Classic Ultima Online: IPY2 Launch date: Feb 11th

[Slayerik]

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.

[Sky]

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.

[Azaroth]

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.

[Azaroth]

Error.

[Lucas]

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.

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.

[Cheddar]

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?

Razor has everything you need built in.

[LC]

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

Thanks for making my case.

[Chinchilla]

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.

[Chinchilla]

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

[Azaroth]

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

Thanks for making my case.

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. ;)

[Cheddar]

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. 

[TheWall]

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

[Slayerik]

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 :)

[TheWall]

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.

[Sky]

you might even get hooked like so many others :)

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.

[sinij]

That's what RoT is for, absolutely.

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.

[Quinton]

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 :)

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?

[Chinchilla]

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 :)

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

[Cheddar]

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?

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

[Chinchilla]

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 :)

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?

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.

[Lucas]

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?

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

"Hail to the King, baby!" 

[Rasix]

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 :)

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?

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

[Azaroth]

Surprised about the DDOS.  What the fuck.

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

[NiX]

Thanks for making my case.

If it makes you feel better, sure.

[Krakrok]

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

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

[Azaroth]

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

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.

[Pringles]

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.

[Chinchilla]

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.

[Kageru]

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.

[Xuri]

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.

[Slayerik]

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.

[Zetor]

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?!   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 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.

[Lucas]

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.

[Xuri]

Out of curiosity, what's the tech you guys use? Is POL and Sphere still around?

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

[Chinchilla]

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.

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).