Again, this isn't about subscriptions, or whether you like or dislike any given aspect of the game. This is about the vision of the game and what it was intended to be and to represent, and you have that completely wrong.

You can have your own vision, but that vision is not applicable to UO. If it were, then this wouldn't be UO anymore, would it? I believe I remember Garriott saying something to that affect when he was with NCSoft - UO isn't UO anymore and hasn't been since, oh, when? Guess!

It's worth mentioning that DD also had the same opinion as Garriott regarding artificial attempts at controlling pvp, if my memory serves.

If you really have an idea for a game that you think will work, then by all means, discuss it, design it and with a little luck and money, maybe you can create it. Unfortunately for you, as it regards UO, the only person with any authority to speak about the issues you are debating is Garriott. Unfortunately for you he has already disagreed with pretty much every rehashed and regurgitated idea you've proposed (if there are archives take a look - your ideas are already there, almost verbatim, just someone else thought of them. Indeed, your opponents ideas are there as well, including mine, and are just as old and tiring).


There were plenty of non-pvp minded individuals who were extremely successful in UO without the need of an artificial switch to protect them.

If you just have to alter someone else's art (and yes, UO is a unique work of art), then start your own freeserver and implement as you like. I suspect you will probably find some success, and I hope that it suits you well. I would never expect someone to do something they hate.

With respect...

I won't bother repeating the numerous holes that have been shot in that line. <laugh> Read this thread

 

[Morgana LeFay (PoV)]

You want to sacrifice the purity of the game Garriott envisioned with your own version of what he created simply because you do not wish to take steps to prepare yourself for the possibility that someone might want to kill you and take your stuff. Or, maybe they just want to kill you and don't care about your stuff...

Have you read nothing that was posted here?

I couldn't personally care less if I am killed, or if my stuff is taken.

Everyone reading this thread...pay attention here!...

This person represents the all or nothing attitude that led this game to the Trammel/Fel split that ruined the game.

It is this very "my way or no way" no compromise, no restraint attitude that is EXACTLY why we are discussing ways to prevent people like this from causing a Classic Shard to become another FAILED experiment.

Richard Garriott had a wonderful vision with Ultima Online, but even he knew that the game could not remain static forever. I had the chance to meet Richard Garriott in 1998 at the launch of T2A at a convention. One of the things that he said to me always stuck with me...and that was that 'Ultima Online is a living world that changes constantly'.

Do I think he would have wanted UO to be in the condition it is in today?? I have no way to know that...but I can tell you this, he would not have wanted the game to have been canceled in 1999 due to lack of revenue because of attitudes like the one exhibited by the poster I have quoted here.

It is extremely important that people that wish to simply recreate the old days of preying on innocent players understand that this is no longer possible!

In 1997/1998, it was possible because the people being preyed upon had no where else to go. Things are vastly different now.

It is also important that posters like the one I have quoted here understand that not everyone that wants to see a Classic Shard with some limits on PKing believes that way because they are "trammies", "carebears", "whinners", or "are afraid of being PKed". Some of us feel the way we do because we actually care about what this shard could be, and would rather not see it fail (closed or Trammelized).

This is probably the number one sticking point between all proponents of a Classic Shard...and the greatest ammunition that we could hand to those that are opposed to having a Classic Shard.

This infighting and bickering over minor details does nothing to further our cause.

Thus far, in this thread, we have seen a shift from people wanting no AoS with Tram, to no AoS without Tram...but with some reasonable limits. Why is it so difficult for some people to meet these people in the middle...unless of course their sole purpose is to mass murder everyone that plays the shard until the devs have to close it or Trammelize it. And I am beginning to believe that this is the sole desire of certain people...to make any Classic Shard that EA puts up unplayable so as to cause it to be closed down.

If your objective is to make certain that a Classic Shard never happens, then by all means...continue to be as aggressive and inflexible as possible, because that is exactly where these divisive attitudes will lead us.

 

[Longest Journey]

I did, and in return I won't bother pointing out all the holes in your ideas either. Read the hundreds and thousands of threads/essays from the era, many of which I authored. You want to sacrifice the purity of the game Garriott envisioned with your own version of what he created simply because you do not wish to take steps to prepare yourself for the possibility that someone might want to kill you and take your stuff. Or, maybe they just want to kill you and don't care about your stuff...

