What Do You Tell A Friend....

[Tina Small]

...if your friend is thinking of quitting UO and just walking away and letting full castles and Fel Yew gate houses just fall into oblivion?

What kind of information can you offer someone who plays UO mostly to engage in PvP or anything that supports PvP as semi-solid proof that it's worthwhile for them to keep their subscriptions active?

All I've been able to come up with for this person, whose main interest in UO is to PvP, is the following:

- More behind-the-scenes UO infrastructure is being moved "to the cloud," so obviously EA wants to keep UO around long enough to recoup whatever expense that entails.

- If the next publish ever goes live, some weapons are going to do a little more damage and a few have had their special moves changed.

- If the next publish ever happens, you may decide you need to keep your crafter account turned on, gather resources and revamp your PvP characters' suits to take advantage of changes.

- If the next publish happens and you're interested in having unique titles for your characters and the ability to implement localized changes that affect your fellow players on the shard, you might want to work on loyalty on one of your blue characters and run for an ambassador's position in one of the Trammel towns.

- If the next publish happens, you might finally be able to have a house on Siege to make it easier to finish your characters there and PvP/PK on Siege.

- If the next publish happens, there might be some new dyes you can get from the turn-in system.

- Maybe someday we'll see the return of Order and Chaos and the demise of factions.

- Maybe someday the champ spawn system will...be somehow different than what it is today.

- Maybe someday your characters will have new boots to wear.

- Maybe someday you'll be able to find out which guild and faction your "sworn mortal enemy" (or some character who claims to be your mortal enemy) belongs to now...or if he's even logged in lately.

I honestly can't come up with anything else to tell this person to give them a reason to stick around. I haven't played long enough to be anywhere close to being able to claim the top-tier vet rewards, so I have no idea if those are a good incentive for someone to stick around or not. I tend to ignore them and not waste time thinking about them because they're too far out of reach for them to mean anything to me. But maybe someone else can speak to whether or not it's worth putting in the time to get shard shields, polar bear ethies, garden sheds, etc.

Can anyone else come up with some glimmers of hope for this person, reasons to keep paying, reasons to log in? They don't play on Atlantic and I really don't know if they have any interest in moving characters there and joining up with strangers to get involved with PvP, especially if they aren't interested in dropping any of their current homes on another shard.

I don't want to see this person leave UO. But they're very close to just walking away and literally abandoning everything they've worked years to acquire because they're just not sure if it's even worthwhile at this point to go through the effort to log in on their several accounts and attempt to put any of it on mothballs, so to speak. They're feeling like it might just be time to try to break the addiction cold turkey and just walk away for good.

 

[Sellingahouse]

If you cant talk them out of leaving tell them to take a break. I did it for about a year but still paid for my accounts. I love the shard shields glad I paid for my accounts had vet rewards on some accounts i sold on shards to shop there. If they cant pay to keep houses tell them to pack as much as they can in banks and packs, they will want to come back. This game isnt only about PVP, there is so much more to do than fighting. 4 accounts and I dont have a fighter, cant stand fighting, cant tell you much about weapons, armor, skills, monsters or dungeons. If he only wants PVP, and you cant talk him into trying something else, tell him to get the shields and go to other shards fight and become the best PVP on all shards.

 

[Arrgh]

...if your friend is thinking of quitting UO and just walking away and letting full castles and Fel Yew gate houses just fall into oblivion?

What kind of information can you offer someone who plays UO mostly to engage in PvP or anything that supports PvP as semi-solid proof that it's worthwhile for them to keep their subscriptions active?

All I've been able to come up with for this person, whose main interest in UO is to PvP, is the following:

- More behind-the-scenes UO infrastructure is being moved "to the cloud," so obviously EA wants to keep UO around long enough to recoup whatever expense that entails.

- If the next publish ever goes live, some weapons are going to do a little more damage and a few have had their special moves changed.

- If the next publish ever happens, you may decide you need to keep your crafter account turned on, gather resources and revamp your PvP characters' suits to take advantage of changes.

- If the next publish happens and you're interested in having unique titles for your characters and the ability to implement localized changes that affect your fellow players on the shard, you might want to work on loyalty on one of your blue characters and run for an ambassador's position in one of the Trammel towns.

- If the next publish happens, you might finally be able to have a house on Siege to make it easier to finish your characters there and PvP/PK on Siege.

- If the next publish happens, there might be some new dyes you can get from the turn-in system.

- Maybe someday we'll see the return of Order and Chaos and the demise of factions.

