UO Unbound - Making Progress

[Tresdni]

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UO Unbound will soon be the official shard of ServUO. We are running it in a way that it will seem as it's an official shard of sorts.

We will offer some very unique systems which can be found at our website, such as 5 brand new factions, a two-way bounty system, exploding ships, the ability to design your very own city and more.

I just wanted to give you folks the heads up that may wish to try out the new project I've put months of work into. It's not open yet, but we are planning on opening within a few months or so. I'de like to see people get active on the forums and such to help us with ideas to make it one of the best and most stable shards around.

Our key is balance, and to keep players from getting bored. Check us out, sign up on the forums, and be ready as there will be some GREAT beta gifts as well as a shot to get your hands on some unique server birth rares.

www.uounbound.com

P.S. - I will also be making an official announcement here on ServUO when the time gets closer. Also once we're up, you'll see our online player stats streamed directly to ServUO and CraftUO alike

Thank you to Insanity and Voxpire especially as well as Robert (Khaybel of OrbSydia) for all of your support thus far. It's been a great project!

 

[Hank]

Is this shard going to be Custom or EA style? Some of the stuff i'm seeing on the site leads me to believe it's a Custom shard.
Wouldn't that defeat the purpose of being the flagship shard for servuo? Servuo is suppose to be the "most up to date" EA style emu compared to the other EMUs. While it does have some custom things out of the box I did not know that servuo was breaking away from being a Vanilla EA style EMU.
I know this is not the appropriate time or place to be posting this message but if this is the so called Official Servuo Shard then why is it not OSI\EA Style?
So let's say it is a custom shard, If it's supposed to be the showcase for servuo will the custom scripts be available for the public? (unlike other "flagship shards" have done)

 

[Tresdni]

We use ServUO as the server core. It is indeed a custom shard, although not like most.

We stay oriented, meaning, you won't see things that don't actually flow together in the world. ServUO itself is not breaking away from being Vanilla EA style. We just showcase what can be done utilizing what ServUO offers in it's core.

 

[Hank]

Some of the things i saw on the unbound site include city building, six factions, 1000 skillcap, referrals, custom bounties, some kind of custom merchants guild in luna.
All these things seem like attractions for a custom public shard and less like key points for a official emu shard.

It is indeed a custom shard, although not like most.

If i had a dollar for every time I've heard "not like most" I'd have a lot of dollars. What exactly is the difference between a "custom shard" and the uounbound "custom shard" dot dot dot

We use ServUO as the server core.
We just showcase what can be done utilizing what ServUO offers in it's core.

Many people have begun to use servuo as their core server. I don't feel this is enough of an explanation to satisfy my feelings towards a emu's offical shard. Why not have two shards, one that is the flagship shard showing off and making note of the latest servuo updates and another one that shows what can be done with it on the custom side of things. It just feels to me that by making the offical servuo shard custom(ish) it's not as professional in appearance. I know that OSI\EA private shards have been done to death and back but skipping over what servuo has been promoted as in the community seems wrong.

So with unbound becoming the "official servuo" shard will the donations on the unbound site go not only towards helping keep the server for the shard running and smoothly but towards servuo development and site fee's also?
I believe there has been some confrontations in the past with emu's that had flagship shard(s) about where donations went and that turned out poorly. *coughrunuogamerscough*
I'll admit I'm pressing the issues a bit, maybe i need to just keep my 2 cents to myself. In the mean time I'll wait for an admin to post a miraculous cure to why servuo's official shard is a custom shard. :\

 

[Insanity]

Unbound will be an officially sponsored ServUO shard. It will be a little while before we put up an official (what you see is what you get) shard for ServUO. We'll be starting to sponsor a few different shards here on ServUO eventually also. Details about how one becomes a sponsored shard will be given out later. Unbound is definitely highly custom, and unlike a true official ServUO shard...it will feature many custom systems and features that you won't find in/on ServUO. These systems were made by Tresdni and/or Voxpire.

They've been putting a lot of time into this shard. And it is running ServUO as the core of the emulator. ServUO won't receive any donations from Unbound or any other sponsored shards, as we're not here to make money from sponsoring shards (although to be honest...ServUO wouldn't be where it's at now without help/donations from Tresdni; he helped us pay for hosting and XenForo almost a year ago.)

Unbound has some amazing custom systems, that truly are one of a kind. Although that doesn't mean that all of these systems will be made available to the public any time soon/some may never see public release. Although if the shard does well and some of the popular systems do well, Tresdni or the others at Unbound may consider releasing a system or two to the public. Hell, we may end up tweaking a system or two and packing it directly into ServUO as an "optional" system that can be turned on and off.

