f13.net

In Por Ylem has been in development for quite some time now and is set to be released 1/21/11. While it is based around slightly tweaked t2a era PVP there is a lot of custom features implemented throughout the game. It is currently in closed beta with every major implementation fleshed out fully. I'd like to share all the marvelous details but the server is in closed beta. IPY will not include blessed items, any wacky neon hues, and importantly no mounts.

What are some of the major features you might ask? WELL LET ME TELL YOU.

Paladins
Paladins are designed to be a self policing force that punishes reds instead of a statloss based system. Wether you PK or not, reds are a huge issue for any server where they are left with no penalties. Paladins are gifted coins for killing reds that can be put towards rewards. These rewards give paladins an extra leg up on reds therefor evening out the risk v reward for being a red. Paladins cannot participate in Order vs Chaos PVP, so the rewards really be used other then laying the hurt on reds. Any murder counts will throw you out of the paladin order, so be careful not to get trigger happy.
Read more here! http://azaroth.org/2010/10/17/10-in-10-paladins/
(http://azaroth.org/images/10in10/PaladinVendorBook.png)


Kings, Citizenship, Order v Chaos and more
Every major city has the ability to elect a King to control various functions of the city. For instance a king can decide on the taxation of vendors, to the level of guard security a town would provide. The king also has the ability to choose from one of the major perks that will be extended to all the citizens such as increased blacksmith gains or gold and magic item drop rate increasings. Citizen's of a town also receive massive vendor discounts. Appointed citizen's may place vendors inside the city limits as well. Order v Chaos PVP is based around capturing cities for the gain of certain PVP buffs that are only applied within cities themselves. While Kingship and Order v Chaos overlap, having your city captured by the opposite faction has only a small effect on the actual town dynamics beyond the ability for the opposing to steal your treasury. The treasury effects stuff like level of guard security and so forth. Each town also has a militia that takes place in the Order v Chaos PVP in order to protect its treasury. Its similar to the faction system used in UO and various titles are awarded and so forth.
Read more here! - http://azaroth.org/2010/11/07/10-in-10-kings-and-oc/

(http://azaroth.org/images/10in10/kings/kingstone.jpg)


Portals
Portals are designed to appeal the the explorer/adventurer type. Portals are randomly generated all over the world that provide entrances to instanced custom dungeons. The level of difficulty scales with your skill level and let me tell you some can be brutally hard but rewards appropriately. The rewards vary from the usually gold, gems, magic items to unique rares. Currently it is a solo experience, but it will be expanded to a group environment later on in the server's lifetime.
Read more here! - http://azaroth.org/2010/11/22/10-in-10-portals/

(http://azaroth.org/images/10in10/portals/snow.jpg)



Naval warfare and pirates
One of the more robust implementations, naval warfare is an interesting system on IPY 2. It features custom craftable ships/cannons, guild docks, pirate items and titles, shipwrecks and much more. The main goal of all pirates is to control Buccaneer’s Den in order to spend your pirate currency on various ammunitions, ship plans, to vanity rewards. You gain the pirate currency by ruining someone's day and sinking the hell out of their ship. Right before the ship is sunk, you are able to enter the ship for a short period of time to clear the hull out, then scram. One you have sunk a ship, the currency is deposited into your hull and you may no longer dry dock your boat unless you stable it at a cities dockmaster or your guild's docks. Smooth boat movement has also been implemented (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DVUUEeu0oU). There are also shipwrecking hunting as well. There is a lot more I haven't touched on this but just read more in the blog post.
Read more here! - http://azaroth.org/2010/10/24/10-in-10-yarr-pirates/
One lovely day

(http://azaroth.org/images/10in10/pirates/pirates.jpg)

Crafting
Crafting on IPY is designed to put a little more coin in a mule's pocket while providing with a more player based economy. For instance carpenters are the only way to get ships. Tinkers are the only way to get cannons. Inscription for the circle 7 and above can only be made with master scrolls making the scroll market more cutthroat and profitable. Alchemy will have additional potions that are more focus towards PVE that can only be found through random alchemy.
Read more here! - http://azaroth.org/2010/11/29/10-in-10-crafting/

(http://azaroth.org/images/10in10/crafting/plans.png)



Detectives
The detective system isn't entirely fleshed out yet, but has a lot of potential. While some might call it somewhat gimmicky, it implements another layer of player based policing. You collect clues from fresh murder scenes in order to pinpoint who did the murder. You file a report to a detective guild master and NPC bounty hunters are dispatched to apprehend the PK. If captured you are placed in an escapable jail. Its still being discussed if detectives will police thieves.
Read more here! - http://azaroth.org/2010/12/06/10-in-10-detectives/

(http://azaroth.org/images/10in10/Detectives/jailbreak.png)



Other features included
One of the more controversial implementations is that IPY 2 will have a RoT (Rate over Time) skill based system roughly based on that which was present on Siege Perilous. RoT has a rather negative connotation but RoT on IPY is designed for you to actually play your character in order to gain skill points. Yes macroing is very much so possible, but there is a daily cap on each skill to however much you can gain. The amount you can gain for each skill does down in value for ever tier, but is not a cumulative cap. So you can work on all 7 of your desired skills in a day. There is current talk of extending RoT to be a 2 to 3 day long cap with higher ceilings to gain within that time period to even the playing field for weekend warriors and such. Skills gain 200% in dungeons and decrease with the safety you are gaining in. Skills gain from fastest to slowest in dungeons, world map, towns, and then houses just like it does on Revelations. Macroing on a boat is more dangerous with the addition of pirating. Monsters also drop skill scrolls which increase the skill you're actively working on in varying degrees but only drop from monsters in your skill level. There is plenty I'm sure I'm leaving out but frankly this post is just too drat long. Ask any questions and I'd love to answer them for you.


-----------Above shameless stolen from Leisure on IPY forums-------------



http://inporylem.com/forum/showthread.php?554-IPY-Launch-January-21st-2011.&p=11732#post11732


January 21st, 2011. Finally, the time has come!

Feb 11th after delay.

I know it's Ultima Online, but it our f13 friend Azaroth's creation so I figured it was worth posting here.

For those not in the know about Ultima Online Freeshards, IPY was widely recognized as THE freeshard server post-trammel. High population, excellent PVP, and tram free being the main draws. This time around, Az has added the paladin system to help the victim and buff the Anti-PK. There are a lot of new systems , as shown on the homepage www.inporylem.com, and Az's blog azaroth.org. He has put a ton of time and effort into making this server great, and I hope that any F13ers that were a part of the 'good old days of UO' or missed the boat and were playing EQ should give this a try.

I will have a guild up for us, and some private forum/voice details if you PM me. We already have a decently large group, we should have a great launch and a lot of fun. Make sure to register at www.inporylem.com/forum. Long live UO.

EDIT: Stole much better post.

So, I don't know how this freeshard thing works, how would I go about actually playing this?

Gentlemen, tell me more about the massively multiplayer game 'ultima online' in the pre-trammel era, and what are your views on the pros and cons of the renaissance expansion?

:ye_gods:

The renaissance expansion being the expansion that added a non PvP world to Ultima Online, changing the gameplay dramatically.

From their website, it looks like they haven't simply created a pre-renaissance version of the game but tried to expand the player-conflict elements of it with workable player justice and so on. It does look like fun.

Download basically any client, patch with IPY stuff, play!

We're actually going to suggest the newest (classic) client because of the smooth boat stuff.

You know, I never played UO.  Seems like it'd be worth a look.  Any specific pointers on where to get a client?  I'm assuming the client is either commercial or abandonware? 

You can snag the client for free here:

http://www.uoherald.com/downloads

Go with Classic.

Cool, thanks.  Is there somewhere we can try stuff out before the Jan 21st launch?

Having played UO on Atlantic from 1997 to 2000 (quitting one month after Renaissance in disgust), I think I'll definitely have a look at this  :awesome_for_real:

I think we're gonna need some macro program in order to make it tolerable. I'm not sure if I recall correctly, it's been more than a decade.

The game is played standard now with Razor - a UO Assist like program that you can record macros in. Az is giving bonuses to skill gain in dungeons/graveyards/ruins, along with skill scrolls that will raise the skill over the RoT cap. It will actually pay to play this UO, and not just macro for a week and have a 7x grandmaster character.

Full, pre-Ren theft system?  If so, count me in.

hahah, I never macroed anything back in the day; actually, one of my fondest (early, of course, 'cause then macroing became the norm) memories was "manually" (as opposed to macroing) practising swordmanship in the Trinsic Training hall while chatting with other like-minded people about the game, or roleplaying.  :heart:

Absolutely.

You need to find out where McFly is and make him put his webpage back up.

For those who want to know more about IPY, UO, and free shards, spleens.net last updates are still referring to IPY in its first incarnation. Griefing and stuff.

http://www.spleens.net/ (http://www.spleens.net/)

(http://www.spleens.net/frowns.jpg)

It's actually coming back!

Good try ;) Na, this thread is meant to get some interest in what is going to be a great experience. Don't miss the boat.




Oh yeah, fuck Trammel.

Woohoo!  Wish I could have gotten the client working when Alpha as going on.  I really liked the testers/devs I met - good group working on this iteration.

I will do some testing later this week - I gots me some vacation coming up.   :awesome_for_real:

We're hopefully fixing problems with the new client today/tonight.

Yeah, sure ya will. I'm starting to doubt that you are even gonna play at launch :)

Just when I had almost forgotten about this whole thing.

(http://img690.imageshack.us/img690/2562/youtubespam.png) (this should have been a 2 or 3)

When a shard launches there is usually a little bit of spam comments on my Youtube videos. It is okay, I delete them. But a couple fanatics from IPY decided to just go nuts. It is pathetic.

I feel like making a video about why player run shards suck just to counter it. But that would be work and I am lazy. So I'll let it slide as long as they stop spamming.

The f13 "Come fellows, we shall play this UO freeshard and it shall be grand!" routine is practically a time-honored tradition around here. At least among the usual four or five guys. A month later there will be a few sporadic "yeah I been real busy but I'll be on this weekend probably" posts. Two months later no one even humors the idea.

We are just missing you, bro.

Actually, this time around I give a shit about the server...so it matters to me more than 'random UO freeshard #345'. You should try it out with us.

Or don't. Don't you have some stratics thread to troll? Maybe explain to us once again how awesome Trammel was?

