Pay for your subscription (or UOA) with gold
Posted September 27, 2002 - 12:29 PM PDT by Jade
Markee Dragon offers gametime codes, LBR upgrades, and UOAssist codes for UO gold.
From Markee Dragon's Website:
30 DAY TIME CODES (1 million gold each)
90 DAY TIME CODES (2.5 million gold each)
NEW GAME ACCOUNT CODES (1 million gold each) - These are for brand new accounts.
LBR ACCOUNT UPGRADE CODES (1 million gold each) - Upgrade your current non LBR account to LBR.
New! UO Assist full version registration keys (1.5 million each) - Need a registered version of UO Assist for your UO account?
I support all US and European shards except for AOL. For Drachenfels and Sonoma please add 30% to these prices. For Oceania add 50%. For Siege gold they are half price because the gold is worth much more.
Want to buy a code? Contact Markee Dragon on ICQ 2128302
Wonder why it costs more or less on your shard? Just like in real life there is a difference in the value that your cash has. Since the gold in UO has a cash value it is affected by this difference in currency values. Also some shards like Sonoma for example have more people moving away from it than moving to it. This causes any brokers to have a hard time selling gold at their normal price for most shards. If they want to sell their gold they are forced to lower their asking price. This is why for example Sonoma is a higher charge. It takes more gold from there to equal the same cash value as most other US shards. I hope this helps in understanding why the prices depend on the shard.
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Sure, his asking prices are slightly higher (sometimes double) what you could sell your gold for if you did that sort of thing, but I think this is great :)
Of course some on the uo.com boards are crying about this, but I honestly have no issues with it at all. This way, people who want to spend gold to pay for their account can do it without having to go through the process of first selling it on eBay.
There have been sooooooo many whines from people about UOA and how it should be included in the UO client. Well, now those who couldn't scrape up the $15 to pay for it can buy it with gold.
What do you think of this service Markee Dragon is offering?
How to properly quit playing Ultima Online
Posted September 23, 2002 - 11:11 AM PDT by Dark Vengeance
It's been quite a week. Quite a month. Hell, it's been quite a year.
Look at the messes that happened since last September. First, the real world, with 9/11, and the myriad of corporate accounting scandals throughout the NYSE. Secondly, in the online gaming community, we saw lumthemad.net close its doors, only to be replaced with slownewsday.net, and then to watch THAT site close its doors the following month. Finally, and most importantly, we've seen the most turbulent year ever to grace UO.
Anyone remember what the game was like last year? I honestly couldn't even describe it to someone that just started....it's that different from today's UO. Tamers and Bards ruled the dungeons of Trammel with an iron fist, the economy was almost as screwy as it is now, skill gain may have been a joke but it still required work on the players' part, being "Virtuous" was something reserved for roleplayers, using the word "rape" in appropriate contexts wasn't bannable, scamming WAS bannable, Blackthorne was not yet a cyborg, Dawn was a vaporware MMORPG from a kid living in his parents Florida basement...not the savior of Britannia, Meer and Juka were nothing more than masturbatory fodder for rabid UO2 (UWO:O) fanbois, and you would have been hard pressed to find anyone wielding vanquishing weapons in Felucca, skills and stats capped at 100 (as they had since UO's alpha), Ilshenar was 3D-only (IIRC UO3D was out last year), raising the skillcap was considered taboo by OSI, there were fewer shards, housing had to be refreshed, GUL was still able to be the epitome of "what PKs are supposed to be", and the only things OSI charged for were subscriptions, new boxes, and gametime coupons (my memory fails on the secure account transfer program).
What a differenece a year makes.
So, in light of the rash of account cancellations this year, I have decided to inform the readers here of how to do it properly....with dignity, and without helping OSI's cause.
