Crystal Discussion Thread

Kane its an ugly rock you can store your skills in (IE store GM taming) then have another char pull that skill out of the stone. It was a way to store unused skills and not have to train em up again. I doubt we will ever get them!

That sounds super broken

People are not mad or anything.

Kane asked for pros and cons why this looks negative on people, and people are expressing opinions. I guess I can say "I don't get why people are so defensive about people not liking an artwork that doesn't belong to an era". I gave a very specific and a good reason why they don't belong to this shard.

@Lightshade , I don't think your post reflects the truth. Even though they were meant to be on same-era, there is a high possibility these were made for the 3d client. I'm afraid I will believe my eyes rather than you, because they look completely different in terms of artwork from the items we have in the game.

[quote="Nymeros]
@Lightshade , I don't think your post reflects the truth. Even though they were meant to be on same-era, there is a high possibility these were made for the 3d client. I'm afraid I will believe my eyes rather than you, because they look completely different in terms of artwork from the items we have in the game.[/quote]

Your insinuations regarding the truth in my comments is noted...

You can't make up your own truth. The truth is that era accuracy is completely irrelevant. Even if they were made for the 3D client AND the 2D client, it is again irrelevant. Its meaningless.

If you don't like how they look, then fine, but EVERYTHING you say after that is irrelevant to the goals of this shard as it is purely your opinion.

For the record, i've been designing, creating, and patching custom client artwork for the 2D client since the 90's. Take your "truth" and go prancing off with it.

It could be argued that these crystals are Ultima 8, they're freaking canon. Yes, that would make them a product of EA thus the fruits of the devil but that makes them even more awesome.

Regardless the point is, I'm glad these crystals have come around. It has become a clear indicator of who plays on this server whilst having an object firmly inserted up their ass.

everything has a black border, does not mean we should add any of it...

anywho there are plenty of ways to fix the crystals and/or other base model crystal types/items to use that wouldnt look like a special needs child drew them with neon crayons.

Lightshade, maybe I missed something, but a black outline would not change how fucking terrible these things look, in any way whatsoever.

napo, for someone who claims to prefer the open world to instances and Trammel areas, how on earth do you not understand how these things being on display in/on people's homes are an eyesore that makes it look like UOF outside. That's a world I don't want to be in, at all, ever. I enjoy a great deal of instances, events and overworld or dungeon activity. I like my balance and options. I don't like seeing things that make the shard look, to put it very simply, like shit. This can be noted in my arguments against z-axis abuse above and beyond deco-tool heights on rooftops that have allowed people to lockdown things so they have an appearance of being on the ground to the west/nw/north of their homes. It looks like complete shit and from the perspective of someone who likes the real nostalgic look and feel of the era, it's another nail in the coffin.


wylwrk, you're a daft newbie. I hope you choke on one of these crystals. People play(ed) on this server for a great many things. Many people play here specifically because it doesn't look like the atrocious eyesore that UO became after this era.

Jeeeze Blaise, calm down. Absolutely NO reason to go wishing physical harm on anyone here.

What does a house decoration have to do with the open world?
I just don't understand why people are up in arms, this seems like something that doesn't have much effect on gameplay unless someone wants to enter kane's crystal hell.

lol... that is some seriously shitty anti-aliasing.

Unfortunately spending a ton of time doing something doesn't necessarily make you any good at it...

For instance: For someone who has such a strong opinion on graphic design; your signature is horrendous. (Just my $0.02 of course)

Does this mean you can learn to live with them? I mean, z-axis abuse hasn't been removed and can be seen in many high traffic areas (yew vendor area, trinsic and minoc moongates)

napo, from a mechanical perspective, the crystals do literally nothing. From a personal perspective they do exactly what I've stated. They've made it look like somewhere that I don't want to be. One of the reasons I preferred older Call of Duty titles to say, Halo or other shooters, wasn't always the gameplay because that's fairly uniform. For the most part it was look and feel. Those crystals make me feel like something's gone wrong with the vision here and it's much worse than the z-axis deco or ridiculous hues chosen for the 'rare' drops here. It's entirely subjective and there's nothing to be done about it from what I can tell, short of modifying my client if I still insist on playing the best shard ever run.

This just gave me a great thought. I could perhaps change entire hues to ones that I would rather see. I hope it doesn't make anything else look weird.


wylwrk, these crystals don't really exist. I was only suggesting your character choke on them. ;P

This is a big deal because this is the first time Telamon has gone overboard with his graphic addition, pretty sure he knew it when he though about adding it, damn sure he knows it now. If we let these slide whats next... those fucking mounted pixies?

A good portion of us came here and play here specifically because we cant stand the later era art.

I think demanding something be removed because it offends your personal sensibilities is a little much.

Where have I demanded it? I feel they don't belong here and I've stated my feelings and decisions clearly. That is all.

The crystals are a tramp stamp on the lower back of UO:R!

They make us look tacky and must be removed.

I'm actually quite good at graphics design. My signature is the way it is for a reason. Its murky, foggy, shady, and unclear for a reason. Not that any of that has any relevance to the topic at hand, nor does it make someone's opinion less useful than someone else's opinion when we are in fact having a discussion about something that is simply that....someone's opinion.

Furthermore, if you used your reading comprehension skills, you would see that I clearly stated how to fix the offending images to make them more in line with what everyone seems to want.

If you look through all the artwork that started coming out after the T2A expansion, you see how a lot of it was hit or miss. Cherry picking and posting a bit of artwork from any time period to further support your desired narrative that its all or nothing is irrelevant as some of it was good and some of it was bad. I understand that the smoothed over artwork that seems to be popular in video games nowadays is not what UO artwork looked like back in the day. Some of the artwork simply doesn't fit that mold.

For the ones that solely focused on the black outline of objects, you completely missed that boat and have only shown me that you don't understand the differences at all. When I said that working on outlining the individual shards within the crystal would make it look more era accurate, you all seemed to have flown right past that. You can't just cherry pick comments and create your own narrative, folks.

Again, my previous points stand. There is NOTHING about Era-Accuracy, a cutoff date, an expansion, etc....that has any relevance at all to this topic. People that keep bringing that up are using completely ILLOGICAL discussions.

This entire topic is about your OPINION.

State your opinion and move on. Quit mucking up the discussion with illogical ramblings, rants, tangents and nonsense that has nothing to do with this. Stop calling people liars and insulting people over a frigging couple hundred pixels. Its pathetic. This shard isn't about any of that crap and constantly beating your head against the wall like it should be just makes you look insane.

These crystals being introduced into UO on OSI nearly a decade after the launch of the era this server is reproducing, is contradictory to these statements:

"Renaissance is the only shard committed to making a balanced reproduction of the UO:R era."

"Come experience UO the way you remember it."

This is not subjective in any way. This is cut and dry not appropriate in a reproduction of the Renaissance era. This is not UO the way I remember it, because these things never existed in that decade.

The crystals don't fit and shouldn't exist.