A Plea to EA

[Chike]

Not sure if anyone has considered or attempted this.

Why not plea to EA to dig up the old files, perhaps at a nominal fee for their time. Or was the entirety of OSI's work gutted. I read a post that linked to an interview with some of the original devs and they said that their original work was probably in a file somewhere at EA in storage.

Maybe someone with ties to EA could pull some strings, work some magic?

Let us remove the arguments and reveal t2a and other era's for what they truly were. The demo is a good reference, but the real treasure is in the original live servers documentation. The patch notes are another great reference, but again every little change that was made is not there.

This would help ERA accuracy tremendously. So, anyone work for EA to get the ball rolling?

[mrbojangles]

Wishful thinking.

Free-shards have always existed in a legal gray-area, luckily EA has been sane enough to realize that these player bases can not be monetized, and so have never sought any sort of legal recourse. Putting your hand in a bee-hive and asking for honey is probably not the best idea.

It would be awesome to have access to some of that original data though. You're absolutely right about that interview video highlighting how much was changed in the game by the seat of their pants before release. The devs say themselves that before release they were basically doing last-minute hacks of the code and rushing to get the thing ready to ship. They did not follow the strict documentation regimen that UO devs later adopted. It's naive to think that the demo accurately depicts the state of the first live servers, and that all the differences were fully documented.

As long as were thinking wishfully, how cool would it be to have some comments from, or interview the original devs like Starr Long about ultima from that era, our shard, and the accuracy of our mechanics.

[Chike]

Ah yes, I'd been playing on freeshards for too long. I forgot about the gray area, where I once wondered how it was possible now we can be thankful they don't care to whack us.

Perhaps the search could turn towards those devs. Maybe a loose twitter or facebook is hanging around? We could try to contact them and maybe, just maybe have another point of reference. An original Dev.

Thanks for reminding me that EA is infact a bee hive. They ruined this game, best not to remind them we exist.

[Faust]

There was some mention of the old data files being lost or corrupt during the move from one state to another. This was stated by an admin on their forums to a very similar question to your own a few years back.

[Freight Elevator]

to realize that these player bases can not be monetized

lol?

[Robbbb]

I will put some effort into trying to get this done as this is very similar to the type of work I do now. Although, if I get my hands on this valuable piece of history I plan to hold it for ransom for 1 pair of glacial ice hued GF sandals!

[Kriav]

Maybe not apolyton released the source code to call to power.

Wishful thinking.

Free-shards have always existed in a legal gray-area, luckily EA has been sane enough to realize that these player bases can not be monetized, and so have never sought any sort of legal recourse. Putting your hand in a bee-hive and asking for honey is probably not the best idea.

It would be awesome to have access to some of that original data though. You're absolutely right about that interview video highlighting how much was changed in the game by the seat of their pants before release. The devs say themselves that before release they were basically doing last-minute hacks of the code and rushing to get the thing ready to ship. They did not follow the strict documentation regimen that UO devs later adopted. It's naive to think that the demo accurately depicts the state of the first live servers, and that all the differences were fully documented.

As long as were thinking wishfully, how cool would it be to have some comments from, or interview the original devs like Starr Long about ultima from that era, our shard, and the accuracy of our mechanics.