Really?
What I feel is odd is that nobody was enticed by the “assume I’m remaking IPY right now..” in my last post.
I mean, not that long ago I’d at LEAST have had a group or two of “griefers” screaming about various conspiracy theories and how I’ve got Santa Claus tied in my basement, etc.
I’m becoming more and more convinced that attraction to the gameplay style of UO was largely nostalgia based, largely driven by griefers and PKs who enjoyed taking advantage of the ruleset (note: taking advantage of, not using.. there’s a distinction here), and had a very finite lifespan.
IPY launched in late 2003. Ultimately, this isn’t a long time after UO’s heyday. Since UO launched in late ‘97, and most people played, became enamoured with, and eventually quit over changes that were reversed with IPY in 98-00, or 01. That’s 2-3 years after the fact. Now, it’s been 8-10 (I’m emphasizing with numbers here, don’t worry, you’re not 67 yet.. but it really has been a while), and where’s the passion?
Does anyone really talk about UO much anymore? Have any of the IPY clone shards in the last several years had any kind of longevity?
What about right now? If I actually DID put IPY back up, how many people would come, and possibly more importantly - how long would they stay? (My estimate is 1-4 months on average)
Now, another interesting question.
What is the overwhelming feature or set of features that drew you to UO?
Would you play another game that eschewed the notion of leveling, raiding, etc., for that feature or feature set?
Is open PvP what you like? How many new MMOs offering open PvP have done well?
Is a sandbox what you want? How many new MMOs have done well with a sandbox design?
Haven’t been any, you say?
Well, not many high profile ones - that’s for sure. And that’s because nobody cares about them. People think they’re boring.
Take for instance Saga of Ryzom. By all accounts great crafting, EXTREMELY sandboxy, lots of really neat features.
It’s relaunching soon. Because, as far as I can gather, after its third bankruptcy, someone has picked up the code and servers again. And I think its’ the original developers.
Now, it’s very clearly unpopular and unprofitable. Why would they want to run it? Why would there be a small number of diehards still following the game through bankruptcy after bankruptcy?
Nostalgia. Personal attachment. And trust me - the diehards following around WoW Classic shards in a couple years and WoW1 in ten will be MUCH larger.
-Az
August 3rd, 2008 at 12:39 am
Hey Az long time no see. :>
The day you remake IPY and start it up again is the day I log back into UO. Then again I havent seriously played UO since the UO Redemption days, but still, you can count me in.
August 5th, 2008 at 11:54 am
I think alot of people gave up after a few years AZ , I feel like just posting here is like posting on the darkfall forums.. it just will never happenish. I will made it my personal mission to drag back skurry and the rest of us [fku] house hiders if you do ! ravatar doesent do shit these days either , ill harp on him too !
I don’t even know what possessed me to type in ipyshard.com earlier … probably from reading the hybrid ( ICK ) forums. If you get the word out I am damn sure some of the big guilds will be back just to finish what we started ! ( I miss fku city :( )
I was glad to read your farewell post again.. that was me as the chicken on my boat at brit bank :D
please lord tell me you still have all the files and could just restore it like the day we all had to say goodbye :( ( or a little before that.. I remember the recent saves were major messed up )
If you got the site up for real with forums and a news post about coming back. Then got the word out about it I think you would see quite the response. Everyone I talk to from IPY misses it and for the most part considers it their glory days of UO even over OSI.
donation items are your friend.. I know you despise them but IPY had trouble paying the bills sometimes , they don’t have to be 7x skill balls but.. something.
August 5th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
Hah. That’s one of my favourite screenshots.
On bringing back IPY:
I think there are a few difficult issues with that proposition.
First of all, we all saw that era of UO for what it was. It was a lot of fun for a finite period of time. It lacked a lot of modern MMO trappings, which was both fun for a while and ultimately its downfall. I’m fairly certain that if UO had never changed from that ruleset, it wouldn’t be quite as fondly remembered.
Beyond that, Pre-UO:R shards have been done to death. Everyone and their mother has ripped the IPY ruleset (although I won’t call Redemption a rip, because I know for a fact that Tilly was just trying to keep something going for the diehards).
But the fact is that since then, the crowd has become more and more concentrated as they’ve jumped from one new Pre-UO:R shard to the next. It’s just the same people over and over now, and old problems like script PvP and such have become exacerbated to the point where I wouldn’t even consider putting any UO shard up without first solving that problem entirely.
