I've played for most of a year and have spent $10 on the game in that time. That $10 did provide a big advantage over spending $0, as it meant I could get special shipbuilding permits. But the advantage of spending $10 (total, not per month) rather than $0 is greater than the advantage of spending $100 rather than $10 would have been.
If you want to be a pirate, then it is pretty much pay to win. But otherwise, no. Think of the old SNES game. If you increased your attack power or ship speed there by 20%, so what? That is game-breaking in most MMORPGs, but here, it's practically a rounding error unless you're a pirate.
And it's hardly like I barely played the game. Right now, I'm at something like 65/47/29, and waiting for a level cap increase because my adventuring level is at the cap. I somewhat expect the next patch to raise the cap to 70. And then I'll spend another $10 on more special shipbuliding permits.
yeah. at this point i have been playing for a couple days and it doesn't seem as greasy as i feared, i also understand even if it costed only a small amount of money some younger players would not be able to play, however i still worry. there is a slippery slope when free games of this sort have a cash shop and no advertisements. as it stands now the cash shop stuff is cosmetic or only cuts off the highest of the highest level bits of this intricate world, but what happens when the owners of the host server need more cash to keep the game online?
UWO is not "Pay to Win", it's more like "Pay for Convenience". You can level a bit faster by buying experience boosts, for example. Also things like increased bank storage or more skill slots. Not necessary to have but it makes your life a bit easier if you want to spend the money on them. The game itself regularly has events like double experience or double skill proficiency so you can always participate during those times to grind out levels and skills more quickly than normal.
As for ships, ships we can win from treasure boxes (called NC Ships) also don't have to be bought via real money. They can be bought in game from other players using the money of the game (ducats). There's a girl in my company who 100% refuses to spend a single penny of real money on the game. She's levels 65/65/53 now and has both a Modified Armored Vaisseau and a Custom Turkish Galley (both at maximum modifications) and other real money items like a General's Robe. She got them by earning money in the game and buying them from people.
I spend money on the game myself, both for the convenience and to support a free game that I put a lot of time into. I certainly don't have to. It's my choice.
Just saying, I returned briefly to the game two months ago. I did exactly one trip from Marseille (where I was) to East Africa. It took forever. Things in East Africa had remained exactly the same as I had left them a year ago, as though nothing had changed. Anyway, I had played UWO for six months, and within 20 minutes of returning I was already wondering why I had stayed so long. It was boring, grindy, repetitive and meaningless. It's fairly atmospheric, but there's nothing under the sheen but the usual grindy Asian MMO setup. My advice would be to stay away - it's a life-waster.
I think most would agree that the addictiveness and re-playability of an MMO are key points of criteria of what a good MMO is. I've been playing UWO straight (daily... several hours per day) for more than 14 months now. Life waster? Maybe - but then aren't all good MMOs that way?
If the game is boring and repetitive for you, then try doing different things. Here's a small list of different things you can do: 1) buy and sell trade goods, 2) make discoveries via adventuring, 3) become a pirate, 4) hunt pirates, 5) do dungeons, 6) do land battles, 7) do sea battles to grind your skill as a maritimer, 8) get involved in production skills, 9) do mock battles to test your pvp skills in a safe environment, 10) grind up your levels to get access to better ships.
Don't give it a pass. Give it a try. Don't listen to me or the voices who say UWO sucks. Go try it for yourself.
I think most would agree that the addictiveness and re-playability of an MMO are key points of criteria of what a good MMO is. I've been playing UWO straight (daily... several hours per day) for more than 14 months now. Life waster? Maybe - but then aren't all good MMOs that way?
If the game is boring and repetitive for you, then try doing different things. Here's a small list of different things you can do: 1) buy and sell trade goods, 2) make discoveries via adventuring, 3) become a pirate, 4) hunt pirates, 5) do dungeons, 6) do land battles, 7) do sea battles to grind your skill as a maritimer, 8) get involved in production skills, 9) do mock battles to test your pvp skills in a safe environment, 10) grind up your levels to get access to better ships.
Don't give it a pass. Give it a try. Don't listen to me or the voices who say UWO sucks. Go try it for yourself.
I hope the learning curve is easy.
Change your thoughts and you change your world. -
Norman Vincent Peale
What makes for a soft learning curve is making a game very similar to a bunch of others that you've already played. That way, knowing how the other games work means you're already 90% of the way to knowing how the "new" game works. And 90% of the way to being sick of it.
That's basically the opposite of what UWO does. Koei disregards common MMORPG conventions to do things their own way. Be sure to ask for help if you need it, as otherwise, you'll spend many hours banging your head against a wall trying to figure out how something works.
