Originally posted by bigtroy I miss the days where there were 100 people standing outside brit bank chatting, selling their wares or getting guard whacked for trying to steal something from someone elses backpack. UO is still one of the greatest games I've ever played. The only thing they're missing nowadays is the population.
I for one would be glad to see an overhaul and hope that it attracts more people especially those who have yet to experience it.
Those days are trully missed , my moneys on this dev team , they really seem to care about making UO better , after all the current producer/ dev team might be the only one that has been able to talk EA into doing this , as long as it doesn't get cancelled..
He calls Siege an oldschool shard when it has been corrupted by every single consensual based expansion for the past seven years, including consensual and carebear updates like instanced corpses (you strangely cannot loot a dead body unless you were the one that killed it), sunglasses and flip flops, instant self-loot greatly reducing the penalty and challenge of death, ressurectable pets, blessed items which are not lost when you die, uber weapons and armor not based on the materials they are made of but only on numbers and stats which are displayed when clicking on them, ninjas, elves, giant bugs, pastel dog mounts, florescent weapons and armor, customized borg cube housing that is private, which means it has an invisible forcefield around it - if you even try to run on the steps you are immediately bumped off, bags of sending which allow anyone to quickly teleport items and gold directly into their banks from anywhere in the world - got some good loot, you don't need to adventure back to town, just pop it in a bag, rideable firebeetle forges and all kinds of other carebear crap.
Total crap.
A sub par graphics update is not going to help UO. In order for UO to draw back customers and grow to new heights they are going to need to offer something different, something serious, something innovative and professionally run, something like the amazing virtual world that the industry leading MMOG was founded upon!
Though i have not played the game in 4 years i played it for 5 before that. It was then without any dout the best mmo to ever come onto the market if you enjoyed skillful pvp as apposed to the crap item based pvp we see now in games such as WoW and DAOC. Though i am a fan of both of those games pvp doesnt even compare to UO in its heyday. If this new update retains even a faction of the old UO it will outdo most mmo's today.
Just about right, complaining over nothing, but thats the fun of the forums! And I forgot about the "End Days" people everytime there is something new added to any game. Its even funnier when UO has been going on for 9 years and they think this is the one expansion who will 'kill' it. All MMORPGs have expansions that add new changes to the game. If the games stayed the same way, we would have just about the same amount of people complaining that nothing is being done. There are some cases where the games are drastically changed, like Star Wars Galaxies; It was a very deep and complex game, and to atract non-mmorpg gamers, they scratched the game and turned it into something simple and 'arcadey' (lol). If something like that happened to any game, I would understand most of these complaints. Well....my skin is ready for the slapping!
Seeing this made me think of the good old times, surviving the lizzard man spawn at banks in brit, searching bags for any armour/weapons that older players droped on floor at bank walls and heading off to the woods with a mate only to get owned by a PK polymorphed as a lizardman , or getting a gate to fireisland then finding you had no recall scrolls on you because some sneaky thief ran off with them and end up being stuck there for 3 days lol.
I tried to play the game again for about a hour a good 6 months ago and just crindged at the graphics i so used to love, so used to WoW type graphics now days its hard to take a step back in quality. I even checked out ebay to see the state of game currency, and its scarey, like 1 mil for £1 saying to me gold has pretty much no value ingame, even when i left the game a mil was worth £18 on ebay, that was just before the big gold dupel, shows how bad the game econnemy is still to this day.
But all that aside, i'll buy the new box when its out and take a peek at the newer graphics and gameplay, might bump into some old friends doing the same from my 5 years of gaming on Europa
I played this alot in 98-00 and it is still today my favorite game. i cannot play my favorite game anymore because is does not exist. this is not the same game, and i doubt the update will bring back the community that made this my favorite game.
so my point is: is there anyone else like me that has found a game worthy of giving you your fix of mmo gaming? is there any game out there today with a balanced economy and non-fighting characters that support it?
Hej all, I would like to speak a little about the shard Siege Perilous and reply to some of the quotes in the thread.
The only way (speaking as a veteran from 1998) I'll return to UO is if you create new servers with just the Felucca ruleset (of course with the new graphics circa 1999. Otherwise its not worth my time and effort.
That server was created in sep 1999, before you quit. It's named Siege Perilous. We don't have the Trammel facet and all new land added is with Felucca/Siege ruleset. You can be attacked everywhere and there is no Item insurance. We do however have a few problems with some blessed items that need to be removed from the shard, hope DarkScribe will help us with that.
