Do you remember when people actually played uo to raise skill?

[ACB1961]

People talk all the time about what ruined the game. I don't care about that really. I like uo fine. You have to be able to adapt here to thrive basically.

Imbuing was wonderful and terrible at the same time. The forged tool was a ridiculous sure-fire way for them to earn income. Every time I use the thing I KNOW I cheating, but what can I do?

I don't care about any of that stuff really. I'm not very political.

I don't care that different characters come in and out of power. Its not really to "balance" anything. Its a device to force you to continue to work so you don't leave. All these things are about keeping you off-balance so you will continue to pay them. Its just business, and for 14 years business has been good.

I understand all these things. I don't understand SOT's. I don't understand how you can farm low level to middle level creatures and end up with 120 skill in something you never worked in your life. That's crazy. I don't want them to stop having SOT's. I'm not trying to change anything here. Its far too late for that. I was just looking at 51 pages of SOT's for atlantic on a site. umm WOW!

My son helped me so much with the pumpkins I converted one of my old craftsfolk into a 120 necro mage for him. So, I'm raising all those skills. Its fun for me actually playing and working skills. I always enjoyed it. I looked on that same site and they actually sell powerleveling the same char. They say they can do it for you in 2-3 days. Can you imagine what I'm saying here?

120 magery
120 necro
120 eval
120 resist
120 med
120 spirit speak

or

120 taming
120 lore
120 magery
120 eval
120 med
120 resist


in 2 or 3 days.... 2 or 3 days???????

There's seriously no point in achieving anything here any more. This has just gone waaay too far imo. Most of the time when I actually post something I'm trying to effect change, or help in some way. Not this time. I just don't know what in the world could be done to help something like this. It used to take maybe a year to get to 120 taming, shorter if you were blessed. I had the 4th or 5th 120 tamer on atl, like imbuing. I've never actually the first person to get anything some of these people are really focused.

I realize I'll get a lot of grief about saying this, but it seems like someone ought to at least try to point this out. This is crazy!

 

[Ludes]

I train all my characters the old way cause it's fun for me.

My smith just made gm after 8 years..
But a better example is my fisherman.. I started him when High Seas came out..
Played him every day. skills at 102.4 right now.

Now that is FLP (Fishing at a Leisurely Pace). But every day.

I find I get more satisfaction from the game when I do things the old way.

 

[Kayne]

I train all my characters the old way cause it's fun for me.

My smith just made gm after 8 years..
But a better example is my fisherman.. I started him when High Seas came out..
Played him every day. skills at 102.4 right now.

Now that is FLP (Fishing at a Leisurely Pace). But every day.

I find I get more satisfaction from the game when I do things the old way.

QFT

like Ludes just GM'd Tinkering after 4 years. Ok I used 4.0 worth of SoT's but jeez I can be allowed a 4.0 break. It's hardly like I hadn't already got to 95 on my own.

All my chars are done the old way. Heck I went and got a couple resolves bridles and some rope from Krakens just because I wanted to recharge my hitching post. I had the offer of what I needed from a friend but declined because it was far more fun for me to discover what it took

 

[Tina Small]

I train all my characters the old way cause it's fun for me.

My smith just made gm after 8 years..
But a better example is my fisherman.. I started him when High Seas came out..
Played him every day. skills at 102.4 right now.

Now that is FLP (Fishing at a Leisurely Pace). But every day.

I find I get more satisfaction from the game when I do things the old way.

Ditto for me.

I've got characters all over the place, most of them still in training. One of my goals for a long time has been to have a peace tamer, a swords or macing character, a tailor/smith/artificer, carpenter/fletcher/tinker, scribe/cook/alchemist, and a miner/lumberjack/fisher on every single shard (no matter how bad the lag is or the ruleset). I know I'll never finish all of them and that none of them will ever be classified as "great" characters with uber gear, but it sure has been fun working on all of them over the years and seeing them gradually improve in skills, acquire basic LRC suits, full spellbooks, some rune books, 110 or 115 power scrolls, +10 or +15 stat scrolls, etc. And I have a guildmate who is similarly afflicted who has his own crew of characters on almost every shard. It's always fun to meet up with him and help each other out in achieving our goals of having a crew of characters on every shard. At the moment, I have 186 characters spread out over 27 shards whose basic info and skills I track in a spreadsheet. Funny thing is, all their gold put together amounts to only 182 million, so obviously I'm not working on them to get rich in UO, as that works out to an average of just 6.7 million gold per shard and the most gold I have on any shard right now is 29 million on Legends! Haha.

I think it's a hoot to start from scratch and see how far I can get and who I run into and chat with along the way; find out what's unique about each shard, which guilds dominate the shard, where people like to gather to shoot the breeze; learn which shops and crafters supply basic necessities, dye tubs, and rune libraries; reach the point where my tamer can tame blue and fire beetles, nightmares and greater dragons; figure out where to park the crew all so they can easily live out of bankboxes; learn with each expansion or booster what new craftables have been added that make trade skill training less expensive for using up resources; etc.

