I thought that John meant that all the people showed up in a certain area for a fight by staged. Not like someone sat there drawing out a battle plan and outcome...

Yeah.. exactly. And as I said, raids and patrols are not planned in any way.

I tried that in Felucca, but no one like my plan and killed me.

"I believe Se'an Silverfoot plays that shard, perhaps he can give you some input on what its like."

Oh yes, Se'an Silverfoot is an 'old UO timer' and is a main force behind the Ianstorm Alliance on Siege ...
he is a great one to ask about Siege and other things related to being an 'old schooler' in our updated UO world.

Did I hear my name?

Ahh the old "Old school UO" debate. I think I'll put my views about that in the blog.

Brett give Siege a try it's the closest thing you'll see to non-arti fighting. You wear/carry what you can afford to lose. Hopefully the Armslore/resist changes that are in discussion for SP, will see the unblessing of the 7AE helm and leggings that are standard fair as far as SP wear is concerned. With NO insurance it keeps things interesting.

I just don't see the Dev team having the time or resources to support 3 different kinds of shards. It's hard enough now to make sure each expansion or gift doesn't introduce a new blessed item to Sp or Mugen. Do you really think folks would play a pre pub 16 shard that gets no improvements? Only 3% of the UO population plays SP?Mugen as it stands. I don't see the bean-counters thinking it a good investment of dev time.

IMHO of course.

If you do decide to give Siege a try, look up the NEW guild, that guild tag will get you about a 30 day reprieve from MOST (not all) players on Siege, time enough to get your char fairly well trained up.
Please feel free to shoot me any questions you may have.

I think what everyone is forgetting is that during the T2A era as you call it, Ultima Online was still being run by origin. The fundamental change you speak of, would actually be EA taking over. Whether it was for better or for worse, those changes happened because the original team no longer existed. The new teams, and i say "teams", all had differing views on how the game should be played. Naturally being a very old game, changes have happened over the course of a long period of time, and players sometimes forget when/why they happened, and who made the changes.

edit

well i cant tell you where to get old school uo, but i can say this, if you look hard enough you will find it

The chances of them actually have the backup before they patched to AoS are more than slim I would imagine...

That was actually brought up and is exactly as you say. I'll see if I can find this post. It's pretty old.

One of the biggest problems in the 'old school' debate is which school?? There have been so many changes no one could agree on exactly what rules/lands/skills etc...

Siege really is the best option as I see it. (but not for me. I LOVE AOS and Tram)

Myself I prefered it when there was no trammel, you wander the land always on edge and in fear of being caught by someone and killed!