Interoperability standard

[kriavj]

I was thinking as a way to promote a larger user base and encourage new shards, there should be an interoperability standard. The servers can give an export of a players toon and their wealth. A shard then decide to delete the export items or toons. So a player take his toon with him. A receiving shard can decide to accept or not based on many factors exporting shard and which items.

All this can be done with modern dual key encryption with digital signing.

the idea is to allow people to come into the uo universe and not feel any time on new or unkown shards is wasted. Lets say a very popular shard is now just losing population. People quit but because the macroing is hard. of course it varies shard to shard.

This of course allows for multishard universes provided you can get a group of shards to agree on interoperability.

i dunno just throwing it out there

 

[Po0ka]

the only resultings would be:
1: drama.
2: compromises.
3: lack of uniqueness.

Drama is bad, as it can make many players flee a server.
Compromises are bad, as both party don't have what they want in the end.
I can only see server prepackaged packs dominating such a playerbase sharing method.

In the end, may as well make a character on each, keeping the distinct and unique shards aspects, and making sure that the shard isn't remotely affiliated nor abiding to "agreements" along the way.

To me, such a system is only additional restrictions for everyone.

 

[Voxpire]

It has been talked about before quite a lot and it always comes down to what @Po0ka has said.

It is also a maintenance heavy type of system to manage, and even with shard owners having to approve character transfers, there's nothing to stop any one person from spinning up a shard to create a character transfer without having to put in any effort on the character. This doesn't even touch on the fact that some shard owners would likely abuse the service in a similar way.

The only time this kind of collaboration is viable is when it is done by a single entity; a company or like-minded group of individuals who have already established a trust network.

 

[Heamo Goblin]

It has been talked about before quite a lot and it always comes down to what @Po0ka has said.

It is also a maintenance heavy type of system to manage, and even with shard owners having to approve character transfers, there's nothing to stop any one person from spinning up a shard to create a character transfer without having to put in any effort on the character. This doesn't even touch on the fact that some shard owners would likely abuse the service in a similar way.

The only time this kind of collaboration is viable is when it is done by a single entity; a company or like-minded group of individuals who have already established a trust network.

Not to poke a dead horse with a stick talking about this post as old as it is but one thing i think would be huge to the UO community is either making or bringing back connnect uo that Jeff made for RunUO.

It is still talked about largely today by players an i think it would be a nice thing to have to make more shards come together minus the drama an bs of course.
Also add a shard rating feature and maybe a comment section for shards so people can say what they feel and think about said shard?

Having many shards all in one area where all you have to do is click a button check it out eh not my cup of tea on to the next type of thing i guess...

Also making it where people can add their shards but the shard will have to be approved so none of those fly by night shards get added...
An then can also manage what shards can or can not be on said program.

Could also implement many features to benefit the program its self...
As in making it to where it can launch shards with steam, razor, CUO etc.

Once again just thinking out loud could be a total waste of time but i feel and have felt connect UO was important some time ago for the free shard community!

 

[[REDACTED 815]]

Dead horse poked!

ConnectUO served a purpose back in the days before blogging was a thing and social media was in its infancy...but something like that now wouldn't work out very well. Back then it was a menu of shards you could double click and play, but that was during the time when nobody altered their clients. There were bandwidth limitations to both storage and delivery so it was easier for everyone to have a link to EA's site to get the client. Now any shard worth a look has altered their client and tried to make something special/unique so a ConnectUO service would have a computer with 10 different UO installs on it for each custom shard today. Even if you didn't alter the client, you would have different era clients.

As for people wanting some sort of "centralized list" of active shards...well...that doesn't fit well in 2019's social media marketing. If someone wants to run a public shard, they better get ready to become high profile community activists for their shards. They better have a nice website with forums and Discord channels...along with accounts on Reddit, MeWe, Facebook, YouTube, or any place else you can make a post.

Trying to maintain a popular UO shard is something I think most people don't know what they may be getting into. I see it all of the time on these forums. Someone announces their new server and then leave that hanging out there like it is going to drive traffic. Most players of free shards never visited RunUO.com or ServUO.com. They know UO can be emulated but they only ever hear about an emulated server from elsewhere (Reddit is common). Having a diverse, online presence will eventually get you in the Google hits. So someday, someone will search for "is there a free Ultima Online shard that is just like OSI but has skill balls cuz I am too lazy to build a character from scratch" and they may see servers appear at the top of the results. That is your shard list! Anything less is lumped into a pile of half-hearted attempts to run a server where longevity is immediately questioned due to the lack of promotional effort and unique features that make it stand out from all the others.

