UO Second Age

brandonsantacruz wrote:I guess I was playing before UO Assist's heyday, more towards the beginning of T2A. At that point this stuff may have just been coming on the scene. UO Extreme was my 3rd party app, especially since UOA wanted $$(jerks) and collaborated with OSI(boo).
I found the patch notes from UOA:
http://www.tugsoft.com/UOAssist/OldUpdates.asp

How common was it to use UOA from 98-2000? The notes seem to suggest that it came out in summer 1998 or earlier, since it doesn't list versions before 1.5.

Edit: Also, how does Razor's speed and efficiency compare to the 3rd party programs of the time?

Razor is a piece of shit, its UOA with UOExtreme features plugged into it.
UOAssist or another 3rd party program was REQUIRED in order to PvP with a tankmage because arm/disarm didnt exist inside the UO client regular macros options. So any tank mage was using something, thats how common it was. The same goes for about 50% of all the things you can bind inside the UO client alone now. Most of those features arrived years ahead of their time a la 3rd party programs. 3rd party programs gave birth to T2a tank mage fighting.
An for the record UOAssists disarm/arm feature was like budda, you could arm, get a swing an disarm so fast, if you did it right you wouldnt even see the weapon in your hand, you would just see empty hand swing animation. heh
No other program I used could arm/disarm that fast, razors is slow as piss.
And I agree about the auto target features, thats how most people got popped back in the day for cheating. But binding combos with auto targeting is something that originated on these player run shards and would never work on a real T2a shard, because casting was slower, with recast timers, proper, correct spell interruption in place, pre-binding targeting and a whole combo would of gotten you killed faster than anything.
I never used last target macros, ever, and I killed more than my fair share

brandonsantacruz wrote:So you are saying that it isn't feasible to ban razor?

I'm saying it isn't possible. To the server, there's no difference between Razor controlling your client and you controlling your client. Razor works entirely through the client. GMs can police a "no macro assist" policy through heuristic clues like precise repetition, and can police unattended macroing by being vigilant and challenging someone who is macroing to respond. They could police the usage of (for example) the scavenger agent by tailing logs of object pickups (which may or may not exist in a particular server build, but could exist in principle) and noting which ones occur too fast for human reflexes.

All of these are a pretty big pain in the ass for one reason or another.

But there's no way for them to ultimately know whether or not you are using Razor, per se. It quite simply doesn't produce a signature that is detectable over a network. It can be "against the rules" but it can't be "banned" in the sense that if you run it, you will disconnect. It can be gimped with great difficulty, but not blacklisted.

How is it that OSI banned UOE if 3rd party apps can't be stopped?

UO Extreme contained some packet-injection exploits, from what I understand. A server can detect them and respond accordingly. Razor doesn't do that. Razor doesn't do anything that a person couldn't do from within the client interface.

when in T2A was combat as gimmicky as it is now?

Based on my flawed human memory... it was always like that.

i wouldnt know how to connect to the server without razor

I didn't even use UOAssist until UO:R and I was considered one of the best duelists on Chesapeake. I was the master clicker!!

I used and purchased a key for UOAssist. As a matter of fact I used it one of the times I returned the UO during the Lord Blackthrone's Revenge era (I quit a few days afterwards when I saw what they did to my beloved UO). Most of the people I knew also used UOAssist.

jd222 wrote:Razor is necessary for you to log in the shard. And UOAssist was very similar to Razor in the sense of PVPing. Razor has more features, but they wouldn't affect PVPing as much.

Razor isn't necessary to log in. You can use UO Gateway to log in. I do agree w/ the rest of your statement though.

Derrick wrote:Just as a heads up. I've banned two accounts for using EUO this week, and I've got a couple more I'm keeping an eye on. EUO is strictly forbidden.

What about EZ Macros ? i found a old floppy disc with this program, i used it to macro it records keyboard and mouse inputs and loops.. not that i need it just wanted to see if it still worked.. hehe and between uoassist and ez macros i had same thing as razor before. so on div they disabled the target closest {blah}. but u can still use the target random which kind of sucks but is nice when u cannt see or target the monster. anyways i have never used EUO ...there was another program before uo extreme , but i dont remember the name ... OH another question What about the tree hack turning the trees to stumps whats the rule on that ok or not ???

EZMacros illegal, all you need is razor
I used UOAssist during UO:R just like ironfist, never used it during t2a, and I had a tank mage with equip/unequip macros setup through uo..

Lajon wrote:Everyone I played with used UOAssist from '98-'00. UOExtreme was less common because it was illegal and some of its 'features' would get you banned.

UOAssist became approved when they removed the 'Loop' feature that repeated macros. At that point, UOALoop came out and made it possible to macro unattended.

