What Happened to The Idea of Turning UO Back Into The Wild, Wild West?

[Tina Small]

In the weeks before the Stygian Abyss expansion was released just over two years ago, Cal and Josh Drescher from Mythic did an interview with UGO Entertainment. You can find a copy of that interview here: Ultima Online: 12 years down, 12 years to go - UGO.com

One of the interviewer's questions was, "UO was like the Wild West in its early days, everything seemed fairplay and you took your life in your hands when you left town; does that still exist in today's UO?"

Cal's response was, "That's something we're going to try to do in two pieces. We're going to have an announcement after this launch about another piece that will turn UO back into the Wild, Wild West that everyone wants. But before that, within the Stygian Abyss, there are areas that are Player vs. Player combat that, are, I'll just go ahead and say it, where the 'Care Bears' have to travel. As you are going from one place to another, yeah it's all fine. But The Abyss is not a place you travel alone. I think that's what players have been missing a lot. Also, there are more challenges for the brain that aren't handholding exercises. You're going to have to go and find and do some discovery. I think a lot of things that the players say they want we've as a production team gone and said 'We're going to give it to you our way and remind you of what Ultima Online was like.'"

The impression I've had in the two years since Cal made that remark was that there was something big and PvP-related that was going to be announced after the SA launch. But I don't think whatever it was ever happened, unless he was talking about ship-to-ship PvP in the High Seas booster. But that booster always seemed so....rushed....that I somehow doubt that was what Cal was referring to a year earlier when he did the interview with UGO Entertainment. For a while, I even thought there was a slim possibility that we might see the Fel ruleset extended across the whole game as all characters got stuffed into factions and that the devs thought maybe we wouldn't mind too much since by then we had the teleporter tiles and crystal portals to simplify and make safe the process of getting around.

What say you? Any thoughts on what Cal was talking about? Was it ship battles, arenas, faction revamp, a classic shard, or something else entirely? And do you think he was on the right track in thinking that the majority of players want more areas in UO that you don't dare to travel alone? Do you think UO's new producer and what's left of the dev team will ever be able to dig deep and pull out and finish some partially completed PvP-related project and surprise us with it?

 

[Mirt]

I think he was talking about the big and now aborted update that they were talking about to factions. Probably it was also that classic PVP test server with the king of the hill. Of course all of those lead to nothing. But with Cal gone and a new Franchise producer who knows what the future holds.

 

[Tina Small]

I think he was talking about the big and now aborted update that they were talking about to factions. Probably it was also that classic PVP test server with the king of the hill. Of course all of those lead to nothing. But with Cal gone and a new Franchise producer who knows what the future holds.

I've kind of thought it was the factions update too. But then I remember reading the comments by one or the other of the developers or designers that worked on it where he said it was just a project they were working on between other projects. It made it sound like it was just something they had fooled around with a bit. And when they dropped it so quickly, I really had that impression. I'll try to find that comment if I can and provide a link.

Edited to add:

Eh, closest I can come is this collection of developer posts in the Developer Feed forum, drawn from one much longer thread that was in the Test Center forum for a while: http://vboards.stratics.com/uo-developer-feed/206929-factions-testing-commencement.html#post1717585. Re-reading it now, I still have the impression that Mark, Mike, and Bruce were all working on the faction revamp in-between other projects. And then we all know that a scant couple of months later, we got the surprise announcement that they were rolling out the High Seas booster.

 

[Kayne]

Cal's response was, "That's something we're going to try to do in two pieces. We're going to have an announcement after this launch about another piece that will turn UO back into the Wild, Wild West that everyone wants.

No I didnt want the wild wild west at all. I want reasons for the community to come together and have fun without constant new items and arguments over old ones being made less rare.

I want interaction with other people, I want the random things that make this game great, standing in Haven before it got blown up with the community singing random songs like "Stairway to haven" etc. I want my smith to actually be useful, I want that stone mason to make something useful and fun.

I don't want to farm imbuing regs all day to make the latest wonderful suit. I don't mind farming the usual ingots and leather, heck I've even made most of my own cloth for tailor training but I really don't want to lose the fun and grind to get the imbuing regs.
I trained the crafters so I could use them and help others but my smith is virtually useless.

But before that, within the Stygian Abyss, there are areas that are Player vs. Player combat that, are, I'll just go ahead and say it, where the 'Care Bears' have to travel. As you are going from one place to another, yeah it's all fine. But The Abyss is not a place you travel alone. I think that's what players have been missing a lot. Also, there are more challenges for the brain that aren't handholding exercises. You're going to have to go and find and do some discovery. I think a lot of things that the players say they want we've as a production team gone and said 'We're going to give it to you our way and remind you of what Ultima Online was like.'"

