Uncharted Waters Online: A Modest Review

Comments

• Vetarnias Member UncommonPosts: 630

  April 2011

  (Part II, continued)

  This desire to break away from the Mediterranean and offer French traders more options had been, from the early months of the game, what differentiated our company from the others, who rarely considered the outside of the Mediterranean, with the exception of our territorial towns. It was only later that I learned of diverging views even among the latter investors; the top French grinder at the time, hm11, reportedly wanted to concentrate on Genoa and Tunis, while the other French decided to spread as far as possible, regardless of their long-term capability of even retaining those towns, all in the name of the French Cause.

  
  
  But I soon learned that there was no French Cause, just a myriad of selfish considerations by top players who wanted to optimize their art-trade short routes, not to mention a desire to crush Venice once and for all. Starting around (I would say) late December, it all started to fall apart. At least one high-profile player publicly stated he was quitting the game over the publisher's inability, or unwillingness, to deal with multi-account cheaters; others, more often, just gradually faded away. I saw this even within the confines of our company: players who were active one day suddenly stopped logging in, without leaving so much as a goodbye note. Boredom, perhaps, which never compels the player to return to the game. I do not know whether other nations were similarly affected, but the lack of French players exacerbated matters in our case. The return of old inactive players I was anticipating after the introduction of the "Aztec" (South American) expansion on January 11 never materialized; if anything, a few days later, one of our most active members, dissatisfied at the dismal progress made by the French to unlock the South American permit, logged off and was never seen again.

  
  
  Then, a few weeks later, the French empire collapsed.

  
  
  Whether anyone heeded the warning signs, let alone considered acting accordingly (if they could have done so), is anyone's guess. From the beginning of the year, the situation became alarming: far more Venetian than French characters could be seen in the Mediterranean; it had been suggested that it would be natural for Spain to extend east, instead of confining itself to the Caribbean and African gold-producing cities; and, despite the distance, Venice had unlocked its South American permit by the end of January, which France only managed to do on February 16.

  
  
  Then there were the actions of a French player whom I will call Monsieur, who led one of the major companies of France that I will call the Coalition. It eventually transpired in the postmortem that Monsieur had gone to the Venetians and imprudently ventured that in addition to all of the Western Mediterranean, "the French will take all ports Venice tries to claim in the Eastern Mediterranean". In many ways, he reminded me of a chess so player so entranced by his own meticulously planned strategy that he forgets to take notice that his opponent is playing, too.

  
  
  Sadly, underdog fixed sides in MMORPG's never fail to attract a Monsieur type: the kind of player who, through massive amounts of spare time and self-satisfied mastery of one crucial but narrow aspect of the game, will cultivate the ambition of directing the destiny of his entire nation. In this case, Monsieur was the quintessential investor, perhaps the third on the French side after hm11 and another investor who quit the game in December. Whatever goods gave the most profit, he would specialize in; whatever gear would offer "the most plusses", he would wear. He began his irresistible ascendency by breaking off from the main French company of the day, now a shadow of its former self, and shouting recruitment messages in Marseilles. A short time later, he started salivating after the Game Assistant position as soon as it became known that the player currently serving as French GA was inactive.

  
  
  But as with all such players, Monsieur mistook his technical knowledge for a natural ability for leadership; whereas he should have been invited to play a key advisory role in the national direction, he naturally assumed that power was plutocratic, and that wherever his money went, the designs of France had to follow. As it happened, his modest goal was to turn the entire Mediterranean French, to the benefit of national short-route traders such as himself.

  
  
  That short trade routes might burn out players did not matter; he knew what was best, even after the French collapse. When that happened, I could not resist pointing out what led to the situation: the short-route grinder mentality, scientific gaming, the French deliberately turning their backs on exploration and long-distance trading outside of the Mediterranean, and, above all, the desire of its top investors to extend far beyond what the nation could retain. Instead of concentrating on key towns and making them impregnable, the French had seen fit to take this, this and that too, losing it all in the end. Needless to say, Monsieur did not appreciate my views on the matter.

  
  
  First, as my forum name was different from my character name, he mistook me for someone else, and went through a litany of that other player's offenses, such as being expelled from another company (which I could not have been, as I had never been a member). Then I told him my character's identity -- the founder and ex-leader of one of the five largest companies in France.

  
  
  His response? "All i need to know... is that you admit not helping at all with french invests and still feel the need to complain, your a worthless french player and am happy to see you passed on the leadership role of [my company], i have alot of freinds in that company and all of them are great guys! now maybe without your leading them in the wrong direction it will do well!" Then, 45 minutes after typing that he "had enough of this thread ", he returned to add: "I now fully understand why some [my company] members have joined my company recently". (I estimate the number at two over a period of two months, and I later had a report of his actively trying to poach one of our members, who turned him down.)

  
  
  The next day, Netmarble, oblivious to all the considerations that might have arisen from this exchange, appointed Monsieur the new Game Assistant for France.

  
  
  Shortly after I relinquished the leadership of my company, the other officers held a meeting in my absence, where they decided to continue our African policy; it's one of those moments that make you proud as a guild leader, when you can feel that the rest of the leadership stands by you even when they are perfectly free to distance themselves from anything you have ever attempted to accomplish. Still, I want to return to the question of "not helping at all with French invests". Besides the fact that this is an exaggeration (I did help, but not with hundreds of millions that would have guaranteed me a spot on the top investors' list, where the extent of my contribution could have been noticed), the reasons for not throwing all my money into this effort are manifold.

  
  
  First, much of the French expansion took place without our being consulted. The first time our company was approached by the rest of the French, the subject at hand was not even to retain the Genoa-Pisa-Calvi triangle, but to fend off a Venetian counter-investment at Naples, a city where nearly nobody in our company traded regularly. It was not even a debate over whether we should retain Naples, let alone whether we could do so in the long run, but merely that we had to. Likewise, when France took Tunis, it came as a complete surprise to our company, as we had never been approached to take part; at that exact same time, we were taking over Mozambique, where we were expecting no support.

  
  
  Second, it had become clear that the French had over-extended themselves. When the rest of the French took Beirut, again without our knowledge, I knew it was only a matter of time before we lost it; indeed, it was the last port France took before the debacle. What France should have done is dump everything it earned into Genoa, but clearly one town was not good enough. But then why should we put our entire earnings, pennies in comparison to what the heavy grinders made, in ports whose development was abandoned beyond the strictly utilitarian -- for instance at a level where new trade goods tied to the development of the town were unlocked -- even by those who not only traded there far more often than we did but who had invested millions of ducats? In the end, as a result of too much greed and too little restraint, all those investments were wasted, and the way one Venetian put it was "thank you for developing our towns"; why, thank you indeed.

  
  
  The third point is one the likes of Monsieur are unlikely to ever understand, because the measurement of its impact cannot be arrived at with a calculator: morale. This is Monsieur going through the consequences of the French collapse: "Having invested well over 2 billion for france and quickly taking over the #1 invester for my country i can honestly say nothing much has changed with the ports being flipped, i still have my %s for haggles and making millions/hour from the same ports! I guarantee all city taken from france will become french city again, it not only makes my game play more exciting im having a great time doing what i always do! Ports being taken only means 1 thing!! more development for my favorite trade citys, which is good for everyone!" His haggles, his money, his policy, his glory; but, beyond the figures, there are intangible reasons for putting little French flags next to town names. A newbie starting to play in a game where no conquerable town is under French control will soon come to the conclusion that France is not an underdog, but a moribund nation not worth choosing; worse still if he starts comparing the number of companies in Marseilles with the number in Seville.

  
  
  
  
  Top: Seville; bottom: Marseilles

  
  
  That is, you might say, the underdog's lot; but despite flocking to underdogs for the ease with which they cover one's personal ambition with the mantle of national urgency necessary to command obedience, the Monsieurs are usually incapable of grasping their mystique. Underdogs rarely achieve prominence, hence it was un-natural for France as an underdog to hold a dozen ports; in the context of this game, an underdog will place all its money in a few towns and hold them against all comers. It plays defensively; it makes its moves not to win, but to not lose. An expansionistic Monsieur who refuses to come to terms with this sad geopolitical reality yet who ascends the echelons of power in his nation is nothing short of a disaster for all sharing the misfortune of his presence.