Where you folks are wrong is this isn't about money, or subscriptions, or anything else. The real issue is based on principle. It is somewhat fallacious to say so, but you cannot argue any point without first accepting as true that you have to argue from principle. The reason for this is that Garriott is the only person who has any legitimate claim to truly know the vision of this game as it was and as it was intended to become. He made it very clear he was against almost every single type of artifical method of controlling pvp that has been proposed in this thread.

I really don't understand who you people think you are to argue with the creator of the world you claim to love so much. Again, this isn't about subscriptions, or whether you like or dislike any given aspect of the game. This is about the vision of the game and what it was intended to be and to represent, and you have that completely wrong.

You can have your own vision, but that vision is not applicable to UO. If it were, then this wouldn't be UO anymore, would it? I believe I remember Garriott saying something to that affect when he was with NCSoft - UO isn't UO anymore and hasn't been since, oh, when? Guess!

It's worth mentioning that DD also had the same opinion as Garriott regarding artificial attempts at controlling pvp, if my memory serves.

If you really have an idea for a game that you think will work, then by all means, discuss it, design it and with a little luck and money, maybe you can create it. Unfortunately for you, as it regards UO, the only person with any authority to speak about the issues you are debating is Garriott. Unfortunately for you he has already disagreed with pretty much every rehashed and regurgitated idea you've proposed (if there are archives take a look - your ideas are already there, almost verbatim, just someone else thought of them. Indeed, your opponents ideas are there as well, including mine, and are just as old and tiring).


There were plenty of non-pvp minded individuals who were extremely successful in UO without the need of an artificial switch to protect them.

If you just have to alter someone else's art (and yes, UO is a unique work of art), then start your own freeserver and implement as you like. I suspect you will probably find some success, and I hope that it suits you well. I would never expect someone to do something they hate.

With respect...

QFT.

Well put.

 

[Heartseeker]

Oh, I remember Power Hour quite well. I GMed taming when that was going on...but that lasted beyond Ren. I can't remember exactly when GGS replaced it, but it sucked when it did. I liked Power Hour. That's just me though.

You are very correct that back then some skills were really easy to GM. I GMed archery using a Troll trapped in one of the upstairs bedrooms by crates by standing in front of it with a bow with no arrows in my pack!!

No one ever said that Classic UO was perfect!

I also remember when you could gain in carpentry by using a carpentry tool, but canceling the window because the game made the check before the gump came up!!

I also remember when bard skills were not skill based, so even a novice bard of say Journeyman level could solo Destard.

I still say that all of that is preferable to the crap we have now.

Also, Tanivar might not have been around back in the T2A days, but I was...so I know what the PK situation was, and you are making light of it. I don't know what shard you were on, but on Atlantic, PKs were a problem from day 1 until Trammel was introduced. When I say they were a problem, I don't mean that they were a constant nuisance like they were in the first 3 months or so, but they were still problematic...otherwise PoV would have found other things to do besides hunt reds!

I think you are probably right that pre-existing rules concerning PKs could be enough to curtail the out of control PKing that the game once saw...but there is no historical precedence to back that up. Quite the opposite in fact.

I will admit that drastic steps like perma-death and Trammel or a PvP switch are not preferable...but at the same time, I stand by my opinion that if EA ever did green light a Classic Shard that was a Fel ruleset, that we would all get 1 chance and 1 chance only, and if the shard didn't succeed in retaining a strong population, it would be shut down or converted to a Tram shard...

...and then we would never see another instance of Classic UO again on EA servers. We probably won't anyway...but I would rather see a Classic Shard that was given a chance to succeed rather than a Classic Shard that was just a bone thrown to the old school players, specifically reds, that was meant to do nothing but shut us all up.

I don't know how you can remember so well, since you were a little kid then.

Sorry but I am not taking a 13-14 year old's opinion seriously.

What was rampant to your young mind wasn't rampant to others.

