Aragon, that is something I can agree with you 100%, powerscrolls and Age of Shadows destroyed UO, prior to that it was fine. Even Trammel did not hurt it.
Sounds like it's the first time we agree on something.
I quit after AOS also. but that doesn't change the fact that for the year or two before that, Felucca was mostly empty. The devs had to put a lot of effort into changing Felucca to get players back ( Factions, then later powerscrolls). Even with a lot of extra rewards, Felucca was still empty. The ruleset does not work.
I quit when AoS hit too...and I played in trammel mainly but that was only because fel was so dead as you say. I can remember traveling to fel just to fight someone. And if you went to fel and were not good at pvp, you didn't dare use the moongates lol. I do agree with you that trammel was created because of all the QQ'ing about getting ganked. But I think that the unique combats system, i.e. the fps mode and actually having to adjust ranged attacks for both movement, trajectory and time will be somewhat new to all players. In a true fps the shot is almost instant and you don't have to adjust for trajectory or any of the other things I listed.
In DFO if you are a bow user you actually have to allow for target movement, and you have to aim not only a little above the target but also have to guess pretty close to where you think your target is GOING to be by the time the arrow get's there. There is no auto target as there was in UO. No dragging the name off and clicking the name icon to continuously target the player. No macros of last object last target etc. It will take considerable skill to consistently attack a target while in battle. You may think that fps experienced players will have an advantage, but I don't think that most will since as I stated most fps games are instant hit when you have the target in the crosshairs and shoot and this one will not be that way.
Anyway...I just hope that DFO will be a good game. I don't look for it to out do wow or anything like that because it definately appeals to a specific group of players...but who knows...maybe the players that have never played this type of game will give it a try, love it and realize that games don't have to be spoon fed to us.
Disclaimer: Although the opinions of the author of this reply are his own, he is not a game expert. But he plays one in real life.
i think people who play fps will have some advantages, i mean HL2 had the bow that shot metal rods, i mean u didn't have to aim up or anything. but you did have to predict were they would move to. also if you played wc3 mod on cs:s then you might have a small advantage. cause you would be use to people knifing you all the time + your very sensitive to the smallest movement on the screen. not saying people who don't play fps have a disadvantage, i mean they could be good at it too... i don't know all depends on the controls i think.
Originally posted by Clixgamer Think about what you are saying here. Say for instance you finally looted this uber epic xtra rare sword off a Boss that you have been trying to get for over a week. Now comes the gankin scenarios as you are traveling home with your new found treasure: WoW: You get killed and get sent back to a graveyard. You res with loot intact, hey he actually did me a favor. UO: You get killed. You roam around as a ghost looking for a roaming healer. Once you find one the killer then proceeds to continue to kill you again with the uber epic super rare sword that you spent all that time trying to obtain. Yes essentially time is what you are losing, but one I am willing to live with and continue playing, the other I am not.
i made an account because you make me so mad.
you miss the whole reason to play UO or a game like it. the interactions are what define these types of games, not the loot. there is a reason that up untill AOS, uo had no super uber weapons. it wasnt about items! if you thought it was boy were you mistaken! i could kill someone with an axe off an orc and 20 bandages. no matter how much good shit you had, if you couldnt control your character as good as me, i would be prying those items off your corpse.
why would you grind for anything??! what a pathetic waste of time that would be! you're grinding for an imaginary digital item.. hell you dont own it! it does you no real good. the only reason to play a game like this is for entertainment. what value does that stupid fucking sword hold? nothing.
in uo if you had vanq stuff, and you used it, you did marginally better than someone with gm items. it was no major tip of the scales. if you think it was, christ you never fought me.
whats the point of hording items or getting uber shit, if it barely makes your character bettter than mine? thats the point of UO and hopefully DF. having items helps, but its no game breaker. you also missed that in DF mosnters drop tons of equiptment.. a fully equipt gobo drops everything when he dies. its reasonable to think you could bank many many sets of weaps and armor.. so why bitch about losing one?
I just dont understand what kind of entertainment you can get from killing some stupid npc for some dumb sword. what does that do for you? to grind your ass off for a digital nothing? the only real fun in a game like this is the interaction. good or bad. you missed it entirely while you were looking in the mirror: at your stupid uber armor and your dumb fucking sword.
Actually, I recall that what set you apart in UO was a combination of how well you knew how to use the exploits paired with how good you were at macroing skills so you could train them up fast enough to be useful.
Yay for spending 10 hours macro'ing chopping down a tree!
i never ever exploited in all my time in UO. what set you apart was being able to skillfully control your character. and whats wrong with macroing on a tree, a bear, or a friends account? if you couldnt get your skills up to 100, then you were a nub. only a nub is going to go "let me actually fight my str up to 100" thats just sad and stupid.
its like you want to be a sheep, act the role, walk around without a care in the word. but, cry your fucking eyes out when someone sheers your lil wool coat. sorry sheep boy, expliots didnt ruin the game for you. not adapting to situations and play styles did.
in fact, why even have any interest in DF? you know its going to be the exact same way. why bother? dont you have a wow account to grind on?
Trammel didnt destroy UO. Age of Shadow february 2003 was what ruined UO. Heck, powerscrolls implementation ruined UO alot more then trammel ever did. After trammel implementation early 2000 the subs raised from 180K to 240K in a years time. That trammel ruined UO is something that the pre-trammel players made up. Facts of increasing subs and the no decreasing of players in felucca after trammel proves that the talk of trammel ruined UO is nothing but just that, alot of talk with no facts behind the words. Powerscrolls made more people leave UO and felucca then the implementation of trammel ever did. Powerscrolls were introduced to UO 23 july 2002. If you check MMOGCHART you see the dip in subs just after they implemented powerscrolls. Subs went down 15K after the powerscrolls were introduced. http://update.uo.com/design_409.html http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart2.html Age of Shadows implemented february 2003 which was a carebear patch with uberweapons, insurances, retarded templates and a ridicolous spellsystem ruined UO.