 

[Heamo Goblin]

Dead horse poked!

ConnectUO served a purpose back in the days before blogging was a thing and social media was in its infancy...but something like that now wouldn't work out very well. Back then it was a menu of shards you could double click and play, but that was during the time when nobody altered their clients. There were bandwidth limitations to both storage and delivery so it was easier for everyone to have a link to EA's site to get the client. Now any shard worth a look has altered their client and tried to make something special/unique so a ConnectUO service would have a computer with 10 different UO installs on it for each custom shard today. Even if you didn't alter the client, you would have different era clients.

As for people wanting some sort of "centralized list" of active shards...well...that doesn't fit well in 2019's social media marketing. If someone wants to run a public shard, they better get ready to become high profile community activists for their shards. They better have a nice website with forums and Discord channels...along with accounts on Reddit, MeWe, Facebook, YouTube, or any place else you can make a post.

Trying to maintain a popular UO shard is something I think most people don't know what they may be getting into. I see it all of the time on these forums. Someone announces their new server and then leave that hanging out there like it is going to drive traffic. Most players of free shards never visited RunUO.com or ServUO.com. They know UO can be emulated but they only ever hear about an emulated server from elsewhere (Reddit is common). Having a diverse, online presence will eventually get you in the Google hits. So someday, someone will search for "is there a free Ultima Online shard that is just like OSI but has skill balls cuz I am too lazy to build a character from scratch" and they may see servers appear at the top of the results. That is your shard list! Anything less is lumped into a pile of half-hearted attempts to run a server where longevity is immediately questioned due to the lack of promotional effort and unique features that make it stand out from all the others.

I can agree to this to a point but we are also in the day an age where clients for games and a big thing...

Per say to play BL3 you gotta have epic games...
To play apex Origin.
An of course we all know steam vary well if any one has been around pc gameing that is.
Even gog stepped up their game and is releasing a custom client with a games library...

More or less i just thought maybe something could come around that would work out if done correctly for all shards as most servers as you said that are even worth checking out have their own clients with custom installers etc.

UO emulation is becoming more and more harder to launch a successful project to say the lease makes me wounder how alot of older shards are still even staying relevant.

As i said it was just thinking out loud as we all know most shard vote sites are owned by the same person "cough" "cough" so using them is next to irrelevant tbh plus using them you flood your own community or player base persay to other shards.

Once again was just food for thought.

First time i ever heard of MeWe haha i guess i am just dated like a fine wine.

 

[Po0ka]

If you want to make such a service, go ahead, try it out, it's a good way to learn and certainly worth a try.
However, keep in mind that not only you can't force shard owners to put their shards on it, but you also have to attract people to use it.
Then the same game as with shard owners start (as pointed out by Djeryv)... You have to be on social medias, you have to be on blogs, you have to make a unique platform and provide something that works, so in the end, such a program would only act as yet another online shards list (because lets face it, not many, me included, would download an app to do something a browser could do).

 

[Heamo Goblin]

If you want to make such a service, go ahead, try it out, it's a good way to learn and certainly worth a try.
However, keep in mind that not only you can't force shard owners to put their shards on it, but you also have to attract people to use it.
Then the same game as with shard owners start (as pointed out by Djeryv)... You have to be on social medias, you have to be on blogs, you have to make a unique platform and provide something that works, so in the end, such a program would only act as yet another online shards list (because lets face it, not many, me included, would download an app to do something a browser could do).

I was just thinking out loud is all @Po0ka nothing more nothing less just throwing out ideas an thoughts was all it was if i wanted to do such a thing i would have already done it not posted about it i would have programmed it and released it everywhere i could put it on a git hub repo etc.
It was more or less just thinking out loud and offering my 2 cents to something that i know most per say games are doing to force traffic to their launchers so was thinking about the same thing just in a ultima mind set.

I never once said anything about forcing anyone to use it... It was all just a thought haha but hay everyone wants to keep advertising on rigged sites be my guess cuz we all know who owns them!
Thats all ill say about that.

I truly do not have the time to even look at Starting such a huge project, let lone anything else haha i barley got time to work on my shard let lone be to work 7 days a week.
But i do like all the feedback and information getting peoples thoughts and feelings on things and seeing their points of view.
I would vary much so download such a service just so i didn't have to see so many adds for all the same shard on every vote site! but thats my personal opinion.

