If your shard is like the one I play on, PvP is on the decline. There dosent appear to be much coming from EA in getting people to come back to UO, so on our shard some of the hardcore PvPers have decided to take it upon themselves to try and inject some life into this dead horse called PvP.

To do that these guys have broken away from their current guild OPK and started a new guild One United World (OUW). This guild is for anyone that wants to learn to PvP, Spawn and survive the Felucca facite.

Now these guys are well know for not really giving a care for what anyone else outside their guild thinks. They have been know to grief the players they are now trying to attract and they have been know to scam people as well. As stated by one of them, PvP is dying and really the only option is to try and introduce more people to PvP. So these guys want to recant their old ways and start a guild that anyone can join and hopefully benefit from.

Many people have knocked the idea and said its purely a ruse for them to get some slaves to spawn for them. Well thats not likely, getting scrolls on our shard is not exactly a challenge especially when one of them completed another Rats solo that day.

Me I believe that they are on the right track and all I have got to loose from getting in and trying to help them is some time. Seeing as I see the benefit should these guys be on the level that I think my time is worth the investment for what it could achieve. So far so good.

We even had our first outting last night with the first four memebers of the guild. We even managed to beat OPK back 3 times before one member had to log and eventually we surrended the champ to OPK. So if your on the Oceania shard and want to try your hand at PvP, then give OUW a shot as this guild is for you.

For those that are interested in some easy insurance money, keep an eye out for these two chars of mine: Frogskin (Blue) and FrozenYoghurt (Red).

Cheers
Shane

In PvP battles anyone can ress anyone else and they are back into it within seconds.

Heres my fix for it:

It should be that every time you die in a PvP battle (which would have to be a time period or location), it takes more people to ress you.

So die once, any person can res you.
Die twice, two people have to res you
Die three times, three people have to res you.
Die ... you get the idea. Cap it at 5 or 6 maybe.

This answers all angles for requirements and puts the onus of the guild to keep each other alive.

A moment of brilliance I must say

Cheers
Shane

Opps did I say 2006, well you certainly would have thought it was if you play UO. Every year EA gives Christmas gifts to those active accounts that are 30 days or older when the gifts are given out. Well not this year, EA having laid off half or more of the development staff due to redundancies and the moving of the development studio to a location the other developers did want to move too has left the 10 year tradition as a joke this year.

Every year for 10 years EA has at least made an attempt to give something different and new  to its subscribers, but as another sign things are not all well at UO HQ, this year was an exact rehash of last years gifts except with the date changed to suit the year.

So recently EA changed the drop rates in Doom so now even the most casual of players can get involved and even score an arty or two. However the whiners appear to be out in full force bitching about how archer templates dominate in Doom and should 16 or more of them show up its unfair and dose not allow anyone else to get a chance to get an artefact. Which as you can see from this thread, that not everyone agrees and even a debate started on whether archers are the best template for dealing damage.
 
I never ceases to amaze me how players of this game find something so moronic to whinge about, especially when if they really wanted they could create an archer template and go to Doom and join the crowd. But no, they would prefer to whinge and hope to effect change by getting EA to nurf archers. Which would only lead to another thread about another template needing nurfing. In this day and age of Soul Stones are people still too lazy to train up characters? Worse case you could use and advanced character token and start your archery skill at 85. If you took him to the invasion it wouldn’t take very long at all to get him to whatever skill level you wanted.

I was listening to podcast 11 and the ideas that Mr Tact had tabled in regards to items decaying and how to make crafters viable. He had some good ideas on how to implement a life span for items without overly pissing of those people that have uber items and don’t want to loose those items. In a nutshell he suggested that items would be able to be repaired, however every time they are repaired they cost more to repair. The idea being that eventually its cheaper to get a new item than repair it.

Now the first thing that comes to mind is that building a decent PvP suit costs a boat load of gold and to have those items decay to the point they don’t exist or cost ridiculous amounts to repair will have the PvP community up in arms. But you know what it would even the playing field a little in that once those uber items had decayed and made it super expensive to repair then peoples PvP suits would start to balance out. Main reason being is that people wouldn’t use those l33t items in normal field battles and may only use them for dueling and other such occasions.

I really don’t know why EA put Artefact level 12 on Vorpal Blades and Pyros Staves if they had every intention of handing them out like candy. Other Artefacts have lower levels and are extremely rare to come by, yet these latest editions are level 12 and can be found lying on the ground.

A number of people have asked me some questions about the improvement I suggested could be made to shopping in UO. If you have read it, go here and return back here for an update.

So the idea was that due too the gazillion items for sale on each shard that EA should introduce a trade vendor into each city. The trade vendor would provide the ability for you to see all of the items for sale on player run vendors. Now this could be through an interface that categorises all items and when you first speak to the vendor the UI shows you a list of catagories. You then drill down on the category to see the items for sale in that category. Possible it has sub categories to help minimise list size. Also the vendor could provide a search featrure to find the item you want quicker.

Now once you found the item you want to purchase you buy from the trade vendor a rune to the players shop. You recall to the shop and buy the item from the vendor. Now some idiots thought this idea was copying World of Warcraft and immediately dismissed the idea. Well for those fuck knuckles this idea doesnt rip anything off from WoW other than having a vendor that can show you all the items for sale on your shard. It’s not an auction process, it doesn’t magically deliver the item to you and for you idiots that think it’s a rip off of WOW. I think Dark Age of Camelot introduced the centralised auction theme first.

Have you tried shopping in UO for a specific item? It’s a bloody nightmare and one of the most frustrating activities that one can undertake whilst playing the game. Having spent some time playing other MMORPG’s lately all of them had least one thing in common and that was you could go to a single vendor and see all of the player sold goods in one place. They are commonly referred to as Auction houses.

Now I appreciate Auction houses in UO could ruin some of the immersion in the game. So I make the following proposal. How about UO has a centralised trading vendor who is aware of every item that’s for sale on player run vendors and should you want to buy an item then this vendor sells you a rune to that vendors store. This way if you want to find a specific item you can go to the one place to see if it’s for sale and then if you decide you want to purchase it, you get a rune to the store location.

This will also have the effect of lowering the cost of real estate as the primary reason for owning a house in Luna is so your vendors are exposed to the most possible foot traffic as possible. Well with my proposed system, then you could have your vendors set up in you house out in the middle of no where and they would still be found. Now a true market economy can happen as people will be able to see the going price for an item and either under cut the competition or raise the price if they wish.

Also players benefit as they don’t have to spend countless hours searching for that specific item they want.

Refine this proposal by placing your comments below and lets see if we can get the system changed for the better good.

Cheers
Shane