Uo was awesome back in the day before the fel/tram split. You couldnt walk out of town without fear of dieing but my problem was that I would go someone, get killed, someone would loot all my shit and I would quit playing for days, not just because I was sore but I just got aggrivated because it had a very difficult pvp. I dont like that there are pretty much only safe places anymore but the new job classes are awesome
Originally posted by Leesus Originally posted by hercules Originally posted by Leesus Hercule, go back to WoW carebear. Old school UO retained a TON of players. So much so, they were rewarded for having 3 and 4 year old accounts. UO probably had some of the most loyal players out of any MMO ever, until EA ruined it. I know my guild was made of veterans and we had 100+ members with 4 year old accounts. Thats just one guild on one server, out of about 30 servers at the time. Don't talk about a game unless you've actually played it, obviously you haven't.
If you knew your facts you would know pre trammel UO had under 100k and dropping.Post trammel 1 year on it had 250k paying clients.
Its a known fact published etc.Go to mmorpgchart.com and check the history chart.
Really genius? I wonder why that is.... Oh maybe it's because Trammel was tailored for casual gamers and new gamers, thus luring in more players. At the time, 100,000 players on one game was insane. That's why it was the top MMO for so long. Then when Trammel came out, a lot of new people joined and a lot of old school players quit. So like I said, go back to WoW carebear.
LoL you said UO retained tons of "old school" players and even went on to say how many got 4 year rewards(that brings the timeline way after trammel) and now you say it lots of old school players left.
Originally posted by Gnomesmusher I'm not sure why so many of you claim that UO takes more player skill in PVP than any other MMO out there but maybe because so many of you played the obviously overpowered Tank Mages back then. You literally were a tank with the offensive power of a mage. And mages themselves were overpowered.
"Pure" warriors were no match. The only other "class" that could match up were the Pet Tamers with Dragons. But those weren't easy to get.
The fact that you think that, shows that you didn't play a swordsman. Sure, Tank Mages are powerful, but they had a few weak points. Mana, Regs, Armor. They where based on one fact, long range powerstrikes. Any swordsman who had a inch of brain matter, never left town without a lot of bandages, and several potions.
When a Tank Mages tries to attack you, first thing, run! Let him strike you, heal on the run, by the time his second strike hit, you had maybe 10 to 20% health left, but, thanks to your potions, you are back to full health in a mather of seconds. Then its PAYBACK time. You take out your Katana, because this weapon has the fasted hit ratio, and interrupts the spell casters ability. And then its just a mather of trusting it up the tank mages ass ...
Ofcourse, when playing a Swordsman or any other melee class, you needed to increase your resistance to magic atleased to 50 skill level ( 70 was advised ). That alone made there spell's loos over 50% of there damage.
Now, unless you are a total newbie, everybody had protection against Magic, because its a ranged attack, and deadly to any Melee Fighter.
And there are other ways to deal with Mage Tanks. Hiding, Splitstap Attacks ( closing the distance between you & your attack fast ) etc.
Now, by any definition, everybody can be called a Mage, sinds there used to be very little character without any points in Magery. Recall & Gate where essential to even none Magery using Characters.
Gnomes musher Gnomes-musher Mismatch Edit... Ignore all Add to dictionary
Mag es Mag-es Mags Mag's Magus Edit... Ignore all Add to dictionary
Madge Marge marge Mag mag Edit... Ignore all Add to dictionary
mag es mag-es mags Mag's Magus Edit... Ignore all Add to dictionary
didnt didn't dissent dent dint Edit... Revert to "dident"
Mag es Mag-es Mags Mag's Magus Edit... Ignore all Add to dictionary
powerful power full power-full powerfully Edit... Revert to "powerfull"
Marna Mania Manna Man Manda Edit... Ignore all Add to dictionary
powerstrokes power strikes power-strikes powers trikes powers-trikes Edit... Ignore all Add to dictionary
Originally posted by hercules LoL you said UO retained tons of "old school" players and even went on to say how many got 4 year rewards(that brings the timeline way after trammel) and now you say it lots of old school players left.
Your saying as if everybody left the day Trammel was released. Trammel was one of the main reason why so many Vets left. But, its not like everybody left the day that Trammel was released he! I'm one of those Vets, and i left atleased 6 or 8 months after Trammel got released. By that time, i ranked up 3 rewards if i remember correctly.
The impact of Trammel was not felt on day one. One of the reason was that fact that not everybody had the stones to open a Gate to Trammel. What it did create was like a small wount, slowly bleeding the one layer empty. More & more people when't to Trammel, becouse it was "safe". Hell, even i did for a while. Mining widout fear of PK'ers, no fear in the woods. It was a nice change, BUT, then reality started to set in!
All this "safe" started to create a economy gone nuts. A item that cost 10GP in the old world, cost 100GP in the new world. Why? Becouse money was so easy to come by. And slowy it started to errode the economy. In the old world, people needed to work as one, now, a Blacksmith was able to gather his own ingots widout fear, result: All those Miners who did the dangerous work, where out of a job. The old world, camping a spawn point was like sending out a message to PK'ers * please come kill me *. Now, that was gone. People only needed to fear the NPC's ( and those had the IQ of 10, making them no threat ). O wait, lets remove the ability to loot people. Now if you die, you can't be looted. *Joink* ... Dead started to have no more meaning or effect.
And the list goes on. Trammel wasent the Vet killer on day one, but it took several months to almost a year before it had totaly destroyed the player based economy, and replaced it by a almost egoistic world where nobody needed nobody else anymore. Safe, cossy, widout danger, the opposit of the "Old World". And that world became empty, desolated. The Vets left.
The "old world", people knew each other, works as one, PK'ers & None-Pk'ers, there was a good economy, everything made sense. It was litterly a representation of the Middle Ages. Dangerous times.
The Fact that the Playersbase jumped to 250k, was only a temperary effect. UO had a very loyal playbase. Those 150k has little turnover in regards to people leaving. Those 250k may have been a nice jump, but a lot of those 150k left. And, they where FORCED to started creating one after another newbie helping solution. People came, looked around, left, came looked around, left, repeat. They litterly sacrefieced there loyal playerbase, for a group of people with no loyalty. If they enhanced the Old UO, it may have taken longer for gaining to 250k player, but you had loyal players.
O yea, if you want to lie based on a statistic ( mmorpgchart.com ), atleased study your material better. Trammel was introduced in 2000 April.
Before Trammel ( April 2000 ): 180.000! Not below 100.000 as you claimed After Trammel ( April 2000 ): it peaked to 245.000 around Jan 2001.
Then it slowly started to loos people with more & more Vets leaving, and there attempts at drawing in more newbies was able to temperary prevent the body from bleeding to dead.