Let me start by stating that I detest ebay. I have bought in-game items online before, but I can't say I'm proud of it. I was lazy, the price was right, and it made it easier for me. I admit that much, I used ebay out of laziness, and the sellers used my laziness as a method for fulfilling their RL financial needs. I don't want to debate ebay sales, but suffice it to say that I don't consider this as a dignified way to leave...I will touch on the reasons why a bit later.
Step #1) Assess your Housing
Housing is one of the few things in UO that cannot simply be deleted. When you re-deed that house, you THINK you are deleting a house, and reasonably so. But what happens as soon as someone recognizes the spot? That's right, they plop down another one at deed price. The house may be deleted, but the space cannot.
The lone exception to this rule is grandfathered housing (i.e. houses that were placed under old housing rules, which cannot be replaced in the same spot). Determine if your housing is replacable or not.
Step #2) Assess items
Do you have any items with historical significance to your shard, such as "server birth" rares, or items from old seer quests? You don't want to destroy history, so this assessment is crucial. Select any remaining vet rewards you may have avaiable.
Step #3) Do the unimaginable
If your house does not contain a trash barrel, place one. Begin dropping all non-historical items into the barrel. This may take some time. Delete it all, even the "monthly" rares, the fruit baskets, the vet rewards, the vanqs....all of it.
Alternately, you can sell as much as possible to NPCs.
Step #4) Bye-bye house
If you have a grandfathered house, simply redeed it, and sell the deed to the NPCs.
If your house is not grandfathered, sell the house for as much in-game gold as you can get. Follow this same procedure for any rares of historical significance.
Step #5) Take your vow of poverty
Delete your remaining gold, or simply place it all in your bank box and proceed to step #6.
Step #6) Ritual suicide
Check any shard you've ever had a character on. Delete them all.
Step #7) Cancel account
Make sure that when describing your reason for leaving, don't take the easy way out. Be specific. Tell them exactly why they are losing your business.
Step #8) Uninstall the game from your HD
This includes all related files, like UOAssist, UOAM, and any other UO-related files you have.
The entire point to this method is that you want to leave, and leave for good. You must eliminate all reasons for coming back, short of OSI doing a full 180 on their dev direction.
Some people ask why I don't suggest giving away items. The answer is that the more a player has, the more likely they are to stay, even when a change comes along that they despise. You don't want to give someone a reason to stay any longer than they normally would....that benefits OSI, and that is not the objective. The side benefit is that it helps the player economy.
Other have asked why I don't recommend "cashing out" via ebay. The answer here is easy as well. If they ever come to their senses, you want an account, so you don't have to buy a new retail box. In addition, by cashing out, you are effectively giving away your in-game items (albeit in exchange for RL money)....and if you sell the entire account, you are doing something that is even worse than the Advanced Character Program. If you are really hurting in your RL finances (i.e. can't pay your bills, can't afford food, etc), then I can't blame you for selling items, but in any other case, it is simply greed.....and that greed will compromise your final voice in telling OSI what is wrong.
I'm close, very close to dropping it all in exactly this fashion. As a beta vet, I'm still hoping against all hope that they'll stop the madness, and quit opening all of these "pandora's boxes". Sadly, I'm an optimist here, despite all the implications of updates like these. But even I can't allow OSI to profit from this weakness forever.
One can only tolerate wasted potential for so long before saying "enough is enough".
As an aside, for those that give a rip, bringthenoise.net has been registered, and is currently under construction. An announcement will be made when the site goes live.
Express your disagreement with my idealistic altruism here.
Bring the noise.
Cheers...........
Wanna be the Fry Guy?
Posted September 19, 2002 - 9:17 PM PDT by Jade
Well, this news is a few days old and kind of got lost in all the furor over the Advanced Character Service for the past couple days, but I thought it kind of tied in since this is another EA venture. This is what they are planning for their Sims Online:
Electronic Arts is taking product placement to the extreme with its next big online PC game offering, The Sims Online. The company announced today an interesting product placement deal with fast-food chain McDonald's and Intel that will see their respective products going beyond the standard "ad in the game" mentality. EA will allow players of this online people simulation game to buy McDonald's Kiosk and sell fast food for cash. Similarly, Intel's Pentium 4 brand of processors will be available in the game -- including the familiar Pentium jingle and product logo.
