Hail and well met! I am a UO veteran trying to return to the game after playing for over a dozen years and UO:R is one of the first shards that caught my attention. Having researched/played other shards I would have to say that I am down to two finalists for a shard I want to commit to (UO:R and one that starts with an "Ex"). The information provided on the UO:R website is robust and exciting, the forums are active, and what little gameplay I've seen so far is very compelling. Of course I will continue to play a little more before making a decision but I was curious if you would share why you chose UO:R over a different new home. What brings you here? Everything here so far has been outstanding. Thanks!
Most of what brings/keeps me here is in this thread: http://uorforum.com/threads/what-i-love-about-current-uor.288/
For me, its 3 main things. The first big one is the economy; as someone who mostly does crafting and trade skills in-game myself, the economy and trade market are always crucial to me, and it can't be beat here. Resources have value, and a market, and its entirely approachable by new people -- not dominated by the entrenched few as most free shards seem to be. The second, is the community. We have a fabulous group of people here, most of which will give you the newbied shirt off their back if it would benefit you more than they. This carries over into the forums and irc; we are a pretty close knit group around here. The third is the development focus of staff here. There is a constant stream of new content, town invasions, special holiday events, unique expansions on existing systems, and the like coming from staff, and it helps keep the shard feeling fresh for me constantly. I've been here for about 9 months now, and I've not even scratched the surface of things to do here. Welcome to UOR! Hope to see you in-game soon!
1) policy and protections against AFK resource gathering 2) customized large houses (large keep, fortress) 3) built from the basis of the Renaissance era of Ultima Online, so I have some familiarity and fond memories with this period of UO 4) detailed logging of data. For example, here's every sandal hue on the shard. And here's the list of the people who have killed the most dragons. 5) mature staff, and no pay-to-play. Donations are voluntary and will not give you in-game wealth or rewards. 6) additional customizations to classic Renaissance era that keep me interested and exploring new types of gameplay and new adventures.
An opportunity to link this again! http://www.uorenaissance.com/50things.jpg I originally started here because I wanted to tackle some of those old UO goals I never got around to completing (owning a villa, seeing the depths of some dungeons, run a couple vendors, etc...). I figured I would play for 3 or 4 months and then move on. But I haven't. The world economy is healthy, the staff is excellent, the website tools are fantastic, the custom modifications to the game make sense... I've got a huge backlog of other games to play, but I always log into UOR instead. There's just so much to do, and I don't even PvP.
Ditto plus: 7. Fishing changes are awesome and actually made me take up a previously unexplored element of the game.
Hi Titanious, If it's the "Ex" I think it is, I play (and enjoy!) both places. While they share a common software interface and game map, the similarities stop there. You would not be wrong to think of them as entirely different games. Here are some key differences: UOR is a Felucca shard. Other players can do bad things to you and you can do bad things to them. Ex is not. Most harmful actions a player can undertake against another are disabled in the software. The rest are banned. UOR has the classic UO skill grind where your character's attributes take substantial work to build. With a 700 skill cap, your characters will all be specialists: the crafter, the warrior, the bard, etc. Building those skills and tuning the balance for effective play styles is a chief focus of the game. Fortunately, you're allowed 15 such characters. Ex zips past this aspect of the game with highly accelerated gains and no skill cap. You'll have a 3500 skill character within two weeks. The leveling grind comes in to play later with tames, levelable weapons, relayers (leveled weapons converted into armor) and the acquisition of power scrolls which raise individual stats to 120 from the normal 100, none of which exist on UOR. You can only have 5 characters but except for a couple of time-limited things you'll really only play one of them. Tamers and bards are the effective PvM play styles on UOR. Everything else is either PvP, non-combatant or second-rate. Only tamers are effective on Ex, and their tamer process is vastly more elaborate including animal breeding and bioengineered golems. UOR has fixed house designs. Ex allows custom houses with broad flexibility. Folks on Ex have even built custom guild castles hundreds of tiles wide. UOR has no item decay in houses and a practical limit of around 5,000 items in the minimum size house. Ex decays any items which aren't secured and enforces a practical limit of around 600 items in a minimum size house. Hoarders will find Ex frustrating. Both shards have ample space for new players to build houses. UOR uses the standard UO client and graphics. Ex requires the use of a custom client with a substantial graphics pack. UOR has the classic Ultima moongates. Ex has a crazy complex system of hundreds of teleporters. Ex uses a "pay to win" system. Craft linchpin items, build more than two houses, gain the best tames: to do those things you'll fork over cash. Joining the 95th percentile will cost you around $1500. IRL cash converts to in-game gold at around 300,000 gold per U.S. dollar. UOR offers nothing in game for cash and strictly forbids IRL-cash based trading, so you're on equal footing with everybody else regardless of your outside resources. Regards, Wil
I'm here for the people, everyone I've met seems to be a decent person. The community is great. I've been a solo player for most of the years I played UO, but this server has me wanting to deal with other players. Some things bug me about the server, but overall it's the closest I've seen to accurate. And by some things it only has to do with spell dmg being insanely high (I'm not sure if it's from resist not working correctly) and melee being extremely under powered for this era.
