I think dropping it back down to 100 whilst under an EJ account would be easy for them to code. And easy to restore (i.e. Remove the restriction) if subscription was recativated. There is already coding in game to temp increase or drop skills.
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Merlin
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^^^ This.
Even with what they announced at the Anniversary Party, only confirmed restriction seems to be with housing and bank box storage. During the Q&A session at the party, I stood up and specifically asked them to confirm if there will be any other restrictions (and gave Fel spawns & ghost cams as an example) and they didn't confirm any other restrictions beyond saying it was still a work in progress and that more information would be forthcoming.
Estimated release of Q1 2018.
I honestly don't know why they just don't sanction this play style and just add a "house holder" payment option to the auto-pay billing system. In fact, make the account come with no characters at all and just bill you every 90 days for each house you add. Since so many people are going this route and there's no real incentive to change it, just bite the bullet and market the crap out of it.
When have they ever said something that didn't happen or have the player base completely misunderstand what they meant?
Trammel will not be a mirror! Look it's got like dead trees and stuff I doubt they even know what they're gonna do yet. They probably got some rough ideas but that's about it.
I've left a few times and known it's been more than 90 days and my house has still been up. It's not a very reliable system either.
When I came back all my bank boxes were empty. Seems like I remember getting an email like 15 years ago it would happen if I didn't renew. I got sick of rage quitting, coming back 2 years later and start all over again. I just send them a check now
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Every time we leave our houses are dropped and everything goes into the bank/beetles. I've never had my bank box cleared out, even when I've been gone for 5 years or so, when I get back I am still on my beetle and it still has all my stuff on it.. I have heard a few other people say their bank was emptied, but some of those also admitted that 'friends' knew their account details, so it's hard to say what actually happened there. I've never had an e-mail saying my stuff would be gone, but since my husband was in the military for over 20 years we moved around a lot and often changed address/e-mail every couple of years.
As far as I understood all the tidbits, that were posted here, was, that an unpaid acc with a house placed won't go into EJ at all. Meaning you can't log in.
If you want to make that acc EJ you either have to wait until that house falls or sub, remove the house and wait until the sub runs out...
I had a couple of 2001-2002 accounts I closed in the 2003 range. I recently activated some of them and one of them was stripped of everything. No one knows my accts details not even my wife
And toss in these accts had nothing but junk on them, in the packs and in the banks. Another account simply had no characters on any shards. No idea what malfunctioned or whether it was intentional or a bug or what. Both of those accounts did still have their first year vet rewards available though, so I am certain that they were not compromised and stripped..... anyone would have stripped the vet rewards.
So basically nothing would change from how it is now other than the EJ Option at the end of the 90 days?
Is this your or their estimation?
UOCraft.com
That slide says Pub 100 and onwards come after EJ. So I would interpret it as EJ being Pub 99. Usually they release pubs in a 3 month interval. So I would have guessed, that we might get EJ a little bit earlier...
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The weird thing is that some people who have lost stuff from their bank still sometimes have a few items. One person told me she still had the Charger of the Fallen in her bank. I would assume if someone she knew had taken her stuff they would have taken that. A bit odd really.
Yes. At least, that's how I understood it.
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I am trying to find the video of that part but can't right now to confirm that I am not mixing up with something else ( @CottonEyeJoe104 - did you get part II up yet?)... I believe they said EJs were coming Q1 2018, unless I am mistaken with the date of one of the publishes.
Someone from the party please correct me if I'm wrong.
Exactly. Thats what I was saying. So in effect ... the 90 day shuffle remains identical to how it is now. The question I guess is will that house still be accessible to co-owners or friends who have fully paid up accounts.
Someone posted, that all of this stays untouched. Means, the house stays accessible in game by all characters eligible, i.e. co-owners, friends, etc...
Just don't ask me for a quote. It's somewhere in all those new threads and I don't want to read through all of them a second time
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IE: Q1 2018....
They said that they are HOPING to have EJ ready by the end of March 2018 (the end of Q1) - but don't hold them to it, if there are significant issues.
I think Mesanna and the rest are wary of definitive deadlines, after what happened with Kingdom Reborn.