 

[georgemarvin2001]

Actually, I did think that the speed in which a new player could become ready for PvP and PvM combat prior to Evocare's "fix" was perfect.

Yeah, I remember a few of the bugs that made a crafting skill easy to GM for a short while before it was fixed. But crafting skills weren't made easy to GM by design, and, whenever anybody figured out an easy way to GM one of them, it was fixed ASAP, and the crafting skill almost immediately became difficult to master again.

On the other hand, all of the combat skills were easy to GM from day one, by design, not by bugs, and they weren't made any more difficult to gain throughout T2A or UO:R until Evocare decided to "fix" them in Oct. 2001. Even without the archery trick, it only took a few days to GM it. The trick just meant that you didn't have to use arrows. The Jhelom pits were put there especially for new players to GM their fighting skills in the shortest amount of time possible, while remaining in the safety of a guard zone. Up until after UO:R, the fighters had basic armor and weapons as loot, too.

People would spend years training their trade skills, and it was a real accomplishment. But there wasn't a bug involved in the well-thought-out decision to allow new players to be capable of both PvP and PvM within just a few days. The whole philosophy seemed to be that they wanted us to be really proud of spending the months of hard work to become a GM blacksmith, tamer or treasure hunter, but that we should be able to fight, and even stand a chance of winning, with a week-old newbie character.

I think we have a difference of opinion about the merits of the T2A skill gain system. I do think that it was perfect, except for the occasional crafting skill bug. Crafting and advanced professions should be really, really hard to master. There should be a real sense of accomplishment in becoming a GM craftsman. On the other hand, combat skills should be easy, like they were until the guy who gave us AOS decided to "fix" something that wasn't broken. Again.

During the T2A era, I had the small tower just below the Brit guard zone, where I sold GM crafted weapons and armor, when I wasn't sitting at the Brit forge and fixing armor for tips, or mining on fire island and at the Minoc mines. I also liked going to Khaldun to hunt spectral armors, hoping for that supremely accurate vanq katana, and spent a lot of time killing the tentacles of the harrowers there. There would usually be 2 or 3 other people there, and we would all take turns. And I liked going to Covetous level 3, where there were always several veterans taking turns killing liches, and level 4 killing dragons. Then I would go help Mayor McCheese round up a posse to go looking for reds, whenever they were harassing the miners. And I would help my guild set up the barrels for the weekly free-for-all, last man standing contest, where everybody contributed 10k, about 30 of us would all get in the ring and try to kill each other, but nobody was allowed to give murder counts or loot anybody's corpse, and it was winner-take-all. And I was on Atlantic.

I never had a lot of problems with reds until a few months before UO:R, when things changed. I had operated my shop for a long time, and nobody had ever bothered me; I sold great armor cheap, and did a lot of repairs. I had a good reputation in the community. Suddenly, a half-dozen reds began ganking me every time I recalled home with a load of ingots. They started raiding Khaldun, and killing everybody who was taking turns at the tentacles of the harrower. They didn't care about the fact that the Harrower's AOE effect killed a lot of them while they were fighting us. Nothing to worry about if half of them died; they just kept coming, and next thing you knew, we were all going OOooOO and the PKs who survived were looting our corpses.

They had always ran when all the players around Minoc had gotten a posse together. Suddenly, instead of 1 or 2 reds harassing the miners, there were dozens. And they had always run away before, but now they could stand and fight. No big deal if they died.

The same goes for Covetous. There had always been 1 or 2 reds who would stage a lightning raid to kill some of the newbies who were there to make a little gold, then leave before a group of blue veterans could recall in. Then it changed. Instead of a couple of reds running away, dozens waited in ambush and slaughtered the posse. They began waiting outside Covetous level 3, and ganking veteran players when they recalled in. With 15 reds there, even a small guild wouldn't stand a chance. And Destard became a death trap.

But that was just in the last few months before UO:R, when there were no penalties whatsoever for PK'ers. I still say that, before the penalties were removed, PKers weren't really a huge problem. It was actually fun organizing a posse to hunt them, or setting up an ambush. And they had to be really skilled, or they would die and go into stat loss. Before the penalties were removed, players would go to considerable lengths to keep their murder counts below 5.

