UO Second Age

The FIRST IPY was really cool. Nice balance on mechanics, intelligent changes, lots of players. It was fun and then all of a sudden it was gone.

However, instead of recreating that coolness, the SECOND (current IPY) is a horrid Frankengame of suck, and I can tell that just by reading the "About" page. All of the following is lame:

"unique names, no mounts, no recall in dungeons, Paladin Class buff items, etc.
Skill Scrolls, NPC Red hunters, and a general feeling of something that is not the UO experience."

This shard has its plusses and minuses, and while it's static nature presents some issues, it's stability outweighs those. Yes, tailoring is useless and archery is nerfed, but it will ALWAYS be like that, and you can plan accordingly. You won't suddenly need to remake your character because "OMG Archery ROX NOW!"

On a side note, do you all remember when that happened on OSI? Archery sucked and hardly anyone used it, then it was the best thing ever and everyone dropped swords for it, then it sucked worse than the first time and everyone dropped it again. Ahhhh, OSI.

ya, ipy is bad, their mindset is "No trammell, now with trammell!"

Pixelclicker wrote:The FIRST IPY was really cool. Nice balance on mechanics, intelligent changes, lots of players. It was fun and then all of a sudden it was gone.

However, instead of recreating that coolness, the SECOND (current IPY) is a horrid Frankengame of suck, and I can tell that just by reading the "About" page. All of the following is lame:

"unique names, no mounts, no recall in dungeons, Paladin Class buff items, etc.
Skill Scrolls, NPC Red hunters, and a general feeling of something that is not the UO experience."

This shard has its plusses and minuses, and while it's static nature presents some issues, it's stability outweighs those. Yes, tailoring is useless and archery is nerfed, but it will ALWAYS be like that, and you can plan accordingly. You won't suddenly need to remake your character because "OMG Archery ROX NOW!"

On a side note, do you all remember when that happened on OSI? Archery sucked and hardly anyone used it, then it was the best thing ever and everyone dropped swords for it, then it sucked worse than the first time and everyone dropped it again. Ahhhh, OSI.

I remember being able to cast while weilding a bow on OSI. Now THOSE were the days.

*farts*

hohoho. Uruks lib ere.

IPY had 2200+ clients online within the first week or two of the shard coming up because of all the hype. It's dropped alot since then. Not really worth the time IMO.

Victor Cassella wrote:

Lucien wrote:One thing I just can't understand is: why is their player base so big? Better advertisement, perhaps?

I love UOSA, but I'd like to see it growing!

Now that I am pretty much fully committed to this shard, I'd have to echo that. The more I play here, the more I believe this is a way better shard than IPY, yet they have double the population. Don't get me wrong, 400 clients online does make the world feel alive, but you can never have too many people.

I am sure admins have tried all sorts things to promote the server, and I am sure this topic has been beat to death. But it be worth always attempting to promote the shard and try and reach that golden 1000+ clients online mark. The thing is population brings population, which I believe is why IPY's population does well. Not because its that great of a shard, but because it has always been known to be the biggest free shard.

I'll be donating to this shard, as I know how much it takes to keep these servers running. I'd also be willing to donate separately into some form of affective shard promoting.

We rely on you guys to bring your family and friends to the shard. This is pretty much the method that UOSA has used to recruit people. Maybe in the future we can launch a marketing campaign aimed at getting those whom have never played UO, but for now, we just rely on you guys.

We already hit the 1,000 clients on-line mark a long time ago. Our average clients on-line though is about half that (charts available on the main UOSA website). Regarding IPY, we are not really in competition with them. They have their player base and we have ours. People are, of course, free to go back and forth at their leisure.

Pretty sure UOSA peaked @ about 860 (ish) clients.

Been here pretty much since the beginning and I have never once seen anything above 900.

Unless I missed a stress test, or something..

Personally I haven't played IPY but I can say that economy means everything in UO. If the economy gets out of hand by selling in game stuff for money staff intervention in a negative way, there goes the server not worth playing anymore. Staff here have perfected the economy of UO better than any EA/OSI ever could IMHO.

marmalade wrote:IPY had 2200+ clients online within the first week or two of the shard coming up because of all the hype. It's dropped alot since then. Not really worth the time IMO.

Did everyone already forget about the Rixus upload of the original IPY where there was a code modfication to the join message that displayed a false player count in the system message? We all know about the massive amounts of corruption that Az conducted with the original IPY ranging from the altered players skills that was flubbed with the 'online player UI' menu to the enet asian girl island rune. Why would that be any different now? He has not registered his shard on JoinUO where the player count would be recorded even after a year of being live despite being told too. This does not necessarily mean the current player count is a lie but based on past experiences it's highly possible.

A person would have to be a complete fool to believe anything over there without some form of hard proof.

Sandro wrote:Pretty sure UOSA peaked @ about 860 (ish) clients.

Been here pretty much since the beginning and I have never once seen anything above 900.

Unless I missed a stress test, or something..

The answer to that is simple Sandro, 838.

Faust wrote: A person would have to be BizzyBeast to believe anything over there without some form of hard proof.

fixed

Dude, if you're looking for a new shard, and you heard good things about two....

Asking both sides' personal opinions on the matter will be a sales pitch no matter who you talk to.

Play one for a week, then play the other; get a taste of each and decide for yourself.

Science not Salesmanship

How can one get an idea for the opinions or player base just playing each for a little while?
Getting open feedback on the forums and seeing people not get squelched for speaking highly of another shard, tells quite a lot.

Science often involves research of this nature.

I've played both UOSA (since a month after launch) and IPY 2 (since launch).

Verdict:
UOSA wins by a long shot

For all you people talking about IPY's population...download the game and log on. 90% or more of the players online at any given time are afk fishers. Its legal to afk fish, and you can sell 20k fish steaks per day to NPCs. x3 accounts, thats 60k per day for 5 minutes work. There's also the skill cap per day, which causes all players to either play the game 24 hours a day OR macro for months/years to get GM in most skills. I was the second GM blacksmith on there, and it took over a month of pure smithing (I mined using macros on the other 2 characters).

IPY2 is definitely broken, so all you UOSA players don't have to worry about the population. Give it a year or so, and UOSA will be at 1k online again once everyone quits IPY. UOSA is still more alive - i.e. players actually playing the game at every hour - than IPY ever was. Not to mention the trammy items/donation shop on IPY. That was the main reason I left...Az created this donation gift shop, where you donate a certain amount and get special rare items/dyes from it. Very lame IMO, and I've always appreciated how the staff here refuses to pander for $.

I was more commenting on the population when IPY came up. There was over 2k clients connected, and every dungeon was full of new characters running around. Regardless of whether the numbers were fixed or not, I've never seen a freeshard that busy. Was pretty amazing at first, but didn't last long. I think once the novelty of running around on a shard full of newbies wore off, alot of people just quit.

I messed around with IPY2 for a couple of days. Enjoyed it about as much as I enjoyed Hybrid (which isn't a whole lot). UOSA wins out for me simply because it provides the feel of the UO I loved the most.