EA says that this deal is just the tip of the iceberg for product placement in The Sims Online, and future product placement announcements are forthcoming. EA also plans on adding other products to the game after its launch, though details on that are pretty thin as of this writing.
I'll leave out all the commentary about EA's schemes to make money by advertising in game or selling stuff in game for cash, because I think we have all heard enough about that in the last couple of days
What I want to know is: who the heck wants to pay to play a game where they can pretend they work at McDonalds???
Your thoughts?
Advanced Characters for Sale
Posted September 18, 2002 - 5:03 PM PDT by Jade
From uo.com:
Are you a long-time Ultima Online player and have long-hoped for a means to fast-track your character through the development process? Or are you starting on a new shard, and looking for a quick way to catch up to your friends? Are your daily obligations getting in the way of you achieving the stats you want and exploring the far reaches of Britannia? Well, now you’re in luck!
Ultima Online players can now purchase advanced characters through our new Advanced Character Service. This is a great way to move quickly ahead in specific areas of the game without needing to go through the building-up process for each character you play. Advanced characters can be purchased on your existing or new accounts. Get your advanced character NOW for $29.95!
Read Hennar's thoughts on the matter and comment here
New "feature"??
Posted September 12, 2002 - 3:32 PM PDT by Jade
It seems that today OSI released a new feature into the game.
Is this the new content we've been waiting for? (you know...that stuff on your LBR box that was promised but never made it into the game).
Maybe the long-promised and perpetually delayed scenario is out, so we can all get to work collecting hordes of new items (read: rehued old items) and spam them for sale at the bank?
Do we finally have rideable beetles or spiders or whatever the heck else new tameable tamers are getting?
Maybe some of the very annoying bugs that came with Publish 16 have been fixed?
Well, not exactly but we sure do have something new.
Read about it here and tell us what you think.
OSI remembers September 11th
Posted September 11, 2002 - 8:07 PM PDT by Jade
For the past few days, OSI on their forums has offered posters a chance to talk about 9/11 by making their Hot Topics related to the attacks and reactions to them.
While I would usually agree with those who say we should leave real life events out of game discussion boards, the events of September 11th were so tragic and had such a huge impact on so many people, that this does seem appropriate and I applaud them for letting people express their feelings on it by offering a structured forum setting to do so.
Of course, as always happens when anyone talks about September 11th over there, the anti-American people crawl out of the woodwork to tell us how much our country sucks. One such reply was "I found the 'memorial' stuff at the bank today just plain annoying. People running round spamming "TAKE A TORCH FOR 9/11 MEMORIAL" and building representations of US flags on top of WBB. I'm not american - I don't care about 9/11 - it was a year ago. Period.", for example.
Hennar of UOPG posted a reply to those people today, and gave me permission to share it here.
The end of Chaos griefers?
Posted September 10, 2002 - 7:12 AM PDT by Jade
For once, the red called a GM on the blues and actually got a good response.
Caverunner got a little tired of the twinks farming points at the Chaos shrine, and posted a short story for us of what happened.
Although the GM was cool in this instance, I somehow think that it will be hard to find one quite so cooperative on a regular basis.
Read about it here and tell us what you think!
Don't Get Banned!!!
Posted September 5, 2002 - 11:31 PM PDT by Jade
I saw a post earlier today from someone, asking how they could find out if something was illegal or not, and started thinking about how silly some of the policies in the game are, and how we are often left in the dark about whether or not something is bannable.
I thought I'd poke a little fun at the staff by writing a 'guide' for players about how to not get banned.
*Disclaimer: This guide is not an official OSI document, and should not be taken seriously by anyone. (I'd hate to get banned for impersonating staff! ;p )
Don't Get Banned!