Regardless of the usual shit, I am quite pumped about this server and hope as many people as possible join at launch. It is something you will want to be a part of from the start....and even if it only lasts as long as WUA suspects, that's as much as I usually get out of MMO's these days anyway.

This is pretty much how I'm looking at it, and if it sticks, all the better.

I will at least download a client and make a character. Never played in a guild, so I am interested in how it plays when I am not beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and tyranny of evil men. Maybe I should start in Magincia...

WUA, Classic UO isn't compatible with your soft, impressionable and highly vulnerable personality, and I suggest you avoid it at all costs, least your fragile sanity will take a turn for the worse.

As for the rest of us, link to client download would be helpful.

I downloaded the classic client from here: http://www.uoherald.com/downloads  I assume we need to wait until the 21st to get the IPY files.

So you are going to give it a shot, Sinij?

Also, updated OP to make it prettier and tell a bit more.

Which rules were these? I played a thief for much of the game and hated most other thieves, which basically boiled down to bank snatching teams or pks trying to flag other players.

Does it go back to going to Dark Lord for stealing, greying out, what are ze rules?

I guess, yes, maybe it also depends on your personality and how you reacted to that harsh world. Even though I was your typical PK prey, I embraced that aspect of the game because, well, it was a time when MMOGs still meant "living in a alternate world", with dark and light playing together.

Now it's all about theme parks, cockblocks, silly no cross faction communication, and a more "gamey" approach overall to MMOGs: the market says "yes" so undoubtedly they are right in continuing to bring out such games, but for me the best part is still that original approach that Raph Koster (and his colleagues) envisioned with the original UO.

See what I did there?

Slayerik, I think you can get most if not all of those images directly from my blog. You can steal my bandwidth all you like.

Probably a dumb question but is there a Mac client for UO?

Either way I'll find a way to play. Even if I have to ressurect an old Windows 98 machine.

http://inporylem.com/forum/showthread.php?128-Running-UO-on-a-Mac

I saw what Sheepherder did about 10 hours earlier.

I appreciate being asked, like some of Azaroth's ideas, and have no philosophical objection to playing on a freeshard. But meh, it's just not the game I'm interested in playing. I like my relaxed banksitting half-a-roleplayer lifestyle too much to get into the whole "Here is an undecorated small house with a box you throw regs/vanqs in when you loot them, and take from when you die and need to restock, now let's spend a month trying to take more than we lose!" routine.


Probably. Ever since the developers said they'd come to a decison on a classic shard by the end of the year and then forgot about it, Stratics has been inundated with "Hello I haven't played UO in ten years but here is why none of you are really having fun!" mini-Sinij lolcows to troll.

It was worth repeating my bran filled friend.

Hehe. This made me giggle. I  :heart:  you guyz. ^_^

Is it open beta now? I wouldn't mind tinkering around with it, just not in a focused "Find ze bugs and report zem all plz!" way.

The whole point is that there's more to the shard than that, but it's still classic. I think you should come try it out.

Just imagine how badly you get to rip me on multiple websites if it isn't any good.

These things always implode after months of drama that usually involves GM/Admin corruption or donations. It's kind of like paying to remodel a house that you are renting. Then you get evicted a month after completing the project.

Wait, Britannia has mold?!

TOXIC Mold.

Is that the Bat Country UO chapter?  :why_so_serious:

That's what the Moldy Backpack Inspector told me, too!

*You notice Landlord trying to remove toxic mold from your backpack*

Nice.

This thread needs more charts.

(http://www.blogcdn.com/massively.joystiq.com/media/2011/01/chartexportoverallbest2010.png)

The best new MMOs of 2010 according to Massively's poll.

You may think this is off topic, but I think it illustrates well why I am excited about a UO freeshard at the moment.

In the land of shit, nostalgia is king.

edit:
I think I'll be too busy to give this a shot, but it is intriguing.  I don't expect it to be much fun or have any lasting appeal, but another walk through Britannia sounds like it's at least worth an install. 

The fact that anyone voted for APB in that poll means they were a bot and should have been insta-banned.

... and that graph also has FFXIV in 3rd place or so.

2010 was a shitty year for mmo, eh?

I can at least buy that due to the fanbois going down with the airship.

It was horrid.  A private shard for a ten year old game is news in such a bad year.

What year since 2004 (EQ2/CoH/FFXI/some other shit) has not been a crappy year for MMOGs?

EDIT:

Also UO called for Lantyssa, to remind her that he is not ten years old, and will in fact be FOURTEEN this year.

This how old the shit we have to talk about in this genre is.

This one seemed particularly bad.  Lots and lots released, as opposed to a few big name titles or not much at all, and all of it stunk.  Fourteen years is even worse.  It's almost enough to drive me back to a twenty year old MUD.

Some of the shit, like DCUO, didn't even GET released in 2010. Instead the turd is floating down the river into 2011.

This is awesome, very much looking forward to it. I was terrible at it back in the day, and will probably be worse now. :grin:

IPY was around for awhile and Az just shut it down because he was done with people complaining about a free service.

Well, from the SA thread, I can assure you that you'll get goonrushed at the very least.

Seems like there a lot of eager folks to play a 10 year old game.

Count me in, bro. I like the look of some of the new features, I'm a long-time Britannia fan, and it's been too long since I've actually given a shit about any sort of MMO. Client downloaded, and I'm registered on the forums.

I'm excited for this shard and I honestly love the systems I am reading about.  Kings, Paladins, RoT (neat concept I like it) and etc.  Too bad that work has been kicking my ass so I haven't been able to do much online. :(.  Hoping for stuff to clear up soon!

I'm one of the minority that liked RoT on Siege. I pretty much liked most of what Siege was about and disliked some of the later changes to appease the vocaltards.

But then, I also ran a 100% non-combat character on SP and engaged in a ton of pvp. So there's that (thief/treasure hunter).

Any idea what time of day the server will be up on the 21st? I am going to a hockey game that evening, but if it is up early enough I might work a half day or something and come home to get my character started while I enjoy a few adult beverages before the game.

At the very least, get a macro rolling! :) To answer your question, I have no idea!

I never did get into macroing in UO. Did a bit of very simple stuff in Darkfall, so I imagine it is similar. Is there a built in macro system or do I need to use autoit scripts or something?

The standard program, Razor (like UOAssist back in the day), allows you to make simple to complex macros.  You basically click record, use the skill and select the target. Insert a pause, select "loop" and viola you are rolling. I'll be sure to get starting info and basic stuff like this posted over in our forums.

Needing to macro is broken gameplay imo. Why don't the skills just accrue as you use them? Isn't that the whole benefit of RoT? I never macroed in vanilla UO, and SP made it so I didn't have to (and didn't 'fall behind' because of it).

If you need macroing to avoid a crappy skill gain system, just allow folks to buy up skills at a certain amount per day rather than waste time dicking around with such an archaic method.

That's what RoT is for, absolutely.

However, we have a unique combination of hard skill gain and RoT that is certainly likely to frighten and confuse the people who have gotten accustomed to grey shards being an overnight macro to greatness. That's why some people might be suggesting macroing to you.

We can't totally overhaul how skills work and gain in UO, but here's a few of the things we've got:

• RoT, which allows macroing, but places an upper cap on each skill per 23 hours something near where a casual player could achieve, thus evening the playing field and stopping macroing from being the only viable option of character creation.
• 200% combat skill gain in dungeons. You might as well get out there and take advantage of it. You're capped at a certain level anyway, so if you choose to macro it'll be safer, but slower and more expensive (unless you happen to die a lot in the dungeon, I suppose). This is in combination with skill scrolls found on monsters, which are tailored to your character and provide a quick skill bonus that doesn't apply to the RoT cap.
• Bonus crafting gains in Town Markets. Remember when there were actually crafters in town working away, offering item and repairs? Now everyone just macros in their house. On IPY, certain areas in towns will provide crafting skill gain bonus. This is something you'd be silly not to take advantage of.

Error.

Yeah, even in vanilla UO, I never saw a point to macroing, beside keeping up with the "competition" (but I was never interested in keeping up with that, so...). I just enjoyed raising my skill through whatever I was doing that day, be it hunting, crafting or whatever. But of course, I understand that the majority, when given a shortcut, it's going to use it.

Razor has everything you need built in.

Thanks for making my case.

I have the shard info inputted into Razor, but I don't know my account name and PW.  I tried to see if it would let me autocreate one like on some other shards, but it didn't seem to work.

Got it resolved.  Az had to set me up an account manually.  I'm coming in!!

That and the constant, massive DDOS.

Which I suppose is just another kind of complaining about a free service that I wasn't too fond of. ;)

Surprised about the DDOS.  What the fuck.

Logged in to my beta dude (has 80 tactics/fencing) and got cornered by an Ettin + Giant spider.  Died.

Will try again tomorrow. 

Are beta toons being reset? Am I missing the boat if I don't get in on the beta?

It's a complete wipe. Message Azaroth here if you have a real interest in testing (and not just playing early, though the beta events are all very fun) and he might have an open beta slot for you (don't hate me Az : ). You seem to be pretty active on the forums - not necessarily posting but you are logged in a lot.

15 days to go. I'm pretty damn pumped. Don't miss the boat guys...and you might even get hooked like so many others :)

Nah its cool. I'd enjoy the beta but I'm still working on getting the Mac client working. Thanks for that link btw Az.

Yea, I don't post much. There is a ton to read. Especially in the EvE threads. I miss that game too. :-)

I asked about the thief rules, you can't hook without bait. Although as I said, the timing is pretty awful for me. A month ago I'd have been game for it, even if I'm not really into the time investment for worldy games anymore.

At the very beginning - sure. Once everyone established RoT is a "hard time" where you can't compete no matter how much time or effort you put in, until you "do your hard time". Fucking bad news bears all around.

For a change, Blizzard did get something right - rested system. If you want to grind it out, go for it, but if you are even somewhat casual, part or all of your gains are accelerated. This is ideal system, not RoT. The only question is how aggressive to make this rested bonus.

What I'm interested in is just understanding how the UI works (having never played UO) before I walk into whatever insanity will greet us on day one.  Is there another freeshard or whatnot out there where one can at least connect the client and figure out how to move around and do things?

I'm testing some old house invasion bugs.  Let's see if they still work :).

UI? Son, this is 1997 - we got us GUMPS!

If you have never played UO before you can try some other freeshards or just get in here and try it out.  The UI is pretty easy.  Left click NPC and see your options (buying stuff, training skills, etc...).  I have only played UO Second Age and Metropolis (which has been shut down for awhile).  Could try that if you don't want to get into IPY2, but I would recommend IPY2 first and foremost.

