Ran a Shard myself years ago... was quite funny (as we rewritten everything complete to have a completely new game). I always thought, that the free shards were always better than the original worlds.

Beside the Costs, the people were much more in Roleplaying than on the original servers.

deelee74> thanks for the info. I've always been intrigued by UO and never got a chance to play it, even if when I was a kid U6-7 was the very fabric of PC greatness when I read the tests in PC gaming magazines.

I'll now be able to try it, for free, and in a friendly community, it seems. I may or may not like the game, but at least I will be able to give it a fair try. Thank you!

I'm in a similar position. I was actually reading about UO just a few weeks ago and thinking about giving it a go. However I read that the community can be quite unforgiving to new players. However this sounds like a good way to test the waters.

I thought this was about a GOG shard...

You know, I played UO: Second Age quite a lot for several months back in 1999. UO had an openness to its system that let anyone who watched the interactions realize what horrible, terrible people gamers are to each other given any opportunity. You could gather ore and wood for hours to build looms and forges and drawers for houses, and someone would pickpocket the deed right out from you. Buy a house and stock it, and someone would come along and steal anything not locked down.

But you're right on about the living community. The events where game masters would possess monsters and go on rampages as dozen of players had to band together to keep cities from being overrun were some of the most amazing moments of PvE content in any MMO ever. Having the environment directed by a person made it so much more real than the graphics and somewhat cumbersome interface would ever suggest. To hell with rants about how graphics are what matters in a game and you can't play third person because it's not immersive. Immersion is losing yourself in a game, and UO: Second Age did a wonderful job of that in its heyday.

Mmm. Corp Por! Corp Por!

Sounds interesting, might give it a go.

Urgh. Tried UO recently on a free shard server thing, and I hated it with a burning, fiery passion. I can't recommend anyone waste the bandwidth of downloading the client which is huge for this game. Just my opinion, of course, but I think those without the element of nostalgia won't enjoy this game nearly as much as those that played it back in the day.

huge client? In 2011, ~350 Mo for a MMO client is not what I call huge...

As I'm interested, is there a way to contact the bunch of you that's going to give it a try (e.g. what's your character names) and around what time can you be found on-line (including time zone)?

In this case I would be inclined to try it out.

Why is OSI a joke? I didn't realize that content being added on a regular bases, pretty full shards (far from empty) and dedicated support made for a bad game.

Yeah, someones still mad about Trammel. Give it up, seriously its been almost a decade now.

Also, freeshards are quite illegal, according to the DMCA. Its mainly because EA hasn't got mad that they still exist.

It's a shame that what UO had, the things that make it unique and special (open world, sandbox style gameplay, plenty of SOCIAL aspects, open pvp, full lotting,e tc) will likely never be made in another AAA backed mmo.

When graphical MMO's came out you had the big ones for that time, mainly UO and EQ (then AC). After these games the next-gen mmo's pretty much went the "eq" style of formula, games like WoW are pretty much a staple of EQ, just polished to hell with a few things added here and there, but the basic frame work and function is how EQ did it. Lv based, "theme park" style hand holding through specific area's of the world.

After UO made the switch with the whole Tram/Felucia split it went downhill from there, it lost what made it unique and fun compared to other mmo's. Then after it changed it set in stone basically that no AAA publisher would be backing a game in a similar style.

You can find some indie developer attempts at it (IE Mortal Online, Darkfall, etc) but nothing that has the marketing and power to attract the AAA likes of audiences such as WoW or even mmo's like DCUO.

It's a shame that when you try to explain what made UO special, the open world where you can cut your own path through it, making your character into whatever you wish. Then you explain there were no "quest chains, etc etc" and how you could be killed by other players at any time and looted of everything they cringe and can't wrap their head around it. They just picture their time spent in WoW or other mmo's where the LOOT makes your character. Where if oyu lose that "uber sword + 2" you are gimped and have lost over days/weeks of time getting it. Then you explain how items in UO were player crafted, they weren't uber and didn't "make" your character (your player skills and character skills were far more important) and that items were fairly cheap and you'd usually have plenty in the bank to requip, they still don't get it.

I long for the day when we may finally get a new UO Style mmo that actually takes off, where people actaully give it a solid, open minded chance, and find that they enjoy it for the same reasons those of us who were lucky enough to play it back in those days enjoyed it.

I just fear that day will never come, especially since everyone seems to want to chase the big WoW monster trying to eat it's pie.

It's a joke because they now offer the ability to buy experience and just about anything else in the game. Noone roleplays anymore. Everyone on there spends the money to buy a badass fighter and they play the game as a badass fighter. Yeah, I am mad about Trammel. That's kinda the point of my original post. The game used to be something special and I miss it. I know it was a decade ago. That's why I said I was nostalgic for it.

The classic client was a gigabyte with about 250MB of forced patches after that. Pretty big for a 10+ year old game.