For my part, I always tried to stay blue, but I did go red a couple of times by accident back then. Once when a bunch of blade spirits killed a player who recalled in after I had killed an ogre lord, but before I had a chance to dispel them. Another time when some players recalled into a dungeon where I had a poison field set up, ran into it and died. I got killed on one of those occasions and spent the next 8 hours wandering around as a ghost and looking for IDOCs until the short count timer was up. Then I had to find the chaos shrine; I had never used it before. Then I had to spend the next 32 hours pretty much doing nothing to turn blue again. It sucked. Stat loss was a really good reason NOT to PK.

I guess what it boils down to is the fact that I actually enjoyed the PK system before the penalties were removed. Hunting reds, setting up an ambush to collect that half a million gold bounty, setting up a posse or militia to protect the newbs and miners, that was all a lot of fun. Having a row of dread lord heads adorning my doorstep and locked down all over my floor was something to be proud of. Reds were an amusing nuisance, but they weren't really that big of a deal. The threat of stat loss kept them at bay. If you wanted to PvP, hunting reds was a lot of fun. If you didn't, they were a minor annoyance and a small risk when you ventured into a dungeon. Of course, that is assuming you had enough sense not to go running around the Brit x-roads in a suit of invul armor and holding a vanq kat. Even a blue would take a murder count for something like that.

Once the penalties were removed, they took over, and started hunting US, the blues. Then it was a totally different game. Unlike the reds, who had decided of their own free will to become hunted outcasts, on the run from the community, I hadn't. I enjoyed hunting, not being the hunted. Most blue players felt the same way. I still think that the only reason the reds went out of control in the months before UO:R was released was because there weren't any penalties to stop them anymore. Bring back the penalties, and hunting reds will become a really fun PvP experience again.

One more late UO:R era change that I would like to comment on: I didn't like when they changed the collateral damage rules, either, even though they could cause people to accidentally get murder counts. When it happened to me, I suffered the penalty, but I didn't even think about asking for the devs to change them. It was the way they were designed. If you were careless, you could get murder counts without actually ever PKing anybody. I would want all the fields and summons to act like they did during T2A, collateral damage and all.

 

[Unsatisfied]

I thought it was looking good last night but things seem to be trailing off into a weird hybrid custom again. Make it era specific and if needs be add things to it at a later date. These additions can be the things people need to keep stuff interesting. For example everyones saying they want all the house eye crack that you can get today. Wasn't the system that much better when things were slowly introduced as rares? Rugs, potted plants, player ticket events for black dye tubs etc, why not run things like this again? Housing, StarTit classic, if there's enough demand for it bring it in as an update later, changing the game and keeping people happy and excited with already existing scripts. This also applies for red controls. Were talking bout all these extra controls straight off the bat, and some people at the front of the argument wernt around int2a or launch to see what controls were in place or how they worked, they just saw the mess that followed after. What's the harm in trying it and fixing things if it's needed?

It seemed like this was the direction the discussion was going when I went to sleep last night and now it's done a flip back to all the hybrid ways we can change things to make it less and less classic right from the get go.

 

[Longest Journey]

I thought it was looking good last night but things seem to be trailing off into a weird hybrid custom again. Make it era specific and if needs be add things to it at a later date. These additions can be the things people need to keep stuff interesting. For example everyones saying they want all the house eye crack that you can get today. Wasn't the system that much better when things were slowly introduced as rares? Rugs, potted plants, player ticket events for black dye tubs etc, why not run things like this again? Housing, StarTit classic, if there's enough demand for it bring it in as an update later, changing the game and keeping people happy and excited with already existing scripts. This also applies for red controls. Were talking bout all these extra controls straight off the bat, and some people at the front of the argument wernt around int2a or launch to see what controls were in place or how they worked, they just saw the mess that followed after. What's the harm in trying it and fixing things if it's needed?

It seemed like this was the direction the discussion was going when I went to sleep last night and now it's done a flip back to all the hybrid ways we can change things to make it less and less classic right from the get go.

Thats because none of them truly want a classic server. They just want to change things to suit their tastes....

.....sound familiar?

