15 year retrospective; biggest game changer?

That was huge, but not as huge as the Tram/Fel "split"... That HAS to be the biggest....

I'm going to have to go with Customizable housing. Before that everything was cookie cutter..... now there is such a variety one can hardly take it all in. From truly amazing and inspiring to completely hideous and total eyesores.... changed the entire face of UO.

Trammel is already mentioned so I think I'll go with the item insurance.

The addition of Tram thus enabling UO to be here 15 years
Power Scolls Making being a 7xGM mean nothing
AoS The death of a crafter
Addition of 3 lands thus splitting the player base even more

Anything after pub 16

Well, I ain't been around for the full 15 years. But in my time the biggest game changer I have seen from a positive standpoint has been the EM Program. From the negative standpoint, it was the huge decline of the "community" aspect in game. Thankfully that has been on an upswing for a good while now tho.

Just my .02 tho

LRC had a huge impact, but it ties into the itemization/AOS, which I think I think had the biggest impact. LRC is just another symptom of the Diablo syndrome - loading up items with all kinds of modifiers so people are checking spreadsheets, etc. where the game because spreadsheet-based instead of skill/experience based.

Item insurance (which also ties into the Diablo syndrome) removed a lot of the risk from the game - the only thing you really risk these days when dying is losing the time you just spent doing something. I'd like to think that it encourages people to PvP and PvE more, but I'm not sure it does. When you remove some of the risk/danger, things that were exciting aren't as exciting.

I honestly don't think the Tram/Fel split is as important, because in a way, the split was already happening - people that didn't want to PvP were leaving UO and going to EverQuest where they didn't have to PvP if they didn't want to. I still think it should have been a toggle instead of separate facets, but ultimately I think it was needed to keep UO going in the long run. Non-consensual PvP MMORPGs are not very popular.

Elves. bleh.

The Intro to 3d.... no matter which one you favor it changed the way players play the game. I'm a pureist with CC.

Tram was easily the biggest change. No Tram and it wouldn't matter what kinda armor or houses there were because the game would be long dead.

Also, like if you're tired of hearing how dead crafting is while wearing 100m worth of player crafted stuff.

Trammel
Item Properties
Item Insurance

In that order for me.

The abonimation that was the Tram/Fel split.

AOS and items.


I still use regs on my mage characters. I don't really see LRC as needed except maybe if you play a pvp mage. Yeah I am behind the times on building suits and stuff.

^This is the biggest in the history of UO. LRC only changed the game for a subset of players.

I don't use the like system but:

"GalenKnighthawke likes this."

-Galen's player

The biggest change, clearly, was allowing Factioners to rez their own Faction Horses with no Vet skill.

-Galen's player

In a few years telling a 3 year vet there once was a UO without general chat. Like other changes if you long for the past, just don't use the changes. Time to go sell my car and truck and see how a horse and buggy does on the I95. And for all that is good bring back the pull tab beer can. Beer tab necklas FTW.

TRAM. many people, because of the PVP aspect, waited to join until its creation. With the subsequent green light to griefing and rezkilling in what was left, many left. The other changes, while MAJOR, weren't the Biggest, imo.

Adding new lands and dungeons , making the older ones obsalite..
But now there trying to revamp them, so that is good in a way..

bad= 1 month open account end 3 months down..alot of money that could have helped UO is not there.

creapy portraits - I still have nightmares

IMO the biggest game changer was the slow decline of dev comment and interaction with the player base. At one time many years ago we had a thriving amount of conversation with the team and a clear sense of the direction. All of us here have stuck through the tram/fel split, stat loss for reds(second worst IMO), old content laid to waste by new stuff which was quickly laid to waste again, LRC/LMC and all the other great points but the worst the true loss of direction.

I agree with everyone that said AOS. And then it was Imbuing and Reforging to continue down that road. This pretty much killed off the need to farm for any sort of loot. Sure, we unravel loot to get imbuing ingredients, but I am referring to actually using weapons and armor off corpses. Does anyone even look at the loot beyond special reagents, artifacts and maybe jewelry?

Yes.

