Hey UO:R Community, I’m hitting my 1 year anniversary on UO:R and I thought I’d share some of my thoughts as someone who had not played UO for 14 years prior to coming here. TL;DR: Thank you to everyone who helped me get going and thanks to @Chris and the staff for giving us all a place to horde our pixels and play our favorite game. Looking forward to 2019! The “Good”: This server kicked me right in the nostalgias. This is the only UO ruleset I’ve ever known, so coming back to it felt right at home. I saw @Puck streaming one day, and after seeing a few streams from other shards I gave UO:R a shot. Telamon has done an amazing job capturing that era and it’s been a pleasure to get to experience it. It was really easy to find people to help and the vast majority of the people in the community are always willing to help, either on IRC or the forums. At the risk of missing someone with a name list, a special thank you to people like @Karrelan , @Vella , @Puck , @Surfrats , @JohnM , @Majestic , @TheNooNoo, @Valrick who dedicated a lot of their time helping me and creating a really fun and amazing UO experience, from being on Twitch, hanging out in voice chat or just shooting the shit about UO on Discord – you guys made getting back into UO really fun and I want to thank you for that. I’ve met some great people, some who we’ve since become friends on Facebook and we get to see each other’s lives outside of UO, some others who are just really great people and it’s been pleasure getting to know them. In my non-UO guild, I’ve been with a lot of them for over 20 years, it was a reminder when in UO by yourself. it’s important to find people you can trust on some level and if you know a little about each other outside of UO (family stuff, real life stuff) it makes that level of trust a bit stronger. Tons of resources compiled over the years by people. These guides were really helpful answering questions and getting me going. Thank you to everyone still here, or long gone, who put some time into making guides. *insert you are the real MVP meme here* It’s been really fun working on Razor and sharing it with all of you. I hope everyone believes the changes I’ve made have stayed true to what this shard represents, and what we’ve all come to expect from Razor. I take it very seriously and try to be as transparent as I can. It’s been really enjoyable to be able to contribute in my small way to what you all have built here and thank you everyone for helping me test the different versions released. Thanks to @JimmyTheHand for all his contributions and I look forward to seeing what else he has in store for all of us! Another mention for @Chris who shares all this data via the UOR Compendium – from house locations, character data, hue data, item counts, who is online and more – the level of transparency is amazing. We all can name those money private UO shards that have existed and/or exist today who wouldn’t dare expose this level of detail. This list can go on, but to sum it all up, thanks to everyone who does their small part to help keep this place alive for all of us to collect pixels in. The “Bad”: Bad might be a strong word – nothing is truly bad, especially how it relates directly to UO:R. I hope no one takes offense, I mean it with love in my heart. Less a knock on UOR, more on me but this game definitely has taken up time out of my life that used to be for doing other things. Early on, it took me a while to get a good balance to where this game wasn’t taking over my life and I sometimes still get that wrong. I love the holiday events, but between those things can be a little slow. I found myself in the final days of summer not wanting to play and simply refreshing my houses. AMIBs are amazing, Level 7 Tmaps are amazing no question, and with nothing but respect towards the staff here, some additional events, some new all year content, getting the stats on the UOR site updated more regularly, would go a long way. I say all this acknowledging the huge the challenge of keeping a 20-year-old game fresh while trying to stay true to the era of UO and not turning it into crazy dungeon neon trammel world. I know this is a debated subject and I’m not looking to start one here, but as someone who has a few too many houses himself, I’d support rules that made the number of empty houses around the world less. I’d love to see the towns a little less – empty of life and wear. The staff here can make some awesome looking deco (tmaps, amibs, xmas events, etc) -- unleash those folks in Ocllo, in the other towns, add some things to the towns that make them feel more alive and lived in. More non-tamer content would be nice. AMIBs are a perfect example of that, I'd love to see more things focused on provo and other non-tamer templates. I'm sure this has been debated to death too. The “Ugly”: Anonymity is a powerful thing. UOR can bring out the best in people but it can also bring out the worst. UO in general can be very personal for people on different levels. What game still, after 20 years, makes you get shaky hands or sweaty pits when something is going on? UO politics and rivalries that existed long before you came around are suddenly tossed in your lap and can directly affect your UO experience. Because the community is so small, as someone new it can be challenging avoiding it without excluding yourself. I learned to take what people say about person X with extra skepticism, because often those opinions were formed by perceived slights that happen long before you came around. If the person is truly as awful as they tell you they are, it won't be long before you find out yourselves. We’re all guilty of having our emotions take over, saying things we later regret (myself included) but it can be cringy seeing some of the same folks who seem to really get a kick off of “trolling” (broad term, but it can come with all different flavors) over and over again, knowing they’re probably men in their mid to late 30’s with some kids and a mortgage. This isn’t unique to UOR but in such a small community of people, it stands out more. End of the day, who people are here, how they treat others, probably doesn't differ than much from who they are in real life. Thanks to everyone who made this new guy feel welcome in your community over this year. I look forward to 2019 and beyond on UOR. Merry Christmas everyone!
haha yeah, I was just getting a formatting thing down and wanted to test it in preview, hit create instead. Reported the thread, hopefully they'll delete it. It was just a post about my year on UO:R, nothing too exciting.
Ha, if you want. This is what I had so far. Code: Hey UO:R Community, I've been playing here for almost a year now and I thought you might want to hear some of my experiences, some stories and thoughts from someone who hadn't played UO for 14 years before starting here last year. The Good: Welcome to new people. I hate making a list, because I'm bound to miss people but folks like @Karrelan, @Vella, @Puck, @Surfrats, @JohnM who helped me and The Bad: The Ugly: Oh and a link to my post back in Jan telling my UO story. Sorry, nothing exciting to see here.
Largely relate to your thoughts and you make valid points. One thing I'd add is that this shard is addictive. Here's to having you around for more Christmas events
Right, exactly. Not only is UO inherently addictive (which could be a whole thread on it's own talking about the reasons why), that mixed with the nostalgia we get from UOR, UO can become a powerful drug. Thanks for the kind words too, Merry Christmas!