Ugh, its 1999 all over again......

I mean, it doesnt even seem to matter that, when combining options 1,2 and 3 of the Poll Set up by Petra, over...

........heh, hey, get this, when you add up options 1,2 and 3 from that poll, you get 123....heh funny.

Anyway, yeah, 123 of the people who bother to come onto this forums thus far favor pre-trammel and the old rulesets. The reason you dont see more people voting is because no one actually believes EA will make a classic server(s). Not to mention these forums have lost A LOT of credibility over the years.

So, to everyone who wants a hybrid server, you're probably going to get your way.

And so, Ill give old UO, the true old UO, its last send off and farewells.

[YOUTUBE]<object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/7rzj3FEuZzg&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/7rzj3FEuZzg&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>[/YOUTUBE]

"And so the lands of virtue were cast into shadow,
Her beauty corrupted and her king long since gone

Her champions lay down their arms and surrender to time,
her villans swept away into the night and long since forgotten

Sweet Britannia, thy time hath come and past,
To live only in the minds of those who remember

Parting with a friend so old and dear,
It is a pain too deep to tell

May one day her majesty be reborn,
And the children of Britannia shall return home"

 

[Unsatisfied]

http://vboards.stratics.com/showthread.php?t=185375

the poll in case you havnt voted already
(just put it in OP also)

 

[Tanivar]

Where you folks are wrong is this isn't about money, or subscriptions, or anything else. The real issue is based on principle

Roll a Reality Check champ. It is about money. EA is a business which has to make money from game sales and subscriptions to pay the bills each month. Something I suspect you've never had to do or you would never have made that comment.

EA, as a business, has has it's goal, to take in the most money it can while spending as little as it can to do it.

If EA invests time & money into a project to set up a new shard. They want it to make money to cover the development costs, the server hardware costs, the maintenence costs, and the costs of paying employees to keep it operational, with some more as profit above those expenses.

A classic shard as you want it to be would be a waste of money since there would be to few players on it. All the thousands and thousands of players who left UO when UO:Ren came out, did so because all the fun they were having killing other players ended when those sick and tired of the damn PKing went to where they could have fun, Trammel.

Another shard set up as you want it would only draw those PKers to slow between the ears to realise that there is going to be no one on the shard but them and PvPers who will boot their rumps up between their ears. The entertainment of having all those players to kill isn't going to be there so those thousands and thousands of PKers you people keep bringing up will leave again, and EA would not make enough money from the shard to make it worth keeping open.

Reality champ, deal with it.

 

[Longest Journey]

Roll a Reality Check champ. It is about money. EA is a business which has to make money from game sales and subscriptions to pay the bills each month. Something I suspect you've never had to do or you would never have made that comment.

EA, as a business, has has it's goal, to take in the most money it can while spending as little as it can to do it.

If EA invests time & money into a project to set up a new shard. They want it to make money to cover the development costs, the server hardware costs, the maintenence costs, and the costs of paying employees to keep it operational, with some more as profit above those expenses.

A classic shard as you want it to be would be a waste of money since there would be to few players on it. All the thousands and thousands of players who left UO when UO:Ren came out, did so because all the fun they were having killing other players ended when those sick and tired of the damn PKing went to where they could have fun, Trammel.

Thousands and thousands of players didnt leave after Reniassance. Granted, the quality of players dropped significantly and more kids started playing, but thousands didnt leave.

Now, as one of the people who stayed in Felucca after the split, it wasnt all red gank kill fest.

However, the game did get stale and repetitve as there was no more unknown variables coming from PvP. Trammel was boring. The monsters were predictable. Scripters started to take over. Gold Farmers started rearing their ugly heads. Sites like UO gold didnt come around until Trammel because there were no more gold sinks in the game. Inflation started to take over, things got more and more expensive, and before you knew it, everyone was a multi-millionaire.

Fun in trammel.....hmmmm.....what did that consist of? Camping dungeons for hours, farming gold, bank sitting, and yacking on ICQ. wow....sounds like a blast....... not.

