f13.net forums - Old hag lifts skirt for a freebie...

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June 25, 2025, 03:52:57 PM

we're back, baby

So EA just spammed me with some UO "winback program". Am I going to get spammed from "The Realm" winback program one of these days too?

I haven't played UO since 1999. That is 5 fucking years ago. What are the chances that EA has my 7 year old characters in their database? Do I even care?

No. No, I don't. And thank you so much for bringing back such painful memories from where it all went wrong.

It's over. Let it die.

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I was going to post the email but that since the disclaimer at the bottom of it was longer then the actual contents of the email I posted that instead. Lawyers for teh win!

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EA RESERVES THE RIGHT TO TERMINATE THE ULTIMA ONLINE SERVICE AFTER 90 DAYS NOTICE.

Interesting that they choose to put this in all caps.

Kind of a like a guy standing on a 40-story ledge, screaming, "I'll jump, I swear to Christ I will!!!!"

I would not recommend returning to UO for anything other then a month of idle site-seeing, to see the new content. At first the new content might suck you in... until you meet blaze-orange colored beetles, people in neon clothes, and pvp with Item Insurance. No longer can you knock out that dexer and take the uber Vanq wep he was kicking ass with. No more risk vs reward.

Trammel(UO:Ren) crippled the community. Item Insurance(UO:AoS) crippled pvp and risk vs reward.

UO is now nothing more then an character armor/weapon-slot upgrade game. No more level playing field. Whoever sinks the most time into the game wins. And personal greed(read: item-based combat) has further broken the community.

That's all true Wonderbrick. But UO is still alive with a couple hundred thousand players while IPY is gone at the end of the month.

Don't you think it's time to reign in the UO nostalgia by now?

Quote from: WonderBrick

UO is now nothing more then an character armor/weapon-slot upgrade game. No more level playing field. Whoever sinks the most time into the game wins. And personal greed(read: item-based combat) has further broken the community.

I would argue that a community of PKs is pretty damn broken itself, but I'll let Azaroth explain (from IPYUO):

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It started out as a fun project, even somewhat innocent. The time was right, I saw that, I capitalized, and we all had a really great time.

But somewhere along the way, it stopped being a fun project. It stopped being innocent whatsoever, even, far before that. The kind of playerbase that was attracted to our little shard, was, quite frankly, the bottom of the bottom of the barrel. That barrel was, actually, underneath the good barrel, holding it up and collecting slime from the runoff.

...

A user base the size of EverQuest's will include several bona fide psychopaths. That's assuming that virtual worlds mirror the general population: It could be, for example, that the nature of these worlds is such that fewer crazy people play that. Alternatively, they could act as magnets. I suspect the latter."

...

But, I suppose the point is that, if virtual worlds are psychopath magnets - IPY was a fucking black hole.

Bartle mentioned that a game the size of EQ would have "several" psychopaths. Well, I think IPY surpassed the "several" mark a few times over. And it'd be nice if I were exaggerating, but unfortunately I am not.

...

Why IPY was a blackhole for other types of trouble, I suppose I'll never know. Although it can all be explained individually, I guess, that certainly doesn't mean I've ever seen more bullshit swirling around one bowl in my entire life.

...

I've seen entire guilds comprised of nothing but people who wanted to do as much damage to everyone and everything around them as possible. They wanted to destroy the game. That was their goal. It was the only game that'd ALLOW them to do this, so why were they doing it?

Because they could.

There's a flaw in logic there somewhere.

...

What's next for you?

Play the new shiny games. Have fun, but always fight for what a real online world is.

Relax.

Enjoy your friends and family. Be with them while you can and do everything you can for them.

...

Make no mistake - these were the last days of Ultima Online. It is now shelved, only to be dusted off occasionally for nostalgia, or to be shown to MMORPG newbies. What needs to be concentrated on now is the improvement of our futures as MMORPG players. The time to stare longingly at the past is over.

