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SoulStones & ShardShieds are NO MORE recoverable from IDOCs?

ShriNayne

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Many people have multiple paid accounts, cash shops in a subscription game should just be fluff items, they sell plenty of those, heck I used to buy lots of stuff from the cash shop every time my husband and I did a Halloween party or other guild event for prizes.. Maybe they could try not losing paid subs with their bad content/gameplay decisions or making people annoyed by saying they will do one thing and actually doing another.
 

Goldberg-Chessy

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Yes, it is somone business, you are right: it is the PLAYERS business, i.e., the ones that PAY BS people's salaries. This have nothing to do with "fair" in a childish sense, and all with fairness in a business one.... unless BS plan is to cash out as much as possible before closing the show.
You clearly have no idea what the word ‘business’ means as it pertains to this topic :rolleyes:
 

Goldberg-Chessy

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I have taken many, many breaks over the years. I have never lost anything important to me when I did. Whining about people losing stuff is just dumb, I'm sorry. The only way you are really going to lose your stuff is if you just say, "f*** it, I'm done," and don't bother packing any of your stuff away. I understand that financial hardships are a thing, but you have 90 days to come up with $15 so you can resub, pack your stuff, and deal with life. If you just let your house fall and think anyone's soulstone graveyard is going to save you, you're a moron. So this move by the devs is going to save you the time of checking to see if anyone is saving your soulstones. Good job devs!
This
 

Corwyn

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I think I've quit this game four times now. The first I quit, I put everything I thought valuable in the bank, figuring I might come back at some point. Each subsequent exodus from the game, I didn't bother, figuring I wouldn't come back again for whatever reason. And each time I decided to return, I went through the process of purchasing the vet rewards I lost through player vendors selling what I needed (dye tubs primarily). I am certain I have at least one soulstone that I lost along the way. I went to the soulstone graveyard the other day on the off-chance I would find it. Most of the soulstones have an owner of "unknown." So I can attempt to double-click on each one in the hopes it works (not sure it would), or I can cut my losses (which I have basically done) and buy a couple from the UO store (which I have also done).

I have nobody to blame but myself.
 

ShriNayne

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I have come and gone a lot of times, but every time I have packed up everything, just in case....I think when houses fall it's not always a case of it being deliberate, just a lack of thought, or maybe losing track of time and payments. Gets harder to come back every time you leave though, nostalgia can only take you so far.
 

ShriNayne

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The sensible approach would have been to cap the population of Atlantic years ago, it's only got so many people because it was first on the list, they could have rotated the available shards to funnel people into less populated ones, but of course they were short-sighted as always.
Shard Shields were one of the worst ideas ever, along with the random resources, destroying cities and 'revamping' Despise, the list goes on and on and don't get me started on the t-hunt 'revamp' either! :mad:
 

Goldberg-Chessy

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The sensible approach would have been to cap the population of Atlantic years ago, it's only got so many people because it was first on the list, they could have rotated the available shards to funnel people into less populated ones, but of course they were short-sighted as always.
Shard Shields were one of the worst ideas ever, along with the random resources, destroying cities and 'revamping' Despise, the list goes on and on and don't get me started on the t-hunt 'revamp' either! :mad:
Top 10 on most clueless comment list :next:
 

petemage

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Shard Shields were one of the worst ideas ever, along with the random resources, destroying cities and 'revamping' Despise, the list goes on and on and don't get me started on the t-hunt 'revamp' either! :mad:
I don't think shard transfer in general are the issue, but only making them free for a fraction of the playerbase is horrible.

What choices do you have as a new player? Beg veterans for the coming 10+ years to go buy stuff on Atlantic for you or buckle up $40 for a trip back and forth to buy a nice robe and an ethy that you can't find on your shard? Hard pass on both.

In other games free server transfers are the best thing I ever experienced. I've met so many people, been to so many different places. In UO I would have to pay $40 to only visit your house on Europa or just wait another 5+ years or so @ShriNayne LOL. See ya in 2025 :)
 

QwertyEuropa

Adventurer
Stratics Veteran
Many people have multiple paid accounts, cash shops in a subscription game should just be fluff items, they sell plenty of those, heck I used to buy lots of stuff from the cash shop every time my husband and I did a Halloween party or other guild event for prizes.. Maybe they could try not losing paid subs with their bad content/gameplay decisions or making people annoyed by saying they will do one thing and actually doing another.
I can understand why your upset by this but you have to remember, as stated above, that Ultima Online is a business and has to, at minimum, break even financially. The cash shop items should be desirable and should be helpful for new players and returns who were careless with their vet rewards and items. The problems only come when the cash shop items are more "powerful" than ingame items as then things become "pay to win"

Shard shields and transferring shards is a weird and difficult subject... Yes anyone who has them has a massive advantage over anyone who doesn't. Yes it has stifled the vendor market on shards other than Atlantic. And yes, 14 years is a long time. But... 14 years is a long time, maybe those people deserve to have their dedication repaid. The only compromise I could think of for shard shields for new players was implementing a quest line that would take 30+ days to complete that requirely daily attendance and a lot of varied resources and that you had to do on BOTH the shards for the shields but not couldn't do them at the same time.
I will say though that the community on Europa is fantastic and I've had multiple people, both inside my guild and outside, who have offered to transfer pets and items to Atlantic for me.
 