I wouldn't say that Trammel destroyed UO, but it was the first nail in the coffin. At the time of Trammel, UO had 180k subscribers. UO went into immediate stagnation for some months upon the release of Trammel, due to old subscribers leaving. It recovered a bit and topped off at 225k (the 250k mark was very briefly - a fluke IMO - UO was always known to be at the 225k mark, always referred to be the devs as well). That means it topped off only 45k higher than at the time of Trammel, and that from an increase rate, that at one point surpassed EQ!
Trammel may not have destroyed UO, but it heralded the beginning, and with Trammel, OSI forever put themselves out of the race against EQ.
Could they have done it better without Trammel? We don't know, and we never will. There is no proof that they couldn't though.
As for AoS: I agree, that was when I finally quit (I had been quitting on and off between UO:R and AoS), and that was when the game was finally destroyed - though it had begun with powerscrolls prior to that, in that powerscrolls was the first step in itemizing the game.
AoS is the obvious trainwreck incidence, but don't underestimate Trammel, which stopped UO in it's tracks subscription-increase-wise.
Just for the record, im in no way someone that applauds the implementation of trammel to UO. It was a bad move. Trammel however did very little damage to felucca as i see it. What more or less did the really bad damage was powerscrolls and the patch Age of Shadows.
It did IMMENSE damage! It ripped apart all the communities. You know, the game was more than PvP back then?
If you were plugged in to the community in any way beyond PvP, you would have felt the immense damage it did. Many of my friends left, while I stayed. We stopped hanging out as much, because it was a chore to switch worlds all the time (and I felt incredibly bored with Trammel, so I didn't like to go there), all other playstyles save PvP'ers left, and with them they took the diverse community, that had constituted the interesting world that UO was.
In it's stead was only a PvP game left in Fellucca. Gone was the time where you could wander around and meet a stranger and wonder whether he was a threat or a potential friend, that you could team up with. Now you knew that it was either an enemy or an alt of an enemy. Furthermore, the world got empty, and IMO it got dull compared to before, where so many roles and playstyles interacted.
Trammel ripped apart some of the intrinsic social fabric, that really made the game stand out, and that made the game a pull to so many people, keeping them glued month after month.
Don't underestimate what Trammel did to the game.
Btw. are you from B@D on Europa? Im Rasputin of MRC, we had some fights I think
I think the OP offers up a pretty good analysis for why this type of game is not sustainable. Ultimately we'll have to wait and see what the Darkfall devs come up with. It's their dime after all...
From every mmo that launches, there are lessons to be learned. Unfortunately, some lesson's are becoming rather repetitive. You would hope that someone at Darkfall is capable of making the same type of analysis based on their understanding of gamer/human psychology, and therefore implement a strategy to foster a successful future. Time will tell.
Just for the record, im in no way someone that applauds the implementation of trammel to UO. It was a bad move. Trammel however did very little damage to felucca as i see it. What more or less did the really bad damage was powerscrolls and the patch Age of Shadows.
It did IMMENSE damage! It ripped apart all the communities. You know, the game was more than PvP back then?
If you were plugged in to the community in any way beyond PvP, you would have felt the immense damage it did. Many of my friends left, while I stayed. We stopped hanging out as much, because it was a chore to switch worlds all the time (and I felt incredibly bored with Trammel, so I didn't like to go there), all other playstyles save PvP'ers left, and with them they took the diverse community, that had constituted the interesting world that UO was.
In it's stead was only a PvP game left in Fellucca. Gone was the time where you could wander around and meet a stranger and wonder whether he was a threat or a potential friend, that you could team up with. Now you knew that it was either an enemy or an alt of an enemy. Furthermore, the world got empty, and IMO it got dull compared to before, where so many roles and playstyles interacted.
Trammel ripped apart some of the intrinsic social fabric, that really made the game stand out, and that made the game a pull to so many people, keeping them glued month after month.
Don't underestimate what Trammel did to the game.
Btw. are you from B@D on Europa? Im Rasputin of MRC, we had some fights I think
Ahh MRC.=)
Aye we had some fights for sure. Baal and Mani Shakib Pour is still our GM:s and were getting prepared for Darkfall. All old members and their cats is in the blocks. About 150+ members today and were gonna play Alfar. It seems some 6I6 members will join us in Darkfall also.
On topic - i understand you're part on ripping communities apart and agrees on it. My point was mainly the PvP aspect of the game that continued even after trammel.
All trammies should go play in traffic. The game wasn't "dying" you idiot, trammel is what hurt the sub base. When they started catering to the carebears, they slowly killed the game.
All trammies should go play in traffic. The game wasn't "dying" you idiot, trammel is what hurt the sub base. When they started catering to the carebears, they slowly killed the game.
All the stats and even the designer of UO, Raph Koster, disagrees with you. UO lost most of its subs due to AOS and competition from everquest.
They introduced trammel in an attempt to stop the loss of subs, the loss of subs precipitated trammel, not the other way around.
still whine about about a 11year old game hey guys
Games played:AC1-Darktide'99-2000-AC2-Darktide/dawnsong2003-2005,Lineage2-2005-2006 and now Darkfall-2009..... In between WoW few months AoC few months and some f2p also all very short few weeks.
Ahh MRC.=) Aye we had some fights for sure. Baal and Mani Shakib Pour is still our GM:s and were getting prepared for Darkfall. All old members and their cats is in the blocks. About 150+ members today and were gonna play Alfar. It seems some 6I6 members will join us in Darkfall also. You guys gonna play Darkfall? Here is the B@D website, come visit some time.=) http://www.badboysforlife.se/forum/ On topic - i understand you're part on ripping communities apart and agrees on it. My point was mainly the PvP aspect of the game that continued even after trammel.
I will join for sure, and I will see what is left of MRC to bring along. We had 80'ish members in WoW, but that game really was bad for us, and we have had some bad conflicts. Add a 3 year wait on top of that, and you will see your guild heavily diminished
I will try to rally our entire roster of all our times, dating back from Planetside (the FPS element of DF is perfect for them), then we will see how much we can muster. In PS we had some 70 members.
But I haven't had contact with alot of people for a long time, since I have been totally out of gaming circulation now for 3 years. Makes it a bit hard to stay in touch...