What has been surprising (and very depressing) over the years, though, is to find out which shards still seem to have players who stock vendors with basic necessities for new characters and which ones have vendors that almost exclusively sell nothing but high-priced items that are of little to no value to starting characters. It always makes me sad to pull out a rune book with shop runes on some remote shard and hit them all and be lucky to find maybe one of them still in business.

 

[DevilsOwn]

I train all my characters the old way cause it's fun for me.

Ditto for me.

yep

29 million on Legends!

uhhhh...... better say hiya next time yer there, missy

It always makes me sad to pull out a rune book with shop runes on some remote shard and hit them all and be lucky to find maybe one of them still in business.

watching the old shops go will tug at your heart, for sure... pretty sure the only reliable original left on Legends is Fate Vendors, just east of Minoc town

 

[Tina Small]

I train all my characters the old way cause it's fun for me.

Ditto for me.

yep

29 million on Legends!

uhhhh...... better say hiya next time yer there, missy

It always makes me sad to pull out a rune book with shop runes on some remote shard and hit them all and be lucky to find maybe one of them still in business.

watching the old shops go will tug at your heart, for sure... pretty sure the only reliable original left on Legends is Fate Vendors, just east of Minoc town

Yeah, I haven't been on Legends much in quite a while. Moved one of my two peace tamers there over to Atlantic to take back a house that I gave to a guildmate last year. (I have to quit reopening accounts. Grrr. Back up to 7open ones again.) Our Fel guild house on Legends has been gone for quite a while now and I think I finally got all the characters that were still logged out there moved to safety. Going to have to track you down and check up on you, lady!

 

[pgib]

Sots are just an option: you can reach the peak with or without them. I can't see how that can be a bad thing: it is not like it ruin your playstyle if you like to do it the old way.

It would be horrible if sots were the only way to go.

 

[Basara]

99% of the time, I gain skills the hard way - through actual play. Even most SoTs I use come from my actually having them drop (I think Bard skills are the only ones I've bought, because gaining over 100 is a pain.)

The only characters I ever golem trained were a lumberjack (trying to get to 100 LJ before ML opened) and an archer that I did to get the skills up from 50 (70 with jewels) to about 90 real, before going back to gaining through use.

Other oddball training was the ubiquitous LP training house (though I was doing dozens of maps between stops at the boxes, and never used the boxes for more than an hour or two a week). When I trained my THIRD LP, I used the satyr method, because I didn't want to have it distract from my combat training of my main characters' skills through gameplay. And, to train BOD runners (I intend 4 of my bod-capable characters to be 120/120), I actually fill BODs with them as the sole source of their gains, unless I luck into SoTs. There's also the Tamer/Bard whose base skills came from TWO Advanced character tokens - then sat unplayed for 5 years while sitting at those advanced skills). He didn't really come into play until all my guildmates that were playing Tamers and Bards started concentrating on weapon-based templates, and suddenly the need was there (and the taming stuff got trained up the old way, first).

IF you graph my characters' percentage of skills gained through play, with the amount I play them, it shows the more I did things to raise my skills quickly, the less I actually play them.

 

[T-Hunt]

Its fun and relaxing to train up the old way..
I will make new chars on other servers then my main..and train them up..

I ask for nothing from anyone on the servers..all my gold comes from escorting npc for coin..
Armor is from kills and weapons also..it makes you feal like your doing something..insted of auto lvling..

But some skills do lvl fast..
I figured i try snooping on my main took me 1 hour 15 min using SOT..

Kind of sad..i also found i could GM Lp same way..

Heres the trick by the way..

The manequins are the best thing they added to the game..
Just add a quiver on one, each time you try to open it..it uses snooping skill..
I found you can add 100 arrows and try to steal them and get stealing gains..

Hope the Devs dont see this as exploit and fix it..its kind of handy..
Oh and i was in Tram doing this stuff, did not need to be in Felucia for it..

 

[Splup]

There has always been powergamers, and there always will be, times with powerhour or 8x8 or at the beginning weren't any different. Yea now there's SOTS I don't think it's such a big deal.

 

[Ludes]

Sots are just an option: you can reach the peak with or without them. I can't see how that can be a bad thing: it is not like it ruin your playstyle if you like to do it the old way.

It would be horrible if sots were the only way to go.

Yeah I would never ask for them to remove them.. they are an option for other people.
Once people start trying to mandate other people's play style the end is upon us.

 

[Kayne]

I think I did a bunch of golem training years ago on my swords char. Then I went back out hunting and sat with harpies for a while and then hit the trogs but I don't like sitting around clicking and doing nothing else so I get bored doing golem training.

