What was UWO like in the early days?

BlakeC · January 2018

Ive been here only for a few years, having joined up in 2014. But I know the game launched outside Asia in 2010. And im curious if anyone that played around that time is still around. So I ask; what UWO was like back then? What features did we not have then that we tend to take for granted now?

CrzyPsycoChick · January 2018

Thought you were here longer lok

1. There was much greater rivalries and altercations maritimers actually fought other maritimers... Imagine that lol

2. World chat was way way way more aggressive and nasty this was partial fueled by my next point

3. Ivyro used to be SUPER DUPER abusive site unrestricted and uncensored and unregulated so you it wasn't uncommon to have racial slurs, threats, lies and slander written about you and it would carry over into the game

4. Legends were much more prevalent like seeing certain players was like meeting celebrities of there's Lidia on there's Dog oh oleh hey there's nukeshaw. This was one of my favorite aspects.

5. Land battle was big time it died down during the coolwind Era but their were many big time duelist I even had a dueling school lol. There lots of duelist dueling for the Land Battle championship

6. Turtles were laughed at

7. Auctions were long huge events sometimes 6 hours long I got a job can do that.

8. Dungeons were unable nerfed so you saw us dungeon rats.

9. Net marble had uwo police and GM 24 7

10. Traders and pirates had an intense rivalry I even started a pirate welfare program giving pirates free food clothing and water because they were so poor lol... It was all in good fun to get the server popping.

11.. ALOT more players like way more

12. Things were more expensive

13. There was a lot more conflict at sea not just mocks. People and companies like PAC and sea legion and BBB actually took initiative to make conflicts at sea way different than today where maritimers just cry and blame traders for them not going out to wage war...

14. More drama like an endless soap opera lol.

15 more corruption back in the day player GM, people rallying to report, baiting ppl Into bans, lies cover up crowd selling gold... Omg I got stories to tell but it's a lot more tame now.

16. Way more tournaments and titles to win like beat company world championship in sea battle dueling, g poker, etc.

17. No fusion so you had to make PRECISE ships

18. People were generally more optimistic about the game more cry babies and doom sayers now.

19. Game was way way way longer and harder due to no fusion or Oxford or refine or nanban or BRs

20. Cash items used to be untradeable so bigger gap BTW pay to win

Rhend78 · January 2018

I remember things a bit differently than CPC...

To me, at launch....

Everything was new. The only people who knew anything were the Chinese Gold farmers. So, people were truly learning everything. Due to that, people didn't craft like crazy, so there was fewer of everything, with a lot more people.

But, ducats were valuable. CPC says everything was more expensive, I disagree. I remember when you could buy the top end warships for 500 mil, because it was before dungeons, it was before Nanban. Before SEA came out, things just didn't cost a ton like they do now.

Maritimers did fight a lot more. As CDR we had a lot of fun fights with the Sea Legion crew, especially when the colonies first came out and we were always by the Georgia area and Sea Legion was always running between Virginia and Nassau/New York area.

We didn't have upgrading, the ship you got, was the ship you had. The game didn't have the FS ship building yet. So, no crazy fast ships, no floating dreadnoughts and such.

The ships were incredibly limited. Took forever to get enough investments in cities to be able to make just the 52 clipper and such. This was because you started with 50k gold, and that was it. Go forth and forge a new empire, with 50k gold...

Sail Handling, it actually took up a skill slot to use while sailing. At the start, a LOT of us had no clue what it was, and we didn't get it for like a month or two. So, people like me, were constantly, manually manipulating our sail directions to increase our speed without the skill.

As CPC said, most cash shop things were untradeable, and the speed buffs that were put in the shop were single player use only, as soon as you had people following your ship, it stopped working. What we did to kind of get around that was did a constantly slingshot. We'd all catch the admiral, then break off follow, and slingshot past, he'd then catch and pass us, when we could hardly see him anymore, we'd do it all over again.

The game was a LOT harder in a LOT of ways, and that made the accomplishments mean more, and made it a lot funner.

Hawthorne · January 2018

I've played since the very first western Beta under NetMarble. Adding to Rhend's post, I'll recount my experience with the game's very first event.