- Maybe someday the champ spawn system will...be somehow different than what it is today.

- Maybe someday your characters will have new boots to wear.

- Maybe someday you'll be able to find out which guild and faction your "sworn mortal enemy" (or some character who claims to be your mortal enemy) belongs to now...or if he's even logged in lately.

I honestly can't come up with anything else to tell this person to give them a reason to stick around. I haven't played long enough to be anywhere close to being able to claim the top-tier vet rewards, so I have no idea if those are a good incentive for someone to stick around or not. I tend to ignore them and not waste time thinking about them because they're too far out of reach for them to mean anything to me. But maybe someone else can speak to whether or not it's worth putting in the time to get shard shields, polar bear ethies, garden sheds, etc.

Can anyone else come up with some glimmers of hope for this person, reasons to keep paying, reasons to log in? They don't play on Atlantic and I really don't know if they have any interest in moving characters there and joining up with strangers to get involved with PvP, especially if they aren't interested in dropping any of their current homes on another shard.

I don't want to see this person leave UO. But they're very close to just walking away and literally abandoning everything they've worked years to acquire because they're just not sure if it's even worthwhile at this point to go through the effort to log in on their several accounts and attempt to put any of it on mothballs, so to speak. They're feeling like it might just be time to try to break the addiction cold turkey and just walk away for good.

If their account is old enough, they can always use shard shield to xfer to other server for new people to pvp with for a few weeks until they start missing the goobers (friends) they pvp with on their home shard.


I gave away several accounts years ago and really wish I had of kept them. I regret that except for the fact that several people have fond memories of UO thanks to my generosity and one even still plays 15 years later. I just let some accounts get purged also and have regretted that as well. I would have to think for a long time before I considered letting go of the few remaining accounts I have and I feel like others should give it time as well before leaving something with a lot of time invested. I say this because I have always returned back to UO. I don't care what other game I play, they all s-u-c-k compared to UO despite the ancient graphics UO has. The 'other' MMO's may be nice and shiny but they are all the same for the most part. WoW wannabes...and who wants to play WoW?!?


Tell them to find all the good things about the game rather than focusing on the things that are wrong in their opinion. UO has a lot "right" compared to other MMO's and sometimes it takes playing another MMO to figure that out.

 

[Berethrain]

Yeah, i agree tell them to take a break. I gave my account to a friend for a couple years while i was gone before he got me to come back.

Otherwise, there are way too many "ifs" and "maybes" to try and convince them otherwise.

You can tell them you'll keep them updated with changes etc.

 

[GalenKnighthawke]

I actually make it a policy to not convince people to stay. My theory is, that it's not really my business what someone else's hobbies are.

Were I to, however, I would stick to the basic point that we have no obvious or good reason to think the game's dying anytime soon, and that they like to play or they would not play at all, and that old players have a habit of returning anyway, so why not eliminate the middle-man and just stay?

A lot of it depends upon what said person is into. Some things are unlikely to return and that's a good thing. Some things are unlikely to return and that's a bad thing. Some things never went away they have just been supplanted. UO's still the only game where one can primarily craft, and one can spend one's time in UO only gold-farming for tavern money and basic living and never really participate in anything grand or big. You are never going to need to run into the NPC with an exclamation point over his head in order to advance.

-Galen's player

 

[Thrakkar]

This is an odd question. Especially because we know nothing about his motives. Do you even know? If you don't, try to find out. Then evaluate those motives. And if they're valid and make sense (from his point of view), why would you want to talk him out of it if you're a real friend?

Maybe I got your post wrong, but to me it reads like, "I don't want to see him go, I don't care what he thinks, he should stay". But that's just my interpretation.

And if he decides to leave, I bet you don't need a game to stay in touch. There are a lots of ways to communicate these days...

P.S.: Don't get this post wrong, I just want to shed some light on it from the other side.

 

[Wenchkin]

I find my love of UO is much greater now I let myself take breaks rather than sticking with it when something frustrates me. I used to try persuading players to stay, but if you're not enjoying something then a break is better than waiting until you're so angry you never want to see the game. Take a break while you still care about some things. I recently had fun for a month with my RL partner back in UO at the same time as myself and we just let ourselves enjoy pottering around, no pressure, no hassle. It felt a lot better than trying to stay with the game past frustration point. If a game frustrates me, I play something else for a bit. Then later it's like "ooh, I've got a quiet month ahead, let's open UO again" And then I've always got new changes to get busy with.

With all the changes to armour etc, after some testing on TC I'd take a break at least until the changes are published. Seems a good time to take a break and chill IMO.