There are no areas in the Abyss that a "care bear" HAS to travel through. The primeval lich is the only spawn I know of thats in a fel ruleset and I don't have to go there IF I choose not too.

What say you? Any thoughts on what Cal was talking about? Was it ship battles, arenas, faction revamp, a classic shard, or something else entirely? And do you think he was on the right track in thinking that the majority of players want more areas in UO that you don't dare to travel alone? Do you think UO's new producer and what's left of the dev team will ever be able to dig deep and pull out and finish some partially completed PvP-related project and surprise us with it?

I say that no I don't want areas that I daren't travel to, I don't enjoy PvP so I would only end up avoiding all areas made into PvP zones. I want areas that I can travel to alone or in a group have some random encounters (probably die alot) but ultimately come away having had fun. I don't care about an Artie lvl 11,12 or 1001 I just want to have fun and play with like minded people.

 

[Warpig Inc]

There is already a shard for that and as argued it's greatest downfall is one character slot. Period.

Want action go to yew fel gate and talk smack on chat till someone gets froggy and shows up. For a fel ruleset across the lands. Ya rub that left and right brain cell together harder to get that to work.

They can barely keep up with the EC & CC gap and players want a classic shard. Going to make that a 2d only shard or double the work load coding. Classic shard. Lets rip all the flavors of ice cream off the shelf and sell only vanilla.

There are all types of places currently in the game for all types of play style. Forcing paying players to now be forced into a playstyle they do not desire. Will not improve anything.


Progress would be to limit the Item bless deed earned to one per character over 30 days old from the turn in. Then do away with insurance and issue every account over 3 months old 2 PBD per character. Thinking over the ins and outs of this not having everything safe. How many the current PVP base would go for losing items. That would be a load of the current PVP base that don't even read theese forums.

 

[Barry Manilow]

Most likely it was the failed classic shard. When even players can't come up with a the "classic" they want, how you think the Devs will.

Also the wild west of early UO included alot of factors of why it was very chaotic. Unless you were a beta player, most players had no idea what to do. So your 100gps you got in your backpack meant something. And there are other tons of factors.

No matter what the devs do, well short of a complete wipe, change the rules so no one knows how to play the game, there will never be a wild west of UO anymore.

Maybe UO2 . But I highly doubt it because PvP MMOs just too niche for a business. The demand is for a split of both game styles (PvM/PvP). And honestly, if it wasn't for Trammel, UO would not even be around today.

 

[ACB1961]

People now have no idea how it was. If you stayed a Lord you were just plain rough. We fought groups of murderers every day because thats how it was. You'd be killing something good for that time & a group would run up & try to kill you.

My favorite times were the no armor in death robes years.

That rocked! It was exciting. Where now its just sort of items & business.

 

[georox]

They were actually talking about the 'Wild Wild West' inspired expansion that comes out in Q2 2012.*













*I just pulled that out of my butt.

 

[enderz]

A suggestion, since tram will always be at odds with fel in regaurds to "keep your pvp off my pve an reverse" an etc ad nauseum.

Siege needs an update on it's housing rule so others can come play n have a place, also give Siege perks to draw people in. Perks that don't break the ruleset and Siege's uniqueness of course.

Any attempts at this point to put more fel into tram or tram into fel, even those with good intention, will be highly controversial.

Also new producer means some things the old producer might have envisoned is prolly being revised or scrapped.

 

[Mirt]

I actually do remember the old days. But we have to remember that much of that system wouldn't work out all that well today. I think we can sadly point to the population of Siege and Mugen to tell us that. (Not that both shards don't have some great players)

 

[Vyal]

Could it have had something to do with gargoyle faction & allowing factions member to fight in Ter Mur like a fel facet? No one will ever know...

 

[Yalp]

Turns out if people have the chance to live in the Wild Wild West or modern day.. they kind of prefer the modern for their conveniences.. like oh.. indoor plumbing, central heat and air, fleece v. wool fabrics, homogenized milk, telephones v. telegraphs, the internet, online gaming, etc. etc.

 

[Promathia]

The History Of Cal : Keep making pvpers promises and never follow through on any of them


1: The OP's post
2: Arenas
3: Faction Revamp

 

[GalenKnighthawke]

My feeling is that, being largely unfamiliar with the product he was asking to run, he foolishly judged it by the boards, wherein Siege players and Fellies from the production shard are horribly over-represented relative to their apparent population in the game. He thus made both that remark and called most of his customers "care bears."

