The Uam Shard!

General debates and discussion about the Guild of Writers and Age creation

Re: The Uam Shard!

Postby Karkadann » Sat Sep 04, 2010 10:36 am

Every time I go in im the only one on the KI list. As far as the DI shard is concerned I got a clean copy of Uru CC on a BKF file, I just install in into a different location. It takes about 2 minutes. I dont know why you guys are loading it from scratch. A short time after I joined UAM shard it was empty I don't wanna drive every one off the DI shard.
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Re: The Uam Shard!

Postby ddb174 » Sun Sep 05, 2010 8:34 pm

There isn't much interest in Uru in general anymore. Sometimes a number of people talk with their friends and all come on at the same time. The Uam shard isn't meant to be a busy place by any means. That will never be sustained in Uru, as Uru does not hold much interest for people. (UU was usually empty too, once the initial interest wore off.) It is a place where you can come see all the fan Ages and come with friends if you like. It's a very different place than DI, with a very different purpose.
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Re: The Uam Shard!

Postby kaelisebonrai » Sun Sep 05, 2010 8:52 pm

ddb174 wrote:It is a place where you can come see all the fan Ages and come with friends if you like. It's a very different place than DI, with a very different purpose.


That sounds to me to be precisely the purpose of DI, but, whatever. ;) and, in fact, that's exactly how I've been treating and *using* DI. ;) Visting fan Ages, and having fun with friends. ;)
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Re: The Uam Shard!

Postby BAD » Sun Sep 05, 2010 9:33 pm

kaelisebonrai wrote:
ddb174 wrote:It is a place where you can come see all the fan Ages and come with friends if you like. It's a very different place than DI, with a very different purpose.


That sounds to me to be precisely the purpose of DI, but, whatever. ;) and, in fact, that's exactly how I've been treating and *using* DI. ;) Visting fan Ages, and having fun with friends. ;)


UU was only busy when something was happening. The Slackers shard have about 5 to 10 people a night on average for quite a while. That was due to a close knit group of friends who logged in nearly daily. When events happened, there where upwards of 20 to 30 people (enough to crash the server) for a while which tapered back off to the core users.

That is how things happen for Uru and most online games (besides the grinding mmorpg element). DLC, community events, and any other happenings will bring Uru more fans and little else. :)
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Re: The Uam Shard!

Postby GPNMilano » Sun Sep 05, 2010 10:43 pm

ddb174 wrote:There isn't much interest in Uru in general anymore. Sometimes a number of people talk with their friends and all come on at the same time. The Uam shard isn't meant to be a busy place by any means. That will never be sustained in Uru, as Uru does not hold much interest for people. (UU was usually empty too, once the initial interest wore off.) It is a place where you can come see all the fan Ages and come with friends if you like. It's a very different place than DI, with a very different purpose.


See, I tend to disagree with the idea that Uru cannot sustain many people. I think, and as was evident during the episodic periods of GameTap. That if you have regular stories/events happening, along with a steady flow of new content every month, you can have a shard that will get the numbers needed to sustain a "busy" and happening place. You just need two things. 1. A story and events. and 2. Content to go with that story. IE Ages, areas, collectibles. The problem with Cyan's and GameTap's running of MOUL wasn't that it didn't have large groups of people. It's that it only had them during the peak times when things were being released. Once people knew when to show up, it was hard to get in. One week a month it was busy, the rest of the time it was not. So, the answer then is fairly simple, and falls back to what Cyan tried to do in those early days of Ubisoft. Build a pipeline, a years worth of content, to sustain Uru for a year, while releasing it slowly over the course of that year as they built more and more content for the next year. IF Ubisoft had not cancelled Uru, I'm fairly certain that it would have run pretty smoothly during that first year (aside from the bugs, some of which are fixed others...not so much) with enough content to keep it fairly busy. However it was cancelled, and the majority of the content was released in expansion packs, with other stuff being repurposed into Myst V and the rest sitting in the vault over at Cyan.

Gametap's era however had limited funding and a much smaller staff, and the result was less content was created during Gametap's year run of things then Ubisoft's. More content was produced but not nearly to the depth that content under Ubisoft's reign had. And the stuff that was just the expansion packs repurposed yet again.