Smithy was probably the one I did sit and keep clicking for (no make max then) and two of my friends were training at the same time so we had a race to see who could gm first and it made it all the more interesting to track each others progress.

 

[Irvyn]

I train all my characters the old way cause it's fun for me.
...
I find I get more satisfaction from the game when I do things the old way.

Its fun and relaxing to train up the old way..

I so agree with this

 

[Ahuaeyjnkxs]

Exactly what I do too... I am now a proud expert swordsman on Siege

Slowly, but surely.

 

[Tjalle]

Exactly what I do too... I am now a proud expert swordsman on Siege

Time for you to join in on some champ spawns then.

 

[Ahuaeyjnkxs]

hehehe I'm still a bit rusty, but my third and fourth arm are getting nifty 'gain !

 

[GalenKnighthawke]

Surely there was never a thing called power hour in the old days.

Surely there were never a site called UO Power Gamers which offered advice on rapid skill gain in the old days.

Surely there were never people you had never seen before who would suddenly emerge as 7xGM PK mages, who lived in castles, in the old days.

Save that, in all cases, there were.

-Galen's player

 

[Ahuaeyjnkxs]

Yup as Galen aptly points out... it was encouraged even.

Thats how you create slow inflation, eternal war and lenghten the game world - true world economy.

So many, many people can live off UO.

 

[GalenKnighthawke]

Surely there was never a thing called power hour in the old days.

Surely there were never a site called UO Power Gamers which offered advice on rapid skill gain in the old days.

Surely there were never people you had never seen before who would suddenly emerge as 7xGM PK mages, who lived in castles, in the old days.

Save that, in all cases, there were.

-Galen's player

In case it was not obvious, the point of my post was that the things the original poster complains about are not new; merely their form has changed.

Basically he's complaining about power-gaming and level-grinding.

And those aren't new.

Anyone remember "the wall" in Deceit?

What about advanced characters? That was started a long, long time ago.

-Galen's player

 

[Ahuaeyjnkxs]

Who can forget the wall... but it was intense too, and back then skill gain was MUCH... MUUUCH slower.

You have a great memory, please don't take this post out of context and only recall what you want to.

 

[Ender]

This question is also very closely related to "Do you remember when new players actually joined UO?"

 

[Ahuaeyjnkxs]

thats it... you found my field of expertise !

hehe

 

[Percivalgoh]

I tend to train my characters to a large degree by playing. Since Trammel it's been a lot better and my new characters venture out brazenly without concern for the human element. Used to be I had these paths out of town staying away from roads and hot spots but now I just walk or ride right down the path and don't even look both ways when I cross a bridge. Some things such as crafting are difficult to raise without grinding away but for the rest I try to get something back from playing other than skill. If they add another character slot I may do just that again.

 

[Shiznit Bo'Bourbon]

Unattended macroing has been a big deal in this game since day one. So actually...

Do you remember when people actually played uo to raise skill?

No not really.

 

[Malee]

Anyone remember "the wall" in Deceit?

I loved the wall! Not to actually gain skill but to loot the skeletons. I would take all the junk and sell to npcs.


I also like gaining the slow way. My account is 11 years old and my blacksmith is still not GM.

 

[Zomeguy]

I remember personally macroing hiding in 1998. 13 years later it is *much* worse and you seem to be surprised? Why exactly?

Oh and there is no "old way", its just that you were ignorant way back.

 

[Winker]

11 Year tamer still in the making im at 116.7 and only another 4 years to go

 

[Ludes]

I remember personally macroing hiding in 1998. 13 years later it is *much* worse and you seem to be surprised? Why exactly?

Oh and there is no "old way", its just that you were ignorant way back.

Just because the game is too hard for you to play without cheating doesn't mean it's the same for everyone.

Sometimes ignorance can be self evident.

 

[Kayne]

I think the biggest thing that made skill gain very very fast was the blackrock area that when you used skill there you would gain like crazy. I remember finding out about it just before it ended.

 

[Ned888]

There are definitely certain skills that are much easier to grind than others. I just made GM in Tailoring last night after spending 3 days chipping away at oil cloths. I finally had to switch to deer masks to make up the last .8 on the skill, but otherwise I really only had to stand in one place and snip away at the cloth. It even paid for itself, because I cut the oil cloths into bandages and sold them to the healers for more cash for more cloth! A bit too easy, but who am I to complain?

Now, I'm on to Bowcraft and this skill is not as easy to grind on, mostly because I have to go get my own wood all the time. I guess I could store it all up in the bank and grind away at it in one sitting, but I'm also trying to get the recipies from the elves at the same time, so I have to keep moving. It's much more challenging.

