Ultima World Spawns

Dian

Dian

I have been really on the fence about this, and been talking with a couple people about it. Please do not misunderstand what I am about to say as being stingy or otherwise, I can not stress that enough.

As to the whole Spawn Packs that are out there, we all know of neruns world spawn packs, and some other modified variations of them. I applaud the hard work and effort to nerun and anyone else that has attempted to refine them to be accurate, and re releasing them. It is one of the most tedious jobs of any shard owner, and arguably one of the most critical for overall shard.. rating, for lack of a better word..

So, here is my issue with it all. In my opinion, I honestly feel that the spawn of a shard is the last link to what separates a truly good shard, and just another 'cookie cutter' shard. It also says a lot about how much the shard owner really cares about the shard, and the effort they put into it. It separates those out there that are just trying to throw a shard together in a day, for the sake of raking in some quick donations and what not.

Do we really want to have a truly accurate spawn pack for all maps for everyone to have, making the vanilla shards out there escalate? I really think that if the spawn packs seriously were made that good, it would intensify the amount of these phoney shards, and make finding that good shard for players almost impossible. Again, I just feel that the overall spawn of the entire world is the last link that separates those that are doing this for the love of the game and community that it brings, and the ones that are out to gain something with little to no effort.

Where does the line get drawn? Is the entire emulator, complete with most working scripts and game mechanics not enough to get one started? Sure, there is nothing stopping anyone from spending the time to create that perfect world spawn and releasing it.. but I ask you all, is that really for the best?

I hope I explained this well enough, because I am not trying to keep anyone from anything necessarily.. and I am dont want to upset anyone here.. I know it may strike a nerve with some.. but this is just my opinion, and concern.. nothing more. I am just curious how the rest of you all feel about this matter :)

*steps off soap box*

:)
 
I tend to agree Dian. Most new shards out there that just got started are running basic "RunUO/OrbUO/CraftUO/ServUO" scripts and hoping for the best. However, I think that having a nice base OSI spawn can be helpful to tweak when customizing a shard ("I don't want mongbats here, I want savage, vampire, sewer rats").
 
I agree and disagree...

Do I want to see more vanilla cookie cutter shards? No, but more cookies would be nice

The emulator is meant to be just a prepackaged deal to make it easier for the average person to get started.
If you have nothing special and don't tweak anything, it's going to stand out and be quite obvious.

But a good and reliable base spawn is something that seems to have been missing for awhile now. Nerun has done a good job, and yes there's some bad feelings about it, but from what I understand it's just him working on it.

Since we're ServUO and kind of redoing things, maybe we should establish a ServUO base spawn. Kind of like createworld.
Plain-jane-sugar-cookie-no-bells-or-whistles spawn.

After all, the actually OSI spawn is a bit over whelming for players on a shard with few other players to hunt with. I think that's why you often see pets and OP gear.
 
I hear ya, and agree too, really. And again, Im not trying to stop anyone from releasing a well laid out spawned world or anything.. I was just looking for opinions :)
I am on the fence, thats all.
 
I prefer custom spawned worlds, otherwise everyone will just all be the same.
I been making a shard for years, mainly for learning I guess and keep leaving it and coming back having to start again, but I was always going to custom spawn it, even custom monsters as well.

Friends and myself made a shard years ago with OSI maps and we customised the spawn for everything. Knowing it wont be populated by thousands we cut off areas and custom spawned areas we wanted players to hunt and use, custom starting area (Turned the whole of Luna into a starting area) and looked great.
 
There's no reason not to mix things up. You can have your classic spawns that everyone is familiar with and you can create your own custom monsters as well. I think a good mix adds some spice and newness to PvM and it's a hell of a lot of fun creating your own monsters with their own unique abilities. You can tell if the staff puts in serious work on their spawns because it'll be new and interesting and not the same ol' boring stuff that everyone has played with for all these years.

