UO continues to seal its fate

[Martok]

Lance and myself traveled to the Balron cage for a little Ballie killing.  But alas, it seems balrons have been made invulnerable to EV's!  Between myself and Lance, we threw at least 15 EV's at the balron.  Not a single bit of damage!

We then started casting spells at the balron.  VERY little damage from our magic!  I am talking about two GM mages, one with high eval, the other with GM eval.  After fifteen minutes I was too mad to continue, I left and logged out.

What are they thinking?  I hope this is just a "bug" that Ev's aren't working right.  If not, my fate with UO has been sealed.  It has been fun (not so much as of late) but I will be leaving.

I plan on putting two of my accounts for sale this week on ebay.  I will keep the account with Martok on it for a little while longer (most likely until shadowbane comes out).

I would be willing to wager, when Shadowbane comes out there will be an overwhelming flood of UO accounts for sale on Ebay.  Think of it as your next door neighbor putting toilets in their front yard with flowers in it, and painting their house pink.  Property value is getting ready to go way down.  I can see it now:  7X GM tamer accounts with castles....$50 or best offer!

No thanks.  I will sell my goodies before that time.

If you ever wanted a GREAT account, your chance is coming.  But be careful........when you pay that $50 for that great account, they will turn the switch at EA....and the world will go dark.

[Aluim Aster]

Hey maybe we should start a pool to see exactly when it does finally snuff out... my bet is on September 2002, you have to consider that they'll wanna wait until the very last UO third dawn is bought by some unexpecting sod. Poor guy:roll:

[Coldren]

Quote from Aluim Aster, posted on

Hey maybe we should start a pool to see exactly when it does finally snuff out... my bet is on September 2002

My bet is April 2002... By then Shadowbane will have (BETTER HAVE) been released, along with NWN and a few other good new MMORPG's. Once people see there is much better out there that works a heck of a lot better, I think you'll see a stampeed to get out of EA's client list soon after christmas if games like SB are released.... By April it will cost more to keep the servers running than they will have cash flow...

Die EA... I hope you all end up pennyless like just about everything else from the .com frenzy.

:smash: :smash: :smash: :smash: :smash:

[Cedric]

before you leave UO all together like I did, remember 2 things.

The bonds you made in UO you "will" miss, even those days you loose conn 10-20 times and it laggs to death, you will miss it. God if I know why, but ya miss it.

Fianlly when you sell your account get several estimates 1st. I got almost 2K for my account, when after I found out I could have gotten 3K. Research it 1st. see what people want, and since you are sellign yrou account anyway, macro up whatever skills are hot at the time. I got 700 for just transfering money to another shard and buying a house on it and starting there. You "can" PH a warrior to a 2-3x gm in a week. if you transfer enough $ you can macro a GM smith, etc... little things that will bring up the value of your account. The last biggy people want is rares, and lots of them. YOu can spend about 500K-700K (when I played) and buy 1 of each daily rare out there. That is a collection and now worth more. Getting all the books of khaldun is anotyher rare, little stupid things is what the "kids" want.

And after you leave try a player run shard, some are bad (and I mean bad) and others are enjoyable.

Cedric (Retired Praetorian Guard)

[Prometheus]

After hearing this bit of news, that is also the last straw for me. I will also be looking to put my account up for sale on Ebay as well. In the meantime, I'm still having a blast playing Diablo 2 LoD .... so if anyone wants to find me, that's where I'll be ... for now.

[Koopsta]

Its a damn shame after 2 3/4 years I finally get into a good guild that renewed my interest in uo half the people in it are talking about leaving...  

If anyone needs me I'll be at the orc fort fighting the war... alone I suppose :ashamed:

[Prometheus]

I think what most people are angry about is that EA/OSI flat out DENIES there is a problem with EV/BSs. This is a quote taken off of Stratics:

The energy vortex and blade spirit AI was rewritten to remove alot of inefficiency in their cycle counts. This has resulted in substantial reduction in dungeon server cpu cycles used by these programs.

As a result they now attack targets with better prediction and spend less time "thinking" and more time fighting their target. The z exploits have been removed so that they can be dispelled correctly. Using a blade spirit or Energy Vortex on creatures that have the ability to dispel them is not going to be effective unless those creatures are mana drained.

Ive done some checking and they appear to be working (they do damage, they are dispelled correctly, they attack).

Balrons are one of the most challenging monsters in the game - it may indeed take more of them to kill the more challenging monsters but for the (upper mid) level creatures they should be functioning the same.

- Adrick

Update: Adrick dropped in to give some more info here:

Im taking the feedback here seriously and I just concluded a test on the Lake Superior shard. I created a normal lich, I set its mana to 0. I then at 100 magery cast 1 energy vortex and it imeddiately attacked the lich - I timed it in 29 seconds the lich was dead and the energy vortex was the slightest sliver harmed.

Yes there were changes to the energy vortex spell as I detailed in several posts.

1] They now actually fight an enemy in that they can hit or miss.

2] They no longer spend extra cycles evaluating targets - they chose a target and fight it thus reducing lag mostly on the dungeon servers where these spells are common.

3] They no longer poison.

A lich is a mid level creature so my information about the relative strength of EV vs mid to high mid creatures was correct.

- Adrick

Now Adrick claims there is no change, yet everyone else seems to report a change.  Now here is my problem:

1. I agree partially with nerfing bladespirits a bit. It was too easy for low level mages to easily kill strong monsters with it.

2. Energy vortex is an 8th circle spell. It is MEANT to be powerful. It costs 50 (half) of any persons mana and even a Grandmaster Mage will fizzle it about 2 in 8 tries. Why oh why did it have to get nerfed? The general consensus is that the only useful 8th circle spell is Ressurection.

In all, I am really really really getting tired of the unwanted, not even asked for, and totally unbased nerfing of skills, spells, etc. I know people don't like to hear about people leaving, but quite frankly, there is nobody to blame but EA/OSI for this. They simply do not care about their established players and are only concerned with reeling in new accounts. But it'll bite them in the back when all these accounts get cancled. I may not like Everquest, but there are thousands of other people who do, and of course, theres the other upcoming games like Shadowbane and such.

People find Diablo 2 to be "tedious" and all "hack-and-slash" but I am enjoying it more than UO. Funny thing about Blizzard ... just this last week, there was a major glitch of some kind, and many people lost their characters, their posesions, etc. Know what Blizzard did? They actually did a "rollback" of the realms, restoring everything. They LISTENED to their customers, and gave them what they wanted.

The point to this rant is .... that my future on UO, along with others such as Martok and Baltazar, is purely dependant on whether or not EA does something major to rekindle our interest in UO.  Unwanted nerfs and "newbiefying" of the game are NOT gonig to do it.  Localaztion and 3rd Dawn will NOT do it.  Vet rewards will NOT do it (at least for me). In the meantime, don't be surprised to see Prom up for auction on Ebay.

[Lord Ser Brightblade]

Quote from Koopsta, posted on

Its a damn shame after 2 3/4 years I finally get into a good guild that renewed my interest in uo half the people in it are talking about leaving...  

If anyone needs me I'll be at the orc fort fighting the war... alone I suppose :ashamed:

Have no fear Koop.  I dont play for the money I can make playing.  Ill not sell my accounts though Scout would love me to to get some moolah for the baby which isnt too far off.

Gimmie just a few more days and IDSL will be installed.  Wont be blazing fast but it will be much better than the conn I have now (24,000 baud with tons of line noise).