Yes there is such a thing like a waste of time: every moment I can't play UWO for some strange reasons.
Seriously, my first 3 days where horrible and accompanied by thoughts like "what the hell am I you doing here" and then on day 4 I suddenly was hooked. Badly.
I can't remember one single game that I disliked so much in the beginning (story line represented by manga pics, go figure! Or 12(!) clicks to enter the game. I could go on bashing that game but...) and that turned out to be so adictive!
A lot of the points have already been covered, so I'll just chime in here and say that UWO is the first MMORPG I've played since Star Wars Galaxies was released (or AC1 before that) where I lasted for more than about 1.5 months. I'm at 6 months in UWO now. But granted, probably nearing the end. Still, I guess that statistic is basically saying that UWO is the best MMORPG - according to my tastes- that I've played in the last ten years. And though I'm not really comfortable praising the game that highly, that does seem to be one possible conclusion.
I will elaborate on a comment one poster made - "...it took me forever to sail from Marseilles to East Africa". Okay, in my fastest ship "forever" would be about 30 minutes. And I actually find long voyages somewhat relaxing at times. I'll listen to music, or reduce the game to a window and web browse, or simultaneously play online poker etc. (but always while keeping an eye on the search feature for player pirates possibly being in my current zone). Some of us really do enjoy taking a break from nonstop action. But then again, others don't.
Another thing about UWO. You can't just sail willy-nilly to someplace like East Africa, and then expect to have content handed to you at every port. You have to use your brain, and go with a plan in mind. Like planning to trade specialty perfumes which are common on the East African coast. Or hit up the quest mediators in the city of Zanzibar (no NPC will tell you they are there, you have to know how to look this information up on fan websites or discover them yourself). Or plan to grind maritime skills in this area because you believe the NPC difficulty level might be appropriate for you here now. Or try to catch certain types of fish native to these waters to make a special food, etc.. UWO is not an on rails themepark. You have to learn how to chart your own course - excuse the pun - to get anything worthwhile accomplished.
Great game and pretty old school (which is a big plus in my book). Unfortunetely there has been a massive infestation of gold spammers lately and no easy way to filter them out. Putting them on ignore makes no sense, they are just too much. And switching to world chat (instead of "ALL) is also no solution since "ALL" includes some more or less important game messages (which are cluttered then by spam). The spammers even do it with "GM-colors" while netmarble apparently has no clue how to counteract which is not a good sign. At the end of the day it's probably the bane of all F2P titles with item shops...
P.S. netmarble is probably planning to offer a special item via cash shop to get rid of these spammers (*grin* hopefully nothing more than a bad joke)
Great game and pretty old school (which is a big plus in my book). Unfortunetely there has been a massive infestation of gold spammers lately and no easy way to filter them out. Putting them on ignore makes no sense, they are just too much. And switching to world chat (instead of "ALL) is also no solution since "ALL" includes some more or less important game messages (which are cluttered then by spam). The spammers even do it with "GM-colors" while netmarble apparently has no clue how to counteract which is not a good sign. At the end of the day it's probably the bane of all F2P titles with item shops...
P.S. netmarble is probably planning to offer a special item via cash shop to get rid of these spammers (*grin* hopefully nothing more than a bad joke)
The gold spammers aren't new. They're bots that use the search function in towns to find player names, and then send whispers to the players they find with the gold spam messages. Once your name is on their list, that bot will keep spamming you even after you leave town.
You can block that by turning on private status when you're in capital cities (i.e., turn it on before you enter the city, and leave it on until after you leave), so that you won't appear in their searches. That way, they won't be able to find you and put you on the list of people who are online to spam.
Originally posted by Mr_C Thanks for all the info about this game; will stay the hell away from this garbage now
If that's the gist you've taken away from all these posts, then you must be a themepark type player (or maybe you like FPS). If you want a free game maybe you should try something like Lord of the Rings Online or Star Wars TOR.
I will elaborate on a comment one poster made - "...it took me forever to sail from Marseilles to East Africa". Okay, in my fastest ship "forever" would be about 30 minutes. And I actually find long voyages somewhat relaxing at times. I'll listen to music, or reduce the game to a window and web browse, or simultaneously play online poker etc. (but always while keeping an eye on the search feature for player pirates possibly being in my current zone). Some of us really do enjoy taking a break from nonstop action. But then again, others don't.