Then he look at the numbers, **** his pants, and calmed down about such foolishness.

-Galen's player

 

[GalenKnighthawke]

My feeling is that, being largely unfamiliar with the product he was asking to run, he foolishly judged it by the boards, wherein Siege players and Fellies from the production shard are horribly over-represented relative to their apparent population in the game. He thus made both that remark and called most of his customers "care bears."

Then he look at the numbers, **** his pants, and calmed down about such foolishness.

-Galen's player

Part 2:

He then decided to focus on smaller changes to cater to the PvP crowd he favored. Faction revamping didn't go that well, as we saw. So he dropped that.

They really do need to do the arenas, though, it looks like they have already done a lot of work on it, senseless to just leave it there.

And besides, I'm hatching a proposal on the Virtue System I want to pitch to them and having the arenas active is a pretty critical component of it.

-Galen's player

 

[Barry Manilow]

My feeling is that, being largely unfamiliar with the product he was asking to run, he foolishly judged it by the boards, wherein Siege players and Fellies from the production shard are horribly over-represented relative to their apparent population in the game. He thus made both that remark and called most of his customers "care bears."

Then he look at the numbers, **** his pants, and calmed down about such foolishness.

-Galen's player

If that's the case I am glad he is gone.

 

[GalenKnighthawke]

If that's the case I am glad he is gone.

Just for clarification: You are glad he's gone because he calmed down about the foolishness, or because he engaged in said foolishness at all?

-Galen's player

 

[Otis Firefly]

it is exactly as he said it would be!! the wild wild west!!...nothin but ghost shards, over priced items/services...changes to account services so its harder to even pay them to play if ya want to...alot like the way things ran back in the wild wild west days...xept we cant lynch anyone!!
and they even have the old snake oil salesmen via the uo store!
buy this fantastic new boat!..be the first on your shard to have it!! its big!! its slow as hell!..and it comes with a fancy sextant wheel..that will tell you the location of your home (incase trolls move it in the middle of the night)
or a fancy dye! sure to bring all the harpys runnin to see your shiney self!!!
lol ok sorry...i had too

 

[Zosimus]

it is exactly as he said it would be!! the wild wild west!!...nothin but ghost shards, over priced items/services...changes to account services so its harder to even pay them to play if ya want to...alot like the way things ran back in the wild wild west days...xept we cant lynch anyone!!
and they even have the old snake oil salesmen via the uo store!
buy this fantastic new boat!..be the first on your shard to have it!! its big!! its slow as hell!..and it comes with a fancy sextant wheel..that will tell you the location of your home (incase trolls move it in the middle of the night)
or a fancy dye! sure to bring all the harpys runnin to see your shiney self!!!
lol ok sorry...i had too

LAWL!!!! You just made me a fan lol

 

[Ahuaeyjnkxs]

Gotta give it to Tina for making people puke their guts out in public and pulling noses out of a few wlurmkers.

Naha

 

[Sevin0oo0]

I think Cal said/says what he does 'cause he's a 'producer' - think 'Salesman', as such, he's very drama oriented - hopefully the new one won't be selling the same snake oil

 

[phantus]

I think Cal said/says what he does 'cause he's a 'producer' - think 'Salesman', as such, he's very drama oriented - hopefully the new one won't be selling the same snake oil

And here, ladies and gentlemen, is your answer in it's most simplistic form.

Cal was selling a product. His speeches and posts and apologies were scripted and made for our benefit. They were molded to fit to us.

 

[Vyal]

Ya all those lies he told everyone... I was excited about them for sure, new faction changes would have been great. On Legends I still have 87 million punkte on one guy alone. Still nothing has been added for gargoyles The duel pits would have been great to have events with, it would have been tons of fun to have even half the things he said they would do like a year ago.
For that matter though even Mesanna talked about those things being in the works already and should be out soon. It was all just a big lie to keep people playing. SOTD was the biggest carrot I have seen in all my time playing UO. Screwed by that sword to the max... Cal's response was, I don't care if everyone hates the sword you don't have to play. I had enough and quit 4 months ago but I still looked at the patch notes & this new cleanup I have been waiting for almost a year on looks good, thief additions new virtue great cool. Is it out yet? Hell no, just another carrot man to get me to turn my account on for a month then after this month when it still is not live it will be, "soon" again... Freaking UO get your **** right.

