Right there with you. Just this morning, I realized that during all the craziness of the closure of City of Heroes and #SaveCOH, I had done the unthinkable: I'd forgotten to resubscribe to Ultima Online and refresh my house at the end of its three-month dormancy allowance.
So I resubscribed, patched up and nervously logged in, holding my breath, hoping for the best, fearing the worst.
And...
Everything was gone. My house on Great Lakes, up the road a ways north of the Majestic Oaks Auction house, and just south outside of Minoc, where my brave isometric Britannians had lived for years...my neatly organized house, with chests and crates full of gear and rare collected items, including several rares from pre-21st Century holidays that I'd either held on to for many years, or paid unthinkable amounts of gold for; books and journals that I'd written or collected, sentimental items, veteran rewards, art and other house decor. All...gone.
Just gone. Disappeared forever, after decaying on the ground, or claimed by collapsing house collectors.
A few of my oldest rares were among the last in the entire game on any shard, and may have been the last on Great Lakes. It was gut-wrenching, a truly hollow experience to log in to Ultima Online this morning.
And, crazily, this is not the first time that I have lost some property to an IDOC, and it was not even a very big house--just a little workshop with an upstairs room and open porch; But because of the value of many of the rare and powerful items (and sentimental items) that were in my house, it is my worst financial loss to date. Worse even than the time I lost a large castle-keep to an IDOC, filled with furniture, decor, books, and gear that was all fairly replaceable.
Granted, it isn't a total loss. Some of my oldest and most valuable rares, from 1997-1998, are actually coded differently in a way that isn't compatible with modern era housing, meaning I can't lock them down to display them (they will decay even if locked down). All of those are in the bank, along with plenty of gear, and gold, and other things that for whatever reason I wasn't keeping in my house when it fell.
And I still have my characters and everything in their inventories, including Hannes-Erich, the first character that I ever created, in November, 1997, who I embarked with on my first MMORPG journeys.
As I stood there, in the empty area where my house once stood, surrounded by grass and forest, now full of many empty areas these days, and not a house in sight, I wondered if I should just call it quits, or at least scale back, like many die-hard Ultima fans, and start living lightly out of my characters bank accounts.
But the thing is, COLLECTING is one of the things that I have grown to enjoy the most over the years, as well as decorating; everything from large villas and keeps, to quaint little cottages. I don't want to quit UO for good, but after fifteen years, I'm tired of these occasional and irreplaceable losses, punishments incurred for taking breaks, leaves of absence, and playing other games. One of the most enjoyable parts of MMORPGs is making progress in various ways for your characters, whether through levels, skills, deeds, whatever. For a rares collector, for which some items take weeks, months, or years to acquire, an IDOC like this results in a staggering loss of progress.
I have only myself to blame. I'm not going to point fingers at EA/Mythic. But it makes me wonder if things could be improved. The thing is, though, IDOCs are behind a long-standing tradition of celebrations for collectors, and they've led me and fellow collectors into the possession of many powerful or rare items over the years. If they had programmed overflow crates into the game for IDOCs, for instance, to transfer items to your bank or some other safe space, then many items would simply disappear for good behind accounts that never returned to play. I think that would be even worse for the game as a whole, regardless of my personal loss today.
My biggest hope is that my items were at least grabbed by IDOC campers, preferably experienced ones who knew what they were picking up, guaranteeing that these items found their way into the hands of people who would keep them existing. It would be much worse, in my mind, if I'm responsible for the permanent loss of some really cool rares.
On the other side of the coin, this makes it very hard to come back to UO, even though I still enjoy this old game, and the folks on Great Lakes who, unlike me, never seem to leave.
I don't know that there's a balance to be found for the problem of losing your possessions any time you unsubscribe for more than three months, especially this late in the game's development. But, I gotta tell ya, if there had been an option to insure a few of those crates and items in my house against the IDOC, I would have paid gladly, in gold or hard cash. Gladly. Name your price, EA/Mythic.