Another thing about UWO. You can't just sail willy-nilly to someplace like East Africa, and then expect to have content handed to you at every port. You have to use your brain, and go with a plan in mind. Like planning to trade specialty perfumes which are common on the East African coast. Or hit up the quest mediators in the city of Zanzibar (no NPC will tell you they are there, you have to know how to look this information up on fan websites or discover them yourself). Or plan to grind maritime skills in this area because you believe the NPC difficulty level might be appropriate for you here now. Or try to catch certain types of fish native to these waters to make a special food, etc.. UWO is not an on rails themepark. You have to learn how to chart your own course - excuse the pun - to get anything worthwhile accomplished.
I know, I've played the game for something like six months from November 2010 to May of last year. I did a lot of trading, and I used to go to Eastern Africa every few days. I noticed that when I last logged in, most of Southeast Africa was French; this was the policy which our company was the first to undertake, while the rest of the French were all about trying to keep Genoa, something we knew was futile in those days (which may no longer be true as of writing). And what experience told me is that none of this mattered in the least; this is a game that gives you an illusion of depth, but would rather have you do the same repetitive actions over and over again. Also not helping was Netmarble screwing up with the cash shop, especially when it added bonds that made game-earned investments pointless. (If you want more details, you're free to look up my "Modest Review" posted here.) UWO was a great atmospheric game, but the design was lacking -- just another Asian grinder.
Vetarnias got it right, it is just another good game gone bad by horrible developers. Its grindy, cash shop compares with star trek online.
By all means play a couplle months if you enjoy the game but you will see when you reach max lvl that you NEED those cash shop items. (trade gets old and only fun thing to do is being pirate).
I uninstalled myself and never coming back after the gpotato takeover. More cash shop ships, super duper items etc etc..
It really loses its charm and the illusion of being a sandboxy game after a while....
Vetarnias got it right, it is just another good game gone bad by horrible developers. Its grindy, cash shop compares with star trek online.
By all means play a couplle months if you enjoy the game but you will see when you reach max lvl that you NEED those cash shop items. (trade gets old and only fun thing to do is being pirate).
No, the business model isn't comparable to STO at all. STO is a subscription game with a fairly generous free trial. UWO is free to play with an item mall--and no subscription option.
Which max level did you reach, again? Because I'm guessing that you didn't do much adventuring. Relatively few hit the cap of 65 in adventuring before El Oriente, and I don't think anyone has hit the new cap of 70 yet.
Vetarnias got it right, it is just another good game gone bad by horrible developers. Its grindy, cash shop compares with star trek online.
By all means play a couplle months if you enjoy the game but you will see when you reach max lvl that you NEED those cash shop items. (trade gets old and only fun thing to do is being pirate).
I uninstalled myself and never coming back after the gpotato takeover. More cash shop ships, super duper items etc etc..
It really loses its charm and the illusion of being a sandboxy game after a while....
There is nothing in the cashshop that you need to reach the highest levels in UWO or to be a great pirate. The highest notoriety pirate on the server plays for free. Yes you can buy ships that are slightly better than player made ships by using the cash shop, but you can also buy those ships with the in-game currency.
UWO is far from perfect, but there is nothing in game that you must spend cash on to be competitive and win. The biggest benefit the cash shop ships give you is they allow you to sail higher level ships with lower level requirements.
People really should look at the cash shops in these games before they invest any time in it. If it's selling items that give direct advantages to people who spend money....that should be your que to leave and never look back.
UWO is far from perfect, but there is nothing in game that you must spend cash on to be competitive and win. The biggest benefit the cash shop ships give you is they allow you to sail higher level ships with lower level requirements.
UWO is far from perfect, but there is nothing in game that you must spend cash on to be competitive and win. The biggest benefit the cash shop ships give you is they allow you to sail higher level ships with lower level requirements.
and back in the day it wasnt 30% , it wass like 50%, they also had the teleport to port scrolls, good times...
Pay to win a particular event that most of the playerbase ignores.
They actually still have routine races from this port to that, and most of the playerbase still ignores them. Having the races is harmless, really, as they're easily ignored.
Originally posted by DamonVile People really should look at the cash shops in these games before they invest any time in it. If it's selling items that give direct advantages to people who spend money....that should be your que to leave and never look back.
It depends on what the advantages are. If someone can kill you at will because he bought a super sword from the item mall, then yeah, that's a problem. If someone gets double experience points because he bought something from the item mall, so what? Is that any worse than someone leveling faster because he hired a powerleveling company to play the game for him, which can be done even if there is no item mall at all? Though the latter can often be a sign that a game is too grindy if you don't buy the item mall leveling boosts.
Comments
I've played for most of a year and have spent $10 on the game in that time. That $10 did provide a big advantage over spending $0, as it meant I could get special shipbuilding permits. But the advantage of spending $10 (total, not per month) rather than $0 is greater than the advantage of spending $100 rather than $10 would have been.