 

[MalagAste]

Well I for one wasn't too pleased with Cal insulting 80% of the playerbase by calling them "Carebears".... not the brightest move.

Then the whole talk of Classic Shards made me want to pull my hair out.

I don't even want to start another discussion of that nature ever...

Yes the Arena's NEED finished... There are a great number of people looking forward to that! Just thinking about how that might add to events and things to do gets me excited.

Faction changes would be great... though just like classic shards NO ONE can agree on how that should be implemented.

And I'm pretty excited about the additions talked about in Pub 72 as well... though we all need to keep in mind that UO just lost it's producer and we now have someone "newish" who will need to get all familiar with what's going on and all before he can start working on things.

I also want my house to be working right as far as lockdowns are concerned... I believe there are all sorts of posts about bugs associated with the new patch/publish.... so I for one would kinda like the kinks worked out before this goes out all over... What would be worse waiting a couple of weeks for a sound patch or getting disappointed yet again because of another botched publish?

I'm still waiting for someone to fix the number of Co-owners we can have on a house..... while I was excited to finally be able to be co-owned to all my homes I'm stuck still not being able to co-own all my characters to all my homes ..... because of the limit to co-owners per house. I'm still stuck being just a friend in my own house and not being able to friend my actual friends to my house.....

I hate not being able to secure stuff in my house without playing the log out log in game.... Now that my accounts have to be "linked" I'd love to have my homes linked too...... but that's a day dream.

 

[HD2300]

Watch out Tina, you might get a PM... Oh nvm.

Actually I think a very open and unmoderated discussion of what went wrong would be very useful at this point in time, so that the same mistakes arent repeated in the next couple of years.

If the new Franchise Producer is reading this, please ignore the fanbois. UO has been on the wrong track for a while, and the "Yes men" are the ones that want things to remain on the same track. Subscription numbers now versus 2 years ago dont lie.

 

[Woodsman]

Yes the Arena's NEED finished... There are a great number of people looking forward to that! Just thinking about how that might add to events and things to do gets me excited.

If you look at one of the videos, Supreem said he was in charge of the arena stuff, and given that he's the lead engineer for UO and has probably worked on the account migration and some of the other stuff more than others, his time has probably not been spent on arenas much, if any. At the time he mentioned it, he said that the server upgrades delayed him working on the arenas. That was March or April.

They didn't even get around to finishing the character copy that was needed for the arenas stuff did they? Until they get that finished, it won't even matter how much work is done on arenas since arenas relies on character copy. And right now Pub 72, Anniversary, Vet Rewards, Halloween and hopefully the graphics update are probably the priorities and the lead engineer would be involved with all of those in some way. I personally don't think arenas will happen before November or December at the very earliest.

 

[lucitus]

I really cant understand the never ending discussion about a classic UO or vanilla UO. There are many many servers out there offering exactly that ruleset. Also i cant understand why the 2d players are feared of the Enhanced Client, there were no plans to abond the 2d client and there will be no plans to do it!

Another thing is the lack of development this year, a year of nothing, a year of boredom, this year is for me the worst year ever in the UO history.

Nothing good were or will be implemented, the rustic and gothic theme packs came with no content at all, the spring cleaning is also only a simple implementation without any content, for 2 years many many gargoyles are living in tents near Royal City without any danger in the gohst cities around them.

The development the last 2 years was soo slow like the Enhanced Client after 2h of gametime

 

[Martyna Zmuir]

Character copy has been working for a while now, and I have to admit is a neat feature. WAY faster than a character transfer too...

Arenas would definately be nice to see finished, since parts of that code might be able to be used to make the bagball arena grief-proof.


Personally, I believe that the "wild, wild west" comment was said in the same vein as the "carebears" slur - i.e. without much forethought or true knowledge of the community. While Cal may have had a lot of infectious energy in his announcements and videos, he was far more marketing oriented... Lots of bubbly words, few results. I had hoped he had turned a corner after the last video, but cest la vie, now we'll never truly know.

I do, however, think it is safe to say that the notion of "wild,wild west"-itizing UO (interperated as somehow making the Trammel-like facets more like Felucca) would be an epic fail...

 

[Martyna Zmuir]

SOTD was the biggest carrot I have seen in all my time playing UO. Screwed by that sword to the max... Cal's response was, I don't care if everyone hates the sword you don't have to play.

To be fair to Cal, he DID NOT say that. It was Supreem in this post.

The "carrot" of the SotD was entirely in the eyes of the pro-classic sharder's imaginations as evidenced in THIS and THIS post.