UO Secon Age gets pretty dull fast since its easy to end up having nothing to really do and they have mounts and other things which is very different from IPY.  IPY already seems like its going to have all sorts of different things going ot keep you engaged.

"Hail to the King, baby!"  :awesome_for_real:

Have you played Ultima 7 or Ultima 8?  The game controls similarly to those two (no jumping, however). 

DDOS is pretty common for free UO servers. Or at least it was for IPY.

If it makes you feel better, sure.

That's one of the rules of MMO developers. Don't read your own forums.

Oh, it's a little harder to avoid than that.

But I'm not going to start complaining. Right now I just want to make a good shard. Later, complain.

You custom changes have my interest.

I think you are tackling some of the problems in my experience of playing pre-trammel UO servers.  They almost always cater to reds without anything for the blues to do besides be food for gankers.

That was honestly getting pretty annoying.  Reds would even setup "ghost" characters at key popular dungeon areas to watch for anyone so if someone ran by they would all recall in, go hunt the person down, gank them, and then leave.  Rinse and Repeat.

They called this "Ghosting" (original term I know).

Reds did keep things interesting, but it was getting overwhelming the amount that there was.  It was bad enough having to worry about the blue PKers to then have the Reds on top of it.

I'd think anyone still interested in playing UO is there to relive (or experience) the opportunities for ganking and griefing it offered.

Reading that spleen journal helped make it fairly clear what UO's claim to fame was.

World > Game. That's the reason why I played UO and the reason why I might still be interested in playing it. Not because I enjoyed getting ganked or griefed.

Exactly, it still is an awesome sandbox.

The best thing about pre-trammel UO was how 3/4 of the population seemed to be psychotic murderers. What happened to the Eight Virtues?!  :why_so_serious: That said, I had a lot of fun playing/GMing on a heavy-rp permadeath* shard until the rampant metagaming drove me away. Out of curiosity, what's the tech you guys use? Is POL and Sphere still around?

Kind of a tangent, but this (http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/01/04/the-soapbox-sandboxes-and-the-cop-out-of-ffa-pvp/) massively article is a fairly interesting take on the idolization / vilification of pvp sandboxes.

* It wasn't real permadeath (people had a set number of lives and you only lost lives in pvp; you could also get new lives, though it was pretty hard) and I actually only remember one character dying permanently, and he was a pretty notorious pker... so yeah.

Thanks for pointing out that article over at Massively, Zetor; very interesting one and I share a lot of the author's viewpoints. Regarding the beginning of your post, yes, that's what drew away (within 5-6 months from release) most of the pre-release, single-player Utima fanatics (especially UDIC members) who of course dreamt of "living in Britannia" and roleplaying in it along with other players. Now we can say it was a naive hope, but times and the perception of what a MMORPG meant were different back then.

Most shards run on RunUO nowadays, but both POL and Sphere (and... UOX3, barely) are still around.

Not me.  What has me hooked is the community and how open it is to allow you to do what you want (crafting and etc).

Man, I kind of wish the Penny-Arcade forum crew hadn't decided to start up an IPY presence, since now I don't know who I want to roll with.  :ye_gods:

It's cool man, you have a place with us if you want. Maybe if activity is exceptionally poor for us, I'll follow you to PA land :)

Or the other way around for me.

I am inexplicably intrigued by this.

http://grindingtovalhalla.wordpress.com/2011/01/07/one-shot-an-interview-with-azaroth/

I am literally Az's press bitch.

So before I dive into this (I picked up UO:Ren and played for like two months; didn't really take) how is this legal? Not that this would be a huge hurdle but I don't quite get how this is legal but WoW shards are illegal.

It isn't.  Origin / EA just has never really been interested in fighting it if they're not blatantly attempting to turn a profit.

And apparently EA doesn't care that much if they do. See the UOAssist guy who has been and continues to sell his software for actual money for over a decade.

derp, double post

How is UOAssist illegal? It's a macro program.

I don't ever recall mentioning legality or lack thereof. Generally I'd imagine most game companies nowadays would frown on unaffiliated third parties making a buck off of their services by offering third-party apps that hook into their client.

One important distinction between UO and WOW was timing. Most fundamental reverse engineering of the UO protocols and such happened from 1997 to 1998. In October 98, a little law called the DMCA was passed which included language that can be used to shut down all reverse engineering of anything the manufacturer labels a "protection measure". That was one of the main weapons used against the WOW emulation projects.

13 million or so players helps also. 

When you installed the software you probably clicked "agree" to a Terms of Service that read something like "The Software is licensed to you for play on the Service only. Electronic Arts does not grant you a license to use the Software for any other purpose. You agree to play Ultima Online only on the Service and not through any other means." On the other hand, nothing's actually going to happen to you if you ignore the ToS. So I guess it depends how you feel about these things.

I guess I need to clarify. I don't really care either way. It's just a point of curiosity on my part.

Since the IPY forums are down, I'm really curious as to some of the mechanics Az hasn't specifically mentioned, like whether or not you can heal through poison without having to cure it first, if treasure chests work differently, or just what the deal with special hits is.

I think I can safely answer those....

You can heal through poison.

Well, actually not sure what you are asking about with the chests.

There are no special hits.

I'm not sure what I mean by the chests either. Someone else was asking me about them.

Pretty ambivalent about the special hits, but healing through poison is kind of a bummer.

Friday night, fellas.

There will be a live video stream posted for those that would like to stand back and observe the mayhem.

No-Healing through poison just made me spend tons on GC pots.

I'm pumped Az....you said night so I won't bother taking Friday off work :)

So if I trade for a glacial staff, dye my robe the brightest color on the tub, and sit at the WBB, what is the TTG? (time to ganked)

 :grin:

The time it takes someone to bank their stuff and get enough purple pots to bomb you, probably.

Gonna tell my GF now that Friday is reserved ;).  I gotta get all my character names in since I really like your name generator and how it catches dupes.

what was the final decision on the restrictions on PKs

seen here in this poll: http://inporylem.com/forum/showthread.php?78-quot-Paladins-quot-Poll

There is a timer after aggressive action where ANY players cannot gate/recall. No Red specific nerf.

that's a little disappointing

Launch delayed until Feb. 11th. (http://azaroth.org/2011/01/17/executive-decision/)

Very disappointed, and three weeks seems like a really small amount of time to fix and polish up all the existing stuff, implement and test new game systems, and even launch a new website and forums.

Yeah, I do apologize to everyone. But I've just been working on this for so long that I don't want it to flop because of bugs and incomplete stuff.

We're very close and we can get enough done in 3 weeks to be somewhere good.

Hey man, ya gotta do what ya gotta do. I know I selfishly wanted release, but hell....we've waited this long - polish her up and lets roll in three weeks.

This actually works perfectly for me. I am going to a hockey game Friday night and will be in no shape to try to deal with re-learning UO when I get home. I also was coerced into starting WoW again- by the 11th I will probably be good and sick of it again.

No problem, Az, keep working on it 'til you feel it's ready :)

I am not disappointed at all.  I'll be honest I was looking forward to playing and getting with my buds Slayer/Cheddar and making new ones, but that is OK because I would also rather have something that is in a good working condition and not just mediocre.  If people truly are interested enough they will gladly wait the time needed for a good working product.

Custom housing Az? Looking sweet. Come help us build a town (well) after launch (in about 2 weeks):

http://www.facebook.com/pages/In-Por-Ylem-Classic-Ultima-Online/166921443320403#!/album.php?aid=51305&id=166921443320403 (http://www.facebook.com/pages/In-Por-Ylem-Classic-Ultima-Online/166921443320403#!/album.php?aid=51305&id=166921443320403)

(http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash1/hs792.ash1/168240_193502100662337_166921443320403_773682_2046392_n.jpg)

(http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/hs001.snc6/165162_193502443995636_166921443320403_773694_2452109_n.jpg)

(http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash1/hs778.ash1/166840_193502570662290_166921443320403_773695_1233591_n.jpg)

(http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/hs265.snc6/179342_193502637328950_166921443320403_773696_1620871_n.jpg)

(http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash1/hs884.ash1/179220_193502760662271_166921443320403_773697_5956662_n.jpg)


Join the In Por Ylem facebook page if you haven't already, suckas!

Seriously, fuck facebook.  I'm not joining a goddamn spyware scam aimed at scraping my personal information in order to better serve me ads, just so I can follow an illegal implementation of a server based around a failed MMO.

Thanks for contributing to the conversation.

I like the custom housing and hope there's even more than what he showed. Now I'm more interested in playing, though I know I won't be PVPing much. Probably be one of those weirdos who crafts all the time.

Hey man, craftards are always welcome...just make sure to throw me some armor/pots once in a while :) We'll have a sweet vendor spot for ya.

Sloppy cobblestone-laying in the center of that second screenshot, needs more randomness. There are at least two, and sometimes four of each different tile in UO (grass, dirt, cobblestone, wooden floorboards, etc), and randomizing between them helps getting rid of repeating patterns, improving the overall feel both in screenshots and while moving around. :P

Friendly reminder, 1 week to go! Hit me up if you are down to try this with us at launch.

You already know that I'm soooo there ;)!

Dude I'm so there.

I actually got a hankering for some old school so I'm interested.   I d/led the client and signed up on the forums.   Do we have to do anything specific to get an actual account?

Also not to derail but I got confused when I looked at the client page and did some reading.   Did they seriously spend a bunch of money to do KR with fancy graphics then throw them in the trash and spend a bunch of money to make a crappy 2d in 3d client?

Sorry man, we don't let people with WoW nicknames in the guild.... TRAMMY!

You should read up on the UO client. Some interesting stuff, especially how anyone who has had to code in it admits it's a steaming pile of mess in the backend.

I have the client downloaded. Haven't decided if I'll macro or kick it old school. What's the word on vendors? Were they tweaked a bit to allow a bit more selling/buying?

Got my work laptop working, I may be able to get it working on there... which means COUNT ME IN!!!

Do we have an estimate for server up time? Is it going to be earlier in the day or in the evening?

They are aiming for 7:00pm EST Tomorrow, according to the Az man.

227 on the forums right now, at 10:15am. Good luck Az, this sucker looks like it's gonna be big :)

I am ready with like 4 friends to play tonight.
We just started on UOSA last week (after reading up on IPY we had to get some UO in) but I'm definitely more interested in IPY since I think the flexibility of making it so custom will really allow changes that are positive.