The problem is that once I got done with “solving problems”, the shard may no longer resemble a Pre-UO:R ruleset. You may or may not like that.
August 6th, 2008 at 4:28 pm
Whoa, hold up a sec there Az. I think it’s very possible that the majority of people who would be interested in an IPY revival might not be checking here too frequently. I mean, I just heard about this post from HMU and to be honest I check this blog maybe twice a year to see if you’re still alive. I agree with the above poster who said that most people accepted a long time ago that IPY was never coming back and moved on.
I would say that most of the people still playing pre UO:R are probably on Divinity right now. It’s actually not a bad little scene and there’s decent amount of PVP happening there. That said, I imagine that most players would probably log on to a new IPY as soon as it was put up.
The things that I’ve always loved about UO are the freedom of interaction, and the fact that it’s Ultima. While open PVP is definitely a niche market, it’s one that I’ve always loved. What is really great is that I played a dexer on OSI and IPY, but it wasn’t until the shards after that that I learned to play a tank mage. Now that I play a tank mage I honestly love the gameplay of mage PVP and it’s some of the most fun I have playing video games.
I think it’s interesting that you bring up scripting because on divinity there’s probably about a thread a day about so and so guild is scripting. I know you have a lot experience with people using 3rd party programs and obviously there are people who are going to try and cheat but I can say without a doubt that play with most of the top guilds on Div on a regular basis and none of them script.
August 6th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
Well, I’d believe that they all say they don’t script.
Regardless, it’s like having a well known dupe bug. Maybe some people don’t use it, and others only use it “sometimes”. Maybe there’s only a couple handfuls of people who abuse the hell out of it.
I still wouldn’t start a fresh shard without fixing it.
Either way, I’m not putting up a UO shard just to steal a playerbase from another one. If you look (and like I said earlier), it’s basically the same people jumping from shard to shard to shard - it’s just less each time, and they quit faster each go around. I guess the current Pre-UO:R shard is Ryan’s “Divinity”, but really.. it’s what, the fifth or sixth one since IPY? Why does anyone need another one?
Anyway, my posts here were hypothetical. I’ve been saying IPY isn’t coming back for years now, and everyone but old Curly Bob has believed me with good reason. I have no current intentions of ever putting IPY back up. Mark that down as official. There are better games to play for you guys, and better things for myself to spend time on. Besides, there is NEVER a lack of free UO out there anymore. And people actually play it now. Shards were very lucky to see 30-50 online before IPY.
Plus, it’d be an awfully cold day in hell before I suffered that much frustration for free again.
Trust me - If everything I have going on in life right now falls through and UO becomes a main concern of mine again, or I simply have an uncontrollable urge to dink around with UO again and absolutely no other possible outlet, the shard I’d put up wouldn’t necessarily look a whole hell of a lot like IPY.
August 9th, 2008 at 6:53 pm
Thank God you finally mentions Ryand and Divinity. I’ll tell you what, Divinity is the closest thing to IPY that i can think of. I still log on to refresh my houses. I would suggest getting ahold of him and asking to join his team. I mean when Divinity announced that they were teaming up with WTFMAN everyone jumped back to the game, maybe the same would happen if they announced AZAROTH OF IPY joins Divinity team. If they can keep a good balance between PK/grifers and Trammies that server would florish. The problem is, is that they dont have the right answer just like Origin didn’t. I would quit every game im playin right now and go back to Divinity regularly if I had a large amount of people to compete with consistently
August 9th, 2008 at 7:27 pm
Maybe you would, for a bit.
UO is old and played out. The most hardcore of the hardcore follow these shards around and play for short periods of time before getting bored again. The WTFMan publicity stunt was a good idea on Ryan’s part and all, but the nature of the phenomenon remains the same.
August 11th, 2008 at 4:04 am
Rather than launching yet another Pre-UO:R shard, have you thought about launching a classic WoW realm Az? The last paragraph seems to hint that you’ve at least considered it. There are certainly many requests from players on the WoW forums for one, so the potential is there.
I’ve sort of toyed with the idea myself… using an older WoW client and limiting the level cap to say 40 (to start), experimenting with different rule-sets (such as FFA), tweaking things for more balanced PvP, taking elements from the earlier beta and alphas (different spells and talents) and adding different systems/events into the mix.