Meh trash the thought

 

[[REDACTED 815]]

I know you are throwing out "ideas", but I am throwing out "experience" on why such a "shard advertising" methodology doesn't work anymore. This topic of conversation has been broached often since its expiration date, and it is just a heartbreaking reality check for new shard owners that their shard content/promotion is lacking...not the fact that something like ConnectUO doesn't exist anymore. So I would see posts from these new shard owners asking about a central advertising place because they think that is why their shard is barren of players. So the analysis of any information system is to learn from past designs and find the root cause of their demise. ConnectUO's demise is simply that of emergence of social media...because shard owners have way better control of their shard's public image. Again...I loved ConnectUO back in the day as it served a purpose many years ago. The idea behind it just aged out.

If you want a popular shard...you better be ready to work for it. Some shard owners are so into social media promotion of their own shards, that they Google search their shard name to try and see if there is negative press and then attempt to head it off immediately. They are so busy trying to project a great image for their shard, they will delete any kind of post they can control if negativity is written. I know this post is mainly about transferring characters to other shards, but I feel the need to take opportunities to educate the newcomers of shard management and give them a heads up on what they are in for...or better be in for.

Anyone can run a public shard...but if you want to run a popular one, you are going to have to earn it on your own. Advertise, promote, build and community, and lastly...be special/unique. Some shards take a year or two to gain attraction, and some people need to be emotionally ready to wait that long.

It was mentioned: "makes me wounder how alot of older shards are still even staying relevant". The fact is "they are not". I don't play anyone's shard but my single player game...but I like to lurk on other shard sites/forums to see what they are doing to perhaps get ideas for my game. Servers like "UO Second Age" and "UO Renaissance" are actually crumbling from the posts I am reading there. Why? Well their promotion has fallen off for one thing. I could only imaging whoever started those servers are probably getting less and less excited about Ultima like they did back then. You know how new blogs start out with posts every day...and then once a month...and then once a year? Shards often get that way. The shard owner is excited at first and then their life slowly gets interested in other things where something like Ultima is a slight hobby from time to time but they payed for X years of hosting so the server just kinda runs. Their content isn't being updated...or updated very often. Sadly, the majority of players want new content and they want it often or they will leave. With the over-saturation of UO shards...they can just jump to another.

Britannia is getting a bit "old". Games like Outlands offered a brand new world to explore. Nobody gave two shits about what the new mechanics were...they just wanted to run around this new world and go to new dungeons. Now that things have settled down, people on Outlands want the new content. My point here is that Outlands put something hugely brand new right in your face...the map. That was the biggest draw (might still be because it looks really nice). I used to run my game publicly...but it was really only for local friends. They would comment on how my game was great because it was all new lands and dungeons. I made all of the skills have a purpose again. I added a bunch of new mechanics, items, and monsters. It felt like a brand new game to them. Again, Britannia seems to be getting old. We played there alot for years. If anyone thinks they are going to have a huge draw of players running vanilla UO, they may be fooling themselves.

UO emulation offers something to the world that is very, very special but the community needs to be innovative with it. It gives us the opportunity to make a very unique Ultima-like experience if we have the creativity, technical aptitude, and patience. If you go lurk on Broadsword's UO forums, you can find posts about live-UO players bitching about free shards and how "they have better shit than we do!" They are correct. I mean you can see what I did with RunUO 2.2 without changing a single line of code in the core. I modded the hell out of that thing to make something very unique that nobody else has done. I have one dungeon that is a crashed spaceship with robots, lasers, and lightsabers. It has beeps and blips, computer consoles, and sliding Star Trek doors. My point is, what if someone took that concept further and made a sci-fi game based on UO mechanics? RunUO/ServUO didn't just provide a way to play Ultima Offline, they provide a game engine to create your own world. Anything else is usually just cookie-cutter UO and isn't very interesting anymore.

 

[Voxpire]

In spite of all that's been said, I do plan on bringing back ConnectUO in its full glory, complete with shard selection and full custom patching support - with the shard owners optionally hosting their files, or hosting with the ConnectUO service.

Bandwidth is not an issue, and the right patch provisioning mechanic will keep things to a minimum, only patching files that are actually different.

Even if it may be a waste of my time in the long run, it's something the community needs, especially with the only available top-list/vote-sites being corrupt AF.

 

[Heamo Goblin]

In spite of all that's been said, I do plan on bringing back ConnectUO in its full glory, complete with shard selection and full custom patching support - with the shard owners optionally hosting their files, or hosting with the ConnectUO service.

