UO Second Age

Mostly for the reasons you stated.

-There are a good amount of players on this shard. Once my characters are ready to PvP I don't foresee any trouble finding some stuff to do.

-There are some VERY helpful people on this server. It makes it much more enjoyable and much easier to get started

-Great performance. Enough said. This server seems to have very solid performance/reliability.

-Good community. I see lots of very nice players, a--hole players, and those in between. Just like the good old days of UO. Wouldn't have it any other way

1) The staff cannot be bribed like other shards.
2) Long stable history
3) Most realistic era in uo history.

Purely laziness. I can't be bothered to start on another server so I just play an hour a week on here.

Honestly, the reason that I play here is not only because of the competent staff, reliability, etc, etc as other people have stated, but it's the style of game that UO was in the T2A era that keeps me drawn in. It's more of an indictment of modern MMO design than anything else.

I love UO for the fact that it is a sandbox, plain and simple. You are free to be what you want to be whether it is an adventurer, murderer, thief, craftsman, proprietor or anything else you can imagine. The problem that I have always found with more modern MMOs is that they (By and large, the most notable exception being EVE Online) are what is becoming known as a "theme park" style game rather than a sandbox. World of Warcraft (WoW, being the most prominent example) is a perfect example of this. The game is not designed to allow you to do whatever you want to in the world. Sure, you can control your character and choose where to go and what quests to do, but there is always some sort of big bad character or impending doom that is placed over everyone's head (examples being Illidan, Arthas, Deathwing, the Shattering, etc.). This forces you to run through the story even while you are questing. This coupled with the limited crafting options makes the game more about being a legendary hero than a lowly craftsman/shopkeep, which is really unfortunate for me because that's what I like to do.

Coupled with the fact that the entire game is being streamlined more and more really takes a lot of the social aspect out of the game. In UO, if you want something repaired and don't have a blacksmith mule to do it, you have to seek a GM blacksmith PC and interact with them to make it happen. In WoW, you toss money at an NPC and the repair is done. If you want to sell goods in UO, you have to find a buyer, negotiate a price and then execute the transaction to whatever end. In WoW, you hop onto the auction house, search for what you want and buy it without ever interacting with the buyer. If you want to run a dungeon, you need to find other PCs to run the dungeons with in UO then travel there. In WoW, you just pick the dungeon, set your position in the Tank-Healer-DPS holy trinity stand around in town for 10 minutes and you're warped right into the action in your pre-defined roll, plus with cross-server queuing, chances are you'll never see half of your group ever again since they play on different servers.

The reason I focus so much on WoW in this comparison is that it has become the defacto standard for modern MMOs. Speaking generally, MMOs these days all have the fundamental WoW features and fall into the same similar trappings of making everything easier and easier for the players. People complain that walking takes forever so they implement mounts, people complain that they have to travel by mounts so they implement flight paths, people complain that the flight paths take too long so they implement quick travel, eventually all you are left with is a bunch of people standing in town waiting for their queues to ding and warp them straight into the dungeons.

I have had many, many thought provoking discussions on this topic with some of my local friends that play more modern MMOs. I am not a game designer myself, but debating and discussing the finer points of MMO design has always seemed quite interesting to me.

TL;DR The game is more social and more rugged than modern MMO designs with more freedom.

Honestly, I loved UO back when I played from 97 to 2001. Got a little ridiculous near the end of my run and I lost interest. Several times during the past years I've thought about coming back to the game (OSI) but just felt overwhelmed thinking of all the new expansions and skills and junk that I would have to get used to (and wasn't that interested in learning the new stuff cuz it seemed kinda lame). I always knew there were free shards, but didn't bother ever looking into that, until about 9 months ago, when I decided I was going to see what was out there. Found UOSA and about had a heart attack! This was the game I remembered! No new junk to learn or deal with (okay, there's Razor). This was how I remembered it. What could be better? Started playing to try it out and it was amazing. Friendly players, helpful tips for using Razor and macros, suggested character builds, etc. I played about a week and was loving it so much I had to call my brothers, who also used to play back in the day, and got them hooked too.

All that and the fact that I've been able to try out things I never took the time to do back when I played, or never had the resources to achieve (i.e. - build a GM tamer, own a tower, etc) have made me fall in love with UO all over again. I've looked at some of the other free shards like Hybrid and such, but the "custom" crap just doesn't interest me. I like the game the way it was/is here.

Kudos to Derrick and the amazing staff here for building and running a great shard.

I am new, but like many of you I played for years back around this era and quit around Age of Shadows.

When I saw this being advertised on youtube last week, I thought "this server is too good to be true, it probably does not exit anymore". Sure enough I log in the vent channel and talk to a very awesome dude by the name of Kavian(admin) and after about a good hour of talking with him I about shed a tear & now I am hooked like crack

SaibotMK wrote:I am new, but like many of you I played for years back around this era and quit around Age of Shadows.

When I saw this being advertised on youtube last week, I thought "this server is too good to be true, it probably does not exit anymore". Sure enough I log in the vent channel and talk to a very awesome dude by the name of Kavian(admin) and after about a good hour of talking with him I about shed a tear & now I am hooked like crack

Kaivan's good people.

Pro wrote:Purely laziness. I can't be bothered to start on another server so I just play an hour a week on here.

Worst endorsement ever by an ugly person.

haterskates

i play here because it's fun

Man i just logged onto UOGamers: Hybrid, and that place is still jumping... wtf is wrong with those people... Wish we could steal their population though.

tbh, hybrid was a fun server too, its just that some people are ridiculously rich..... u think its bad on UOSA u have no idea.... UOR was a pretty fun ruleset to pvp in, especially if u prefer a dexxer....

risk and accuracy (fix reveal please). no risk on the new shards

Guerrilla wrote:tbh, hybrid was a fun server too, its just that some people are ridiculously rich..... u think its bad on UOSA u have no idea.... UOR was a pretty fun ruleset to pvp in, especially if u prefer a dexxer....

yeah but it looks like an acid trip, the world is deserted and everything is super easy to gain. All it has is arena style PvP, which to me is nothing. But to each their own, but I'm sure many of their players simply don't know any better.

uosa shouldnt compete with uogamers:hybrid. players on hybrid stay on hybrid (expept the ones who are tired of it). because they can buy gold for real money so they dont have to invest time in farming, etc. they log in and pvp..its a funshard...and some ppl really like the uo:r ruleset. and unfortunately there isnt any better uo:r shard..

i still dont understand why this shard (uosa) isnt the downfall of ipy2..these are the ppl we should get to play here