I wanted to play this game for some time. The '2D' graphics remind me of the MSX RPG times
But before I am going to spend any money I want to trial first. And while I can with this game it needs a creditcard to activate. I just aint going to enter a creditcard number in order to play a free trial. If they really want new players they have to lift the creditcard need for the trial so more people will try it out.
Sadly we need the creditcard part to protect the game again scammers, exploiters and other kind of players who not want to play but want to make RL money from UO without thinking about how much they hurt the game.
Only way I see that part removed is with making a trial island where trial players have to stay until they pay the game. Right now, a trial player can access every part of UO.
I played this alot in 98-00 and it is still today my favorite game. i cannot play my favorite game anymore because is does not exist. this is not the same game, and i doubt the update will bring back the community that made this my favorite game.
This is true and even when Siege is more close to the game I loved 1997-1998, Siege still got hurt of 2 thing.
The changes to items we got from AoS, we got 5 kind of resists and alot mods on the items that made an item hell, the update got called Ages of Stuff. Now with no item insure and need for upper items that was hard to get, Siege got hurt. It become worse when they added the elf stuff and resources for crafting the crafters could not get and most crafters on Siege gave up. Crafters are the backbone in UO and they need alot of love on Siege so they can make good items, that is not to expensive to get lost easy in PvP.
The second problem is to much land or to few players. It become to hard to find each others and player towns are hard to build because we do have alot of ghost houses owned of old players who refuse to let their houses go. Some may be paying to the game, but they are not playing and their houses take up place from playing customers. We need alot more active players on Siege and we need to disallow trial players to own/transfer a house and keep it for 3 months before they again need to transfer to a new trial account. DarkScribe, let this houses die if not paid for.
Let new players see Siege Perilous on the shard list with a PvP tag and let them start without it effect their young status on other shards. Siege Perilous need new blood now!
I had played sinse dec 1997, I'm one of the players who love Siege and can't stand the other shards. I had been on Siege sinse the shard was born in sep 1999, my first shard was Atlantic.
I had made so many friends in UO, but most are gone now, I wish you all back.
I still think UO is the only MMO worth playing at this point. Everything elese is Single player games with deathmatches and chatrooms.
The graphics overhaul was probably the last thing that UO needed. A new GUI would be nice with larger icons and items. But new graphic doesn't make me tingle at all.
I really think that EA has totally destroyed this game and that it is no longer about what everyone liked.
As it stands now, EA shards are loot fests to the biggest degree, and crafting has fallen by the wayside.
If you look into some of the things that the real UO community is doing, it blows the pants off this facelift.
Look to things like UOIris which is attempting to make UO into a true 3-D everquestlike game.
Player run shards have implemented so many more usefull things in one week than EA has done in a few years.
What really needs to happen is for EA to let go of the reigns and allow the real UO community to chime in and show them what players want.
Player run shards are by far the more interesting and fun way to play. Plus they are free.
I think that this new graphics update will turn more vets off as more noobish loot whoring players make their way into this game.
I'm glad to see some work being done on the game. The UI and new graphics are really the minimum I would expect from a game going on for 9 (wow!) years. I played UO on and off for about 4 years, trying out seige perilous after they implemented the felucia.
Although I think the new graphics are a good face lift, what is being done to fix all of the outstanding issues? You need to work HARD to get a single server back to where UO was in it's glory days. I'm talking about resetting a server, taking out of all of the neon/sparkling shit, making houses HARD to get so that every square inch isn't covered by some stupid brick hut. Cut out 3/4 of the map so that when you go to a town, THERE IS ACTUALLY ANOTHER HUMAN THERE. Nothing was more frustrating when I went back to UO after a year hiatus to find that there was 10x more random dungeons all over the map, with absolutely no one inside of them.
I originally quit when the penalties to red characters were implemented, quit again when Trammel/Felucia shit turned the world upside down. I played on several player-made servers and some of them really had good ideas. Maybe these new developers will take a step back and think about what made UO so popular off the bat.
You're probably thinking i'm stuck in the past, but I LOVED some of the stuff they added, so I'm not advocating just turning a server into an old school one. I just wish they would have thought out each of their changes further and decided if it was actually good for the game.
That Aaron guy is talking such pap.. How is UO still one of the most popular MMO's?! It's dying on it's arse! It's been stedily dying on it's arse ever since EA took over..
With that said, I do like the look of the new graphics engine and I would be willing to give it a go when it's released.
