by Azaroth | September 24th, 2009
To me, it’s a somewhat odd situation. Free UO is, through nearly no action of EA or seemingly any kind of propaganda campaign of any kind, shunned in large numbers by mainstream UO players. The Stratics people, as I call them. Although I’m sure only a very small percentage of EA players ever actually click onto Stratics let alone post there and make their opinions known at all.
Nevertheless, here we are. Almost universally, discussion of free UO servers of any kind on Stratics or other mainstream Ultima Online forums brings out hatred in a certain percentage of the population. The rest seem to follow suit to some degree, generally shunning the idea of ever setting foot on the soil of Free Sosaria. Odd, kind of.
But not so hard to understand when you take a moment. EA provides a stable, professional, mainstream environment. How many of you that played WoW ever went looking for a free server? I assume the number might rise as the years pass and expansions distort the game, creating gamers nostalgic for what they can’t have and what was enjoyed in the past. But in general, there are ten million World of Warcraft players and a very, very small percentage of them have ever gone looking to play on a free server.
Now, UO servers have been around a long time. They’ve had plenty of time to build up a stockpile of negative events that a detractor can draw from. It’s easy to slag free servers. Hell, it’s easy to slag IPY. There were plenty of events a person can bring up from back then that I was far too inexperienced to see coming, and IPY is probably the most memorable example a person can draw from. The server was great and it helped bring free UO much closer to the mainstream than it had ever even thought of being previously – but in hindsight, it was a bit like every other free UO server… stuff happened. People like pixels, people take games seriously, and people ARE willing to spend significant amounts of time deceiving others, cheating, lying and stealing for personal gain within a video game. Just how it is.
So in the end, when people speak poorly about what goes on in the free server community, you can understand it. A lot of shards are pretty shady. Even the best have their moments, because everything does. OSI had GM Darwin, and he was getting paid. When people aren’t, it’s much more likely that they’ll stab everyone playing the shard in the back at some point and do something for their own personal gain.
Even with the experience I have now and the tight leash I intend to have on ALL of my volunteers, I fully expect there to be incidents along the line. I’m not naive enough to think that nobody will ever fool me. After all, they have one goal and one opponent. I can’t pay that kind of attention to everyone that might pose a problem.
The big question is, though, how to eliminate the stigma. Running a tight ship with few or no serious incidents isn’t enough, though it would have helped tremendously if I could have accomplished it back during IPY’s days.
How do you get every type of UO player talking positively about a single shard, if not the whole scene. What brings people to say “Yeah, this one is -different-”? Beyond that, what attracts those Stratics players. Is a really great shard enough? Is a great concept for 3.0 and flawless execution going to be enough to change their minds?
If not, what needs to be done?
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First! /endpost
Na really, what could be done. About ensuring trust from yourself to staff and players to staff? Not a lot. The only thing that will matter is the experience and precedent set forth as it begins and the mark people leave. All before hand is speculation so it’s sort of neither here nor there. Gotta walk the walk after talking the talk.
Stratics people? As someone who mods on their irc I can theres no chance in that. It’s like your political discussions. It’s like religious discussions. There is no way you’re going to get through to that crowd.
And in case what you really meant is, what can be done to set the server apart from other indies and OSI/EA? Not a lot. You can be Mr. Pibb and Dr. Pepper may be salty about it, but he’ll get over it. Some people will like Mr. Pibb more when they *eventually* give it a try. Market penetration [in this case, WORD OF MOUTH] is not huge for something like this, but then again, IPY set the bar pretty high a while ago for anything indie.
I never played a indie WoW server but I did wreck major, major faces post IPY @ release for a year or so. That was almost as fun, but in a different way – those were noobs, casuals, first timers, scrubs who don’t go out of their way to get the purple shoulderpads.
You wanna add purple shoulderpads to 3.0, go ahead. Maybe you’ll get a few of those kids or the stratics types.
