Did you read my post at all? If you did, then why spend so much time reading a silly complaint about a PC game? And if not, then how do you know it's not worth a reply? And furthermore, isn't the fact that you actually posted a reply proof that, in one way or another, my thread was indeed worth a reply?

Unfortunately you are correct. I read a quote by a dev (can't remember who exactly) who said that changes to the game have to go through several layers of approvals; from the players (which of course is impossible), the head cheeses, execs etc. And unfortunately, there is a significant number of people in each of these layers who do not quite understand the 'virtue' of Ultima, or the design philosophy behind Ultima, and so forth.


...


Some more rants!

End Game?
One annoying trend I've noticed is people using the term "end-game" in reference to UO. When did this come in? There's no end-game in UO... well, wasn't, at least, not until WoW-type-games came into the picture. This is why I say Ultima Online is adventure-driven. It's not supposed to be about reaching "the end" or "the top" or "the final boss" or even "the toughest boss". The Ultima experience is a perpetual adventure fueled by player interaction. The feuds, alliances, friendships, betrayals, grudges, and all around drama (the good kind) that we have with other players should be our motivation to play (it certainly was for me). It may be different nowadays for some of you who play on more populated shards, but for me, my home shard is practically dead. I would estimate that there are probably 200-300 accounts logged in normally, maybe more in prime time, but that's a very rough estimate on my part. But why not move? The reason is quite simple...

Cross Shard Transfers
One of the cool things about Ultima Online is that each individual shard can be unique and meaningful. Each has its own unique community and its own unique history. You'll never find that on Warcraft. About a year ago, I think, I was convinced (it took a lot of convincing, and from a woman no less) to transfer my first and favorite character, Deraj, from Napa Valley to Catskills. Reluctantly I did, and ended up growing to regret it. Eventually I transfered Deraj back and vowed never to transfer him again.

I hate cross shard transfers. They're basically a slap in the face to the idea the shards are unique places. And what with EM event items, items whose very existence are to mark historical events on the shard are cheapened and turned into "rarez". On Napa Valley, one of the biggest EM characters was a blue dragon named Tal'Keesh. I cannot even begin to describe how much trouble that damn dragon gave us. Massive dragon invasion of Britain, the capital city. An unholy undead invasion of Trinsic. We came close to killing her at one point but missed the mark. And finally, after a long battle she was finally destroyed. The last I checked, her head was resting peacefully in a castle on Catskills. The hell? Why do I have to log in to Catskills if I want to view Napa history? My shard is empty and its history is spread out among "collectors" and dupers that want to dupe those stupid Tal'Keesh robes (the neon blue shrouds). Is it any wonder I despise shard transfers?

Some more Item Inconsistencies
Crimson Cincture was mentioned. So for all this time, you had the half-apron slot which never possessed magic properties. Suddenly, ML comes out and now there's a single, very rare and very expensive item that adds magic properties to a slot that never held magic properties before. Is anyone seeing what's wrong with this picture?

Ancient Samurai Helm and Heart of the Lion. Two perfect examples of a long, long list of items that are completely inconsistent. But why these two items? Simple: DCI. Now I'm not saying it doesn't make sense that these two items help one "block" or "defend" or whatever. My argument is this: how are crafters supposed to compete with these items with properties that they do not normally have? Making a helm of any kind or chest piece with DCI is impossible; only shields and jewelery naturally spawn with this property. Imagine before AOS if there was a blessed "vanquishing" bascinet that was handed out at UO's 2nd anniversary. I mean it's magic, so it doesn't have to make sense. But how are crafters to compete, or people who didn't have the advantage of being there supposed to compete? It doesn't make sense.

Any items that nullifies a skill. A good example of this is the Staff of the Magi. Using the Staff of the Magi is like basically saying, "You now have GM mace fighting" or whatever your magery is at.

Oh yeah, my favorite example: HCI on shields. Look, let's get one thing straight, I could care less whether or not shields "help you hit better or not" in real life. Let's look at it from a design perspective. At one point shields spawned with HCI, and now they do not. Those that have HCI shields have an advantage over those who do not, because the only shield with HCI that's available is that stupid museum replica shield, which in all honesty, sucks. Nowadays, the good HCI shields are priced in the millions. How to compete? Gee, I don't know.

Some more general responses...

Ehhhhh... it's fun to say that, believe me. But saying do away with recall and gate is about the same as saying, "Do away with Trammel". It's one of the biggest no-no's in the entire universe and is, at this point of time, not feasible. The thing I hate about recall and gate is, as others have clearly pointed out, it cheapens the idea of traveling by foot.

Think about treasure chests. The whole point of treasure chests is to look at the map, learn where the map is pointing towards then explore until you finally hit the magic spot (which is why mining used to be a good skill for treasure hunters to increase their dig radius). But now, every single treasure location is well documented and marked with a rune so that finding the treasure is as easy as recalling off a runebook. What happened to the adventure? The exploration?

Unfortunately, I can't really give a plausible solution to the mark/recall problem. At this point in time it's just a matter of saying, "Okay, you all can recall to your treasures, I'm going to discover it on my own" and simply doing it for yourself.

I am glad that you're stilling enjoying UO, and I'm glad for anyone that's still enjoying it. UO's going to live for a very long time, but with radical changes it has undergone and is currently undergoing, I cannot even possibly begin to fathom what it will be like in the years to come.

I do not doubt it. Though over the recent months I have been somewhat critical of "roleplaying communities", the thing that annoys me about roleplaying in UO is that it's just so dang irritating when the world changes so drastically. Here you have this Ultima theme, and suddenly LBR comes out and robots come into the mix. Okay, I can deal with that, that's not too big a change. Oops, here comes Samurai Empire with Samurais and Ninjas. Well... crap I guess I can get used to that, I mean Land of the Feudal Lords or something... right? Suddenly a giant tree appears somewhere that we never knew about and there are elves living in it (again, no comment on elves place in the Ultima universe, that's a tired, old debate).