I'm glad to hear that UO is still going strong, and with the updated gfx engine I might have to hop into old seige perilous and take a gander. I had had high hopes for UO2 and since its cancellation i have yet to really find a game that I really had to play if you get my meaning. From a friend that once worked at EA the cancellation of UO2 was because they wanted to devote all development time towards UO, not shortchange those people by gambling on a new game. I respect that, at least the UO team actually cares, to some extent, about their player base and do not want to go out of their way to alienate them, lessons that SOE could really stand to learn from.
About the subscription fees, apart from anarchy online (which has a free version) no game that I can think of has ever said awww you guys pay too much, here lets halve your subscription fee. Even Anarchy Online they still pay full sub fees to play the game advert free etc.
Ah... UO... the game that showed me the glory of MMORPGs... Also the game that set my high tolerance for ganking... Nothing like trying to get money from the bank only to have six feet of cold steel rammed in your back. And yes i do mean that with a nostalgic feeling of warmt. These younglings and their soft ways... Consensual Pvp... And i remember one of the best RPG guilds i ever been in, the guardsmen militia. Never found anything like it again. I wonder if they are still around.
Originally posted by tawess Ah... UO... the game that showed me the glory of MMORPGs... Also the game that set my high tolerance for ganking... Nothing like trying to get money from the bank only to have six feet of cold steel rammed in your back. And yes i do mean that with a nostalgic feeling of warmt. These younglings and their soft ways... Consensual Pvp... And i remember one of the best RPG guilds i ever been in, the guardsmen militia. Never found anything like it again. I wonder if they are still around.
I check this out when the upgrade comes around.
Europa shard? Yes, they're still around...about hundred members strong or so...you'll find their town from yew crossroads trammel side
This was my first MMO too. I can remember years back staying up all night playing this game then being dead at work the next day. UGH! The new graphics look pretty good compared to what they're using now. Well, what I assume they're still using I haven't played in years. UO was one of the best MMO's of all time. I loved the housing options especially being able to place itmes where I want them in the house to decorate. The only other game I've found that I loved so much was pre-cu SWG. They had awesome housing options too. And UO didn't really need content overhaul, there is plenty to do. The reason I left is exactly like they said, the graphics were outdated and I was ready for a more visually appealing game. After SWG I've been bouncing around tho and am still looking for one that I like. Only UO and pre-cu SWG were games where you could actually just stand around and talk to people and actually not be bored. I've found no other games with that type of community. I hate to step backwards but I might, just might, give this a try. Wonder if there's even any empty housing plots left
==================== Remember man that passes by, as you are now so once was I. And as I am so must you be, prepare yourself to follow me.
There is easy to find a large house spot on Siege and I believe on some of the other shards too.
A new client will hopeful draw alot old players back to UO and add alot new players. I hope they also will use a little time to fix the balance of Siege, we had far to long been in the shadow of the Trammel shards. All we need is help to our crafters so there again will be demand for their items.
On other shards, items don't get lost, so they made them more expensive and harder to get. That just don't work on Siege where you may lose it in the first fight. Items need to be easy to replace on Siege. EA know that I think but the question is when they will do something to help us with this problem. It have to be soon.
But still, for players who like old UO (1997-1998), Siege is only place worth playing.
Well Im glad that UO is getting a makeover. I have some great nostalgia from those days in my first MMO. I even went back on several occasions, but it just wasnt the same. I still have friends from my UO days, although we all play different games now, or none at all in one case!! Sad guy!
I am interested in what they will do to revamp its graphics, and the screenies look pretty good. But, I have to say I doubt very much if I'll go back and try it because I just dont like that top down 3rd person view. I have got too used to choosing 1st, 3rd person views and camera angles etc. Just too inflexible for my taste. Although, you never can tell, you might just see me there
I loved crafting and housing back then. Just never managed to get that tower!!!
I also remember lots of late nights camping IDOCS or fighting demons til the server saved..'did we get the xp from that last kill?' lol
Still, I wish them well, and it is only my 1cp worth
Okay this post is from a long time (7 Year Vet, Played Alpha thru friends account, got into Beta officially) turned stone cold hater of Ultima Online.
First let me say the Graphics Overhaul is cool. Good idea, props to whoever thought of it. It looks good, I'm sure it will draw in a couple suckers. Heck I might even be seduced to try it if they offer a free trial for a bit.
But here's what crucifies Ultima Online:
1. Rampant Hackers! EA has proven for 9 years that they cannot or will not stop hacking. The two most common (meaning performed every day) cheats are Duping and Speed Hacking. EA apparently can do NOTHING about duping as they have said it was fixed multiple times but it happens EVERY DAY, EVERY SINGLE DAY! With Speed Hacking they have put a system in place that does not work and just bans blocks of people who may or may not be guilty. (Like the time they banned a ton of IM users who they thought were hacking...)