Hot Topics leave this writer chilled
Posted September 3, 2002 - 2:58 PM PDT by Dark Vengeance
Yes, I know, I'm a day late with the update. Somewhere in the drunken debauchery of 2 nights of concert-going and 2 days of bar-hopping, I managed to lose a day. Sue me.
OSI recently introduced a new board to their discussion forums over at www.uo.com. For those who have not visited the site, the forum is called "daily hot topics".
What amazes me is the disparity between what OSI considers to be a "hot" topic, and what the players consider as "Hot". The basic premise is that a dev submits a topic each day for players to discuss....these topics are supposed to reflect "hot" issues which OSI feels need more looking into.
If you browse the new board, you'll quickly notice that very few of the discussion topics are really anything to sneeze at. Some of the more mundane subjects include "Eating in UO" and "How do you organize your backpack?". Not exactly revolutionary stuff.
Moreover, just as happens on the other forums, very little actual discussion takes place. The dev asks the question, a few hundred reply to the dev, end of story. People don't reply to one another or debate any actual issues. The result is that OSI gets a few hundred different opinions about very "politically neutral" topics.
What they fail to address is that the most common answers are always from the "powergamer" or the "utility player". "Do you eat in UO?" features several replies of "Yes. I have seen/heard that it helps me with skill gain, and success rates, so I eat whatever is available".
On topics regarding Holiday rewards and Veteran rewards, the overwhelming response is, of course, "give us stuff". On topics regarding fiction, you'll see a lot of requests for personalized quests and the return of the Seers. The net effect is that OSI gets the "lowest common denominator" message....we do what benefits us, only what benefits us, and we want to benefit more from whatever we do.
This author's opinion is that you'll be lucky if we ever see a "Hot Topic" discussing the Virtues, not commenting upon how they stand right now, anyway. A topic on the current status of the Justice Virtue would result in OSI receiving a lot of flack for their shoddy design, and uncanny ability to show that hatred (for the concept of what PKs represent) can be used by "good" players that have never even been Pked in any online game to justify the very same sort of activities which they once used to denounce the existance of non-consentual PvP.
You'll also be lucky if you see a topic on the status of how Publish 16 altered Felucca, or on the various possibilities for fixing the economy, or on the flaws of an automated reputation system, or anything that is remotely related to player justice. It just isn't going to happen. You're also not likely to see an OSI rep jump into the discussion, other than to introduce the topic.
Why? Quite simply, because those are controversial topics. They generate debate from two sides....which is inevitably what any controversy creates, two extremes that battle it out in a war of words. OSI isn't about to showcase some of their biggest failings and foul-ups, and they certainly aren't about to try and make a contribution to either side of such a shitstorm, even if they were the ones to create it. To do so would lend weight to the "they hate playstyle XYZ" conspiracies....as well as actually forcing them to take a stand on some issues that have divided the playerbase since before UO opened it's public beta.
So what purpose could OSI's new "Hot Topics" forum serve? Hmmmm, could it be some Machavellian plot to gain statistical information to justify future changes? Frankly, I doubt it. They have designers, artists, and programmers working on a client that uses the Unreal engine....and Calandryll has already commented in interviews that any UO sequel would be a continuance of the previous game (his actual quote was something along the lines of "ensuring players of the current game that their efforts would have value in the new game").
My best guess is that they are conducting the most basic forms of market research while designing the new "sequel", or other MMOGs. Don't be shocked if some marketing gurus suggested this method as a means to "build the perfect beast".....little did they realize that by avoiding the truly controversial topics, the resulting game will suffer the same problems as UO, or the same artistic and conceptual mediocrity of EQ and it's various clones....nor will they realize that listening to the masses is what has spurred this latest trend of changes that are hated by many players, but tolerated by others because they get "skill scrolls".
Discuss why this article shows I drank too much yesterday.
Bring the noise.
Cheers...........