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OSI Starts Selling Preleveled UO characters
NinjaPablo writes "OSI has started a new service, detailed here which allows you to pay $29.95 to get a decent character premade for you, and bypass the hours of working skills at lower levels. Most of the player community is in an uproar about the whole thing, since it basically means a newbie can pay a little extra and be as good as an average player right off the bat."
Face it. UO is slowly fading into irrelivance. Everquest seems to be the "standard" mmorpg-- i don't know anyone who plays uo anymore-- and with the upcoming, mindblowing Star Wars Galaxies, soon UO will be attracting no new customers, only the diehards. UO could try to keep people with really good plots and stuff, but that would likely only retain old customers, and attract few new ones.
So, instead, they're trying desperation tactics like this one. Think about it. This is not a decision that even a company as stupid as the one that bought and ruined Origin would make about a product they wanted to keep viable. This is a product that is near the end of its lifespan, the parent company knows it, and so they are trying to squeeze out the last couple pennies from it before it fades into complete obscurity.
Origin's parent company doomed UO to stagnation, irrelivance, and eventual death the day they killed Ultima Online 2. The product is no longer maturing, and so it will be replaced by services that do. Plain and simple. Welcome to the gaming world, where the only law is that stasis is death.
So what's Lord British been up to lately?
--super ugly ultraman
Players of Ultima Online are outraged to discover a service called eBay.
Really, though - who didn't see this coming? "end-of-ultima-online" seems inappropriate here; the end's been coming for a while now.
- At least four (five?) expansion packs
- The canning of UO2
- Premium services offered by Verant for their Everquest
Obviously, they're just running out of ideas, and at the same time, trying to milk every last drop from the cash cow that is Ultima Online.
So.. Basically OSI is trying to cut in on the After Market selling of property and accounds, and try to take in some of the profit themselves.
That's no such a bad idea. People on Slashdot always say- Don't attack a new technology or development, find a way to adapt to make it work for you.
That seems to be exactly what they are doing here.
Colin Davis
Let me say first off I support gaming and roleplaying and all that, but to the people who are freaking out about this I say so what?
Now a bunch of UO geeks are mad because they just realized that they have wasted hours and hours of their life that could of been spent otherwise.
If anything this should be a wakeup call that spending hundreds of hours "developing" a computer character may not lead to the payoff you think it did.
To the people who feel they have been cheated, your the ones who are cheating yourselves by investing way too much time in a game.
Life is too short, time to unplug.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
I used to play Ultima Online, however, I stopped a while ago. These prepaid characters are clearly an outrage. The hours it would take to build a magery with the skills mentioned on the page are many, and selling these characters GREATLY undermines the efforts people like myself have made in the past to build characters. Personally, I think OSI is trying to make the game much more newbie-friendly than it once was. They're making certain stats lockable that haven't been before, and certain skills easier to gain in and others less effective. They've also made many 'rare' or unique items in the game worth far less than they used to be due to their horribly thought out rewards system. Instead of introducing new items, they change the hue of a once VERY rare and VERY old item that no longer spawns and then the value for said items plummet to zero. In the process of making Ultima Online more new player friendly, they're just going to make the Ultima Online environment less friendly and less desirable to new and veteran rpg'ers alike.
death is eternity
after death is eternity
there is no death there is only eternity.
This acknowledges that UO wants to cater more to the casual gamer.
Who is the casual gamer? The casual gamer is someone who just does not have time to spend levelnig mindlessly like some 13-year-olds do, nor do they wish to have UO be their only non-work related fun. They still want to participate in the fun quests, and other great parts of UO, without having to deal with month after month of macroing, doing repetitive tasks, and being PKed by the aftermentioned 13-year-olds who do nothing but school and UO.
Naturally there will be an uproar by players who are jealous they didn't buy a preleveled character, and by other people who feel "leet" because they've spent 3 weeks fishing they skills up, but they're not the intended audience of this.
I stopped playing UO a long, long time ago. Why? Because after a summer of playing UO, I was still PKed a lot. Often times losing some cool stuff. You see people outside of the banks all the time giving stuff away because they don't want to play anymore, and don't want the items to go to waste.
The folks behind UO are trying to strike a balance between casual gamers, and people who like to do this sort of thing every day, for years on end. I'm not sure if they can ever make it close to perfect, but I applaud the choice they are offering to the gaming population at large.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Yes, I'm posting anon as I don't like the smell of burning karma in the morning.
Did you ever stop and think that this is just like any other service people pay for? People pay for services like getting their lawn cut, oil changed, food cooked for them, etc. because their time is worth more than they'd save by doing it themselves. If you have all day to play a video game, fine... If you have hours of free time to bake a home made loaf of bread, fine.
Most people; however, have a job they have to be at and would rather maximize their free time by using money instead of more free time. Hell, if I had all the free time in the world, I wouldn't need cable modem.
Unless you know the timings of casting various spells, and know about macros, then you're going to get your ass kicked on the battlefield. Having a more powerful character only means that it's going to take the good players 10 more seconds to take you down.
If anything, this is going to make the newbie players targets, as the old-school vets will make a point of ruining their playing experience for being able to buy their way into having high stats.
"People should be allowed to keep midgets as pets."
- Gov. Jesse Ventura
If people are willing to pay to skip the first part of a game isn't that an indicator there's something wrong with that part?
Just an observation.