Bandwidth is not an issue, and the right patch provisioning mechanic will keep things to a minimum, only patching files that are actually different.

Even if it may be a waste of my time in the long run, it's something the community needs, especially with the only available top-list/vote-sites being corrupt AF.

I can not agree more and that is my main concern! @Djeryv i ran a few shards many grossing in the 100+ players counts that were legit players! I understand everything that you are saying and also can't agree more with what you have said... I feel that maybe you just missed what i was trying to put out their as Voxpire understands in a way that i guess others do not...

Once again i was not trying to bring back a dead post to fight an argue about this or that or get a lecture of how to run a shard etc i was more or so just trying to point out some ideas that if done correctly....

We would have a legit way to find legit servers that are worth looking for if that makes since just as Voxpire has said vote sites are corrupt asf!
They are all owned by the same guy who takes gift cards as donos!

Anyways once again i was not trying to stir a shit pot if i must say just wanted to see what other peoples thoughts were and maybe some one had the same as mine?

I love ServUO i loved RunUO and i loved sphere back in the day cuz as you have said many of times it gives you a emulation that you can do anything that you damn well please with! You can create any game that you wish to a point haha of course in the end it is going to have characteristics of UO but either way!

An i have checked out your single player shard it is breath taking the same as Outlands is content wise and world building wise is truly beautiful!

I have nothing bad to say about anyshard unless its name starts with an E! As to me we are all trying to do the same thing as one another an thats keep an old dated game that we love so gosh darn much alive! We all just have different ideas and images of how we would like it to be!

@tass23 is a prime example of this i am sadly in no way a fan of any thing star wars never really have been once again as i say this sadly as i have always been a huge mythology buff spent all high school years studying it and even did in collage! But back to what i was saying the way he has implemented the star wars theme to fit The Expense i felt was truly awesome! As i love to see new works an things that are just truly different! An his shard has more then just that his custom maps were vary well done also many of them if not all of them were beautiful!

But i will say one of the main reasons i have always kept to myself all the years through all the Ultima Online Emulation is due to not wanting to start drama or get onto topics i feel escalate like this one has cuz i do not like to stir the shit pot unless its on Reddit where i know the shard owner personally and as you said when they try to hide their ass so to speak about being a dirty person i will speak on it!

But i do apologize if i offended anyone with anything i said!
I was just thinking out loud and wondered if anyone had the same thinking pattern as i did!

 

[[REDACTED 815]]

@Heamo Goblin

You don't need to apologize...especially for this thread/discussion. You brought up a point and I brought up a counter point. It is the very example of how conversations should take place on the forums as we are having a discussion without resorting to cheap shots. I don't think this topic is "escalating" either because I am not angrily bashing my keyboard here. I have no skin in the public shard game as I don't play on other people's servers. Haven't for over 10 years. Voxpire isn't bashing either from what I can tell. He simply responded with a "I'm gonna do it" response. My motiviation here is the abundance of threads I have seen over the years of "why don't people love my shard?"

Just because I am virtually long-winded and write alot doesn't make my points any more official. I write alot because all of these things are on my mind when topics like this come up so I tend to try and cover everything I am thinking about on the subject. I have been in the UO emulation community every since UOX dropped onto the world and we would run it just to log in...equip characters...and spawn monsters just to fight in the center of an empty city of Britain. During the Wolfpack/Lonewolf emulation era, I was the only one that publicly released a spawned world for anyone to use. Hell...I think you can still find that stuff on the Internet somewhere...even though Wolfpack never got too far in development.

The point of these statements is that I have seen many things happen in this community and it then wraps up into experience and wisdom. I hear about many people that started playing UO in "high school", where my friends and I were 22-23 when UO was released. During those years we just had girlfriends and went bar hopping at night. Had parties at our apartments and went to regular low paying jobs. Now 20+ years have passed and some of us are now directors in companies with high salaries and kids that are about to graduate high school...where we are now talking about retirement plans with the wife. This passing time would "hopefully" mean we take an objective view on proposed solutions and do a good analysis on why such ideas may fail/succeed or why they may have failed/succeeded before. Someone new jumping into UO emulation doesn't immediately have that experience and thus they generally have the same optimistic view we had many years ago...if you build it they will come...which just doesn't work in reality. We learned things like what is considered popular play styles, dungeon layouts, world design, and community involvement. We have seen shards come and go many, many times during the years and we learn why they failed or simply turned off the power switch.