But we still exist. At a minimum we will join with 5-10, at maximum, I hope for some 30, but time will tell. Once we know 100% the release date (and that the game will be released at all!), it will be easier to entice people to get ready for this game.
I will stop by the B@D site one of these days. It could be fun to play alongside some of our old enemies
Maybe we could form an alliance, show them what oldschool teamplay is about, hehe
I will tell my opinion on what killed UO for ME, that was AOS and the implementation of magical items with properies,not even mentioning blessed and insure system, the fact that if you were a mage and you only wear a simple clothing robe needing reagents to cast you spells and avoiding melee hits because you can get screwed and if you were a warrior melee and wear an armor "made of yours by your hands and your blacksmith and mining skills" mining your ore on the next cave and smelting the ingots making your armor was the BEST thing and it is BY EFFIN FAR the SPIRIT of the game that made it sooooooooo funny and classic as hell that if you were KILLED ganked GANGBANGED or whatever YOU GAVE A ff'k because you just RESSURRECT and make another armor with no dificult and live the game experience BUT YEAAAAHH someone got the best idea that a moron can breed and insert magical properties to items that changed the PERFECT system to a complete trash of goldsellers and greedy kids but ohh well yeah... I still live in that perfect world and prefer to remember as it was.. perfect.
sorry for the long post but i had to tell all this out ...
I will tell my opinion on what killed UO for ME, that was AOS and the implementation of magical items with properies,not even mentioning blessed and insure system, the fact that if you were a mage and you only wear a simple clothing robe needing reagents to cast you spells and avoiding melee hits because you can get screwed and if you were a warrior melee and wear an armor "made of yours by your hands and your blacksmith and mining skills" mining your ore on the next cave and smelting the ingots making your armor was the BEST thing and it is BY EFFIN FAR the SPIRIT of the game that made it sooooooooo funny and classic as hell that if you were KILLED ganked GANGBANGED or whatever YOU GAVE A ff'k because you just RESSURRECT and make another armor with no dificult and live the game experience BUT YEAAAAHH someone got the best idea that a moron can breed and insert magical properties to items that changed the PERFECT system to a complete trash of goldsellers and greedy kids but ohh well yeah... I still live in that perfect world and prefer to remember as it was.. perfect.
sorry for the long post but i had to tell all this out ...
UO never had a real population decline until AOS. OP apparently doesn't pvp and didn't play UO very long if at all. There was a high turnover rate, but also high rate of new subs. Trammel was made to stop the whining. It didn't really prevented many players from quitting though since player that quit from getting pked also quit when the next shiny thing comes along.
DF has soft cap skill limit. The first skills you train will be faster. So you can become a very effective niche player and stand a chance against vets.
DF is more based on player skill given the manual combat/dodging.
DF is skilled based, it pretty much balances itself because people just come up with counters to the best builds.
With one character per server that also decreases pkers. Also, having a large world means more places to train. Many players will be able to fulfill their pking desires through factional combat and city conquest.
Exploits and lag can ruin DF though.
Your mind is like a parachute, it's only useful when it's open. Don't forget, you can use the block function on trolls.
LOL to all the noobs comparing WOW ganking to UO ganking........There is no comparison.......You literally lost everything yo uhad on you in UO if you got killed......Very few people ever made it back to their body to loot it safely........ WOW is the biggest joke of a world PVP system ever......If DF plays like Uo the players that have only played WOW before are in for a shock.......The problem is in FFA games you cant trust anyone.....Players you think are your friends will backstab you first chance and take your stuff....... Theres a reaason why UO was never copied, thats because it doesnt work.......Players have hundreds of other games to play now, back when UO came out they had none until EQ came out.......... Df may be successful but I have serious doubts in this day and age that it will be....I think alot of people will like to check it out, jsut how how many stay past the first month remains to be seen.
2. Lag is basically up to the player. Devs can only do so much when it comes to lag and really, most of the time its the players fault.
3. SWG had multiple starting areas (until the NGE). Pretty sure i read somewhere that every race will have its own starting area. That coupled with the (barren ) open world would make it a lot easier to sneak through blockades than in a small game like UO.
5. ok this one is a bit tough, however in a skill based game its really up to the player to make the overpowered class. In SWG you had esentially 3 skill groups. PvE, PvP and other (musicians, dancers, cooks). Its quite easy to grind up a full pvp set character and dominate other players, however thats not for everyone (it never is) and you will find plenty of other players that wont smash you in less than 20 seconds. Basically it comes down to luck, who you meet. Sucks to be you if you run into the area with all the crazy PvP'ers.
the other points (and even these) affect every game on the market. Sure people are going to be worried about full loot and dying, i dont care really. Learn (as most UO players did).
you have a valid point about the new players, that is exactly why Darkfall will be a niche game
MMO wish list:
-Changeable worlds -Solid non level based game -Sharks with lasers attached to their heads
LOL to all the noobs comparing WOW ganking to UO ganking........There is no comparison.......You literally lost everything yo uhad on you in UO if you got killed......Very few people ever made it back to their body to loot it safely........ WOW is the biggest joke of a world PVP system ever......If DF plays like Uo the players that have only played WOW before are in for a shock.......The problem is in FFA games you cant trust anyone.....Players you think are your friends will backstab you first chance and take your stuff....... Theres a reaason why UO was never copied, thats because it doesnt work.......Players have hundreds of other games to play now, back when UO came out they had none until EQ came out.......... Df may be successful but I have serious doubts in this day and age that it will be....I think alot of people will like to check it out, jsut how how many stay past the first month remains to be seen.
The system in UO did work. I wasn't a ganker when I played in the early days. All FFA games have a balance. There will be gankers, there will be criminals, and there will be blues. That is how these games work. Darkfall will be no different. Actually I will say this now that Darkfall will be heavily populated by "police' players. The ones that stop the fighting and gank the gankers.
A game like UO and DF offers something more to immertion than any other game you have ever played. I enjoy the feeling of anxiety just to go out and pick flowers. The possibility of being ganked makes everything more vauable and more worth while to me.