But, unlike what you where saying about UO dying, strange, that graphics showed UO going up all the time,and only after the effects of Trammel set in ( several months after the relase ), people started to leave in mass. It was not until Age Of Shadows ( 2003 !! ) it was able to regain people, and after that, well, the dead of UO ( hell, even i tried my old UO account again for a month during that time ). Only to be discusted and leave. It took me ONE!!! Week, to be able to buy a house! The economy was so destroyed, that money was so darn easy to come by. And that was with new characters! Well, the effects are clear.
And don't tell that BS story that Loyality does not pay. Take a look at Eve. Dispite being buggy game at release, its been able to draw in more & more people, while keeping there current playerbase, aka, a steady growth widout any hype.
Really genius? I wonder why that is.... Oh maybe it's because Trammel was tailored for casual gamers and new gamers, thus luring in more players. At the time, 100,000 players on one game was insane. That's why it was the top MMO for so long. Then when Trammel came out, a lot of new people joined and a lot of old school players quit. So like I said, go back to WoW carebear.
LoL you said UO retained tons of "old school" players and even went on to say how many got 4 year rewards(that brings the timeline way after trammel) and now you say it lots of old school players left.
Are you seriously retarded? Trammel wasn't the only reason old school players split. It was a series of bad patches after Trammel. Like stat and skill scrolls. Everyone reading this post knows you're talking out of your ass and cant admit you are wrong. So I'm dont talking to you now.
The fact that you think that, shows that you didn't play a swordsman. Sure, Tank Mages are powerful, but they had a few weak points. Mana, Regs, Armor. They where based on one fact, long range powerstrikes. Any swordsman who had a inch of brain matter, never left town without a lot of bandages, and several potions.
When a Tank Mages tries to attack you, first thing, run! Let him strike you, heal on the run, by the time his second strike hit, you had maybe 10 to 20% health left, but, thanks to your potions, you are back to full health in a mather of seconds. Then its PAYBACK time. You take out your Katana, because this weapon has the fasted hit ratio, and interrupts the spell casters ability. And then its just a mather of trusting it up the tank mages ass ...
Ofcourse, when playing a Swordsman or any other melee class, you needed to increase your resistance to magic atleased to 50 skill level ( 70 was advised ). That alone made there spell's loos over 50% of there damage.
Now, unless you are a total newbie, everybody had protection against Magic, because its a ranged attack, and deadly to any Melee Fighter.
And there are other ways to deal with Mage Tanks. Hiding, Splitstap Attacks ( closing the distance between you & your attack fast ) etc.
Now, by any definition, everybody can be called a Mage, sinds there used to be very little character without any points in Magery. Recall & Gate where essential to even none Magery using Characters.
Gnomes musher Gnomes-musher Mismatch Edit... Ignore all Add to dictionary
Mag es Mag-es Mags Mag's Magus Edit... Ignore all Add to dictionary
Madge Marge marge Mag mag Edit... Ignore all Add to dictionary
mag es mag-es mags Mag's Magus Edit... Ignore all Add to dictionary
didnt didn't dissent dent dint Edit... Revert to "dident"
Mag es Mag-es Mags Mag's Magus Edit... Ignore all Add to dictionary
powerful power full power-full powerfully Edit... Revert to "powerfull"
Marna Mania Manna Man Manda Edit... Ignore all Add to dictionary
powerstrokes power strikes power-strikes powers trikes powers-trikes Edit... Ignore all Add to dictionary
brain matter
Meh, I probably should have clarified that I was talking about when the game first came out (which in my opinion is when PVP was the most fun) The stuff you were talking about wasnt in the game until later (stuff like making bandages for healing yourself etc etc)
The fact was the for a very long time, the tank mage was THE dominating figure and overpowered. It wasnt until later that it got nerfed thanks to some changes like making plate armor give penalties.
And I'm talking about GM tank mages versus GM anything else. Someone else also pointed out that a newbie swordsman can kill a newbie mage anytime anywhere. But the mage gets a whole lot better as he improves his skills but a whole lot slower than a melee character. However the payoff was much higher.
Originally posted by Arqentus Originally posted by hercules LoL you said UO retained tons of "old school" players and even went on to say how many got 4 year rewards(that brings the timeline way after trammel) and now you say it lots of old school players left.
Your saying as if everybody left the day Trammel was released. Trammel was one of the main reason why so many Vets left. But, its not like everybody left the day that Trammel was released he! I'm one of those Vets, and i left atleased 6 or 8 months after Trammel got released. By that time, i ranked up 3 rewards if i remember correctly.
The impact of Trammel was not felt on day one. One of the reason was that fact that not everybody had the stones to open a Gate to Trammel. What it did create was like a small wount, slowly bleeding the one layer empty. More & more people when't to Trammel, becouse it was "safe". Hell, even i did for a while. Mining widout fear of PK'ers, no fear in the woods. It was a nice change, BUT, then reality started to set in!
All this "safe" started to create a economy gone nuts. A item that cost 10GP in the old world, cost 100GP in the new world. Why? Becouse money was so easy to come by. And slowy it started to errode the economy. In the old world, people needed to work as one, now, a Blacksmith was able to gather his own ingots widout fear, result: All those Miners who did the dangerous work, where out of a job. The old world, camping a spawn point was like sending out a message to PK'ers * please come kill me *. Now, that was gone. People only needed to fear the NPC's ( and those had the IQ of 10, making them no threat ). O wait, lets remove the ability to loot people. Now if you die, you can't be looted. *Joink* ... Dead started to have no more meaning or effect.
And the list goes on. Trammel wasent the Vet killer on day one, but it took several months to almost a year before it had totaly destroyed the player based economy, and replaced it by a almost egoistic world where nobody needed nobody else anymore. Safe, cossy, widout danger, the opposit of the "Old World". And that world became empty, desolated. The Vets left.
The "old world", people knew each other, works as one, PK'ers & None-Pk'ers, there was a good economy, everything made sense. It was litterly a representation of the Middle Ages. Dangerous times.
The Fact that the Playersbase jumped to 250k, was only a temperary effect. UO had a very loyal playbase. Those 150k has little turnover in regards to people leaving. Those 250k may have been a nice jump, but a lot of those 150k left. And, they where FORCED to started creating one after another newbie helping solution. People came, looked around, left, came looked around, left, repeat. They litterly sacrefieced there loyal playerbase, for a group of people with no loyalty. If they enhanced the Old UO, it may have taken longer for gaining to 250k player, but you had loyal players.
O yea, if you want to lie based on a statistic ( mmorpgchart.com ), atleased study your material better. Trammel was introduced in 2000 April.