And, while we are on the topic of wastes of money, lets talk about the current state of UO. Its been 7 years since AOS launched and there have been 3 expansions released in that time. Also in that time, the game has seen a massive loss in subscriptions. If anything is a waste of money, and there is ample evidence to support this, its continuing with the AOS path.

So dont go calling Classic servers wastes of money, because the old school servers, with their PK's and all, made WAY more money than the current AOS/Trammel setups have.

Another shard set up as you want it would only draw those PKers to slow between the ears to realise that there is going to be no one on the shard but them and PvPers who will boot their rumps up between their ears. The entertainment of having all those players to kill isn't going to be there so those thousands and thousands of PKers you people keep bringing up will leave again, and EA would not make enough money from the shard to make it worth keeping open.

PKers slow between the ears...... and you have the guts to get all high and mighty when players like you are called carebears and trammies.....huh......

Well, heres the deal, it isnt just PKs that want T2A, there are far more "true blues" who want a classic server more than the old PKs do. Mostly in part because of the symbiosis the two sides generated back then. They depended on eachother for a challenge and excitement, you know, those who could actually handle PvP on both sides of the coin...

......not the ers

Reality champ, deal with it.

Oh, so its reality ye be want'n'. Happy to oblige....

PK'ers were around, but they weren't really a problem in the beginning. It was shortly before UO:R was introduced that they became the huge problem you're talking about. But you can't really blame the PKs. The Devs at the time made them a problem intentionally. If you remember, the Devs made these changes a few months before UO:R, which helped sway sentiment towards allowing a PvM only facet:
1. Removed permanent stat loss. When there was permanent stat loss, reds had to really watch out; if they died, they would have to stay logged into the game for days on end as a ghost, or bite the bullet, take the loss then work hard to regain the skills that they had lost. If I remember correctly, permanent stat loss was 20%, a hefty penalty. Even if they did wait it out, that meant that they couldn't PvP again for a long time. If they had 10 counts, it would be 48 hours of game time before they could rez as a blue, and they would have to move every 10 minutes during that time or be logged out; that was before all of the programs that would move for them, so they had to actually at least be semi-attended standing around as a ghost. That system made sure that even most PKs made sure that their counts didn't get out of reason. Nobody wanted to sit around doing nothing for a week.
2. Removed the bounty system
3. Allowed reds into towns
4. Gave all reds a reprieve, implying that there would be more reprieves in the future
5. Changed the system so that all of their newbied items didn't drop to their corpse
6. Added the priests to rez reds
7. Made skill gains much harder, meaning that new players were automatic victims

After the Devs made all of those changes, their runebooks and newbied stuff wouldn't drop to their corpse anymore, without stat loss, there was no penalty for dying while red, and there were healers that would heal them, so they could PK to their heart's content without repercussions.

The fact is that the changes made by the Devs prior to the release of UO:R created the problem by removing every single obstacle and penalty for reds, which they "fixed" by adding Trammel but not allowing reds into it, in order to make UO more kid-friendly, hoping to increase subscriptions in the new demographic. Unfortunately, the kids demographic that they were courting still flocked to EQ, not UO.

I'm tired of quoting UO's own press releases and the numbers that they posted in trade magazines again and again and again. Everybody seems to ignore the facts, as stated by UO's own press releases, and stating that there was a mass exodus during T2A, even though subscriptions rose from 100,000 to 185,000 during that period. I'll say it one more time: UO was NOT bleeding subscribers before UO:R and trammel. It had the most subscribers ever, 250,000, at the time that AOS was released. The press release 2 weeks after AOS was released stated that, at the time AOS was released, UO had 250,000 subscribers. Before AOS, they were releasing the subscription numbers practically every month. After AOS was released, there was a period of several months in which they didn't release any numbers. When they released the subscription numbers again, it was down to 175,000, and has kept declining ever since. That means that UO's greatest number of subscriptions was NOT a result of AOS. It means that 1/3 of the subscriber base LEFT sometime after AOS was released, but before they started posting subscription numbers again. The massive decline in subscriptions post-AOS is probably the reason why UO quit releasing the numbers for several months.