Give us the statistics or your full of shit and speaking out your ass. I'm not saying it couldn't be true you frankly are making assumptions UOExtreme was free UOAssist wasn't illegal or not people like free and illegal doesn't mean people won't use it anyway and guess what people are competitive as well so UOExtreme was probably actually more dominantly used.

lol go take a nap nobody has posted in this thread in 5 years I doubt any of them even play and I'm making this a run on sentence because you did ok, cool

Artemis wrote:

brandonsantacruz wrote:I guess I was playing before UO Assist's heyday, more towards the beginning of T2A. At that point this stuff may have just been coming on the scene. UO Extreme was my 3rd party app, especially since UOA wanted $$(jerks) and collaborated with OSI(boo).
I found the patch notes from UOA:
http://www.tugsoft.com/UOAssist/OldUpdates.asp

How common was it to use UOA from 98-2000? The notes seem to suggest that it came out in summer 1998 or earlier, since it doesn't list versions before 1.5.

Edit: Also, how does Razor's speed and efficiency compare to the 3rd party programs of the time?

Razor is a piece of shit, its UOA with UOExtreme features plugged into it.
UOAssist or another 3rd party program was REQUIRED in order to PvP with a tankmage because arm/disarm didnt exist inside the UO client regular macros options. So any tank mage was using something, thats how common it was. The same goes for about 50% of all the things you can bind inside the UO client alone now. Most of those features arrived years ahead of their time a la 3rd party programs. 3rd party programs gave birth to T2a tank mage fighting.
An for the record UOAssists disarm/arm feature was like budda, you could arm, get a swing an disarm so fast, if you did it right you wouldnt even see the weapon in your hand, you would just see empty hand swing animation. heh
No other program I used could arm/disarm that fast, razors is slow as piss.
And I agree about the auto target features, thats how most people got popped back in the day for cheating. But binding combos with auto targeting is something that originated on these player run shards and would never work on a real T2a shard, because casting was slower, with recast timers, proper, correct spell interruption in place, pre-binding targeting and a whole combo would of gotten you killed faster than anything.
I never used last target macros, ever, and I killed more than my fair share

UOExtreme shits on every 3rd party tool for UO frankly and UO right up before hiding and archery nerf with all the melee dexxer changes was best time frame of the game for PVP bar none it was bad ass hiding, stealing, archery, magery, alchemy, pking, and bug exploiting were all in there prime there was nothing not to like about it frankly from a pvp stand point that time frame of early UO kicked complete ass it was a great time to be evil then a lot of those things were deliberately fucked over and unskilled dexxers came along and shit hit the fan and just got worse and worse and worse until they lost most of their player base to EQ and AC.

Freight Elevator wrote:lol go take a nap nobody has posted in this thread in 5 years I doubt any of them even play and I'm making this a run on sentence because you did ok, cool

UOExtreme is era accuracy and PVP and better than Razor flat out.

inmani wrote:UOExtreme is era accuracy and PVP and better than Razor flat out.

additional note here- uoassist wasn't legal during t2a. Hell many programs weren't legal then- not even macro programs

Loathed wrote:additional note here- uoassist wasn't legal during t2a. Hell many programs weren't legal then- not even macro programs

Exactly and if not for the 3rd party program "exploiters" using UOAssist and UOExtreme it's hard to say when or if OSI would have ever added a lot of the feature ideas they took and implemented from them. They were certainly heavily used though by the PVP community UOAssist wasn't free, but UOExtreme was and had more features on top of that and as a result more heavily frowned upon by OSI and the community. That said it was worth the ban risk I'd still take that risk to have the features it offered to the world of UO anyone that tried it and had a taste of it swore by it.

inmani wrote:

Loathed wrote:additional note here- uoassist wasn't legal during t2a. Hell many programs weren't legal then- not even macro programs

Exactly and if not for the 3rd party program "exploiters" using UOAssist and UOExtreme it's hard to say when or if OSI would have ever added a lot of the feature ideas they took and implemented from them. They were certainly heavily used though by the PVP community UOAssist wasn't free, but UOExtreme was and had more features on top of that and as a result more heavily frowned upon by OSI and the community. That said it was worth the ban risk I'd still take that risk to have the features it offered to the world of UO anyone that tried it and had a taste of it swore by it.

I was one of the few people who refused to use UOE/UOA during the banned times. A lot of my friends did. They were always amazed how good I was at dueling and fielding even tho I wasnt using either program. But, to be honest, I thought it was a lot of fun to cast a gheal or a eb or a mini heal or whatever spell then double click my heal during the cast time. Shit like that made the game fun.