Excelsior vs official shard

[Krematory]

Hi everyone!
I'm new to this shard and to Ultima Online, although I've played lots of MMOs before.
First of all, I must say I'm very pleased and impressed with the community and the staff so far. Everyone is so helpful and mature, which I appreciate.
The point is: I was wondering how different is this shard from the official one. Are the rules any different? The world is just the same? I assume there's a lot of custom content in this shard, and I would like to know how similar is to the original, which I never played.

Thanks and see you ingame!

[Melkor]

The list is long, I won't be able to name them all

Custom:
Druid Spells
Cleric Spells
Animal Breeding and Levelling
Bio-Engineering
Imprisoned pets
Ointments
Almost everything on the ED stone
Weapon Levelling
[exex feature
Uni Tubs
Bee Keeping
Custom tamables
Powerscroll Bag
World Tele Feature
Custom Champ Spawns
Custom Monsters
No still cap
Yard Wand


Things that don’t work:
Most Virtues don’t work
Many Weapon Special’s don’t work
Generally Skills work Differently
No Guild wars
No Factions
No Protection at champs
All of the content from the two most recent expansion packs are not included

I’m sure I’m missing lots, but this will get it started.

[Stranger]

No PvP.
Kinda obvious, but worth to mention.

[Allen]

Great study materials to establish the differences of OSI servers compared to Excelsior's server is....

http://www.uoguide.com

http://uo.stratics.com

A majority of the content is based from the OSI servers. As checking http://www.uoex.net/wiki will elaborate more on our customized content here.

Between the 3 sites you can read and have almost all of of your questions answered without too much effort for scouring around aimlessly for an answer. Granted the three sites don't list EVERY single question you may have, but they are great reference sites and help a good player become a better player, or a new player skip the good and become better.

Hope you enjoy your time on, Excelsior.

[anarchy]

if you have any questions you can pm me by typing [pm anarchy, and i'll try to help you out. mind you i don't know everything. also, i'm extremely terrible with prices. so don't ask cause i'll probably not be able to tell you.

[Krematory]

Thanks for those quick answers
I'll take a look at those sites to get an idea of how those differences have an impact on the gameplay.
I would like to ask another question though. I assume that most of the players of Excelsior are former UO players. Why do you prefer to play in this shard rather that in the official one?

Thanks!

[Adrias]

Because I am cheap and the community is much nicer (although haven't played the official shards in probably 9-10 years)

[anarchy]

got sick of pking or being ganked. erm.. no skill cap. erm... less people... more customs. more weapon and gear customs. pet breeding. bees. helpful people and very respectful, kind, fast acting, event planning, non judgmental, considerate staff.

for more information see this thread there are videos created by players to show what they love about this shard.

http://www.uoex.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=3521

[Melkor]

I have actually never played on OSI, I believe the good player shards over the years are much superior to OSI.