Welcome to UO Renaissance Titanios! A great place to start when looking for what sets UO:R apart from other servers is our custom designed Compendium. The Renaissance Compendium Another reason that will keep you here is that we are still actively developing the server with regular patches almost 18 months after we started. Patch Forum And if you ask our players Renaissance has by far the best economy on any free server. While most places overlook this until it is too late, it was one of the most important design directives when creating the server.
^^^ In addition to all things mentioned above, I also like it for the Free Summer Breeze Ferry to Justice Shrine. I doubt you'll find a free player made ferry system anywhere else! http://uorforum.com/threads/visions...p-hassellhoff-inc-the-summer-wind-faith.4322/ Or the Postal Service http://uorforum.com/posts/19872/ Or the regular Fight Nights http://uorforum.com/threads/friday-fight-night-at-grimoire-03-07-14.4305/ Or the Champ Spawns! Which lead to the harrower! http://uorforum.com/threads/the-eights-of-march.4310/ It's a great place to be.
Hey, you haven't lived until the shard op randomly declares a "power hour" and gives every character online a temporary 100 point boost to str, dex and int. Can you imagine the carnage if Chris did that here?
I started out a few weeks ago so there is several aspect of the shard that I did not experience yet, but I can tell you it is addictive and the players are really helpful. I had so many questions at first and every single one was answered. Not once did I get a rude answer or something. Of course, players might get in a flame war from time to time, that's to be expected in a game where killing a player and dry looting is common, but the community is really great and helpful. I just finished my provo-mage and started hunting, and oh god the pvm is hard! Not impossible but it's actually risk vs reward. You might gm some skills relatively fast but it won't make you op or anything, I feel there's some actual learning curve for you to be good here, instead of the usual gm skill and annihilate everything in your path. Here's an example if you're interested. My template is musicianship, provocation, magery, fencing, tactics, anatomy, healing. So I'm thinking hell, I'm ready to go deep into dungeons now that I've gm'ed all of them! I recall a few floors down a dungeon, enter a room where two elder gazers are, provo them together, fail the provo. Got poisoned and flamestriked so while I'm healing with bandages (gm healing..) I exit that room of hell and close the door. Well, they opened the door and manage to cast a few more spells on me and can't manage to heal myself and cure the poison in time. I got owned in like one minute, see the learning curve? I did, and still have a bitter taste in my mouth.
The taste will be bitter sweet once you get your revenge on them! Remember that GM instruments actually increase your chance for success. Which is another cool aspect of this shard. That means that people who take the time to GM crafting skills have a viable economy.
Hello again! Time to dust off this thread a bit and hopefully pick up where I left off. Thank you to all that replied to my original message. Not long after my original post I was somewhat pulled away to the other shard to spend that UO time with old friends. It was a fine experience but it wasn't exactly what I wanted so I stopped playing once they left. Now that I have time to dedicate to UO once again I am choosing to return to UOR and was grateful that my original account was still accessible (thank you!). I am playing catch up with the patch notes, forums, and UOR documentation but have already spent time in game over the last few nights. My UO passion has always been crafting so you will usually see me digging around rocks or chopping trees (though I am going to build an explorer character as well). Hopefully the crafting opportunities here live up to even half of the posts I have read so far. Didn't want to post a long-winded message here so I'll leave this with "Thank you" to all for UOR still going strong and to please say hello if you see me in game. -Titanious
No salt here. I even get PK'd with a gracious smile on my face. I have found that complaining about being PK'd usually leads to being killed again (which just takes time away from crafting).