I remember once I got ganked fighting Liche Lords and lost my silver vanq double axe. The player and Liche Lord looted everything I had. Do you know what I did after I rezzed? I went and got a silver vanq dagger that I had in my bank and I went and got all my stuff back from both the Liche Lord and the player who killed me. That is how and why the system works fine.
You PvE kids have had it too easy for too long. Those of you who enjoy PvP however will be like kids in a candy store when this game launched. This is what real pvp is. Just don't act a fool and you will be fine.
BTW the OP is a noob. I had to throw that in there.
The fact is, that UO was dying pretty rapidly up until they announced Trammel. Let me give you some reasons why players quit under this kind of system.
Can you back up that claim? How about linking to your so-called "fact"?
I have followed UO's history intensely, and there were fact of the opposite - that UO was doing VERY well. Only the devs said that it was losing customers, and frankly, what devs don't lie to justify alienating a huge part of their player base? Smed dejavu.
The only thing that happened to UO was EQ. The devs wanted UO to compete against EQ, they were not happy with their own increase in customers, because it wasn't as fast as EQ's. So they altered the game to become more EQ, selling out one of UO's biggest strengths - freedom. And UO has been declining ever since.
The UO vs. EQ situation reminds me alot about the SWG vs. WoW one, where SWG devs changed their game to compete directly against WoW.
UO's history just isn't as well known.
If I'm wrong, I expect you to back up your claims.
I was just getting ready to post pretty much exactly the same thing. UO was not dying. The UO subscription numbers never declined Pre-Trammel. You have absolutely no proof that the game was declining before that expansion.
That's one thing that really gets to me on these forums, people posting completely fabricated statements claiming them to be fact.
"There is as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer."
Originally posted by Azrile UO pre-trammel showed exactly what is going to happen with DF. 1. New players won't last the first month
2. Exploits will be rampent and spread quickly. 'tricking' players into going grey will be considered a tactic. Players who are successful aren't the ones who use their skills the best, they will be the ones who learn to game the game.
3. The Flavor-of-the-month class will be the only one played. UO had a phase (about 6 months) where everyone was a mage who carried a polearm.
4. Gear grinding - You'll have to have many sets of gear stored, or else when you die with your group, you will get left behind as you try to get more gear. There is a reason why UO made Trammel, they were losing a ton of players because of the ruleset. If you have a pre-built guild and you plan on starting on day 1 things will seem fine for a few weeks... but the UO ruleset just is not viable for a longterm game
While there are plenty of people that will agree with you, I am not one of them.
I came late to the party for UO, not too late but late enough. I didn't start playing UO until the T2A release.
So yeah I was a new player in an already established game, but I survived and kept on playing until AoS.
See I didn't look for excuses or cop outs as to why I died and lost gear. I was actually thrilled to have that experience. My first few days mining hard to get a boat. It took me an my buddy about a week. We lost that boat after only one trip and I was furious but I learned something from it. Don't walk around with the boat key on you... expensive lesson but at least I learned it early on.
Or there was the time I first ventured out of Brit, heading towards the crossroads. I had just bought all the games the general goods vendor sold and was carrying them with me out there. Well needless to say I was slaughtered pretty much instantly at the crossroads. I didn't cry, I didn't pout, I just sat there as a ghost hoping for a resurrection. Well after the PK's sorted through my games, they thought wow this guy just brought us all these games to play in between victims lets rez em. So I sat there without any gear hanging out with the murderers and learning their ways. All because I wasn't a cry baby about the situation. I didn't ask for anything back when i was rezzed, I didn't even bother them for a heal. I just wanted to stay alive and watch them perform.
I also asked them questions, learned that you couldn't go into town as a red etc etc. They still had stat loss at the time as well, so all in all I had no desire at this point to be a murderer. It just wouldn't be feesible for my newb ass.
Well I trucked on, and worked my character all along the way, dieing an looting all the time. Eventually I purchased a house on Ice Island, so I could be very close to my favorite dungeon... Deciet. What a grand day this was, now I could hunt all day in Deciet and rack up all the bone armor suits an gold I could stand.
All was good until one day after about an hour of killing, someone ran in and killed me. Taking all my hour's worth of loot for themselves. It got me to thinking... you know I have a house out here and plenty of supplies... I should be THAT guy, fuck this working for money shit.
The very next day I made it a point to become a murderer and forgo being blue ever again. I wanted to see what it was like on the other side. Well off I went into Deceit, still blue at the time of course. I saw someone hunting and doing whatever. I wasn't sure how much he had on him but I figured I want to farm some too. So I hunted with this guy for about 30 mins. I wanted to be sure he had something worthwhile on him.
I took one last look at my macros, and dragged out spells. Made sure I had plenty of supplies and said OK... here we go.
My heart was pounding I was so scared before I even started my first cast.. What if I lose? What if he turns the table an gets all my loot? What if someone else comes what am I going to do? The time for silly thoughts was over... it was now or never.
Corp Por... Corp Por.... Then I started chasing him around with my kryss, knowing he is running for his life now and I had the advantage. I chased him all up an down the skeleton room on the first level. Every hit I made got me that much closer to my first kill. It was invigorating to be on the evil side of things. To be the aggressor, and to be in control. Then I heard it... Something I never heard before without seeing grey myself.. the famous UO death sound. Success! As I stood there over the fresh corpse, my eyes lit up at all the loot he had on him, this was so much more fulfilling than fighting monsters. I was hooked from then on. That was the last day I hunted monsters, and the first of many days I was hunting people.
I did all that even with all those things you said were against a newb like me. That was the beauty of old school UO that many don't understand. It was a trial by fire, nothing was handed to you like MMO's of current. You had to earn everything and it was so much more rewarding. The only disadvantage I had back in those days was when people started getting Cable and DSL and I was still on dial up. Even then I could compete well enough. When I got cable though oh man it was an entirely new game!
Anyways that's that, I just wanted to make my point of how I got through the first month and continued to play the game well past it's prime, despite all the barriers you say I supposedly had.
Velika: City of Wheels: Among the mortal races, the humans were the only one that never built cities or great empires; a curse laid upon them by their creator, Gidd, forced them to wander as nomads for twenty centuries...