Before Trammel ( April 2000 ): 180.000! Not below 100.000 as you claimed After Trammel ( April 2000 ): it peaked to 245.000 around Jan 2001.
Then it slowly started to loos people with more & more Vets leaving, and there attempts at drawing in more newbies was able to temperary prevent the body from bleeding to dead.
But, unlike what you where saying about UO dying, strange, that graphics showed UO going up all the time,and only after the effects of Trammel set in ( several months after the relase ), people started to leave in mass. It was not until Age Of Shadows ( 2003 !! ) it was able to regain people, and after that, well, the dead of UO ( hell, even i tried my old UO account again for a month during that time ). Only to be discusted and leave. It took me ONE!!! Week, to be able to buy a house! The economy was so destroyed, that money was so darn easy to come by. And that was with new characters! Well, the effects are clear.
And don't tell that BS story that Loyality does not pay. Take a look at Eve. Dispite being buggy game at release, its been able to draw in more & more people, while keeping there current playerbase, aka, a steady growth widout any hype.
Mate I was there when lord british got killed in late beta and got accidently killed by blackthorn's demon(sigh).
The economy started to die back in 1998 when we informed GMs that there was a serious duping bug which became almost open by end of that year and never got sorted till 2000.
And like i always said they never took away the option of fellucia .If people wanted to stay in old UO ways there was always fellucia .Fact is it became a waste and because there was no defenceless miners or newbies to kill.I recall my anti-pk guild going on hunts for weeks still in fellucia and there was no one.
It just shows you the kind of pkers who existed.They scream here how ppl are carebear and such but always ran away from seasoned gamers .Which was a key fustration for many.
and try and keep the discussion civil.It makes you look more mature and worse you can get banned from this site for insulting(directed to leesus).Building a reputation on this forum actually makes people listen to you.
If you're going to try to argue with me, at least read my posts and understand them. Half of what you said was a rebutal to either stuff I never said, or stuff you misunderstood.
Originally posted by Arqentus Originally posted by hercules LoL you said UO retained tons of "old school" players and even went on to say how many got 4 year rewards(that brings the timeline way after trammel) and now you say it lots of old school players left.
Your saying as if everybody left the day Trammel was released. Trammel was one of the main reason why so many Vets left. But, its not like everybody left the day that Trammel was released he! I'm one of those Vets, and i left atleased 6 or 8 months after Trammel got released. By that time, i ranked up 3 rewards if i remember correctly.
The impact of Trammel was not felt on day one. One of the reason was that fact that not everybody had the stones to open a Gate to Trammel. What it did create was like a small wount, slowly bleeding the one layer empty. More & more people when't to Trammel, becouse it was "safe". Hell, even i did for a while. Mining widout fear of PK'ers, no fear in the woods. It was a nice change, BUT, then reality started to set in!
All this "safe" started to create a economy gone nuts. A item that cost 10GP in the old world, cost 100GP in the new world. Why? Becouse money was so easy to come by. And slowy it started to errode the economy. In the old world, people needed to work as one, now, a Blacksmith was able to gather his own ingots widout fear, result: All those Miners who did the dangerous work, where out of a job. The old world, camping a spawn point was like sending out a message to PK'ers * please come kill me *. Now, that was gone. People only needed to fear the NPC's ( and those had the IQ of 10, making them no threat ). O wait, lets remove the ability to loot people. Now if you die, you can't be looted. *Joink* ... Dead started to have no more meaning or effect.
And the list goes on. Trammel wasent the Vet killer on day one, but it took several months to almost a year before it had totaly destroyed the player based economy, and replaced it by a almost egoistic world where nobody needed nobody else anymore. Safe, cossy, widout danger, the opposit of the "Old World". And that world became empty, desolated. The Vets left.
The "old world", people knew each other, works as one, PK'ers & None-Pk'ers, there was a good economy, everything made sense. It was litterly a representation of the Middle Ages. Dangerous times.
The Fact that the Playersbase jumped to 250k, was only a temperary effect. UO had a very loyal playbase. Those 150k has little turnover in regards to people leaving. Those 250k may have been a nice jump, but a lot of those 150k left. And, they where FORCED to started creating one after another newbie helping solution. People came, looked around, left, came looked around, left, repeat. They litterly sacrefieced there loyal playerbase, for a group of people with no loyalty. If they enhanced the Old UO, it may have taken longer for gaining to 250k player, but you had loyal players.
O yea, if you want to lie based on a statistic ( mmorpgchart.com ), atleased study your material better. Trammel was introduced in 2000 April.
Before Trammel ( April 2000 ): 180.000! Not below 100.000 as you claimed After Trammel ( April 2000 ): it peaked to 245.000 around Jan 2001.
Then it slowly started to loos people with more & more Vets leaving, and there attempts at drawing in more newbies was able to temperary prevent the body from bleeding to dead.
But, unlike what you where saying about UO dying, strange, that graphics showed UO going up all the time,and only after the effects of Trammel set in ( several months after the relase ), people started to leave in mass. It was not until Age Of Shadows ( 2003 !! ) it was able to regain people, and after that, well, the dead of UO ( hell, even i tried my old UO account again for a month during that time ). Only to be discusted and leave. It took me ONE!!! Week, to be able to buy a house! The economy was so destroyed, that money was so darn easy to come by. And that was with new characters! Well, the effects are clear.
And don't tell that BS story that Loyality does not pay. Take a look at Eve. Dispite being buggy game at release, its been able to draw in more & more people, while keeping there current playerbase, aka, a steady growth widout any hype.
Nice timeline And absolutely correct. Gold duping in UO wasn't an economy breaker like in other games. The dupers eventually got killed, looted, and the wealth got distributed and eventually flushed out of the economy. There was just enough npc costs in the game to make sure cash flowed OUT as well as into the economy. UO had a very very solid Economy that was very well balanced. There wasn't much inflation at all (until Trammel). And the PVP was very well balanced.
I played an armsman and never ever lost a PVP 1.1 fight. Ever. 2.1 I'd die occasionally. I had just enough magery to self heal and teleport but I never used it in combat. My crossbow and warhammer were all I used in battle. Won every single fight. There's a very satisfying feeling when you smack a tank mage in the head and watch his health drop by 50-60% in 1 hit.
UO was alot like EVE is now before Trammel. A very loyal very dedicated player base that truely loved the game. Not a lot of people stuck with it after trying it but everyone that did stayed for the long haul. It was, as EVE is now, slowly growing. And, also important to note, it did this DESPITE having the *worst* graphics in the industry.
