The State of the Game

[Kas Valentine]

Trapping a wisp in your house for winner parry gains !

Awwww, such fun.

[Khaelieth]

http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2004/12/ultima_online_r.html

An old article on the state of the game. But like Kazuo, I think Ultima is too easy, perhaps even too easy. Reinstate the Counselors!

Garriott quote from Gamespy interview:

But even today, I wish that things had worked out better with Electronic Arts. It's ironic that the top selling online product at EA, even today, is Ultima Online. We constantly tried to tell them that we understood the online game business and give advice, but the company had a very different agenda. Even the four or five other massively multiplayer games they've launched have flopped compared to Ultima Online.

On the one hand, I feel vindicated that we were giving good advice, but unfortunately there was a substantial disagreement as to the future of online gaming there, and it just wasn't possible to sustain the relationship.

[Khaelieth]

*Ding*

After sitting bored at work for a bit, browsing old UO threads, I figured out what I'd want UO to do! I want EA to make a UO:R server and an UO:3D server (Perhaps more). Then make it possible to x-shard onto one of those servers with any character created before the servers. This would:

- Remove sunglasses
- Remove neon things
- Remove powerscrolls
- Remove stat scrolls
- Get us back to the 100 stat system
- Fix a lot of the PvP issues with ninjitsu, bushido etc (which are skills that will DISSAPEAR)
- No insurance
- No possibility for silly marties or such, only event items!
- No Trammel or such
- Gief back newbiefied daggers!
- Fix crafting
- No private houses. Phooey.
- Return the Factions
- Stat loss
- No beetles

With only a few servers, if it's succesful, it would quickly fill up, so we wouldn't feel so damned lonely in Moonglow, when you're a noob hunting hinds for leather.

Two things I'd want them to keep is the housing rules we've got. I actually like being able to customise my house! The second is elves, with a bit of tweaking, they'd be quite alright!
Problems I can see with this is that the housing price will skyrocket if it's succesful. Another thing is the inflation that MMORPG's get after a while. An idea could be to have gold pay for a "war-effort." This could be rewarded with semi-rares and such.

When this was done I'd love to see these things:
- Implementation of gargoyles
- Possibility of adding certain parts of the other expansions, like perhaps Heartwood or Ilshenar with a Felluca ruleset
- The possibility to dye sandals
- The return of Seers
- Possibility to dye armour
- Remove bronze as a mineable ore


[More to be added]

[Kas Valentine]

I like the cut of your mutton Khae !

Don't forget;

• Dismemberment
• Texas law for private houses
• Removal of the Jack of all Trades passive bonus for humans
• Put perma grey status back into the game

Jack of all Trades has to go because at the moment it causes silly problems for thieves. Beforehand you could walk rings around people in stealth and not get revealed. With Jack their 20.0 detect hidden ticks and reveals you when you get close about 90% of the time. The addition of perma grey acts as the thief protection people would be losing with the removal of Jack. Someone stole something from you? Find them and kill them !

Instead of having no private houses just remove the forcefields private houses currently have (and use Texas law as mentioned above). If you're going to tweak elves and keep them in the game then for the love of crumpets please make them look decent and not like some bloke walking around with a dustpan on his head.

Your list looks super sexy so far though, I'd think of some more additions but I have to go out soon.

(PS; I still want a copy of your Blackmoor book, got caught up getting drunk after I went to the shop)

(PPS; You have to admire good old Garriot, the boy was a hero, real shame what happened between him and EA. Anyone fancy giving Tabula Rasa a go...?)

[Khaelieth]

If you're going to tweak elves and keep them in the game then for the love of crumpets please make them look decent and not like some bloke walking around with a dustpan on his head.


(PS; I still want a copy of your Blackmoor book, got caught up getting drunk after I went to the shop)

(PPS; You have to admire good old Garriot, the boy was a hero, real shame what happened between him and EA. Anyone fancy giving Tabula Rasa a go...?)

Aye, tweaking the elves is needed! But the idea is alright! As for Blackmoor, just come by and say hello! Is Tabula Rasa any good?

But a few more changes:
- Loot is FFA. Anytime, anywhere!
- Make it more difficult to cast spells, so people can't cast recall from scrolls, i.e. you've got to WALK to the dungeons
- Get back the might, power and vanq weapons! 1,5% increase to neoness is NOT cool!
- ID sticks!
- Charge magic items! How much I loved my boots of invis when PvP'ing!
But I'd also like to see more events, such as the siege of Trinsic and such!

Is there anyone that think these changes would be beneficial for the game, aside from me and Kas?!

[Samuel West]

Stop asking us.. ask them!! *Points at Game programmers!*

[Moraine DiGoraz]

Although I would love these changes, they would not be beneficial for the game.
Why? The playerbase has changed.
Everyone keeps whining about Felucca and the good old days but when it comes down to it, no one wants to play it anymore. Otherwise, why is not everyone playing Siege?

Siege has no recall spells, skills are harder to raise, no item insurance, only the neon is still present.

I say leave things as they are and build a few new (not too much, one or two will do) large siege ruleset dungeons with high end rewards. Perhaps make them work like the old champ spawn area system. You die, you are teleported out and cannot return for 30 minutes - 1 hour. This prevents pks from setting up a base and keeps things fun and challenging for everyone.

[Kas Valentine]

Siege isn't enough, I have a 7x GM thief there and rarely play him. While theres no insurance each character was given a personal bless deed or something a while ago and people tend to use that to the best of their ability. Of course the situation there is a lot lot better than it is on normal shards but it's not a whole lot different.

They have the same dungeons, the same crazy weapons and all that sort of thing. The skill system is nice but I actually found RoT better for gaining skills than a normal shard. I just logged in for a while every day, got my assigned amount of points and then logged off to repeat it the next day.

If I had a house there (which I used to have before I closed my second account) James Valentine would probably get a lot more action. Personally I'd prefer an old days shard far more than modern Siege, but yer right, it is a nice change (the community there is fabulous too).