ShriNayne

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@petemage I agree, they should never have become free, more items should be shard or account bound too. But the bigger problem is that a huge proportion (I won't try and guess the percentage) of players are now all on one shard and the remaining percentage is scattered across all the others, so all but Atlantic have economies that are out of whack to some extent.
@QwertyEuropa yes Europa does have a great community and they do help new and returning players a lot, I still think Europa is a great place to play! I just wish that new players were given more help from playing, the new player area needs a serious revamp, it needs new quests that give worthwhile rewards, make them account bound or shard bound by all means, but give more help to people starting out that feel they will never catch up. Nowadays 1000 gold, a book and a candle just isn't helpful....
 

kelmo

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Dread Lord

petemage

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That's what I did when I read Atlantic's economy is the only one not out of whack.
The truth hurts, but shard economies where a single rich player can buy every item there is on vendor search can clearly be considered "out of whack to some extend" ;)
 

kelmo

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I can buy a soul stone token from an in game vendor for less than 2 million gold.
 

Pawain

I Hate Skilling
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The truth hurts, but shard economies where a single rich player can buy every item there is on vendor search can clearly be considered "out of whack to some extend" ;)
You have not looked on LS recently. Other shards are using Atlantic Prices now.
 

skett

Babbling Loonie
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On Pac some items are 5x the cost as ATL
 

Pawain

I Hate Skilling
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^^^ That also. Funny how it happened when commission vendors came out.... But in another thread we found out that had nothing to do with it.
 

Amber Witch

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At the Drac's Meet & Greet I asked about the possibility of soulstones being put back into IDOC's as many of us save them for their owners. I've had, on multiple occasions, been able to give owners their souls.

Mesanna said they will not change what is in place. In addition she said that they will be deleting soulstone graveyards on the shards that have them. She said that no one has come forward to collect their stones. Personally I never knew that such existed.

So make sure that you have all your souls banked. Once you've lost your soul... you've lost your soul.
 

petemage

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You have not looked on LS recently. Other shards are using Atlantic Prices now.
Are you really trying to frame it like the overall economy isn't skewed by picking one of the healthier examples out of all the shards? Ok then.
 

skett

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I have to admit I collect junk
On my shard Pac that junk cost far far more than me going to Alt and buying 5 to 10 for the cost of 1
Over all things like primers PS and EM items might be inflated but I feel it’s on all shards
The devs need to fix the lack of needed items to compete inUO but the rare em items I really could careless
 

Loriel

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I don't think shard transfer in general are the issue, but only making them free for a fraction of the playerbase is horrible.

What choices do you have as a new player? Beg veterans for the coming 10+ years to go buy stuff on Atlantic for you or buckle up $40 for a trip back and forth to buy a nice robe and an ethy that you can't find on your shard? Hard pass on both.

In other games free server transfers are the best thing I ever experienced. I've met so many people, been to so many different places. In UO I would have to pay $40 to only visit your house on Europa or just wait another 5+ years or so @ShriNayne LOL. See ya in 2025 :)
If they made it free to transfer for everyone the other, less populated shards would begin to grow again in my opinion. People would have an incentive to stay on their own "local" shard to actually play the game and just run to ATL or wherever when they need to buy or sell something from there in particular. It would also mean people on ATL would find it easier to visit other shards too to sell what they have to a target market where there is shortages of different types of items. Less barriers to trade always stimulates more growth in an economy.
 

Pawain

I Hate Skilling
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Are you really trying to frame it like the overall economy isn't skewed by picking one of the healthier examples out of all the shards? Ok then.
I'm saying all the shards have horrible economies. My original comment was because someone said Atlantic has a good economy.

They can't fix it when so many players have platinums while others have a few million. You would have to wipe all gold and start fresh. Then the first duping episode would ruin it again.
 

ShriNayne

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Atlantic at least has no problems of supplying players with all they need, there are plenty of items on VS, especially items for newer players. The other quieter shards often have very few regularly stocked shops now that supply basic goods. Unless you have a lot of crafters, are in a guild or know people who can supply you then new and returning players can have some issues getting basic items. Even on Europa, which doesn't have the worst economy, there are only a few decent shops left now. A lot of the vendors, even in Luna, are empty or only have junk.
 

railshot

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The sensible approach would have been to cap the population of Atlantic years ago, it's only got so many people because it was first on the list, they could have rotated the available shards to funnel people into less populated ones, but of course they were short-sighted as always.
Shard Shields were one of the worst ideas ever, along with the random resources, destroying cities and 'revamping' Despise, the list goes on and on and don't get me started on the t-hunt 'revamp' either! :mad:
I think Atlantic cap was the opposite of what they actually trying to do. I believe the idea was to have players gradually move from less populated shards to more populated ones, and thus deal with the empty shard problem. And that worked out in a typical UO fashion of taking a bad situation and expanding a bunch of dev hours to make it worse.
 

SteelRust

Sage
Stratics Veteran
At the Drac's Meet & Greet I asked about the possibility of soulstones being put back into IDOC's as many of us save them for their owners. I've had, on multiple occasions, been able to give owners their souls.

Mesanna said they will not change what is in place. In addition she said that they will be deleting soulstone graveyards on the shards that have them. She said that no one has come forward to collect their stones. Personally I never knew that such existed.

So make sure that you have all your souls banked. Once you've lost your soul... you've lost your soul.
And this is simply callous, IMO, and, for the zilch it matters, it has already cost to BS at least 1,000 $/year, i.e. the subs of the 10 accounts I have already closed.
 

Drakelord

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I used to shop for Vet rewards before this IDOC change and get some really nice bargains sometimes, today, forget it.
 
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