You going to roll with us?

346 users on forum....

Wow, forum is boggin down somethin serious.  A monster has been created.

p.s.
I still have no damned clue how to even get this crap working, and there's nothing on IPY to indicate how. 

http://inporylem.com/enter.html

Its up and live wanna link up?

Log in seems hosed. Stuck at verifying.

Its authentic old school .. 3rd server crash in 2 hours.  :awesome_for_real:

But lots of people and a blast from the past.

I think I crashed the server by removing someone's bodyparts.   :why_so_serious:

A certain amount of people seem to get stuck at verifying.

Here's my recommendations to this point:

       1. Make sure you have a Classic Client version 7.0.10.3 or higher.
       2. Make sure your login.cfg says "playipy.com" and not "login.owo.com".
       3. Restart your client.
       4. Try a different account name (it might be taken).
       5. If all else fails... try to connect with Razor to address:

        playipy.com

        port 2593

So far a very solid launch Az, good work. People that want access, PM me.


We got our first house up, the Buc's Den transporter tower spot. WOOT

Az, you did a fuck awesome job. I've been loving the shit out of what I've seen and done in game so far, and I really love the scrolls thing from monsters. I always wanted to learn to pvp too.

One of those was our KillCam script.

It showed each death on the shard, and it started flipping around so quick that it crashed the server.

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/in-por-ylem-broadcast

One thing I love the most is the current skill progression pace. When I see screen shots of people afk(nonafk) macroing fletching in towns just to make gold I cringe at how unfun that seems to me. Or when I run by magery shops and people afk(nonafk) macroing in place over and over and over.

Shit man, i'm out in the fuckin woods with my bears, and hinds, and timber wolves, and mother fucking gorillas tearing shit up like a mad bard at the same time, stabbing a gazer in the nipple. I skill up as I play the game and stat up as I play the game, also I make cash this way, and it's seriously made my fucking week that I can enjoy this shit again in a UO server just starting out with a huge pop. Because I run into people in the middle of no where. Like someone said on the ipy forums, you only need a 7x gm if everyone else has one (I've never actually had a 7x gm to be honest). UO can be played and enjoyed even if everyone isn't a 7x gm. Hell I was harassing miners with an army of bears and got attacked countless times by newbie geared up newbs and managed to get a few hundred ingots before the guards sent me to a dirt nap with a few murder counts under my belt.

This does remind me a hell of a lot like how ultima used to be.

This is really amazing Az I gotta give mad props to you guys for this.   Most fun an MMO has been in a long time.

Seriously we were all grinding our ass off to get a house up and that was by far the most rewarding feeling teamwork I've had in years.

Heh, not surprised then. There were folks in Yew standing at the Ankh killing each other as fast as they could go. 

Pretty much the only thing I macro afk is Hide, since it's nigh-on impossible to do through normal gameplay without holding down a macro as you move everywhere.

Also isn't a live stream of every death on IPY able to be abused a good bit?

So far, great job Az!




We got our second house up, securing our Buc teleporter tower spot.

Great crew of guys. If you aren't part, well you are going to miss out.

Slayerik: If you wouldn't mind me tagging along, I'd love to see what it's all about. I have basic knowledge of the game/mechanics/world so I usually don't need too much explained, but I'm aware there's a lot I don't know/bother to know. Although I've never been big on macroing or guilds so I might be a bit unreliable for the time being. Still enjoying newbie life, skilling up, taming, provoking, and all that. Currently making a pvm character started with 50 tame/ 50 voke. Currently working hiding into the 30s, music into the 40s, fencing into the 40s, anat/heal/tactics into the 30s and Magery into the 30s thanks to trainers. Only messing around with melee skills due to the lack of any real income for magery. Had to go to bucs den to find a thief guild trainer. If you wouldn't mind my company when you're doing something with friends, what would be the preferred method of contact for UO? Do people still use ICQ or is it all IRC now?

My largest gripe so far is that I need a cooking utensil to cook a raw bird on a campfire. Bah. When I grew up, we didn't need cooking "tools". We double-clicked our raw birds and fish-steaks and threw them on the campfires until they were blackened and ready for consumption.

So far my only gripe is how incredibly slow stats raise. Skills I've been fine with, but stats need to be a bit faster, especially since see-sawing isn't really worth doing.

I love this thing.   I really only played traditional UO hardcore so this is right up my ally.

Except
For
Magery

A.k.a. how I waste a bunch of skill points to get recall on every character I'll ever make.   Would be awesome to have some options for this one must have ability.

I'm hanging out in Cove.  Mining, very slowly, to victory.

I see stat increases faster than I do skill. Depends on what you're doing, I guess.

Apparently Az has been working on stat gain rates.

Runebooks, you put recall scrolls in em. Dont need much magery then!

I also found out someone placed a fucking villa in the area north of Brit past the mountains. A VILLA. How the fuck.

People get pretty serious about UO.

I'm roleplaying a bard being jailed after having gotten too drunk in a tavern and started a bar-brawl after singing loud, obnoxious songs about the appearance of the other tavern-patrons' mothers. Now my character paces forth and back in his cell, his only belonging being an out of tune lute. A round-house kick to the head in the bar-brawl knocked a few braincells loose and made him forget nearly all his barding skills, which he is now trying to remember (i.e. I keep double-clicking the damn lute while pacing forth and back).

(http://img35.imageshack.us/img35/8378/uoscreenshot4.th.png) (http://img35.imageshack.us/i/uoscreenshot4.png/)

Originally he was in the cell just across the hall, but another player randomly logged in there, and after the embarrassing silence that occurred had passed, he shivved my character with a poisonous shiv he had hidden about his person. After nearly dying (2 hp remaining when poison wore off), the guards threw my character in a different cell.

You know CAPTCHA is only gonna slow em down a tad, right Az?

CAPTCHA?  Where's this implemented?

Eh, lots of bots. Mining and lumberjacking is overrun with em if you believe the forums. So AZ said he was gonna put a CAPTCHA in for those.

Sonova... any details?  I enjoy UO mining, but if I have to deal with a CAPTCHA, that could quickly get annoying.

Well, not in yet so I don't have any details of coarse.

And I wouldn't really expect Az to be forthcoming with any info on this.

In the mean time, I wonder if anybody knows if the concept of Deep Water is in for fishing on IPY. Can you GM fishing from the shore? I plan to make or buy a boat in any case, but am curious to know.

Also, this is really awesome Az. I am reliving 1998 for the most part. Having a blast.

CAPTCHA would make mining a chore but if it got rid of the bots i would tolerate it.

Well, that was my point. I don't believe CAPTCHA will get rid of the bots. They will just work around it.

There seems to be a lot of GM activity to try and quell it some. I think that is the best approach really.

Hope you're not on IPY then, since IPY2 has no colored ore.  :grin:

We're hesitating on the CAPTCHA just a little mostly because we know it'll be an annoyance.

We track resource gatherers. If you're mining, fishing, lumberjacking, whatever... we know about it. We do the rounds regularly to check, and I'd say that players are attended 80-90% of the time. The problem is being blown out of proportion on the forums (obviously).

If we do a CAPTCHA however, it'll hopefully be less intrusive than you're imagining, and perhaps even a little "fun".

Wait, so how does this captcha work? I'm getting the impression you're not talking about a login one.

If you interrupt and block my mining, it will not be fun.

I'll simply stop playing altogether.

Speaking of playing, why aren't 90% of the people that showed interest in working together? We have a solid guild base and basically the F13ers besides a couple of us are non-existant. Contact me.

The surest way to get me to leave a game, is to join a guild. Any guild. I prefer to play solo.

I poked my head in to the game, but much like Eve, I don't think I am capable of getting my head around this game.

Well, how's the mining around the guild house?  Is there a forge and anvil?

I picked Cove for now because I thought that few people would go there to level mining and blacksmithing.  Turns out it's a major city or something.   :oh_i_see:

Only about 1/3 of the PA forums folks that showed interest stuck around past the first weekend. Most everyone else was interested in crafting and their enthusiasm just completely evaporated after seeing how slow gains were or were tired of being PK'd every time they went out to do something. We have a fairly solid core of about half a dozen people, but only two of us are any kind of fighting character, and everyone else has been frantically lumberjacking and mining like crazy to try to afford houses and reagent stockpiles for magery later on.

Yea I was having fun but I quit today.   The murder system is a bit to carebear for me.

Baffling, given that this never happened in real UO and is merely an invention of butthurt carebears who couldn't be bothered to just recall to an easy escape.

 :oh_i_see:

I think the PK reference might refer to training fighting skills, which gain much faster in dungeons, where there is no recall.  I haven't been there my self as my little fisher woman with 50 archery can barely scratch a skeleton. Takes 5 minutes to kill one so I can't imagine going to dungeons any time soon.

I have to think this will be an interesting experiment to see if player justice can hold the murder rate down. I have my doubts at this point, but ya never know.

Edited to add: Actually I see far more complaints from the other side on the forums , Big disappointments that they can't dry loot and rape at will.

Player justice won't work.

As to the crafting skills, after I saw how slowly they were going up, I thought to myself "You know, I'll probably GM blacksmithing about the time everyone else has stopped playing."

It made me a little sad.

Yep, it does remind me of how painful it really was. It took me years to have 'completed' characters. Its just that we were new and there was nothing else... so it was all good.

I believe I will continue to plug along, although I am unable to entice my GF to come play here. As a result, we decided to once more rescue our UO accounts from the verge of death and play some together again. We met in UO in '98.

Oh and
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/02/lord-british-explains-what-ultima-online-did-better-than-anyone.ars (http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/02/lord-british-explains-what-ultima-online-did-better-than-anyone.ars)
 very brief word with RG

I logged into the voice chat the first night, struggled for 2 hours to get the goddamned game running, then was ignored when I asked basic questions like how the fuck to get rezzed (I couldn't remember if it was shrines or healers or what), how to skin kills, etc. I realize they were retard basic questions, but it would have been nice if SOMEONE at least acknowledged them. I eventually got frustrated and just quit. Too much work and bullshit with almost zero fun. Pity, since I was really looking forward to it.

Wait, people are complaining about gatherer bots? Is this a carebear server? The UO I remember would rejoice to find botting miners: easy ore.

Also, nobody has ever answered my repeated questions about what version of thievery rules are active.

