UO used to be a great game, until it was ruined by a string of bad decision and marketing stunts. To get an idea of how great it used to be (some of you probably never played UO before Trammel, or before T2A), check out these two threads on a completely unrelated forum, dedicated to UO, especially old school UO.

I would copy and paste the posts over here, but most of these people are the old schoolers that many of the people on this forum strive to be:

What's all this about UO:
http://forums.darkfallonline.com/showthread.php?t=38268

Your UO story:
http://forums.darkfallonline.com/showthread.php?t=30995


Bring back the real UO!

Deleted a couple of replies
Rudeness/disrespect isn't welcome here.

well i for one never played uo back before trammel or t2a and though i do have my odds with some aspects of the game like people do with other games if you bash it don't play it because your bashing peoples choices and thats not cool.Have a good day

Don't get me wrong, I still play on Sonoma (name Gregor De Gar). I was just reading these other forums today and I came across a couple UO threads that got me to thinking about the old glory days.

Honestly, how hard would it be for them to release just ONE server with old school style rules?

*edit*

Just imagine what would happen to all the illegal shards out there right now whose SOLE hook is the face that they embrace the old UO. I think its almost a given that the majority of their playerbase would come back to the real thing if given an opportunity to play the game they all used to love and still do love. Many people make the mistake of thinking people play these shards because they dont want to pay the monthly fee. The truth is, people play these shards because they offer something that OSI used to offer and which EA no longer offers them.

Worst case scenario, they put the shard up for a few months, it flops, and EA is out some cash. I think they can afford to take a hit like that considering the possible gains to be had by gaining all of the lost playerbase who are now playing on illegal shards (which I do not condone).

Glad your still playing Brett .

I doubt it would be feasible to bring back an old style shard. If you think about it. Why would they keep a back up of each publish server and client code and IF they did which publish would you want? Nice thing about UO is the glory days can be today for you if you want them to be

Vepl

I think it'd be worth the risk, personally, especially given the fact the top free shards, are all pre aos or pre uor.
UO has changed alot, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse, but I'm doubtful they'll ever bring out a shard with a different ruleset

Pre-Aos can be brought back, but it is the community that made Pre-Aos what it was back then. The players have changed, as well as play styles.

In the greatest respect, I have having to read those posts and topics because UO was such a great game under that ruleset* so to speak And now it is not. Reading those only brings back memories of something I would rather have than what we have now. Hopefully Darkfall will be UO2 you could say (We can only hope!) Im sure if its as good as the hype is - Quite alot will flock to it. New and Old gamers alike.
But the question stems like all games which were great Ultima Online - Star Wars Galaxies for instance - How long till they ruin it?

Thats the bad things about most companies who makes games, And companies I always babble on these type of topics but its gets me annoyed because people just DONT care (share holders mostly) All they want is their cut of the game and the money they put in plus the earnings. People need to have a passion for it. Now just a greed for money.

I was reading the pre alpha, beta blurbing going on and playing since the day UO went live.. first on GL and as soon as LS came online moved to it...

First off.. UO was never designed as a PVP game.. RG had this miss guided vision that as soon as UO went live (aka no longer beta) that the pking would stop.. pking was not a designed feature, nor was pvp a designed stand alone playstyle....pvp was in the game to support the designed aspect of being a virtual online version of the off line Ultima world and was to be RP focus in building a virtual world...pvp was to support that vision


I remember UO as it was prior to trammel very well........I remember what Richard designed it for and what his dream for UO was....

I remember it being a totally new world.. a experience never experienced before in the detail it had.....

But as in life you grow accustom to your surroundings... just as when you move to a new town or state the world is vibrant and exciting... till you grow use to it then its just like the last place you lived in...

Any new game will be exciting, until time passes and you grow to know it.... any game will lose its luster with the passing of time....

Well said Ziggy.Its like any intense experience.

At first its all consuming,and you cant seem to think of anything else.Eventually though, cracks may start to show,and it begins to lack lustre.

This is when we start to hanker for the pastand rely on our memories to recreate what was and is no more.

As humans we are loathe to change and want to hold onto the good times.Nothing wrong with that, just sadly things change.

Along with the 'old' style of UO ,needs to be remembered the 'downsides' also .

However I do understand your passion Brett

I have played UO from the beginning...and Meridian 59 before that...some things have changed that I didn't like...but all in all I still love this game.
Do I miss having a start up character ganked every time I turn around..no
Some things are better...some things are worse...as it is in life..change is inevitable...deal with it

Well to answer your question - How hard would it but to make an "old school" server?

Well EAMythic has given this answer on several occassions, and before the formation of EAMythic. EA addressed the issue.

Their answer(s) has been over the years that :

1) the original source for a old school server is gone : only the code that is on the servers know exists, when they move out to california, they moved the servers and started patching them. To keep the game servers going without shutting down they just moved the primary servers, the backup were left to be moved at a later date. Then either the backups were lost/erased/destroyed I do not remember which exactly but since there had been several patches since the move, this meant there were no more "originals" to reload from. They just made back up of the current servers and went on.

2) Even if they could find an original source there are not enough programers left from the original dev team to understand parts of the code (apparently they did not make good notes in the code)

3) It would use up too many resources to maintain this single shard because it would have to be coded separately from the other production shards. It would even have to be coded differently from seige/mugen.

