UO Second Age

Duke Jones wrote:

Tron wrote:

Duke Jones wrote: Alot of angry banter.

These kind of posts don't help your crusade.

You're right, Tron. I apologize (especially to Zorce). My comments were more scathing than helpful or constructive. I should really know better than that.

It just seems that every day, there's less and less "gameplay" and more elaborate macros, unattended players, and an elitst community shifting the economy into inflation.

There are already posts online by new players asking how to macro their skills up, or which template is the best, etc. It's pretty much understood now that anyone joining the game is just going to goldfarm or PvP, and although there's nothing inherently wrong there, the original vision of UO, is fading away. I'm afraid UOSA will simply be a shard without gameplay standards or policies, covered with the false guise of a "T2A wrapper."

"Simply the way it was..."
Hmph! Not quite yet, and slipping fast. We can only dream and not give up.

Your posts are becoming increasingly difficult to read and take seriously...

First of all, the 'orginal vision' of UO by DD is not what the T2A era became. OSI was never even anything that came close to 'the original version of UO'.

Let's work through this. Consider the follow:

If we were to take a guess at what the 'original vision' of UO would be, we could assume the designers only wanted their own client used to play the game. Unfortunately, now that isn't a possibility, at least a reasonable one, considering we need to use third party applications to run the server and connect to it. What other clues can we find that lead to what the 'original vision' of UO might of included? Well, during the Second Age era we do have evidence of a third party application, UO Assist, being approved for use after being considered an illegal program for some time. What capabilities did it offer and what features, if any, had to be removed for the approval? We can safely assume that this approval meant the designers believed UO Assist shared in what their 'new vision' of UO would be.

Now after collecting all this information, which will be easy compared to the other research I've seen done for this shard, let's contrast the differences between what was allowed to be done through UO Assist, which was an approved third-party application during T2A, and what is now being done in Razor. If we are to be as true as possible to era accuracy as we have been since the server was created, then it is not possible to carry on these discrepancies now that we have discovered them.

Limiting Razor just seems retarded. In T2A there were already a bunch of different 3rd party apps floating around. Many people used them, legal or not. If you drive away Razor functions, I can guarantee you they'll just turn to EUO or something similar. Are you really going to sit down and actively police your entire playerbase?

I like this server but its never going to be truly "accurate" to 1998 unless you force everyone to play on 56k, and somehow strip years of knowledge and experience out of people's minds. Programming has moved on, playstyles evolved, playerbase changed. Being technically accurate is good enough. Screwing with Razor just opens up a whole can of worms.

In 1998, no one used Teamspeak or Ventrilo either. Target synching was a talented art. Are you going to ban those programs because they aren't era accurate?

Because razor is a huge part of pvp now, I believe we need to get a counsel together and minor tune some things about pvp.

Still keeping the t2a feel, but we have to realize that razor is no era accurate...so what's wrong with minor tuning a few things to put skill and balance back in pvp?

Neoptolemos wrote:
I like this server but its never going to be truly "accurate" to 1998 unless you force everyone to play on 56k, and somehow strip years of knowledge and experience out of people's minds.

No. Let's *really* be era accurate and discuss Monica Lewinski and how none of this is going to matter when Y2K hits anyway...

I'm scared.

Because razor is a huge part of pvp now, I believe we need to get a counsel together and minor tune some things about pvp.

I hate to say it but I agree. Razor is here and it looks like it is not going to go away soon.

Another solution : Let's create an UOSA installer (that does not tamper with your existing UO installations) and everyone starts using the same client from right after our target data.
http://www.uoguide.com/Client_Patch_1.26.2
With a litle bit of luck we can get UOAssist to work.

I don't think replacing Razor with UO Assist and forcing everyone to switch applications will do any good. Razor is here, everyone uses it, its only fault is it provides too much control of the client. It is easy enough to just disable certain features than to try and convert the entire shard to another third party application.

Limiting Razor just seems retarded. In T2A there were already a bunch of different 3rd party apps floating around. Many people used them, legal or not. If you drive away Razor functions, I can guarantee you they'll just turn to EUO or something similar. Are you really going to sit down and actively police your entire playerbase?

Let the few who are adamant about macroing turn to EUO, the point is many won't feel the need to switch to it because:

• its exponentially harder to use than Razor for macroing;

• they will probably not bother getting another program;

• it'll now be 100% certain that anything you couldn't do in Razor is illegal

The way it is now, I don't understand how we can even ban anyone for using macros that are included with an application endorsed by the shard. If this is corrected, not only would we not be giving people the tools to destroy the economy and to power through certain skills, but it will be apparent we do not condone any actions outside of the ones in Razor and the staff will not have to deliberate on any actions that aren't capable in Razor.

I'd like to note that bypassing Razor's feature negotiation is trivial for anyone with even a tiny amount of reverse engineering ability. This conversation is kind of moot, because if you disable these features then people will crack razor to use the features regardless.

Rabbi Dan wrote:I'd like to note that bypassing Razor's feature negotiation is trivial for anyone with even a tiny amount of reverse engineering ability. This conversation is kind of moot, because if you disable these features then people will crack razor to use the features regardless.

You are overestimating everyones ability. The same people who would actually do this are already exploiting much more horrible things in game.

Rabbi Dan wrote:I'd like to note that bypassing Razor's feature negotiation is trivial for anyone with even a tiny amount of reverse engineering ability. This conversation is kind of moot, because if you disable these features then people will crack razor to use the features regardless.

Definitely not.

Definitely not.

Explain.

Batlin wrote:Another solution : Let's create an UOSA installer (that does not tamper with your existing UO installations) and everyone starts using the same client from right after our target data.
http://www.uoguide.com/Client_Patch_1.26.2
With a litle bit of luck we can get UOAssist to work.

Novus Opiate POL did this, their client came with a prepatched UOA that worked damn flawless if I remember right. The only T2A replica shard to ever do something like that, I think. It would take more work to modify RunUO to work with the older protocol, though. And even then, older clients can be buggy... but hey, accuracy

Batlin wrote:

Definitely not.

Explain.

Is there any account of ANYONE ever doing this? MANY shards have limited Razor.

If someone was going to go to all the trouble of cracking, they would just use EUO which is an already existing problem.

This topic will continue to float here because I know many of the people seeking a true era experience will keep it up, however the same void excuses will always turn up in replies, good luck.

Hemperor wrote:Is there any account of ANYONE ever doing this? MANY shards have limited Razor.

Yeah, on Divinity a Razor crack that disabled server negotiation was in circulation less than 1 week after the patch that turned off auto-door opening and a few other things. Like I said, the crack was trivial.

Rabbi Dan wrote:

Hemperor wrote:Is there any account of ANYONE ever doing this? MANY shards have limited Razor.

Yeah, on Divinity a Razor crack that disabled server negotiation was in circulation less than 1 week after the patch that turned off auto-door opening and a few other things. Like I said, the crack was trivial.

I have been unable to find anything supporting this claim, links?