Not sure if I know all the answers on stealing and the Codex seems to have lost it's page if there was any info there to begin with.

What I do know is there is a huge discussion about in combat stealing on the forums right now. Combat stealing is disallowed. Town stealing is I believe.

An yes people are killing the botters when they're are out of town but the botters are running in Yew and inside city limits elsewhere as well. They're are taking counts for it though and been red has its pains.


side note on all the edits.. chemo sucks

I especially like the thief-rage over house looting being essentially out of the picture. Apparently homeowners should have to take on massive amounts of risk and go through elaborate safety rituals every time they even look at their front door funny or else they deserve to lose everything in their homes, while the house thief has the massive risk of... having to throw away another death robe? Getting only half of a house's loot (gasp, shock!) if they get caught midway through?

And apparently combat stealing is in, but the thief can't be in War mode.

Sorry man, it was pretty hectic for me with babies and stuff and I didn't have the presence I had hoped for on launch weekend.

If you want to give it another go, I can't promise I'll be around all the time but the guys that are should be helpful. It was all pretty chaotic that first day or two.

Make sure they can actually hear you. The first time I popped in with my mic plugged in they couldn't hear me and I thought they were just ignoring me.

The main problem with the awesome thief mechanics in UO have always been the shitty thieves, those just out to push the rules and fuck people over. Bank thieves, noto thieves, sploiter thieves, every system UO had put in had a gaggle of tards to get it pulled right back out again.

It was really depressing as I loved my thief characters.

No, I got responses when said things like 'test? test?'...just dead silence when I had a question. Every time.

Can't say I am too interested in working with that level of cooperation. And I am a week behind now, so really no point.

did you run it as admin?

I had a similar experience one night, but i noticed they could only hear me when I alt tabbed to the voice app to say test test, re ran as admin and it worked out better.

i'm in ur server unattended macroing ur ore

Not sure if Az is going to see this as I have no way to comprehend the stress tolls it's taken on him from running the server and how busy he might be. Also I realize this is completely inappropriate and probably shouldn't be posted here and probably extremely personal, and I know Az doesn't have any reason to believe a single word of this, and I know I'm going to regret it and probably not visit this forum for a while afterwards because I'm completely introverted as fuck, but that's beside the point. And I profusely apologize for how long this might be as I have no way to determine how long this is going to get as I am typing this from the beginning. But I will seriously try to make this as short as I possibly am able, and it's not necessary at all for him to reply to this post, I only hope that he gets to read it at some point when he has the time and if it isn't too much trouble. And I realize a lot of this is probably going to sound like I'm giving you guys way too much credit than you deserve and possibly (I hate using this word) "asskissing" which I am not intending to, and I'm only posting this right now because of the way I'm feeling and the way I have been feeling so I felt I would express myself with this. I also realize everything is subject to change and the server could be up for years or could be gone tomorrow or the worst of the worst case scenarios could take place, that's why I'm just trying to take the days as slow as possible and enjoy my time. Enjoy thinking about running through the woods in UO, the forests I know. Enjoying my time being there, in that world I loved so much. And I'm very thankful to have that opportunity and I feel the dev team must be some of the most amazing people (even though I don't know shit about them) to have put this amazing project all together.

Also I realize this is probably completely way too soon to put together something like this. And I know I'm just some random person and I don't know anything about Az except for the fact I think he had something to do with wtfman years ago but I could be completely wrong. Oh and before I forget, I hope I get completely and madly swept up in IPY2 to the point I become so sick of the game that I never want to look at it anymore because I would feel as if I'd had my share and made my peace and it can be remembered as something I will always remember for the rest of my life. But anyways, I just have to have my say on this. Okay I'll shut up and get to the point already.

When I first played UO it was in the year 2000 after trammel had already been introduced. I never got to see old UO or what it was like, I only heard stories about it. That's not what's important though. I enjoyed UO more than anything else I've ever felt in my entire life. I know I was young and in my teens at the time. But I was also dealing with a lot of problems of my own and UO was like a better place for me to be when I felt like everything else wasn't working out. I eventually (bad move I know) dropped out of highschool at the time so I could spend more time in UO and avoid the real problems in my life. I've never been into PKing, PVPing or griefing much. I was just having too much fun with what the world had to offer. At one point I was even the co-owner to a castle and had my own giant tower.  I left UO on a bad note with my  real life situation really having gone to shit. I spent many years struggling with depression and I realize a big part of the reason I probably enjoyed UO was the addiction I had to it. Of course over the years I've gotten things in order, I won't go into detail about how bad things got when I was at my lowest but it was pretty shitty, I'll leave it at that. However, for years nothing ever really compared to UO for me. The closest thing was maybe Arcanum. And the only other games I somewhat extremely enjoyed were team fortress classic and ragnarok online(lol I know). Anyways I grew up with console systems NES, SMS, GEN, SNES, N64, Saturn (my favorite), PS1, Dreamcast. Those were my favorites. But when I played UO, nothing compared to the amazing world UO provided. Quit UO in 2001 though.

I started to turn my life around in 2003 and it's been mostly uphill ever since, with a lot of really hard bumps on the way. But I was always miserable most of the time. I was never really happy, or maybe I wasn't certain what happiness was. Last year I had heart surgery (I'm in my 20s) to fix a near fatal birth defect (it wasn't from bad health, just bad luck) and the circumstances leading up to having my primary doctor actually finding such a critical issue so close to something serious actually happening and then having a heart surgeon actual correct it in time (I was in the critical stages, already had an aortic aneurysm)(its possible to have one without it bursting, it was just very very expanded and ready to burst) had to have been one in a hundred thousand because I only had that doctor as my primary doctor after my mom met him through an accident. A year before that I was in a suicide ward, and just a few weeks ago I was in the hospital from a very serious case of food poisoning. However, regardless of all this, I've been going to school for some time now and I've been working on getting a career in the medical field. I'm pretty sure no amount of therapy sessions or anti-depressant meds will be able to fix a lot of things with me and I know by the time I die some day I'll probably have way too many regrets or unresolved things, or things that make me upset or cry or angry. (But I sure as hell don't regret dropping out of highschool to play UO). I have a better grip on things now these days, if something needs to be done, it will be done. I don't let my addictions (I'm not sure if I can I usually get miserable) take advantage of me.

I know not many things make me happy in life and like I mentioned before, I'm usually constantly miserable and not happy. I usually don't like a lot of things in life so I know it'll be rough for me at times. But I just wanted to let you know, and possibly your dev team know, (yes I've said this before) that you've made a person happy (god damn I have a tear running down my face) this is so cheesy and corny. But thank you, like I said, I know nothing about the people who put IPY2 together, and I was not there for IPY1 because I was too busy hating myself and being miserable to care much about something like that at the time. But thank you so much, I know it probably sounds like I'm giving you guys too much credit but this is how I truly feel. And I know nothing is guaranteed and things are always subject to change, I know I might feel completely different tomorrow than I am right now but that's why I'm trying to enjoy it. I'm just trying to enjoy the happiness I'm feeling from being able to play on IPY2. I know UO has a reputation for PKers, griefers and such and I've never really met that criteria but I love being swept up in the chaotic nature of it. I love being part of that world and experiencing things like that. It's like the world I never gave up on. And I just wanted to thank you again, the devs who put this together, to me, are truly beautiful people for making me feel this way. And I'm sure I probably forgot 90% of the things I wanted to say or how I wanted to say them and I'm extremely sorry for how long this is, but I just had to have my say on this.

So thank you, thank you, you wondrous bastards for bringing tears to my eyes as I type this, and a feeling of happiness for something, a feeling that I haven't felt in years for anything. I know I'll probably get some flak from the regulars here as I don't exactly consider myself a regular of (anywhere) to be honest. And I just hope they allow a post like this to remain here regardless of the inappropriate nature of it.

And like I said, I don't know how things will go, how things will last, what will be or what will come. How life is going to be or whatever. But I'm just trying to enjoy my time, the time given to me, and that's all that's important and matters to me right now.

(http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e121/GrimDysart/words-1.png)

 :ye_gods: :ye_gods: :ye_gods: :ye_gods: :ye_gods: :ye_gods:

tl;dr that shit. Bloody hell.

I think something is broken here. I haven't seen a Red Tears post on the forums in days now, and as this is my major entertainment from this game now, if makes me sadf.    :cry2:

Well that's because there are almost no reds so far. Murder counts decay very quickly since most people are still macroing overnight (1100 players at 3 AM EST certainly are not out and about in dungeons), so a lot of people are just being blue PKs.

You people are animals.

Cosapi, I'm really glad you're enjoying yourself. That's what this is all about.

I too am enjoying myself thoroughly; thanks much Az!

I'm having almost as much fun cleaning up and updating the wiki as I am playing the game, but that's just how I roll ...

Well I have played about 3 days or so now. IPY isn't really how I envisioned a "classic" uo server. What people want is the classic ruleset, not just leaving out the cool new shit added by expansions.

Things I hate:

1. No new lands. Why not have more room for housing, and less crowding.
2. No new mobs.
3. No new mounts. (Are there any mounts in the game? I haven't seen one.)
4. Instant death when looting a blue in town. Nobody has to call the guards.
5. No rare ores or cool crafting shit.
6. Stupid "RoT remix" skill gains. Probably worse than RoT because It seems like I gain 1 point now before I'm exhausted.
7. Crafting skills are incredibly slow to raise even in the 200% gain areas. I think i made like 60 cutlass and raised from 50 to 50.2
8. NPC sell prices for most items are just too low when compared to the value of their base materials. The NPC will buy a shield that takes 8 ingots for 16g, but he won't buy my "exceptional" sword that took 10 ingots for more than 7g?
9. Secure houses? How the fuck can someone justify leaving out the stuff I already mentioned, but leaving this shit in?
10. I have seen much better mob ai and spawns on other servers.
11. Macro Police. Kind of pointless considering the crowd this kind of server attracts. Punishing people for wanting to automate tedious shit like clicking rocks is probably the worst idea ever. Either find ways to make it more fun, or leave it alone.  
12. Server shutting down randomly. Heard about the old days of az timewarping the first server to save his friends houses. Makes you wonder.

Like:

1. It's uo and there are people playing.
2. The "King" system seems interesting. Should be called "Mayor" though.

I guess only one thing REALLY needs to be said by me here:

#12 is nonsense.

The rest, I guess.. I dunno. You're certainly free to have your own opinions.

If you're enjoying yourself in general, then I'm happy.