It's better to store belongings and sell/give away the buildings than let the lot fall or take a risk with it. Choose the important stuff and store it on characters on those accounts, or choose a favourite account and put the "treasures" onto that account. I don't keep anything in houses now, then it's entirely my choice when accounts are active and I'm not costing money in the interim. I have 1 plot I care about keeping, but there's nothing in that house which matters to me. If I'm playing actively I'd have more interest in housing, but I think if you're not using something it's fair to let others enjoy it. Besides, all those accounts mount up to a fair amount of money each month. UO may be the cost of a meal to some, but the next family can make that 9.99 stretch to a week's food bill. Or it can be spent on something else that you enjoy. Treat the family for a few months instead, take a break and loiter on forums then come back with renewed enthusiasm. Or use the saved money to upgrade your accounts to the new booster when it arrives.

Wenchy

 

[Tina Small]

This is an odd question. Especially because we know nothing about his motives. Do you even know? If you don't, try to find out. Then evaluate those motives. And if they're valid and make sense (from his point of view), why would you want to talk him out of it if you're a real friend?

From what I understand, the main reason my friend is contemplating quitting is because there's little to no PvP activity left on the shard and moving to Atlantic is a solution that has no appeal and kind of feels like it's just a temporary solution anyway.

Apparently, most of my friend's guildmates quit after last year's changes made it too difficult for them to maintain adequate PvP gear and they didn't want to put in the effort to make new suits. And since there's no information available at this point to figure out what the next publish is actually going to include or not include in terms of changes to armor and weapons, it's just about impossible to coax those people back to UO when key parts of their suits were faction arties and have literally vanished into thin air because they've been gone too long and you can't even tell them what will or won't be in the next publish to even know what a new suit would consist of.

If you know people who have quit and now want to come back and replace their faction artifacts with the "real thing," do you just automatically tell them to plan on buying gold from brokers, buying stuff on Atlantic at inflated prices, and then buying transfer tokens to transfer it back to their home shard? Or is it realistic to think they can just stay put on their home shard and somehow farm up replacement pieces themselves within some reasonable time frame? And if they need stuff from Doom and the Abyss and most of their good fighting characters are red, what do they do? Hope to find stuff in Shame? Train up new blue characters and scroll them out, put them in crummy gear, and just wing it? Hope to find enough forged pardons to make red characters blue so they can go to Doom and the Abyss? And if they do all that, there's still no way to guarantee anyone else is doing the same thing on your shard so there is or will be someone to fight against. Or do you tell your old guildmates that if they want to revive the guild, everyone's going to have to just suck it up and plan on moving lock, stock, and barrel to Atlantic because nothing else makes sense anymore?

How is any of this appealing to people who just really want to PvP, especially with so much uncertainty about whether Order and Chaos is coming back and what it will look like, what's going to happen to champ spawns, and whether or not the devs have more changes in mind for revamping armor, perhaps monkeying with meddable armor in some future publish?

And this doesn't even touch on problems people continue to have with credit cards not being accepted or having trouble with resetting forgotten passwords.

For my friend, I think it all really just boils down to whether or not it's worth trying to stick it out on one of those dying shards, hoping someday there will be overwhelming reasons for old guildmates to come back and breath new life into the guild, give up and transfer to Atlantic, or just call it quits. I honestly don't know what to tell my friend. Don't own a crystal ball to be able to see if there's anything coming that's worth waiting for. I don't PvP at this point...tried it and it wasn't my cup of tea. Rarely use my faction thieves anymore. I barely play on Siege anymore. I putter around training tamers and crafters at this point because nothing else really captures my interest anymore. So I really don't feel like I have the expertise to give my friend any good suggestions on how to keep playing UO as a die hard PvPer and still find it enjoyable. That's why I asked for suggestions.

 

[outcry]

Tell him to pack as much as he can into his account banks. have each char ride blue bug for more storage , so if he does quit and decides to come back he , comes back with some of his previous items.. As for the castle and others , instead of letting them just fall, he should make an event out of it..
or
But most all leave at some point and then come back . Taking the break works and if he only has a couple of accounts just round robin them every 3 months and pay to make sure the Castles and Yew house do not fall

or
Tell him to visit some other shards that may not be Atl pvp but still have enough he might enjoy it

 

[Goldberg-Chessy]

What a shock.

More UO doom and gloom from the spreadsheet accountant.

How about telling your friend that UO is and has always been the best MMORPG ever created?