-Galen's player

Insurance and high durability killed off the need to farm or hunt but it was not the addition of mods that did this. Once you end gamed and could keep the items that stopped the hunt.

Chaga mushroom spawn rate, hands down.
Wait, wrong discussion?
Tram/Fel.

It sure killed our way of life.

Removing of Order and Choas, hands down better then factions, not the biggest change but the one that hurt.

I can't help but +1 the Tram/Fel split. I wasn't even around for that long before it happened, but I can imagine myself taking a completely different path over the decade that's passed; a more enjoyable one.

LRC is also a dear shame. I feel so over-powered in-game (despite rolling Solo) thanks to certain Item attributes - and I don't even have the best gear.

The addition of up and down arrows for skill and stat management was veerry big at the time.

i agree with removal of statloss. I loved statloss pking and it really sucked when they removed it (for everyone)

UO was actually still very much an open world with full looting etc. after the tram/fel split. even as a jerk PKer i didn't mind tram/fel at all. there were still plenty of people in felucca back then. age of shadows though - ouch. never fully recovered from that one.

Making the game item based ala AOS

Pre that it was all about the player skill not what armor etc you hadde equiped .....

I also say insurance..
The most fun I ever had in the game was when I was afraid to die.

The item based AoS changes Serine mentions runs a close second.

Power hour and 8x8 skill gaining

Do you think UO would have lasted past 2002 with no Tram?
But yes Power scrolls did make GM feal like you wasted time after they came in..

Yeah the excitement was very intense when you could actually lose things.

Without AOS you wouldn't need insurance, so I go back to AOS being the biggest game changer. People can debate Tram/Fel, but the split was already physically happening - people that didn't want to PvP were going to other games.

But AOS affected every single person and every single playstyle, because it changed the entire combat and crafting system from top to bottom.

It was either leave for Tram or leave for EverQuest. Felucca was always doomed.

The quick-fix "mirror world" was disasterous. It's easy to look back at it with 12 years of hindisght, but the insatiable desire for more housing drove the creation of Fel/Tram far more than any player naughtiness did. But the mirror-world killed communities of all kinds on every shard.

edited becuase i'm drunk.

I remember thinking GM was such a lofty goal, then someone turned me onto PH and 8x8 on a boat... blew my mind!

While Trammel was already mentioned, maybe it just needs repeating. Not meant to be a slam on the 'devs of old' who everyone seem to love, who fulfilling the request of players, created this.
Could the current 'devs of new' have found a better solution back then? Unknown, will it go back, NO, it can't.
It's now one of their challenges tho, and perhaps the next Biggest game change is just around the corner, uniting players, and I don't mean on a 100K hit point mob.
People say the lands divided the people - that's housing - it's deeper issues that divided us, imo.
Maybe the Awakening is where They woke up, said oh crap, put it in gear and figured out stuff for this game?

I am really liking these posts.

Power hour I so loved.

I missed when GM actually showed up and did something.

Exploration was taken away from the game. I used to go all over the place to just fight in the woods monsters roaming so I could avoid the PK attack until my skills were high enough. Exploration years later was more hunting scripters while mining or lumberjacking.

Order vs Chaos. Enough said on that. Best damn thing UO had instead of a broken artifact infested factions of today.

Trading and simple shopping in the game. Being a crafter meant something back in the day. I so loved just roaming the lands to find vendors and buy GM made armor and weps at good prices. I used to sell death robes dyed black on my vendors lol. Poison katanas was my fetish in the game and always ran down 3 houses from mine and bought them off this guys vendor.

Luna killed UO also.

Running from a mongbat was for real


Finally.......

Video killed the radio star

The randomness of poison back in the day. I can remember the very first time I got poisoned by a player. Front of covetous where we all fought, took what seemed like ages to die, bandages didn't work and no one carried cures as nothing poisoned there....still makes me laugh to this day. I also fondly recall when the asian shards opened and my guild made newb archers there. 30+ douches camping the front of covetous with no skill but we cleaned house.

Definitely the item properties, and the continuing property complexity... I can't keep up with it all!