  
  
  That is not to say that an underdog should not take risks; but an underdog following a policy strictly based on numbers, triple-validated by spreadsheet, will sooner or later face the reality that the only numbers that matter are those in which it is inherently deficient as an underdog: player populations. The real pleasure of playing an underdog comes not from winning, but from surviving, and a realist would know the game was up from the start anyway -- only a matter of time before the fall, like playing hopscotch over your opponents' hotels on a late-game Monopoly board. But unlike Monopoly, where delaying the inevitable has neither appeal nor purpose, the trick is to make it last.

  
  
  Make it last, but how? That's where Monsieur would undoubtedly drag out his calculator, and figure out that if we held this percentage in that town, we might get a second haggle and maybe, maybe. Or maybe not. In either case, that is a boring way to play, and demonstrates a complete inability to think outside the box, a necessity when the box is not and will never be under your control. But to argue against numbers, and in favour of a bold, unpredictable strategy that is not immediately apparent, in a game such as Uncharted Waters Online is nigh impossible to do, as everything has already been calculated, planned, implemented to compel players, through appeals to reason, into following one mapped-out strategy over another; and, on paper, France, with its initial territories split in two, with the second half unattainable until the proper sailing permit was obtained, with its gastronomic approach to trade, was already conceived as an underdog, without even considering the international reputation of the country (which had so much of an impact in Pirates of the Burning Sea). Pitted against the central location of the Spanish or the compact geography of the Dutch, France had nothing to offer to the player who sought optimization at all costs; to attempt to optimize that which was conceived with the opposite result in mind was, in other words, a fool's errand.

  
  
  Needless to say, Monsieur, despite his bluster, has yet to retake any of the towns that France has lost. Over the weeks that followed, all I heard were faint rumours that his company was going to attempt to retake Genoa, and some wild scheme about a lightning takeover of Calicut, the main city in India, then as now under heavy Portuguese control. The latest piece of intelligence I obtained from the Coalition was that he had apparently set his eyes on obtaining a twenty-percent French influence in Genoa; but this betrayed both his fondness for spreadsheets as well as his lack of political sense: both Venice and Spain were vying for control of the town, with any French progress likely to be obliterated by the next Spanish attack and the inevitable Venetian counter-attack. For the sake of an additional haggle, and practically nothing to gain in the way of morale, he was prepared to waste hundreds of millions of ducats on a lost cause. Well, you could say that France itself is a lost cause -- a Chinese forum said we were "feeling the number of small" and "eating by the Great God, people can ignore" -- but twenty percent of Genoa is as lackluster a pursuit as one can come up with when the only way to go is down.

  
  
  Recently, I remarked to my successor as company leader: "You know what's the problem with us? We're just a bunch of old romantics." And in the same vein, he said: "I don't know about you, but I'd rather be a part of a company trying to take something -- anything -- than one where the leader is trying to get me to throw my money in a lost cause at Genoa". But that was the minority view, thanks in part to a game design that gave no true advantage to owning far-flung colonies -- to "have little pieces of France the world over", as my successor put it. In the real world, major powers would have sought even the most insignificant wind-swept rock for the possibility of erecting a naval base on it; but in this game, the sole purpose of owning a port is to benefit from better trading terms -- even, presumably, in a time of war. Hence we were the only ones in France pushing outside the Mediterranean in the superficial world of Uncharted Waters Online. This effort, as you can infer from above, was duly ignored, except to blame us for being selfish slackers in the pursuit of the national objective.

   

  Ironically, those three African towns -- towns with no obvious merit until looked at more closely -- are now all that remains of the French empire, but even when expelled from the Mediterranean and discovering that the rest of the world even existed, most of the French continued to ignore them; instead, they moved their trading activities directly to India, the new Land of the Most Plusses.

  
  
   
  
  The Multiboxer Rebellion

  
  
  What is in India, you ask, that makes it so popular? Gems, pepper, and a lucrative local trade for those with the sewing skill. Naturally, France is not competitive anywhere in that region, which is split in half between Portugal and the Netherlands, but French players have a good reason to be there these days: to attempt to unlock the national permit for South East Asia, which was introduced with the "Angkor" expansion on March 9th.

  
  
  Just as France finished last in its quest to obtain the South America permit, it is likely to be bringing up the proverbial rear once more (I know for certain that every other nation but Venice has obtained it); but what is France likely to find there, when both the Dutch and the Portuguese obtained the permit just a week after the expansion? In fact, thanks to a Dutch player who posted a map of the world around March 18th, we know. What is also known, or at least suspected, is that some of the investments done in the East Asian towns were made with bought ducats.

  
  
  So a Dutch player contacted those good old gold sellers to buy himself an advantage, eh? Actually, no; the money came from Netmarble's cash shop. In my initial review, I wrote, in reference to the Netmarble shop: "There is nothing abusive about it, and the items don't particularly tip the scales in favour of buyers." I now utterly and completely repudiate this statement. The company, in its infinite wisdom, saw fit to add to its cash shop two items called "Special Investment Bonds" and "Special Jumbo Investment Bonds", fancy names that obscure the fact that you are, in effect, buying five or twenty million ducats, respectively, to be used in investments. So a Dutch player calling herself (?) RobynSnow apparently (without the South East Asia permit, I cannot corroborate this myself) bought a few billion ducats' worth of bonds and started spraying them around Indonesia.

  
  
  What is in Indonesia that warrants such expenditures? Mace and nutmeg, the new spices with the most plusses, which have now started replacing pepper in the bazaars of gold sellers. Yes, these gold sellers, who offer spices and gems at rates far above what NPC markets buy them for, but which players buy anyway for the trade experience, are still there. So are fleets of multiboxers taking advantage of grouping to maximize profits. And so are players accessing the game from areas explicitly banned by Netmarble's terms of service, namely, China, Korea, Taiwan and Japan. All of this points to a game quickly deteriorating, to the extent that even a few player Game Assistants, the sole line of contact between Netmarble's game manager (yes, just one was ever seen), and the rest of the players, are displaying clear signs of impatience.

  
  
  Netmarble's latest cash shop additions betray, as with the investment bonds, a complete lack of understanding of the western mindset when it comes to cash shops, according to which it is crudely exploitative to directly offer money in the shop, as well as items which confer a direct benefit on the buyer, but now include parts of the game which players took for granted. I mentioned in my initial review how players were regularly consulting the Japanese wiki for every minute detail of gameplay. As a result, they tended to assume that everything included in the wiki would find its way into the game free of charge; not so anymore. I have not yet mentioned aides, so a brief word on them: they are NPC characters the player can hire, for a fee of 100,000 ducats, who give a bonus to certain skills, and who can even sail their own ship when reaching a total number of levels of 90. Not all aides, especially the best ones, were in the game at the start, as a few were added by Koei with expansions, and players, seeing the names of these aides on the Japanese wiki, assumed it was only a matter of time before they could hire them. Now they can -- for a modest fee of 15,995 NC (Netmarble Cash) points, at the exchange rate of approximately one dollar per thousand points. Note that it is a limited-time offer, which might indicate that they will be included for all at a later date, and that you are encouraged to buy them just to get "an edge"; but nobody quite knows yet.

  
  
  "Nobody quite knows." This could sum up my entire feelings about Netmarble. What are they doing about multiboxers, screenshots of which are posted on the official forums week after week? Nobody quite knows. What are their plans for curbing the influx of players from the defunct Chinese server, who are not supposed to play on the western server according to Netmarble's licensing agreement with Tecmo-Koei? Nobody quite knows. What are their long-term plans for the game? Nobody quite knows. What other content are they planning to monetize? Nobody quite knows. Will that level-13 recipe that disappeared from my brewery book suddenly reappear next to a price tag? Nobody quite knows. How long can this game last without collapsing on itself? Nobody quite knows, but we can hazard a guess; for my part, I give it three months.

  
  
  After all, what is the point of playing a trader when nothing is done to eliminate multi-account users who will necessarily earn more than you ever will? What is the point of grinding to invest when anyone can now hit the Netmarble shop for the National Cause? And what fun is there in playing for an underdog nation that has lost all sense of ambition, and has pretty much admitted defeat, and whose players never approved of your course of action? Why bother going through the drudgery of repetitive quests to obtain the South East Asia permit if your nation will never secure a port there, even if it tried? (That reminds me of a Dutch player who tried to claim that it was purely as a result of "historical accuracy" if his country controlled Indonesia in the game. Perhaps, but I then asked him whether the Dutch would be prepared, in the name of historical accuracy, to return the Indian town of Pondicherry to France; I have yet to hear back from him.)

