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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."
...buy a pre-karma'd Slashdot account with a +1 posting bonus?
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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
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
Now they just give a very cheap price tag on this and what more, you have complete newbies who you cannot rely on to do their part of job in group right and no way to distinguish them.
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?
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
if you look at the page for the character templates you can use its pritty lame, Ive played UO and its very very easy to get those stats only a few days of playing a few hours a day will get you that high, Its not like they are setting you up with GM status, the stats they give you is about min for what it takes to fully explore the world, sure its cheating a little bit, but its not so much to give someone an advantage
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 have a pair of 3+ year accounts, with characters and housing active on 3 shards. There is *no* uproar that I can see amongst experienced players! This article is sensationalistic at best and a troll at worst!
/yawn/
If you look carefully at the templates, they are only selling characters with up to 85 skill points in any given attribute (presently the maximums are up to 125 in some skills and 100 in others). Any player with even modest experience can get up to 85 skill points in desired categories in *DAYS*.
As it turns out, *MOST* of the hard work is spent getting your character up over 85 skill anyway!
So, this is not really disruptive to the game at all. Read that again, its not disruptive *AT ALL*
MUCH more disliked by most long-time gamers is the noobs who buy an account on EBAY and wander around like complete a$ses... and these accounts can be at max cap (7x100 skill, 5x125, etc).
The only templates that are even moderately interesting that are offered are the tamer and the alchemist because taming and poisoning presently take *Forever* to get up to really high stat levels.
-The Glorious Lord AK Wallace
GM Mage/Eval/Med/Scribe/Alchemy/Wrestle
These idiots are gonna pay $30 to get a sweet character ripe for the picking when he walks outside the city gates not knowing how to defend himself from getting assraped by everyone. Then he'll sue OSI for his $30 back. :)
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.
> Five digit slashdot account number maxed out on karma!
:)
Five-digit punk.
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
Four-digit punk. :)
(who's next!?)
A well thought out post that I totally agree with. I simply don't have the time to devote to playing a single game for hours upon hours to raise a character to a level I can enjoy. That said, I did play Diablo II from the beginning, but my highest characters were only around level 40 or so. I didn't have the patience to just go and "kill more stuff" to get into the 80+ range. Got bored.
The obvious solution would be to make two seperate game communities - if you buy a pre-made character, you are restricted to only play with other pre-mades. If you start from scratch, you have to stay with other players from scratch.
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
I am Nakombo Aragumba, secretary of the recently deceased President Sani Abacha of Nigeria, who was avidly an expert player of the American computer game, "Ultima Online," amassing the sum of 26.3 million gold pieces. Before his untimely death the President entrusted to me control of these sums of gold, in the fear that our new and corrupt government would want to seeking control of this fortune.
My character is constant watched under by Government spies searching for this moneys who have infiltrated the game. It is the asking of your help for the transfer of this gold from my personal Ultima Online character to yours, in exchange you will receive a consideration of 2.3 million gold pieces.
Please contact me immediately to arrange for the transfer of this important fortune, as will be to our mutual benefit.
Respectful of yours sincerely
Nakombo Aragumba,
"Brentley of the Shire"
Apparently, he sat there and did it for several hours while my pal went to a movie and got some grub. Came back, little brother handed the controller to him, and my friend started playing.
A little brother will work for many games where repetition is necessary. You might also want to try this with other small children. Neighbor children can be used in a pinch, under the guise of babysitting, or collect your own!