 

[Tina Small]

If the dev team can get arenas going, I hope they'll also work on figuring out a way for players to copy characters from Siege and Mugen to wherever the arena is located. As of right now, you can't use that feature for copying characters on those shards to Test Center.

 

[Zosimus]

If the dev team can get arenas going, I hope they'll also work on figuring out a way for players to copy characters from Siege and Mugen to wherever the arena is located. As of right now, you can't use that feature for copying characters on those shards to Test Center.

I dont think you can or ever will copy chars from Siege or Mugen since it was kind of classified as an island by the devs because of items..

Off Camera: A Short question, will you allow transfers off Siege.
Cal: You can’t do it. It’s not technically possible. So..
Supreem: That’s right. Umm..because the rules are differet, there are items on that shard that are very specific to it, I mean not just necessarily items, but different things you can do with items, you can’t just bring those characters to live shards, we’d have to make so many exceptions to make it possible, to transfer a character from there.
Cal: Right. As I said before, umm..when Siege was created, and this is the stuff that I’ve learned. Umm..there are a lot of rules that were made that prohibited folks from going there or leaving…umm..so like I said, Siege is an island, and it was designed that way unfortunately.

Off Camera: *Unintelligible*…Um… Question for the team, will the PVP arena be open this spring.
Supreem: I hope so. He’s pointing at me because I’m the one that is taking point on that project. The hardware migration kind of sucked me up for a while and now I’m starting to climb out of that hole, I can start looking at arenas again, so it’s..like 90% of the way there, but that 10% is 90% of the rest of it.
Cal: Nice
Supreem: So it’s still
Cal: That’s great math
*unintelligible*
Off Camera: Should be in front of Congress
*laughter*
Cal: That makes 93.7% *unintelligible* Congressman
Supreem: It needs more work before it can go to a test center..umm..and we really want to make sure Character Copy is working before we open our arenas so that you can bring your live characters there, we don’t want to have to force you to spend hours setting up a character so that you can test arenas for us

 

[Conrad]

"No matter what the devs do, well short of a complete wipe, change the rules so no one knows how to play the game, there will never be a wild west of UO anymore."

You're missing something. Not only did people not know how to play Ultima Online, they didn't know how to play MMOs.

Nobody did. That was a time in gaming history that will never exist again. Simple things--like dedicated healers and tanks, for example--that are a core concept in games like WoW often never even occurred to people playing UO. It was that ability to truly discover something new--to think--of different possibilities, and then put them into action, that made early UO so special.

Never again will that mass naivete, where everyone felt like a babe in the woods, exist in the gaming world. If you were a part of it, like me, I am sure you understand--UO in the early days was a new frontier I feel honored to have been a part of.

I once got stuck, quite dead, up on one of those little tussocks of land near the oasis in T2A--I had teleported up, then accidentally whacked myself with a mis-targeted Blade Spirit--and ended up standing up there for two days waiting for some nice person to save me. Mind you, this is before the "Stuck Option". I asked myself, "So this is supposed to be fun?".

Oddly, it was, even after a GM answered my page and told me "You got up here...I'm sure you'll figure a way down" and promptly disappeared.

 

[GalenKnighthawke]

Personally, I believe that the "wild, wild west" comment was said in the same vein as the "carebears" slur - i.e. without much forethought or true knowledge of the community.

Yep.

I do, however, think it is safe to say that the notion of "wild,wild west"-itizing UO (interperated as somehow making the Trammel-like facets more like Felucca) would be an epic fail...

I would find it difficult to imagine a reasonable argument for any other result, considering the actual evidence. The fact that they found it necessary to create Trammel to begin with, because people were leaving. The fact that UO peaked post-Trammel. The fact that walking around in Trammel and Felucca you see way more people in Trammel. The fact that the 2 least populated shards, according to a now-deleted Draconi post, are Siege and Mugen. The fact that things are still this way after years and years of incentives to come to Fel going back to the Dungeon Khaldun and stretching through Publish 16, double resources, and the awesome content available at the Primeval Lich spawn. Despite all these Fel is still under-populated, and any attempt to spread that throughout the game as a whole can serve only to further depopulate the game as a whole.

As I stated above, I think Cal saw the boards and wildly misinterpreted it to represent UO players.

-Galen's player

 

[Vyal]

Here comes the care bears to diss Fel again... Go home care bear this thread is not for you.

 

[Ahuaeyjnkxs]

You guys make me hallucinate in how much you can forget in such little time..

this is ridiculous... leave the classic shard in the grave where it belongs.

