So long story short:

I played uo from 98-2000 or so, and then quit to play EQ. considering EQ is horribly time intensive I have had to give that up, and am considering just piddling around on UO because i enjoyed the ability to successfully play for an hour here and an hour there.

Since 2000, what all has changed with UO? I left right around the time the pvp/non pvp mirrors of britannia were created and they gave monsters more intelligent pathing/teleporting abilities (bye bye fun in terrathan keep). Someone gimme a short rundown how UO is nowadays please.

Thx

In my opinion, I find UO insanely boring and the gameplay (PvP) is incredibaly lacking. I came back a month ago or so and after 3 days I shut down my account again. In short, it's too carebear.

Yet, I still come and post on UOForums. LoL, old habits are hard to break .

One of the biggest changes since 2000 would be AOS (age of shadows) With that expansion they completely reworked combat and armor. The new armor has properties in different areas of resistance (fire, cold, energy etc...) The weapons have changed as well. They changed the properties on weapons as well (swing speed, accuracy % etc...)

Some like it, some don't (like everything in UO) I personally love the AOS combat system. UO has become much more item dependant because of it though. But to counter balance that they also added in insurance, and auto-looting your corpse. You can insure as many items as you want and you will have them upon ressurection. With auto looting you just run by your corpse and double click it to retrieve everything automatically. (I love that!)

UO is now, as always, what we make of it. I never enjoyed PvP and with AOS they improved PvM quite a bit so I really enjoy it. The latest Pub was directed at PvP balances. (as a non PvP'er I don't how that worked out)

With all the new facets we now have enough land for everyone to have a house if they want one. Maybe not a huge house but at least a nice sized one.

It has changed a lot over the years so you may want to try one of the free trials they offer and see if you like it or not. I never played EQ so I really can't say how they compare.

I've heard reference to classes, when i left it was just 7 GM sets you chose from, did they redo that? Im just curious on some of the changes in gameplay.

Well you have your old basics like Mage, Melee,(pick a weapon) and Tamer. They have added other skills as well. We now have Paladins, Necromancers, Samuraii, and Ninja. Plus they added a new race, elves.

The Paladin uses chivalry and battle focus and is very effective in PvM. I have not played a necro, samuraii, or ninja so I don't know as much about them. All four of the new characters use the new skills in addition to your weapon skill. I love the melee/paladin. You can mix it up any way you want. melee/samuraii, mage/necro, melee/necro whatever you want. The Paladins and Necros came with AOS and the Samuraii/Ninjas came with the Samuraii Empire expansion.

Next we got Mondains Legacy expansion it came with elves. The elves get an extra 20 points to thier mana as a racial ability but the humans get extra strength and hit point regeneration as thiers. I like the human attributes better than the elf attributes myself.

There is tons of new critters to fight, all over the place. AOS gave us dungeon Doom, SE had a couple dungeons, and ML came with like 9 new dungeons too. If PvM is your bag then you will have lots of exploring to do.

cool, you happen to have alink to the 15 day trial?

Here you are:

http://www.uo.com/demo.html

I *think* that the demo does not come with the newest expansion, which was Mondain's Legacy. But it covers all expansions up to Samarui Empire.

Mondain's Legacy gave us the ability to play as an Elf, put in a questing system, new dungeons ect.

http://www.uo.com/uoml/

That is the ML site. There are links to New Player, Ordering Backup Discs and other things on it.

Well some of us do not have to pvp to have fun and enjoy a game and I for one am glad the pvp is the way it is.

It takes all kinds of play to make a world. While I don't do PvP, it seems there are a lot who do. From what my son, who introduced me to UO, says, PvP lost a lot as it came along. He says the new PvP players. ( I KNOW not all fit into this mould) are predominantly foul mouthed spoiled kids. He has played since it was about 6 months old, so he has seen most everything they've put out.