So why have such crap for skill gains? 

There are people already starting to hit 90 skill, not yet two weeks in.

However, if you'd like to know why I did things, check out my blog.

I'd be somewhat interested if it wasn't the terrible default RunUO settings. It's depressing after playing on a fantastic (yet empty) shard like IMY.

Az, take a wander around IMY - http://www.inmaniylem.com/index.php?title=Server_Information (http://www.inmaniylem.com/index.php?title=Server_Information) and see what's actually possible with runUO. Maybe try getting in touch with that guy or something.

Everyone's a critic!

Besides, I actually just glanced over that. Those changes are neat, but all quite simple compared to what we've done. We just didn't detail every small change we've ever made in one big behemoth list.

I think I'll back out of here slowly now, though.

Have fun.. or don't. ;)

That's pretty damn impressive when you compare it to IPY. Prison sounds awesome.

So what's the difference? You make the scripters macro for a month instead of a week, and condemn anyone else to either giving up or being the eternal bitch of the people who macroed.

Welcome to the world of video games! "You tried to make something for me to enjoy? HOW FUCKING DARE YOU!"  :grin:

I think skill gain is fine. Stat gain was bad but it's better now.

Dungeons are full of activity, and it seems I find stuff everywhere I venture. The world seems to be alive, and that's a very good thing.

We just placed our Villa at the Buc's den gate....woo!


Anyways, I have no major complaints...but I'm not looking for stuff either.

That's what it seems like to me. You still have to macro your ass off for those gains because they come so slowly. You can't just be Mr casual anti-macroer who only logs in for an hour each night to have fun. Even resources and gold are slow and tedious to accumulate. I don't know who az was trying to help, but it wasn't casual players.

How does it compare to Siege Perilous RoT? Because that was pretty awesome for casual players.

It's RoT turned around to be more psychologically palatable.

When you log in, you get a 200% boost to skill gain that tapers off gradually to a soft cap at a point we've deemed casual players probably wouldn't be getting to.

However, you can go out and grab skill scrolls from monsters that give you instant boosts and push through the soft cap. So you can catass to some degree if you really want to, but you have to actually play.

So far it's working quite well. People are generally even, macroers aren't getting ahead, and by a large margin the very best strategy to raise your character's skills is to get out into a dungeon.

Sorry Aaroth, didn't mean to come off as a total ass-hat, it is awesome that you are getting a private UO shard up and running, something I never will have the time for (well unless I hit the lottery).

Having played UO since Jan of 98, for about 4 years, it was a wild ride, I don't want to go to the shitty skill/stat gain that classic had (well depending on what week you were playing), and I really like the locks that are available, having to really only be a 6 spec gm and then have 100 you would blow in stat keeping sucked.  Okay, my view only, but would rather you have the classic set up of making something and gaining skill until you have to move on to something else.  I don't want it as easy as WoW, where you could in theory have orange materials to always gain a skill, but making it so you take a long time (like 100 tries to gain 0.1 skill uggggggh) would suck, the balance with a decent sweet spot would be nice.

Lack of time means I can't come and play on your shard.

That's laughably wrong. The towns are full of EUO macroers making huge bank. The guarded sheep pens all have naked people sitting in them hidden collecting wool and banking it. Wandering the woods you'll find it full of tamers on EUO macros running in straight lines taming everything in sight.

Skill gain wise. The system I described has nothing to do with resources, and neither did RoT.

Unless you want something Punkbuster or Warden-esque on your computer, we can't automatically stop EasyUO and neither can any other UO server - EA or free.

The amount of nostalgia skewing this thread is awesome. I don't enjoy the shard, but that's because I don't have the patience for MMOs anymore, as far as I recall the gains are just as brutal as they were back before T2A.

Well, I guess you can get pretty far based on the fact that most people aren't familiar with the runuo forums. However, I'm not really impressed by the number of unmodified addons you dropped into the custom folder. When I run into any core mods I'll begin to be impressed.

It is cool to be excited to play a MMO again.

Thanks Az, been havin' a blast so far.

I don't think you know what you're talking about.

Either that, or you've got some sort of grudge going on and feel the need to troll.

Anyway, I get enough trolling from assholes elsewhere, I think I'll happily avoid these forums from now on. Have fun.

I'm pretty sure that I do know what I'm talking about. Your reply confirms it.

Fix your guardlines at least. You can leave the holes in the ocean for now.

When you message that guy to ask what a core mod is, could you ask him to fix the moongates too?

Right now the only two huge (and one not-quite-as-huge) problems I have with IPY after not having played UO for years and years and years is that:

a.) Aside from PvE, dexer/melee fighter characters are at a massive, massive disadvantage compared to someone who uses primarily magery (and even in PvE, it's completely trivial for a mage to waltz up to something I'm fighting, ebolt it once, and get full loot rights while I take all the damage) due to the era of the shard, its young age, and the lack of any noticeable balance changes to help the melee/mage disparity. Yeah, one of the best, deadliest PvPers on IPY1 was the dexer Method Man, but he ran around in tens of thousands of gold worth of gear (likely with more than a few replacements) that's currently unavailable to the general population with skills nobody has yet and won't for at least another month or more and the better part of a decade in experience.

b.) Crafting gains are slow. Really slow. Far slower than they should be, even in the "crafting squares" where you get 200% skill gain. The only reason my guild's carpenter is in the late 70s is because we had a team of 3-4 lumberjacks feeding him hundreds of thousands of boards (and most other crafters at that skill level or higher have had the same treatment, along with EUO gathering scripts). My alchemist went through 1000 nightshade making and applying poisons and only went up around 2.4% alchemy and poisoning at only around 50 skill. Crafting other potions isn't much quicker.

c.) Housing prices are kind of  :uhrr:. With citizenship, small houses are 27-28k, sandstone w/patio houses are 32k, two-story villas are around the 50k range (!), but the small stone tower (which has less secures and lockdowns than the sandstone, but has slightly more efficient use of space) is 54k gold, and the other 8 secure/1100 lockdown houses like the villa are 154-180k gold. I understand the villa pricing was used as an incentive to get people to place larger houses earlier, but right now it's just led to people placing a shitload of smalls, a shitload of sandstones, and a shitload of villas. With super-cheap villas, there's no reason to ever really buy one of the other 8/1100 houses aside from aesthetics and/or a ton of money burning a hole in your bank box, and a guild-house villa with one or two smaller houses placed in a decent spot can hold enough space for a tower to be placed just as easily as a large brick.

I find myself wondering if anyone working on IPY2 ever played uo before trammel.

I'm more than certain Az has at least; IIRC he played on the same server I did (Napa Valley?),

I'm not certain you read his posts explaining his intent vis-a-vis IPY2.

I heard AZ came after trammel. New lamest feature for IPY: blessed house keys

That sounds like a good feature to me.  I'm not a fan of MMO stealing in the first place.  In all likelihood, if I lost a house due to someone snagging a key from me, that'd probably be it in terms of my playing IPY2.

Even if someone got your house key, it wouldn't really matter. You can't steal locked down/secured shit.

Honestly, why do you play if you hate it so much?

Same here, pretty much. The "standard" house-protection measure involves placing tables around the entrance so nobody (even you) can get in without unlocking, moving, replacing, and re-locking them down, which is oh so fun a ritual to do, especially if you have to sit there and detect for hidden people every time you open your door.

At any rate, according to Az, most house thieving he saw was done via exploits and bugs, so it's unlikely we'll ever see it in.

I don't mind that feature too much to be honest.  Geez why do ppl always want the griefing options available.  I understand some griefing, but not so they can get every single thing to the point where you need a multi-box secure setup just to get inside your house.

I just want to know where I can go to get money (and maybe some skills) as a dexer outside of Shame. I got a few blessed days in the place before it got too popular and now it's pretty much perma-camped at any time of day or night and absolutely stuffed with annoying inept notos. Even Wrong with its decent-but-not-that-great gold (if you're not farming the ogre lords as a bard) is pretty populated and frequented by PKs looking to slaughter bards and newbs killing orcs and trolls.

Despise is a shithole full of slimes and rats and snakes and other absolutely trivial bullshit, with few to no decent spawns anywhere (the old ogre lord spawn on the bottom-most level seems to be gone entirely). Covetous is also full of slimes, and level one is pretty much always packed. Destard is pretty much un-doable if you're not a bard or mage. Hythloth's loot is garbage for the amount of annoyance in the place, Deceit's probably not even doable without a group to deal with people like the Goons, and I can't even set foot into Wind due to my lack of magery.

It sure is awesome having LC post here.

The griefer perspective is always amusing.

Maybe I should change my online handle, quit hanging out with my derelict friends, and pretend to be someone else.  The respect of whiny douchebags from the internet is all that really matters in the end.

Our checkered past doesn't change the sentiment.   I miss you too, buttercup.

Is LC some famous griefer from the old UO days that I've forgotten about it?

Nope, just a guy with a Little Cock....

edit: I don't know the guy but the cheap shot was too easy not to take.

Shadowbane.  I don't remember LC from UO.

But you are too cool for irc these days.

Curious if this has changed much?   I quit on like the 3rd or 4th day when I saw this was going to happen and everyone thought I was crazy.    I liked IPY2 even though there were several things I didn't agree with.   I mean everyone has their own pet peeves but if we all had our own perfect server we'd all be playing alone.    A non functional red/blue PvP system on an old school UO server though is like  :uhrr:.

Which of course brings up the real problem with RoT.   Even if Az fixes it now I obviously won't come back and spend a whole month being behind people who are nearing GM.

Blue PKs are a bit less of an issue now with short term counts at 8 hours and longs at 40, and the red situation's actually changed quite a bit very rapidly. More than a few of the people I saw macroing Magery at East Brit Bank only a couple days ago (who would be there day in and day out for literally weeks on end) are now red and pretty much running from lowbie dungeon to lowbie dungeon stomping anyone who can't stand up to them; considering most of them are running with probably 91 magery at the least, this will be most people.

For people like me who aren't really good at UO PvP (which is starting to make me question why I play the shard, since even if I'm not really there for PvP, the vast majority of people probably are), it's kind of irritating, since I basically have nothing to do now except macro skills of my own.

A lot of the casual players are starting to complain as they hit the upper 70s and 80s. Az's fair play (or rested casual bonus) actually hurts casual players more than anyone else. Sure the daily gains are capped, but to reach those caps you have to play/macro for 8+ hours at a time. Over an hour of play just to gain .1 in a skill.  Casuals just can't put in that kind of time. Az's response has been to delete or lock all threads about the issue.