As far as things that can be done in order to get every type of player talking positively, I think this is a situation where you won’t be able to make the grass grow, you’ll just be able to provide good soil and, essentially, hope for the best while planting a few seeds here and there. That is the short way of saying it. Now I’m going to try the more specific, but longer and more complex route:
When I think about what separates IPY with other Freeshards it is not really an issue of mechanics. Yes, the Hally Swing timers were legendary and it was super sweet how fast we could get off mini heals, but in the grand scheme I think that these kinds of things could and probably have been replicated elsewhere. Mostly, when I look back to IPY and Glory Days UO, I am thinking of times I had with people who became more than just a glop of pixels to me. Whether it were the reds that terrorized me, the insane crafter who was running at least 30 clients mining from inside houses, or the koreans I killed blood elementals alongside, these people essentially became a part of my life. We didn’t really have any positive interactions, we certainly weren’t friends in any sense, but I liked that they were a part of the world I was inhabiting, and that diversity gave a certain sense of weight that is missing from most shards. Again, this is a long winded way of saying what everyone pretty much knows already: diversity is good.
But (hopefully), there’s something else I’m getting at here: a sense of community, lame as it might sound, is what I find lacking in most free shards. I think this goes a long way toward explaining why Stratics members in particular might have a bias against freeshards: they are already part of a strong and well-formed (or at least long-lasting) community. And this is where IPY was most notably different: IPY had a community that was tighter than any I have seen since Glory Days UO.
Now, the easiest way to get a pulse on a community is by checking the forums and IRC. Granted, there is much, much more that goes into a community, this provides a really good place for people to jump in. And in this regard I think IPY was tremendously successful. The trading forum was as active as tradespot or trading post, whatever the forum we used to use back in the day was, and just the general bullshitting, shit-talking, random postings going on in the “general” section were lively and provided a lot of fun. Even when I wasn’t playing IPY because I was at work or school, I was able to read the forums and feel connected. This is what I would call a positive feedback loop: Active forums made me more likely to think about and participate in the shard even when I couldn’t play, which only made me want to play more; The more I played, the more I wanted to invest myself in the forums when I wasn’t playing.
And, if you’ll follow me down the rabbit hole, I’d extend this basic structure to a bunch of it’s similar counterparts in-game. Real estate, Events, Dungeon Hotspots, Dueling rooms, City Banks. One of my absolute favorite memories from IPY was of a guy who stood near the Britain West Bank and was constantly raving about something I don’t even remember. I just liked that he was there, devoting his energy (or at least one of his clients) to infusing the game world with some of his insanity. Some spice to the soup, if you will. That, to me, is the kind of thing that makes a community strong. And this can also be said for everyone who posted comic strips, or even wrote things on the forum like “Hey Red Player X, You killed me while I was macroing, fuck off and die, if you ever do it again I will track you down and rape your sister.” Again, not the way I would handle things but I liked the intensity they brought.
Okay, so this all seems to be converging and I might as well end this as soon as possible: If players of all types feel as though there is a spot for them here, a place for them to carry out whatever fantasy it is they have (be it pking dudes in the lich room or writing novels in their house on the Vesper Coast), then they are more likely to come. The more that people see that people are here, doing those very things, the more likely they are to join in.
As far as EA UO paying customers not taking a liking to free shards goes, its really just psychological. They have invested years into playing and paying for the servers they are on, and to them, IPY 2.0 represents a threat in some way. Its not very logical, but I remember when I played metro before ipy came out, I was like. No! IPY will never be bigger then metro! no ways! Turns out I was wrong :P, but the real point is that this way of thinking is natural, and quite common. Once we invest our time or assets into something we become little bitches about it.
People attract people. Nice people attract nice people.
You should not be afraid to ask your players to behave in a “normal” way, with respect for the shard. With respect for other people. This might be hard to explain to the younger kids, but they will follow soon enough if you can get your more mature players on the right path.
Id suggest to ban the people who ruin it for the rest. Players that only work against you and the rest of the shard are of no value and you are better of without them.
Just my 2 cents.
Lefty
Some interesting thoughts, but mostly still just telling me that it’s not possible. Let’s get some positive ideas flowing, folks!
Not sure what you could do besides a big PR campaign.
What type of people among the “Stratics people” do you intend to attract? I can’t imagine any of the non-pvpers wanting to come play against this crowd.
Are there any pvpers still playing on EAs shards that aren’t coming here?
Depends. But it’s important to remember that a good mix of player types is important for a truly healthy, interesting shard.
Here has been my big ideas for the past two years. Trying to pull people from the UO community is not the best way to allocate your time and effort.