Then Trammel hit, and initially it was ok... but then folks started migrating to trammel and the above post already outlines all that so I'm not gonna get into it. I just wanted to post in agreement with Arqentus. I was there. I had 7 years of active time in the official UO servers. I'm now 9 years and counting playing the game
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online. Sig image Pending Still in: A couple Betas
The reason UO pvp was so insanley awesome was for one simple reason. UO was around BEFORE griefing was frowned upon! People could quite happily get away with horse killing, rez killing, PKing noobs, loot stealing, etc etc. OSI didn't worry about any of it, because they knew it would create a seriously hardcore UO society/fanbase. and that it did.
the PVP was so good I think, not only because it took an immense amount of real skill to be 'really' good, but also because PVP had a real meaning in UO. you were never told 'this guys bad, go kill him' (unless you were order/chaos, but thats a whole other ball game), you would be left to forge your own alliances, and indeed own enemies as you played the game. I remember I had a set of very close friends, we were all guilded.. and along the way, if somebody upset or crossed any of us, then the entire guild would consider that person an 'enemy'.
this lead to immensley cool player feuds brewing. i remember, for example, when my beloved neighbour hid inside my house and tried to kill me when i went home. i managed to get away and soon informed my guild of my troubles. my guildmaster then actually managed to arrange a meeting between our guild, and the guild of the 'perpertrater', it was just about the most awesome gaming experience i've ever had... it was so tense, about 20 of us all standing in a circle, trying to be polite as we knew one wrong word could result in uber blood shed. of course eventually it did indeed lead to a ruck, which i'm happy to say we won
it's things like that, that made PVP in UO so insanley exciting, worthwhile and generally FUN! not to mention that when you died you lost AAAAAAAAAAAAALOT sometimes, i've never been so devasted by a game in my entire life before. infact, I can't remember a single incident in my entire life (real life that is), where i felt as utterly upset and downtrodden as when i was PK'd and lost my newly bought silver kryss of power....... brings a tear to my eye. However, losing a lot of decent loot wasn't the only thing that made UO PVP awesome, you actually had a reputation to uphold... losing to your biggest enemy, infront of other people could be just about the most embarrassing and utterly humiliating thing to happen. this bought a whole new edge to PVP, an edge that hasn't been found by any other MMO to date. (after all, who gives a fuck if you die in WoW lol, you just respawn without losing a single item, no one even knows you died, and you just carry on.. oh the loss!)
god, stop, i can't think about UO any more, the memories hurt too much
What do I want out of a game? I ask myself this many times before purchasing a new game (a reason why I don't buy many games anymore, mmo wise). When I read on a box, I try to stay away from games tha'll say on the box "No death pentalty. . .easy to learn. . .addicting. . .etc" The main reason this is so because this usually is misleading and put on there for people to buy more of. When I want to look at a game box. . .I want to know what's the game about, what's the features are.
But back to UO. When I buy a MMORPG, I want to play a game that takes PRACTICE to get good. Not time. That is why i play games like UT2004, Battlefield 2, UO. etc. . . I want to learn the ins and outs of a game. I want to fight some people and I want them to ask (if their new) "HOW YOU DID YOU DO THAT!!" I don't want a game that just takes time and your good....ei: WoW or any game close to it. UO gave me that possiblility. If you stay away from the game for a coupel of months, your going to forget things and how the games work. I don't want a game to be so easy, I usually find games that are extremely easy to be boring. Mainly because there's no challenge and what fun is it to not learn anything? It comes down to learning. If I can learn something from a game and I enjoy it, I will like it for sure. This is a reason why I will not buy Auto Assault. Sure, I'm sure it has a depth to it. But it's really easy to learn and get into it. I don't want that. Ultima Online you have to learn alot of things. You have to learn how to make money, you have to learn how to set up great hotkeys, you have to learn where the hot spots for PKs are at, and you have to learn which weapons are better against a mage/another warrior. etc.
So that is my rant. . .that is why I like UO and it's PvP. It's a learning experience. Sure, we can all say learning is boring. . but when most people think about learning, they usually think about Math, or english. If you learn something your into, you'll want to learn more. That is how people get good at UO. People asked for easy games, people asked for Trammel. . .now look at everyone. Their all getting bored with their games.
Hardly do I ever see a player from UO say "What are some other good mmo's out there, I'm getting bored of UO," especially from the Pre-REN shards.
/played-mmorpgs
Total time played:9125 Days, 21 Hours, 29 Minutes, 27 Seconds Time played this level: 39 Days, 1 Hour, 24 Minutes, 5 Seconds
UO has shaped my gaming experience, and like most, I've lost my love for the game as EA made it worse. I was excited about AoS, I enjoyed the new content, the new classes, and in some ways, the new weapon and armor system.. But most of my real joy in the game, my best memories, are Pre-Trammel.
Let's get this out before I go any further; I don't really like PvP. I'm frankly bad at it, and don't care to get better. I hate jerkoff PKs who gank you, loot you dry and try to pretend that they're more skilled or better than you. But as much as I hate them, as much as I welcomed Trammel when it came, I've come to realize that the risk inherent in open PvP is what gave the game it's spice.
The PvP system meant that you formed bonds of loyalty; If I went hunting with someone that I wasn't guilded with, and they were killed, I'd stand there over their body, waiting for them to come back. If I were especially loyal, I'd loot their body before it decayed, or before someone else came along. This was a real risk, because anyone who came along after I'd looted their body could kill me without penalty. It really meant something when you'd come back to find your body decaying and looted dry and your friend gone.. Only to have them pop out of hiding and trade you back all of your stuff. THAT was a friend.
Open PvP gave even the most routine, boring tasks extra spice. Mining? Lumberjacking? You're keeping an eye out for anyone approaching. Hearing hoofbeats when you're out with your non-combat prospector usually meant spamming your hide macro even before you knew if they were red, and never loading up with more than you can carry.
The WBB mob in Trammel was something you NEVER saw in Felucca, or pre-Trammel. That big of a crowd meant you'd be robbed blind, and even if you said guards, someone else would probably loot your stolen item from the corpse before you could.
As much as I dislike PvP and PKs.. Be assured, I'll be on the lookout for a game that has open PvP, like UO did back in the day.
Originally posted by Senden I've constantly read the WoW forums mainly the pvp section in hope that something will come along but it seems that there are a lot of players who mention UO and just how great the pvp was in that game and I was wondering if I could get some detailed answers for a few questions..
1: What was the pvp like? (people refer to the pvp as classic UO which i'm sure refers to the time before EA got their mitts on the game.) 2: What is the pvp like now? 3: Is the game still worth getting? (I don't mind the graphics but is there still enough people playing it to make the pvp worthwhile?) 4: What the heck are shards? (At first I thought it was what they called servers but i'm not sure.) Thanks for your time!
I've play UO. Nothing in that game is average, let alone great.
