Some of the older players here may remember a game back in the late 90's and early 2000's called Ultima Online.
It was arguably one of the first MMO's and the inspiration for an entire gaming genre. Based on the Ultima series by Richard Garriott it was an open ended sandbox where players created their own content and purpose in a mythical world called Britannia.
I played this game to death back in the day, i run my own guild, owned houses and got involved in player organised PvP wars. It was simply one of the best gaming experiances of my life.
The game ultimatly died as Electronic Arts did what they do to gaming companies they purchase and to I.P's they own. But the memories live on.
The original game has come back somewhat hosted by people on private servers using the Second age client (The good client before EA ruined the game) but the game is showing its age.
I recently found out about Legends of Aria which is being created by the development team of the original Ultima Online minus Richard Garriott. Alot of people are touting it as Ultima Online 2 for this reason and when you watch the game play videos you can see that it is litterally a game mechanic copy of UO but with updated visuals. The game has recently been Green lit by Steam.
Im actually very excited by this game and fully intend to invest my interest in it and see where it goes.
How many other players here are old UO players, Remember the game and are interested in giving this a look?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima_Online
https://www.legendsofaria.com/
[video=youtube;pU5d7ZCEh2Y]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pU5d7ZCEh2Y[/video]
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The game works by hosting clusters (servers) official servers and player run/administrated servers with custom rule sets.
You can play on official or private run clusters for free, but you can run your own cluster for a sub fee and configure the rule sets as you see fit.
Here are some copy paste details about how this works.
https://www.legendsofaria.com/game/#Customization
Regions and ‘Cluster’ Technology
A Legends of Aria server (both official and community run) are comprised of a collection of world regions. . These regions (game worlds/maps) are connected together using our ‘Cluster’ technology. Once connected, players can use portals, both static and dynamically created, to travel between them.
All regions within a single server must run the same rule-set or “mod”. This enforces fairness since player characters are also tied to that server. It would not make sense to be able to bring a character that is fully geared from a region with easy rules to a region running a hardcore rule-set.
The ‘Cluster’ servers are provided by Citadel Studios and use a simple web interface for managing the cluster. Through this interface, you can select the rule-set, change settings, add regions to the cluster, and manage god users.
Clusters can have any number of regions connected to it. This way you can decide which maps are available to explore. Want to run a steampunk only cluster? Want to run 10 versions of the fantasy home world Celador? (think of them as alternate realities) It’s completely up to the players that run the server.
Our top priority with player run servers is simplicity. This is the first step to putting all the power and freedom of Legends of Aria squarely in the players hands.
https://www.reddit.com/r/shardsonline/comments/3wl95x/players_running_shards/
Yes you are misunderstanding the concept. It's not your fault, its because the terminology we use can be a bit confusing.
To understand you need to know the difference between a cluster and a shard.
Shard: Is the equivalent of a zone in a conventional MMO. It's a just single map or game region. Currently they are capped at 64 but it will go up to at least 128 before release. Celador, the map running in the pre-alpha is an example of a single shard.
Cluster: This is the equivalent of a server in a conventional MMO. When you go to the server list of Shards Online you will see clusters not shards. The shards connect to the cluster which allows them to share characters and travel between them. Travel between shards in a cluster will be seamless (short loading screen) just like zones in other MMOs.
This means clusters will be as big as the admins who run it. We fully expect to have official clusters that support thousands of players.
It's also important to note that a cluster can run multiple copies of the same map as separate "instances". This is how we will support large number of players on a single cluster while we still have a limited number of maps.
Does that make more sense?
It was arguably one of the first MMO's and the inspiration for an entire gaming genre. Based on the Ultima series by Richard Garriott it was an open ended sandbox where players created their own content and purpose in a mythical world called Britannia.
I played this game to death back in the day, i run my own guild, owned houses and got involved in player organised PvP wars. It was simply one of the best gaming experiances of my life.
The game ultimatly died as Electronic Arts did what they do to gaming companies they purchase and to I.P's they own. But the memories live on.
The original game has come back somewhat hosted by people on private servers using the Second age client (The good client before EA ruined the game) but the game is showing its age.
I recently found out about Legends of Aria which is being created by the development team of the original Ultima Online minus Richard Garriott. Alot of people are touting it as Ultima Online 2 for this reason and when you watch the game play videos you can see that it is litterally a game mechanic copy of UO but with updated visuals. The game has recently been Green lit by Steam.
Im actually very excited by this game and fully intend to invest my interest in it and see where it goes.
How many other players here are old UO players, Remember the game and are interested in giving this a look?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima_Online
https://www.legendsofaria.com/
[video=youtube;pU5d7ZCEh2Y]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pU5d7ZCEh2Y[/video]
----
The game works by hosting clusters (servers) official servers and player run/administrated servers with custom rule sets.
You can play on official or private run clusters for free, but you can run your own cluster for a sub fee and configure the rule sets as you see fit.
Here are some copy paste details about how this works.
https://www.legendsofaria.com/game/#Customization
Regions and ‘Cluster’ Technology
A Legends of Aria server (both official and community run) are comprised of a collection of world regions. . These regions (game worlds/maps) are connected together using our ‘Cluster’ technology. Once connected, players can use portals, both static and dynamically created, to travel between them.
All regions within a single server must run the same rule-set or “mod”. This enforces fairness since player characters are also tied to that server. It would not make sense to be able to bring a character that is fully geared from a region with easy rules to a region running a hardcore rule-set.
The ‘Cluster’ servers are provided by Citadel Studios and use a simple web interface for managing the cluster. Through this interface, you can select the rule-set, change settings, add regions to the cluster, and manage god users.
Clusters can have any number of regions connected to it. This way you can decide which maps are available to explore. Want to run a steampunk only cluster? Want to run 10 versions of the fantasy home world Celador? (think of them as alternate realities) It’s completely up to the players that run the server.
Our top priority with player run servers is simplicity. This is the first step to putting all the power and freedom of Legends of Aria squarely in the players hands.
https://www.reddit.com/r/shardsonline/comments/3wl95x/players_running_shards/
Yes you are misunderstanding the concept. It's not your fault, its because the terminology we use can be a bit confusing.
To understand you need to know the difference between a cluster and a shard.
Shard: Is the equivalent of a zone in a conventional MMO. It's a just single map or game region. Currently they are capped at 64 but it will go up to at least 128 before release. Celador, the map running in the pre-alpha is an example of a single shard.
Cluster: This is the equivalent of a server in a conventional MMO. When you go to the server list of Shards Online you will see clusters not shards. The shards connect to the cluster which allows them to share characters and travel between them. Travel between shards in a cluster will be seamless (short loading screen) just like zones in other MMOs.
This means clusters will be as big as the admins who run it. We fully expect to have official clusters that support thousands of players.
It's also important to note that a cluster can run multiple copies of the same map as separate "instances". This is how we will support large number of players on a single cluster while we still have a limited number of maps.
Does that make more sense?
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