Australia/New Zealand/Oceania players

[Benzo]

Hi,

TL:DR at the bottom

I got first my dose of ultima with Ultima 7 way back in '97 (still play it now using exult - fantastic program, just wish a huge team would expand on it and turn it into something amazing). I was part of a UO shards server back in '99-'00 (forgte the name, but it was one of the first) until my brother converted me to everquest. Back then I played on a crappy 56k modem and had little to no problems with lag/latency and pvp. It was a pretty even playing ground. Now that I've come back, I've tried UORenassaissance but my ping was regularly 360-450, making almost all things impossible (enemies suddenly appearing on top of me, insta death etc), and even parts of my screen not appearing as I moved (black patches everywhere).

I've done a ping test of UltimaOnlineEvolution and got an avg ping of around 260, which would realistically go up to around 320-350 after processing, but being a PvP server, that's out of the question. I can't test this server though (can't find a ping to test, or anything to perform a tracert), which is not really a concern though as it's not a PvP based server, it's not so critical.

Are there any any (or many Aus/NZ/Oceania) players on this server that find they have little problem with latency? I live in Far North Queensland, so connection isn't always the best for me. Would be interesting to know the experiences of anyone from surrounding areas).


But in all of this, PvP was the big killer, as a 360-450ms connection, I just could't compete with a 10-50ms connection.

In my view PvP has is like kicking a ball in a park with a few of your friends, and when suddenly a big group of kids surround you, stab your ball, and then horribly violate you. I do believe PvP has its place in fairly contested arenas, such as 1vs1, 2vs2, 4vs4, 12vs12, bottle royale etc. Now from my understanding this is a non-PK/PvP server, but does it still hold occasional PvP tournaments?

TL:DR

• Ping is too high for PvP servers (300+ difference between me and my enemies = instant death for me)

• Never a big fan of regularl PvP (translated:It's always a gangbang - 9/10 enjoy it)

• Prefer team based PvE, while occasionally participating in team based PvP

• Really looking for a suitable server, with unique content, friendly playing base

• Want a relatively stable server

• For What it's worth I played on Shards of Dalaya (US based server) without major latency problems

[patrix]

There are a number of players from Oz and NZ on here. I live in Adelaide and have no problems with UOEX. There are 2 banana benders on here that I know of one from Brisbane and the other round Rocky and neither have complained of latency issues and as I have teamed up with both fighting mobs I did not observe any problems.
Results of my ping test:
--- PING uoex.net (192.185.16.76) 56(84) bytes of data. ---
64 bytes from 192.185.16.76: icmp_seq=1 ttl=54 time=119 ms
64 bytes from 192.185.16.76: icmp_seq=2 ttl=54 time=120 ms
64 bytes from 192.185.16.76: icmp_seq=3 ttl=54 time=119 ms
64 bytes from 192.185.16.76: icmp_seq=4 ttl=54 time=119 ms

This is a great shard with lots of fun players.
Cheers
Michiko

[Benzo]

Sweet!

I just did a new ping test in game in UORenaissance and I got min.306ms and max 599.



Guess I'll be switching over ASAP.


Thanks for your reply

[moonsongtx]

There are PvP events that are staff run. Capture the Flag, Hunger Games, and one of my favorite "Kill the staff!" events are all PvP. The difference between these events though and "normal PvP" on severs where PvP is a main thing is kinda like the difference between a "Fight Club" and a gank war. In our PvP events here players are stripped down of all their gear and weapons and given things to use instead. This makes it nice for a few reasons. One is that when given weapons and gear, those items actually have skills added to them. So brand new players have the same abilities skill-wise as veteran players. Secondly, no chance to lose your gear/weapons. PvP is done here for fun and no one 'HAS" to participate. There are some very cool in game rewards if you do participate in the events but that goes for all staff-run events.

There is lag. Even for players in the states, some places have lag. But honestly I think you'll find the lag is worth it just to play here.

I am in the US but many years ago I was a Senior Counselor on Oceania. I had a few characters on there too but I mainly just volunteered on there. I understand your lag since I had it there. But as I said, it's more than worth it.

Please contact me in game if I can help ya learn the shard here. We have an awesome player base and lots of helpful players on at all hours of the night/day. So don't worry that you are in a "different time zone" than most players. It's not so here. There are players from all over the world. There are also many players (like me) who are up and on shard at different times due to sleep habits.

