UO Blog - UO Too Much Based on Items? - Dec 9th, 2008

I've been playing UO since its release in 1998. I made a long break from 2002 and 2007. After my return, I noticed how much the game had changed. First, I first want to say that many many changes have been a great enhancement of UO, and increased the breadth and the diversity of UO. So, I do not want "the good old days" back!

However, one thing has destroyed a lot of the gaming experience, to my opinion. And that's the artifacts, rare uber-items and insurance. Let me explain, why:

When I returned, I was looking for fellow adventurers in vain. Nobody cared about visiting a dungeon, working yourself from top to bottom level, or exploring the landmasses. All people did, was recalling to a handful of hotspots (preferably Melisande and Doom Gauntlet) to get an artifact. I've seen groups doing the Melisande quest 15 times in a row in order to get an artifact. The way people were playing seemed a lot more boring than it was back in 2001. Back then, people were playing for adventure, community, PvP. Today, most people are playing for items. This has changed the character of the game immensely, and not for the better.

Also, in order to explore the new content (paragon, peerless, new dungeons, events), you NEED those rare and powerful items. And the items you need will cost millions and millions of gold. A halfway decent equipment is worth at least 20 millions. And this stuff won't even be good enough for PvP. Back in 2001, you could buy a very good suit and weapon for less than 10,000 gold coins. For those who have such valuable items (which are 99% of the players), about 90% of the game content gets boring, because it isn't challenging anymore (see a previous column New Craftables Discovered). Those who don't use such items (1% of the players) will end up alone.

Of course, if your equipment is worth 20 million, you don't want to lose it. That's why insurance is needed. Back in 2001, when you lost your whole stuff to a PK, you were annoyed, but then you'd contact the dedicated smith or tailor in your guild, and he'd supply you with new items. Death had a consequence! Also, wear-and-tear was abolished and Powder of Fortifying was introduced, so valuable items would last forever. You hardly need a crafter anymore to replace your equipment.
Insurance also made classic thieves and murderers obsolete. Today, murderers don't fight to loot you or to improve their fighting tactics, but to prove that their equipment is more powerful than yours. Thieves have nothing to steal from players anymore. They now schedule their weekly or monthly dungeon trip to get the rare stealable artifacts from Doom.

While artifacts and rare items surely are a nice enhancement to the game, they have some serious disadvantages:

• They have become too important, even vital, for decent gameplay.
• They require very bad makeshifts, like insurance and Powder of Fortifying.
• They destroy the profession of a crafter.
• They make people addicted, and make people focus more on items than on other players.
• They penalize players who focus more on community and adventure.
• They unbalance PvP. (PvP today is only for the rich players.)
• They encourage duping and scripting, they unbalance the economy.

I thought about a solution for a very long time. I am aware that you cannot just remove those items from the game, as people have spent a lot of time and effort to get those. My suggestion would be: Make rare items much less rare, and better available for EVERY player. More precisely:

• Abolish runic crafting (it is an annoying, unimaginative and boring!), or limit it to low level runics which are easy to get.
• Make ALL artifacts craftable. Crafting high-end equipment should not require mindless boring repetitive tasks, but legendary skill and special ingredients. Allow reward artifacts only in rare exceptions (like earrings, talismans, shoes, jewelry, sashes as event rewards), and make sure those exceptions are useful but not too powerful.
• To make crafting more challenging and interesting, make it more random (to avoid ingredient farming) and more adventure-like (as an example, see a previous column New Craftables Discovered).
• Limit insurance to 5 insured items per character. As all items can be crafted now, they can be replaced with not too insane an effort. You still could insure your favorite weapon and talisman.

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