Ahh MRC.=) Aye we had some fights for sure. Baal and Mani Shakib Pour is still our GM:s and were getting prepared for Darkfall. All old members and their cats is in the blocks. About 150+ members today and were gonna play Alfar. It seems some 6I6 members will join us in Darkfall also. You guys gonna play Darkfall? Here is the B@D website, come visit some time.=) http://www.badboysforlife.se/forum/ On topic - i understand you're part on ripping communities apart and agrees on it. My point was mainly the PvP aspect of the game that continued even after trammel.
I will join for sure, and I will see what is left of MRC to bring along. We had 80'ish members in WoW, but that game really was bad for us, and we have had some bad conflicts. Add a 3 year wait on top of that, and you will see your guild heavily diminished
I will try to rally our entire roster of all our times, dating back from Planetside (the FPS element of DF is perfect for them), then we will see how much we can muster. In PS we had some 70 members.
But I haven't had contact with alot of people for a long time, since I have been totally out of gaming circulation now for 3 years. Makes it a bit hard to stay in touch...
But we still exist. At a minimum we will join with 5-10, at maximum, I hope for some 30, but time will tell. Once we know 100% the release date (and that the game will be released at all!), it will be easier to entice people to get ready for this game.
I will stop by the B@D site one of these days. It could be fun to play alongside some of our old enemies
Maybe we could form an alliance, show them what oldschool teamplay is about, hehe
Aye stop by our site. So many old school UO players there.
An alliance can be most likely be made. Numbers will be more important in a game like Darkfall and being able to play together with a old school guild like MRC would for me be a honor.
You want to know what killed UO? I was there what killed UO was the complaining and finally getting what they want a friendly no killing and bad stuff zone away from the evil players. The core of UO was not carebears it was PVPers.. they left, and all that was left was an army of hugs and kisses. Case in point the same thing that happened to UO is now happening to WOW, just go look at there forums.. go on go look at the PVP forums, the WOTLK expansion is totally balanced to PVE and screws PVP, wanna see how they act aftter they destroy a game look at some of the typical responses they have.
Know what else screws up MMORPGS? Tom Chilton in UO his name was EVOCARE he was head Dev there after UOR was out.. the game was booming doing great... then he created Age of Shadows the expansion... hrm what happened after that.. lets see.
THAT is wha messed UO AOS and pvp imbalance don't belive me go check the forum archives youll see threads that read Server Exodus. Players are not satisfied until they destroy the game and usually they get board shortly after they mess up and follow you to your new game...
Wanna know who the head Dev for WOTLK and BC was.. Kalgan, AKA Evocare AKA Tom Chilton.
But were ready in Darkfall no players will be left standing, the crafting system is gonna be good to so lots of Carebears.. but thats fine all the big pvp guilds are coming as well..
Comments
Sounds like it's the first time we agree on something.
I quit when AoS hit too...and I played in trammel mainly but that was only because fel was so dead as you say. I can remember traveling to fel just to fight someone. And if you went to fel and were not good at pvp, you didn't dare use the moongates lol. I do agree with you that trammel was created because of all the QQ'ing about getting ganked. But I think that the unique combats system, i.e. the fps mode and actually having to adjust ranged attacks for both movement, trajectory and time will be somewhat new to all players. In a true fps the shot is almost instant and you don't have to adjust for trajectory or any of the other things I listed.
In DFO if you are a bow user you actually have to allow for target movement, and you have to aim not only a little above the target but also have to guess pretty close to where you think your target is GOING to be by the time the arrow get's there. There is no auto target as there was in UO. No dragging the name off and clicking the name icon to continuously target the player. No macros of last object last target etc. It will take considerable skill to consistently attack a target while in battle. You may think that fps experienced players will have an advantage, but I don't think that most will since as I stated most fps games are instant hit when you have the target in the crosshairs and shoot and this one will not be that way.
Anyway...I just hope that DFO will be a good game. I don't look for it to out do wow or anything like that because it definately appeals to a specific group of players...but who knows...maybe the players that have never played this type of game will give it a try, love it and realize that games don't have to be spoon fed to us.
Disclaimer: Although the opinions of the author of this reply are his own, he is not a game expert. But he plays one in real life.
Krystar Daymen (Old School UO player baby)
i think people who play fps will have some advantages, i mean HL2 had the bow that shot metal rods, i mean u didn't have to aim up or anything. but you did have to predict were they would move to. also if you played wc3 mod on cs:s then you might have a small advantage. cause you would be use to people knifing you all the time
+ your very sensitive to the smallest movement on the screen. not saying people who don't play fps have a disadvantage, i mean they could be good at it too... i don't know all depends on the controls i think.
i made an account because you make me so mad.
you miss the whole reason to play UO or a game like it. the interactions are what define these types of games, not the loot. there is a reason that up untill AOS, uo had no super uber weapons. it wasnt about items! if you thought it was boy were you mistaken! i could kill someone with an axe off an orc and 20 bandages. no matter how much good shit you had, if you couldnt control your character as good as me, i would be prying those items off your corpse.
why would you grind for anything??! what a pathetic waste of time that would be! you're grinding for an imaginary digital item.. hell you dont own it! it does you no real good. the only reason to play a game like this is for entertainment. what value does that stupid fucking sword hold? nothing.
in uo if you had vanq stuff, and you used it, you did marginally better than someone with gm items. it was no major tip of the scales. if you think it was, christ you never fought me.
whats the point of hording items or getting uber shit, if it barely makes your character bettter than mine? thats the point of UO and hopefully DF. having items helps, but its no game breaker. you also missed that in DF mosnters drop tons of equiptment.. a fully equipt gobo drops everything when he dies. its reasonable to think you could bank many many sets of weaps and armor.. so why bitch about losing one?
I just dont understand what kind of entertainment you can get from killing some stupid npc for some dumb sword. what does that do for you? to grind your ass off for a digital nothing? the only real fun in a game like this is the interaction. good or bad. you missed it entirely while you were looking in the mirror: at your stupid uber armor and your dumb fucking sword.
Actually, I recall that what set you apart in UO was a combination of how well you knew how to use the exploits paired with how good you were at macroing skills so you could train them up fast enough to be useful.