2. Lack of Support for Game Bugs and Playability Issues! Back in the day when you paged for a GM, he/she would pop up in front of you and ask you what the problem was, take a look for themselves, and sort things out. Ever since EA Officially took over (EA has always owned UO, but officially took over when the original creator was bought out) the GM Support went right down the tubes! They don't come anymore when you page them, they send you a generic response that directs you to their totally out of date website that doesnt answer anything clearly. Most of the things you would page a GM about (hacking, duping, cheating, banning, game bugs) and answered wishy-washy on the Support Website... i.e. It might be illegal to do a certain action, but not illegal to reap the proffits from that action.
3. The economy is 100% shot to hell for several reasons: a) To many character slots and allowable skills per character. Basically this allows everyone to have a blacksmith, everyone to have an alchemist, everyone to have a mage. No character professions or skills are in demand at all. b) Duping... many characters have millions and millions of gold from duping bugs. c) Scripting... UO is easily the most scriptable MMO on the market. And Scripters take full advantage of this... so they are gone all day but when they get home their script has mined 10,000 ingots or 10,000 wood, or whatever the case may be. d) No-Breakage and Insurance, the two worst ideas every put into UO. Yes this works with some games but UO was never meant for this type of ruleset. Further adds to the disselusion of professions and interactivety as you dont ever need a blacksmith or any type of crafter because nothing you have ever breaks, gets stolen, or becomes unuseable. e) ... I could go on but for breavity sake I will stop here.
4. Making UO item based was like serving someone microwaved ice cream. It just wasnt mean to ever be served up that way, period. And putting the rocket-science statisics on every item made the game a hassle rather then a joy to play. Before AoS you could get into the game fast... just put on the armor best for your class... usually plate for Warrior, Leather for Mage, Leather/Mail combo for other classes... it all depended on strength, dexterity, intelligence, wether or not you needed to meditate, etc... it was fun!! Now it's all based around the particular stat average on every single piece you wear. It's gay to the extreme! NOT TO MENTION IT COMPLETELY UNBALANCED THE GAME FOR ABOUT 3 YEARS, and still has a huge impact of existing and new players. -- It is the single biggest obstacle for new players, if Aaron is serious about wanting new players they really need to go back to the old system.
5. Trammel/Felucca was a huge mistake. -- The two rulesets cannot co-exist... and it is proved by the fact that Felucca is dead, dead, dead. The only exception is around specific moongates (portals) where PvP occurs. Other then that nobody uses Felucca except for extra storage space.
I know this list wasnt exactly in order but at least you get the picture of what you will deal with if you join UO right now.
I hate to be so negative but those are some of the major problems in UO. Not to mention the complete unbalanced nature of PvP due to the item-based gameplay.
Here are a few things they need to do in order fix UO:
1. No Insurance. 2. Bring back breakage in a big way... not only to armor but to craftables, make houses start to crumble after time, make kegs start to leak, make weapons break after a time of use (including artifacts which will discourage there wide spread use and make a more even playing field and a "funner" experience for everyone). 3. DO MORE TO PREVENT HACKING, CHEATING, SCIRPTING, DUPING, ETC! 4. Bring back GM Support so that they actually show up when you page them and dont send you canned responses. 5. Bring back Counselors! Why? Because EA SUCKS at content and roleplaying and events and helping new players! The counselors were one of the best things UO had going for it. 6. Get rid of Trammel. Bring back the forced interactivity and bring back the community. Stop fragmenting society and localize it on each server so that people need to interact, so that they need each other. That was the original magic of UO. You could play within a circle of friends, or be a big time merchant. MMO's were NOT mean to be played solo, stop cattering to solo players. 7. Please for gods sake get rid of moongates and just upgrade the server equipment. Jeeesus. Talk about hybrid-instancing taken to the extreme. Theres no need for it, it just serves to fragment society even more. 8. Get rid of the Powerup Program.... that is the lamest crap ever! It only takes 2 days of serious playing to GM your character anyway, stop letting people cheat! 9. Only allow people to buy items that do not unbalance the game.. like house decorations. 10. Police Ebay and other trading sites, get your lawyers on it or something! 11. Bring back corpse looting and stealing... the sense of loss/risk made the game playable on so many more levels. Some changes were good like more secure housing, massive house customization, dark fathers, quests, etc.