There are literally hundreds of thou sands of people playing free online mmorpg’s like Ragnarok, Rune Scape, and a buncha other shit, simply because they are free, and they have PvP.
Now the reason these shit games have such high populations is that they are way more accesable to a new player.
UO doesn’t hold your hand at all, and thats what makes it great, but most players who play UO, start out, invest 10-20 mins before they are pked at the brit gy, and fucking quit. I think if you gave a new player some form of quest based tutorial system, wich gave them worth while rewards and held their hands just a wee bit. You would see a very large increase of new players who stick around, and then invite their friends to come play. Have the tutorial consist of about 1 day worth of content, and leave the player with about 25k gold, at least 50% of all his skills, some stats, some armor, a gm kat, maybe some regs. That way by the time joe newbie realizes he can be killed and looted, he already has his foot in the door, and will probley suck it up, rather then saying “fuck this, im out”.
Idea 2. Add rare spawns in dungeons, like EQ. Allocate certain monsters to be place holders with a rare chance of spawning a rare mob in its place which has a chance of dropping a cool magical item, something appearance changing. People love the ability to collect worthless crap that makes their character look cool. This doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice all style and give them neon deer masks, but it would really add an appeal to the game that is highly desired by most mmorpg gamers, and not present in the UO world.
I think with a little baby sitting we can really bring a flood of new players into the game. You just have to toss them a bone.
Nothing wrong with a carefully designed tutorial. Can’t get in the way of other players, can’t be exploited by macroing it for profit, has to be clear enough and simple enough to hold hands but not so simple as to fail to show off the complexity of the game to new players and perhaps leave them thinking the game is boring and ugly. People are also going to flip if you start with the [New] tags and make invincible characters, but there needs to be some protection from PKs. Perhaps quests around town and a sewer/tree stump dungeon, etc.
Random spawns are always fun. You’ll get random awesome spawns in anything I do, and you’ll get so much more than that that you’ll {EDIT} POSSIBLY ENJOY IT {EDIT}. One of my favourite things in an MMO is the “random spawn” and the supersecretawesomeI’mherefirst discovery followed by some sort of fun reward. On 2.0 you need to be careful, because people won’t accept any wildly coloured crap. There’s also the problem that free shards are all doing that kind of thing, and the most unique thing you can do is to NOT recolour things at random. You’ll notice I’m trying to hunt down pixel artists.
Az, is there any way we can get this discussion into a vent server? I would be willing to host it with the Umbral vent. I think at this point we should all consider meeting up and talking to one another. I feel for the first time, that we have the acctual intellectual side of our UO community here on this forum, and maybe we could all congregate in a voip channel with out it becoming a pissing contest.
I think getting EA players to jump ship would be very difficult. Most people start looking for other options when they’re unhappy with their current option and they must be pretty happy with EA if they’ve stuck it out this long.
However, there are plenty of former UO players who pop up on free shards all the time looking for classic UO. The biggest hurdle for these players is the learning curve. Unfortunately, the game is very different from when they used to play and knowing Ultima is not nearly as important as knowing Razor. I’ve talked to a lot of brand new players who weren’t macroing skills, they weren’t setting up basic pvp macros, they were barely even using hotkeys. They were grinding it out with 60 strength and 0 resist in a world full of GM tank mage pks with auto-targeting and they didn’t stand a chance.
When they see a pk in a dungeon they’re dragging their weapon to their pack, double-clicking the little square recall picture from the spellbook and then waiting for the target so they can click on their rune. They die every time they leave the guard zone until they get sick of it and quit.
The only solution I can think of is a welcome message that sends you to a good tutorial for Razor. Or you need to strictly prohibit Razor functions (and any other similar programs) so that the playing field is even.
Or maybe have some basic Razor profile that they can download and which will have some essential macros and hotkeys and things.
You know, it might be a good idea if I cut the casual swearing too. Oh my. This personal blog isn’t so personal anymore, really.
Zigo, you can email me if you like.
Uhmmm, Yeah I guess, I ment the ventrilo thing more as a new medium for the discussion of IPY, rather then some cyber :P
Well, I do like having things like this. I can both direct the topic of disussion and have everything in written form so I can look back at what people have said later. It’s also a bit more accessible – nothing gets missed out on if you don’t happen to be hanging out in vent.