There are definitely some interesting possibilities; however, I haven’t done enough research to see just how customizable or feasible this sort of stuff would be - and it’s sort of on the back-burner for the moment unfortunately.
Given that the WoW emulation scene is going strong, it wouldn’t be difficult to get hold of a server that would easily handle a few thousand players; customization would certainly be the biggest challenge.
Would it be worth it? I think so. Look how well IPY did. I think if a realm did go up and word was spread it would only be a matter of weeks before it had a cult following. If anything, it would be a nice little experiment to see just how popular such a beast would be.
Imagine if it rekindled your love for the game (even if it was for a few months), much like IPY did with UO; that would most certainly make it worthwhile (for me) IMHO.
August 11th, 2008 at 11:49 am
Interestingly enough, I’ve toyed with the idea of a “classic” WoW server a fair bit. Reconstructing the classes was always a hobby of mine as well (I almost posted a complete Paladin class redesign on this site once).
However, I’m not as much of a WoW fan as I was/am a UO fan. I enjoyed WoW to a degree, and I definitely think the expansions are making it worse. But WoW is just another Diku, and it’s not really what I’m all about. But it was a relatively enjoyable distraction for a time.
Plus, Blizzard aggressively prosecutes emulator server operators as far as I’ve heard. That, I’m not too interested in.
August 31st, 2008 at 4:12 am
Azaroth, you’re a fucking tool. No one would ever play any piece of shit corrupt shard you created again. You rigged tournaments and had your entire guild given freebies and bullshit.
The only reason your shit worked was because of Ravatar and when you fucked him over, your shit went down hill quick.
go choke on a cock you arrogant mother fucker.
August 31st, 2008 at 4:14 am
p.s.
sincerely,
your friends from c2w
August 31st, 2008 at 10:12 am
Oh noes! I’ve been griefed by another uninformed nerdrager who thinks he knows a bunch of shit he really doesn’t!
!!!!
Thanks, guys. I was beginning to think you didn’t care anymore.
Something like that did take a long time to show up, though. I was getting worried.
September 16th, 2008 at 5:59 am
We did run Trepidus back in 05/06, but didn’t have the time or $$ to keep it going. Back then it WAS the Biggest T2A server since IPY. I still have the server on my computer and thought about hosting it again.. but haven’t thought it out yet.
IPY though, it was a fun server nonetheless. I’d bet on launch if it was re-created. 1500 User’s would log on within first hour. Although they wouldn’t be unique ip.
September 16th, 2008 at 7:06 am
Well, remember that we also forced one IP per account to the best of my recollection after the first week or so, and had people apply for a second.
September 16th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
Im all for trying to put in place another T2A shard. But the playerbase will always be the same now. Same people jumping server to server.
September 16th, 2008 at 6:00 pm
Oh, absolutely. I’ve been saying that for a long time.
In fact, not only is that true - but that group will continue to shrink over time. That, and so will the group of people interested in playing UO in general.
September 17th, 2008 at 2:23 am
Which is unfortunate for the people that enjoy Pre-UO:R UO and stick around, I mean. I don’t intend to come off as a jerk about it.
But it’s the nature of the situation, through and through.
I think there’ll always be free shards for those people to play on, though. Which is a good thing.
September 19th, 2008 at 10:23 pm
The only reason UOR servers like Hybrid and Defiance are big now is the fact that people have too many houses and “uber” items they couldn’t stand throwing away. I myself was like that. They are shrinking though. People dont like UOR and they dont like the servers anymore.. but they are too greedy to give their items up.
September 21st, 2008 at 12:39 am
Well, at least they’re “big”, right. The biggest Pre-UO:R shards are pretty small, from what I’m told.
I doubt too many people play what they don’t like, though. I had plenty of loots on WoW, but I deleted my characters a while ago. Mainly because they keep characters forever and I kept coming back for like two weeks before I would quit again. I didn’t want to keep going back.
It’s a good game, but I’m over it. Don’t hate it, don’t hate the GMs or the company or whatever… just over it. It’s a waste of time.
September 28th, 2008 at 1:25 am
Started on Warhammer while i wait for Darkfall. UO is a dead game and we all should give it away tbh :)