NEWS Ultima Online Newsletter

[Uriah Heep]

Well, unless they learn to communicate, often, real often, they are all just gonna be blank pages anyway....Official forums will be like Stratics, us talking to ourselves.

 

[petemage]

While in general I don't think official forums are going to be what people expect... as in be VERY careful what you type.... I think UO should have official forums. If I were a new player I'd want to look at screen shots and read what the players are saying about the game. I've always felt a game that didn't have forums was kinda 2nd rate and cheesy. If they had a bold noticeable link from UO.com to here, that would be fine, but I don't see that happening.

OTOH, lots of those game forums are utter crap. A true PITA to read, slow loading times, little organized, full of ads, plain empty or what not.

I haven't seen a single official forum that's as comfortable to use as Stratics. Doubt a skeleton team can match a group of 5+ motivated ethusiasts.

I hope they will not just add some random phpBB with an horrible non mobile-friendly UI or something that you can only use on a desktop (just like the newsletter, website and basically everything they produce..). But at the same time I guess that's what we see, and they couldn't care less anyway..

 

[Gorath]

Pre-trammel was fun, Pub 16 was fun and even got along okay until just before AoS hit too, that was fun. AoS after that, it always seems like we're balancing for something.

Only thing I can really recall prior to itemization is that runic weapons got a little crazy there. I mean I had a verite double axe that could damn near one hit kill someone but you risked losing the item if you died. There was one dude on Chesapeake that had item blessed his valorite short spear, that was terrifying lol, risk vs reward was not there.

 

[Capt. Lucky]

Not sure I even find risk vs reward even a valid concept. The richest people I know irl take like zero risks.

 

[Thrakkar]

Not sure I even find risk vs reward even a valid concept.

I know, I dont. I have yet to find someone, who can explain the concept of risk vs. reward in UO to me (in a meaningful way that is, with arguments that can be considered as plausible). It's just a buzz-phrase from the PvP community. While there might be some reward (PvP exclusives like PSs), there is definitely no risk involved.

 

[cobb]

Risk vs reward does not make sense in this game currently. You can take zero risk and stay in tram based facets and get everything you need. All the good loot is coming from there.

Maybe it's time to change that.

 

[Pawain]

Risk vs reward does not make sense in this game currently. You can take zero risk and stay in tram based facets and get everything you need. All the good loot is coming from there.

Maybe it's time to change that.

When did they put Power scrolls in Tram? I missed that change.

 

[Thrakkar]

Risk vs reward does not make sense in this game currently. You can take zero risk and stay in tram based facets and get everything you need. All the good loot is coming from there.

Maybe it's time to change that.

Please explain to me exactly, what risk is!

Is risk maybe getting killed, having to spend 3-5k for insurance, getting a rez and returning to the battle more or less immediately? If that's your definition of risk, you can have that in tram too...

 

[The Craftsman]

If a person can't behave on the forums, it probably can't in game as well.

Not true. I rarely behave on the forums and have never had a single infraction or ban in any of the many games I have played online in the last 20 years. Im a model player, if not a model forum poster.

 

[Victim of Siege]

Risk in a pixel-crack world, that's hilarious. The only "risk" to this game is getting your CC/Bank acct. hacked.

 

[cobb]

When did they put Power scrolls in Tram? I missed that change.

You can use the gold you made from afk farming in tram to purchase the power scrolls.

 

[Pawain]

You can take zero risk and stay in tram based facets and get everything you need. All the good loot is coming from there.

You can buy the tram stuff from all your afk spawning.

 

[SwordofExcalibur]

The only thing I honestly miss from the pre-Trammel days was the community, the people that actually wanted to play together. Once Renaissance hit, most communities were scattered between two facets and unable to quickly recapture the magic they had before. (Some shards managed, but on many it took years to get clusters of nearby buildings.) At the time, Fel was all risk, no reward. (carrots rewards didn't really come until the '02 champ revamp) The risk vs reward debate also falls apart when one looks at the paucity of Siege/Mugen players - most people simply have no interest in being sheep.

Garriott has admitted that UO was a sociological experiment of sorts. He's also admitted that it failed spectacularly. Anonymity bred unrepentant sociopathy as soon as people figured out that there were no real consequences (and that what few consequences were introduced were easily evaded). Subscriber unrest demanded that the wolves be kept at bay and Trammel was tacked onto UO in 2000. UO subs increased after Renaissance by nearly 100K, fyi.

Three years later, they bait-and-switched AoS in our faces and changed the game from skill-based to item-based. Many people, including me, were not happy with this...but we learned to adapt. This is also where UO subs peak just north of 250K for about six months, then it went on a slow decline until nobody could find reliable sub numbers after January '07 (subs were just north of 100K at that time).

So, was it Trammel that started the decline? Clearly not, as the decline didn't begin until three years, and three expansions, later. Trammel being UO's death has been resoundingly debunked. The wolves didn't win.

Was it AoS? Maybe, though I believe it was only a contributing factor. Starting in '99, UO faced a slew of arguably superior competitors (almost all of which were heavily item-based). EQ, WoW, SWG, even DAoC trounced UO's numbers.

UO simply hasn't kept up with the times, preferring to skate along by pandering to a niche market that, while wanting to play UO, doesn't want it to actually change (see Third Dawn, KR and the EC as the attempt to drag the luddites into the 21st century). Now, not all of that is due to subscriber reticence, EA myopathy and just plain epically awful managerial F-ups played their nasty roles as well (i.e. low Third Dawn poly counts and muddy textures, canning nearly the entire SA dev team after launch, contracting a poopy studio to make the KR art, prematurely releasing KR as "Gold" just to save face for a suit at EA Japan, the entirety of Calvin Crowner and Jeff Skalski's tenures, etc).

UO got ninety nine problems but Trammel ain't one.

Best summary and best comment in this thread.

 

[Archnight]

Not true. I rarely behave on the forums and have never had a single infraction or ban in any of the many games I have played online in the last 20 years. Im a model player, if not a model forum poster.

How can you say that you rarely behave on the forums and consider yourself a model poster..? That just doesn't make any sense

 

[Thrakkar]

Not true. I rarely behave on the forums...

I flew over the last 40 posts of you here on the forums. Have yet to find a post, where you didn't behave.
I don't know, how you define "not behaving", but disagreeing or opposing ones opinion does not count as not behaving.

 

[The Craftsman]

How can you say that you rarely behave on the forums and consider yourself a model poster..? That just doesn't make any sense

I said if NOT a model poster ... reading comprehension.

 

[The Craftsman]

I flew over the last 40 posts of you here on the forums. Have yet to find a post, where you didn't behave.
I don't know, how you define "not behaving", but disagreeing or opposing ones opinion does not count as not behaving.

My infraction record would suggest differently ...

 

[Pawain]

My infraction record would suggest differently ...

I hear a lot of people brag about that. Most prob dont have any more than I do. But, I think you have some. I would have given you a couple if I were a mod. Not recently.

 

[Uriah Heep]

I flew over the last 40 posts of you here on the forums. Have yet to find a post, where you didn't behave.
I don't know, how you define "not behaving", but disagreeing or opposing ones opinion does not count as not behaving.

Those all probably got moved/hidden/deleted...you wont see them

 

[SwordofExcalibur]

You can use the gold you made from afk farming in tram to purchase the power scrolls.

Meanwhile, at the Hall of Justice, everyone speed-hacks and scripts at Yew Gate. I'm not sure risk vs reward is ever really going to get addressed while Dr. Doom is on the rampage.