A question for veterans of UO

[Death]

I don't mean veterans of AOV specifically, I mean veterans of UO. I'm talking about players who remember the classic days of uo (back in the early/late 90's), who have played the original single player ultima games for the NES and the SNES as well as the early days of Ultima Online.

I have been trying to remember all the differences between modern Ultima and classic Ultima in order to grab at the roots of what made this game great. When EA took over OSI, a lot of new content was added that made the game more interesting and in depth, but at the same time a lot of balance, logics and lore/atmosphere were lost.

With the introduction of UOSA, OSI is tracing back to its ultima roots which is a good thing. Some day, AOV may want to bring back some of the gameplay familiarity as well as Ultima's original lore.

So I guess the question I'm asking is: What kind of stuff do you remember from the early days of Ultima?

Some things I can recall were Balrons camping your corpse when you died as well as a cloak that acted as a lantern (Think it was a blazing cloak which had a limited light charge on it so it would eventually expire). Not sure if this was custom to the shard I was playing on or not.

NOTE: I vaguely recall making a post like this in the past so I'll search for it later and probably do a merge. Gives something to talk about anyways.

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:4839, old post ID:31311

[Dirk]

Im no Vet of UO and I dont know of anything specific item doing this or doing that. What I do remember (I played for about 8-10 months in 97 & 98) is having to run like a little b**ch from most mobiles! Oh wait I could'nt run because of LAG,LAG,LAG (just a sec im just about done ) LAG,LAG,LAG,LAG and more LAG. So I really did'nt venture to far from town and or house (which I shared with a buddy) I enjoyed the game and never really touched on the content within the game. (bad connection, had a pentium 120 cpu about 32 megs ram crap for vid card, I would hang out in bucc's den and try to pvp and usaully just end up killing npc's @ the blacksmith shop. I know this was'nt much help but like you said Death it started a conservation.

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:4839, old post ID:31312

[Death]

Actually, it's funny you should mention lag as it was a huge huge problem back in the day on official OSI shards (still lag to this day but it's considerably less).

The problem was people dropping their res robes and littering the bank floors with items (still done today) but it was WAY worse back in the day. Think it was due to the fact that there was no decay process coded at that time so items would remain. Also, technology wasn't as advanced in the late 90's as it is today.

This introduced the "Clean up Britannia" program which I used to enjoy. It was similar to cooperative collections where you turn in items for points which could then be exchanged for some items. I obtained my first keep with enough points from that system. 3 days later, the shard I was playing on went down and never came back up (Doh, my luck).

I still remember that system though, and I'm glad OSI brought in a permanent collection system such as the vesper museum and the Britain library. Their spring cleaning is also a salute to the old "Clean up Britannia" system.

I heard that people used to go to jail for excessive littering on OSI. Could you imagine the same practice today?

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:4839, old post ID:31314

[Dirk]

You would have to create an Island in the middle of the ocean and build your own Alcatraz! Hey this might be a fun idea make it like Fel to where you can't recall or gate out. You could have Prison Riots!!lol You could make it based on a point system so many points against you, then there would be a certain amount of time you would be stuck on the Island. With no way out till your time is up. If you get into a fight or riot against some one you have to stay longer. I wonder what it would take to code something like this into the game. Im sure the list of items that would be considered loitering would be huge. Is throwing a biodegradable item on the ground considered littering? Example Apple, paper, wood items, u get the pic.

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:4839, old post ID:31328

[Death]

I thought a kind of neat idea would be a system that would create the ruleset of oldschool Ultima or Siege/Mugen ruleset for those who wished to partake in it. It would be a salute to the old days of Ultima and at the same time, would not affect those who are against it so it's pretty much win-win.

The system would create pvp everywhere and possibly omit the rules of insurance VS players of the same system. In trammel facets, they would be able to freely attack each other (those who have just like in the old ultima. There would be no outside influence too (So some trammie could not try and ruin your battle by healing or boxing you in to disrupt the fight, they could only spectate and would not be able to affect the battle in any way possible, including loot rights).

In felucca, all rules would apply where anyone is freely attackable.

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:4839, old post ID:31335

[DOCTOR THUNDER]

I thought a kind of neat idea would be a system that would create the ruleset of oldschool Ultima or Siege/Mugen ruleset for those who wished to partake in it. It would be a salute to the old days of Ultima and at the same time, would not affect those who are against it so it's pretty much win-win.

The system would create pvp everywhere and possibly omit the rules of insurance VS players of the same system. In trammel facets, they would be able to freely attack each other (those who have just like in the old ultima. There would be no outside influence too (So some trammie could not try and ruin your battle by healing or boxing you in to disrupt the fight, they could only spectate and would not be able to affect the battle in any way possible, including loot rights).

In felucca, all rules would apply where anyone is freely attackable.

You and red should have put your effort into creating this instead of the MySql bullshit.

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:4839, old post ID:31336

[Red Squirrel]

I thought a kind of neat idea would be a system that would create the ruleset of oldschool Ultima or Siege/Mugen ruleset for those who wished to partake in it. It would be a salute to the old days of Ultima and at the same time, would not affect those who are against it so it's pretty much win-win.

The system would create pvp everywhere and possibly omit the rules of insurance VS players of the same system. In trammel facets, they would be able to freely attack each other (those who have just like in the old ultima. There would be no outside influence too (So some trammie could not try and ruin your battle by healing or boxing you in to disrupt the fight, they could only spectate and would not be able to affect the battle in any way possible, including loot rights).

In felucca, all rules would apply where anyone is freely attackable.

That reminds me, I have the back end for that all coded and it's actually been on live for a long time, just never decided on how players "join". Think we were thinking of a ticket you buy, or something. I forget now. Probably something we could do.

