UO the way it was - fun - Is it here?

[Grom]

Grom, it more or less sounds like you're just whining that the server is not fun for you. Honestly, if you don't find it fun, why bother playing here at all? The shards mechanics should not restrict you from having fun. UO is a sandbox, whether or not you can hit on the run/kill someone with DP shouldn't make such an enormous difference to how much fun you're having.

That's part of the problem, but not the focus of the issues (although it tends to get brought up a lot in comments and thus replied to more). It's about what it means for UO to be a sandbox. Playing in a sandbox, one has tools, say, I use my bucket to build my sand castle. This is increasingly difficult, if my bucket has a huge hole in it.

The perfect example of this would be the faction system on this server. Show me examples of players using factions as they were intended to help shape the game. There's no comradarie because once joining a faction others of the same faction appear green, allowing you to freely attack and kill them with no penalty. Also, this isn't back in the day, people have good connections right now, everyone runs at the same speed. Mix that in with horses unlimited stamina exploit and any fight just turn into endless chase fests with no hit on run, gimped archery mechanics, and no magic in towns, and the new goal becomes to steal as much from your opponent as possible before running off and healing. Faction wars is a tool in my sandbox, the only problem is it's a broken tool that needs to be fixed or replaced.

I can sit in a sandbox full of broken tools, and still try to make the best of it. Would it be fun though? Would it be worth the time and effort vs simply playing in a sandbox a couple feet away with non-broken tools? Some of the tools in this sandbox weren't originally broken, or had promises of being fixed, I like this sandbox, I've spent a lot of time here. I just don't like it when someone comes and breaks my shovel and tells me it's for accuracy. A big discussion on these forums is how to draw more people into the server and bring life into it, which I find important, since me and my guilds experience here so far has been one lacking in activity/players in general. It would be great to see the server improve beyond the bugs/exploits of the era to a balanced version of t2a, but in its current state it certainly pushes away a majority of new players simply based on its stance of 100% mechanical accuracy, exploits bugs imbalances and all, even though they would have been fixed regardless of new content added by the next era.

[Kabal]

At first I thought maybe you had some interesting points but now your talking about making sand castles . . .

[BobDobbs]

I can sit in a sandbox full of broken tools, and still try to make the best of it. Would it be fun though? Would it be worth the time and effort vs simply playing in a sandbox a couple feet away with non-broken tools? Some of the tools in this sandbox weren't originally broken, or had promises of being fixed, I like this sandbox, I've spent a lot of time here. I just don't like it when someone comes and breaks my shovel and tells me it's for accuracy. A big discussion on these forums is how to draw more people into the server and bring life into it, which I find important, since me and my guilds experience here so far has been one lacking in activity/players in general. It would be great to see the server improve beyond the bugs/exploits of the era to a balanced version of t2a, but in its current state it certainly pushes away a majority of new players simply based on its stance of 100% mechanical accuracy, exploits bugs imbalances and all, even though they would have been fixed regardless of new content added by the next era.

So basically because you and your guildies aren't having fun here, no one can?

I disagree.

You talk about other players but mostly what I read is what you want.

[Faust]

There really is no point in trying to argue with him. He takes the traditional belief that you can redesign the era just like every other t2a shard in the past with the goal to making it better. However, the flip side of that approach is more sinister than what can be seen.

Who has the right to decide what the 't2a' era should be like Grom? Would that person be you, me, Jimbo, Dick, Harry, or Derrick? Who decides what mechanics from the UOR should have been in the t2a era? Wait, better yet... Why stop there? What about all the decent features that was implemented in AOS, SE, ML, and the rest of the expansions?

Hopefully, you now understand the underlining problem that comes with this sort of approach when developing a server that has made every other t2a shard fail, quite miserably.

What you are asking for is not a t2a shard Grom. You are asking for a shard to be 'based' on the t2a era. There are plenty of those type of shards that exist and plenty that has crumbled due to this structure. When you implement an idea based off some notion it only opens the flood gates for an endless array of others. The bickering and arguing starts among the playerbase. The shard dies, it's quite simple.

Derrick is not here to redesign or develop a FAKE t2a shard that people 'believes' should have existed. He is here to develop one based on the actual game mechanics that the REAL t2a shards used, nothing more. You are not the first person to hold these traditional values and you won't be the last. However, if you have actually been around for the last decade like myself in the Pre:UOR shard scene... you would see how this approach is nothing but a ticking time bomb waiting to go off.

Trust me, it's not going to happen. The shard has a great objective/goal for era accuracy and that is the driving force behind it coupled with great staff. That is why UOSA is the ONLY popular t2a server that has increased its numbers from a meager average of a few from the start to well into the hundreds today. The rest of the other popular shards started with hundreds from the very beginning when the shard opened up.

[Blackbeard]

This place is magical because I can play like somebody who had $45 a month to blow on 3 accounts in a place with a population less than the game had during beta testing on official servers.