JUST SHUT UP about it rofl...

you guys remember more the trolls "and possible HIRED agent provocateurs" heck some idiots would sell their mother for 10$ so they can get their next dose...

NO I'm not out of line here !

JUST LEAVE IT

STOP SAYING WE HAVENT AGREED, THERE WAS A POLL AND IT WAS WON BY 70% and even if it was NOT my FIRST CHOICE I'd have PUT UP with IT and be happier than now.

JUST LEAVE IT !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Tina Small]

If the dev team can get arenas going, I hope they'll also work on figuring out a way for players to copy characters from Siege and Mugen to wherever the arena is located. As of right now, you can't use that feature for copying characters on those shards to Test Center.

I dont think you can or ever will copy chars from Siege or Mugen since it was kind of classified as an island by the devs because of items..

Off Camera: A Short question, will you allow transfers off Siege.
Cal: You can’t do it. It’s not technically possible. So..
Supreem: That’s right. Umm..because the rules are differet, there are items on that shard that are very specific to it, I mean not just necessarily items, but different things you can do with items, you can’t just bring those characters to live shards, we’d have to make so many exceptions to make it possible, to transfer a character from there.
Cal: Right. As I said before, umm..when Siege was created, and this is the stuff that I’ve learned. Umm..there are a lot of rules that were made that prohibited folks from going there or leaving…umm..so like I said, Siege is an island, and it was designed that way unfortunately.

Off Camera: *Unintelligible*…Um… Question for the team, will the PVP arena be open this spring.
Supreem: I hope so. He’s pointing at me because I’m the one that is taking point on that project. The hardware migration kind of sucked me up for a while and now I’m starting to climb out of that hole, I can start looking at arenas again, so it’s..like 90% of the way there, but that 10% is 90% of the rest of it.
Cal: Nice
Supreem: So it’s still
Cal: That’s great math
*unintelligible*
Off Camera: Should be in front of Congress
*laughter*
Cal: That makes 93.7% *unintelligible* Congressman
Supreem: It needs more work before it can go to a test center..umm..and we really want to make sure Character Copy is working before we open our arenas so that you can bring your live characters there, we don’t want to have to force you to spend hours setting up a character so that you can test arenas for us

If arenas were to end up being just an area that you copy characters to and not a full-blown shard, it would seem like the main differences between gear on a Siege or Mugen character and gear on a character from one of the other shards would be: (1) an item is Hero or Evil dyed so it has a distinct color and (assuming it isn't a faction artifact) can only be equipped by another character in the same pair of factions; (2) a bladed weapon, scissors, or fishing pole shows a number of remaining uses; (3) an item is protected with the Siege blessing; and (4) an item that is normally blessed elsewhere (e.g., most spellbooks with mods on them, the 7th anniversary helm and ember leggings) isn't blessed at all.

To get around one aspect of difference #1, substitute regular dye tub colors (white or black, perhaps) on the Evil or Hero-dyed item so the character still looks somewhat color-coordinated.

To accommodate difference #2, in the character copy process, make sure any bladed weapons, scissors, and fishing poles that are copied lose the tag that shows how many uses they have left and make sure double clicking on such items while in the arena location can't affect usage and/or never destroys or weakens such items.

To get around the "equipability" aspect of difference #1, the Siege blessing of difference #3, and the lack of blessing in difference #4, just treat all copied items no matter which shard they came from as blessed and only able to be equipped or used by the character they came with, sort of like faction artifacts. If you can't leave the arena and roam a full shard and copying your character is presumably going to be easy, there would be no need to swap gear or other items between characters, even vanquished to victor. Presumably you'd be there to fight and get bragging rights, not make a return trip to your character's shard of origin with newly acquired "stuff." When you want to change up what you have with you for something you didn't bring or say you ran out of bandages or potions, just restock on your home shard and make a new copy of the character in the arena that replaces the old one but the copy/overlay process wouldn't affect your rank/standing.

Unless I'm missing something really big and obvious, it seems like the differences are not that huge, especially if you only copy the character to use an arena and not an entire shard. I think it would be pretty pathetic if arenas come to fruition and two shards where people pay the same amount to play there as any other shard are never given the opportunity to use them.

 

[Tanivar]

Here comes the care bears to diss Fel again... Go home care bear this thread is not for you.

You can have your fel as long as they leave the Tram ruleset facets intact and free from a return of the PKer problem that was killing UO pre-tram.

If we wound up with a 'wild wild west' like pre-tram with as few players as UO has now, the sudden return of the mass exodus of players out of UO due to PKing would probably drop the subscriber numbers to low to keep the game profitable pretty quickly. There are not that many left now.