I'd love to see UO brought back to glory, but I just dont think new graphics (which arent even up to par by todays standards and are only about as good as Lineage I) are going to bring back players or rekindle interest. Especially since I can play WoW or GW or EVE or EQ2 etc etc for the same or very near the same price per month.
Thats my big question now: What are the people who got turned away, for all these reasons, playing today? Is there a single game that can hold a candle to 98-00 UO? I heard EVE is ok, and i heard WoW is a joke compared to the complexity of UO. What is the most complex MMO out today (besides UO)?
Originally posted by konradg Thats my big question now: What are the people who got turned away, for all these reasons, playing today? Is there a single game that can hold a candle to 98-00 UO? I heard EVE is ok, and i heard WoW is a joke compared to the complexity of UO. What is the most complex MMO out today (besides UO)?
There really isnt anything close to the complexity of UO in the market atm...well, Eve might come close but outside the item stats and ship tweaking it's complexity is about the same as of pea shooters.
kids these days wants instant gratification with developers leading them by their hands to content.
i just joined zulu hotel. a free UO shard. it has 400 people on average online. Im sure thats about the size of atlantic now anyway haha. worth a shot. i think everyone should join a server like this until ea finally realizes its losing everyone to an older version of its own game.
For anyone who has played or though of it , now is the time to join , dont listen to the people who dont play it , because they have no clue how much work the current dev team has done this year , granted its not the UO of old , but its ALOT better than 1-3 years ago..
I know its a shady topic but I am going to come right out and say it, so please read on instead of deleting my post right away. I have been playing a free server of UO that is set on the Pre UO:R build. I play this server because of how the original "graphics revamping" of 3rd Dawn really started to deteriorate the Roleplaying community of UO. For me, and I feel I can also speak for some of the roleplaying cohort, we have stuck with the UO franchise for so long because of the RP possibilities that have been feisable only in UO. I believe the seemingly failure of the first Graphics Revamp was due to the fact that us old timers respected UO for what it was, it was a fresh change from the current MMORPG market.
With that said, I have not played Official UO since maybe six months or so after the release of AoS. And as for Aaron Cohen, I understand that you are were the Marketing guy so its your job to hype us all up.... Well I will say this... It worked. I think I might dabble about in Kingdom Reborn for a month or so and see if I can get rehooked. I think the winning factor for me will be the RP community which I intend on putting the majority of my efforts into rebuilding from what Old UO was like.
I wonder what Richard Garriot thinks of his baby in the hands of EA Mythic. Lepidus, maybe that would be an interview worth getting Well with whatever Richard Garriot feels about Ultima's current course, I wish him the best of luck with his future endeavors with PlayNC and Tabula Rasa.
Also Aaron, you kind of tiptoed around the idea of launching another single player Ultima product, would definately be interested in hearing what you would have to say about any future plans for one.
Comments
Hightly doubt it. UO was never ment to be played in 1st person view.
Those days are trully missed , my moneys on this dev team , they really seem to care about making UO better , after all the current producer/ dev team might be the only one that has been able to talk EA into doing this , as long as it doesn't get cancelled..
Hey if it fails , bye bye UO.....
Cohen is more clueless than I thought.
He calls Siege an oldschool shard when it has been corrupted by every single consensual based expansion for the past seven years, including consensual and carebear updates like instanced corpses (you strangely cannot loot a dead body unless you were the one that killed it), sunglasses and flip flops, instant self-loot greatly reducing the penalty and challenge of death, ressurectable pets, blessed items which are not lost when you die, uber weapons and armor not based on the materials they are made of but only on numbers and stats which are displayed when clicking on them, ninjas, elves, giant bugs, pastel dog mounts, florescent weapons and armor, customized borg cube housing that is private, which means it has an invisible forcefield around it - if you even try to run on the steps you are immediately bumped off, bags of sending which allow anyone to quickly teleport items and gold directly into their banks from anywhere in the world - got some good loot, you don't need to adventure back to town, just pop it in a bag, rideable firebeetle forges and all kinds of other carebear crap.
Total crap.
A sub par graphics update is not going to help UO. In order for UO to draw back customers and grow to new heights they are going to need to offer something different, something serious, something innovative and professionally run, something like the amazing virtual world that the industry leading MMOG was founded upon!
I tried to play the game again for about a hour a good 6 months ago and just crindged at the graphics i so used to love, so used to WoW type graphics now days its hard to take a step back in quality. I even checked out ebay to see the state of game currency, and its scarey, like 1 mil for £1 saying to me gold has pretty much no value ingame, even when i left the game a mil was worth £18 on ebay, that was just before the big gold dupel, shows how bad the game econnemy is still to this day.