I think that's generally what Biohazard was trying to convey to you Dobbs. It's pretty intellectually dishonest not to see the validity in his perspective but equally dishonest, on his part, not to recognize that this is a free shard and that is pretty much the first thing a real estate salesman or anybody with a house fetish is going to think about when they Google UO Freeshards.

[BobDobbs]

This place is magical because I can play like somebody who had $45 a month to blow on 3 accounts in a place with a population less than the game had during beta testing on official servers.

I think that's generally what Biohazard was trying to convey to you Dobbs. It's pretty intellectually dishonest not to see the validity in his perspective but equally dishonest, on his part, not to recognize that this is a free shard and that is pretty much the first thing a real estate salesman or anybody with a house fetish is going to think about when they Google UO Freeshards.

Again, I was perfectly willing to entertain the idea that it was a "stupid argument." It is not intellectually dishonest because Biohazard refused to spend the effort to tell me why before I accepted his position. I asked him over and over to simply explain his position. He would not. That is not dishonesty on my part.

You, on the other hand, did. And as a result I do see that perspective. Do I necessarily agree with it? No. But I appreciate you taking the time to explain it.

I don't understand what Biohazard expected to accomplish with a two word inflammatory post he refused to explain.

[Rhaps]

lone hally mage pk's and thief characters are about the only thing left while the rest of the server looks like a barren wasteland of macroers, empty cities, and occasional noobs..

Aside from all the to-and-fro about mechanics, sandcastles and intellectual honesty that quote really did ring true for me. The only thing I think that would rectify the situation would be a huge increase in players , including many that weren't old UO vets that can max a toon while barely leaving their small.

We should all just quit bickering and go vote up the shard. Then at least something productive will come of this thread.

[Biohazard]

I don't understand what Biohazard expected to accomplish with a two word inflammatory post he refused to explain.

let it go man... i done batted more than just you away on this argument. thats why i asked you go read the old thread to "get my position".. i tire of explaining such a simple concept. the point is every turd who refutes what i say says the same retort every time. "you couldnt place a house on OSI so you totally shouldnt be able to here" regardless of the means. we dont even have a fraction of the population osi did yet the shard should be filled with a thousand empty houses?

im not sure what else you are trying to drag out of me.. thats the end of the story bro.

[Grom]

So basically because you and your guildies aren't having fun here, no one can?

I disagree.

You talk about other players but mostly what I read is what you want.

Sorry if you disagree, but the post was never about the server as a whole, as it's been stated several times it's about the reaction of new players to the server, getting them to stay, and what makes the game "fun" for old UO players, giving from the perspective of me and my guildmates from our time here. Taniso is in my guild, his big problem is the archery mechanics (as he's an archer), he posted here. Other than that, I can name off the people in our guild that started up here, we're an old UO/shadowbane/Darkfall/MortalOnline/BacktoUO group now mostly looking for something fun to play, most of whom don't check these forums nor have an interest in debating topics against players who claim the mechanics work great yet we never see their characters in-game anyway.

You can up-vote a server all you want, but the chances of finding more people interested in a sandbox with broken mechanics because it was like that back in the day, back in the day when the game was still being developed and patched (but being patched backwards/breaking things here), you're going to have a hard time expanding beyond a population of vets who seem to spend more time in IRC and forums than in-game and noobs who come to try the server out before moving on. This is our perspective at least, 4 of us went out drinking last night and were trying to brainstorm about what could be fun to play next, obviously games like Guild Wars 2 and Old Republic are big names we throw around. But the fact of the matter is, UO was the first mmo for most of us, a true sandbox with a lot of potential, but if we wanted to play a sandbox with broken or no tools, we would still be playing Mortal Online, it's just not fun. From our perspective, if it was fun, you would actually see people actively going out and partaking in those aspects of the game (like order/chaos), which is something rare to non-existent.

edit: And don't get me wrong, I've voted nearly every chance I got, and encouraged other members to do the same to try and help server growth. It just feels like the niche this particular server was trying to attract, is here, and getting a new player to accept such broken mechanics because that's how it was 10-12 years ago, is hard to swallow for any gamer looking to have fun in a game bound by mechanics that were broken and preferred broken by some of the vets here.

[Faust]

There are just some people that can't handle the original real version of UO. I hope you manage to get over your issues and deal with it, but you are definitely not looking for anything T2A related based on your responses so far though.

Again, you would not be playing on a t2a server if you were to throw UOR mechanics into the system.

Broken is a term that you're tossing out there based on your opinion of dislike. However, broken to many would be a t2a system utilizing many of the same game mechanics you are lobbying for in this thread. This shard would not be a 't2a shard' if you were to include those items.

Still sounds like you are not looking for a t2a shard and instead a UOR server to me.

Would be great if you guys could manage to get yourself familiarized with the way UO really was back in the day. However, as stated previously... this era isn't for everyone and many just can't hack it.

[Derrick]

I fully sympathize with the position that there are some things that might be able to made made better, for better or worse, although it's simply out of the scope of this shard to redesign the game. Simply put, the shard isn't the way it is becuase anyone liked it that way in total.