  
  
  If this game requires a proverbial canary in the mine, however, it cannot be France, which has withered in silence after the February collapse; it will have to be the far more populous nation of England, which currently holds no town south of the British Isles, with the exception of Rio de Janeiro, and has its hands full with the Dutch in Northern Europe. In Africa, the key port of Cape Town still oscillates between the English and the Dutch, but it will undoubtedly share the fate of Sierra Leone, which was controlled by the English, with the French in second place. When the town reached a development level close to unlocking diamonds as trade goods, a Dutch player dumped 400 million in the port and transferred its allegiance to the Netherlands. Adding insult to injury is the knowledge that Chinese players -- who, as mentioned above, are prohibited from playing on the western server -- had a marked predilection for choosing Spain and the Netherlands, although if you took them at their word, they would probably claim to control every nation: "Netherlands --- ethnic Chinese, a few Americans, Southeast Asians, the rest hodgepodge trace --- UK, the number of people are about Han, Chinese, Europeans, Japanese, Koreans, Americans, Russians, and even Indians part of Spain --- Chinese, Korean part of the American part of the Hispanic part of the rest of a large number of Koreans trace --- Portugal, a small but high profile Chinese, a few Europeans, the rest part of the trace --- France Koreans, part of the Americans, a few Chinese, a few Europeans, the rest of Venice --- almost no trace of Chinese and Japanese, some Korean, some Americans, some Europeans, the rest did not open trace --- Osman ". Apparently the intended market -- westerners -- is in the minority.

  
  
  Beyond, this, what we are witnessing is, in effect, the rapid decline of a game that showed so much potential but which is regularly being squandered by Netmarble's absentee approach to management and its dubious monetization method. In the meantime, increasingly disillusioned Game Assistants get accused of conflicts of interest on a regular basis, one has resigned already and a second has also suggested she would. You can only ask so much of volunteers; when they are gone, what will happen? There is mounting evidence that Netmarble does not read its own forums, and it never bothered to explain, for example, why it only took two months between the Aztec and the Angkor expansion, as opposed to twice as much on the Japanese server. New features are rushed in and immediately abused by people who seemed to have had months of practice on how to exploit them.

  
  
  Unless Netmarble proves capable, let alone willing, to tackle these issues, and to modify its approach to real-money transactions, I would avoid this game. This is unfortunate, as Uncharted Waters Online is quite a good game, and I almost wish Tecmo-Koei would take a close look at what is being done to their title. It deserves better, but until that is changed, this game will always end up as less than the sum of its parts.
  
   
  
  +++++++++++++++++
  
  PART III (April 17th; expanded April 25th)
  
   
  
  Losing my (Net)marbles
  
   
  
  Yes, I still play the Uncharted Waters Online, probably out of some perverse desire to chronicle its decline, but this will probably be my last addition to this review, unless something important happens before I muster all my willpower and actually quit the game. It has only been slightly more than two weeks since I posted Part II, but what a momentous fortnight this has been.
  
   
  
  On a personal level, I buried, after six months, the FlammeNoire, the company I had founded, as it merged with La Royale, the oldest French company and one of the few competitive ones not led by Monsieur, the French Game Assistant of whom I wrote in the last part.
  
   
  
  On a national level, France finally obtained the Southeast Asia permit around the 5th of April, the last nation to do so. It goes without saying that the French do not hold a single town there; neither have they made any addition to their meager empire anywhere else on the map.
  
   
  
  On a gameplay level, the Game Assistant system appears to be on its last legs, while multiboxers are still rampant, and players with names in Chinese characters are still encountered on a regular basis. (Addition, April 25: The Game Assistant system has now been officially discontinued by Netmarble.)
  
   
  
  Meanwhile, I have seen one player, on the day I joined the new company, log in, say he found the game boring to the extent that he would delete his character. At least two others just stopped logging in and haven't been heard of in more than two weeks. A third still hangs around, after telling us she would severely reduce her presence in this game. Could Uncharted Waters Online be as my friend called it -- a yawnfest? Am I indeed, as one commenter has suggested, a masochist for staying around? Or am I just addicted? Is my real intent, with this review, to convince myself to stop playing? Hell if I know.
  
   
  
  Circumnavigating the Drain
  
   
  
  The game is at its best when it can convince you that there is something ahead that is worth exploring; hence I spent two fun days going around Southeast Asia, completing the circumnavigation story line in the process, where you endeavour to restore Magellan's name to the history books, as his fame had been eclipsed by Juan Sebastian Elcano, the man who completed the voyage.
  
   
  
  During my tour of the region, I took copious notes on town investments. At the time of Part II, I had to rely on a map a Dutch player had posted, on which every town had been allied to the Netherlands. Normal enough, as, at the time that map was compiled, just a week after the Angkor expansion was introduced, only the Dutch and the Portuguese were known to have obtained the permit. A month later, the Dutch still hold a large number of these towns, but the Portuguese and Spanish obtained key towns, while the English went after parts of Oceania; even Venice secured a foothold by taking Surabaya. From looking at investment figures, however, one is soon overwhelmed by a sense of futility.
  
   
  
  Nowhere can it be felt more than at Jakarta, the regional hub, where one can witness what can be most aptly called the Battle of the Billions, mostly between two players, one Dutch and one Portuguese, who have invested in excess of one billion each in an attempt to be top dog. What are the trade goods in Jakarta? Fish, wetland rice, ducks and oil. That's all; no spices, no special products (unless one plucks feathers), not even the redeeming presence of a precious metal. If one were investing for commerce, one would do it in one of the spice islands: Ambon, Run, Ternate or Makassar. Then why Jakarta?
  
   
  
  I have heard it said that whichever nation controlled the port obtained the best adventuring quests, i.e. those that gave items which sold at the highest prices. Yes, even the adventuring field has been corrupted by Mammon. Please note that this is just a rumour, as I am mostly a neophyte when it comes to adventure; but I see little reason to invest heavy amounts of money in a town with third-rate trade goods.
  
   
  
  Interestingly, the billionaire investor on the Dutch side is RobynSnow, mentioned in Part II as the player who purchased a great number of Southeast Asian towns for the Netherlands. Having conducted a thorough investigation of the matter, I now file my report of her investments in the region:
  
   
  
  
  
   
  
  As you can see, her total investments are in excess of six billion dollars. (Update, April 25: These numbers, obviously, are not static, and I don't quite feel like updating all of them. However, during a recent visit to Southeast Asia, I noticed that RobynSnow's investments in Run and Ambon had increased to 1,326,944,000 and 542,005,000, respectively.) (Also note the round numbers in towns such as Pattani and Dili, which strongly suggest that this money indeed comes from investment bonds.) And the Portuguese billionaire in Jakarta, although I didn't feel like keeping a tally of his investments, could give her a run for her money. How are ordinary players supposed to keep up with this? Wait, never mind ordinary players; with an attrition rate such as this game's, they probably left long ago. Rather, how is France supposed to keep up with this?
  
   
  
  The Further Adventures of Monsieur
  
   
  
  The last time I wrote of Monsieur, France's devoted Game Assistant, he was still leading the Coalition, one of the largest companies in France. Indeed, he became so successful in the meantime that he founded a sister company, which he naturally led himself from a second account. In a game rife with, and unbalanced by, multiboxers, where indeed multiboxing, much to the dismay of purists, is allowed on the condition that no more than one account be used per computer, Monsieur eschewed the moral high ground and became one of them.
  
   
  
  I came to that realization after seeing him and his alter ego in action simultaneously (hence no same-account alt), and I later discovered that Monsieur's multiple-person disorder was an open secret on the French side. Open, because everybody noticed it; secret, because nobody cared enough to repeat it -- until I did.
  
   
  
  Please note that I did not have a shred of evidence when I chose to expose him, just personal observations and what some people I trust had told me. I did not even have the opportunity to take screenshots, and any case of multiboxing -- legal or illegal -- is open to conjecture anyway. I was expecting to be accused of carrying a vendetta against him, of being jealous, even of secretly attempting to replace him as GA, a position I neither sought nor wanted, but which I was now pressing him to abandon. More importantly, I was banking on the chance that since multiboxing was allowed, he would triumphantly admit it, as another opportunity to not only put me down by demonstrating how much in the right he was, but to demonstrate how much of a struggle he was putting up for France; but not, as one might be tempted to think, out of honesty. Simply put, he had no reason to deny it.
  
