This is not a criticism topic, I enjoy the combination of old stuff in the shard and some new stuff and some unique custom made stuff, I'm not asking to remove any of it, the staff probably know of most of this stuff, and perhaps they are not practical to implement but here are some things the Pre-Alpha had that this shard does not...

1. Font, the font during the pre-alpha was arial plain looking, not the current fancy modern font.

2. Fire dildos, pardon the term, but it was the nickname of the red colored mace that Myndon dropped, perhaps it was too powerful but it worked like a regular mace but it would shoot fireballs upon impact on the head of an enemy, I'm assuming the fireball wand is the alternative inspired by this.

3. Attack stance were available in the pre-alpha, when you clicked to attack mode if you were fighting or not your character would be in attack stance, I noticed this doesn't exist here.

4. The duelling pit, in the godlands, where players who won would be knighted and be able to choose a full set of plate any color of their choosing including white, red, etc, now it may be there but I can't tell as I can't jump the fence, the fence could be bypassed, but again this is just a suggestion to add a duelling pit and perhaps difficult knights of additional colored armors so they could be acquired.

5. Level system, the level system is interesting but not nearly like it was in the pre-alpha, I don't know how the level system is calculated, a combination of skills and stats? However it was calculated in the pre-alpha it was easier to level, is level 10 the highest? In the pre-alpha I know dragonslayer I believe reached something like level 32, there was a poll on the original owo.com website that asked players if they prefer a level system or a skill system and it was like 90% skill. I enjoy the fact that there is a level system here but it would be cool to see the level cap raised.

6. Hell hounds!

7. I'll add more later, these are just old things that people may or may not care about that existed in the pre-alpha, thanks...

ok, here are some shots showing the level process of the pre-alpha, i know it would be a lot of work and am not expecting it but just wanted to show these, i always liked the focus on levels as opposed to skills...




looks like sthenalous wins with a level of 48, 506k points

that sthenalous website i found years ago using archive.org after it was already removed from the internet, thanks to the fact that i think he put it on a university host... too bad archive.org doesn't work too great with old sites anymore, 99% of images are usually gone now not to mention most sites aren't archived or are blocked with a robot.txt...

In response to your first post.

1. Im very aware of the font used in the pre-alpha. It would be possible to use this font. The reason i chose not to is i really dislike it. Its way to similar to the modern Unifont and just seems unfitting. Also, the font First Dawn uses is ASCII type, it has in a way totally disappeared from OSI since Age of Shadows. There are some free shards out there who base from pre-aos and down who do not even use this font. To me this is one of those small things that go a long way.

2. Dildos . I have long lost my archive article of the topic, but from its claims the wands were very overpowered. To the point that Gamemasters were asking players to turn them in. I guess they didn't have the feature to mass remove them via command as we do now. Some players kept them hidden, others did as they were told. I just have to little information about how they worked, did the have charges? Was it unlimited? Did they shoot a fireball each hit?

3. I did not know about the attack stance. The pre-alpha client shows no signs of any animations. Unless they just used the first frame of attack or something of the sort. Im a little confused exactly on this, i apologize if im way off.

4. The "god lands". Im in no way doubting you, i have taken a look around the area and could not find any area set for dueling, then again im uncertain of what to look for. I have seen the pic of colored armor and packs being handed out in this area. Mostly just a bunch of random structures and unused tiles. If you have any screens or more info about the area id love to add this on FD.


5. The level system thats in place is redundant. The number shown is merely a number projected by your total skill points. I did not add a level system like seen in the pre--alpha for 2 big reasons. First, the character status window that the modern client uses is completely handled by the client. If i were to distribute a modified version i could face legal problems. Unfortunately, many ideas and pre-alpha features im unable to implement exactly or at all due to client side limitations. Secondly, i always viewed level based MMOs as a big waste. It made later UO very unique and is really the only mainstream game to be successful with out it. Skill based provides more realistic choices. You have the freedom of working on whatever you want at the time. Level based is more of a "grind" or "repetitions" concept.

6. Lets have some!


In response to your second post:

Im confused how the level system worked in the pre-alpha as well. Was it a combination of skill/level based? Did your skills raise, while your stats would only raise when you level? Did you get to chose your stats?

I don't know how the lvl system worked, I could ask around.









There were 2 arenas, one in the godlands and one at Castle British which is there, it would be nice to see people using it instead of random killing in the streets. And you could pick color set of your choice of course it was manually held by GM Hades.



hellhounds are just powerful reddish-pink dyed wolves.