Yay for spending 10 hours macro'ing chopping down a tree!
i never ever exploited in all my time in UO. what set you apart was being able to skillfully control your character. and whats wrong with macroing on a tree, a bear, or a friends account? if you couldnt get your skills up to 100, then you were a nub. only a nub is going to go "let me actually fight my str up to 100" thats just sad and stupid.
its like you want to be a sheep, act the role, walk around without a care in the word. but, cry your fucking eyes out when someone sheers your lil wool coat. sorry sheep boy, expliots didnt ruin the game for you. not adapting to situations and play styles did.
in fact, why even have any interest in DF? you know its going to be the exact same way. why bother? dont you have a wow account to grind on?
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i make em go "ooOOOooooo"
I wouldn't say that Trammel destroyed UO, but it was the first nail in the coffin. At the time of Trammel, UO had 180k subscribers. UO went into immediate stagnation for some months upon the release of Trammel, due to old subscribers leaving. It recovered a bit and topped off at 225k (the 250k mark was very briefly - a fluke IMO - UO was always known to be at the 225k mark, always referred to be the devs as well). That means it topped off only 45k higher than at the time of Trammel, and that from an increase rate, that at one point surpassed EQ!
Trammel may not have destroyed UO, but it heralded the beginning, and with Trammel, OSI forever put themselves out of the race against EQ.
Could they have done it better without Trammel? We don't know, and we never will. There is no proof that they couldn't though.
As for AoS: I agree, that was when I finally quit (I had been quitting on and off between UO:R and AoS), and that was when the game was finally destroyed - though it had begun with powerscrolls prior to that, in that powerscrolls was the first step in itemizing the game.
AoS is the obvious trainwreck incidence, but don't underestimate Trammel, which stopped UO in it's tracks subscription-increase-wise.
It did IMMENSE damage! It ripped apart all the communities. You know, the game was more than PvP back then?
If you were plugged in to the community in any way beyond PvP, you would have felt the immense damage it did. Many of my friends left, while I stayed. We stopped hanging out as much, because it was a chore to switch worlds all the time (and I felt incredibly bored with Trammel, so I didn't like to go there), all other playstyles save PvP'ers left, and with them they took the diverse community, that had constituted the interesting world that UO was.
In it's stead was only a PvP game left in Fellucca. Gone was the time where you could wander around and meet a stranger and wonder whether he was a threat or a potential friend, that you could team up with. Now you knew that it was either an enemy or an alt of an enemy. Furthermore, the world got empty, and IMO it got dull compared to before, where so many roles and playstyles interacted.
Trammel ripped apart some of the intrinsic social fabric, that really made the game stand out, and that made the game a pull to so many people, keeping them glued month after month.
Don't underestimate what Trammel did to the game.
Btw. are you from B@D on Europa? Im Rasputin of MRC, we had some fights I think
I think the OP offers up a pretty good analysis for why this type of game is not sustainable. Ultimately we'll have to wait and see what the Darkfall devs come up with. It's their dime after all...
From every mmo that launches, there are lessons to be learned. Unfortunately, some lesson's are becoming rather repetitive. You would hope that someone at Darkfall is capable of making the same type of analysis based on their understanding of gamer/human psychology, and therefore implement a strategy to foster a successful future. Time will tell.
vapourware!
oops sorry, wrong thread.
It did IMMENSE damage! It ripped apart all the communities. You know, the game was more than PvP back then?
If you were plugged in to the community in any way beyond PvP, you would have felt the immense damage it did. Many of my friends left, while I stayed. We stopped hanging out as much, because it was a chore to switch worlds all the time (and I felt incredibly bored with Trammel, so I didn't like to go there), all other playstyles save PvP'ers left, and with them they took the diverse community, that had constituted the interesting world that UO was.
In it's stead was only a PvP game left in Fellucca. Gone was the time where you could wander around and meet a stranger and wonder whether he was a threat or a potential friend, that you could team up with. Now you knew that it was either an enemy or an alt of an enemy. Furthermore, the world got empty, and IMO it got dull compared to before, where so many roles and playstyles interacted.
Trammel ripped apart some of the intrinsic social fabric, that really made the game stand out, and that made the game a pull to so many people, keeping them glued month after month.
Don't underestimate what Trammel did to the game.
Btw. are you from B@D on Europa? Im Rasputin of MRC, we had some fights I think
Ahh MRC.=)
Aye we had some fights for sure. Baal and Mani Shakib Pour is still our GM:s and were getting prepared for Darkfall. All old members and their cats is in the blocks. About 150+ members today and were gonna play Alfar. It seems some 6I6 members will join us in Darkfall also.
You guys gonna play Darkfall?
Here is the B@D website, come visit some time.=)
http://www.badboysforlife.se/forum/
On topic - i understand you're part on ripping communities apart and agrees on it. My point was mainly the PvP aspect of the game that continued even after trammel.
All trammies should go play in traffic. The game wasn't "dying" you idiot, trammel is what hurt the sub base. When they started catering to the carebears, they slowly killed the game.
All the stats and even the designer of UO, Raph Koster, disagrees with you. UO lost most of its subs due to AOS and competition from everquest.
They introduced trammel in an attempt to stop the loss of subs, the loss of subs precipitated trammel, not the other way around.
still whine about about a 11year old game hey guys
Games played:AC1-Darktide'99-2000-AC2-Darktide/dawnsong2003-2005,Lineage2-2005-2006 and now Darkfall-2009.....
In between WoW few months AoC few months and some f2p also all very short few weeks.
I will join for sure, and I will see what is left of MRC to bring along. We had 80'ish members in WoW, but that game really was bad for us, and we have had some bad conflicts. Add a 3 year wait on top of that, and you will see your guild heavily diminished
I will try to rally our entire roster of all our times, dating back from Planetside (the FPS element of DF is perfect for them), then we will see how much we can muster. In PS we had some 70 members.
But I haven't had contact with alot of people for a long time, since I have been totally out of gaming circulation now for 3 years. Makes it a bit hard to stay in touch...
But we still exist. At a minimum we will join with 5-10, at maximum, I hope for some 30, but time will tell. Once we know 100% the release date (and that the game will be released at all!), it will be easier to entice people to get ready for this game.
