Ultima Online: too much freedom

Most video games have goals or a clear way of playing them, you know what to do or the game itself tells you what you should do, some games provide a long tutorial to teach you how to play the game.

And there is Minecraft, which throw you into a world and you have to figure it out,  Minecraft is popular and you’ll find a lot of tutorials for it, and many videos showing how to play the game, for people who love Minecraft it’s easy to decide what they want to do, first they usually try to survive the first night, then look for more resources, build the first house, then they can plan a number of things to do, from exploring to going into another world to fight a dragon.

Ultima Online is similar to Minecraft, there is so much to do and you as a player should choose, the game does not provide any guidance, there are no achievements, no levels to gain, you have skills to level but which ones? you can make your own class of fighter or crafter but you can’t be everything, so you have to choose your skills.

Even if you know what you want to be, the question still remain: what now?

So i decided that my character will be a mage with tailoring and inscription, level my combat skills, go to dungeons, maybe try my luck with taming animals.

Since UO is free to play (with some limits) it’ll be a long term project, no need to play it for hours every day, yesterday i leveled my inscription skill to 50, that didn’t take long time, so every day i can do a little to level my skills.

First steps in Ultima Online

I sent a question for MassivelyOP about Ultima Online and if there is a guide for new players, and they read my question in their podcast episode 252, Bree mentioned websites for UO:

• Stratics
• UOGuide
• Ultima Online Wiki
• Ultima Onlie Forums

And told me to search for answers in these websites, because UO is not an easy game to explain, and it’s not an easy game to play, UO is old.

For example, last year i played it, i wanted to have magery skills so i can be a spell caster, i need an NPC who provide training for these skills, finding the NPC was not hard, she have a quest so i took it, then i asked her to teach me, she asked for 100 gold.

Now the hard part: how do i pay the NPC to teach me magery skills?

In modern MMOs this is easy, right-click on the skills and that’s it, in UO? it took me 2 hours to find the answer, i need to take 100 gold from my bag and put it over the NPC, i did that and nothing happened, i took all the gold and put it on the NPC, she took it all and thanked me! i did not get my skills! so i removed the game from my PC.

After listening to the podcast i thought i’ll try again, i searched the forums and i found that first i should buy the skill then take the quest from the NPC, and it worked, so my question here is: why did they design the game in this way?

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Ultima Online is a skill-based MMORPG, there is no classes, you choose what skills you want to level, you can buy training and then use the skills to level them up, you can be a crafting player who focus just on crafting.

Right now i’m focusing on leveling my magery skills, later i’ll start learning tailoring and i’ll stay in the starting area to learn the game and its systems, little by little i’ll understand it more and maybe one day i can write the guide i needed 🙂

Waiting for 8.3

Durrzam is level 95! will reach level 110 one day

Few hours remain for subscription time in WoW, and i’m thinking if i should add more time or wait until 8.3 release, which is not far but i get a chance to play other games.

I leveled Unholy DK to level 111, i focused more on my Horde main to grind reputation, but Blizzard designed reputation grind in Legion and BFA to be a long term project, something you do every day for months, i reached exalted only The Honorbound which means unlocking the Mag’har orcs.

But other reputations? still honored with the Zandalari, reached revered with Voldunai, i did worlds quests for both factions every day, normal WQ gives about 83 points, using the scribes scrolls add only 11 points and only for 7 days.

The Emissaries is the best way to gain more than 2000 points of reputation, without them you have to do about 22 WQ which is impossible in one zone, and each faction require one zone except for The Honorbound who give a lot of reputation doing quests, not WQs.

I wish they allow using tabard for grinding reputation in dungeons, at least i’ll have a reason to do them, but Blizzard and for many expansions made tabards as a transmog reward.

Anyway, 8.3 will give us a lot to do, so i think i’ll play other games until then.

Two sides to every tale

Last few days i focused on leveling my Horde warrior, started leveling in Nazmir because it’s a creepy place and i love it, then Vol’dun then Zuldazar, at level 120 i got full set of benthic gear sent by my alliance main.

At this point i just focused on finishing all the requirement to unlock the allied races:

• Ready for War, to unlock Mag’har orcs.
• Tide of Vengeance +  Zandalari Forever, to unlock Zandalari  trolls.
• Secrets in the Sands, to unlock Volpera

Now i just need to grind reputation with 3 factions and reach exalted with them.

The story on the Horde side is interesting except when it becomes about fighting the Alliance, Zandalar itself  is worth exploring and doing all the quests, the zones are beautiful, i loved the music, especially Zuldazar, it reminds me of Stranglethorn Vale, one of my favorite zones in the game.

Each zone have some interesting NPCs, princess Talanji, the Gob squad, Meerah in Voldun and her alpacas, all made the journey … fun!

By doing the story on both sides the game gave me two mounts, Bloodflank charger for the Horde and Ironclad Frostclaw for the Alliance.

Balance of reputation

When i did the quest line with my main, i didn’t need to grind reputation with the factions because my main is exalted with all of them, now i’m trying the quest line with alts i found every reputation to be a content gate and it’s annoying.

And again: some players did all of that in Legion with all classes! how?!

Anyway, I was planning on doing Balance of Power quest line on many classes, now i won’t, instead i’ll just level alts in Legion and BFA, low level alts will wait until Shadowlands.

This means i can work on the Horde side leveling and gaining reputation with Horde faction and later unlocking allied races.

As for Balance of Power, i’ll keep it for later, class halls provide mission tables which offer missions for reputation items, i’ll use them to gain reputation, they are account-bound, so i can send them to alts.

WoW goals and screenshots

I got flying recently in BFA and immediately i thought “now what?”, of course there is much to do, i just need a simple plan.

• Shadow priest, level 114, grinding PVP AV for a mount, and maybe reach 120.
• Arcane Mage, level 120, need to finish Class Hall quests and artifact looks.
• Warlock, level 111, need leveling, i’ll try to do anniversary quests.
• Unholy DK, level 100, leveling and Class hall quests + artifact look.

Darkmoon Faire is here, and it’s a good chance to grind reputation, and i miss the faire, i’m happy for what is coming in the faire in 8.3.

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I found an addon called TodoChecklister, which you can use to make a todo list in WoW, you even can make a task to collect something, say 1000 Draenic Seeds and it’ll show for you the number of seeds you need to collect.

Alas the addon is account wide list not character based, it’ll be perfect if you can make a list for each character.

This addon should be part of many MMOs, you should be able to make your own quests, give yourself goals and do that in the game, and these quests have no reward and no experience, they are just goals to work on.

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Since Warlords of Draenor i wanted this pet, at last i have it

New transmog for the Lightforged Draenei .. he make people stop to look, seriously!

Showing the light … tattoos? chandelier?

Working for this mount was fun, and it’s a great mount, i love it

Overly attached fire elemental … it did not want to leave!

First time to notice this, and the second English word in the game i found

Watermelon boat race!