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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People do hate change, that’s true. But that’s why we’ll do two servers.
Are you planning on having something up for a year (or however long) and then bringing it down for 3.0? Or two going concurrently?
In all honesty, talk of two servers makes me a bit uneasy.
I think it would be interesting in having two servers. ten+ years with the same map is pretty boring.
one thing I think would really rock is:
before a huge event or server wide pvp event, you transfered over the accounts from the other server onto this one just for the one event, then delete them afterwards.
Uneasy in what way, Mazer?
I think the uneasy feeling Mazer gets is probably regarded to thinking back to the size of the population and how great the original IPY was, and when wanting to recreate that changing something as big as the map it can have a big impact on the number of players that will be willing to join and make it an initial sucess. I can’t say that’s the exact thing, but its a similar feeling I get when it comes to changing major game mechanics and maps. It either works out amazing, or fails…there is seemingly very rarely an in between when it comes to that.
I think OSI can even be used as an example when it comes the UO:R and AOS expansion, both changed a lot of different play styles and when it came down to it they lost quite a few subscribers due to this change.
This might also be an extreme way of looking at it with changing game mechanics and a map, but I think it can be used as an example of altering mechanics can turn a lot of people away. People play UO because of what it is, a sandbox MMO with a very balanced PvP system and complete customization of one’s character. People run the game, not instances to get the new loot patched in.
2 servers? :<
1 server I think. Why split the population?
Just do whatever it is your ganna do Azaroth. You have to run the risk of failure to really succeed at anything in this world, and I think most people will be willing to play whatever you put out there, because of the impact IPY 1.0 had on them.
Well, I think the populations will be pretty different. I think the original holds the mass appeal, and it’s what most people are looking for. I’m not expecting enormous populations on the second server.
I’m sure some of you guys would support and play anything I put up, but I’m not so sure that’s true for the majority of people. I just want to give people that option.
I don’t have any experience running a UO servers so I may not know what exactly it is i’m talking about, but is starting with two servers a good idea? It could cause a pretty severe split in the population.
EDIT: Especially when free server’s population are pretty random at times and what not. No shards are really guaranteed success from the beginning, so that may have an adverse effect. Though, I recall you saying in a previous post that you would put the server up later than IPY 2.0 though I may just be nuts :p
Right. One will go up, and a while later the second will go up. I won’t put them both up at the same time.
It’ll be more like an expansion being released, except we’re not forcing anyone onto it. We go a step further than creating a classic shard and don’t force anyone to do anything – if they want to stay where they are, they can and nothing changes. Which I think most people probably will.
Additionally, hopefully the new ruleset attracts some more people and can provide some new blood to both servers after a period of time.
Man I used to know like 3 or 4 really good coders, and a couple of them weren’t even weirdos! I’ve been waitin on them to check their fucking emails or get on AIM ever since you posted this with no luck. Finding a coder who isn’t a complete weirdo who’s involved in a million other things, is fucking hard.
Zigo I’m gonna roll you up and smoke you when this server launches :P Well maybe not you directly, but your “ryemus”s so to speak. Lol Think im gonna stop by your vent and bullshit with ya one of these days.
az knows what hes doing
im excited.
Yea I think a custom map that you add parts every month as part of RP quests and storyline would bring a lot of people and keep them interested in playing. the addons tho would need to be small else the population would become too sparse.
Haha yeah right slug is ganna fucking block you like always and then you will get downed har har har! either way I can’t wait for you to get + – back together.
There is a really good guild on SA called mYm as well. They only played Defiance apperently, but they are really cool guys, and very skilled pvpers!
They said they would play :)
I didn’t read every single reply so exsqueeze me if someone already said exactly what I’m about to say.
I just wanted to give my two cents on the “community” part of the discussion which I don’t remember who brought it up. Which in turn I think also relates to getting “the stratics people” to play a freeshard, as well as people in general who look for more in a server than pvp. It’s the economy, stupid. People need things to aspire to, EA was always adding things to the game that people can aspire to, work towards. If you reach a point where there is nothing more for you to get your hands on then some people might lose interest. Getting stuff is what drives the economy, be it rares, a new custom house, a bless deed, whatever. I feel that preuor freeshards always have lacked continuation of life after pvp. Perhaps mostly because the biggest novelty of the shard was the shard itself, being a preuor shard, things that made it a preuorshard were the biggest focus and things that people like during all eras were payed less attention to. Taking away trammel and implementing a reet pvp system doesnt complete the pie. Bank sitters need things to sit at the bank for, rare collectors need rares to collect, (real rares, like back in the day) shop owners need their materials to be worth a damn and all of the hard work they spent on making them mean something, i could go on but you get the point.
Perhaps on your 3.0 server you could even consider something like custom housing. I’ve never actually had a custom house but I do know that they are really expensive and people are pretty into them. Great gold sink and a great past-time for some people. Even though they are especially hideous most of the time.
So get a really good team of uo economist and give the community something to get together about. That would be of course getting gold and getting iTeMs with golds.
Spawn some server birth rares like OSI had.
RIGHTO
Another thing I meant to suggest for your 3.0 server is factions. Factions was pretty fun if you take out all of the UOR business. Nobody has ever done factions on a preuor server, at least not on one that I’ve heard of.
The economy is the rice and pvp is the soy sauce. Pvp i the pepper to my ramen.
Oh one more thing (I think). I was surprised how many people I’ve met on the various freeshards that I played who had never played an OSI server, their first uo experience was on a freeshard. Advertise to the websites of freeshards of othergames than uo. Plenty people are trying out these freegames and there seems to be some kinda freegame community going on, hopping from one free game to the next in hopes that the next game will be home.
Okay one more thing, hire a group of skilled pvpers as police. I’ve never understood why games didn’t do this. When I say hire I don’t mean pay them with IRL money or with phat loots in-game. Select them as you’d select your staff, with some scrutiny and care. Maybe just provide them with a police house with a reg and gm weapon stone that only members of the guild can use, and equip, like faction items. The regs would be tricky to make it so nobody else could use them, I guess just make it so they never can leave a persons body if they came from the stone. So all they get are regs and gm weapons and whatever other basic resources are decided reasonable for them to be provided. I know there are plenty of people that would enjoy doing something like this, myself included.
There could be an irc channel for a citizen to “call the police”. Independent player guilds have of course tried this before but a legitimate shard provided and monitored police would be better. Don’t think of the police as something that would stop pking or stealing or any criminal behavior at all maybe. Just a cool feature that could add an extra element to the game and if the pks were on enough and skilled enough they would give the average player who was just face planted in covetous a weapon against their aggressors.
The police could possibly be muted to ensure they don’t ever partake in ay U SUK NO U SUK situations thus lowering the chance that their reputation turns sour. Maybe allow them only to use macroe’d commands like “HALT OR GET PWNED” Seems pretty cool tome, doeeet
Yea I dunno, I’m stoned and in between classes so sorry for the multiple messages.
Don’t worry, I don’t think anyone had any idea you were stoned.
jamieirl’s idea sounds like the Weasels from Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
Haha, holy fucking shit.
I think any idea considering the problem of player justice and attempting to address it without hard PK switch or no looting solutions is a good idea. They just need to be refined and… not typed out while stoned. ;)