Ideas for expanding the depth of the game that do fit into fit into our mold (even if we may need to hammer and chisel a little bit) are highly regarded. Sometimes though even the best ideas that are implementable of Second Age get less consideration than may be deserving just due to lack of time. It's been a slow steady progression on UOSA and it always seems (to me anyway) like the best stuff is right around the corner; just trying to get there.

[Taniso]

There are just some people that can't handle the original real version of UO. I hope you manage to get over your issues and deal with it, but you are definitely not looking for anything T2A related based on your responses so far though.

Again, you would not be playing on a t2a server if you were to throw UOR mechanics into the system.

Broken is a term that you're tossing out there based on your opinion of dislike. However, broken to many would be a t2a system utilizing many of the same game mechanics you are lobbying for in this thread. This shard would not be a 't2a shard' if you were to include those items.

Still sounds like you are not looking for a t2a shard and instead a UOR server to me.

Would be great if you guys could manage to get yourself familiarized with the way UO really was back in the day. However, as stated previously... this era isn't for everyone and many just can't hack it.

Faust, not everyone started playing UO with the UOR expansion. I personally started playing in T2A... before the whole Trammel bull . I pvped as an Order soldier and I honestly do not remember once that you could kill another Order soldier unless you were an warring guild. I'll stop using the word "broken" and say that Archery and melee dexing is worthless.

Archery was a challenge in T2A, but I don't remember it being this difficult to fire an arrow at someone. I've tried plenty of tricks to try to get an arrow to hit something other than just holding still. I've noticed that you shoot arrows faster if you walk(not run), but you always miss. I haven't hit anything out of 100 arrows. Now with a 50% chance to hit at gm Archery/tactics... wow... a 100 misses in a row.

Someone said that I should go look up the patch notes to prove that the equations used on this server are wrong. First off, I have no idea where to look for that information. I appreciate everything that this staff has done to make it so much like T2A. I'm just trying to make it known that there are some aspects of the game that are worthless that weren't in the original T2A.

[nightshark]

There really is no point in trying to argue with him. He takes the traditional belief that you can redesign the era just like every other t2a shard in the past with the goal to making it better. However, the flip side of that approach is more sinister than what can be seen.

Who has the right to decide what the 't2a' era should be like Grom? Would that person be you, me, Jimbo, Dick, Harry, or Derrick? Who decides what mechanics from the UOR should have been in the t2a era? Wait, better yet... Why stop there? What about all the decent features that was implemented in AOS, SE, ML, and the rest of the expansions?

Hopefully, you now understand the underlining problem that comes with this sort of approach when developing a server that has made every other t2a shard fail, quite miserably.

What you are asking for is not a t2a shard Grom. You are asking for a shard to be 'based' on the t2a era. There are plenty of those type of shards that exist and plenty that has crumbled due to this structure. When you implement an idea based off some notion it only opens the flood gates for an endless array of others. The bickering and arguing starts among the playerbase. The shard dies, it's quite simple.

Derrick is not here to redesign or develop a FAKE t2a shard that people 'believes' should have existed. He is here to develop one based on the actual game mechanics that the REAL t2a shards used, nothing more. You are not the first person to hold these traditional values and you won't be the last. However, if you have actually been around for the last decade like myself in the Pre:UOR shard scene... you would see how this approach is nothing but a ticking time bomb waiting to go off.

Trust me, it's not going to happen. The shard has a great objective/goal for era accuracy and that is the driving force behind it coupled with great staff. That is why UOSA is the ONLY popular t2a server that has increased its numbers from a meager average of a few from the start to well into the hundreds today. The rest of the other popular shards started with hundreds from the very beginning when the shard opened up.

good post, pretty much sums up why this shard is successful and why any deviation from actual t2a mechanics is a bad thing. i think it's great that derrick has said "we are not game developers, we only aim to replicate a successful system". noone can disagree with him or others on this stance because there is nothing to argue with. if you like t2a mechanics, play here, if you don't, play div or whatever other shard

i played UOGamers when it first came up, and it was a fun shard. rebirth was great because again they were replicating an exact era the best they could. hybrid, i have to say, is one of the only shards that took on the "developer" role and was actually successful with it. i had a lot of fun on hybrid in 2003-2004.

[Derrick]

I personally started playing in T2A... before the whole Trammel bull . I pvped as an Order soldier and I honestly do not remember once that you could kill another Order soldier unless you were an warring guild.

This one was recently posted and happened to have it handy:

• If you are a member of an order or chaos guild, and become a murderer, or lose enough fame to fall below the requirements (by dying or by atrophy), you'll be removed from the guild.
• For highlighting purposes, all members of guilds of the opposing alignment will appear orange, and can be freely attacked. All members of guilds of the same alignment will appear green, and can also be freely attacked.

The fame requirement for O/C was later removed in a patch which I do not have as handy.

[Iced Earth]

UOSA isn't about fun.

It's about accuracy.

If you want fun, then get ready for UO Revelation, which will be coming up in about a month.