I was also thinking it would be cool to have a set time of the month, maybe called "darkness day" or something, where it's fel ruleset everywhere for like a day.

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:4839, old post ID:31338

[Death]

You and red should have put your effort into creating this instead of the MySql bullshit.

There are an endless amount of projects that are on the list of projects we wish to pursue. That pvpeverywhere system was actually half started but the SQL system was a better idea at the time as there would be greater control for tracking, saving and statistics. This was highly important as we were planning into UOML quests at the same time.

If the SQL project was 100% successful, it would mean a lot of improvements server wise as well as tracking wise (Say you've lost an item, it wouldn't take 5 years to find it and we would know the exact circumstances when it went missing). It didn't turn out exactly as expected but it doesn't mean that what was created isn't still useful. The only downfall of it all was the time consumption when we were deadlined. Sure, the resources could have been better spent on content and revisions but there was no way to know that until the SQL project began.

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:4839, old post ID:31339

[Death]

I thought a kind of neat idea would be a system that would create the ruleset of oldschool Ultima or Siege/Mugen ruleset for those who wished to partake in it. It would be a salute to the old days of Ultima and at the same time, would not affect those who are against it so it's pretty much win-win.

The system would create pvp everywhere and possibly omit the rules of insurance VS players of the same system. In trammel facets, they would be able to freely attack each other (those who have just like in the old ultima. There would be no outside influence too (So some trammie could not try and ruin your battle by healing or boxing you in to disrupt the fight, they could only spectate and would not be able to affect the battle in any way possible, including loot rights).

In felucca, all rules would apply where anyone is freely attackable.

That reminds me, I have the back end for that all coded and it's actually been on live for a long time, just never decided on how players "join". Think we were thinking of a ticket you buy, or something. I forget now. Probably something we could do.

I was also thinking it would be cool to have a set time of the month, maybe called "darkness day" or something, where it's fel ruleset everywhere for like a day.

Ya, it's one of those projects you tied into the notoriety system that we didn't launch as we couldn't decide on how to complete the system (in terms of how you could activate PVP everywhere and deactivate it if you find it was a mistake). Something to improve upon and complete in the future as there's a lot more details to consider yet.

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:4839, old post ID:31340

[DOCTOR THUNDER]

How about making factions pvp anywhere? only in tram they cannot attack their own faction. Unless they were guilded, of course.

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:4839, old post ID:31341

[Red Squirrel]

How about making factions pvp anywhere? only in tram they cannot attack their own faction. Unless they were guilded, of course.

We thought about that one as well. Could very well happen at some point.

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:4839, old post ID:31343

[Death]

How about making factions pvp anywhere? only in tram they cannot attack their own faction. Unless they were guilded, of course.

Factions are kind of tough because the bases are all situated in felucca so if we brought faction fighting to all facets, there would need to be some kind of parallel and reason to faction in all facets. An interesting idea would be to create more than 4 factions and have each one have a facet of control. Ultima currently has 6 facets:
- Trammel
- Felucca
- Malas
- Ilshenar
- Tokuno
- Ter Mur

So there would need to be something for factions to do in each facet. We would also need to think about the scenario of giving too much land for facets to cover. I think it's probably best if they were restricted to felucca because of a smaller area.

Not many people choose factions to begin with so if we give people a larger area to roam, it would be hard to find them (unless an item was introduced that could hunt them down for you but that kind of ruins the surprise of "search and destroy")

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:4839, old post ID:31345

[d.]

How about making factions pvp anywhere? only in tram they cannot attack their own faction. Unless they were guilded, of course.

Factions are kind of tough because the bases are all situated in felucca so if we brought faction fighting to all facets, there would need to be some kind of parallel and reason to faction in all facets. An interesting idea would be to create more than 4 factions and have each one have a facet of control. Ultima currently has 6 facets:
- Trammel
- Felucca
- Malas
- Ilshenar
- Tokuno
- Ter Mur

So there would need to be something for factions to do in each facet. We would also need to think about the scenario of giving too much land for facets to cover. I think it's probably best if they were restricted to felucca because of a smaller area.

Not many people choose factions to begin with so if we give people a larger area to roam, it would be hard to find them (unless an item was introduced that could hunt them down for you but that kind of ruins the surprise of "search and destroy")

Specific monsters that can only be attacked/damaged by faction characters, and only target factioners. They would be on trammel ruleset facets, thus the factioners would fight there to kill them.

-High yeild loot
-Faction only artifacts
-large amounts of silver
-something unique or special, such as simple clothing items with low/mid intensity random 1-3 mods, nothing outrageous but worth trying to get.

As for such a large area to roam, these monsters could be in specific areas (island on level 2 despise in tram, where the balron spawns by the area with the lava moat near chaos shrine in ish, etc). there would be like 3-4 locations and only one of the locations would spawn a monster right after server wars/reset. This would mean everyone after reset would log onto their faction chars and go slug it out for the loots. It encourages activity, pvp, and brings livelyhood to otherwise ignored areas of trammel facets.

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:4839, old post ID:31348

[Death]

All good points but of course, the main focus would be to tie into factions. Something more along the lines of invasions that each faction could be responsible for that other factions would have to dismantle. Something that would signal all faction members to go to that area and either attack or defend (Kind of like how CTF everyone searches for the flag carrier).

The faction invasions with crimson dragons were a good idea, although they were event driven on OSI and they also had the nasty tendency to involve everyone into it (Would suck if you went to go bank something cause they invaded towns).

There could be loot or rank to gather, something that you would have to keep up. Then you could use your faction silver and reputation to purchase bonuses for artifacts you are already wearing. As long as you can keep your rank up, you can keep your bonuses (this way people can't just join factions for all the goodies and none of the work).

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:4839, old post ID:31349