   
  
  His edifying response (this is the condensed version; read it whole here): "I do have multiple characters now because netmarble is allowing it, 1 player per PC... im still against this 100% i would prefer there was no multi on this server... but the fact is Netmarble is not going to change it, and any hardcore player is going to quit or join in > Theres no way to compete without using multi characters... so its either join them or quit because the game is no longer any fun... I have many PC at home and am now making upwards 150m + per day using them".
  
   
  
  So, Netmarble won't change it, any hardcore player must embrace it to maintain his "leetness" because there is no way to compete without it, join them or quit, 150 million a day. France expects every computer to do its duty. Not helping is that in a recent survey by Netmarble (who once more demonstrated its lack of knowledge of the Western market by making the submit button appear in Korean), the company asked: "What is your thought on multis?" The choices were: "Multis should not be allowed; 2 characters per PC at the same time is okay for user convenience; More than 3 characters per PC at the same time is okay." Apparently, a "multi", to Netmarble, is a second character playing simultaneously on the same PC; a player controlling one character on five computers is not even regarded as a "multi", so if you are expecting to see that behaviour banned someday...
  
   
  
  Wait a minute -- did he say 150 million per day? Assuming this figure is truthful, he and his multiple characters earn more in a week than I have made in six months. Still assuming that this is true, Monsieur and his acolytes must be sitting on a mountain of ducats, to be showered on a predictable town following a predictable plan which will, predictably to everyone but its masterminds, fail. He is right in one respect, however: it might well be "join them or quit". Perhaps this explains, on the one hand, why I have seen so many players come and go, and, on the other, why those who remain tend to agree with him, or just accept multiboxing as "a fact of life". A fact of life which, sadly, has ruined several aspects of the game.
  
   
  
  A recent addition to the ways in which the game can be abused through the use of multis is maritime battles. (My knowledge of things maritime is spotty, so I will try to summarize the situation as best I can; if others can provide additional insights, I will incorporate them in this review.) Every month, two nations and their respective allies (seemingly chosen at random) vie for additional influence points in a certain region and in a certain town. I have no idea whether the locale and the belligerents are random, but, this month, Spain and the Netherlands are fighting each other for influence in the Red Sea, where no player country except Portugal even controls a town. Yes, superficial is the word. At any rate, after enlisting with one side or the other, you take a five-minute ship ride to the battle location, where you can create or join a room to fight other players. So, what does a maritime-inclined multiboxer do? Create a room, fill one side with all the big boys, send multi dummies to the other, lock, sink and repeat to get the rewards.
  
   
  
  The professional multiboxers also found a use for maritimers in trading as well. Following recent calls by legitimate players to attack multis on sight, the multis fought back by creating maritime characters who serve a dual purpose: keep legitimate maritimers occupied in battle by attacking them, allowing the multis to sail away; and attack their own multis, rendering them immune to attack after their "escape".
  
   
  
  I have already dwelled on the effects of multiboxing on the investment wars, so I will limit my discussion to the actions of a single player, a Spaniard named Potato, who was banned from the game for one reason or another; the word "power multi" was used, presumably meaning he used more than one account per computer. Still, he was banned after he invested half a billion in Naples alone, as well as unknown amounts in other cities. The development of those towns was not reset, nor was the Spanish influence gained from Potato's investment. The kamikaze investor, in the end, accomplished his mission; a few weeks after his banning, his name still appeared on the top investors' list of a Caribbean city, and Sassari is Spanish mostly because of him. Most worrying, however, was that some players objected to the possibility of a town development rollback even though they were perfectly aware of how those ducats were earned.
  
   
  
  The Already Charted Waters
  
   
  
  Indeed, such players, not content to just let the server run its course at a normal pace, seek to fast-track the development of towns to unlock everything from additional trade goods to better ships to every minute item which gives the most plusses. The nadir of such considerations manifested itself in a player's thread urging the development of Valencia to unlock a skill bookcase, As Seen on the Taiwan Wiki. However, Valencia is Spanish territory, and as I mentioned in Part I, only Spanish nationals can invest there. No problem, said the player: create a Spanish character!

  
  
  It reminds me of a player we had in our company a few months ago, who had played on the Chinese server for a long time but was now playing here, legally or not. He had just joined the western server, and did not have the permits to even exit the Mediterranean, but from the first discussion I had with him it was all about how we must take Pondicherry in India, because we had to, never mind that the Dutch and everybody else probably thought exactly the same, and that, unlike the Dutch and everybody else, we couldn't. He was aware of very little, if anything, of the geopolitics of the server, let alone of the investment status of towns he could not even reach, but, as with every little armchair strategist who knew all the economic data, just knew what had to be done. Eventually, he jumped ship to a Chinese company that had appeared in Marseilles, and Pondicherry is still Dutch.

  
  
  Maybe the French should just do as he did and play pretend -- pretend that if we put our minds to it, we can take any town on the map, pretend that we can remain competitive -- but every expansion will add hurdles, as we will undoubtedly be the last nation to obtain the necessary permits to land in new areas, and the least likely to take and hold any town there. But before even this, grinding for permits (there is no other word for it) will take its toll on a dwindling number of veterans, many of whom will feel under the obligation to complete the imperial quests just to pull their weight. By the time of Southeast Asia, the obligation part had, in my case, long smothered the reason why I play games -- fun; and when the next expansion will come about, if I still play UWO, I probably won't bother with imperial quests at all, regardless of how others might say we must open the permit to gain access to the new best trade goods. In the case of France, the domino effect has been in motion since at least South America; we are now playing a losing game of trying to catch up with other nations, as they go for the best towns in new regions, leaving us with their scraps which, in turn, they could take from us with the profits they make. And there is nothing we can do about it.
  
   
  
  Such is the fate of an old game with every aspect, every little trick already documented, measured, assessed, analyzed in hundreds of web pages before it even started in your region of the world: nothing is left to chance. The pleasure of discovering anything, the trial-and-error process which is not only fun in itself, but allows a more even development of the game world instead of everyone going after the best cities with little regard for the rest, have all been ironed out by a combination of hindsight and a desire for optimization; because of this, it is to be feared that it might have been stillborn, as these waters, despite their name, have already been charted. At the very least, this facilitates the emergence of a hardcore mentality -- on top of a game design that encourages it -- of which Monsieur is the prime example among those players whom I have seen up close.
  
   
  
  Scrubbing the Deck
  
   
  
  If you go through the thread from which Monsieur was quoted, you will see little concern over the ethics of multiboxing, the lack of fairness this creates, and the marginalization of the rest of the player base that results from it. You use it, or you fall behind, even though Monsieur did not grasp the futility of his attempt; the state of France is such that it cannot be helped even by multiboxing. Getting the national permits behind everyone else should be enough of an indication of this.
  
   
  
  I have twice been suggested to defect, but there are two problems. The first is that I do not have enough fame to do so with my current character; indeed, the game makes it easier to join a sinking ship than to leave one, and I do not have the energy to start another. The second is that I actually like the French, out of some outmoded attachment to some form of roleplaying. I would not leave France even if I could. I guess that would make me what has been called, condescendingly, a "scrub", here defined by David Sirlin.
  
   
  
  Naturally, the hardcore, Sirlin included, sneer on the "scrubs" as people who do not play to win, who still stick to silly things like house rules and codes of honour, and overly value originality, seemingly out of a subjective notion such as fun.
  
   
  
  To quote Sirlin: "A common call of the scrub is to cry that the kind of play in which one tries to win at all costs is “boring” or “not fun.” Who knows what objective the scrub has, but we know his objective is not truly to win. Yours is. Your objective is good and right and true, and let no one tell you otherwise. You have the power to dispatch those who would tell you otherwise, anyway. Simply beat them." That may be well and good in the world of tournament games, but in a persistent world such as a MMORPG, playing to win burns people out -- quickly. The mythical hm11, for instance, has not logged in recently. Winning being a long-term, collaborative effort, playing scientifically -- to win -- might be ideal, but it is definitely boring and not fun.
  
