As for "What does RunUO bring to the table?", here are just a few things it offers:
* High Seas client - This is huge, with every client update comes bug fixes and new content.
* EVERYTHING is, in it's base form, implemented to emulate OSI, unlike POL, when you download a copy of Runuo distro, you are downloading a world that is already populated, fully functional and finally does not have some of the shortcomings of POL such as jerky boats.
* As everything is modeled on OSI, our crafting system would be up-to-date with the latest gumps.
* Combat oriented ability book which offers players though limited, special moves dependent on the weapon you current have equipped.
* I have skimmed some of the available pkgs people have released to supplement shards, one in particular is very exciting, under the name of UltimaLive, it offers staff the ability to create upwards of 200 new maps as well as push live map updates to us players. This means we could have a dynamic world that is rocked by a catastrophic event such as the "Goddess of the Sea swallowing up Jhelom cause she got tired of all the degradation she saw going on". There are many many other pkg's that offer other very different things from new items such as new container types such as safes to a project where when you chop a tree and it runs out of resources it's graphic changes and the tree is seen to be chopped down and will grow back first as a saplings then back to fully grown trees. I mean there is a lot that can be done with RunUO.
Now, this is not all chestnuts and tea, there are three major pkgs that would need a port over and also some serious evaluations as to what RunUO comes with and if any of it should be disabled to keep integrity of RP (Samurai Empire comes to mind really for this one
). Those three pkg's being druid, class system and religion system. The necromancy pkg is already in place as it uses the OSI standard which means necros get their own spell tiles, it also offers the ability for knights to be religion characters but have their own skill, chivalry and thus have their very own tome to make them seem truly their own holy warriors on the battlefield.Finally, what RunUO brings to the table compared to POL is that RunUO uses the C# programming language as it runs on .Net and as such, there is a probable wider variety of people who know this language compared to POL's escript.
Now I am not saying neither is better, they both have their advantages, with RunUO sure, you are handed a runable shard modeled directly on OSI and everything works as it does on OSI where as POL you are handed a shard that is nearly fully functional in terms of the basics of all the skills and what not but not really, the benefit of this being of course is that you are forced into scripting stuff you otherwise would lazily let be on say a RunUO shard so you can tweak things the way you want them. Look at it like the difference between an Android phone and an IPhone, the IPhone being RunUO, you don't have to fiddle with it, it works as you want it to (according to Jobs) where as the Android while stable can be finicky at times but allows those of us (like myself) who want to fiddle around with stuff you otherwise would leave alone on the IPhone because it just works, you can.
It is all in perspective and the unfortunate thing no matter which way you go on this topic you will always have those who reject it as a horrible move cause they harp back to the old days when it was like this or that. Personally, hard work though it maybe and aside from all the upshots I pointed out here, the RunUO option is the way to go, the RunUO forums unlike the pol forums are always alive with activity so a scripter does not always feel he is the lone captain on the bridge of a trapped ship in icy seas and just offers more then what we have out of the box.
My only advice to the staff if they take this momentous step is:
Take small steps, do not worry about getting every piece of Pangaea's current feature set ported over before you launch it, focus on the main one, the class system, then move to other ones like the religion system then to other pkgs. Use what RunUO already has to your strength.
- I need to point out I do not know C# as two members of the staff have already asked me.
- Also, if you were to take this momentous step, what would happen with the old Pangaea scripts, might I suggest instead of zipping them up and storing somewhere, you let Pangaea live on by releasing them on the POL forums so that future POL users have an exceptional script base they can draw on.