But all that aside, i'll buy the new box when its out and take a peek at the newer graphics and gameplay, might bump into some old friends doing the same from my 5 years of gaming on Europa
so my point is: is there anyone else like me that has found a game worthy of giving you your fix of mmo gaming? is there any game out there today with a balanced economy and non-fighting characters that support it?
or is this game non existent?
Hej all, I would like to speak a little about the shard Siege Perilous and reply to some of the quotes in the thread.
That server was created in sep 1999, before you quit. It's named Siege Perilous. We don't have the Trammel facet and all new land added is with Felucca/Siege ruleset. You can be attacked everywhere and there is no Item insurance. We do however have a few problems with some blessed items that need to be removed from the shard, hope DarkScribe will help us with that.
Sadly we need the creditcard part to protect the game again scammers, exploiters and other kind of players who not want to play but want to make RL money from UO without thinking about how much they hurt the game.
Only way I see that part removed is with making a trial island where trial players have to stay until they pay the game. Right now, a trial player can access every part of UO.
This is true and even when Siege is more close to the game I loved 1997-1998, Siege still got hurt of 2 thing.
The changes to items we got from AoS, we got 5 kind of resists and alot mods on the items that made an item hell, the update got called Ages of Stuff. Now with no item insure and need for upper items that was hard to get, Siege got hurt. It become worse when they added the elf stuff and resources for crafting the crafters could not get and most crafters on Siege gave up.
Crafters are the backbone in UO and they need alot of love on Siege so they can make good items, that is not to expensive to get lost easy in PvP.
The second problem is to much land or to few players. It become to hard to find each others and player towns are hard to build because we do have alot of ghost houses owned of old players who refuse to let their houses go. Some may be paying to the game, but they are not playing and their houses take up place from playing customers.
We need alot more active players on Siege and we need to disallow trial players to own/transfer a house and keep it for 3 months before they again need to transfer to a new trial account. DarkScribe, let this houses die if not paid for.
Let new players see Siege Perilous on the shard list with a PvP tag and let them start without it effect their young status on other shards. Siege Perilous need new blood now!
I had played sinse dec 1997, I'm one of the players who love Siege and can't stand the other shards.
I had been on Siege sinse the shard was born in sep 1999, my first shard was Atlantic.
I had made so many friends in UO, but most are gone now, I wish you all back.
FrejaSP
Lonely Vampire of Siege Perilous UO
The graphics overhaul was probably the last thing that UO needed. A new GUI would be nice with larger icons and items. But new graphic doesn't make me tingle at all.
I really think that EA has totally destroyed this game and that it is no longer about what everyone liked.
As it stands now, EA shards are loot fests to the biggest degree, and crafting has fallen by the wayside.
If you look into some of the things that the real UO community is doing, it blows the pants off this facelift.
Look to things like UOIris which is attempting to make UO into a true 3-D everquestlike game.
Player run shards have implemented so many more usefull things in one week than EA has done in a few years.
What really needs to happen is for EA to let go of the reigns and allow the real UO community to chime in and show them what players want.
Player run shards are by far the more interesting and fun way to play. Plus they are free.
I think that this new graphics update will turn more vets off as more noobish loot whoring players make their way into this game.
I'm glad to see some work being done on the game. The UI and new graphics are really the minimum I would expect from a game going on for 9 (wow!) years. I played UO on and off for about 4 years, trying out seige perilous after they implemented the felucia.
Although I think the new graphics are a good face lift, what is being done to fix all of the outstanding issues? You need to work HARD to get a single server back to where UO was in it's glory days. I'm talking about resetting a server, taking out of all of the neon/sparkling shit, making houses HARD to get so that every square inch isn't covered by some stupid brick hut. Cut out 3/4 of the map so that when you go to a town, THERE IS ACTUALLY ANOTHER HUMAN THERE. Nothing was more frustrating when I went back to UO after a year hiatus to find that there was 10x more random dungeons all over the map, with absolutely no one inside of them.
I originally quit when the penalties to red characters were implemented, quit again when Trammel/Felucia shit turned the world upside down. I played on several player-made servers and some of them really had good ideas. Maybe these new developers will take a step back and think about what made UO so popular off the bat.
You're probably thinking i'm stuck in the past, but I LOVED some of the stuff they added, so I'm not advocating just turning a server into an old school one. I just wish they would have thought out each of their changes further and decided if it was actually good for the game.