   
  
  Sirlin also writes: "The first step in becoming a top player is the realization that playing to win means doing whatever most increases your chances of winning." In this game, it means not playing French, as it is designed weaker on purpose. It might also mean that you get a Dutch juggernaut and a dead endgame. It also means employing unethical but legal methods such as multiboxing. And it also means, in the context of Uncharted Waters Online, paying to win.
  
   
  
  Counting their Ducats
  
   
  
  Netmarble isn't being particularly subtle about this last point anymore. Just a few days after France unlocked the Southeast Asia permit, Netmarble announced a race around the world, in which only those who had already completed the circumnavigation quest could take part, with the registration period ending a week later (on the 15th). Incidentally, it was at the exact same time that Netmarble started promoting its latest additions to the cash shop: 50% sailing boosts for 15 days, replacing the older month-long 30% boosts to be taken out on the 20th.

  
  
  Actually, the previous paragraph is only half-correct: 50% boosts were just a temporary offer, but the month-long 30% boosts were indeed removed from the cash shop on that date, and replaced with week-long 30% boosts. And whereas a monthly 30% boost to sailing speed used to cost 7,990 Netmarble Cash points, a weekly 30% boost now costs 3,100 NC points. Other boosts, to skill and experience gain, went from 4,990 NC monthly to a similar 3,100 NC weekly -- nearly triple their former cost. The players, needless to say, did not take this well; even Monsieur threatened to boycott the cash shop under these new terms.

  
  
  Since at least the end of January, Netmarble has shed any pretense of trying to maintain a moderate approach to the cash shop, beginning with investment bonds that made a mockery of the political endgame. The latest update even adds a "Special Pricey Investment Bond", worth 50 million ducats, which, at 12,990 NC points, is pricey indeed. But every in-game event seems tailored to the purpose of selling items, such as a three-day period during which skill gains are tripled, to coincide with the new week-long boosts in the store.

  
  
  The most egregious travesty of an event remains the circumnavigation race, impossible to win without buying speed boosts. But there is worse: players with the speed boosts started reporting they were being beaten by abnormally low times. Then the truth started coming out: For the race, players are prohibited from using "liners", which, under normal situations, ferry a player at fast speeds between regional hubs for a fee, provided the player's hold is empty, but one new shop item, a "special ship boarding ticket" that allows "transfers to town all over nautical area with liners", is not disabled. Players who bought those tickets just rode as many liners as they could, even though it made the race as legitimate as a marathon in which select runners can hitch a ride. Others, meanwhile, were wondering whether this was an oversight, to which I feel like answering with my patented "yeah, right".

  
  
  What could be even worse than that? How about the addition of a special maritime ship, the Modified Armoured Vaisseau, exclusive to the cash shop? What could be worse than even this? While the original Armoured Vaisseau requires a battle level of 64, the Modified version can be sailed by someone with a battle level of 16, effectively outclassing every ship of that level. And how could this get even worse? By making this ship available exclusively through the use of "special lottery tickets". I wish I were joking, but no, Netmarble actually introduced "premium tickets" that don't even try to disguise the fact that it's a lottery system. One wonders how many people bought these tickets just to get that ship, but I have already seen a few sailing around. Still, I have no choice but to call this unethical and highly suspect. In addition, another possible reward from those tickets is twenty Special Pricey Investment Bonds, a full billion's worth of bought ducats, or a full week of multiboxing by Monsieur.
  
   
  
  I am tired of this. I met decent people in this game, who are the only reason why I am still playing; but how long will it take before they, in turn, quit, like so many of their predecessors? Once they do, I could do little more than quote an old newsreel travelogue series: "And it is with this thought that we most reluctantly say: Farewell to Uncharted Waters".

  +++++++++++++++++++++++++
  
  PART IV (May 19)

  Come with Me to the Cash Grab

  This part will be short, as there is not much to discuss when one witnesses the implosion of the game community as a result of Netmarble's management. Indeed, because this will exclusively cover the publisher's attempts to make a quick buck off a flagging property, this might as well have been called Part 3.5, if you get my drift; but even that franchise subsequently had a Fourth Edition, while this game is dying with more than half the expansions not even released. According to a Netmarble staffer: "There is still no scheduled update for South east America anytime soon and regarding plans for updates I don't think we will have one soon as the full potential for the fist expansion has not even been unlocked yet." A player wryly replied: "It cannot be unlocked, without experienced players. Don't expect it to be."

  In other words, after releasing the Aztec and Angkor expansions, Netmarble is just waiting for players to do their part to get the next expansion. For the western server, updates so far have been released as a bundle (Australia and Indonesia were originally in two separate expansions), making an appropriate timeline open to conjecture, but, on the Japanese server, nearly a year passed between the addition of Australia and the "Inca" expansion. What is Netmarble waiting for before it will consider unlocking new regions? The "full potential" of the first expansion is meaningless when all but three or four cities in the current expansions offer nothing of note to the trader? Who will want to invest in Buenos Aires when you can make more money by running spices from Ambon like everybody else? What else is to be expected when players calculate decisions with the benefit of hindsight? Furthermore, I don't think this game has a year left to it, which means that the rest of the content -- Japan, China, North America, the Suez and Panama canals -- might never see the light of day.

  In the last part, I wrote about one player's obsession with the development of Valencia to obtain some trinket, called a skill bookshelf, that becomes completely irrelevant when the game is collapsing under you. But Valencia has now been developed to his satisfaction, so he has turned his attention to Bremen and Lubeck for more unlocking of futile trinkets -- and he won't ever let you forget it, as he is doing the gaming equivalent of "are we there yet?" just to bump up his thread on the official forum. This same player then says, without a hint of irony, "Do you even understand how boring this game sometime? This game is complex and a lot of grinding, the maturity level is higher then usual game". No wonder, when all you do is recite a to-do list from a wiki, but his point was that western players should just let the server be overrun by Asian players prohibited from playing on it, and, further, that we should "STOP blame the cash shop for people who quit. No one quit because of cash shop, there is no serious advantage to having investment bonds or a MAV. No one play this game just to invest to do 100 trips of spices to invest 1 billion into hamburg."  Never mind that I do, and that the cash shop is leading me to quit.

  There was a French player who invested around 300 million in Bremen a few months ago to help unlock this trinket, and, for a while, French influence in the town was above 10 percent, the minimum required for traders to have a second haggle. Her name was even among the top five investors in the port. After this little fast-tracking cabal and many, many investment bonds later, French influence is down to one percent, and her name has been kicked off the list. I wonder what she thinks of this, but I have not seen her recently. For that matter, this is what Bremen looks like these days:

  

  Always the telling round numbers, something impossible to achieve by making investments with game-earned ducats; and in this case, the #1 player actually bragged about flipping the town with investment bonds on the forum. I mentioned in the last part that one of the rewards for the lottery tickets in the cash shop was a billion dollars in investment bonds, but that player, who spent $80 on tickets, did not even want the bonds; he was trying, in vain, to obtain the modified vaisseau that could not be bought otherwise. A less charitable way of putting it was that Netmarble allowed him to wreck the economic endgame in at least one port as a consolation prize for not hitting the jackpot. (I won't even address the ethics of offering some items exclusively as a lottery reward, though you probably know what I think of this.)

  I was among the first to expose the game-breaking potential of investment bonds, but now this has reached the point where a few hundred million ducats is considered a casual amount of money, in spite of the fact that a spice cargo from Ambon sells for 10 to 15 million for a four-hour return trip. (On the plus side, if you're looking for one, this has nearly killed multiboxing.) Apart from Bremen, investment bonds were involved in port flips in Jakarta and Ambon (by dear RobynSnow), Ceylon and Cape town; and these are just the cases I know for certain. A player even admitted he was stashing bonds for when his character would defect to the Ottomans. Finally, someone had enough and, seeing a Netmarble announcement that the ticket rewards would shortly be changed, launched a petition to have bonds removed from the list of rewards. For my part, I advocated the radical position that all investment bonds should be removed from the game, but the difference would be moot if Netmarble did not budge on the first point.

  The rewards were changed this morning; the twenty 50-million bonds are still in the list. In spite of the popularity of the petition, reaction to this latest development has been remarkably muted -- not a bang but a whimper, as T.S. Eliot famously put it; but his previous line is even truer, as far as this game is concerned: "This is the way the world ends."