With KR, EA Japan committed to a Q2 2007 release, including making a version of KR for the shelves (technically, it was a bonus CD for a UO Soundtrack release, to get around any restrictions at the time on doing a box set for just one nation). This included reserving shelf space in several Japanese chains, and all that money would be lost if the stuff didn't ship to the Japanese retailers by the end of June. As a result, in order to keep from embarrassment, EA Japan (which has always been rumored to have more UO players than the rest of the world) pressured the US side to move the KR client from Alpha to Beta when it was barely ready for Alpha, and release it worldwide when it really needed another 4-6 months in Beta. And, those of us around for KR know just how big a debacle it was, and the reason EC exists was that it was easier to start from scratch with a KR replacement than repair/update KR. (sources: former UO staff, in personal conversations 2007-2009).
They said that they are HOPING to have EJ ready by the end of March 2018 (the end of Q1) - but don't hold them to it, if there are significant issues.
I think Mesanna and the rest are wary of definitive deadlines, after what happened with Kingdom Reborn.
With KR, EA Japan committed to a Q2 2007 release, including making a version of KR for the shelves (technically, it was a bonus CD for a UO Soundtrack release, to get around any restrictions at the time on doing a box set for just one nation). This included reserving shelf space in several Japanese chains, and all that money would be lost if the stuff didn't ship to the Japanese retailers by the end of June. As a result, in order to keep from embarrassment, EA Japan (which has always been rumored to have more UO players than the rest of the world) pressured the US side to move the KR client from Alpha to Beta when it was barely ready for Alpha, and release it worldwide when it really needed another 4-6 months in Beta. And, those of us around for KR know just how big a debacle it was, and the reason EC exists was that it was easier to start from scratch with a KR replacement than repair/update KR. (sources: former UO staff, in personal conversations 2007-2009).
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EJ is planned for Early 18. They said Hopefully by March, but dont hold the feet to the fire on that.
I was scrolling through the posts to see whether I should post this. Actually in between yeah and no is "meh." I can think of plenty of other priorities instead of this, and none of what I've heard excites me much.
We all get excited about different things. Me, I play a TWENTY YEAR OLD MMO that is, miraculously, still very much alive and in very active live development. Said game recently had a really cool birthday party where the devs highlighted some half a dozen up and coming features, many of which appear to be of a pretty notable scale. Including a F2P mode, which traditionally has been seen as a new launch or a new spring in most MMOs that have ever tried it. I consider sum of all these parts plenty exciting.
Honestly, if you zoom away til you see it from this angle, does it not excite you?
I'm seriously surprised these poll options manage to bring out serious replies out of people. : D Purpose of this thread is two fold!
A) I really wanted to see a thread in stratics where all this new stuff is mentioned very clearly in the headline&OP. There are plenty of people who aren't currently active but keep " one eye" in UO. imho it is valuable to ensure there are objects big enough for this one eye to catch.
B) I really wanted to make a honest to god hype thread based on and due to the said new stuff.
I'm extremely, terribly not sorry that you don't get your chance and satisfaction to go MEH in the bogus poll included, hahaha
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I have no idea what's going to happen and I've said all I felt I needed to on the subject. Mostly
Comcast put You Tube on their app list so now I've sat through hours of videos from the 20th. I hate having my computer tied up watching videos. Anyway... One thing I found very interesting on the video. Mesanna said that EJ will not be a "Buy one get 3 free deal". I could have been knocked over with a feather lol. She gets it. Now she needs to decide which way to go is the bigger cash cow for EA, we'll see. Although I know she was aware of the scam a long time ago and didn't like it in general. She has all the numbers and I don't. But she's heard us and she gets it. I could easily see it fall either way. But if everything stays the same I'll jump on the bandwagon. Hate being the only sucker in town still paying full price lol. I could beat EA outta 300 a year or so Also I don't see EJ being able to be friended to a house or the whole storage issue they're trying to address is a joke.
They feel EJ could make them money. And it could. I think that will make this pretty much a number one priority, not considering things they're kinda forced to do like holidays, bugs and such. I would hope they would work the new player experience, open their forums and try and do something with account management first. But I doubt that will happen. Although I have no idea how the new player tutorials work, that was after my time pretty much. Maybe they're better than I think.