I will stop by the B@D site one of these days. It could be fun to play alongside some of our old enemies
Maybe we could form an alliance, show them what oldschool teamplay is about, hehe
I will tell my opinion on what killed UO for ME, that was AOS and the implementation of magical items with properies,not even mentioning blessed and insure system, the fact that if you were a mage and you only wear a simple clothing robe needing reagents to cast you spells and avoiding melee hits because you can get screwed and if you were a warrior melee and wear an armor "made of yours by your hands and your blacksmith and mining skills" mining your ore on the next cave and smelting the ingots making your armor was the BEST thing and it is BY EFFIN FAR the SPIRIT of the game that made it sooooooooo funny and classic as hell that if you were KILLED ganked GANGBANGED or whatever YOU GAVE A ff'k because you just RESSURRECT and make another armor with no dificult and live the game experience BUT YEAAAAHH someone got the best idea that a moron can breed and insert magical properties to items that changed the PERFECT system to a complete trash of goldsellers and greedy kids but ohh well yeah... I still live in that perfect world and prefer to remember as it was.. perfect.
sorry for the long post but i had to tell all this out ...
There is no knowledge that is no power.
*gives hug*
Everything will be ok. Just let it all out....
UO never had a real population decline until AOS. OP apparently doesn't pvp and didn't play UO very long if at all. There was a high turnover rate, but also high rate of new subs. Trammel was made to stop the whining. It didn't really prevented many players from quitting though since player that quit from getting pked also quit when the next shiny thing comes along.
DF has soft cap skill limit. The first skills you train will be faster. So you can become a very effective niche player and stand a chance against vets.
DF is more based on player skill given the manual combat/dodging.
DF is skilled based, it pretty much balances itself because people just come up with counters to the best builds.
With one character per server that also decreases pkers. Also, having a large world means more places to train. Many players will be able to fulfill their pking desires through factional combat and city conquest.
Exploits and lag can ruin DF though.
Your mind is like a parachute, it's only useful when it's open.
Don't forget, you can use the block function on trolls.
Couldn't have said it better.
A game must decide what crowd it wants. A faithful crowd - even when its numbers is smaller - can be as valuable as a big, unfaithful one.
LOL to all the noobs comparing WOW ganking to UO ganking........There is no comparison.......You literally lost everything yo uhad on you in UO if you got killed......Very few people ever made it back to their body to loot it safely........ WOW is the biggest joke of a world PVP system ever......If DF plays like Uo the players that have only played WOW before are in for a shock.......The problem is in FFA games you cant trust anyone.....Players you think are your friends will backstab you first chance and take your stuff....... Theres a reaason why UO was never copied, thats because it doesnt work.......Players have hundreds of other games to play now, back when UO came out they had none until EQ came out.......... Df may be successful but I have serious doubts in this day and age that it will be....I think alot of people will like to check it out, jsut how how many stay past the first month remains to be seen.
2, 3 and 5 were dealth with in SWG
2. Lag is basically up to the player. Devs can only do so much when it comes to lag and really, most of the time its the players fault.
3. SWG had multiple starting areas (until the NGE). Pretty sure i read somewhere that every race will have its own starting area. That coupled with the (barren
) open world would make it a lot easier to sneak through blockades than in a small game like UO.
5. ok this one is a bit tough, however in a skill based game its really up to the player to make the overpowered class. In SWG you had esentially 3 skill groups. PvE, PvP and other (musicians, dancers, cooks). Its quite easy to grind up a full pvp set character and dominate other players, however thats not for everyone (it never is) and you will find plenty of other players that wont smash you in less than 20 seconds. Basically it comes down to luck, who you meet. Sucks to be you if you run into the area with all the crazy PvP'ers.
the other points (and even these) affect every game on the market. Sure people are going to be worried about full loot and dying, i dont care really. Learn (as most UO players did).
you have a valid point about the new players, that is exactly why Darkfall will be a niche game
MMO wish list:
-Changeable worlds
-Solid non level based game
-Sharks with lasers attached to their heads
The system in UO did work. I wasn't a ganker when I played in the early days. All FFA games have a balance. There will be gankers, there will be criminals, and there will be blues. That is how these games work. Darkfall will be no different. Actually I will say this now that Darkfall will be heavily populated by "police' players. The ones that stop the fighting and gank the gankers.
A game like UO and DF offers something more to immertion than any other game you have ever played. I enjoy the feeling of anxiety just to go out and pick flowers. The possibility of being ganked makes everything more vauable and more worth while to me.
I remember once I got ganked fighting Liche Lords and lost my silver vanq double axe. The player and Liche Lord looted everything I had. Do you know what I did after I rezzed? I went and got a silver vanq dagger that I had in my bank and I went and got all my stuff back from both the Liche Lord and the player who killed me. That is how and why the system works fine.
You PvE kids have had it too easy for too long. Those of you who enjoy PvP however will be like kids in a candy store when this game launched. This is what real pvp is. Just don't act a fool and you will be fine.
BTW the OP is a noob. I had to throw that in there.
Can you back up that claim? How about linking to your so-called "fact"?
I have followed UO's history intensely, and there were fact of the opposite - that UO was doing VERY well. Only the devs said that it was losing customers, and frankly, what devs don't lie to justify alienating a huge part of their player base? Smed dejavu.
The only thing that happened to UO was EQ. The devs wanted UO to compete against EQ, they were not happy with their own increase in customers, because it wasn't as fast as EQ's. So they altered the game to become more EQ, selling out one of UO's biggest strengths - freedom. And UO has been declining ever since.
The UO vs. EQ situation reminds me alot about the SWG vs. WoW one, where SWG devs changed their game to compete directly against WoW.
UO's history just isn't as well known.
If I'm wrong, I expect you to back up your claims.
I was just getting ready to post pretty much exactly the same thing. UO was not dying. The UO subscription numbers never declined Pre-Trammel. You have absolutely no proof that the game was declining before that expansion.
That's one thing that really gets to me on these forums, people posting completely fabricated statements claiming them to be fact.
"There is as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer."