It was a Christopher Columbus-themed event that started in Seville. Since I'd wager the grand majority of us didn't even have Caribbean permits by then, the NPC who started the event was nice enough to give you 8-10 non-tradable permits. These permits would allow you to enter a port, even if you didn't have a permit for those waters. It let you go inside to talk to the NPCs in the Caribbean ports to further the event quest. Mind you, only the Caribbean ports were available. Back then, you couldn't even get inside the Latin American ports; landing areas existed for them, but there were no actual ports insite to visit.

We didn't have very nice school rewards back then outside of the body outfits you get upon completing the advanced courses. There were no school ships, so you had to scrap by from whatever low-level SBs could make for you. For this trip, I had just traded my Hooker (the ship) for a dhow. It was like night and day, in terms of speed. Some of my company mates were using slow caravels and naos to make the trip, but in my dhow my fleet beat them to the New World and back to Seville. There was no GVONavi for us back then (or at least I wasn't aware of it or how to get it), so that first trip across the Atlantic was a little nerve-wracking but exciting.

Anyway, once you talked to all the NPCs in the Caribbean and returned to Seville, the starter NPC there rewarded you with like 50 or so lots of gold. That may seem like small change now, but it was a lot of money to me back then. And I took great satisfaction in crashing Seville's precious metals markets with it.

I've been a long-time fan of the Uncharted Waters series. I loved the game then, and I still love it now. Some of the excitement and intrigue has worn off over the years, but it's funny to look back and remember how little we all knew but how fun it was to figure it all out.

Twitchalot · January 2018

When I started on Nov 22nd 2011:

1) SSIPs were not tradeable

2) A 2/4 r19 built BTC was the ultimate trade ship(no Treasure Chest/Bottle/Ticket ships)

3) 10 drills for all advanced schools and 20 ships to sink for the Maritime final

4) No Challenge Rewards or School Ships

5) no EA(SEA had just opened before I started)

6) Almost no greenies(Ottoman defectors) The first Ottoman character I remember seeing was Viking.

7) QMP sold for 100k-ish in bazaars

8) No dungeons

9) 100,000,000 ducats was a LOT of game money

One thing I do have now though is a much greater appreciation of how much time and effort the people who played for a year before I did put into the game, doing IQ's to get National Permits, investing in cities and posting all the info in ivyro(special thanks to Mary_ReaD and Warbride[come back and play again!]).

TheEzioAuditore · January 2018

Back when I started, a few months after launch, ships weren't stupidly expensive. Top tier was maybe 800m and that was EXPENSIVE back then. SSIP's weren't tradeable. No EA, there was SEA though. It was the Golden Age of Piracy back when we had no restrictions and pirates were prolific. That was true freedom.

Twitchalot · January 2018

Were you in school for that long Ezio? Because if you recall, CullumStraun was in school chat with you and I started Nov 22nd 2011. And back then there wasn't the kind stuff available from the Cash Shop and in the Treasure Boxes like we have now worth a lot more real cash and hundreds of millions or even billions of ducats that if plundered from a player would possibly cause them to say to heck with the game, and even if someone did quit over getting pirated, we had a lot bigger player base then. Now we have too few players to lose any. So, be a real player, take one for the server, and give up on wanting to Plunder everything so we can get more people playing and keep the game alive.

Rhend78 · January 2018

Twitch, maybe a big part of the reason we don't have as many people now as then is because the rules went so anti-pirate that most of them quit?

I only went orange once and red never before the wipe. I was never a pirate type player, but I LOVED fighting the pirates. Then, they all left. Well, probably 9 out of 10 of them left. At that point, on my maritime toon, I no longer had any fun, and on my trader toon, there was no more rush or excitement when trading. The game lost the element of the unknown, of the chance of being pirated, and every single thing became a pure grind.....

Sure, many loved the anti-piracy patches when they came out. But I think few foreseen the total impact it would have on the game and its player-base, it was fun at first, but then removed a very fun part of the game.

The argument of taking one for the team, would appear to be several years too late.

Twitchalot · January 2018

You can take everything from somebody except Cash Shop items atm and strip them bare except for that stuff, which was a lot more than you could at the end of GAMA, and DB isn't consensual anymore. Ask for more and it's "You want cheese with that?" time.

Culvern · January 2018

Deck battle IS consensual.
It can only be forced on a blue or red.
You CANNOT strip anyone bare at all. Allowed to pirate them once in 24 hours so best you get is one item from a limited list.