I’ll go with this for a while. But if anyone gets too out of hand, don’t worry. I know where the ban button is.
Zigo brought up a very important point on the matter:
There are literally hundreds of thou sands of people playing free online mmorpg’s like Ragnarok, Rune Scape, and a buncha other shit, simply because they are free, and they have PvP.
Now the reason these shit games have such high populations is that they are way more accesable to a new player.
To bring new people to uo, you must bring a platform where they can interact and learn step by step. They meet people, learn from them, become friends and then are ready to step in the “old vet world”. Cause lets face it, most of us here now know every aspect there is to know about uo. Realize it took us 10 years to get there.
So what I am saying is basically, there is a huge gap between personal skill lvl. New people encounter this, like Zigo pointed out, on their first attempt to slay some skeletons at the GY. They get pkd/griefed instantly and quit.
They quit because they havent found anything worth staying yet. Letting these people find out the rough/unfriendly sides of UO on a much smaller scale; ie a newbie dungeon where they can still die, but noone else will be able to loot their corpses. This gives them the chance to get familiar with UO and even get their curiosity rising for future events in “the real world”.
Azaroth you mentioned: One of my favourite things in an MMO is the “random spawn” and the supersecretawesomeI’mherefirst discovery followed by some sort of fun reward.
I believe this is a crucial thing for everyone who likes mmorpgs. Randomly running around a world where there are no secrets and hidden stuff is boring. But knowing that you might end up somewhere where something interesting might happen, gives a whole new challenge.
I also agree that discussing on a blog like this is better than in Vent, simply because this is more organized and more thought-out.
My 4 cents this time,
Lefty
Two things:
I wanted to do a new map for 3.0, but people have been pretty lukewarm about the idea when I brought it up. I think the exploration factor is important too, but there’s also an important nostalgia factor in the classic UO map that people won’t let go of so easily.
Newbie dungeons is a funny topic, because I remember being ridiculed by a few people when I brought up the idea back in ’04. That’s just how the PvP community is sometimes… especially if they’re already pissed off at you about something and just looking for things to slag you over.
I can add plenty of elements of exploration without a new map (although I want one). But there WILL be a newbie dungeon. On 3.0, it’s not even a discussion. On 2.0… we’ll see. I have to keep reminding myself that 2.0 is for the people who don’t want any change and 3.0 is for me to mess around with all I like.
I played a custom map t2a shard, ran by Brody called Moose Valley. The map was small, yet really well done. The server had 3 towns, including one red dungeon with it’s own set of custom guards and rules, and two or three dungeons. This server had < 30 people online at all times, and was alot of fun to play and rarely felt underpopulated until he pulled the plug.
I think you should take IPY 3.0 to a new medium, take a free World of Warcraft emulator, and remap Felucca to that, and fill it with everything that is UO. I expect this to come out late 2020.
I wouldn't mind a new map, especially considered any radical departure from traditional UO isn't going to garner as big of a crowd, and will naturally feel more empty using the full sized original map.
I don’t know if anyone played on one of the earlier (the first one I managed to find) ’99 era UO freeshards: “Hubris”; but it did exactly what’s proposed here – a brand new map.
The shard was going great for a while, popularity increasing, a very similar feel to the PvP. Then the admins decided to take it down and put it back up with a ‘new and improved’ map and a bunch of other new rules.
The thing was dead shortly there after. Yeah that wasn’t the whole story, but honestly I feel like the map had a lot to do with it’s demise. Also, that nostalgia was much harder to recapture with a whole new map.
The problem with a new map is the type of player that’s going to come to this shard isn’t necessarily interested in exploration and PvE and that sort of thing.
But then, you don’t want to lose those players that do want that sort of thing.
Why not keep the same map and add some things to it – a whole new island or something – maybe make some sort of quest line that goes along with it. I know a new dungeon would be easy enough, but I think a new island would add more, if there was incentive to go there.
I think this is sort of secondary to dealing with the game breaking PvP scripts though – I’ll be curious to learn if you figure out a way to deal with them – please let us know!
EA’s UO servers represent two things that free servers typically lack: longevity and integrity. I think IPY’s history places the shard in a unique position to demonstrate both of these characteristics.