We're actually lucky that UO is still around at all. It was almost closed down when EA bought Mythic in 2007:
Check out this quote by Mark Jacobs, the head of Mythic, on October 17, 2008, concerning when EA placed it under Mythic:
In the 20+ years I've been making games, I've been called more obscene things, accused of being responsible for every thing that went wrong in DAoC (even when I wasn't involved in the game at all after a few years because of Imperator or WAR), blamed for the state UO is in (except that EA wanted to shut down UO when they gave it to us but I convinced them to spend more money on the game)

Instead of trying to fix things, UO just wanted to pull the plug. At this point, unless we get some subscribers back, and with EA bleeding 50 million a month, UO had better do something to regain some of the subscribers it has lost, or it may not be around much longer. Bringing back classic shards and trying to get the original, mature player base back may not work, but at this point it's worth a try. It's a better bet than trying to continue on the post-AOS path until the player base shrinks to the point that UO is just a memory.

Reality champ, deal with it.

 

[Petra Fyde]

This is starting to get a little too heated. Everyone take a deep breath and count to 10 please.

 

[Kaleb]

I have not been posting for a while simply due to the fact that people are going off track, We DO NOT want the devs to have to write or create new systems, if that were the case to get a "classic" shard going, it would prove to be so much work that it wont be done, we have to stick strictly to systems that are already or have already been in game.

Not trying to blow my own horn, But methods to controlling PK'S but not making the PK playstyle obsolete I have already mentioned, the code is in the game for those already and if all used together there is no need to write new code/systems.

all these systems are in the UO code somewhere:

Skill and statloss, Can be old style, or faction style(x2)
All blessed/newbie items fall on corpse each death
Loose the ability to use static moongates
Loose the ability to use NPC's, banned from Cities besides bucs, and maybe 1 more.

As a community We have to come up with the easiest way possible to get a Classic shard launched With out excluding any playstyle, by sticking with systems/code that are already in place that just need to be turned on/off.

Thats why Im not for a strictly T2A server, If it were strictly T2A there would be a lot of playstyles excluded, and that in turn hurts our chances at bringing in players who have never played UO pre AOS, Like I said before I know many people who started playing UO just for custom housing, I know PvPers that when they are not PvPing or PvMing they are growing plants. There are so many little things (that dont skew combat) that many people enjoy doing, and those little systems should be considered, Like I said before we want to make this Classic shard something everyone can enjoy using strictly code that has already been in game, to increase our chances of getting said shard launched.

 

[Gowron]

I think the biggest phalacy that's being promulgated here is that PK'ng was rampant.

While I will say that PK'ng did occur and was not uncommon, it was hardly the plague that it is now when a group of blues get a wild hair to do a Baracoon spawn in Despise.

Due to controls that were in place back in the day, PKs were alot more careful about picking their fights. At least when I was out and about, I rarely saw more than 3 at a time. Of course, those 3 would only jump on me if I was solo. If I was in a group of 3 or more, they were definitely less likely to stay engaged. One of us, might have been killed, but rarely did they try to finish the whole group.

Due to the risk of PK's being around, guilds were more inclined to do mutually supportive events. Dungeon crawls were done en masse in hopes of getting that coveted silver vanquishing weapon. Miners would mine in areas, and fellow guildies would stand guard. Heck, going to the bank involved a few guildies sticking around in case a thief attempted a ninja steal.

While I normally don't PvP, and when I do, it's usually a lark, I think the PK's actually added a bit of spice to the game.

Was it irritating? YES! Did it cause me to lose that coveted vanquishing weapon? YES! Did I have to go naked until I could get a new set of armor and weapons? YES!

However, what were the results? The results were that it was time to go back to hunting for that coveted item. Tailors, Tinkers, Bowyers/Fletchers, Blacksmiths were all viable trades to have in the game and interact with.

To put it simply: Going back to a Classic Shard doesn't require ANY kind of customization. The checks on PK's would be in place. However, part of the playstyle will have to be relearned. Knowing that they exist and where they can and cannot operate allows for precautions and tactics/practices to be adopted.

I'm seriously doubtful that "thousands" of players will come back to UO for a classic shard, and I'm still skeptical that EA will see this as a viable investment. I'm not even sure I'd play on it as I'm way too imbedded in Chessy.