the golden land...

[Zaelerion]

Okay, what will?

Two things that need to happen for this shard to survive:

1) Make it more accessible to new players. The vast majority of your players are former OSI players. Clearly, there are people that are willing to macro for a week before they start playing the game. But a player entirely new to UO? They move on before they get to experience anything. I don't know what the solution is, but the entire newbie experience needs to be scrapped and reworked. Change the entire game for new players so they don't spend hours running away from skeletons without bandages.


2) A fun, rewarding endgame. Create something to do after 7x/tower/murder spree. Whether it be PvE or PvP based (both, in my opinion. UO PvP is driven by player interaction, and PvE hotspots create interaction), there needs to be something else. Boss fights, instanced pvp, it doesn't matter. Any sort of endgame would be an improvement.

You have the power and freedom to take existing mechanics and take the game down the path it could and should have gone. Go for it.

[Dedalus]

.
It's a better idea than a wipe. It's a better idea than a new shard

Not so sure about it

.
Don't worry, you can blame me and call me names afterward if it doesn't work. Criticism is the easiest thing in the world, and I know plenty of you are lined up.

You taking it personal, no one hopes you to fail, there is plenty of people that loves this shard and want to see it raise again.
Even if many of us are very sceptical about this. we are the people that didn't leave, shouldn't that be accounted for something?

What OSI did back then was completely different, the player base was as well.
Uo is now a vintage game, people hardly aproaches it looking for shiny contents.
Some do it for nostalgia it's true but they also play Uo because it' offers something unique that was lost on the long road of MMO evolution.
Uo:r is a big step into that road and it's the reason why many of us stopped playing official servers.
My feeling is that you put the weight of potential new players (which don't exist yet) over the weight of a core community that stuck to you no matter what.
And there is so many just inactive and dormients that would eventually reconsider and I don't think it's so hard to gain their trust and interest back.
There is no need to close your eyes and jump into the infinite.

[Larry]

i noticed that Az said he will add new content/adjust things in the current ipy world, why does it seem like everyone thinks once 2.5 launches the current uo is going to be shut down?

[Larry]

List thuggin

Pros:

"Shiny, new"
UO:R rules
Parallel play
More castles
Tougher monsters
Factions
No paladins
Mounts
Build a new character onto a favorite.
'I like it'
'I like Pallies as a red this looks interesting'
'this is enough to bring me back'
'this is innovative; sandboxy'
Relaunch population booster (gamble)

Middle:
It's optional
Potential to add Az's 2009-2010 ideas which didn't make it to IPY2.0

Cons:
UO:R rules
Mounts + High Ping = Tile Loss
"Lower population density." or Divide a small pop.
"I don't like this"
"I don't play here and I don't like this"
"Do we really need this?"
"What about that other thing everyone asked"
"Could we just remove Pallies in the Old not add a new Gold"
"new donation gimmick"
Abusing parallel play to steal, gain tiles or glitch into/through multis
"Some skills and assets should transfer or I won't touch it"
"I didn't understand this when I read the teaser"
"Sounds like felucca/trammel"
'Az has been known to excite communities with lists of ideas and no follow through.'

nice

[einsacks]

I'm curious. Why do you feel that so many players have left IPY2?

Sometimes its the simplest things that have the most profound impact. Trying to wrap my head around this debate, I feel like the process of just thinking about that question gave me what feels like clarity (or possibly just some THC knocked loose in my system).

It has me thinking about how with the frozen slice of time that has most of us here -- 97-99 roughly -- maybe the design changes like Trammel only tell part of the story of the decline we're so familiar with. Possibly there were other forces at work that we just couldnt really imagine at the time because there was no precedent.

It has me thinking that maybe UO at it's greatest is by it's very nature unsustainable.

The shard numbers are down. Ive been on this ride before -- we all have. With each number that drops, the clamoring for change gets a little louder. Some tensions and pocket communities work themselves into knots, others disappear completely, and I wonder: might this be the way it's meant to go?

I've been big on sustainability here, but this question has me thinking in a radically different direction. Maybe as long as youve got some of the very things that make UO great -- player housing, skill system with slow gain, lootable items -- you're also signing on for a world that cant last forever. You're signing on to a world that can't handle it's own accumulations. A world so far beyond the carrot-on-a-stick paradigm that it almost existentially self destructs instead. You're signing on to a world like Jimi Hendrix or Kurt Cobain. Some things just aren't meant for the mediocrity and tedium.

I don't know -- I'm still into the idea of a UO ruleset thats so well thought out and detailed it can run itself for years., I think that could be a really cool thing.. but maybe this is a step in that direction.

[MaximuX]

I just can't help myself, I have to keep coming back to check on things. I think a test center would be a great idea, it would give people a chance to see what's good and not good.

I heard mention of being able to see ghosts of people from other lands? What does that mean? For some reason I think that while in the old lands in shame, you can see etheral players from the other facet duking it out and if you wanted to "join in" you could use a moonstone and bam! This would be a really cool feature I think.

Well, I may check the shard out at some point down the road. Not gonna bother reinstalling UO until at the very least a few months into this project. Good luck.

[Snake]

You guys realize UO:R and onward is actually when UO's population PEAKED right? a lot more people joined during UO:R than prior to that, and the population peaked in 2003 which is when Age of Shadows came out. I know a lot of us don't like trammel and think of it as the "downfall" of UO, but the numbers say otherwise. Now I'm not saying Trammel is/was a good thing, but a lot of changes made were. My point is just that a lot of people came in on the UO:R rule set and a lot of people really like the UO:R era (trammel aside).

[Eminem]

You guys realize UO:R and onward is actually when UO's population PEAKED right? a lot more people joined during UO:R than prior to that, and the population peaked in 2003 which is when Age of Shadows came out. I know a lot of us don't like trammel and think of it as the "downfall" of UO, but the numbers say otherwise. Now I'm not saying Trammel is/was a good thing, but a lot of changes made were. My point is just that a lot of people came in on the UO:R rule set and a lot of people really like the UO:R era (trammel aside).

The numbers peaked because EA was selling out the game mechanics to appeal to those that couldn't hang with a game that had real consequences. The players peaked due to marketing and a safe haven for players and most people who liked the game for what it was and didn't complain we're ****ed over for profits. That's like saying that top 40s music, because it sells millions of albums, is better than music that is timeless because it hasn't sold as much.

[Film Student]

You guys realize UO:R and onward is actually when UO's population PEAKED right? a lot more people joined during UO:R than prior to that, and the population peaked in 2003 which is when Age of Shadows came out. I know a lot of us don't like trammel and think of it as the "downfall" of UO, but the numbers say otherwise. Now I'm not saying Trammel is/was a good thing, but a lot of changes made were. My point is just that a lot of people came in on the UO:R rule set and a lot of people really like the UO:R era (trammel aside).

The numbers peaked, because Trammel changed UO to be more like the other popular MMOs at the time. It made UO's gameplay more "mainstream" and was certainly the downfall of most of what separated UO from the MMOs of the time and the MMOs to come.

[Dedalus]

You guys realize UO:R and onward is actually when UO's population PEAKED right? a lot more people joined during UO:R than prior to that, and the population peaked in 2003 which is when Age of Shadows came out. I know a lot of us don't like trammel and think of it as the "downfall" of UO, but the numbers say otherwise. Now I'm not saying Trammel is/was a good thing, but a lot of changes made were. My point is just that a lot of people came in on the UO:R rule set and a lot of people really like the UO:R era (trammel aside).

I don't undestand Snake, don't take it wrong but if you really think that, why did you pick Ipy on the first place and not one of the gazilion Uo:r shards floating around?