Thinking of past Epic fun....looking forward to that again in SoTA

Good Evening my fellow Founders, Adventurers and Royals (Devs)....

After collecting my requirements for my collectible foofy lala hat (lordy I hope there will be hat stands people can make in game for all these)....I continue to smile at the small tweeks and graphical improvements of the game engine as we chug along thru the updates the Royals code and toil for us and themselves in this SoTA game engine.

I did want to take a moment to share what I look forward to most to finding in the game when it launches for "real" in the future. Areas of Unending Tidal wave spawns that myself and my hearty guildmates, allies and mercenary friends all work in tandem to push back and/or allow ourselves to move forward within an area, dungeon, battlefield...or defend from being overrun. I can remember these kind of moments within other game engines that this occured and how much fun and challenge it was to basically stay EVEN with the systems spawn/assault etc. Hours go by....we fine tune our approaches and try different things and combinations.

Hopefully, though this example is not met with any anger but the early days of Dungeon "Crawls and Creeps" within Ultima Online....where once my guild pushed into the Hyloth dungeon we found a location and marked it....then built our own firebase of boxes n debris from which we then would push out from and retreat to eventually always (in the early months when Devs had the spawn rates at High Levels). We would battle and then hear that another group of our friends were also in the dungeon but were being overun and now needed resurrections......oOooOooOOO ghosts would speak as they appeared in our firebase. Back then monsters didn't loot them ....but the anti socials would...and the decay timer had begun to lose everything....fun stuff. Throw in the Murderers and Evil guilds that would actually negotiate ransoms back then and it was fun stuff. Guilds overtime became known to always be in certain areas.....and when new dungeons opened....oh boy.....HIGH SPAWN RATE INSANITY TIME.....since no one had runes yet to inside.....how far can we go.

Sending out Marking Squads (Recon).....with a mage, thief, and a pair of combat healing units....ironically was oddly fun when it didnt work out perfectly....and they failed to need rescue....the thief holding all their gear (overburdened and unable to move) hiding in shadows surrounded by dungeon evils. Spider Keep in UO was another one like that.

Cities being overrun by evil forces and story content of Juo Nar in Trinsic were epic and random until story lines had them victorious and needing to be vanquished out of the city.

Things not possible for the individual and even the group to completely overcome is what I hope for....that epic unmovable object being hit by the unstoppable force.....results of the ebb n flow becoming resulting history and record....thus determining what happens next in an area/dungeon/battlefield etc....

Yup....those battles in the Halls of Hyloth, Terrathan Keep and Battlefields of games were epic and constant challenges to groups on their teamwork and plans.....and after a few hrs or so going back to the guild or town bank and splitting the plunders was fun over an ale and pizza (ehehe) in game.....made for some great fond memories.

That is why I enjoyed so much being a Seer in UO in the early years....and creating new monsters and beasties of new evil twists and rewards for players to strive to gain. From my favorite children the various Ore Elementals (dropping ore n ingots as loot) to Wicked Trees ( only axes, fire and lightning could damage everything else healed the bark)....all the way to Werewolves (players, NPCs bitten changed at night to be murderous infectious werewolves bent on expanding their pack. ( immune to magic damage, silver weapons would harm them till near death they would fall but not die...then a VETERINARIAN with 100 skill could cure with bandage) None of these could be handled solo at their beginnings.....1000s died before they figured out Ore Elementals were only able to be killed with Pickaxes. Wicked Trees could move back then and it was hilarious when some dragged them into towns....feasting on NPCs.

Everything though had a solution.....and sometimes the solution was just to maintain status quo....keep the Tidal Waves (Uber nasty Water Elementals) and Sea Kelp (swamp tentacles on roids) out of the city....else they will create quicksand (spiral vortexes in sandy areas or dirt areas of town that pulled npcs/players into their death. Once killed people would need to DIG out remnants of dead players NPCs as bone piles filled with their belongings ..ie Magencia)

Fun stuff back then....and hopefully some fun stuff in future....where a DRAW is a victory perhaps...perhaps not.

 

Thank you for the entertaining and well written story of your experiences EmperorBorg. I too am hoping for epic experiences in Shroud of the Avatar, while it will not be UO per se', I believe we will be able to have epic times once all the features are added in. That's why I am always rallying for the details, or ummm is it considered nagging by some. Well if you don't have the details to be able to make things turn out differently like you said and your funny part about about the ore elementals, and the solutions so necessary to have lots of solutions. I saw a piece of a game called Sui Generis being developed, where while fighting a skeleton the player picked up a chair and put it around the skeletons kneck and then the skeleton had really hard time getting to you so that weak player could run away and closing the door on the skeleton kept him in the room for a while and away from the player. So anyway onward we go and epicly so, here's hoping for a lot of that.

 

Thanks Budner...... "and if a boy shall be king!!!" Patrick Stewart says at that moment of the movie I snagged the image......Gwenaviers father in the movie. ehhehe