Now you have the developers thinking, "Oh, let's add more Ultima into Ultima Online" and tossing Ultima-related things into the game without them actually making sense. Okay, so the Time Lord appeared at some point for some reason... and apparently there's blackrock everywhere... and somehow, the Book of Truth and the Candle of Love have something to do with everything, and probably the Bell of Courage will come in at some point. I'm looking forward to seeing players as gargoyles sitting atop their polar bears at Luna saying, "To LOL", to "To have pwned joo newb" after whipping out their latest bushido/ninjitsu/pally combo at the Britain moongate in Felucca. It just warms my small, grinch-like heart.

Very good well written post ... I do have issue with the anti elf view many have in UO... If UO had stayed the course of just being a Online version of the single player Sosarian world I might agree with the no elves bit... but UO didnt and isnt the same world.. its a ... melting pot of what ever the fad is now... but outside of that I have roleplayed a elf since the early days of D&D.. when there were no preprinted adventures when the rules were just xerox'd copies passed around.. with the intro of the elven avatar I no longer had to worry about telling new folks my pal was a elf...only what race of elf he was if they were unfamiliar with the traits I projected with him and where he came from.. I speak of just the avatar and not of the race only stuff ..

Anyhoots.. excellant post

See, that's the point; the community I play in (Europa) does not use magical items, ML elves (at least not the guild I'm in), nor ride neon coloured spiders. There are still those that live in that old facet of things, struggling to avoid all the hideous abominations of items and ride-able monsters, and quite successfully as well.

You'll see that the community on Europa is quite big, perhaps not as big as it used too, but big enough to keep us rolling and enjoying adventure and each other.

*nods slowly and sadly*

This is very true... but I still have my fingers crossed!

And yes, while we're at it, Trammel can go down the drain too!

I am somewhat acquainted with the roleplaying on Europa. Several years ago I joined the Guardsman Militia, in fact if I remember correctly, I think you were a guardsman then as well, correct?

The problem I had with the community though, and I speak *only* of the Crossroads of Yew and no other community, was all the damn rules they had. I understood the desire to control that which was not preferable in a more Ultima-themed roleplaying environment, but to me the rules just got in the way of me "playing the game". It was at that point that I came to realize that I don't want to have to make up a bunch of rules to pretend that aspects of the game I don't like don't exist, but instead to embrace the game and make use of what it offers.

I wasn't allowed to leave the town in order to fight stuff and train my skills (so that I could have more fun in big battles, you know?). In fact I wasn't supposed to leave the town at all. I wasn't allowed to use a non-colored dull copper sword despite the fact that dull copper has absolutely no effect on the swords performance other than it would last longer. Bleh.

Excellent OP Deraj.

I think you will find Grd have changed quite a bit the past year or two.Since Tillek and Erpa dissapeared,a good chunk of the guilds put aside the 'Dont go RP with any Core guilds' and did in fact begin to interact with us .

Its not been an easy road,but its a workable one,and I for one have some excellent roleplay with many folk I couldnt before .

Anyway back on topic.

The thing is whilst a lot of 'you' are well versed in most all the current MMORPG's and can compare graphics,speed,content etc etc,there are folk like little old me ,who have never played another game.

Apart from Zelda and Tombraider,UO was my first RP experience ,and 6 yrs on I still LOVE the game.

I particularly like the fact I dont have to execute all the 'moves' on the keyboard to play the game, as I have bi lateral CTS ,so for me UO is perfect.I have looked at other games ,but as soon as I see all those 'things' on the screen i just shake my head and say 'No, not for me '

SO there will always be the 'element' of people like me for whatever reason, who will be die hard UO fans.

In truth no matter what games such as WOW/DAOC/LOTR offer we will not take them up .

Its the RP experience for me also, that keeps me playing,although some times I need a break from it all ,and just want to 'play' .

So whilst I respect your opinions and thoughts on UO
To me the graphics dont matter,nor the occassional lagg spikes.

I will still be playing,and they will have kick me out at closing time

Very true, I was. You will see that each guild within the community has different rule set. BoC is probably the closest to restrictness to Grd than any other guild, but we are still VERY different. I can say as I've been in both, BoC is absolutely more free when it comes to the ability to wander of with people you want to and go on adventures.

But you're right, Grd and cross-roads were a very strict bunch. But like I said, it's like a ladder, different guilds holds different strictness, you just need to find what suits you best. (And I think I did thankfully)

Hello Tabbitha. I'm glad you're still enjoying UO.

UO is a simple, casual game and that is something I have always appreciated about it. My main complaint is that the nature of the additions have moved UO into a more single-player type of game, as opposed to a more community-oriented game. That doesn't mean community can't exist, it just means not all the fun things that we enjoyed about the community are there, like getting your armor repaired at the smithy, or coming across people on your way to Minoc.

Thanks for reading and understanding. On another note, the graphics for KR aren't too bad. Some of the monsters look decent; I like the landscape (grass, trees etc). And aside from that weird half-squat they do, the paperdolls aren't terrible.

What the...

Did I just say something... positive - about KR?

What about the spell effects and waterfalls .Have you seen them yet ? Pretty amazing,to say the least

Yayyyyyyyy GOTCHA

I'd like to put in another word and recommendation for the RP Community on Europa. I'm in the BoC as well with John Dell, and i'm having a blast with it. It's not restrictive at all in terms of your freedom, only in your equipment and the command structure. To me, it's basically what UO was 8 years ago and i'm loving it. No silly character templates, no silly glowy items, no silly elves. Nothing but good old fashioned UO RP.