Bottom line. if you like what UO used to be, Hop on a player ran shard. If you like new style UO then OSI/EA shards are for you.

EA has the capabilitys to recreate "what UO used to be" but will they? No. Why? Not enough profit in it to many players established on large free shards like UO Gamers that most likely wont come back to pay for what they can play for free.

I do apologize ahead of time if what I'm about to say is in violation of any rules. I'm not saying anything I said to detour people from playing here or there or to offend anyone. Reguardless UO is a great mmorpg that hit the nail on the head when it was made. Look how long this game has been alive. Its just to bad that money and greed effect people/companys.

Like I said before EA wont make a pre aos shard because they want MONEY.
Players recreate the good ol times every single say because they aren't running player ran shards to make money but insted to please the players and their self. To make something they want to play and for others to enjoy.

Got it right there

As I've said before, I do believe EA should bring out pre AOS shards, but they won't
I did get into a long discussion with Jeremy about it, she basically said it'd be upwards of 6 months to a year of work, using the same size team that worked for UOKR
She basically said they'd effectively have to rebuild the server code from scratch

I pointed out that maybe that isn't a bad thing, given the annoying old bugs which lurk around to this date, heh

me myself i like the old days of uo not saying that people shouldnt enjoy how it is now but there is a problem adding the CHOICE of old and new uo i belive least 70% would go back to old school uo leaving a handfull of people in the new ways witch would cause them to convert or quite all together

I personally like a bit of the old with a touch of the new. Both extremes are unplayable to me, as the old you bored too quickly as there is a severe lack of content, and the newer expansions you find yourself more rule-driven than just being free and having fun. Just my two cents though...

I used to pk people with explosion in cities.. release it and run out of screen and there would be no insta death.

In my experience in game design, and online demographics and audience. I would have to say that a pre AoS shard is not lost. Keep in mind that it costs EA money to run the servers. And currently they arnt making what they want. For the people that want a pre AoS server dont whine a lot to EA. The more you complain the more they feel there work is hopeless. EA is a huge copany with many profit clients and contracts. many onlien games they own. If they ever feel UO is a failed project because to many people complain and they can't get it right they may very well scrap it. Of course this would be a mistake since they have yet to make the money from UO that they want. Pre AoS server is still in sight. It takes money and players to do so. When EA gets more money and players then you can whine. As a business man I would have to say that complaining about a game that is slowly dying is not good. Praise the game and EA so they think they got ahold of somthing.

"Its easier to put money in somthing people like than to gamble money on somthing unsure of"

hmm even though i am a big complainer gotta hand it to you that makes lot of sence CONGRATS and well spoken or written lol

people do not change, history does repeat... a pre UO-R shard would at start up gain a good population.... but it wouild end up as all production shads did in the past.... and you will have a empty shard... EA has siege as a example of a specialty shard... it when it came on line was a heavily populated shard... yes its different but its not in the sense of how folks remember things... we tend to remember the good things and forget the bad..

I still think EA could put up a long term test shard.. without having to rewrite the server code.. they can turn things on and off ... they just do not wish too.. either they dont want to be proven wrong with AoS or ...dunno...but they surely can... besides ... I know many dispute this but UO is a property of EA... all forms of it and they need code in original forms so if another company were to produce or use said code and claim its theirs EA could just slap it down and say nope its ours.. most data using companies have off site places where their data is backed up and stored.. Id lay odds that somewhere EA has each major form of the coding stashed away in case of copyright infringment...there are these big arsed platters that are made to hold data... anyways.. matters not really

The thing that makes freeshards different than old school UO is that there is no development for them. The people who run these shards can't or won't add new skills like necromancy or whatever to make the game funner and interesting. I agree, just recreating an old school shard would be boring after a while like on the freeshards. But if they made a shard and reverted back and added new content according to the system then and not change the whole game...well you got yourself a winner and not a World of Warcraft clone.