The UO community is pretty small, so I don’t think it’s going to take much effort to grow the playerbase by launch day. More players will begin to abandon the EA servers once IPY demonstrates that it’s a valid competitor.
What nearly every free shard does wrong is focusing on vets. Vets have been playing so much shard, they build their own little perfect uo in their heads and if the next shard doesnt turn out to be the exact match, they quit.
You cannot please all the vets. So who is your target group here? It should be new players. Worlds dont grow top-down, they grow from the bottom-up.
@ Azaroth: I have to keep reminding myself that 2.0 is for the people who don’t want any change and 3.0 is for me to mess around with all I like.
Why? Why cant 2.0 be an improved version? Dont get stuck on this idea. You say you have to keep reminding yourself, what does that mean? Do you really want this?
Lefty
a new map is cool, but the problem is that it has to be fairly small. a large playermade map always ends up being a few good spots well designed and the rest is shit(like hubris).
an idea would be to start with a small map then every month or so add another part, that would be pretty cool and keep people interested in exploring etc
btw i love the vent idea, if anyone wants to get on it and talk about ideas let me know :)
Doing a new map is a delicate little operation. If I do one, it will not suck.
Actually, I just had a hell of an idea. I need to find a really fantastic mapmaker.
“”btw i love the vent idea, if anyone wants to get on it and talk about ideas let me know :)”"
Hector you can feel free to drop in our vent and discuss ipy 2.0 with us
174.137.48.34
4030
Feel free to hop in any time.
I will allow this vent (with Rave’s permission of course) to all concerned here, but keep in mind this is our guilds private ventrilo, so if you do anything annoying or stupid, we will ban. Otherwise come talk to us about this very exciting time in UO history :)
Can I spam Napolean Dynamite clips?
That’s my favourite thing to do in ventrilo.
GOSH!
Az you got the base if you wanna do it run wild. Is it worth the effort though?
Oh btw I’m lvl 500 in UO. LISTEN TO ME!
No, probably not.
But analysis of the traffic to my site shows that we’re up above what wtfman was when I first discussed and launched IPY using that as a blog. Granted, this blog’s traffic started out higher than they were before I started updating there.
But in a positive light, you can assume that we have at least as many eyes watching us as before and can hopefully do something pretty successful again.
Azaroth, You can only spam napolean dynamite clips if its your own voice doing the impersonating.
What would be the difference?
Effort :P
My lips hurt real bad!
It’s a Liger. It’s pretty much my favourite animal. It’s like a mix between a lion and a tiger… bred for its skills in magic.
give me some idea of how many hits you’ve got there azaroth?
Lol!
fuck i am anxious to play, uosa and divinity blow ass.
How much you wanna make a bet I can throw a football over them mountains? Yeah… we would’ve been state champions. No doubt. No doubt in my mind.
goddamn it az put something up i’ll paypal you 100$ :(
by up i mean a uo server so we can duel each other
Well, organizing programmers is a bit like herding cats, so. But once we get everything converted, there’ll be a lot of testing going on. I’ll want some PvPers in first to make sure everything is going okay.
Cats are delicious!
Oh yeah, I was thinking today about what hector had suggested. A map that releases new area’s to explore and venture in based upon population increase. I think thats a killer idea personaly. I can only imagine a large increase in staying power with a system like that.
i own 2 cats
gf has 2
UMMMMMMMM
forum/irc ANYONE???
I hear anxiousness kills cats.
not my cats – they are too busy doing chores around the house.
btw i love this format much more than the black style.
Yeah, I mostly switch over for polls.
Nice new lay out.
The new layout took me by surprise, but i definitely like it!
I have played on a few free shards that offer a customized map. From my experience, they have been really hit or miss. The new map alone generally is enough to lure more PvM player base in which is great as that is generally what every stable free shard has a lack of, but in the end it also lures people away as its not what they are use to. If you released it with a new, custom map I definitely would give it a shot…I can pretty much navigate UO fairly easily so something different is always fun. Just the glaring issue that I can see happen with it, is that people won’t want to try it because they fear the change factor.
When we discuss new maps, let us all remember the custom dungeon that was added to IPY. The never ending maze of death. I like the idea of a new map after we discover a map god :)