  I can see how Uncharted Waters Online was conceived as a long-term game, but this means nothing if it is left in the hands of a publisher concerned with short-term gain. The least we could say is that Netmarble has squandered the last amount of goodwill it obtained for bringing this game to the western market. Except for those players too busy asking "how is development in Lubeck?" to care about anything else, the trajectory of the game is easy to predict from all the anecdotal evidence of depleted friends' lists and western server veterans threatening to quit. As one player said: "I am a Venetian. Some of the best times I've had in this game were the campaign to reclaim Italy and then defend it. Contrary to what some French folks claimed, this effort was done with ducats, not dollars. Every time I log on now, a new port in the Mediterranean is Venetian. I know some of this, perhaps most of it, is being done with bonds, and I take no pride at all in this. But that is what the merchant game is now: a real money spending contest. When this first came out, I asked one of Venice's top guys for advice on how we can deal with this. He said, "make more money in RL." And there you have it." In turn, this leads to an unwillingness from past paying customers to continue buying shop items. To quote one such player: "I know that I've spent at least 100-150 bucks on this game since the beginning, but now I've start regretting ever paying for this game, its going to head to a dead end like the Chinese server. What is there left to do when you got nobody left to compete against. I'd rather cut my loss and save my money now." And soon enough, this turns into a tailspin.

  A little confession is in order: I never spent money on this game. I tend to wait a few months into the life of the game to see how things turn out, and my instinct was telling me that this publisher was not to be trusted (even when disregarding that dismal web advertising); the only reason why I tried out this game in the first place was because of the familiar name of Tecmo-Koei. Looking at the past seven months, I think that most would agree that my initial reluctance to buy Netmarble Cash was warranted; but I would have been willing to pay for a subscription server without a cash shop attached. In the meantime, Netmarble is driving this game into the ground with a toxic mixture of greed and incompetence of a potency I had never experienced before.

  I think the greed part of this equation has amply been demonstrated, but, even amidst all this chaos over investment bonds, another example came to the attention of forum readers. In April, Netmarble ran a promotional event where players obtained bonus Netmarble Cash with any purchase. While the purchased Netmarble Cash is valid for five years, the bonus cash was valid for just one month, but this was not specified (buried in the cash policy is this vague sentence: "Cash handed out during events is only valid for a given period of time"). In addition to this, purchased Netmarble Cash is consumed first, making extremely likely the possibility of residual bonus cash. As one player put it: "In any case, even if NetMarble hasn't done anything illegal, this issue is definitely a public-relations problem because it's caused a massive trust gap. Right now, I'm fairly convinced NetMarble is more than willing to deliberately mislead or under-inform (or to put it less nicely, swindle) myself and other NC purchasers".

  As for incompetence, one just has to look at the recent circumnavigation race, which was won, as mentioned in Part 3, by those who used the "special ship boarding ticket", which allowed the use of ferries while others were disabled for the race. A Netmarble staffer finally admitted, if you chose to believe him, that "the use of liner tickets was not anticipated since the NC-shop and game management are separate groups so regarding future events they will have to coordinate more carefully and we do apologize of the mistake but decided that the results would stay". Yep, it was unintentional, but the results stay, which says it all, really.

  Like, it would appear, a good portion of the older players, I'm tired of this. Others might have turned to adventuring as the last uncontaminated area of the game, but to me this is akin to saying that the stern is the ideal place because it's still above water; besides, this game is no longer what it used to be.  As one prominent adventurer now quitting the game said: "Adventurers could sail without money, but could not live without friends." For my part, I'm bitter at having wasted so much time (but, at least, no money) on a game whose potential has been wasted through sheer mismanagement and whose graceful evolution nobody is likely to ever witness. I know what it feels like to have been wasting one's time on video games -- I used to play Wurm Online, after all -- but it is the first time I feel like quite the sucker for staying around in spite of all the warning signs.
  
  
  
  At least I was able to chronicle it all.  Now I'm done; what lies ahead would be redundant.
• Hellfyre420 Member Posts: 861

  April 2011

  I actually read all of that.. And enjoyed it.. Was debateing weather i'd get into UWO when it launched, but instead i stuck it out with EvE Online lol

   

  edit: just got done reading part 2 and now i'am sure i made the right choice.. I've played SO many F2P games at launch only to watch the company thats putting them out ruin them months later when the population dips a little.. I played Heroes Of The Three Kingdoms at launch and it was a great pvp game, it only offered cosmetic gear in the cash shop.. I happily bought a dragon mount + some fashion, but i wouldn't of wasted a dime had i known a few months later they'd start saleing the best gear in the game in the cash shop.. That's why i'm done with F2P games.. They have so much potential but get ruined by greedy companies.

  
  

  Currently Playing:
  Rift + Starcraft II + Gears Of War 3 Beta
• Knightsaber2 Member Posts: 31

  April 2011

  And an amen for you, OP.

  Uninstalled it after only a week of playing and reading.  How much did I make in those two weeks?  About 22 million ducats.  And since I'm Dutch, I did it using only three ports, all within 5 minutes of each other.

  Could have been a great game, honestly.  Probably is for some people.

  Playing:SW:TOR
  Played: A lot.
  Beta tested: Freaking everything.
  Looking forward to: Nothing.
• NortonGB Member UncommonPosts: 279

  April 2011

  Excellent review, I see Netmarble are running a survey on thier forum perhaps they will make some changes.

  Potbs community manangement looks positively brilliant in comparison.

  I had a recent visit with my friend Ron, we put together a RVR solution for Potbs "Red circles, missions & free trade" post in general discussion, would love to know what the op thinks about it.
• Vetarnias Member UncommonPosts: 630

  April 2011

  
  Originally posted by NortonGB

  Excellent review, I see Netmarble are running a survey on thier forum perhaps they will make some changes.

  Potbs community manangement looks positively brilliant in comparison.

  I had a recent visit with my friend Ron, we put together a RVR solution for Potbs "Red circles, missions & free trade" post in general discussion, would love to know what the op thinks about it.

  To be honest, I see nothing new there.  That was already being discussed back in 2008, and gradually ganking was just accepted as a fact of life in PotBS.  Then the game was made free-to-play, introducing the wonders of ganking to new players who were expecting something better.

  For my part, I'm done with PotBS.  I even went as far as to reinstall it back in January. But after 45 minutes of play, I felt that I had been through all that before, even though I still had my level-45 trader and didn't have to start back from the beginning. What I can also say is that the game performance was noticeably worse on the same computer I used to play it.

  What surprised me was that, in comparison to those game-breaking decisions, Uncharted Waters Online got a lot of those things right. With the exception of all the no-lifers permanently camping Ambon, hostile waters are vast expanse. That's not to say that stupid things don't happen; in no way should a galley be able to catch up with a galleon in optimal sailing conditions, no matter how many ranks of rowing you ended up getting.

  As the French have now obtained the Southeast Asia permit, I am currently making an investigative round of the new towns, and will probably do an update when I'm finished.
• NortonGB Member UncommonPosts: 279

  April 2011

  
  Originally posted by Vetarnias

  
  Originally posted by NortonGB

  Excellent review, I see Netmarble are running a survey on thier forum perhaps they will make some changes.

  Potbs community manangement looks positively brilliant in comparison.

  I had a recent visit with my friend Ron, we put together a RVR solution for Potbs "Red circles, missions & free trade" post in general discussion, would love to know what the op thinks about it.

  To be honest, I see nothing new there.  That was already being discussed back in 2008, and gradually ganking was just accepted as a fact of life in PotBS.  Then the game was made free-to-play, introducing the wonders of ganking to new players who were expecting something better.

  For my part, I'm done with PotBS.  I even went as far as to reinstall it back in January. But after 45 minutes of play, I felt that I had been through all that before, even though I still had my level-45 trader and didn't have to start back from the beginning. What I can also say is that the game performance was noticeably worse on the same computer I used to play it.

  What surprised me was that, in comparison to those game-breaking decisions, Uncharted Waters Online got a lot of those things right. With the exception of all the no-lifers permanently camping Ambon, hostile waters are vast expanse. That's not to say that stupid things don't happen; in no way should a galley be able to catch up with a galleon in optimal sailing conditions, no matter how many ranks of rowing you ended up getting.

  As the French have now obtained the Southeast Asia permit, I am currently making an investigative round of the new towns, and will probably do an update when I'm finished.