So far my Archery and Tactics are my lowest skills of all.... I don't need them for much except killing the occasional Mongbat or foolish Lizardman who happens upon me in the woods.

 

[Zomeguy]

Just because the game is too hard for you to play without cheating doesn't mean it's the same for everyone.

Because clicking a button over and over is hard and the epitome of fun. There are many masochists in this world, to each his own I guess.

 

[Kayne]

Because clicking a button over and over is hard and the epitome of fun. There are many masochists in this world, to each his own I guess.

He never said it was fun. But rightly there is some level of satisfaction to GM'ing or getting legendary when you actually do it yourself.

Sure clicking isn't always fun but the majority of skills can be done in normal game play. No one forces anyone to do it via constant macroing or constant clicking.

 

[Sevin0oo0]

I train all my characters the old way cause it's fun for me.

I find I get more satisfaction from the game when I do things the old way.

/This. I made a toon on IZUMO just for that purpose. "I" can't help ME, + I have no friends to help ME either. Heck,I rarely even see anybody speak English! Lets me appreciate just how much my friends helped me back in the early days. I find this way entertaining, being a noob again, and yeah, it's a bit of work, but a good thing

 

[Ned888]

/This. I made a toon on IZUMO just for that purpose. "I" can't help ME, + I have no friends to help ME either. Heck,I rarely even see anybody speak English! Lets me appreciate just how much my friends helped me back in the early days. I find this way entertaining, being a noob again, and yeah, it's a bit of work, but a good thing

What's the old way? For that matter, what's the new way? I think that skill gain could be ******** a bit (I think I mentioned it earlier somewhere) and the amount of daily gain capped, but I see no reason why it's so slow that anyone would need to bot it.

Heck for most all of your skills you get up to 50 in Haven in a matter of 30-45 minutes!

 

[sayler04]

Whenever the game gets bored for me I start building skills the old way, through rigorous training, and enjoy meeting small goals and gaining new abilities. And when that gets boring I go back to my tried-and-true mage tamer and enjoy kicking some serious a$$ and making a fortune by it. And when it gets boring again, back to training.

Problem is there is NOTHING rewarding at lower level skills in terms of item gains. Warriors and mages gain far less money and don't have much chance at good items except in large, supportive, patient groups with senior characters. Miners and lumberjacks can make some small living as they advance, but every other craft, without exception, is a profound goldsink until one is at least elder or better, and even then the losses are greater than the gains. Sure there's the occasional chance of decent BODs, but that doesn't make up even in a small way, for the money that one hemmorhages out in training.

It would be cool if there were some really rare rewards that could only be gained at certain skill levels, or with certain combinations of skill levels, and only a set number per character, or even tied also to the age of the character or something. Ya, some people would farm by creating new characters or seesawing skills, but we'd see alot fewer max-power characters around and alot more people in the old anti-virtue dungeons and at midlevel spawns.

 

[Percivalgoh]

Problem is there is NOTHING rewarding at lower level skills in terms of item gains.

Rewarding? I guess it all depends upon your expectations/goals/imagination. I recently made an imbuer/mage/scribe/alchemist/carpenter/tinker/cook and found ways to train magery and gain loyalty for the queens forge and gather a bunch of hides for my tailor and made more than enough gold to pay for the reagents and scrolls and other ingredients needed for those skills killing toxic sliths at first by casting with scrolls then casting without blade spirits and later EVs. On top of that it was a fun endeavor. I really enjoyed training that character.

 

[Sevin0oo0]

What's the old way? For that matter, what's the new way?

old way -I think I was a year in, and had barely GM'd taming * New - done now in a couple weeks?
new way - I gm'd music in an Hour, TWICE, and in same hr - ridiculous?
yeah, power-gaming skills have reached new standards, for sure.
It went from work your butt off, to power hr, GGS, alacrity, to SOTs - oh, don't forget, just BUY it. It all cheapened skills over time, and since it got so Easy, top ends had to be expanded, hence 120= New GM. The Dev's know, that's one of the reasons why they adjusted (downgraded) GM effects. I knew a Lot of people who didn't mind all that at all - they all played the same home shard, TC1. So yeah, a bit of retarding the skills I agree with, and make it mean something to be a powerful GM, and make it where we don't miss swords SEVEN times in a row fighting a low end mob (and that's w/ 20%hci), or need 120 to only fizzle 30-40% of the time.

 

[Lady Michelle]

So, I'm raising all those skills. Its fun for me actually playing and working skills. I always enjoyed it. I looked on that same site and they actually sell powerleveling the same char. They say they can do it for you in 2-3 days. Can you imagine what I'm saying here?

Same here I would rather play, and work the skills myself then have a powerlever have access to any of my accounts,or any of my user names. 2-3 days of um 3rd party programs unattend macroing that is the first thing that crossed my mind when I saw they could do this in 2-3 days.