That Aaron guy is talking such pap.. How is UO still one of the most popular MMO's?! It's dying on it's arse! It's been stedily dying on it's arse ever since EA took over..
With that said, I do like the look of the new graphics engine and I would be willing to give it a go when it's released.
About the subscription fees, apart from anarchy online (which has a free version) no game that I can think of has ever said awww you guys pay too much, here lets halve your subscription fee. Even Anarchy Online they still pay full sub fees to play the game advert free etc.
http://www.speedtest.net/result/7300033012
Never found anything like it again. I wonder if they are still around.
I check this out when the upgrade comes around.
This have been a good conversation
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as you are now so once was I.
And as I am so must you be,
prepare yourself to follow me.
There is easy to find a large house spot on Siege and I believe on some of the other shards too.
A new client will hopeful draw alot old players back to UO and add alot new players. I hope they also will use a little time to fix the balance of Siege, we had far to long been in the shadow of the Trammel shards. All we need is help to our crafters so there again will be demand for their items.
On other shards, items don't get lost, so they made them more expensive and harder to get. That just don't work on Siege where you may lose it in the first fight. Items need to be easy to replace on Siege. EA know that I think but the question is when they will do something to help us with this problem. It have to be soon.
But still, for players who like old UO (1997-1998), Siege is only place worth playing.
I hope some of you will give it a try.
Lonely Vampire of Siege Perilous UO
Well Im glad that UO is getting a makeover. I have some great nostalgia from those days in my first MMO. I even went back on several occasions, but it just wasnt the same. I still have friends from my UO days, although we all play different games now, or none at all in one case!! Sad guy!
I am interested in what they will do to revamp its graphics, and the screenies look pretty good. But, I have to say I doubt very much if I'll go back and try it because I just dont like that top down 3rd person view. I have got too used to choosing 1st, 3rd person views and camera angles etc. Just too inflexible for my taste. Although, you never can tell, you might just see me there
I loved crafting and housing back then. Just never managed to get that tower!!!
I also remember lots of late nights camping IDOCS or fighting demons til the server saved..'did we get the xp from that last kill?' lol
Still, I wish them well, and it is only my 1cp worth
First let me say the Graphics Overhaul is cool. Good idea, props to whoever thought of it. It looks good, I'm sure it will draw in a couple suckers. Heck I might even be seduced to try it if they offer a free trial for a bit.
But here's what crucifies Ultima Online:
1. Rampant Hackers! EA has proven for 9 years that they cannot or will not stop hacking. The two most common (meaning performed every day) cheats are Duping and Speed Hacking. EA apparently can do NOTHING about duping as they have said it was fixed multiple times but it happens EVERY DAY, EVERY SINGLE DAY! With Speed Hacking they have put a system in place that does not work and just bans blocks of people who may or may not be guilty. (Like the time they banned a ton of IM users who they thought were hacking...)
2. Lack of Support for Game Bugs and Playability Issues! Back in the day when you paged for a GM, he/she would pop up in front of you and ask you what the problem was, take a look for themselves, and sort things out. Ever since EA Officially took over (EA has always owned UO, but officially took over when the original creator was bought out) the GM Support went right down the tubes! They don't come anymore when you page them, they send you a generic response that directs you to their totally out of date website that doesnt answer anything clearly. Most of the things you would page a GM about (hacking, duping, cheating, banning, game bugs) and answered wishy-washy on the Support Website... i.e. It might be illegal to do a certain action, but not illegal to reap the proffits from that action.
3. The economy is 100% shot to hell for several reasons:
a) To many character slots and allowable skills per character. Basically this allows everyone to have a blacksmith, everyone to have an alchemist, everyone to have a mage. No character professions or skills are in demand at all.
b) Duping... many characters have millions and millions of gold from duping bugs.
c) Scripting... UO is easily the most scriptable MMO on the market. And Scripters take full advantage of this... so they are gone all day but when they get home their script has mined 10,000 ingots or 10,000 wood, or whatever the case may be.
d) No-Breakage and Insurance, the two worst ideas every put into UO. Yes this works with some games but UO was never meant for this type of ruleset. Further adds to the disselusion of professions and interactivety as you dont ever need a blacksmith or any type of crafter because nothing you have ever breaks, gets stolen, or becomes unuseable.
e) ... I could go on but for breavity sake I will stop here.
