Why did I love UO, and am 'meh' about SotA?

Hi all,

I honestly don't quite know why I loved UO so much, and feel pretty ambivalent about SotA. Perhaps I'm a bit jaded now, have MMO'ed for 18+ years, and perhaps UO being my "first" makes me see it through rose-colored glasses. But I think there's a bit more to it than that.

For one, I LOVED the runebook/teleporting system. I could log in, and teleport to Shame 2 and play with my brothers in seconds. Now, one of us has to slog half way across the map, suffering load screen after load screen, just to get to our hunting destination. I, for one, would just love to have the mark/teleport system replace the clunky one we have now.

Treasure maps also added a great level of uncertainty and expectation which I think SotA is also lacking.

Fishing up a kraken while sailing on the big blue is also something I miss from SotA.

Housing is fun in SotA, but it's also a whale's market, making housing for casual more superficial dress up than actually functional. I used to love crafting at my home in UO, but now, I have to run to and from the crafting pavilion all the time.

I'm sure there are other factors which I've also yet to consider, and honestly, I'm still not certain why SotA hasn't captured my attention like UO, but it makes me a bit sad.

Just my two copper,
Oy.

 

Hit the nail on the head with runebooks my good sire.

 

Y'all forgot about town killing afk folks and all kinds of griefing that we're missing out in this game.

 

To be fair, at this stage in UO's development you could click on a rune and port 4 minutes later. The game had so many bugs and the lag was just crazy at times! I would run for 2-3 minutes just to bounce back to where I started due to lag! What about the rollbacks? We all would lose entire days due to roll backs for the first 6 months of UO's life. A lot of that was just the tech we had at the time, pretty much everyone was on dialup when UO went live. And this is when UO was live and for sale, not beta.

Lets remember the good and bad and be fair to SoTA. UO as it was when it went live would never make it out of beta these days. EQ and AO also had issues, as a matter of fact most early MMOs had big issues when they went live back in the early days of MMOs.

I think we tend to remember the fun things in MMOs and forget about all the truly horrible issues they had back then.

 

Setting your runes so you can teleport directly to the treasure chest and not have to fight anything for the loot. Setting a square of flour bags down and using a polearm so you could solo the higher ranked monsters, chopping at any tree because they all provide wood, mining at any part of a mountain because they all yielded ore, casting wall of fire and standing in it to raise your magic resistance....

Good times. The only thing I really miss from UO that SotA doesn't have (yet) are the black gates.

 

Maybe its the fact that UO was fun exciting and new. SOTA seems to be a 2d game rehashed into 3d, reusing the old. Its maybe 2% new ground. How Portalarium does not get a cease and desist letter from the IP holder of UO now is beyond me.

Also its seems to be more focused on selling one of a kind reskinned items every month

 

*shrug* I left both SWTOR and WoW to play this, and I don't regret it all. As far as the reskinned items, check out the cartel packs in SWTOR; same thing, different game. As long as people buy them, games will keep selling them.

 

A lot of good points but, honestly, it often comes down to how old the MMO genre is now and stuff just isn't as exciting as someone's first time over 20 years ago. Whether they realise that, or not.

 

Hmmm .....

1) Recall/Gating - less waiting, more shenanigans, more action, less boredom, better commerce
2) 2D still better than 3D, oddly. Never tired of the 1998 UO graphics.
3) WAY Better PvP experience. More skill-based and strategic.
4) Excitement of ganking/kill-stealing/scamming/PK'ing/dry-looting made gameplay meaningful, dangerous and exciting.
5) No instancing, but yet a world big enough to never get boring. SOTA's overland map is prettier, but UO's was better.
6) Skill caps. Duh.
7) No decay. Duh.
8) Sweet addictive "you have gained 0.1 in magery" notifications. More addictive than cigarettes.
9) Max 7x GMs. Perfect.
10) Treasure hunting. Why doesn't SOTA have this?
11) Boats/pirating. Why doesn't SOTA have this?
12) Factions/guild wars (please don't tell me that guild wars are a real thing in SOTA). More fun than you can shake a wand at.
13) Bank sitting with dozens of players, creating instant socializing and commerce. Often ridiculed but a great part of the UO experience.
14) Dropping runes to advertise your vendor.
15) Dropping runes to set a trap.
16) Stealing in town.
17) Flaglessness.
18) Statloss for murderers.
19) Permagrey.
20) 5 character slots.
21) Housing scarcity so getting a house meant something.
22) Dye tubs.
23) Mounts!
24) etc. etc. etc.