Here is how Az handles most criticism and complaints: http://i.imgur.com/Oj6q0.jpg

Still no reds on the server.

There is a certain irony in you bitching about the way Az decides to run his server.

I don't know why you'd make a UO freeshard and have it take more than a couple weeks of casual play to hit GM. It's not like players are outleveling meticulously-crafted quests or instance content. You want it to be better to suck up your murder penalties than to delete and make a new character, but that's about it.

On Az's server you are capped at:
60-70: 5 points per day
70-80: 2 points per day
80-90: 1 point per day
90-100: 0.5 points per day

Thats 37 days to reach GM in a skill if you can manage to reach the cap each day. By the 80s you can't do it through normal play anymore. Sometimes it's hours between gains.

I totally agree with you though.

It would only be ironic if I was somehow involved with running UO emu servers. I'm not. Are you looking to score some points with Az?

Or if you were a rabid member of an Eve corp that got caught in a massive developer scandal.

Note the past tense, which renders it only slightly ironic.

I joined RKK/BoB because my previous corporation merged into them. We left BoB and reformed a few months later because we didn't like being in BoB. This all happened long after the developer scandal. In no way did I benefit from it. In fact I was poorer when I left BoB than I was when I joined. I had to devote an hour or more of my play time every night to refueling POSes. Otherwise they would kick me out or charge me like 1 bil isk per week for membership. After that I had to spend 3 hours losing ships in laggy fleet fights.

I hate BoB. Fuck em. I read the shit they said about us when goons leaked their private forums.

I'm still having fun when I can play. I macro my ass off though to try to burn through any of my rested magery status. Tough gains, but I don't mind. Up to like 81 now.

Also, last time I paid attention there was 2100 clients logged on. That's pretty solid, even with probably being 1100-1200 uniques.

I'm still hanging in there. A lot of people that I know are frustrated and angry because of the skill gain. Some of them have stopped playing.

I don't macro anymore. The skill gain is so fucking slow that, to me, it's not worth the energy costs of keeping on a PC overnight running the macro. More or less I've quit.

I've played about 2 hours in the past week.

Why not just go out and play with combat skills in the 80s?  I had plenty of fun in old UO without GM skills.  2100 people means there is plenty of room to play, I would think. 

I gained .6 magery at 79 real last night, after an hour in shame. I also made about 3k gold (PKed a guy that killed me macroing once....ahhh sweet revenge)

Earlier, my macroing for 3 hours of flamestrikes was +.3

Get out and play. I have twin 8 month old babies and I still pull it off.

I have a 5 year old, a 5 month old, a wife, and I work 70 hours a week Mon-Fri.

I have problems with finding the time to enable a hide macro, much less actually playing.

Your post implied you weren't playing more due to unhappiness with skill gain.  Sounds like life is the issue.

Not mutually exclusive.

So you haven't really hit the wall yet.

Yeah, but as long as I don't fizzle Exp/ corps then fuck it, let's PVP.

I don't think REDs will ever thrive on this server. Some red killed my newbie dexxer at the entrance of shame. I exited to res just outside the entrance. When I got back in he was being swarmed by a dozen or more paladins. The murderer radar is a bit too much.

Yeah, I think my murdering will mainly be done on throwaway macers and shit. I can't mage scrap like I used to, and damn twins make me go afk all the damn time.

I think it will be that way for a lot of people. Taking stat/skill loss at GM on this server would mean about 25 days of macroing in perfect conditions to get your skills back. Reds can only macro in houses at 50% skill gain rate so it might be faster to delete the character.

I've also heard a rumor that Az's friends get teleported to T2A for their own private use. It's funny how he hasn't made the GM logs available as he promised to do.

What's really funny is that you keep playing and commenting about this free game if it makes you so unhappy.

So, you don't actually know and you're just sort of talking out your ass, like the last two or three times you heard a rumor?

Fuck T2A anyway ;)

I heard a rumor that Az worships demons on his spare time and also that he bathes in goat-blood, and also that his mother got a buffed character on his server. Also, free houses for all the official UO-developers who play there.

That's why it's a rumor. Isn't it strange that no logs (which were promised) have been posted? I remember the original IPY being pretty corrupt.

Goat blood? With all the money he's making off this, he's upgraded to dolphin blood. I know a guy who knows a guy who sells Az his dolphin-killing knives.

Corruption hurts you how?

I don't even know where to start...

Like logs would mean anything...
HES PAYING FOR THE SERVER
Why do you even care?
There's nothing in T2A worth your time other than that spot all the cows spawn
Start your own server and shup up. It's easy enough.

Gained .5 last night at 85 just dungeoning. That's without a skill scroll drop. Things seem right to me at this level. Macroing isnt worth it anymore, it seems though.

I can cap my fencing in a couple hours if I go in with a dagger and do nothing but stab skeletal knights. It takes several more hours to cap out supporting skills like tactics, anat, healing. I'm not saying its impossible, but it's not the casual friendly system it pretends to be.

It would be a lot better if your unused points during the weekdays were saved until the weekend. Allowing you to catch up on sat/sun. Then let them reset Sunday at midnight.

Yes, that would be more weekend warrior friendly for sure.

Overall I'm having fun, and starting to see some reds come out.

Been having fun as my red, you definitely have to play smart and not linger around after kills. About skill gain, I am now at almost 87 resist and 93 magery. I personally have no problem with the skill gain, I feel like I am earning a good character.

And Az, maces suck. HELP :)

also, just hit GM tailor!

Yes, I've been playing on this server a lot lately. I'm trying to GM taming atm so I can make some money and get a house. The full PVP is nice... finding people off, by themselves macroing is great fun. Lure a lich over if you dont want the murder count etc... What's funny is the macroers dont seem to realize the easiest way to train something is to lock all your other skills and then go kill lots of skeletons. the scroll drops are faster than a macro any day.

Yeah, was just going to give you that hint if you were taming the hard way :)

Skill gain is pretty shitty, and a lot of people have quit. I think Az is finally realizing that I was right. Of course he will never come here and admit it.

What's even funnier is that he posted reds were responsible for the first IPY shutting down. I guess he he thinks everyone else forgot the real reasons like GM corruption, misappropriated donations, and his giant hissy fit that resulted in the server being taken down.

Still playin?

Log in to start macro. Is that considered playing?

I don't remember the big roughy tough PKs being so whiny back in the old days.

Who's being whiny? Do you even know what the penalties for being red are on IPY?

You're being whiny. You do absolutely nothing but whine and moan and bitch about a free game that someone put up purely as a hobby. Just stop playing it for god's sake.

Red or not red the game isn't remotely fun. For the reasons mentioned over a month ago. Which Az is in the process of changing, finally.

Whine or not, LC is correct and has been correct.

Shit is stupid - too little too late anyhow. That is probably the last time I'll have a UO client installed on any machine.

Lets say you were invited to a pool party. The invitation promised free drinks, steaks, and ribs would be served. When you arrive you have to wait in line for 2 hours just to get inside. After you finally get inside, the pool is dry, they only have hot dogs, and the only drink being served is water from a garden hose. Would you just leave without a word to the host?

I'm having fun PKing on my 80's mage.

I know where you guys are coming from , I don't have much playtime so I don't mind slow skill gain. I macro a LOT. It works for me.

Nija, the invite is still open. Just come be red with us if you are going to quit anyway. Plenty of action.

Gah and people dont realize why this is a problem lol. In Darkfall they thought macroing for a year was ok too .

Well, I would rather slow gain and some macroing than have 7x characters everywhere. Now, when you die you can't just bring in your other 7x.

My changes to server would be 100% gain in houses. I miss houses being hangouts and macroing spots. I haven't once truly hung out, cause we're better off at the fuckin' bank of all places.

400% gain in dungeons. 150% out of town limits. 200% at deep sea. 3x current skill scroll drop rate. Skill scrolls max out at the below points per skill, per day.

2.0 points at 60
1.0 points at 70
.8 points at 80
.4 points at 90



Adjust max gains per day to

5.0 points at 60
3.0 points at 70
1.5 points at 80
0.8 points at 90-99
0.4 from 99.0 - 100



500g per short term.

Two OCB nights per week (one weekend, one mid week evening)

Basically, reward the fuck out of people in dungeons and playing your game. Give bonus for those that want to risk macroing in a boat at deep sea. This gives pirates a target as well.

Make doubloons sellable to a vendor for a lot of gold. Create interest there. If it is high enough, people might actually fight for control of this. Make it capturable at certain times:

01:00 ---- 9:00 ---- 14:00 ----19:00

Whatever guild controls it at that time is given x doubloons to the GM's bank, they can use it to buy boats, items, or sell for cash. Simply have a stone that you click that makes it say "X GUILD currently controls" - whatever guild clicked last gets the loot. This should make for some action. Make the stone somewhere that boats can cannon people trying to click it. This makes boats and cannon valuable.

Just spitballing here, but I think some of these things could drastically improve server activity. The downside........faster GM characters, but not THAT fast.

Heh. Actually they were. Can I be a counselor on IPY? This is sounding more and more like classic UO!  :heart:

hahahahalolololol. But seriously folks. :) I would understand slow skill gain, if there was something to do at the lower levels. Slayerik has found some action at skill level 80, so there's that. But also I'm reminded on how, back in the day, I insisted there must be a way to encourage players to stay at lower levels. Everybody I told this to insisted it was impossible. Players are always going to want to progress, no matter what you do. Then DAOC introduced its battlegrounds that you couldn't play in after level 20. Players begged for a way to stop advancing. They didn't want XP anymore. WoW has done this too. Players don't want to max out their players anymore.

Oh, and that pool analogy. Yeah I'd bitch and complain, but then I'd leave. LC, it sounds like you're bitching and complaining, then staying around for months and months, sitting in the dry pool while you keep drinking the rusty hose water. Just sayin'.

Nija made a bard. He quit before making a pvp char.

Waiting for a refund.

Seriously though, it hasn't bothered me as much as it has people like Nija. I just complain because most of the people I play with can't enjoy the game in it's current state. I play solo now because everyone I started with quit. Every night there seems to be less and less activity. There was one dude in shame last night when I went.

That's kind of funny, because LC is pretty representative of pks, at least in my opinion.  Wants to run around ruining the fun of everyone else without consequence or effort on his part.