(1) Player made weapons and armor were very viable in PVP. You didnt need uber loot to compete. This also made player crafting very important to the overall game economy
(2) Your characters stats were skill based. You had a max of 700 skill pts to spread around. With this system in place, the only disadvantage you had was that veterans had their characters already developed, but sooner or later your character would be on equal ground.
PVP came down to skill and experience in battles, not what loot you carried or if you logged 100 hours a week playing.
Plus there was full looting of those you killed. Sure is sucked when you died, but all you would really lose is some time in getting rezzed and re-equipped. No big deal, not as big a deal as other made it to be. You might be player killed in some dungeon with a bunch of gold and loot, but this just made you more careful and you learned to avoid certain areas.
Basically you had a PVP system that was open so you could do whatever you wanted.
Now some say mages dominated but there were people with hybrid mages, archer/mage , swords/mage, then you had dexxers with less mage abilites but still viable in combat once you learned tactics to compete. You could even have a tamer and have your dragons kill someone. Or a Bard , where you could provoke a monster to attack an enemy. Lots of possibilites.
I've tried a ton of games since, SWG, WOW etc, but i've finally given up with the new MMORPGS and just found a free player run UO Shard circa 1999 that i'm loving.
My advice is find a player run shard that has its setting before Trammel was introduced. That will give you the feel that everyone is talking about, and the PVP we still rave about.
Originally posted by Leesus Originally posted by Kasmar It wasn't. It stunk. It is what killed UO.
I'm assuming you never played old school UO, or you were just horrible at PvP.
Ha ha Leesus.. I was Counselor Elindill on the Napa Valley server for 2 1/2 years. The last 1/2 year I was Elder Counselor Elindill. All I heard the last 3 months was this new game called Everquest that was going to knock UO off the map and it did a fairly good job of that. I knew how to play UO. I just didn't like what PvP did to the game. A game cannot flourish and grow if griefers kill off the new players checking out the game. Today, Uo is a shadow of what it used to be. It only started to gain players when they opened the non-PvP servers and got rid of Raph Koster. But that was long after I left because I got sick and tired of being handcuffed as a counselor and listening to all the players hollering about the griefers ruining their game.
====================== It's just me, so open the door.
Originally posted by Kasmar Originally posted by Leesus Originally posted by Kasmar It wasn't. It stunk. It is what killed UO.
I'm assuming you never played old school UO, or you were just horrible at PvP.
Ha ha Leesus.. I was Counselor Elindill on the Napa Valley server for 2 1/2 years. The last 1/2 year I was Elder Counselor Elindill. All I heard the last 3 months was this new game called Everquest that was going to knock UO off the map and it did a fairly good job of that. I knew how to play UO. I just didn't like what PvP did to the game. A game cannot flourish and grow if griefers kill off the new players checking out the game. Today, Uo is a shadow of what it used to be. It only started to gain players when they opened the non-PvP servers and got rid of Raph Koster. But that was long after I left because I got sick and tired of being handcuffed as a counselor and listening to all the players hollering about the griefers ruining their game.
To be honest, its not the griefers who killed the game directly. It was the developers lack of imagination. How many years did it take for them to create the newbie flag? How many years after that to create the Newbie island so they are able to train before released ingame. Most free shards has simulair systems years before the "official" developers.
Same with the murder system. Some people complained about it. Well, solution: a justice system ( what was very much missed in the official UO, yet, some free servers had a justice system to punish pk'ers widout the overkill skill loss. A murdered got jailed, and then sentenced to a island, where he or she needed to mine xxxx ore before getting released. A system like this will have lowered the number of newbie PK'ers, and left you with the more hardcore one's ( who in general had more rollplaying in them then most people ) ).
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If you knew your facts you would know pre trammel UO had under 100k and dropping.Post trammel 1 year on it had 250k paying clients.
Its a known fact published etc.Go to mmorpgchart.com and check the history chart.
Really genius? I wonder why that is.... Oh maybe it's because Trammel was tailored for casual gamers and new gamers, thus luring in more players. At the time, 100,000 players on one game was insane. That's why it was the top MMO for so long. Then when Trammel came out, a lot of new people joined and a lot of old school players quit. So like I said, go back to WoW carebear.
LoL you said UO retained tons of "old school" players and even went on to say how many got 4 year rewards(that brings the timeline way after trammel) and now you say it lots of old school players left.
When a Tank Mages tries to attack you, first thing, run! Let him strike you, heal on the run, by the time his second strike hit, you had maybe 10 to 20% health left, but, thanks to your potions, you are back to full health in a mather of seconds. Then its PAYBACK time. You take out your Katana, because this weapon has the fasted hit ratio, and interrupts the spell casters ability. And then its just a mather of trusting it up the tank mages ass ...
Ofcourse, when playing a Swordsman or any other melee class, you needed to increase your resistance to magic atleased to 50 skill level ( 70 was advised ). That alone made there spell's loos over 50% of there damage.
Now, unless you are a total newbie, everybody had protection against Magic, because its a ranged attack, and deadly to any Melee Fighter.
And there are other ways to deal with Mage Tanks. Hiding, Splitstap Attacks ( closing the distance between you & your attack fast ) etc.
Now, by any definition, everybody can be called a Mage, sinds there used to be very little character without any points in Magery. Recall & Gate where essential to even none Magery using Characters.
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The impact of Trammel was not felt on day one. One of the reason was that fact that not everybody had the stones to open a Gate to Trammel. What it did create was like a small wount, slowly bleeding the one layer empty. More & more people when't to Trammel, becouse it was "safe". Hell, even i did for a while. Mining widout fear of PK'ers, no fear in the woods. It was a nice change, BUT, then reality started to set in!
All this "safe" started to create a economy gone nuts. A item that cost 10GP in the old world, cost 100GP in the new world. Why? Becouse money was so easy to come by. And slowy it started to errode the economy. In the old world, people needed to work as one, now, a Blacksmith was able to gather his own ingots widout fear, result: All those Miners who did the dangerous work, where out of a job. The old world, camping a spawn point was like sending out a message to PK'ers * please come kill me *. Now, that was gone. People only needed to fear the NPC's ( and those had the IQ of 10, making them no threat ). O wait, lets remove the ability to loot people. Now if you die, you can't be looted. *Joink* ... Dead started to have no more meaning or effect.
And the list goes on. Trammel wasent the Vet killer on day one, but it took several months to almost a year before it had totaly destroyed the player based economy, and replaced it by a almost egoistic world where nobody needed nobody else anymore. Safe, cossy, widout danger, the opposit of the "Old World". And that world became empty, desolated. The Vets left.