So if anything, I would hope the aspiring shard admin reads what we wrote and take a good hard look at their projects to determine if they are equipped to take on the role of a shard admin looking to be popular/great. If they just run a shard for themselves to play, and simply invite others to join (without caring if they do or not), then life is pretty easy at that point. To go above and beyond...then...any type of ConnectUO will not solve the problem.

As for Voxpire, I don't think I have ever said but a handful of virtual words to him over the years. I just remember seeing his name when RunUO was a thing and have always seen him around (we may have exchanged words at RunUO...but I can't remember for sure). He is working on Outlands launcher/patcher so I can only assume he is taking that knowledge to perhaps resurrect ConnectUO one day. As for his view on what does it hurt to bring back ConnectUO? It doesn't hurt much really. If he enjoys making it then that is all that matters. A ConnectUO may help a bit with the barrier of entry to starting a new/custom shard...but the shard owners will have to do way more than rely on ConnectUO if they want to be great.

 

[Heamo Goblin]

@Heamo Goblin

You don't need to apologize...especially for this thread/discussion. You brought up a point and I brought up a counter point. It is the very example of how conversations should take place on the forums as we are having a discussion without resorting to cheap shots. I don't think this topic is "escalating" either because I am not angrily bashing my keyboard here. I have no skin in the public shard game as I don't play on other people's servers. Haven't for over 10 years. Voxpire isn't bashing either from what I can tell. He simply responded with a "I'm gonna do it" response. My motiviation here is the abundance of threads I have seen over the years of "why don't people love my shard?"

Just because I am virtually long-winded and write alot doesn't make my points any more official. I write alot because all of these things are on my mind when topics like this come up so I tend to try and cover everything I am thinking about on the subject. I have been in the UO emulation community every since UOX dropped onto the world and we would run it just to log in...equip characters...and spawn monsters just to fight in the center of an empty city of Britain. During the Wolfpack/Lonewolf emulation era, I was the only one that publicly released a spawned world for anyone to use. Hell...I think you can still find that stuff on the Internet somewhere...even though Wolfpack never got too far in development.

The point of these statements is that I have seen many things happen in this community and it then wraps up into experience and wisdom. I hear about many people that started playing UO in "high school", where my friends and I were 22-23 when UO was released. During those years we just had girlfriends and went bar hopping at night. Had parties at our apartments and went to regular low paying jobs. Now 20+ years have passed and some of us are now directors in companies with high salaries and kids that are about to graduate high school...where we are now talking about retirement plans with the wife. This passing time would "hopefully" mean we take an objective view on proposed solutions and do a good analysis on why such ideas may fail/succeed or why they may have failed/succeeded before. Someone new jumping into UO emulation doesn't immediately have that experience and thus they generally have the same optimistic view we had many years ago...if you build it they will come...which just doesn't work in reality. We learned things like what is considered popular play styles, dungeon layouts, world design, and community involvement. We have seen shards come and go many, many times during the years and we learn why they failed or simply turned off the power switch.

So if anything, I would hope the aspiring shard admin reads what we wrote and take a good hard look at their projects to determine if they are equipped to take on the role of a shard admin looking to be popular/great. If they just run a shard for themselves to play, and simply invite others to join (without caring if they do or not), then life is pretty easy at that point. To go above and beyond...then...any type of ConnectUO will not solve the problem.

As for Voxpire, I don't think I have ever said but a handful of virtual words to him over the years. I just remember seeing his name when RunUO was a thing and have always seen him around (we may have exchanged words at RunUO...but I can't remember for sure). He is working on Outlands launcher/patcher so I can only assume he is taking that knowledge to perhaps resurrect ConnectUO one day. As for his view on what does it hurt to bring back ConnectUO? It doesn't hurt much really. If he enjoys making it then that is all that matters. A ConnectUO may help a bit with the barrier of entry to starting a new/custom shard...but the shard owners will have to do way more than rely on ConnectUO if they want to be great.

All vary well said! I can agree with most of this some i am on edge about but either way as you stated before, ServUO gives you the power to do what you want!
It is your job to find that power inside yourself to make something amazing!

 

[tass23]

@tass23 is a prime example of this i am sadly in no way a fan of any thing star wars never really have been once again as i say this sadly as i have always been a huge mythology buff spent all high school years studying it and even did in collage! But back to what i was saying the way he has implemented the star wars theme to fit The Expense i felt was truly awesome! As i love to see new works an things that are just truly different! An his shard has more then just that his custom maps were vary well done also many of them if not all of them were beautiful!