So many are complaining about piracy.
I am curious how many of you have been pirated since the relaunch? How many lost expensive items? How many have been stripped bare?
I don't want to hear about 'I know some who has or 'I heard about it' . Any actual first hand accounts?

I bet I have lost more to NPCs plundering me by getting DCed while grinding. I get DCed with the 2::2 disconnect error about every 20 mins.

I started playing back when piracy was at its height. I played as a trader. I love the thrill of out witting and running from pirates. I have been pirated by the best. It was part of the game. No reason to play a game if the outcome is known.

NaverUWO · January 2018

This kind of excitement is what we need in UWO. No free pass means more negotiation between players.

We had it, crying forum warriors ruined it and UWO fell into ground badly.

And still don't get it because they are dumb as Hillary/Bernie supporters and craving for easy and free stuffs only without any efforts.

YinYangSparty · January 2018

The only few people who forsaw how horrible the game would be after the piracy nerfs were the maritimers/pirates themselves and since the community were a bunch of carebears their views were not appreciated

CrzyPsycoChick · January 2018

Pirates/ Maritimers are in a difficult spot because YES You are right the piracy nerfs were way too heavy handed and did hurt server.

But now they rolled back those nerfs but yet the whining does not cease… So what is the excuse now? It just seems NOTHING satisfies you and unless the fights are easy against Clippers and not agaisnt other maritime everyone cries PVP is broken. Theres ALWAYS an excuse but I'm sorry have run out of them its time they did their part to facilitate maritime on their own and stop waiting to be spoon fed it.

Culvern · January 2018

As a pirate i think the current rules are not bad.
I would only change the cool down period to something way less then 24 hours.
It would also be nice if BHs showed in the search as a blue name the way a red does.

Lerxst · January 2018

Everyone sailed around in much, much smaller ships. Seeing a player in a larger ship usually meant an Asian player who already knew the game or a very experienced, dedicated, 24/7 character... usually a "gold farmer".

3-Masted Cog piracy was an actual thing, as the Baltic was a full PvP zone.

Many regions you can open now, didn't exist back then... like Russia or Nanban.

Getting the India permit was a life-altering event, and a call for company-wide celebration.

Outside of school, there was no publicly available chat channel, so life could get lonely at times, unless you made friends.

r-10 in any trade skill put you well within the top tier of crafters and among the wealthier players in the game.

Although they were more difficult to obtain, there was a larger variety of unique ships players sailed, rather than coalescing around one popular "uber" model like they do now.

Being a "feather plucker" was a way of life early on and a well-guarded secret at first.

There was no online Web site or data base of any kind, other than a barely populated, barely translated site. And the game forum barely had anyone posting to it.

Land battles barely netting you any money or items of value.

Every single port in every newbie zone was spammed with dozens of gold farmers yelling at you.

2x exp events were uncommon but highly welcome.

Newbie school was always, always, always crowded with new players instead of alts.

People barely knew how game mechanics worked so you rarely saw any players using alts in the first place

Lerxst · January 2018

Oh... and the Circumnavigation Quest that everyone just sort of brushes off and completes so "matter of factly" absorbed hours of your life, presented impossible odds and gave you a very respectable reward for your troubles.

theedgedemon · January 2018

pretty sure the pirate nerf was years after launch so your memories are fumbled together guys.

@Rhend78 recount is as close as it gets from how i remember it, adding that there were a few players making a legitimate effort for the community back then making guides and testing stuff i can remember right now Starcrossed and CptMorgan which made a few of the very first guides back when we didn't even have the Caribbean ports.

@Culvern get and aide with seize cargo and obstruction and you can pretty leave someone naked, given you know how to time your attacks.

on how many have attacked me a few tried only killa got to sink me since his alt attacked first and caught my decoy for him to enter battle from the same direction the admiral was retreating, and he took... a fish i believe since storage r18 rocks

WesDoobner · January 2018

Back in the really early days, we had to mark our ship movements on graphing paper, and use a dice to see how far our ship could move. Then we would mail copies of the charts to the other players.

Culvern · January 2018

I do have an aide with seize cargo and obstruction but even trying not to clear out the crew last only a round or two in most cases unless I hit a skilled player with a large crew.
I am not on it for that anyways though, I often give back items that I do get.

I was not there in the very beginning but started playing about 6 years back I would guess.
I believe netmarble had just taken over then.

Getting my first vaiss, what an achievement...

What was UWO like in the early days?

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