What happened was simple. Everquest. DAoC. AC. AO. Lineage. And multiple others. I left UO just after AoS, but not because of AoS. I left because, at that time, EA felt that the Sims Online should be their flagship MMO, and UO was to be nothing more than the step child that wouldn't move out of the basement. Didn't work out that way, it seems.

Ended up moving over to EQ, and was there for 4 years. After getting more and more and more expansions rammed down our throats, and the continual grind to try to remain at the top of the food chain, it was finally just too much.

I came back to UO for a couple reasons. The primary one was because, if I wanted to do something that took a short duration, I could. If I wanted to do a long, involved quest, I could. The fact that this is still the only MMO that has housing like we do is a big plus. And, like a vast majority of people playing, PvP was not a consideration.

The other night, at a player run auction, someone remembered my player from years ago, and asked if I still had my Fel house, and if I still crafted armor, did repairs for reds, etc. My response was that I do not even enter Fel anymore.

Unlike days gone by, there is no honor there anymore. People used to respect the residents that lived there, especially those that were an active part of the community. Now, everyone is just a target for a gank squad, or a victim of some supposed RP miner/LJ killer.

Thanks, but no. The biggest change to PvP wasn't the game. The biggest change to PvP was the community. It wouldn't matter if they made a shard that was day 1 introduced. The PvP community isn't the same as it was, regardless of how many people want to claim to be 9-10 year veterans. Which, at a guess, might actually be 1/10th of the people claiming it.

I played UO back in 2000 and 2001. I miss this game so much. Everything from fighting bone knights to gm melee skills, to using the boat trick to gm a mage, to camping a house that is about to fall, to pvping at the yew moongate. This game was amazing. I have tried to play other games like WoW, and EQ but they just cant compare. I think UO is trying to become too much like other games. It was most likely becuase of stupid ass EA, becuase after they bought it out it started going downhill. This game has changed so much. I reactivated my account a few months ago to go see how things were (and all my chars were deleted,wtf?) so I created a new char to go around to some of the old pvp spots...they were dead silent, not a single person. This game will never be what it once was, and its too bad.

The game will never be what it once was, but it has only gotten better.

I used to play on Pacific, I dont know if I remember you though, its been a long while. Anyways I might give the game another chance if all my characters didnt get deleted, does anyone know why this happened?

Weird, I took a 4year break and my chars weren't deleted :/

MEC, RIP, or FL? Just to name a few.

I remember FL. Not the other two though. Pretty good guild if I remember right.

Actually MEC sounds familiar too.

SP is NOT like the real UO, I played there for quite some time, in fact many of mu guild moved there as we had hoped for the pre UOR ( if not even older ruleset). We had hopes when it was first opened but the exploits were way too much and the Devs were helping the exploiters as we tried turning them in. Houses in non housing areas mostly.
We came back later and played for a few years, but I repeat it is not the real UO.
I strted playing whe UO was released. Then it was fun.

The old UO was just improved upon. The Archiac days of a group of terrorists subjecting their will upon the general populace is long over.

Brett i played UO like 8 yrs ago and played for almost 3yrs and loved it, but after 3yrs of playing i got bored of the same old stuff so i quit. So i think UO devs figured it was time to change it to try to keep players playing UO and get new players coming in. After 2-3 yrs new MMOG started to come up and plp went to some of these games so i'm sure UO was losing a lot of plp to the newer game, for these and other reasons they had to change it up a bit to either keep the players they had or attract new players. I just came back to UO myself after 5 yrs because of the new stuff they have and coming up with, so i think the changes was a good thing for the game and the players.