[Benzo]

There are PvP events that are staff run. Capture the Flag, Hunger Games, and one of my favorite "Kill the staff!" events are all PvP. The difference between these events though and "normal PvP" on severs where PvP is a main thing is kinda like the difference between a "Fight Club" and a gank war. In our PvP events here players are stripped down of all their gear and weapons and given things to use instead. This makes it nice for a few reasons. One is that when given weapons and gear, those items actually have skills added to them. So brand new players have the same abilities skill-wise as veteran players. Secondly, no chance to lose your gear/weapons. PvP is done here for fun and no one 'HAS" to participate. There are some very cool in game rewards if you do participate in the events but that goes for all staff-run events.

See! This is the exact kind of PvP I was doing back in 1999-2000, where we even had capture the flag, hold the "bogey" for as long as you can where prizes were awarded based on times held, treasure hunts that turned into a massacre as the treasure was a dragon egg in the process of hatching, which in turn slaughtered everyone. And then there the glorious server smash Red VS Blue, where two forts complete with cannons, on opposing river banks with several crossing, attempted to stop the opposing army from destroying the enemy fort.

They were great and unique, and I've never seen anything like them since.

Things like that. That's what made PvP fun and exciting

Edit: All armour and weapons were supplied, so nobody had any ridiculous advantage based on gear. Some classes excelled at certain games (sneaks/assassins sneaking in to destroy forts), Tanky characters were great at bogey games as were rangers (tracking/hiding made evasion easy).

[Benzo]

Ok, here goes. Finally managed to login in using a reversed username, and overall...

I'm really, really, overwhelmed. The sheer size, scale, depth, and amount of detail that has gone into this server is incredible, and I can see why it's as popopular as it is.

But at the same time for someone as simple as me, it's complete sensory overload. The first UOMMO I ever played was the the first one (1997) but on a free shard, and coming to this makes me feel like Marty from Back To the Future. "Holy Shit! Hover boards!"

I've been told already not to speak of other shards, but I feel I must, as the most recent shard I played on did one thing really well, and that was set out with Occlo being a [Young] area for new players to learn and grow. In it you were directed step by step in how to interact with vendors and npcs. Enemies woudln't attack unless you attacked first (or if you had a tamed pet), and there were a number of low/mid range dungeons for players to band together try out some team work, and once the time limit was up, they were sent to the real world (although they could always come back to Occlo).

I spent maybe 10-15 hours there just learning the basics, and without this, I would have have felt completely lost and not known how to do anything. Even now I'm still not sure on things. In the end I would have just quit and gone back to regular sessions of Battlefield4 and Planetside2.

+Requiem was kind enough to give me a tour when I finally managed to login, which I'm highly thankful for. We discussed my account problems, which we couldn't come up with anything new. He showed me the donation bins for us poor-people and the training room. But for me personally, I couldn't find anything about this server for entry level players to learn their way up the ladder. While there is somewhate of a social network there to guide new players, I couldn't see anything that helped you teach yourself. How do I learn in the absence of a teacher? I'm not too keen on being thrust in the deep end with no knowledge or experience. I'd like to work uo to it.

If you consider what's happened over the last 10 years, todays UO is a hell of a lot different to what it was, and along with increased differenced is also an increased difficulty/learning curve.

For the beginner player, This. Is. Tough!
For the intermediate player with some background (2-3 years exp) it would be a brilliant step up and easy to pick up.
For the advanced player, already used to this level: perfect.

From what I've seen this is a fantastic server, with great staff, and I hope that when I have more knowloedge/experience I'd love to come back. But as it is, based on my experience joinining late-age MMO's, I'm going to be spending 1.5-2 years just trying to catch up, and even then being a coat dragging ankle biter.


Reading back on this I wonder to myself if I should even post this. Some will take it as flaming, and some might take it on board as constructive crticycism. In no way do I mean to offend, flame, or insult anybody. I'm just giving my 2cents.



EDIT: I guess it's probably wise to add this here for anyone contemplating joining the server, and possibly feeling put-off by what I've spoken about. I've spent a fair amount more time playing now, to know the server a little better, and things have progressed quite smoothly. If you're interested in my experience/progress you can read more here: http://www.uoex.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=9641



I've played on a quite a few paid, and free, MMO's, and the playerbase, and staff support here has been one of the best I've come across. (there was one server that did one thing better, but that's no fault of the players or staff).

[Iltar]

From my experience starting here I want to agree that while there is some information on wiki about quests, it doesn't describe all quests/places to go. Nothing about umbris, information about farming oinments and training weapons is difficult to find. UO has big facets and can't really estimate that everyone will go everywhere and try to kill/talk to each mob himself. While it is fun to learn everything slowly, there been cases for me when I was a bit bored because I didn't know where can I go to for hunting. I think it would help if there were lists of areas for young/mid/experienced levels of players on wiki. Just a short list of places without explaining too much about them perhaps. Or a list of all dungeons/fel towns/quests with information of level of experience that player should have to hunt there.