Free or Pay shards?

[jonathann3891]

I've played very little pay shards, 1 month to be exact because I didn't want to retrain any characters.

But recently I've been debating on whether or not to move to a pay shard. I've been playing demise for a long time, but I feel that it may be lacking some of the features that pay shards have.

What are your thoughts on this?

If y'all are able to talk me into switching over, which pay shard should I play?

[Crome969]

[Xanderyum]

I play OSI and have the boosters and expansions. after those I only pay for one account and don't spend any more RL cash other then the subscription fee.  Only time I'll buy stuff is new expansions and boosters.  I took a break for 5 years from UO, and tried to get my fix on freeshards, i tried a few, some were pro macroing afk some were very against, some didn't want to know but wouldnt go after you.  And for my $0.02 OSI is the only way for me.  And i play Pacific, Atlantic and Siege.  and as far as addictions go I couldn't be happier. Unless someone could pry the keyboard away from my hands and erase UO from my mind, i will always stick to OSI until they shut it down.
 Cheers!

[Crome969]

...until they shut it down.

And then?

[TrailMyx]

Alexandria is always a bit behind the times, but they have been around much longer than most.  If it wasn't for my accounts on OSI and my houses, I would have left OSI years ago.  I even give a minimal monthly contribution to Lexia just to say thanks.

[Xanderyum]

No more "and then's"
And then
And then
And then........
Seriously though. I will cease to play UO if osi shuts down the servers and there is no longer the EA ultima any more. I need to focus on my fam more as it is. =)

[Crome969]

No more "and then's"
And then
And then
And then........
Seriously though. I will cease to play UO if osi shuts down the servers and there is no longer the EA ultima any more. I need to focus on my fam more as it is. =)

Glad to hear..

Back to topic:
Well there were a dozen of shards online in the last years. Many of them only running it for some extra income from Donation and after some time they getting disapointed that they wont get rich and stop. Or they cant fix bugs anymore (because they only knowed how to c\p ).
Other shards are really empty. The owner getting fired if more than 5-20 Player logging in. Depending on what you prefer.

Lexia\ABCUO \ RWUO were always a good choice in my eyes

[NObama]

Perhaps I shall make my own shard, just to get away from all the voices.

[jonathann3891]

Thanks for all the input! I'm going to give OSI a try

I think part of my problem is when I played a few years ago, there was a big group of us that would go hunting and we always found something to thrill us. But sense I've came back, I cant find anybody to do anything with so I'm running solo. I just don't know what to do really. Hell, once I get to OSI I'm probably going to have the same problem....

[jonathann3891]

No more "and then's"
And then
And then
And then........
Seriously though. I will cease to play UO if osi shuts down the servers and there is no longer the EA ultima any more. I need to focus on my fam more as it is. =)

Glad to hear..

Back to topic:
Well there were a dozen of shards online in the last years. Many of them only running it for some extra income from Donation and after some time they getting disapointed that they wont get rich and stop. Or they cant fix bugs anymore (because they only knowed how to c\p ).
Other shards are really empty. The owner getting fired if more than 5-20 Player logging in. Depending on what you prefer.

Lexia\ABCUO \ RWUO were always a good choice in my eyes

I've ran my own shard before (Helms Deep). The first time I ran a shard I had about 80-100 active players. It was A LOT of work, but was really fun. Then my computer crashed and everything was lost. About 2 years ago I tried again to start my own server (helms deep again), and I maybe had 10 players.

Its not so much that they cant fix bugs or whatever, but there are so many cookie cutter servers out there, and nothing setting them apart from each other. And the ones who do, have gone to the point that you don't know where to begin because so much stuff is different...among other things.

[Crome969]

When a non Scripter runs a shard he almost have 3 Options :
- Copy and Paste and hope it works
- Try to modify something with some luck and learn c#
- Pay someone who fix stuff for him

As long as he dont choose the third way or learn pretty fast c# and spending a lot of time in testing and fixxing he wont go further more then runuo offer. Most shards using Daats Custom Ores\Bods , FSGen Taming for Breeding , Neruns Distro for spawning , Partial c\p from Orbsydia. So except some rules you can easy set up most freeshards nowadays are the same.

It reminds me when i got the Sourcecode from a Shard who told in public they are the one and only Stygian Abyss Freeshard with dedicated own content (and a corrupt staff ^^) and looking in sources 95% were c\p from other sources and the remaining 5% were selfmaded Items with own properties.

Poor ..

[jonathann3891]

Well I've made the move to pay shards!

I'm currently on Pacific.

[Xanderyum]

2 thngs. PM me about when you play on Pac and We can meet up. I'll help yu out however I can. I'm a poor scripter.

If Crome's rpediction is right about the CC client going away then I'm out.

Cheers!!!!

P.S. unless there is a new client, that isn't the current new "beta" client, and it looks good works with my old PC and works with Easy.

[gimlet]

Although no one has done so to my knowledge - scripting with the EC is going to be easy to do in the future using the Lua links in the client. But I doubt the classic client will ever go away.

[Crome969]

2 thngs. PM me about when you play on Pac and We can meet up. I'll help yu out however I can. I'm a poor scripter.

If Crome's rpediction is right about the CC client going away then I'm out.

Cheers!!!!

P.S. unless there is a new client, that isn't the current new "beta" client, and it looks good works with my old PC and works with Easy.

As i see the Situation they will be merged more and more. If you analyze the Client Bitmaps in the Mulfiles more and more Muls looking similar to EC Bitmaps. They are trying to merge Classic Content into 1 Fileformat.
So it could be possible in Future that you dont need 2 Clients anymore. It will be more a 1 Client 2 Graphic Level Situation.

The Question is if easyuo will be able to handle these , since they cant support EC yet.

@Gimlet : Did you checked the API for Scripting in Enhanced client? I doubt they will offer clientsided macroing possibilites...
But as long as it exist tools who dont need to attach memory points like easyuo, there will be tools to adapt the stuff.

Running Easyuo Scripts directly in stealth would be crazy btw