  Yeah I agree with you about Potbs, FLS gave up on it themselves years ago when they made the casual division.

  I won't be going back unless they decide to fix the ganking & obvious flaws.

  As far as UWO I'm not impressed with Netmarble's community management, Chinese Mutis & the horrific grind to unlock some of it's features. 200 partiot rewards to get the extra ship dock takes ages for solo players.

  It looks like it was designed for multis or cheaters as it's only them that appear to advance at any reasonable speed.
• i00x00i Member Posts: 243

  April 2011

  Aww I wanted to play this but now I'm discouraged!

  Thank you for the elaborate review.... but you suck =[

  Most people go through life pretending to be a boss. I go through life pretending I'm not.
• Vetarnias Member UncommonPosts: 630

  April 2011

  I added a third part to this review, which I posted immediately after Part II.
• Datarin Member CommonPosts: 164

  April 2011

  
  Originally posted by Vetarnias

  I added a third part to this review, which I posted immediately after Part II.

  All three parts are a wonderful, entertaining read, even for someone who does not plan on playing UWO. Thank you for writing and posting this.

  Forums: The best real-time interactive MMORPG you'll ever be in.
• drel Member Posts: 918

  April 2011

  Really good review of the game!

  I tried it in the hopes it was a great seafaring MMO. I ran into the same problems as the OP did. Really-three weeks for the tutuorial will scare most people away from the game.

  There needs to be a great seafaring MMO beyond this, which, I cannot recommend
• NortonGB Member UncommonPosts: 279

  April 2011

  The conclusion of this review should be something like this:

  UWO does provide a great deal of depth of content, flexibility to change class or do what you like when you like.

  If you let what the many Chinese, Multi-boxer cheaters effect you or you expect to beat them you likely will never be happy or succeed.

  There is in fact real fun & a lot to do in UWO if you are able to set your own individual targets to gain legitimate fame to become a hero for your nation.
• Vetarnias Member UncommonPosts: 630

  April 2011

  
  Originally posted by NortonGB

  The conclusion of this review should be something like this:

  UWO does provide a great deal of depth of content, flexibility to change class or do what you like when you like.

  If you let what the many Chinese, Multi-boxer cheaters effect you or you expect to beat them you likely will never be happy or succeed.

  There is in fact real fun & a lot to do in UWO if you are able to set your own individual targets to gain legitimate fame to become a hero for your nation.

  Actually, no.  Have you seen their latest additions to the cash shop?  Boosts that cost triple what they used to?  Stuff that allowed guys to win the circumnavigation race by taking liners?  That level-16 vaisseau (in comparison to a level-64 ship of a similar build), which is only available through Netmarble's lottery tickets? More investment bonds? 

  I've expanded Part III of my review above to reflect these additions, and I definitely can't recommend playing this game now -- I don't trust Netmarble.
• NortonGB Member UncommonPosts: 279

  May 2011

  
  Originally posted by Vetarnias

  
  Originally posted by NortonGB

  The conclusion of this review should be something like this:

  UWO does provide a great deal of depth of content, flexibility to change class or do what you like when you like.

  If you let what the many Chinese, Multi-boxer cheaters effect you or you expect to beat them you likely will never be happy or succeed.

  There is in fact real fun & a lot to do in UWO if you are able to set your own individual targets to gain legitimate fame to become a hero for your nation.

  Actually, no.  Have you seen their latest additions to the cash shop?  Boosts that cost triple what they used to?  Stuff that allowed guys to win the circumnavigation race by taking liners?  That level-16 vaisseau (in comparison to a level-64 ship of a similar build), which is only available through Netmarble's lottery tickets? More investment bonds? 

  I've expanded Part III of my review above to reflect these additions, and I definitely can't recommend playing this game now -- I don't trust Netmarble.

  There is so much more to UWO gameplay than investing in ports or trying to win the end-game.

  I'm standing by what I said in my last post, you are naturally entitled to your own opinion.

  Similar to Eve nobody wins UWO, there is no fun loss to any nation as there is so much more good content or things to do that you have not mentioned.

  F2P mmo's make money through cash shops, investment bonds do not change UWO as you can never win by using them.

  All they do is replace gold sellers or give the new players a short cut to compete. Another important point is that investment bonds can only be used safely for their intended purpose, they do not inflate the general economy or effect any other prices.

  edit: The use of the liners in the circumnavigation race was an unintentional event bug, no way game breaking. It has now been fixed.
• wrongfeifong Member CommonPosts: 405

  May 2011

  as much i don't want to step in.

   

  Heck, i don't want to even brother reading the silly review when the OP is more clueless then a level 10 player.

   

  let me point this out.

  1. multi-boxer or not, you aren't being beaten. Investment on port is absolutely useless.

  let me give you an example: /yes i dual box, i go to olso with my english main character follow by my dutch alt. I buy 120 wood as an english player, i also can only buy 120 wood on my dutch. on same skill and when the port below to either england or netherland.

  2. I can multi-box, you can multi-box.

  No one here to stop you, even i admit i do it, i even does it in the following games:

  WoW, FFXI, AO, AC, POTBS, DC universe...etc and more.

  why do you even care if i multi-box here? i mult-box in every game and does it make me a king of game?

  3. historical accurcy

  There is no game in this world have full historical accurcy. If you are looking to play a game of history, just go to your local library and play with those hot sexy librarians. These are game developpers, not professors from your local university.

  4. Cash shop

  ...i give up on this topic, if you think a game let you play for free, you might as well go back to elementary school.

   

  I played this game since japanese beta, then taiwan server and here now. I still think this is one of the best game i ever played. There is no competition here, you are the one who set these competition.

   

  i log on, see what i can do, i simply do that tiny bit and log out happy. There are so many choice with this game, i can trade today make 20millions or discover something or level up maritime.

  why should you care about others? The chinese play their own way, you play yours.

  none
• bezado Member UncommonPosts: 1,127

  May 2011

  Great review, solid but done in the long format. Still UWO had a great pre following on SNES, of which was my favorite game when I was a young teenager back in the 90's. That title was Uncharted Waters: New Horizons. One of the best rpg ever created for a console system, even beat FF1-3 for me. I dunno the whole game was awesome, if you got SNES emulator and a controller on your PC then by all means grab this ROM to try it. It's nice to revisit older games thanks to ROMS.

  When I played UWO last year I did not get the feeling like I thought I would get being that the original game developer had it's paws on it. KOEI tried to hard to make it fit into the popularized template of today's mmorpgs but failed to make it exciting enough for me.
• Vetarnias Member UncommonPosts: 630

  May 2011

  "Heck, i don't want to even brother reading the silly review when the OP is more clueless then a level 10 player."

  Then why "brother" replying to it?

  "1. multi-boxer or not, you aren't being beaten. Investment on port is absolutely useless.

  let me give you an example: /yes i dual box, i go to olso with my english main character follow by my dutch alt. I buy 120 wood as an english player, i also can only buy 120 wood on my dutch. on same skill and when the port below to either england or netherland."

  If "investment on port is absolutely useless", did you ever ask yourself what was the point of trading and making money? There is very little "conspicuous consumption" in this game, nothing to really spend your money on.  You could probably buy the most expensive ship in the game with two or three days' trading, maybe even less if you know a shipbuilder.

  The sole purpose of making money, as a trader, is to invest it back. That's how you earn fame to get the later sailing permits.  If you say there is no point to investing in ports, you have just done away with the entire rationale behind trading.

  Oh, I can see why you're not affected by whoever controls the port: you dual-box. You don't care who controls a port because you know you will get the advantages regardless (with the exception, I'm guessing, of haggling).  Then what stops you from doing what that guy did and get your own little multinational fleet with one Dutch, one English, one French, one Portuguese and one Spanish?  How do we know they're multis? Because for once Netmarble did its duty and banned the lot of them.

  "2. I can multi-box, you can multi-box.

  No one here to stop you, even i admit i do it, i even does it in the following games:

  WoW, FFXI, AO, AC, POTBS, DC universe...etc and more.

  why do you even care if i multi-box here? i mult-box in every game and does it make me a king of game?"

  I think you've given, without realizing it, the reason why I object to multiboxing in your first point. You not only bypass the national objective because it does not even affect you, but in doing so you make twice the money a non-multiboxer does.  Come on, you wouldn't multibox if this didn't give you an advantage of some sort.  In turn, this makes you a corrupting influence in the server's geopolitics; the case of Monsieur, mentioned in my review, is ample evidence of that.