Hi everyone *waves*
Thanks for the kind words Heamo 🙂😎
Mogster was a huge help with a lot of that too (and Tixu for several of the major builds). One of the things we tried to focus on with all our custom content was including it in UO lore or at least the shard lore, somehow. Sometimes it was simple, like Professor Van Helsing arriving mysteriously to Blackthorn Castle and then Vampires and Werewolves were added to the shard. *laughs*

Anyway...
Since I got tagged in this, I read up a little too.
The idea of shards working together to support the same playerbase had been discussed when I was helping at Orbsydia (OrbUO). My suggestion, and I believe I mentioned it to Vors before, was to use a DB (flat-file would work just fine), to store character information and such. The two main problems are supporting ALL the customs from shard to shard and updating the flat-file. I further suggested to Jim at Orb that the items to be exported were part of a static list, including character stats. Any special items could have itemIDs set aside and/or give players itemID deeds. I think everyone else has pretty much covered this to death. Bottomline: Shards CAN do it, if those participating all agree on what is what. The Expanse Consortium was the start of that, but by then most established shards were already in their niche. So basically the shards that were part of TEC, shared resources (staff, scripts, support, etc., etc.). Unfortunately many have gone offline since, including my own.

This would have made things a lot closer to OSI shards, being able to go from one to another. Custom shards can be very iffy from a player's standpoint, but then if all the shards are the same how does one stand apart? Being part of a huge company like EA means this isn't an issue because the shards aren't competing for players to "survive".

Just for future reference; I do plan to release The Expanse here, but I have not had time to clean up all the scripts yet as other projects have been getting most of my attention and no one wants The Expanse without code comments and instructions, trust me. *laughs*

 

[Heamo Goblin]

Hi everyone *waves*
Thanks for the kind words Heamo 🙂😎
Mogster was a huge help with a lot of that too (and Tixu for several of the major builds). One of the things we tried to focus on with all our custom content was including it in UO lore or at least the shard lore, somehow. Sometimes it was simple, like Professor Van Helsing arriving mysteriously to Blackthorn Castle and then Vampires and Werewolves were added to the shard. *laughs*

Anyway...
Since I got tagged in this, I read up a little too.
The idea of shards working together to support the same playerbase had been discussed when I was helping at Orbsydia (OrbUO). My suggestion, and I believe I mentioned it to Vors before, was to use a DB (flat-file would work just fine), to store character information and such. The two main problems are supporting ALL the customs from shard to shard and updating the flat-file. I further suggested to Jim at Orb that the items to be exported were part of a static list, including character stats. Any special items could have itemIDs set aside and/or give players itemID deeds. I think everyone else has pretty much covered this to death. Bottomline: Shards CAN do it, if those participating all agree on what is what. The Expanse Consortium was the start of that, but by then most established shards were already in their niche. So basically the shards that were part of TEC, shared resources (staff, scripts, support, etc., etc.). Unfortunately many have gone offline since, including my own.

This would have made things a lot closer to OSI shards, being able to go from one to another. Custom shards can be very iffy from a player's standpoint, but then if all the shards are the same how does one stand apart? Being part of a huge company like EA means this isn't an issue because the shards aren't competing for players to "survive".

Just for future reference; I do plan to release The Expanse here, but I have not had time to clean up all the scripts yet as other projects have been getting most of my attention and no one wants The Expanse without code comments and instructions, trust me. *laughs*

Wow.... I had no idea it went offline... Sorry to hear that tass i use to get on it and dabble here an their but i also took a good 3-4 year brake...
But i do agree with what you have said also vary valid points. i just kinda feel if some of the community and the reason i say some as not all will work together as we all know this haha.

Then maybe something could come together to help all shard owners is more or less my thinking behind alot of things as sure some shards are alot alike thanks for everyone releasing repacks but you do have the ones that stand out @Djeryv single player shard is amazing i was up i think till 2-3am playing on that dog garn master piece haha then got up for work at 7am ROFL.

But more or less im sure many shads could benefit from working together in some way shape or form as many are era set shards some are OSI cloned an then you got the ones that are purely custom just like yours @tass23...

Idk i think with enough thinking and the community some what coming together in ways things can be done to boost player counts so we are not using rigged vote sites any longer to be 100% honest i think the only legit vote site anymore is UOGateway an sadly it is so dated and unheard of by many that to a point it makes it irreverent.

But yea if you do release it i would love to take a gondor at that beauty their were alot of things you did custom wise that i fell in love with over their the bank system being one of them.