The "old world", people knew each other, works as one, PK'ers & None-Pk'ers, there was a good economy, everything made sense. It was litterly a representation of the Middle Ages. Dangerous times.
The Fact that the Playersbase jumped to 250k, was only a temperary effect. UO had a very loyal playbase. Those 150k has little turnover in regards to people leaving. Those 250k may have been a nice jump, but a lot of those 150k left. And, they where FORCED to started creating one after another newbie helping solution. People came, looked around, left, came looked around, left, repeat. They litterly sacrefieced there loyal playerbase, for a group of people with no loyalty. If they enhanced the Old UO, it may have taken longer for gaining to 250k player, but you had loyal players.
O yea, if you want to lie based on a statistic ( mmorpgchart.com ), atleased study your material better. Trammel was introduced in 2000 April.
Before Trammel ( April 2000 ): 180.000! Not below 100.000 as you claimed
After Trammel ( April 2000 ): it peaked to 245.000 around Jan 2001.
Then it slowly started to loos people with more & more Vets leaving, and there attempts at drawing in more newbies was able to temperary prevent the body from bleeding to dead.
But, unlike what you where saying about UO dying, strange, that graphics showed UO going up all the time,and only after the effects of Trammel set in ( several months after the relase ), people started to leave in mass. It was not until Age Of Shadows ( 2003 !! ) it was able to regain people, and after that, well, the dead of UO ( hell, even i tried my old UO account again for a month during that time ). Only to be discusted and leave. It took me ONE!!! Week, to be able to buy a house! The economy was so destroyed, that money was so darn easy to come by. And that was with new characters! Well, the effects are clear.
And don't tell that BS story that Loyality does not pay. Take a look at Eve. Dispite being buggy game at release, its been able to draw in more & more people, while keeping there current playerbase, aka, a steady growth widout any hype.
Really genius? I wonder why that is.... Oh maybe it's because Trammel was tailored for casual gamers and new gamers, thus luring in more players. At the time, 100,000 players on one game was insane. That's why it was the top MMO for so long. Then when Trammel came out, a lot of new people joined and a lot of old school players quit. So like I said, go back to WoW carebear.
LoL you said UO retained tons of "old school" players and even went on to say how many got 4 year rewards(that brings the timeline way after trammel) and now you say it lots of old school players left.
Are you seriously retarded? Trammel wasn't the only reason old school players split. It was a series of bad patches after Trammel. Like stat and skill scrolls. Everyone reading this post knows you're talking out of your ass and cant admit you are wrong. So I'm dont talking to you now.
Meh, I probably should have clarified that I was talking about when the game first came out (which in my opinion is when PVP was the most fun) The stuff you were talking about wasnt in the game until later (stuff like making bandages for healing yourself etc etc)
The fact was the for a very long time, the tank mage was THE dominating figure and overpowered. It wasnt until later that it got nerfed thanks to some changes like making plate armor give penalties.
And I'm talking about GM tank mages versus GM anything else. Someone else also pointed out that a newbie swordsman can kill a newbie mage anytime anywhere. But the mage gets a whole lot better as he improves his skills but a whole lot slower than a melee character. However the payoff was much higher.
The impact of Trammel was not felt on day one. One of the reason was that fact that not everybody had the stones to open a Gate to Trammel. What it did create was like a small wount, slowly bleeding the one layer empty. More & more people when't to Trammel, becouse it was "safe". Hell, even i did for a while. Mining widout fear of PK'ers, no fear in the woods. It was a nice change, BUT, then reality started to set in!
All this "safe" started to create a economy gone nuts. A item that cost 10GP in the old world, cost 100GP in the new world. Why? Becouse money was so easy to come by. And slowy it started to errode the economy. In the old world, people needed to work as one, now, a Blacksmith was able to gather his own ingots widout fear, result: All those Miners who did the dangerous work, where out of a job. The old world, camping a spawn point was like sending out a message to PK'ers * please come kill me *. Now, that was gone. People only needed to fear the NPC's ( and those had the IQ of 10, making them no threat ). O wait, lets remove the ability to loot people. Now if you die, you can't be looted. *Joink* ... Dead started to have no more meaning or effect.
And the list goes on. Trammel wasent the Vet killer on day one, but it took several months to almost a year before it had totaly destroyed the player based economy, and replaced it by a almost egoistic world where nobody needed nobody else anymore. Safe, cossy, widout danger, the opposit of the "Old World". And that world became empty, desolated. The Vets left.
The "old world", people knew each other, works as one, PK'ers & None-Pk'ers, there was a good economy, everything made sense. It was litterly a representation of the Middle Ages. Dangerous times.
The Fact that the Playersbase jumped to 250k, was only a temperary effect. UO had a very loyal playbase. Those 150k has little turnover in regards to people leaving. Those 250k may have been a nice jump, but a lot of those 150k left. And, they where FORCED to started creating one after another newbie helping solution. People came, looked around, left, came looked around, left, repeat. They litterly sacrefieced there loyal playerbase, for a group of people with no loyalty. If they enhanced the Old UO, it may have taken longer for gaining to 250k player, but you had loyal players.
O yea, if you want to lie based on a statistic ( mmorpgchart.com ), atleased study your material better. Trammel was introduced in 2000 April.
Before Trammel ( April 2000 ): 180.000! Not below 100.000 as you claimed
After Trammel ( April 2000 ): it peaked to 245.000 around Jan 2001.
Then it slowly started to loos people with more & more Vets leaving, and there attempts at drawing in more newbies was able to temperary prevent the body from bleeding to dead.
But, unlike what you where saying about UO dying, strange, that graphics showed UO going up all the time,and only after the effects of Trammel set in ( several months after the relase ), people started to leave in mass. It was not until Age Of Shadows ( 2003 !! ) it was able to regain people, and after that, well, the dead of UO ( hell, even i tried my old UO account again for a month during that time ). Only to be discusted and leave. It took me ONE!!! Week, to be able to buy a house! The economy was so destroyed, that money was so darn easy to come by. And that was with new characters! Well, the effects are clear.
And don't tell that BS story that Loyality does not pay. Take a look at Eve. Dispite being buggy game at release, its been able to draw in more & more people, while keeping there current playerbase, aka, a steady growth widout any hype.
Mate I was there when lord british got killed in late beta and got accidently killed by blackthorn's demon(sigh).
The economy started to die back in 1998 when we informed GMs that there was a serious duping bug which became almost open by end of that year and never got sorted till 2000.
And like i always said they never took away the option of fellucia .If people wanted to stay in old UO ways there was always fellucia .Fact is it became a waste and because there was no defenceless miners or newbies to kill.I recall my anti-pk guild going on hunts for weeks still in fellucia and there was no one.