Is that not enough? Maybe your friend got bored because he/she bought all the full castles and accounts so just doesnt get it?

You post doom and gloom nonsense about a random 'friend' and expect what?

Its funny though how your 'friend' seems to have the same pvp gear/faction issues that you are currently ranting about in the other faction post. Hrmmmm

 

[SlobberKnocker]

the gauntlet has been thrown.

i have seen quite a few returning faces to chessy. they ask how the shard is pvp etc and i explain to them things are picking up and all their gear stinks now.

on the flip side i had another friend leave and promptly had me loot his house. i packed all his soulstones and things he'd need upon a return into his bank boxes. left his characters fully suited. emptied his house which was mostly resources and some decent gear and put it either in my stock or up for sale. made enough to cover the transfer token to get the rest back to my shard. the nicest item he had which is probably a 200-250 mln gold piece i held onto. i figure he will be back and can promptly sell it to get himself back on his feet.

 

[Acid Rain]

He needs a break not quit. Advise already given is key. Pack up your stuff best u can and
quit playing not paying, cause everyone comes back eventually. Ive quit playing at least
7 or 8 times over the 15yrs(once for well over a yr) but always paid and always came back.
She may be an old wh ore but shes MY old wh ore.

Best advice I give friends about pvp in UO...... find another game. (BF3 FTW BABY)
If all this person does is pvp then they're missing out on the best parts of UO.
If most all of their characters are red, my guess is they wont be missed much anyway.
"Where'd that guy go that used to kill me all the time? I miss him." - never heard in UO history.

Goldberg said it :

How about telling your friend that UO is and has always been the best MMORPG ever created?

and if he needs a break take it, we all need breaks every now and again.
For less than 1 nites beer money his/her account stays active per month. Done deal.

 

[Dodger]

I would suggest advising them to try something new, if they are burnt out on pvp or there are not enough ppl to fight they could make a blue trammel killer, could try rp, crafting, griefing, decorating, making a unique character, the only limitation in uo is your imagination.

 

[hen]

What you need to do is tell your friend how many hours he has spent in the game, (thousands no doubt) . A couple of hours putting his best stuff in the bank and giving stuff away would release him from his torment, but always give him a doorway to come back.
That, Tina, is what you need to do.

 

[Kirthag]

As someone who has taken voluntary and forced breaks (the last break I lost 3 full with rares & resources houses, 2 of which were in Luna on different shards - that was a forced break), coming back into UO is always an adventure. I started with UO in 1997 soon after launch and I've watched it peak, and dip... and dive. However, people are returning right now (as I have) just out of curiosity.

Breaks are good. Go store everything, sell off what cannot be stored (or donate to friends who are staying) and take a mundane vacation. my longest break was 3 years - is almost like re-learning UO again... sorta... but is like coming home too.

 

[Doubleplay]

I know a person in Cypress who regrets not having invested his money in another month of UO. Someone at the bank had a better use for his $12. Spend it now folks, enjoy the game while you can. Though an extreme example, you never know how much you will miss something until you have lost your choice. I quit UO for two years for a similar reason, after having played since the first month. Forgot my password when I started again and lost credit for the early years. I now have 10 years again and do a double take every time I start to think of dropping the game a second time.

 

[hen]

I know a person in Cypress who regrets not having invested his money in another month of UO. Someone at the bank had a better use for his $12. Spend it now folks, enjoy the game while you can. Though an extreme example, you never know how much you will miss something until you have lost your choice. I quit UO for two years for a similar reason, after having played since the first month. Forgot my password when I started again and lost credit for the early years. I now have 10 years again and do a double take every time I start to think of dropping the game a second time.

Where?

 

[Doubleplay]

The Cypress example was just a general one. This week, the Cypress govt confiscated money from savings accounts for government use. Not intended as a political statement, but rather as a general statement as to the long term vs the short term decision making. How many of us would have missed a long and rewarding marriage if we had divorced every time we felt bored, or got disillusioned about the future? My advice for Tina, then, is to tell her friend to wait a bit and see if their outlook changes. Unless the person is destitute, the $12 a month should not be the determining factor, and the perspective on the things that do matter will change over time. In my case, the perspective about UO did change a few months after I quit and when I joined up again, I regretted the decision to quit in the first place.

 

[Angel of Sonoma]

I agree with the general consensus...Take a break. I've been playing since 1998 and have taken several breaks over the years. Sometimes coming back is like learning a new game.

If PVP is the only reason your friend plays UO and he/she doesn't wish to switch shards, maybe they should go to a free shard for PVP.