Free to play came to UO. Who would have thunk it lol. It pretty much works like any other free to play. Those who pay get the perks. Wouldn't be a bad time to try and get Steam past EA again.
Well the holiday stuff is done, as we got to see it. So I do believe they are working on EJ to get it released ASAP. They mentioned they are working on the account management entanglement, although it won't spectacular, because it is just way to much of a sphagetti code disaster. And they have other stuff they rather attend to. But they are going to make it easier to add and remove accounts to your mythic account. So that is atleast a step in the right direction.
The official forums, shouldn't take buy 2 or 3 days to setup at the most. I'm not sure why that hasn't been done in 20 years. But we definitely need official forums for EJ. That way its a one stop shop for people to get assistance.
Maybe after EJ releases, something to push for.
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Certain shirts at EA have a similar hard-on against Steam that some movie companies had against Blockbuster in the 80s and Netflix in the 2000s. There would literally have to be a major corporate leadership change to get UO on Steam.
There have been official forums in the past, and one of the reasons they are gone and Stratics is still here is that the old official forums (and, it looks like the new ones as well) will be so strictly moderated that Stratics would look like the Wild West by comparison.
Some of the EA people related to UO showed up at the Town Hall - Their presence was not mentioned until after they left, presumably to prevent attendees from accosting them over things EA won't let Broadsword do (as they are only following directives from above, as well).
There have been official forums in the past, and one of the reasons they are gone and Stratics is still here is that the old official forums (and, it looks like the new ones as well) will be so strictly moderated that Stratics would look like the Wild West by comparison.
Some of the EA people related to UO showed up at the Town Hall - Their presence was not mentioned until after they left, presumably to prevent attendees from accosting them over things EA won't let Broadsword do (as they are only following directives from above, as well).
I don't recall there ever being official forums... But maybe it was so short lived I just forgot. Or I was banned instantly and wiped it from memory. lol
Well after EA/UO got sued they actually had to actually pay people for the work they did. EA just wasn't going to pay for a forum. It's all about the money with EA. The Steam thing I understand but it's stupid. What better than using a competitor to make money off of? Money is money, it's doesn't know where it came from. The whole EA thing at the party is interesting. I think I liked it better when EA didn't know they still owned UO
They were ok. I didn't actually get banned until they announced they were shutting down and many of us pushed to get banned just before it ended lol. Things were getting a little wild there the last couple days lol Cause like we were radicals and stuff
I am looking forward to further information but I think that giving F2P people to much could be a down side. I would like to see a larger carrot for playing in Fel, which I think would have a better spin off for tram
If only one could do a poll of former players to see why they decided to stop playing. I feel that from my experience the lack of Fel development was a huge factor, that faction change 6 years ago really hurt the player base from what I saw.
If only one could do a poll of former players to see why they decided to stop playing. I feel that from my experience the lack of Fel development was a huge factor, that faction change 6 years ago really hurt the player base from what I saw.
I think you would find it was the trammelisation of the game rather than the lack of Felucca development that was high up on the list of reasons to quit. Along with the awful account management the cheating the scripting the duping the hacking and the total apthy from EA towards what could have been a flagship product that was nurtured and developed rather than systematically destroyed.
Give too little, and there won't be any F2P people. Time is ultimately the most valuable commodity involved in playing any MMO. If they were to opt with some super restricted " endless trial" garbage, nobody would bat an eye. Nobody would feel like wasting their time. Ultimately, game needs to be every bit as good and wholesome to them as it is to subs. There needs to be walls and restrictions, but there also needs to be a legitimately nice, good, deep cut of the cake - Not some scratching from surface.
Honestly, if already existing active subscribers using F2P for some more or less shady and " creative" machinations weren't a factor, then restricting housing alone would be all it takes imo. And would result in an excellent F2P game.
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Basara
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I sent off an E-mail to Mesanna asking if there was a timetable for giving existing accounts (and upgrading trials) to Stygian Abyss, as she announced that well before any mention of Endless Journey - combined with saying to hold off on paying for an upgrade (which would seem to indicate it would be much sooner than EJ).
4 friends just started in osi this month, all don't have uosa, and we are waiting the same thing about that.
Can EJ accounts trade with subscribers?
