Taking out item properties wouldn't do anything to really change the game back into the old skill-based system. The difference is that today's game is item-based. I don't think you understand us when we say the game used to be skill-based. When those of us who played in the old T2A era say the old combat system was skill-based, we mean that it was based on the PLAYER'S skill, not the CHARACTER'S skill.
Let me give you an example:
T2A era: A week-old mage with 86 magery vs. a 7x GM veteran mage with GM magery, both played by a veteran player with good combat skills:
First, a few givens from the era: The magic resist skill protected against magic damage, so it didn't really matter if the GM mage is wearing leather armor, while the 86 skill mage is naked. Also, you couldn't cast and hold a weapon at the same time. Meditation rose so fast that it was at GM before a character was a day old. You cast a fire field and ran back and forth through it to GM magic resist in a short time, too. Magery took a lot of time and a lot of regs to GM, but that mage with 86 skill wasn't the weakling back then that he would be today. Skill gain was a LOT faster than it is today, particularly during power hour; you could reasonably expect to gain from 50 to 86 magery in less than a week through normal gameplay.
The battle: Each mage has spell reflection on at the beginning of the battle. They assume their opponent does as well, so the first spells they cast are magic arrow or harm to break the reflect. They want to do the least damage to themselves as possible when their spells reflect back on themselves. They will use lightning, heal, para, e-bolts, explosions and invisibility spells. The GM mage could cast flamestrike, while the mage with 86 skill would fizzle at it about 25% of the time, but he doesn't use it, because it's a mana hog. It takes 40 mana, twice as much as an e-bolt, but only does 20% more damage. 2 flamestrikes and you're out of mana. High level spells were mostly for PvM and group battles back then. A duel between two really skillful mages could last for 30 minutes or more. It was the combat skill of the PLAYERS that would determine the outcome. The 7x GM mage would have a small advantage, but not an overwhelming one.
In fact, a naked, day-old mage with just 63 skill, played by a veteran player with really good battle skills, could occasionally beat a GM mage. He would fizzle at e-bolts, but lightning didn't fizzle at 63 magery back then, and it only cost 14 mana, while e-bolts are 20. If you could take the initial onslaught, your mage with just 63 skill, barely more than you had when you started the character, would still have tons of mana, while your opponent was running on empty after the mana dump.
Today: First, remember that, when power scrolls were introduced, the casting chances for spells were bumped up a level. It's now just as likely for a character at 86 magery to fizzle a level 6 spell as it used to be for a character with the same skill to fizzle a level 7 spell.
The 7x GM mage back then was the very best PvP mage in the game. The modern-day equivalent would be a mage with 6x legendary skills, decked out in full faction gear, with all 70s, 40% LMC, 100% LRC, 205 mana, a mage weapon and 2/6 FC/FCR, 80% enhance pots and 45 DCI, 120 magery, EI, magic resist and med. His armor is all 70s, and he is wearing the best faction items, so the -20 mage weapon with 15 HCI, 15 DCI, 30 SSI, 50% DI and 50% hit lightning in his hand doesn't cost any magery points to use.
His opponent is the same week-old naked mage with 86 magery and GM EI, resist and med. You couldn't reasonably expect a week-old character in today's UO to have the gold to pay 50 million for power scrolls. Also, after all of the efforts to make skills a LOT harder to GM, it's really stretching the imagination to believe that a week-old character would be at GM EI and resist, unless he did it the script kiddie way.
We won't even talk about a contest between two veteran players with equal skills. Let's give the character with 86 magery to a player with the skills of Sun Tzu, the writer of "The Art of War" and one of the greatest military strategists of all time, and pit him against a drunk pothead with a ping of 5,000, a mouse that just halfway works, and a broken wrist. Would you give the week-old mage better odds than a snowball in a certain very hot place? What if you bumped him up to GM magery? Gave him halfway decent armor? Still no takers?
Now let's talk about warriors in the two eras:
T2A: You could just go to the Jhelom pit and train a warrior character to GM swords/parry/tactics/anatomy/healing in about 2 days. Your 2-day-old warrior would have the skills to fight, but he wouldn't have the 40,000 gold or so that it would cost to buy a suit of armor and a vanq weapon yet. He would have to pick up some bone armor by killing a few skeletons at the brit graveyard. A suit of bone armor had AR 43. He would have to spend 200 gold for a GM made weapon. Now, let's look at the equations. The base damage for both the newbie and the veteran would be 26, because they would both be GM in all 3 combat skills. The newbie character's GM weapon would be +6 damage. The veteran warrior character would have a 15,000 gold piece vanq that was +9 damage. That means that the vanq would do an extra 3 damage every time it hit. That's a 10% difference in damage. The veteran warrior's valorite would have an AR of 48. Again, the veteran would have a 10% advantage, substantial but not overwhelming, unless the battle lasted long enough for the low-durability bone to break. If both players had equal skill, because of the damage and AR difference, the newbie character would lose about 80% of the time. However, if the veteran wins, he would get a 200 gold piece GM made weapon. If the veteran lost, he had just lost maybe 40,000 gold pieces in high-end equipment, and the newbie warrior would have some decent armor to go hunting in, and hopefully make some gold to buy more stuff.