Once pretty much only the PvPers and PKers remained, many of the PKers would leave as well due to no easy targets and drop the subscriber numbers even lower.

Would there be enough PvPers to keep the game profitable after the PvMers were driven out and the PKers then left?

People will not pay a monthly fee to UO to be fun for others instead of having any fun themselves.

Simple fact folks.

 

[enderz]

... a return of the PKer problem that was killing UO pre-tram.

While I agree with some of what you said the above quote I think is incorrect.

Actually UO pre-tram was a booming time for subscriptions. Some people left cause of pvp of course but most others adapted and even took part in pvp. Right before Trammel was opened there was an increase in reds though I will agree.

It was actually the fact that there was absolutley no where to put a house. One account could have infinite houses before they cap'd housing at 1 per account and a lot were grandfathered in. Every plot in Fel had a house on it no matter how small. Lot's of players had to live out of their bank for some time.

Trammel offered new players and those who lived out of their bank forever a chance at a house without having to ebay for one.

That's how I remember it.

 

[Ahuaeyjnkxs]

I told you to leave it... now you're going to have to put up with a dose of :

this is a 12 year old game and not an important discussion like the future of the USA !

You're all letting yourselves be driven by fear of a past that didn't truely exist.

If we wound up with a 'wild wild west' like pre-tram with as few players as UO has now, the sudden return of the mass exodus of players out of UO due to PKing would probably drop the subscriber numbers to low to keep the game profitable pretty quickly. There are not that many left now.

No... just no... you can't use a sophism to justify an interpretation of the maybe future that dosen't even make sense to begin with !

This is your inner nerd frustration speaking !

I was there... ok ok..

yes I was a PK, but I saw where Pks hanged and let me tell you :

*EMPHASIS*

no other red tought it was a good idea to engage me and my blue healer on atlantic, so we OWNED the dungeons every night for the whole summer.

HOWEVER *DOUBLE EMPHASIS*

There were plenty of guilds that managed to escape from us with big piles of gold. ok ok.. MOST people escaped.

if I made more money in one night than ONE of them I was extreemly lucky, it was a sport to know that they can die and lose what, 30 minutes of play ? one or two hours if they were stupid enough to carry vainqs in a dungeon ?

well if I died, I died and lost 400 hours. Can you imagine the party they had when my second best friend betrayed me and over 100 players and 200 pets jumped on me (yes kind players like our dear Tanivar using lag to kill me)

first hand observation not enough ?

My dear friends were in good guilds, and I asked them what they think about the PK "problem" back in the day...

first answer I get is WHAT pk problem ? then I ask details...

well it turns out most of them didn't even see a PK everynight, because they were bright enough to hunt at less hot spots and get a tiny less bit of loot.

Some of them hunted prime spots and explained to me :

Well yes, we get killed about once every 3-4 runs, which still makes our job more profitable than any PK, it adds to the exitement and is a natural factor of risk in a game that is BASED ON REALITY.

Leave a gold mine open to the public, there are bandits and thieves around.

Maybe not in 2011 where we can install huge lasers to shave their *censored*

Well...

WHY HAVENT YOU LEFT IT ?!

 

[Barry Manilow]

I believe even Lord British (Garret) himself mentioned giving players total freedom on an internet game was the wrong way to go. Of course humans being humans will go for easy marks and target newbie players making the gaming experience for them crappy. And it opened the door wide open for the creation of Everquest and it did suck out alot of UO players looking for another MMO without the headaches that UO had.

 

[Kayne]

Its been well documented that during Beta and after players were a source of amazement to Garriot and the design team at the time because they had their ideas and they didn't think about certain actions being taken by a player and when a player used that freedom in an unexpected way it sometimes brought trouble.

I mean come on we all heard about the supposedly invulnerable Lord Britsh being killed during beta by a now infamous player.

We can never have those days back again because we all know what is and isn't possible in the game. This isn't 1997 and nor should it ever become that.

 

[Lady Storm]

Well from being one of those Beta players to now I have seen all the changes. (I didnt take more then a 2 week walk off from uo in its history)
First idea that went wrong...
T2A. It was not what we expected.
Second....
Trammel Mind you at first the idea was to get more land for houseing, all were happy to have alot more space. The freedom of thiefs and pk'rs is what drew almost all out of fel. It was not a quick move on the part of uo players to leave fel. It was months and I hate to say it player driven. When thiefs found out their trade in highway robery and extortion were unuseable in trammel they went all out to lock up any moongate and rob players blind as they came out. The minute this hit the exodus of Fel started in earnist.
Third
Replacing Chaos & Order
Factions was a bust from day one. It was flawed but they didnt have time to fix it. So they ran with what they had. Fix it while its active ... Every fix every change to factions made it so misshapen from its original concept that it kept loosing ground.
There is a call from players they want their chaos and order back.....