It just shows you the kind of pkers who existed.They scream here how ppl are carebear and such but always ran away from seasoned gamers .Which was a key fustration for many.
and try and keep the discussion civil.It makes you look more mature and worse you can get banned from this site for insulting(directed to leesus).Building a reputation on this forum actually makes people listen to you.
The impact of Trammel was not felt on day one. One of the reason was that fact that not everybody had the stones to open a Gate to Trammel. What it did create was like a small wount, slowly bleeding the one layer empty. More & more people when't to Trammel, becouse it was "safe". Hell, even i did for a while. Mining widout fear of PK'ers, no fear in the woods. It was a nice change, BUT, then reality started to set in!
All this "safe" started to create a economy gone nuts. A item that cost 10GP in the old world, cost 100GP in the new world. Why? Becouse money was so easy to come by. And slowy it started to errode the economy. In the old world, people needed to work as one, now, a Blacksmith was able to gather his own ingots widout fear, result: All those Miners who did the dangerous work, where out of a job. The old world, camping a spawn point was like sending out a message to PK'ers * please come kill me *. Now, that was gone. People only needed to fear the NPC's ( and those had the IQ of 10, making them no threat ). O wait, lets remove the ability to loot people. Now if you die, you can't be looted. *Joink* ... Dead started to have no more meaning or effect.
And the list goes on. Trammel wasent the Vet killer on day one, but it took several months to almost a year before it had totaly destroyed the player based economy, and replaced it by a almost egoistic world where nobody needed nobody else anymore. Safe, cossy, widout danger, the opposit of the "Old World". And that world became empty, desolated. The Vets left.
The "old world", people knew each other, works as one, PK'ers & None-Pk'ers, there was a good economy, everything made sense. It was litterly a representation of the Middle Ages. Dangerous times.
The Fact that the Playersbase jumped to 250k, was only a temperary effect. UO had a very loyal playbase. Those 150k has little turnover in regards to people leaving. Those 250k may have been a nice jump, but a lot of those 150k left. And, they where FORCED to started creating one after another newbie helping solution. People came, looked around, left, came looked around, left, repeat. They litterly sacrefieced there loyal playerbase, for a group of people with no loyalty. If they enhanced the Old UO, it may have taken longer for gaining to 250k player, but you had loyal players.
O yea, if you want to lie based on a statistic ( mmorpgchart.com ), atleased study your material better. Trammel was introduced in 2000 April.
Before Trammel ( April 2000 ): 180.000! Not below 100.000 as you claimed
After Trammel ( April 2000 ): it peaked to 245.000 around Jan 2001.
Then it slowly started to loos people with more & more Vets leaving, and there attempts at drawing in more newbies was able to temperary prevent the body from bleeding to dead.
But, unlike what you where saying about UO dying, strange, that graphics showed UO going up all the time,and only after the effects of Trammel set in ( several months after the relase ), people started to leave in mass. It was not until Age Of Shadows ( 2003 !! ) it was able to regain people, and after that, well, the dead of UO ( hell, even i tried my old UO account again for a month during that time ). Only to be discusted and leave. It took me ONE!!! Week, to be able to buy a house! The economy was so destroyed, that money was so darn easy to come by. And that was with new characters! Well, the effects are clear.
And don't tell that BS story that Loyality does not pay. Take a look at Eve. Dispite being buggy game at release, its been able to draw in more & more people, while keeping there current playerbase, aka, a steady growth widout any hype.
Nice timeline
I played an armsman and never ever lost a PVP 1.1 fight. Ever. 2.1 I'd die occasionally. I had just enough magery to self heal and teleport but I never used it in combat. My crossbow and warhammer were all I used in battle. Won every single fight. There's a very satisfying feeling when you smack a tank mage in the head and watch his health drop by 50-60% in 1 hit.
UO was alot like EVE is now before Trammel. A very loyal very dedicated player base that truely loved the game. Not a lot of people stuck with it after trying it but everyone that did stayed for the long haul. It was, as EVE is now, slowly growing. And, also important to note, it did this DESPITE having the *worst* graphics in the industry.
Then Trammel hit, and initially it was ok... but then folks started migrating to trammel and the above post already outlines all that so I'm not gonna get into it. I just wanted to post in agreement with Arqentus. I was there. I had 7 years of active time in the official UO servers. I'm now 9 years and counting playing the game
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the PVP was so good I think, not only because it took an immense amount of real skill to be 'really' good, but also because PVP had a real meaning in UO. you were never told 'this guys bad, go kill him' (unless you were order/chaos, but thats a whole other ball game), you would be left to forge your own alliances, and indeed own enemies as you played the game. I remember I had a set of very close friends, we were all guilded.. and along the way, if somebody upset or crossed any of us, then the entire guild would consider that person an 'enemy'.
this lead to immensley cool player feuds brewing. i remember, for example, when my beloved neighbour hid inside my house and tried to kill me when i went home. i managed to get away and soon informed my guild of my troubles. my guildmaster then actually managed to arrange a meeting between our guild, and the guild of the 'perpertrater', it was just about the most awesome gaming experience i've ever had... it was so tense, about 20 of us all standing in a circle, trying to be polite as we knew one wrong word could result in uber blood shed. of course eventually it did indeed lead to a ruck, which i'm happy to say we won
it's things like that, that made PVP in UO so insanley exciting, worthwhile and generally FUN! not to mention that when you died you lost AAAAAAAAAAAAALOT sometimes, i've never been so devasted by a game in my entire life before. infact, I can't remember a single incident in my entire life (real life that is), where i felt as utterly upset and downtrodden as when i was PK'd and lost my newly bought silver kryss of power....... brings a tear to my eye. However, losing a lot of decent loot wasn't the only thing that made UO PVP awesome, you actually had a reputation to uphold... losing to your biggest enemy, infront of other people could be just about the most embarrassing and utterly humiliating thing to happen. this bought a whole new edge to PVP, an edge that hasn't been found by any other MMO to date. (after all, who gives a fuck if you die in WoW lol, you just respawn without losing a single item, no one even knows you died, and you just carry on.. oh the loss!)
god, stop, i can't think about UO any more, the memories hurt too much
What do I want out of a game? I ask myself this many times before purchasing a new game (a reason why I don't buy many games anymore, mmo wise). When I read on a box, I try to stay away from games tha'll say on the box "No death pentalty. . .easy to learn. . .addicting. . .etc" The main reason this is so because this usually is misleading and put on there for people to buy more of. When I want to look at a game box. . .I want to know what's the game about, what's the features are.