Today, a 2 day old warrior character wouldn't even be close to GM in all of his fighting skills, even if he scripted 24/7. But let's assume he's 5x GM anyway. He has some low-end armor he picked up and a low-end sword. What are his chances against a 6x legendary bush warrior with full faction gear? What if we give him 10 million gold to buy a basic set of imbued armor, without using PoF on it? Break both the veteran's arms and give him a 50,000 ping?
In the old days, a really skilled veteran player with great battle skills could play with a week old character with low skills, and actually stand a chance of winning at PvP against a 7x GM veteran character. When you talk about skills, you're talking about the numbers in that chart called "skills" on the character. When the people who played during T2A talk about skills, we're talking about our own skills, not the toon's.
The skill of the player isn't very important in the post-AOS world. Even if you removed every single one of the new item properties, a 6x legendary PvPer could beat anything other than another scrolled out PvPer.
The fact is that, at this late date, trying to re-balance the game so that the PLAYER with the best skills usually wins would be impossible. Power scrolls ruined that dynamic forever. The items just put a little icing on the cake.
@Morgana: You've forgotten how much we've been nerfed since the old days. If we had a classic shard with the current content on it, the monsters wouldn't be as overpowered as you think. Remember that, before they nerfed us so many times and put in the pet and summon slots, us mages with GM med could cast 3 daemons, then meditate and either cast 3 EVs, or a dozen blade spirits? And that EVs hit a LOT harder back then? Or that the blade spirits have been nerfed like 10 times since T2A? Between the massive damage and the poison, one blade spirit was a pretty potent summon. And they only cost 14 mana. We could summon 8 or 9 BS in a row, then meditate and summon 8 or 9 more. Or that earthquake used to do like 10 times as much damage as it does now? At one time, it was like insta-death for everything on the screen. How about the tamers who used to walk around with 3 or 4 dragons? Or, before they outlawed them, the really old days, when they would have 2 Ancient Wyrms? (They were so hard to control that I never saw 3) And a warrior witha full set of platemail of invulnerability, AR 58, and a vanq war hammer that would break a monster's AR down to 0 and knock its dex down to 0 wasn't anything to sneeze at. With the T2A ruleset, a half-dozen 7x GM players back then could take down a Slasher of Veils in less time than a half-dozen 6x legendary players with top gear can today. The 2 warriors would wait until the Slasher attacked an EV, then start pounding away and cross-healing. Bandages took 15 seconds for you, but only 3 seconds to heal somebody else. The 4 mages would each be summoning EVs as fast as they could. In a matter of seconds, there would be about a dozen EVs hitting the slasher, doing about 55 damage each, every second and a half, while its dex dropped to 0 and it couldn't move, and its AR dropped to 0 and it took every single point of damage that the warriors and the EVs hit it for. The mages would have their mass dispels ready for the second that it fell, and the warriors would get out of the way, so the EVs didn't decide to attack them before they were dispelled.
As far as the Miasma, it's so weak that, even with mages nerfed to just 2 EVs, it just takes seconds to kill it. In the T2A period, people would have had a dozen EVs thrown down there 24/7. I hunted balron and Ancient Wyrms during T2A. They're just as hard to solo today as they were back then. We've got more mana, but our spells don't work like they used to. Reactive armor used to be strong enough that it would take one hit from an AW. If the AW ate my EVs, and got in a hit, I would have to run and cast invisibility, then recast RA, then meditate and come back with 3 new EVs to finish it off. Today, it's a little different strategy. Same result.
The truth is that UO's PvM content today is just as predictable, and just as easy to kill, as it was back then. Back then, there were always several people camped at the Tentacles of the Harrower, taking turns killing them, just like there are at the Miasma today. For mages, our spells and summons were repeatedly nerfed since then, but we were given more mana and LMC. It's a wash. I remember when my tamer would take his two white wyrms and a nightmare to go hunting blood elementals. Before all the nerfs. WWs were awesome for a while there. Overkill, I'll admit. But it was fun.
... then absolutely! Lose all the AoS properties post-haste!!