4) They bring up that question of what would constitute a "old school" shard?
Would it be pre-trammel, pre-pub 25, pre-pub 16, pre-AoS? The way EAMythic looks at it one mans classic shard is different from someone else.

Those are the main reasons that have been given over the years.

Their policy is not going to change.

I do not agree with them, but I am just laying out their reasons/excuses.

But the good old days of UO, were not so old nor so good. But I can only speak for myself. I was not there for the initial launch, but I did get in a few months later.

I neverminded being hunted by other players, at least not on my mage or my warrior. Now I did mind being hunted on my miner, but I learned to be paraniod about it, and protected myself. I got really good at getting away since this was in the time before bags of sending! for any new players reading this.

In todays UO, I still mine in fel, totally naked, carry enough shovels to use up 5 charges on a bag of sending, so if I am killed I am not out much.

But there were times back then that I just wanted to login and go kill some monsters (to relax from work) and it did get really old when you are down in a dungeon just bashing away. then you hear some other people ride up, now usually I would have just recalled out, but sometimes depending on the spawn it was not possible. Then you see 4+ people just coming in, no words but corp por. Then they talk smack about how you suck after eating 4 corp pors. That does get old. But I could get by.

Also I lived near a player town (Red Dragon City) I was not actually in the so called "city limits" but a few screens over, I got to know those players quite well, we became good neighbors, heck I even help train new players in their guild, even though I was not in it. So there was a community there and at other places on the shard. This is what made UO great.

I was planning to stay in fel, where I started, I did ok. I had no plans to move to trammel. Why? because I heard more trash talk over there then I ever heard in fel.(this was shortly after the creation of "Its not a mirror" trammel. Well lets just say that it was a very interesting time for UO, the shard was in chaos, people trying to move entire communities over to trammel, other people trying to get there old housing spots, or killing them for their goods as they tried to move. Plus the shard reverts, priceless.

Finally what pushed me over the edge? To move to trammel, A guild of reds had bought out the 7/8 houses directly to the south of me. One day I met the leader of this guild (angelfire,angelsomething), He stepped up onto my front steps and waited. At the time I was login with my blacksmith, figured he might want to do business, I was getting ready to restock my vendor. I had a minor rep on my shard of making very good weapons and stocking bone armor suits (sighs for the days of a blacksmith being relavent).

I invited him in. His first question to me - you are not scared cause I am red? I replied Good sire, I know not your intentions, nor your race, care to do business? (I always try to play in character, and I never judge reds just because they were reds as long as they had never wronged my characters I treated them as a law abiding citizens).

He laughed about this and called me crazy. Said he want to buy my house. I told him I had been here for awhile and it was not for sale. Then he made threats, and curses and told me, he and his guild would make me pay. They needed my house (I guess I was the last one on the block{actually a cluster of about 15 houses various sizes} to not sell to them)

I told him politely he could go jump rope. He left, I thought nothing more of it. Over the next few months, they laid seige to my house, every character, everytime I login, they were there, to attack me everytime I left my house. Eventually I go tried of the constant battle, I won some, I lost some but I could not go about my business that I wanted to do. I most say that this guild were not asses about it. They never talked smack, they just killed me every chance they got, all within the rules. Finally we reach a deal and I moved to my current house (which this guild bought and turned over to me before I gave them my house plus 2 million in my pocket for my troubles.)

So my last few months on fel really soured my feelings to this facet. Although there are plenty of asses on the trammel side.

Another point vets like to bring up is that the were not as many gankings as people like to state. Well anyone that talks like that as far as I am concerned was just on the giving side of the ganks. Heck, I ganked reds on my bounty hunter. I can count the times on one hand were I was engaged in a pk attack on my characters one on one. Usually it was packs and nothings really changed since those times.

I still get caught out in fel gathering resources from time to time. What irks me now is that I do not even get looted (at least back when there was just fel they would take my ingots)

Case in point last week I was out getting frostwood, well I heard people coming, hit the wrong buttong, but at least I got the frostwood to the bank. Ended up taking a dirt nap, no big deal if they loot me they would have got a bag of sending and a axe. So I did what I always do, I give those 3 brave souls that killed me, a murder count. Its just my sop, kill me on my non-combat characters get a count, take on my fighters when I am in fel, I do not give counts.

Usually I do not stick around and I go get rez at the nearest healer/shrine. But this time one of them spirit spoke asking me if I wanted a rez, I have not taken a rez from anyone in fel for years, heck I have not been asked by a pk if I wanted a rez in years. The reason they rezd me? They all wanted to know why I gave them all counts, cause when I did 2 out of the 3 went red. I laughed my ass off at them, tired to explain. I got killed again and they talked even more smack. They got another count. First they complain that I had nothing on me to loot, then they complained about getting a murder count. Crazy just crazy.

Anyway I think that EA really went wrong when they split the facets, not the fact that they split them but how it was implemented.

IMO what should have happened is that the facet we know as trammel should have been fel and the facet know as fel should have been trammel. This would have left all the player built cities/communities intact for the most part and all the reds and anyone else that wanted to go could have go. Heck it could have been explained better then it was. Something to the effect that Lord British was banning all criminals and other shady person to a completely lawless land to survive as they saw fit.

With the player towns/communities mostly intact, I think UO would have not lost as many players as they have. There would not have been as much upheavel as there was on all the shards.