But back to UO. When I buy a MMORPG, I want to play a game that takes PRACTICE to get good. Not time. That is why i play games like UT2004, Battlefield 2, UO. etc. . . I want to learn the ins and outs of a game. I want to fight some people and I want them to ask (if their new) "HOW YOU DID YOU DO THAT!!" I don't want a game that just takes time and your good....ei: WoW or any game close to it. UO gave me that possiblility. If you stay away from the game for a coupel of months, your going to forget things and how the games work. I don't want a game to be so easy, I usually find games that are extremely easy to be boring. Mainly because there's no challenge and what fun is it to not learn anything? It comes down to learning. If I can learn something from a game and I enjoy it, I will like it for sure. This is a reason why I will not buy Auto Assault. Sure, I'm sure it has a depth to it. But it's really easy to learn and get into it. I don't want that. Ultima Online you have to learn alot of things. You have to learn how to make money, you have to learn how to set up great hotkeys, you have to learn where the hot spots for PKs are at, and you have to learn which weapons are better against a mage/another warrior. etc.
So that is my rant. . .that is why I like UO and it's PvP. It's a learning experience. Sure, we can all say learning is boring. . but when most people think about learning, they usually think about Math, or english. If you learn something your into, you'll want to learn more. That is how people get good at UO. People asked for easy games, people asked for Trammel. . .now look at everyone. Their all getting bored with their games.
Hardly do I ever see a player from UO say "What are some other good mmo's out there, I'm getting bored of UO," especially from the Pre-REN shards.
Total time played: 9125 Days, 21 Hours, 29 Minutes, 27 Seconds
Time played this level: 39 Days, 1 Hour, 24 Minutes, 5 Seconds
UO has shaped my gaming experience, and like most, I've lost my love for the game as EA made it worse. I was excited about AoS, I enjoyed the new content, the new classes, and in some ways, the new weapon and armor system.. But most of my real joy in the game, my best memories, are Pre-Trammel.
Let's get this out before I go any further; I don't really like PvP. I'm frankly bad at it, and don't care to get better. I hate jerkoff PKs who gank you, loot you dry and try to pretend that they're more skilled or better than you. But as much as I hate them, as much as I welcomed Trammel when it came, I've come to realize that the risk inherent in open PvP is what gave the game it's spice.
The PvP system meant that you formed bonds of loyalty; If I went hunting with someone that I wasn't guilded with, and they were killed, I'd stand there over their body, waiting for them to come back. If I were especially loyal, I'd loot their body before it decayed, or before someone else came along. This was a real risk, because anyone who came along after I'd looted their body could kill me without penalty. It really meant something when you'd come back to find your body decaying and looted dry and your friend gone.. Only to have them pop out of hiding and trade you back all of your stuff. THAT was a friend.
Open PvP gave even the most routine, boring tasks extra spice. Mining? Lumberjacking? You're keeping an eye out for anyone approaching. Hearing hoofbeats when you're out with your non-combat prospector usually meant spamming your hide macro even before you knew if they were red, and never loading up with more than you can carry.
The WBB mob in Trammel was something you NEVER saw in Felucca, or pre-Trammel. That big of a crowd meant you'd be robbed blind, and even if you said guards, someone else would probably loot your stolen item from the corpse before you could.
As much as I dislike PvP and PKs.. Be assured, I'll be on the lookout for a game that has open PvP, like UO did back in the day.
like someone else in this thread said, if you meet a paladin in WoW you fear the class.
In UO you feared the player.
damn i miss uo
_____________________
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member of imminst.org
There were many PVP aspects that made UO great.
(1) Player made weapons and armor were very viable in PVP. You didnt need uber loot to compete. This also made player crafting very important to the overall game economy
(2) Your characters stats were skill based. You had a max of 700 skill pts to spread around. With this system in place, the only disadvantage you had was that veterans had their characters already developed, but sooner or later your character would be on equal ground.
PVP came down to skill and experience in battles, not what loot you carried or if you logged 100 hours a week playing.
Plus there was full looting of those you killed. Sure is sucked when you died, but all you would really lose is some time in getting rezzed and re-equipped. No big deal, not as big a deal as other made it to be. You might be player killed in some dungeon with a bunch of gold and loot, but this just made you more careful and you learned to avoid certain areas.
Basically you had a PVP system that was open so you could do whatever you wanted.
Now some say mages dominated but there were people with hybrid mages, archer/mage , swords/mage, then you had dexxers with less mage abilites but still viable in combat once you learned tactics to compete. You could even have a tamer and have your dragons kill someone. Or a Bard , where you could provoke a monster to attack an enemy. Lots of possibilites.
I've tried a ton of games since, SWG, WOW etc, but i've finally given up with the new MMORPGS and just found a free player run UO Shard circa 1999 that i'm loving.
My advice is find a player run shard that has its setting before Trammel was introduced. That will give you the feel that everyone is talking about, and the PVP we still rave about.
Ha ha Leesus.. I was Counselor Elindill on the Napa Valley server for 2 1/2 years. The last 1/2 year I was Elder Counselor Elindill. All I heard the last 3 months was this new game called Everquest that was going to knock UO off the map and it did a fairly good job of that. I knew how to play UO. I just didn't like what PvP did to the game. A game cannot flourish and grow if griefers kill off the new players checking out the game. Today, Uo is a shadow of what it used to be. It only started to gain players when they opened the non-PvP servers and got rid of Raph Koster. But that was long after I left because I got sick and tired of being handcuffed as a counselor and listening to all the players hollering about the griefers ruining their game.
======================
It's just me, so open the door.
Ha ha Leesus.. I was Counselor Elindill on the Napa Valley server for 2 1/2 years. The last 1/2 year I was Elder Counselor Elindill. All I heard the last 3 months was this new game called Everquest that was going to knock UO off the map and it did a fairly good job of that. I knew how to play UO. I just didn't like what PvP did to the game. A game cannot flourish and grow if griefers kill off the new players checking out the game. Today, Uo is a shadow of what it used to be. It only started to gain players when they opened the non-PvP servers and got rid of Raph Koster. But that was long after I left because I got sick and tired of being handcuffed as a counselor and listening to all the players hollering about the griefers ruining their game.
To be honest, its not the griefers who killed the game directly. It was the developers lack of imagination. How many years did it take for them to create the newbie flag? How many years after that to create the Newbie island so they are able to train before released ingame. Most free shards has simulair systems years before the "official" developers.
Same with the murder system. Some people complained about it. Well, solution: a justice system ( what was very much missed in the official UO, yet, some free servers had a justice system to punish pk'ers widout the overkill skill loss. A murdered got jailed, and then sentenced to a island, where he or she needed to mine xxxx ore before getting released. A system like this will have lowered the number of newbie PK'ers, and left you with the more hardcore one's ( who in general had more rollplaying in them then most people ) ).