UO Second Age

Not exactly new to UO, I made Baja my home when the game went live, and played through to the release of 3rd Dawn. I was definitely one of the people who felt the game lost much of its ‘intensity’ (for lack of a better word) when they split the world between Trammel and Felucca, and so, did move to Siege Perilous before quitting in 2000.

I heard about UOSA through my nephew last Thanksgiving who knew I had played UO during that time. He sold me on the fact he was playing UO on a ‘pre care-bear player run shard which allowed macro’ing’. I created my account the first week of 2011 and have been playing daily since.

First a blurb on New User/Technical issues: using the default installation, if you are not using an administrator account (which you shouldn’t be for security reasons) for both Razor.exe and UOAM.exe you will need to run the programs as an administrator. This is easily set up through the properties of the corresponding icons.

Note: you can connect and play without administrator login, but if you want to start customizing Razor macros etc, you will run into issues. UOAM will only show up in the middle of the ocean until you run as a limited user account. I’m sure this information is somewhere in a post but to promote a “friendly” install – it could be highlighted.

The only other technical issue I ran into was getting Razor to show Counters/Reagents in the title bar. I was using Win7. This was not an issue with my laptop running Vista. Simple Fix : right click on Razor Icon – properties : under ‘compatibility’ tab make sure ‘Disable visual themes’ and ‘Disable desktop composition’ is checked.

Game play experience: If you have never played UO, it is a game that, without research, ejects you into a world of unknowns that will probably lead you to experience frequent periods of frustration. This frustration is multiplied exponentially in UOSA because they have shed the current MMOLRPG model of making the world ‘safe’ from other players until you decide it to be ‘unsafe’. The key words here are ‘without research’. There are plenty of resources available for the new player (including many offered through the UOSA site) that detail ‘how to’ avoid ‘Player Killers’. Learn em, Love em, Macro em – if you want to play UOSA and enjoy yourself. This certainly has not changed
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The real question is does UOSA properly reproduce the experience of UO that I grew to love so much so long ago? Yes. The world is dangerous with other players, at *all* hours. But is your experience with other players always negative: No.

I have had many experiences already like : I was farming around the Ice Dungeon entrance and ran into an individual who played on Atlantic when I was on Baja; we chatted for about 45 minutes about UOSA, OSI, the state of MMOLRPG’s…

At the same time :

In 1 month - I have been killed by other players 3 times. Each could have been avoided by the following:

Forgot that the Ice Dungeon was part of the Lost Lands, and my “recall escape hotkey macro” was NOT set to Paupa. I think I hit my hotkey about 10 times before a group of reds snuffed me in the Orc Fort.

Don’t Macro Provocation in stables, especially at Serpent’s Hold: the most grief I have experienced in game so far are from blokes stabling like, 15 dragons at the Serpent’s Hold Stables, then deciding to have fun with the n3wb bard macro-ing provocation. You know who you are, you b@stards. I was able to escape from you 3x, but found myself dead twice.

Aspiring Bards Note: If you want to macro provo, and you don’t have a house yet, go to some out of way place, like New Magincia, and just lead a cat or a rate into a home and stick it on the other side of a table.

Blues… In one month I have been attacked by blues more than I can estimate accurately. These are the classic experiences with some of them first asking for help/advice/directions, then… Vas Ort Flam… (for those who I appeared like someone that didn’t have reflection up). Almost all of that blue aggro has been in dungeons…. So yeah… dungeons are dangerous places … duh.

If I continue to play at the rate I have been I will certainly be a donor. I think you all have hit the nail on the head with the T2A experience. I am loving it. Yes even you Serpent’s Hold b@stards!

Thank you, UOSA community and Derrick, for once again, staking out the sandbox.

GRENDEL

Baja FTMFW.

there is a way to show the counters on windows 7 aswell. i thought it was the same as vista.

Sorry if it wasn't clear, Marmalade, what i am saying is to make the counters show up in Win7 is to modify the Icon.exe's as I described.

So yes, you can certainly show the counters in Win7, I believe it has something to do with changing the color scheme to the Win7 default, and not a 'theme', which is what Win7 will configure based on the capabilities of your graphics chip (GPU).

This is a perfect example of the new OS (win7) trying to be smart and decide what you want, and actually dumbing down your experience. Vista does not make these assumptions.

it was probably clear. i just didnt bother reading your post properly

good to hear you're enjoying our community! out of curiosity, where are you getting attacked by blues? I've read several threads on the topic and many complain about this, but I've been attacked by blues like 4-5 times in the year+ I've played here

The first one I remember well, Coma, out by the the shrine of justice. He was the one who came up and wanted directions, then sputtered out on explosion. Irony of that encounter is somehow I ended up killing him (sic'd a troll on him and lightning x5). He wasn't moving though so I assume he client crashed. And yes, I got the murder count which I found hilarious.

Another one happened while marking potential house spots north of Vesper. Bloke came out of the nearest house accusing me of beign a stealther? I ran off but circled back after he went back into his house and explained that I was simply marking house spots. He turned out actually to be nice once he believed me.

In the Hidden valley (west of Trinsic). I didn't really give him a chance to attack me, but when guy in a loin cloth comes running at you, its easy to justify hitting the ol' escape hotkey.

The only other one outside was one I witnessed at the orc fort in cove. I was farming with a Mage and someone came up in the middle of managing a sizeable spawn I hear an ebolt and the newcomer is dead. I asked the mage "did you just kill him". He replied, "yeah, rude of him to enter a place where we are farming, couldn't help myself." The mage took off and I checked out his pack. Obviously new. (Yes, I did help him recover everything.)

The rest were in or near dungeons. Four or five instances. Shame, near the air ele's, and the entrance of Shame. The entrance to the Ice Dungeon in the LL, and one in another dungeon. I forget which one. I've been hitting rune libraries trying to recall good farming spots so been buzzing about quite a bit.

I'd like to comment, since my original post was partly directed to individuals who may be thinking about playing here (there were some very innacurate new player experiences posted previously), this is pretty much how I remember it being. For the first few months after the servers went live, Reds were everywhere. Then they introduced some changes and the noto-pk's began showing up.
This did back then and currently does not represent the majority of gameplay. There are many more blue players that are friendly or are tolerating you. In one month solo'ing I have been able to amass nearly 200k and am thinking about what to do for 2nd character.

It's not that different from RL either, right? I never trust anyone that I just meet. Especially in a dungeon