As for the comment about ServUO. It's only meant to be an OSI when you first start it up. When we finish up a few major systems for ServUO and get closer to releasing the 1.0 version, you'll find that you can customize your shard and make it nothing like OSI without having to develop anything. The main goal of ServUO is to OFFER an OSI setup, but make it stupid easy to customize it from with-in game and with no C# knowledge (this will all be possible with the Shard Control system once it's complete.)

A public vanilla ServUO shard won't be up till we get closer to the 1.0 release of ServUO, as there are many things that we need to address before trying to run a public shard (running a shard needs a team among other things, as it eats a lot of time up.)

UO Unbound will be the first and main official custom shard of ServUO. The guys have put a lot of time into it, and it's looking pretty amazing. I've actually been on it to have Tresdni show me around a little...and it's pretty damn amazing. Makes me want to play UO again, and I actually haven't PLAYED the game in many years now.

So to everyone that is interested in finding a nice shard to try out, should check out UO Unbound. If you're interested in running a custom shard, and not sure if ServUO is the right emulator for the job, you should definitely check out Unbound. Either way, everyone should keep a close eye on Unbound because it will end up being a pretty amazing shard. Although don't get confused and think that downloading a copy of ServUO will mean that your shard will be like Unbound, as it is indeed a highly custom shard.

Hope this clears up some of the confusion about UO Unbound. If not, I'll go into more detail after I get off work today.

 

[Voxpire]

It's nice that credit has been attributed to me, but I haven't actually done any work on Unbound yet - It's all been Tresdni up to now, I won't be joining the team until after the holiday season.
Unbound currently implements Vita-Nex: Core and some of the features in Unbound utilize it.

 

[Insanity]

You've done more for Unbound than you give yourself credit for Voxpire. If I recall, you wrote the AFK gump for Tresdni. Which is pretty impressive and more "macro proof" than he could of done in the time it took you to make the gump. Plus...some of the spells looked like you may of had a hand in too, not sure about that though. I just know you can do some pretty awesome visual effects on a shard.

 

[jase giffin]

nice nice nice.....

 

[Zero]

Some of the things i saw on the unbound site include city building, six factions, 1000 skillcap, referrals, custom bounties, some kind of custom merchants guild in luna.
All these things seem like attractions for a custom public shard and less like key points for a official emu shard.
If i had a dollar for every time I've heard "not like most" I'd have a lot of dollars. What exactly is the difference between a "custom shard" and the uounbound "custom shard" dot dot dot

The main difference with Unbound is the amount of talent on the Development team, as well as the amount of effort and work that has gone into Writing, planning and implementing any custom content we design. Whereas almost every custom Shards on the web just throws new content in piece-meal with wanton disregard for anything resembling order, we at Unbound have put much effort into steeping the whole server in RP-Lore so that all content fits together in a smooth manner much like you would see on an Official Server.
You will not be seeing anything such as "The Blade of Infinite Bloody DOOOMMMMM (666 Artifact Rarity)"!!! Instead every bit of custom material, from systems (The Merchant Guild and Player Government System) to monsters and gear look and feel as if they belong, each with it's own story and reason for actually being there.

While Tresdni and Voxpire have been hard at work on the stellar and impressive systems and features, I have been quietly working in the background Designing the first of many "Ex-packs" that will include among other things, Story-line based quests and achievements, Lore-steeped monsters (from the smallest normal mobs to powerful new Peerless bosses with never seen before attacks) and gear, events and Server wide goals.
This like all future "Ex-Packs" will look and feel as if they belong, nothing will seem out of place like on some other custom shards.
This is all just a small amount of what makes Unbound different from other custom shards.

You've done more for Unbound than you give yourself credit for Voxpire. If I recall, you wrote the AFK gump for Tresdni. Which is pretty impressive and more "macro proof" than he could of done in the time it took you to make the gump. Plus...some of the spells looked like you may of had a hand in too, not sure about that though. I just know you can do some pretty awesome visual effects on a shard.

Vorpsire has indeed been instrumental in much of the development of Unbound, from the hand-on help he has given Tresdni all the way to the VitaNex Core. Tresdni and I knew from the start we wanted to power the Shard using VitaNex, which for those that do not know is Voxpire's insanly powerful and state-of-the art Core System add-on that allows for many mind-blowing features not normally capable.
However as for the new spells I have to take credit for the design and implantation of those. ;P . They will be part of another Story-Arc I am already planning and designing for the future.

 

[Omni]

When can i play? eiei

 

[Hank]

@Vividan - Now that i have my head wrapped around the shard i really like it and would like it to succeed. It just caught me off guard at first being the first announced servuo shard. I'll be hanging out on it as I've posted on the unbound forums.
Edit: Without a custom client it's not different from other customs shards.