I guess you'd be surprised to hear that all my characters are blue, and I have both a detective and a paladin. I only had one red character in my uo history. For the most part I was anti. I also had a thief character that I really enjoyed.

The problem is that without reds on the server its boring as hell. My detective and paladin are worthless without active reds. The dungeons feel entirely too safe on ipy.

Been doing my part making them more dangerous ;) Was busy this Easter weekend, but I'm nearing 0 short terms on my PK! Must kill shit!

So is anybody still doing this or did it go how it always goes? Anyway I looked over at Azaroth's last blog entry and read this:


Please tell me that he's just using REALLY REALLY clumsy English to say that hitting GM in a skill is the last hurrah. He couldn't POSSIBLY have meant to say that "UO PVP freeshard #58372 with some original ideas nobody will like" is the "last major hurrah" for Ultima Online, could he? Because I'm pretty sure there will be people banksitting on a UO freeshard the day they unplug the last commercial WoW server.

It is for me. And a lot of other people I have talked to. It may sound a bit pompous, but I think it's not far off. No other freeshard launch will have the numbers IPY had. Those have dropped, and we'll see how he does at keeping interest / apeasing the masses that are left.

I've been logging in to refresh my houses. Thats about it. Everyone else I know quit because of the ridiculous skill grind. After the server population dropped by 25%-30% he finally gave in and agreed to reduce the grind. But not before he introduces some bullshit changes that don't belong on a classic uo server. I'm talking about battlegrounds and raid dungeons.



This is what brought people to the server. Nobody came to play UOWoW.

Of course Az's standard response to any criticism is this:

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?noseen=0&threadid=3378168&pagenumber=27#post391395870

Saw another entry into the IPY banner contest:

Amazing.  Unsatisfied UO fanatics.  Will the surprises never cease?

Dude, stfu. Why are you on the server much less in this thread? there are 100 other servers you can go to... or better yet: START YOUR OWN
Then maybe we can start a thread on it and bitch endlessly about how it's not an exact reproduction of the moment in time on Origins servers when we had the most fun.

Seriously... go away.

I remember someone ranting about a free game called wurm online not long ago. That person sure was a hypocrite.

feck, I got permabanned from Moo.  :hello_thar: Supposedly I was the 2nd person to have been permabanned from Moo.  :mob:

Reason: Causing too much drama. :Love_Letters:

What am I gonna do now? =( At least I can tame dragons, but... but.   :drillf:

I bet you are ready to start cutting yourself. It's such an honor to be accepted into a group of self hating internet nerds for the low fee of ten dollars. Unfortunately I don't have ten dollars I would be willing to spend to buy internet friends.

I cropped something just to express my feelings for the state of this thread, enjoy:

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1143749/Plane%20Derp.png)

The wreck is going down! Get out, before you drown!

Only joined them in the first place so I could hunt in deceit without getting PKd by them back when they were a bigger force. :P (I wasn't the only one to do this) Just happened to have an account there for years that I initially got for the purpose of getting free video game music before torrents went widespread. :P

Hit me up if you are looking for another guild, drama queen.

Or you can join my mostly inactive one man guild.

It's extraordinarily pompous, and whatever the game's "last hurrah" turns out to be? Assuming freeshards even count as "the game" for such purposes? It'll come after EA finally shuts down the UO/DAOC office someday and the other 90% of people interested in UO pour into the freeshard scene.

Wurm has 1 server, and its not free. Seriously, go away.

It was actually going up at the time, but the point remains.

Sorry, was just singing Soundgarden in my head and thought I'd post it :)

Then neither is IPY. They sell items for real money.

What a thread. I guess it proves all the chill Goons are playing Eve. Come to think of it, this thread right here is pretty terrible.

Slayer, you should make a shard. I'd help out a little if you like.

It's been an absolute pleasure. ;)

BTW, loving the patch Az. Fun again to group up and dungeon! Many other good things as well:

Patch notes

http://inporylem.com/codex/index.php?title=May_18,_2011




"
Skill Gain

1. RCB (RoT) soft caps have been increased.
2. Dungeon skill gain boost increased.
3. Skill scroll drop rates increased.
4. All skill gain rates increased.
5. The speed of all “rested” states has been increased, to provide better gains when first logging in for the day.
6. Town Square bonus to crafting skill gain increased.
7. Skill scroll drop rate nerf for groups is removed.
8. All O/C/B militia members may macro inside of houses at 100% of the normal rate.

O/C/B

1. OCB Recall and Gate restrictions now active only during OCB time slots.
2. Baron's Rings now provide a 20% skill scroll drop rate buff.
3. Murderers may not join militias.
4. OCB clothing items now function only during OCB time slots (aside from Baron's Rings, of course).
5. OCB town militia buffs are now active only during OCB time slots.
6. OCB now occurs on Sundays (3-5pm Eastern) and Thursdays (8-10PM Eastern).

Paladins and Detectives

1. Paladins may no longer perform beneficial acts on a murderer losing their Paladin status.
2. Bounty Hunter strength decreased.
3. Bounty Hunters will now apprehend murderers even as a ghost.

Travel Spells

1. Murderers having killed an innocent may not recall or use gates for 5 minutes.

Kings

1. Guard costs reduced.
2. The effects of guard levels are now increased.

Melee & Monsters

1. Damage of all macing weapons increased slightly.
2. Armor level of monsters decreased.
3. Poisoning skill of the character applying the poison now affects application rate, up to a maximum of 25%.

Wind Battleground

1. A daily O/C/B PvP game for control of The City of Wind becomes available immediately Active every day starting at 7:00pm EST. (WindOCB)
2. Wind now provides the dungeon skill gain bonus.
3. Wind now provides 200% skill scroll drops at all times.

Soon To Come

1. Number of hired militia guards available to Kings is now based on guard level
2. Double and Combination town buffs added.
3. Wind now provides an entrance to the Fire Dungeon.
4. The Fire Dungeon added as IPY 2's first raid dungeon. Testing ongoing and access will be enabled shortly.
5. The Pinnacle, a battleground for mid-level characters, active soon."

What the fuck?   How fucking bad are peoples memories?   I got in on the few days early thing because the CE shipped to my house quickly.  There were fucking grandmaster mage/swordsman before the game hit the shelves.    Sparring made it dead simple.   After that the only reason there weren't fucking GM mages EVERYWHERE was there was a reagent shortage for a while.   Anyone who knew though was a GM swordsman via sparring in the first week.

Any other lack of GM's was SOLEY due to newbs ressing on the spot to try and rescue their gear.   I simply can not understand where people get this idea that classic UO was time consuming.

Um I remember macroing THE FUCK outta magery and being very damn proud of my Grandmaster Mage status. I started in beta. I'm not sure where your memories are from.

I played for 1 1/2 years without GMing any skill  :awesome_for_real: But then again I was roleplaying a bard ;P

I started playing in September '98 - a year after the real old timers but even then it took me literally months to GM magery by summoning elementals behind Empath Abbey.

I made a lot of money selling runes for a long time because it was unusual to find a mage capable of using the sixth circle spell required to scribe a rune. The highest level spells in the game were eighth circle.

I didn't say it didn't take time but people act like it took a month or something.   If you macroed it for 40 hours straight you had it no problem.    We clearly had GM mages on day 1 due to the early start on pacific.   I remember because everyone was bitching how the early release people got magery up high before the reagent shortage kicked in.   You remember the shortage right?  The whole reason they started making reagents spawn on the ground was because of that.


Oh no doubt they nerfed the hell out of fast gains by then.  Of course they'd nerfed the game out of the entire game by then too.

Well the code for skill gain used some weird system which meant skills rose more slowly if you used a skill which a lot of other people were also using.

For some reason, this meant that skill gain was much faster on a new shard than a shard that had been around for a few weeks. It's not that skill gain was nerfed - the code remained the same - it was a quirk of the system.

I still can't imagine why skilling up on a UO freeshard should take any longer than a couple weeks, tops. Enough to keep everyone from rerolling the moment they suffer whatever the murderer penalties are or otherwise acquire a negative reputation, but that's it. It's not like they're outleveling meticulously-crafted instances.

I was like this too, roleplaying or not.  I just played the game to play the game.  I started at launch and knew nothing about the details of the game.  I was a newb with no guild.  I had one friend that played with me maybe once or twice a week.  I remember I started in Vesper and stayed there for probably the first 2-3 months.  I would kill anything in the woods around there and made my way to the dungeon up north (Deceit I think...been too long.) 

I wore crap, had crap.  I'd skin things and sell to NPC vendors to scrap together some gold.  I'd run back to the bank as quickly as I could to save everything because 50% of the time I'd run into a random mage PK that would have me dead before they appeared on the screen or a thief would just lift it from me while I wasn't paying attention in town.

I eventually got to a point of killing things in the dungeon.  I'll never forget the day an entire PK guild sat outside the entrance and killed everything and anything that came in or out.  They would strip you clean even with your vendor trash stuff.  This was around 10-15 reds just sitting there putting paralyze fields up so you had nowhere to escape.

I survived through all that and continue to go on to find a guild, get my GM status, start my own guild, then set of guilds, and then a player made and run town.  This was all before Trammel.

It wasn't about level'ing or skilling up.  It wasn't about the loot or killing that new boss.  It was about surviving and eventually thriving in a cruel unfair virtual reality.  To a lot of people, that wasn't fun.  I can understand it.  However, I loved it.  The bad thing is.  It can only be like that exactly once in my life.  Never again.

Hey, it was cool hanging with ya on Metropolis :) Still playing here if you ever get the itch.

I'm pretty sure that the vast majority of all MMO discussion on every forum on the internet is based around people trying to recapture this feeling.

GameSpy has a look at IPY:

http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/ultima-online/1169826p1.html

Yep, and I'm still trying.  I have fun with MMO's still, just a different kind.

Seriously tempted, just a matter of priority with my game time.  Basically, I'm hitting up RIFT now and doing good old fashoined twitch PvP combat with my sons in Special Ops on PS3. (They kick my ass.)

The real issue with UO now is that it REQUIRES a very active shard/guild.  The game in and of itself isn't entertaining enough alone.  The last two times I tried to rekindle the faith, lack of active players killed it for me pretty quickly.

Our guild is active if you are American. Be glad to help ya get rolling....

Still having fun, our guild has taken over Serpent's Hold and it is growing into quite a decent community.

I am .3 resist from being 7x Macer mage. Resist is a bitch, but I feel like I will have earned that GM!