Not really, but whatevs.
What you believe is your choice. That doesn't mean it has any correlation to objective reality, however.
Luckily what I believe is actually based in objective reality -- real life experience -- so you are again, wrong.
But let me guess, I'm just an armchair developer with no technical background making this all up as I go right?
In no particular order:
- Smooth boat movement
- Chaos v Order > Factions > Factions 2.0 >VvV
- The housing system
- RNG 2.0
- The spaghetti that is the combat system (I really don't believe this one would be simple at all)
- Several iterations of mob AI
- Age of
Stuff Shadows (massive revamp of armor & weapons)
- 17 years of balancing
That is by no means a complete list, as I'm not willing to reread 17 years worth of publish notes. I mostly just snagged system changes from the expansions.
Smooth boot movement - How does this have any bearing on whether or not a classic shard plays and feels like a classic shard? This didn't change the game in any sort of meaningful way. If anything, this would enhance the experience and should be something that you get to keep around. On that note, can you think of any impact this would have on a classic shard, negative or otherwise were it to stick around? I can't.
Chaos/Order vs Factions - This will be one of the area's that may need to be coded from near scratch. However, you yourself have implied that backups exist post 2004 (the move to Redwood Shores). That means they have the code for Factions in its earlier iterations, before any major changes to the system (pub 77). You could again, modify this code to resemble something similar to Order/Chaos and Factions of those era's.
The housing system - I've already addressed this. Can you not place classic houses with our current server code? Last I checked you could. How difficult do you honestly think it would be to create some housing deeds, point their functionality at the current
existing code that handles classic house placement, and shut off the house placement tool?
RNG 2.0 - You're gonna have to elaborate on this one.
The spaghetti that is the combat system (I really don't believe this one would be simple at all) - Why do you believe that to be the case? I am arguing that there are zero fundamental changes to PvP from day one, to today. The underlying mechanics are the same. Spells do damage, they have timing, they consume resouces, and they can be disrupted. For melee attacks: you double click, stand next to your enemy, and let the combat logic figure the rest out. Has any of that changed?
Age of
Stuff Shadows (massive revamp of armor & weapons) - Armor and weapons were extremely simplified in classic UO, and yes, mimicking their original properties using the current paradigm is again, trivial!
17 years of balancing - Most of these balances can be attributed to Age of Shadows, and the mess it made of the game. This is an era we are trying to NOT incorporate, so why do those balance changes have any bearing on a classic shard?
We know the default properties of the extremely simplified item properties from those era's. Remember, everything did physical damage, simplifying the process even more.
Some of these balance changes can even be classified as enhancements, or improvements, much like the boat movement upgrades and only serve to enhance the experience.
This also doesn't touch on all the under-the-hood changes that we, as mere subscribers, aren't privy to. Nor could you easily account for all the weird interactions, interdependencies and conflicts that exist in the code. You could "simply" turn off, say special moves, to find you've borked all combat for no apparent reason.
You say that turning off special moves could bork combat for no apparent reason.
I say that disabling special moves is identical to the player opting to not use a special attack through his own free will.
Did you think special moves happen automatically or something?
You do know it is a toggle-able ability right?
A player opting to not use a special ability and leaving it off (the same as it not being an option at all) doesn't magically affect some other aspect of the game.
This is true for just about anything you're gonna throw at me, so I encourage you to give it your best shot.
Even if you could turn things off, you'd still have to test it all, rebalance, test some more, balance some more, etc.
Yep, pretty common process when it comes to any sort of code creation or modification.
Yeah, because UO hasn't evolved since 2003.
There have been 5 expansions since then. Each adding in a mix of new assets, land, skills and items. Several also made big system changes as noted above.
None of these expansions changed the game fundamentally; they were simply additions. How does disabling anything they added affect the core game in any meaningful way?
I can't think of a single feature or function found within any of the previous 5 expansions that might have a negative impact on a classic shard, were it to be disabled or removed.
Here's a fun thought experiment:
If by some chance, every single player today deleted all of their existing characters, and from scratch created nothing but humans with exclusively classic UO skills, would it break the game? Would the void of those other races and skills somehow cause everything to crash?
Would it be any different than them never existing in the first place?
Now is that any different than simply disabling the option to create necro's, paladins, ninja's, elves and gargoyles at the character creation screen?
How about disabling complete access to any of the worlds outside of Felucca and t2a?
By simply disallowing players to go anywhere other than t2a, does it somehow have a technical, negative impact on the game?
Another thought experiment:
If everyone logged in on Atlantic right now went to felucca/t2a simultaneously, leaving the other facets completely void of players, would the game crash due to a fault in the code?
As I stated in a response to someone else, free shard creators can do what they want and aren't using an EA-written backend. Attempting to compare the two products at this point is rather disingenuous.
There isn't much you could do in classic UO that you can't do now. Do you disagree with that statement?
The point i'm trying to stress here (that you and everyone apparently can't grasp) is that, what made classic UO what it was, still exists today in the current server code.
It's just been morphed, and transformed over the years to whatever we have now.
I keep saying that this can be morphed back with relative ease, given the fact that classic UO is extremely basic.
I'll say it again: there really isn't much that has changed fundamentally since day one.
The free shard creators have proven this by writing,
from scratch, everything (literally) required to make a player believe they're playing classic Ultima Online.
If they can do it without having access to the actual code, do you think it's easier or harder for the current dev's (who have access to the actual source code) to mock something up and make believe they're playing classic UO?
EA still isn't going to devote the resources towards undertaking the reconstruction of a classic shard just because you think it's easy.
So they won't do it because I think it's easy? Or they won't do it because you said so, and your 20 years of history means you know best?
We'll let them decide whether or not it's worth it in the end.
We all know the current allocation of their resources has been nothing but a boon for the game, am I right?
The game's never been healthier!
Why don't you go play one of those shards instead of beating a horse corpse here? Or, you know, go play Siege/Mugen, wear only GM crafted armor and just ignore the other facets and newfangled mobs.
The current topic of legacy servers is relevant in the world of MMO's. Otherwise, this thread wouldn't exist.
