My thoughts on UOSA, and UO in general

[Clx]

At work on a night shift, nothing to do so I'll bore you all with my thoughts on UOSA and how my thoughts on this era have changed over the years.

It's the 'best' free-shard I've come across. It feels authentic, and has developed an actual community with players from all parts of the 'uo spectrum' which as far as I'm aware is completely unique. Most shards manage to attract just one type of player and therefore sow the seeds of their downfall. I'm sure this is mostly due to Derrick and his staff's devotion to recreating the era accurately, being in it for the long haul, and managing their shard so professionally and also evidently without corruption and/or bias towards certain players.

I'm still obsessed with UO, like most of you I just can't get it out of my system even after all these years. I first played in May '98, I'm 30 years old now and still hopelessly addicted to the memory, if not the reality.
I really thought until recently that t2a was my preferred UO era as well. A lot of my fondest memories of the game are from the 98-00 time frame, and I played OSI on and off all the way to 07, exclusively as a PvPer from 2000, and PvP is all I'm interested in now.

Despite all the above, I still don't log in here much.
Why? The only faults I can find with UOSA are:
(Nothing below is meant as a complaint, or to try and convince Derrick to change anything, just saying how I personally feel.)

1. Tournament system. We've got a shard striving to be 'era accurate' to the exclusion of all else, but then there's ridiculous almost 'instanced' tournaments every day, completely killing the immersion factor that was a big part of what made old UO great, and taking a big % of the player base out of the actual world for a decent period of time. I absolutely hate it. It just seems completely against the principles of this era and shard.

2. PvP mechanics. I was a bit of a newbie in actual t2a times. I didn't ever have a 'tank mage' but I grew up in UO during this time period as a crappy 'warrior' in an anti guild, and always regretted not being more involved in PvP until UOR. I've been exclusively PvPing since 2000, so always felt I'd just missed the 'great days of PvP'. I heard the stories about how PvP was at it's most fun and most balanced in the t2a era. Now that I've come to experiment with it here and elsewhere, I find that I actually prefer mage PvP in UOR and AOS, which is quite a dissapointment. The romance has well and truly been killed. Maybe it's just because I can't adapt to it..

3. Time has moved on. The naivety has been lost. In this era in 'real' UO, like a lot of people, I got truly caught up in the UO universe. If I wasn't playing I was thinking about the game, waiting for my chance to log in. The shards I played really felt like a world. I loved the community, the rivalry, everything. Seeing a red name in Deceit = adrenaline pumping. That dungeon with it's sounds and no night sight was scary! We wouldn't even go there without half the guild logging on so we'd have safety in numbers. I felt really strongly about being one of the 'good guys'. No game will ever have that immersion factor again. It was part of being the first MMO, when the internet was relatively still new to people. Crazy days. It's impossible for UOSA to recreate this, however close it has come.

4. Purpose in PvP. I hate Trammel, I hate all the neon crap, I hate pretty much everything else brought in by and in UO:R and AoS - but I prefer their PvP systems as well as their PvP mechanics. Factions and Champion Spawns gave some purpose and real 'reason' to PvP. I miss that here.

As I said, none of this is meant as a criticism of UOSA, it's a fantastic shard. I'm just trying to justify & explain to myself why I don't play here more as much as anything, and I guess to apologize to Derrick and explain why I canceled my paypal subscription today. I doubt there will ever be another player-run-shard that's as professionally managed, as 'era accurate' & with such a thriving community as this one.

Am I the only one still chasing that first UO-high 10+ years later?

[Mirage]

Cool story bro

[Mikel123]

It's always fun and exciting to enter a game that you know nothing about, like most of us did 12 years ago, and have to figure things out as you go. It's frustrating at times, but that makes it more enjoyable when you achieve some small successes (for me, completing my spellbook from levels 1 through 7 via stores and liches was always a proud achievement). UOSA isn't going to have too much of that because we all remember some basics of the game and the documentation here is so complete that almost anything can be powergamed via a guide.

I think UOSA is really about accomplishing things you never got to in 1999. For me, it was getting a castle, and having a tamer with a dozen dragons in tow (in production UO, my tamer achieved dragon-taming skill after the pet follower limit went in place) or killing things with a dozen hellcats or dire wolves. Things I still never got to do: owning an island. Starting a town. Maybe in 2040, a new shard will pop up (or this one will still be going!) and I can start over and try again to accomplish those things.

[Hicha]

I think UOSA is really about accomplishing things you never got to in 1999. For me, it was getting a castle, and having a tamer with a dozen dragons in tow (in production UO, my tamer achieved dragon-taming skill after the pet follower limit went in place) or killing things with a dozen hellcats or dire wolves. Things I still never got to do: owning an island. Starting a town. Maybe in 2040, a new shard will pop up (or this one will still be going!) and I can start over and try again to accomplish those things.

Thats usually how i approach my gametime here when i start to get bored. I think the only things left for me to do is build a fisherman and learning to play a tankmage.

[Guerrilla]

drum roll please

[GuardianKnight]

I think UOSA is really about accomplishing things you never got to in 1999. For me, it was getting a castle, and having a tamer with a dozen dragons in tow (in production UO, my tamer achieved dragon-taming skill after the pet follower limit went in place) or killing things with a dozen hellcats or dire wolves. Things I still never got to do: owning an island. Starting a town. Maybe in 2040, a new shard will pop up (or this one will still be going!) and I can start over and try again to accomplish those things.

This is what I did. Back in old UO I had a tamer but because all the good stuff was taken, I had no way to accomplish anything cool.

Since starting here, I have had at least 3 castles, 5 keeps, 4 towers, over a dozen houses of different varieties. Have earned rare rewards that no one else can earn and was given the chance to do my house trading business like I did on SP.

One difference though. In old UO, I could broker a house trade and make a million on each trade. Here I don't even ask for 10 gold.