The extra work can really shine through. :)
 
I agree to an extent, however, I am a newb in all of this having just recently gotten into this whole thing, However, I do not require a donation system for funds or anything like that to run it. I have a regular income and I have cloud computing server accounts that I already pay for anyhow, I do care however that it was VERY easy for me to spawn a basic OSI-like world from the accuratespawner xml, It really helped me get a feel for how things work inside the script and visually on the server. I plan on having a donation section based on how many hours/days/months etc a player plays and plan on building a system based on that with a claim gump. I feel it is much more rewarding to the players as well instead of your basic eth. mounts or paying the shard owner a few bucks to give them something uber...F that...lol. anyhow, just my 2cents from a newb, who literally just started a shard a few days ago. Feel free to check it out by the way, It is still HIGHLY in development, but it is otherwise permanent and will never go down based on the fact that it is running on one of my corporate servers. Its a shitty feeling to know that there are actually people out there that are going to setup a shard for an old game that I started playing when i was a teen just to make a few bucks on...lol, kinda sad really, But if that kinda thing is happening I do agree with you to an extent, I feel that this is a community effort and without the hard work of everyone here, we would not be in this position to begin with, much less those trying to make a quick buck on it...

-Nick
54.68.217.241:2593 - Server is using UltimaLive and has one additional map that has been added to publicmoongates.cs with clilocs added that you guys will not see because well, you dont have my cliloc.enu :) anyhow check it out if you want, and let me know if you see any basic flaws or lagging issue(doubt it) etc. Thanks again for those that have helped me these last few days to get things configured, This is a work in progress and I have a lot of time on my hands so..lol, hopefully something really awesome comes out of this, also if anyone wants to help admin the shard add your own stuff to it etc, pm me, I would love to start a great public shard eventually for the world to enjoy with a dedicated group of people willing to work on it with me :)
 
Thanks for the feedback guys.
Look, I sometimes voice an opinion or whatever without really thinking my words through careful enough, and I get misunderstood, and is why I tried to stress that I wasnt meaning any of this to stop anyone from posting a good accurate world spawn. There have just been a lot of people over the years, and still today that throw a shard together real fast (in a couple days) from all our efforts, just to grab some donations.. only to close shortly later after people realize they are not in it for the love of the game and community that it brought. Then reopen another one shortly later under a new name, and around it go's.
I guess thats just an issue in itself that will just happen, and we just need to help each other out in other ways to prevent the good people looking for a solid shard from winding up on these kind of places :)

As it is, zerodowned, Ravenwolfe and I are reworking some spawn maps somewhat together. I am certain we will consolidate what we end up with and release a better package soon. And thats not meant to insult nerun's package either, because he had put a massive amount of time and effort into his released spawn pack, and I give him mad props for that :)

-Dian
 
We use a lot of the preconfigured spawns, but we have tons of custom spawns as as well. I think your main point is that people will build a preconfigured shard with the only Custom things being the name and the IP. Which, if I'm understanding you, takes away potential players from shards that actually have unique spawns/environments,art,etc., but lose them to the stock like shards. If thats what you're saying I totally agree.
 
Yeah, for the most part it is. More so though, its those few out there that throw up a shard with all the claims of great unique custom content, fully spawned world etc.. that are only in it to rake in some donations real fast before players see its just the same old stuff they could fire up themselves.. custom stuff is just the submitted scripts from our forums here and RunUO.. no effort to the shard creation beyond downloading the scripts and tossing them in the folder, booting the shard and executing the few commands needed .. yeah, edits to serverlist is about as much as they can do.

But I suppose its going to happen no matter what, somehow. I guess I get irritated at those type because we have spent the better part of 12 years on our shard, trying to make an honestly unique shard.. and to be honest, when we ran our shard live originally, we had players asking how they could donate. You know what, believe it or not, we turned them down. We have never received one dollar or any other form of currency from all our time and efforts, ever. Not to say we wouldn't at some point.. but just saying. It would be nice to get a little return on all our time and efforts, sure. It just sickens me to hear of shards that are 2 weeks old (from start to running) making $$ from the efforts of the community here..

lol /rant

I guess its up to us to somehow Vet those shards out, somehow if even possible. Preventing a good spawn package is not the way to go about it I suppose.
 
Aye....hmmmm.....let's call em "Plug&Play Shards." LOL.....I've been with the same shard since 2006 and we do accept donations, but we put the money back into the shard, not our pockets. We've done things like upgraded our servers/ISP, installed Vita-Nex(which is great!) and various other things. I love my shard and try to do everything I can, with the time alloted to me, to make it a better place for everyone. Prob hard to catch them. You don't want to go spreading the word about a Plug&Play shard because their intention may be to customize it and they just haven't yet. I agree though! If their only intention is to scam money off people, no matter who they are or what they're doing, then that makes the rest of us look bad. In addition, those that need funds to buy new systems/art/maps,etc., won't be able to gain the trust of the player base.
 
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