We got one last look - and god damnit, it was a good one.

I enjoy PvP. A lot more these days than I did int the past because I find it more challenging. But I still don't enjoy it as much as I could because of the type of people that he mentions. It's a shame really. Of course, a community of miscreants is still a community, but I wouldn't say that the community of UO was ruined. It was simply changed into a more EQ style of community, and I, like yourself, would rather not play an 8 year old MMOG that centers around loot gathering. It's just not my cup of tea. UO was not perfect (far from it in fact) and nostalgia certainly colors our perspective, but it was fun while it lasted. Time to move on and get over it. ;)

While classic UO, and pvp in general, can have its share of assholes, nothing I mentioned above relates to what Az said. Though his insight, his changed philosophy over time, and the crowd he attracted, is interesting.

UO has sucked for a long time. IPY sucked because it was a UO for free. Things that cost nothing attract the bottom feeders. This is tough to grasp, I know.

Boy, I'm sure glad f13.net is free!

Bruce

Quote from: SirBruce

Boy, I'm sure glad f13.net is free!

Bruce

There's a joke in there somewhere.

The Joke was Sirbruce saying that.

Yes. Self-depricating humor helps to get girls. (And I mean the human variety.)

Bruce

He really is becoming a caricature of himself. Isn't this when the bannings start?

I don't think banning start until Bruce start discussing his reproductive organs and sexual life/lack of thereof in otherwise unrelated to this subject threads.

I wish we had some of the old horrifying bruce threads from p2p and lum archived somewhere... Wait, no I don't.

It sucks to see IPY go. There were a lot of fucknuts there, but Azaroth is a good guy and was trying to help recapture a golden age that more than a few people long for. He touched upon it in his article, which is something I noticed a few months ago: UO was what it was because it was really the only option for a couple great years. You couldn't run to another game if a PK pissed you off, so you had to either make friends with him, or get a bunch of friends together and make him realize why being your enemy really sucks. It was a much better "world simulation" that what any game can approximate now due to competition.

People romanticize old-time UO with it's rampant pking, thievery, and exploiting just because in most cases it was their first MMOG. Hell, I miss those days myself when everything was bright and shiny and I was actually willing to spend a couple of hours a day chopping wood and making bows for .1 or .2 in skill gains. :)

I'm sure that old-time EQ players was nostalgic over the good old days of having to stare at your spell book while meditating for the first 35 levels too. That doesn't mean anyone actually wants to play a game like that anymore.

Bugs and exploits will not be missed. The actual gameplay, player skill in pvp, and friendships made in a wild-west/risk-vs-reward atmosphere will be missed. Not all good memories are romanticized fantasies.

I can't speak for you. But I can speak for me.

This is a small part of the UO I miss. (play with sound)

Hmmm, IPY, a UO community made up of people who made entire web sites off of their griefing exploits, attracted a community of griefing, exploiting asshats.

Color me fucking shocked.

Really, WHAT DID HE EXPECT? That complete assholes would suddenly become responsible, mature individuals who gave two shits about a community for more than just sheeple to grief? And this would happen because you were suddenly giving them the game for free? Is myopia really contagious?

Wide-open PVP is a great illusion, but it is an illusion. It will lead to wide-open assmunchery. Anti-social actions within a community, such as oh killing everything that moves, will lead to a society full of assmunchers. If people can do something and there are no consequences for doing it, THEY WILL DO IT. Only the vast amount of human history has proven this over and over again. If you only want someone to do something within a specific set of circumstances, only allow them to do it within that specific set of circumstances.

You cannot code morality into players.

Quote from: HaemishM

You cannot code morality into players.

No, but you can code a justice system. And I don't mean preschool justice like PvP-ok flags.

Sure, which is what you should do. But IPY didn't want to do that, and the people advocating wide-open PVP respond to that like a kid being made to take nasty-tasting medicine.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't statloss exist on IPY? The problem was they didn't ban for macroing to get out of it.