When UO first came out, I saw my roommate spending hours fishing, making fishcakes, and selling them. Day after day. What kind of fantasy game is that? Why, I asked? "So I can make some money so I can get some decent equipment so I can do stuff," was his response. It sounded like a rip off then, and still sounds like a rip off now. You pay a monthly fee to spend all your time building your character up enough to actually play the damn thing, and some punk kid with an uber character pks your ass and steals your gear the first time you go out.
I'll stick to my private diablo 2 xpac realm running under bnetd, thank you.
-- Will program for bandwidth
I don't see why something like this would have people in such an uproar. I've played a few of these games and it seems like the whole fun in them is starting from scratch and building your character up, making all the decisions that go into it. If someone wants to pay a premium to skip that whole aspect of the game, which to me skips a big chunk of the fun in having the game, they're more than welcome to do it. They'll hear no complaints from me.
They're paying to lose out on fun. I think the uproar begs the bigger question, though. If the process of leveling up and getting to that stage is so un-fun that people are willing to pay a premium for it, and people who don't pay for it consider themselves cheated for having to make their characters from scratch, why the hell are we doing it? It's a game. It's supposed to be recreation, not a chore.
Of course, I think the real objection is the competitive aspect of the game. A lot of gamers get off on how many people they're better than on the server, and the sense of accomplishment in being better. Well, where does that line get drawn? I can start off by saying if I had my hand-crafted character trashed by someone fresh out of the box, I'd be a little miffed. However, I know that when I have characters on these games, sometimes I get help from others either via getting cash donations, spell buffs, power leveling, and so on. This is "cheating" too, and it seems like it would diminish that sense of accomplishment in the same way, but I don't hear many people crying foul over that. The people who do, are hardcore gamers who are likely to be much stronger than these pre-packaged "powerful" characters anyway.
But, back to my first point. Buying a pre-made powerful character, to me, takes away the whole point of the game. However, if people want to pay to do that, more power to them. There's always going to be someone more powerful than you on the game - the fun is found in the journey, not the destination. But, that's just my opinion. I feel the same way about people who use hacks or exploits.
As both a gamer and someone who runs a business in the online gaming space, I can see both sides of the coin here.
Personally I see this as a great first step for massively multiplayer gaming. Not necessarily a great first step, but a move forward nonetheless.
I used to play EQ for 10 hours a day. Then I met the right woman, got married, and had a baby. When Dark Age of Camelot came out, I managed to play 4-5 hours a handful of nights a week (at the expense of sleep). Luckily my wife loves gaming too, but she was in the same boat.
I really enjoyed both games, but in both situations I could not compete with teenagers and college students who could throw 12-14 hours a day at the game. It really ruins the fun if you can no longer group with your friends because your character has fallen behind.
So, yes, I think it's great that I can get the +10 Not-so-rusty sword for $9.95 or whatever... Otherwise I would just be camping some spawn mindlessly wasting time to get it in the game. That makes me get bored and want to quit the game, taking my subscription revenue with it.
Gaming companies and the games themselves are better off long term if they can keep people attracted to the game. For those of us who love the games, but simply don't have the time, this is a good thing.
I think a better (even more powerful idea) would be to create servers/shards/realms with a MAXIMUM amount of hours played per account per week. This would be great for people like me who can only play so many hours a day -- basically you're keeping the power gamers out of one or two servers to allow casual players a chance.
Especially in newer games like DAOC where realm vs realm is so important, there is no way someone who can only play 10 hours per week has a chance. I applaud the companies for realizing this and starting to take baby steps towards addressing it.
Case
maybe you and me enjoyed walking up at 5am to squeeze in a couple hours of gaming before work and before the girlfriend would notice every day, and maybe we enjoyed the comraderie of those awaiting the spawns in the dungeons, assaulting the orc town, or later on adventuring into the dragon caves, maybe we enjoyed the gaming and the level advancing, but plenty other folks just joined a clan and automated the task of advancing their character.
i earned every point of my character's 100 magery; each could be traced back to a key comination i pressed and time during which i actually had fun role playing, even when i was a weak character. But there were plenty of times where i met up with someone who one day had no skills and the next had double 100's simply by automating it. A world that allows that might as well sell high level characters too.
Many players seemed to have this idea that the only way they could enjoy the game was to have 100 skills in everything. Why? The game was plenty fun when i died every night and when i was able to teleport out in the nick of time and when i could actually handle tough situations. If you met up with some good people (as opposed to the virtual zombies who couldnt think past waiting, killing, advancing), your skillset didnt really matter, instead you just had Fun.
Its like if they would be selling Masters Diplomas for few bucks and they would be as good as these you earned. Wouldn't you think it devaluates your efforts throughout the school?
no one can take away what you learned in school, and no other person's paper can either. in terms of the game, i still had fun playing UO and there is nothing that can ever change that.
-f
www.blackant.net
Its the part when you change the game AFTER everyone spent so much time on their character. If the game would allow it from the start, I would not complain a single bit. But then, I would not play the game either. And many others as well.
We would simply let these cheapskates like you who want something without earning it to play it.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
This is the same marketing plan as collectable card games. The more you pay, the stronger your play level regardless of skill.
Ahhh yes. The instant gratification option. Also the "I have a life, unlike you loosers" excuse. Its much the same line you hear from those who run various game cheats.
If you don't want to play the game, don't play it. If the game requires some degree of time and experience and you are either unwilling or unable to meet that requirement, go find another game to play.
Multiplayer games are not there for your own personal ammusement. Don't screw with other's fun. Or put another way... if you want to play the game, PLAY THE GAME. Stop whining and looking for a shortcut.