Yes I just glossed over some points.. We all know the history of UO Dev teams too well. Promise them anything they want ..but deliver only what your willing to put your name to.

Cal made some headway, but also was quick to follow dev doctrine... We all forget as Lead Producer of UO he is under another who is under another that answers to the Board of Directors. EA may say they do not have anything to do with the running of UO but in the large scheme of things Yes they do.

With Cal leaving UO we have no "main head" to yell at to say hey we are down here pay us some attention. Quite frankly they dont have to. We purchase their product and pay for a monthly subscription to USE the game.

UO needs subscribers, the numbers have taken a nose dive in the past few years to close to first year totals. Cause could be atributed to newer games with bigger hype to draw off some, bad judgement on creating content, cost hike, no advertisment, the billing fiasco.

All changes are not gunna go over well to some. This is a fact of human thinking. No two think alike. We have to lay some of this at our own feet. We cowled and conjoled every Dev to give us what we wanted. I use the "we" meaning a loud group. Our downfall is partly our fault.

All this points to "us" the consumer in this game. UO has become the little fish in EA's big pond. If we died out tomorrow there is other games in its arsenal to take its place. UO is not at its extinction point yet.... I hope the new Producer at Large learns the ways of game.

 

[Martyna Zmuir]

Tina,

I don't believe that character copy has anything to do with arenas, just that it was a project they wanted to complete before finishings arenas - and then something shiney distracted them for over a year...

Since the actual arenas have already been built, three per shard, there is no logical reason to require copying a char anywhere...

 

[Tina Small]

Tina,

I don't believe that character copy has anything to do with arenas, just that it was a project they wanted to complete before finishings arenas - and then something shiney distracted them for over a year...

Since the actual arenas have already been built, three per shard, there is no logical reason to require copying a char anywhere...

Thanks, Martyna. I don't know exactly what made me think that there was going to be some sort of inter-shard competition with the arenas. Maybe it was just Supreem's comment about copying characters to Test to help test them.

By three per shard, do you mean the newest one near Khaldun, the one by Luna, and the necromancer's arena near Doom? Or is the one by Khaldun cloned in Trammel as well? I haven't been to that spot in Trammel in quite a while, so I don't remember if something new showed up there or not.

 

[Martyna Zmuir]

Sorry, I mispoke, there are actually at least four arenas per shard.

(The arena south of Luna is for bagball, a sport. The one near Doom is just window dressing.)

The four arenas specifically built for combat are:

Ocllo (Fel) at 99o 13'S 170o 34'E - and a mirror image of it in Trammel attached to Haven.

(This is the one near Khaldun) Lost Lands just south of the passage to the mountains north of Minoc at 52o 33'S 11o 2'E - and a mirror image of it in Trammel Lost Lands.

 

[Tina Small]

Thanks, Martyna. I'd never seen the one near Haven and Occlo. Siege has just got two, but I guess it doesn't matter if none of them are functional anyway! Is there a way for the average character to get into the center section yet? Is any shard's EM using them at all yet for anything?

 

[Woodsman]

Thanks, Martyna. I don't know exactly what made me think that there was going to be some sort of inter-shard competition with the arenas. Maybe it was just Supreem's comment about copying characters to Test to help test them.

I actually thought it was something about we could transfer our characters to test them out on TC before using them in arenas, which is why they seemed to be intent on getting character transfer finished before arenas. And I had forgotten that character transfers went live already, since people were using them in the pub 72 threads to try out the new stuff.

This mentioned both the transfers and arenas and the consensus seemed to be this was ahead of the arenas:

http://vboards.stratics.com/uhall/242174-[uo-herald]-character-copy-has-gone-live.html

 

[Martyna Zmuir]

Thanks, Martyna. I'd never seen the one near Haven and Occlo. Siege has just got two, but I guess it doesn't matter if none of them are functional anyway! Is there a way for the average character to get into the center section yet? Is any shard's EM using them at all yet for anything?

Welcome

The only way I knew to get into the arenas was to teleport, but that may have been fixed by now. There are still some glitches with the arena's designs, as it was possible to fall into the structure for a while - again, this may have been fixed.