So where does this history lesson bring us: To the future. In order to attain a high number of players on a shard you need to give people a reason to sign onto that shard on a daily/weekly basis. The difference between Uru of the past and the Uru of the future is that we have, at our disposal right now, a collective of individuals in our Guilds, with enough talent, and the proper tools at their disposal, to generate that much content on a continued basis but only IF they wanted to. We have within this community a crap load of coders who have the ability to work on the tools and the client and python for the puzzles. Some VERY good Cyan quality age builders who can make ages, and some very talented texture artists and musicians who can make ages come alive. The only thing these people lack is motivation. But it can be done, the resources are there. The talent is there, and the tools are there. This community, if it truly wanted to keep Uru alive and sustained and growing, and most importantly FULL, then it could do it.
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Re: The Uam Shard!

Postby Chacal » Mon Sep 06, 2010 12:44 am

GPNMilano wrote:You just need two things. 1. A story and events. and 2. Content to go with that story.


3. An interesting way to deliver new events and content.

I found the episodes either too dramatic or too boring. Sometimes you had sudden drama out of the blue, with no buildup (such as the gore-fest in Kahlo Pub) and no adequate tools to deliver it (seriously, listening to chat about events no one could see?). Sometimes delivery was underwhelming (Kate links in, plops the Jalak book in the library, links out). The whole idea of episodes was terrible.

I think new content should be added in the spirit of restoration: new areas should open, newly discovered linking books should be made available in the library. New content could be secretly added in frequent updates. This would encourage continual exploration. New explorers would stand a good chance of discovering it, whereas we old-timers don't try to open doors anymore.

See also : 4 models for bringing user content to MORE
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Re: The Uam Shard!

Postby BAD » Mon Sep 06, 2010 9:04 pm

Chacal wrote:
GPNMilano wrote:You just need two things. 1. A story and events. and 2. Content to go with that story.


3. An interesting way to deliver new events and content.

I found the episodes either too dramatic or too boring. Sometimes you had sudden drama out of the blue, with no buildup (such as the gore-fest in Kahlo Pub) and no adequate tools to deliver it (seriously, listening to chat about events no one could see?). Sometimes delivery was underwhelming (Kate links in, plops the Jalak book in the library, links out). The whole idea of episodes was terrible.

I think new content should be added in the spirit of restoration: new areas should open, newly discovered linking books should be made available in the library. New content could be secretly added in frequent updates. This would encourage continual exploration. New explorers would stand a good chance of discovering it, whereas we old-timers don't try to open doors anymore.

See also : 4 models for bringing user content to MORE


One needs adequate time to create a cohesive and engrossing set of events and content for a years worth of divertisement. I would say that twice the amount of time to develop would be cutting it close. At least two years of development by Cyan would be enough time for them to create a set of events and content releases that would sustain a large amount of users in Uru.

However another route is possible. Fan content creation and story additions. Then the pressure is off. Groups of fans would continually create and release content and story arcs with zero development on the part of Cyan.

Right now we are somewhere in the middle. Thus the large amount of anger and resentment. Sorry to once again do a post on the obvious, but I figure if I keep repeating the issue, then everyone will eventually read and understand it. ;)
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Re: The Uam Shard!

Postby Chestnut » Thu Sep 09, 2010 12:03 am

Im so confused, so which shard is better / more popluar?

I'm invested in the DI shard at the momment, I wasn't aware there was even another shard, I have seen quite a bit of traffic in the DI shard today though...
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Re: The Uam Shard!

Postby kaelisebonrai » Thu Sep 09, 2010 12:04 am

in my opinion, the DI shard is better and more popular. >.>

The UAM shard, to access it, you must pm dustin with your username and password. something i would not recommend doing. =)
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Re: The Uam Shard!

Postby diafero » Thu Sep 09, 2010 12:21 am

Which Shard is better is, as usually, a matter of taste. Of course since I am admin of the DI Shard I like that one more ;-)
Technically, the two Shards are very similar - latest Alcugs version, latest Offline KI, all fan- and converted ages. DI has a slightly more recent version of the Offline KI since I put unreleased development versions on there, so you are blessed with bugfixes and features earlier, and might be cursed with issues from unstable/not-so-well-tested code (though I usually try to avoid that :lol: ).

Which one is more popular... best way to find out is check out yourself ;-) . DI has two people online in this very moment, I dunno about UAM.
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