 

That is what made it special, it made it real. No safe spaces, everyone pulled their own weight.

 

I miss my singing ball, runebooks, and bulletin boards. Of course they still await should I return, but that is not happening until 3d becomes 3d . Every day I would chat with my customers and take special orders. The only reason I gave it up was because the 3d was not as promised. I do not miss the early days of mischievous persons stealing my runes when we could not lock them down. I do not miss the ganking and I was I confess ,one of the happy ones when Trammel came along. Goodman, may he rest in peace, kept the faith and made rune after rune.

I came to terms with Sota not being a UO twin long ago and am now content to see how this game plays out. I believe the reason I loved UO so much was that it was a simple game that flowed easily as you played and time passed without getting bored.

 

I really do wish SotA had become more of uo. Maybe they could have put guards in more places to help the more helpless people in the game, in areas that had guards patrolling, not what they have now, just mindless automatons. But one thing UO did have was realistic action, unexpected action and consequence. If the people that required protection in the game had actual protection, this game would sky rocket out of the charts. But we do not have that, we have a pansy state and a bleeding heart. If this does not change this game will go no where.

 

UO has been out for decades to introduce all those nifty trinkets and activities into the game. I see similar in Shroud, just not as many due to the game still being in early development.

Take a deep breath and relax. All good things come to those who wait.

 

The current has already passed. I am here just for feedback and selling what little I have left.

 

The last couple posts of white knighting is another reason to bail this game. They want to shame you out of your opinions. They have money vested and so they try to protect it.

 

Not very nice of you. Who is this "They" you speak of? They sure do mess everything up. Down with They!

 

You aren't in love with UO; you are in love with the way it made you feel at that particular place in time. SOTA is much the same, but will never elicit the same feelings. You're a different person, at a different time.

 

With games like UO, Asherons Call, and Dark Age of Camelot, even WOW, I could get engulfed in the game world and all that there was to do, having a blast, they all had something in that first hour of gaming that put their hooks into you and made you come back for more for years after. With Sota, there just no hook. I log in to check the new releases and am quickly reminded of why I'm not playing. The world is dull and boring, dark, rustic, dirty, the muddy world is absolutely depressing and void of any charm. The combat is just clunky and not satisfyingly . The story is just as lifeless as the world too.

I really wish it wasn't like that for me because like many of you I am heavily invested money-wise in this game. I wanted it be good but time is running out and I think what we see now is pretty much the game, aside from some cosmetic upgrades here and there. I suppose it's just not the game for me. I really hope it goes well for those that do enjoy it though and wish it the best of luck.

 

Thank you, this is exactly right. I want to. I wanted too. I had so much lore built up. I bought a metropolis, I had lore, I had designs I made, I had music I hand made, but ultimately, am let down. This was suposed to be a U4-U7 experience. There was supposed to be a single player mode to accomplish this. Now its all just a bunch of super sensitive community members running the show. I am really sorry that it went this way. At one point I had 20k, (and that was a couple yrs ago) into this game. Now it is the biggest waste of resources that I have ever done.

 

I will say this about SOTA, it more than pays for itself. I still have an account with a reasonably advanced character, but sold every single pledge item and quest item, and made a nice profit. Around $2500 in and $4000 out. Which makes me think that although this game doesn't grab my personal attention any longer, clearly there is a demand for the pixels they are creating. Although the most profitable items were the rares (including quest hats which were free and fun to collect) and the real estate (houses and tax-free deeds). I don't think I sold an add-on store item for more than maybe 60% of what I paid for it.

And those numbers are from pretty aggressive selling, not waiting for the best possible price. If you own a pledge, it's probably worth more than you paid for it. If you attend the quarterly telethons, those pixels are worth something as well.

Not that the game is about making a profit. But in how many games can you actually sell your account/pixels for more than you originally paid? At least if you want to leave the game, you can get a return on your investment.

I played for about 500 hours, got a lot of enjoyment out of SOTA, but eventually just tired of the game. Time and money well spent. And the game is improving daily. Decent story.

I chuckle when I see people complain about their "investment". Sell it or STFU!