If you want to be a pirate, then it is pretty much pay to win. But otherwise, no. Think of the old SNES game. If you increased your attack power or ship speed there by 20%, so what? That is game-breaking in most MMORPGs, but here, it's practically a rounding error unless you're a pirate.
And it's hardly like I barely played the game. Right now, I'm at something like 65/47/29, and waiting for a level cap increase because my adventuring level is at the cap. I somewhat expect the next patch to raise the cap to 70. And then I'll spend another $10 on more special shipbuliding permits.
But seriously, you just negafied the game... you caused a lot of upcoming new players to stop thinking of downloading this game -____-
It said P2W so most average gamers will just turn around disinterested of the game
UWO is not "Pay to Win", it's more like "Pay for Convenience". You can level a bit faster by buying experience boosts, for example. Also things like increased bank storage or more skill slots. Not necessary to have but it makes your life a bit easier if you want to spend the money on them. The game itself regularly has events like double experience or double skill proficiency so you can always participate during those times to grind out levels and skills more quickly than normal.
As for ships, ships we can win from treasure boxes (called NC Ships) also don't have to be bought via real money. They can be bought in game from other players using the money of the game (ducats). There's a girl in my company who 100% refuses to spend a single penny of real money on the game. She's levels 65/65/53 now and has both a Modified Armored Vaisseau and a Custom Turkish Galley (both at maximum modifications) and other real money items like a General's Robe. She got them by earning money in the game and buying them from people.
I spend money on the game myself, both for the convenience and to support a free game that I put a lot of time into. I certainly don't have to. It's my choice.
I think most would agree that the addictiveness and re-playability of an MMO are key points of criteria of what a good MMO is. I've been playing UWO straight (daily... several hours per day) for more than 14 months now. Life waster? Maybe - but then aren't all good MMOs that way?
If the game is boring and repetitive for you, then try doing different things. Here's a small list of different things you can do: 1) buy and sell trade goods, 2) make discoveries via adventuring, 3) become a pirate, 4) hunt pirates, 5) do dungeons, 6) do land battles, 7) do sea battles to grind your skill as a maritimer, 8) get involved in production skills, 9) do mock battles to test your pvp skills in a safe environment, 10) grind up your levels to get access to better ships.
Don't give it a pass. Give it a try. Don't listen to me or the voices who say UWO sucks. Go try it for yourself.
I hope the learning curve is easy.
What makes for a soft learning curve is making a game very similar to a bunch of others that you've already played. That way, knowing how the other games work means you're already 90% of the way to knowing how the "new" game works. And 90% of the way to being sick of it.
That's basically the opposite of what UWO does. Koei disregards common MMORPG conventions to do things their own way. Be sure to ask for help if you need it, as otherwise, you'll spend many hours banging your head against a wall trying to figure out how something works.
Yes there is such a thing like a waste of time: every moment I can't play UWO for some strange reasons.
Seriously, my first 3 days where horrible and accompanied by thoughts like "what the hell am I you doing here" and then on day 4 I suddenly was hooked. Badly.
I can't remember one single game that I disliked so much in the beginning (story line represented by manga pics, go figure! Or 12(!) clicks to enter the game. I could go on bashing that game but...) and that turned out to be so adictive!
A lot of the points have already been covered, so I'll just chime in here and say that UWO is the first MMORPG I've played since Star Wars Galaxies was released (or AC1 before that) where I lasted for more than about 1.5 months. I'm at 6 months in UWO now. But granted, probably nearing the end. Still, I guess that statistic is basically saying that UWO is the best MMORPG - according to my tastes- that I've played in the last ten years. And though I'm not really comfortable praising the game that highly, that does seem to be one possible conclusion.
I will elaborate on a comment one poster made - "...it took me forever to sail from Marseilles to East Africa". Okay, in my fastest ship "forever" would be about 30 minutes. And I actually find long voyages somewhat relaxing at times. I'll listen to music, or reduce the game to a window and web browse, or simultaneously play online poker etc. (but always while keeping an eye on the search feature for player pirates possibly being in my current zone). Some of us really do enjoy taking a break from nonstop action. But then again, others don't.
Another thing about UWO. You can't just sail willy-nilly to someplace like East Africa, and then expect to have content handed to you at every port. You have to use your brain, and go with a plan in mind. Like planning to trade specialty perfumes which are common on the East African coast. Or hit up the quest mediators in the city of Zanzibar (no NPC will tell you they are there, you have to know how to look this information up on fan websites or discover them yourself). Or plan to grind maritime skills in this area because you believe the NPC difficulty level might be appropriate for you here now. Or try to catch certain types of fish native to these waters to make a special food, etc.. UWO is not an on rails themepark. You have to learn how to chart your own course - excuse the pun - to get anything worthwhile accomplished.