4. Making UO item based was like serving someone microwaved ice cream. It just wasnt mean to ever be served up that way, period. And putting the rocket-science statisics on every item made the game a hassle rather then a joy to play. Before AoS you could get into the game fast... just put on the armor best for your class... usually plate for Warrior, Leather for Mage, Leather/Mail combo for other classes... it all depended on strength, dexterity, intelligence, wether or not you needed to meditate, etc... it was fun!! Now it's all based around the particular stat average on every single piece you wear. It's gay to the extreme! NOT TO MENTION IT COMPLETELY UNBALANCED THE GAME FOR ABOUT 3 YEARS, and still has a huge impact of existing and new players. -- It is the single biggest obstacle for new players, if Aaron is serious about wanting new players they really need to go back to the old system.
5. Trammel/Felucca was a huge mistake. -- The two rulesets cannot co-exist... and it is proved by the fact that Felucca is dead, dead, dead. The only exception is around specific moongates (portals) where PvP occurs. Other then that nobody uses Felucca except for extra storage space.
I know this list wasnt exactly in order but at least you get the picture of what you will deal with if you join UO right now.
I hate to be so negative but those are some of the major problems in UO. Not to mention the complete unbalanced nature of PvP due to the item-based gameplay.
Here are a few things they need to do in order fix UO:
1. No Insurance.
2. Bring back breakage in a big way... not only to armor but to craftables, make houses start to crumble after time, make kegs start to leak, make weapons break after a time of use (including artifacts which will discourage there wide spread use and make a more even playing field and a "funner" experience for everyone).
3. DO MORE TO PREVENT HACKING, CHEATING, SCIRPTING, DUPING, ETC!
4. Bring back GM Support so that they actually show up when you page them and dont send you canned responses.
5. Bring back Counselors! Why? Because EA SUCKS at content and roleplaying and events and helping new players! The counselors were one of the best things UO had going for it.
6. Get rid of Trammel. Bring back the forced interactivity and bring back the community. Stop fragmenting society and localize it on each server so that people need to interact, so that they need each other. That was the original magic of UO. You could play within a circle of friends, or be a big time merchant. MMO's were NOT mean to be played solo, stop cattering to solo players.
7. Please for gods sake get rid of moongates and just upgrade the server equipment. Jeeesus. Talk about hybrid-instancing taken to the extreme. Theres no need for it, it just serves to fragment society even more.
8. Get rid of the Powerup Program.... that is the lamest crap ever! It only takes 2 days of serious playing to GM your character anyway, stop letting people cheat!
9. Only allow people to buy items that do not unbalance the game.. like house decorations.
10. Police Ebay and other trading sites, get your lawyers on it or something!
11. Bring back corpse looting and stealing... the sense of loss/risk made the game playable on so many more levels.
Some changes were good like more secure housing, massive house customization, dark fathers, quests, etc.
I'd love to see UO brought back to glory, but I just dont think new graphics (which arent even up to par by todays standards and are only about as good as Lineage I) are going to bring back players or rekindle interest. Especially since I can play WoW or GW or EVE or EQ2 etc etc for the same or very near the same price per month.
There really isnt anything close to the complexity of UO in the market atm...well, Eve might come close but outside the item stats and ship tweaking it's complexity is about the same as of pea shooters.
kids these days wants instant gratification with developers leading them by their hands to content.
Right now, our focus is on Kingdom Reborn. We plan to keep UO going with new features and content that will thrill fans for the next nine years.
Can't wait till they change their mind and create a UO2.
I know its a shady topic but I am going to come right out and say it, so please read on instead of deleting my post right away. I have been playing a free server of UO that is set on the Pre UO:R build. I play this server because of how the original "graphics revamping" of 3rd Dawn really started to deteriorate the Roleplaying community of UO. For me, and I feel I can also speak for some of the roleplaying cohort, we have stuck with the UO franchise for so long because of the RP possibilities that have been feisable only in UO. I believe the seemingly failure of the first Graphics Revamp was due to the fact that us old timers respected UO for what it was, it was a fresh change from the current MMORPG market.
With that said, I have not played Official UO since maybe six months or so after the release of AoS. And as for Aaron Cohen, I understand that you are were the Marketing guy so its your job to hype us all up.... Well I will say this... It worked. I think I might dabble about in Kingdom Reborn for a month or so and see if I can get rehooked. I think the winning factor for me will be the RP community which I intend on putting the majority of my efforts into rebuilding from what Old UO was like.
I wonder what Richard Garriot thinks of his baby in the hands of EA Mythic. Lepidus, maybe that would be an interview worth getting
Also Aaron, you kind of tiptoed around the idea of launching another single player Ultima product, would definately be interested in hearing what you would have to say about any future plans for one.