While there are plenty of people that will agree with you, I am not one of them.
I came late to the party for UO, not too late but late enough. I didn't start playing UO until the T2A release.
So yeah I was a new player in an already established game, but I survived and kept on playing until AoS.
See I didn't look for excuses or cop outs as to why I died and lost gear. I was actually thrilled to have that experience. My first few days mining hard to get a boat. It took me an my buddy about a week. We lost that boat after only one trip and I was furious but I learned something from it. Don't walk around with the boat key on you... expensive lesson but at least I learned it early on.
Or there was the time I first ventured out of Brit, heading towards the crossroads. I had just bought all the games the general goods vendor sold and was carrying them with me out there. Well needless to say I was slaughtered pretty much instantly at the crossroads. I didn't cry, I didn't pout, I just sat there as a ghost hoping for a resurrection. Well after the PK's sorted through my games, they thought wow this guy just brought us all these games to play in between victims lets rez em. So I sat there without any gear hanging out with the murderers and learning their ways. All because I wasn't a cry baby about the situation. I didn't ask for anything back when i was rezzed, I didn't even bother them for a heal. I just wanted to stay alive and watch them perform.
I also asked them questions, learned that you couldn't go into town as a red etc etc. They still had stat loss at the time as well, so all in all I had no desire at this point to be a murderer. It just wouldn't be feesible for my newb ass.
Well I trucked on, and worked my character all along the way, dieing an looting all the time. Eventually I purchased a house on Ice Island, so I could be very close to my favorite dungeon... Deciet. What a grand day this was, now I could hunt all day in Deciet and rack up all the bone armor suits an gold I could stand.
All was good until one day after about an hour of killing, someone ran in and killed me. Taking all my hour's worth of loot for themselves. It got me to thinking... you know I have a house out here and plenty of supplies... I should be THAT guy, fuck this working for money shit.
The very next day I made it a point to become a murderer and forgo being blue ever again. I wanted to see what it was like on the other side. Well off I went into Deceit, still blue at the time of course. I saw someone hunting and doing whatever. I wasn't sure how much he had on him but I figured I want to farm some too. So I hunted with this guy for about 30 mins. I wanted to be sure he had something worthwhile on him.
I took one last look at my macros, and dragged out spells. Made sure I had plenty of supplies and said OK... here we go.
My heart was pounding I was so scared before I even started my first cast.. What if I lose? What if he turns the table an gets all my loot? What if someone else comes what am I going to do? The time for silly thoughts was over... it was now or never.
Corp Por... Corp Por.... Then I started chasing him around with my kryss, knowing he is running for his life now and I had the advantage. I chased him all up an down the skeleton room on the first level. Every hit I made got me that much closer to my first kill. It was invigorating to be on the evil side of things. To be the aggressor, and to be in control. Then I heard it... Something I never heard before without seeing grey myself.. the famous UO death sound. Success! As I stood there over the fresh corpse, my eyes lit up at all the loot he had on him, this was so much more fulfilling than fighting monsters. I was hooked from then on. That was the last day I hunted monsters, and the first of many days I was hunting people.
I did all that even with all those things you said were against a newb like me. That was the beauty of old school UO that many don't understand. It was a trial by fire, nothing was handed to you like MMO's of current. You had to earn everything and it was so much more rewarding. The only disadvantage I had back in those days was when people started getting Cable and DSL and I was still on dial up. Even then I could compete well enough. When I got cable though oh man it was an entirely new game!
Anyways that's that, I just wanted to make my point of how I got through the first month and continued to play the game well past it's prime, despite all the barriers you say I supposedly had.
Wall of text hits me for 10,000k
Velika: City of Wheels: Among the mortal races, the humans were the only one that never built cities or great empires; a curse laid upon them by their creator, Gidd, forced them to wander as nomads for twenty centuries...
I will join for sure, and I will see what is left of MRC to bring along. We had 80'ish members in WoW, but that game really was bad for us, and we have had some bad conflicts. Add a 3 year wait on top of that, and you will see your guild heavily diminished
I will try to rally our entire roster of all our times, dating back from Planetside (the FPS element of DF is perfect for them), then we will see how much we can muster. In PS we had some 70 members.
But I haven't had contact with alot of people for a long time, since I have been totally out of gaming circulation now for 3 years. Makes it a bit hard to stay in touch...
But we still exist. At a minimum we will join with 5-10, at maximum, I hope for some 30, but time will tell. Once we know 100% the release date (and that the game will be released at all!), it will be easier to entice people to get ready for this game.
I will stop by the B@D site one of these days. It could be fun to play alongside some of our old enemies
Maybe we could form an alliance, show them what oldschool teamplay is about, hehe
Aye stop by our site. So many old school UO players there.
An alliance can be most likely be made. Numbers will be more important in a game like Darkfall and being able to play together with a old school guild like MRC would for me be a honor.
Pre Trammel did NOT fail.
You want to know what killed UO? I was there what killed UO was the complaining and finally getting what they want a friendly no killing and bad stuff zone away from the evil players. The core of UO was not carebears it was PVPers.. they left, and all that was left was an army of hugs and kisses. Case in point the same thing that happened to UO is now happening to WOW, just go look at there forums.. go on go look at the PVP forums, the WOTLK expansion is totally balanced to PVE and screws PVP, wanna see how they act aftter they destroy a game look at some of the typical responses they have.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=13593960444&sid=1
Know what else screws up MMORPGS? Tom Chilton in UO his name was EVOCARE he was head Dev there after UOR was out.. the game was booming doing great... then he created Age of Shadows the expansion... hrm what happened after that.. lets see.
http://www.uoforums.com/f1563/age-of-shadows-and-us-48278/
THAT is wha messed UO AOS and pvp imbalance don't belive me go check the forum archives youll see threads that read Server Exodus. Players are not satisfied until they destroy the game and usually they get board shortly after they mess up and follow you to your new game...
Wanna know who the head Dev for WOTLK and BC was.. Kalgan, AKA Evocare AKA Tom Chilton.
But were ready in Darkfall no players will be left standing, the crafting system is gonna be good to so lots of Carebears.. but thats fine all the big pvp guilds are coming as well..
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