Great game and pretty old school (which is a big plus in my book). Unfortunetely there has been a massive infestation of gold spammers lately and no easy way to filter them out. Putting them on ignore makes no sense, they are just too much. And switching to world chat (instead of "ALL) is also no solution since "ALL" includes some more or less important game messages (which are cluttered then by spam). The spammers even do it with "GM-colors" while netmarble apparently has no clue how to counteract which is not a good sign. At the end of the day it's probably the bane of all F2P titles with item shops...
P.S. netmarble is probably planning to offer a special item via cash shop to get rid of these spammers (*grin* hopefully nothing more than a bad joke)
Hope you haven't got me wrong, this "garbadge" is by far the best game I've played over the last years. And yes, even despite the gold spammers...
The gold spammers aren't new. They're bots that use the search function in towns to find player names, and then send whispers to the players they find with the gold spam messages. Once your name is on their list, that bot will keep spamming you even after you leave town.
You can block that by turning on private status when you're in capital cities (i.e., turn it on before you enter the city, and leave it on until after you leave), so that you won't appear in their searches. That way, they won't be able to find you and put you on the list of people who are online to spam.
If that's the gist you've taken away from all these posts, then you must be a themepark type player (or maybe you like FPS). If you want a free game maybe you should try something like Lord of the Rings Online or Star Wars TOR.
I know, I've played the game for something like six months from November 2010 to May of last year. I did a lot of trading, and I used to go to Eastern Africa every few days. I noticed that when I last logged in, most of Southeast Africa was French; this was the policy which our company was the first to undertake, while the rest of the French were all about trying to keep Genoa, something we knew was futile in those days (which may no longer be true as of writing). And what experience told me is that none of this mattered in the least; this is a game that gives you an illusion of depth, but would rather have you do the same repetitive actions over and over again. Also not helping was Netmarble screwing up with the cash shop, especially when it added bonds that made game-earned investments pointless. (If you want more details, you're free to look up my "Modest Review" posted here.) UWO was a great atmospheric game, but the design was lacking -- just another Asian grinder.^.
Vetarnias got it right, it is just another good game gone bad by horrible developers. Its grindy, cash shop compares with star trek online.
By all means play a couplle months if you enjoy the game but you will see when you reach max lvl that you NEED those cash shop items. (trade gets old and only fun thing to do is being pirate).
I uninstalled myself and never coming back after the gpotato takeover. More cash shop ships, super duper items etc etc..
It really loses its charm and the illusion of being a sandboxy game after a while....
No, the business model isn't comparable to STO at all. STO is a subscription game with a fairly generous free trial. UWO is free to play with an item mall--and no subscription option.
Which max level did you reach, again? Because I'm guessing that you didn't do much adventuring. Relatively few hit the cap of 65 in adventuring before El Oriente, and I don't think anyone has hit the new cap of 70 yet.
There is nothing in the cashshop that you need to reach the highest levels in UWO or to be a great pirate. The highest notoriety pirate on the server plays for free. Yes you can buy ships that are slightly better than player made ships by using the cash shop, but you can also buy those ships with the in-game currency.
UWO is far from perfect, but there is nothing in game that you must spend cash on to be competitive and win. The biggest benefit the cash shop ships give you is they allow you to sail higher level ships with lower level requirements.
an old event from when I left the game:
http://www.ign.com/articles/2011/04/08/hoist-the-mainsail-uncharted-waters-online-launches-world-race-challenge
pay to win:
http://uwo.netmarble.com/item/itemDetail.asp?idx=15&sKey1=4&sKey2=1&sKey3=&sKey4=
and back in the day it wasnt 30% , it wass like 50%, they also had the teleport to port scrolls, good times...
Pay to win a particular event that most of the playerbase ignores.
They actually still have routine races from this port to that, and most of the playerbase still ignores them. Having the races is harmless, really, as they're easily ignored.
It depends on what the advantages are. If someone can kill you at will because he bought a super sword from the item mall, then yeah, that's a problem. If someone gets double experience points because he bought something from the item mall, so what? Is that any worse than someone leveling faster because he hired a powerleveling company to play the game for him, which can be done even if there is no item mall at all? Though the latter can often be a sign that a game is too grindy if you don't buy the item mall leveling boosts.
Sigh... why did I even protect this game before? -__-"
And uhuh P2W game wooo...