  "3. historical accurcy

  There is no game in this world have full historical accurcy. If you are looking to play a game of history, just go to your local library and play with those hot sexy librarians. These are game developpers, not professors from your local university."

  You didn't read my review, obviously. I'm poking fun at those historical inaccuracies because they're fun; they don't really bother me.  But you obviously missed the Dutch player who thought it was perfectly fine that every Indonesian port was Dutch because it was Historically Accurate.  Allright, then, if it's all about Historical Accuracy, when do the French get Pondicherry from you?  But no, as usual, it's a one-way excuse.

  "4. Cash shop

  ...i give up on this topic, if you think a game let you play for free, you might as well go back to elementary school."

  Ha.  You seem completely oblivious to the fact, as a player, that there are good cash shop models and bad cash shop models. If I had to do a hierarchy of cash shop models, good to bad, it would look something like this:

  1-Cosmetic items, a dual-currency model like Puzzle Pirates' with a currency exchange, or a model where only part of the map is offered to free-to-play players alongside a subscription model for others (Runescape, DDO, etc.);

  2-Items that confer an advantage to the buyer; the larger the advantage, the lower on this scale;

  3-Items which are the best you can obtain, and for which there is no free equivalent (Pay-to-win starts here);

  4-Items that do away with the need to even play the game in the usual way.

  5-Items for which the game design itself has been twisted to make them pretty much mandatory to play at all.

  Yeah, there can be some overlap.  Introduce a cash-shop exclusive Elite Armor of the Most Plusses in a PvE game and you could say it's #3; make the whole world PvP with full loot and it's down to #5. The whole Fear of Death mechanism in Allods Online would be #5; and it was the game which infamously sold a rune for $7,000 when the cash shop launched. Are you going to say that it's perfectly fine to sell a virtual item in a game for $7,000 and that I should just shut up and pay?

  Again, if you had read my review, you would have noticed that I approved of Netmarble's early cash shop, when the best-selling items were the speed boosts, experience boosts and such. That would have been #2 on my scale. Even when they tripled the price of some of these items, they remained at #2.

  With investment bonds, you're down to #4.  You no longer need to trade around; hell, you don't even need a speed boost. You can just buy your way to a fortune and there it goes.  The level-16 vaisseau would be at #3, but because it is exclusive to a lottery system and cannot be bought directly, it's actually flirting with #5.  You have probably read the case of the player who bought 80 dollars' worth of tickets to get the ship and didn't; what he got instead was a few billion ducats in bonds and invested them in Bremen, flipping the town to the English in the process.

  Not that you would mind, of course. You're the Valencia booster, after all, and now you're all about investing in Bremen and Lubeck so you can get your skill shelf. You're one of those endemic fast-trackers who are ruining the pace of the server because the Japanese wiki says this, this and that, and your points provide ample enough evidence that it is impossible to reason with you.

  "I played this game since japanese beta, then taiwan server and here now. I still think this is one of the best game i ever played. There is no competition here, you are the one who set these competition."

  You do need some sort of endgame in a game like this. If not investment wars, then what? Maritime battles? That too could affect influence percentages in cities, and people took part until that was found to have been rigged by players who knew of every little trick before the battles were introduced on this server -- people like you, with years of experience of this game.

  "i log on, see what i can do, i simply do that tiny bit and log out happy. There are so many choice with this game, i can trade today make 20millions or discover something or level up maritime.

  why should you care about others? The chinese play their own way, you play yours."

  And the Chinese, need we remind it, are not even allowed to play here. (I mean Chinese from the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, who are excluded from the zone of service, as is Japan and Korea.) They don't belong here.

   

  I think all of this will shortly lead to a Part 4 to this review, in which I will deal with the current state of the game.  Yeah, it's pretty much in a tailspin now.
• NortonGB Member UncommonPosts: 279

  May 2011

  The point as I see it is this, UWO was made to cater for Asians who multi-box, they often see it as normal behavior that if you don't do it you are seen as stupid, they also see grind as a way of life so there is nothing wrong with it.

  Clearly there is a mentality difference between Asian & Western mentalities that Koei or Netmarble have not allowed for when releasing their global sever, the only change they made was a patch in beta to prevent multi-clients that was quickly hacked by the Chinese.

  As a result or due to the above UWO has not been able to hold on to a lot of their populations.

  Despite the game being full of content the grind that legitimate players have to face is too much which in turn invites players to multi-box or cheat. As a result we have a two speedgame with the experienced asians who have played before by far in the lead.

  This is a real shame on what otherwise could be a great Age of Sail mmorpg, in its present form it is likely only to appeal to those that are fine with the Asian mentality.
• Eiyaya Member Posts: 1

  May 2011

  I think the problem about the OP is that.

  He started a FRENCH. which is the underdogs.

  Secondly, he never did any research about the game before playing. I mean 3 weeks to complete the school tutorial ? It took me less then a day to complete the trading school. I finished up the next 2 school the 2nd day.

  He doesn't even know how to ask people to share "skill" in buying pigs where there is millions cooks out there.

   

  Just admit it, no one want to play french and he is mad about it.

  Translation and cash shop is another story. I think the 30% is fair since the game server is running on par with other server in experiences generation.

  You are actually paying for the items to get 30% more experience then a japanese playing on the japanese server.

   

  Meanwhile, this guy come in and post about the translation, hey fellow, you forgot one thing. netmarble is a KOREAN company and they took this game license and be glad about it. because no US/EU company can ever get that license off KOEI to speak for the last 5 years. Just be glad, you get to even play this amazing game.

  This is one horrible review of the game, why?

  here are the reasons:

  1. He never mention about adventures or even maritime to speak of. He talks as the game is call Spice water online or trading water online.

  2. he focus his talking in multi-client which are all banned by now

  3. He focus on investment and how people put so much money when he can't flip those port to french because he playing the under dogs.

  4. He mention about companies tools, what else you want? You got a guild house, a kick and invite tool, a place to sell. What you want? a castle? a flag with your name on it? Maybe you should change that city name into your name and change history forever.

   

  Hey fellow, put your level and in game name here as well, so we will see what level you are for real. you talks as you are one of those level 65 65 65 players. I am pretty sure you aren't at least for someone who did 3 week of tutorial, i doubt you are even pass 20.
• Vetarnias Member UncommonPosts: 630

  May 2011

  "I think the problem about the OP is that.

  He started a FRENCH. which is the underdogs."

  So?  I mentioned in my review that I liked playing French; just a matter of linguistic identification, I guess (it's my first language).  I was expecting the French to be underdogs because they would be unpopular among players, as France has been having a lackluster reputation since at least when The Simpsons quipped about those "cheese-eating surrender monkeys".  However, I was not expecting France to be an underdog by design, which is what it turned out to be. Having ports in two different zones should have been an advantage, but it's not, because you're all but forced to expand in the Mediterranean -- and I'm sick of hearing about the Genoa Triangle.

  "Secondly, he never did any research about the game before playing. I mean 3 weeks to complete the school tutorial ? It took me less then a day to complete the trading school. I finished up the next 2 school the 2nd day."

  When I said three weeks, I meant for all three schools.  Adventuring was the toughest, because it's difficult to finish it if you don't have the skills, which you probably don't have if you don't intend to stick it out as an adventurer. I had to wait until an adventurer with those skills spent some time helping me out with the final exam quest.

  And that's not saying the immense amount of time the game is making you waste by having you sail around.   Intermediate school was in Syracuse, but the instructor always sent you to a lecturer in Marseilles or Genoa, and you had to sail back to Syracuse once the blahblah was over.

  As for how much you should know before starting to play, I'm of the school that likes figuring things out by themselves.  I like to experiment, to discover stuff, to map out strategies by trial and error.  And in those days, the English-language wiki was incomplete (the olo.us site didn't exist at the time), and what was posted in English here and there was skimpy.  Even today, it's the tip of the iceberg compared to the Japanese, Korean or Chinese sources.

  "He doesn't even know how to ask people to share "skill" in buying pigs where there is millions cooks out there."

  Let me guess: by typing something in local chat?  What I saw instead in those days were people all too eager to bazaar pigs at a 1000% markup. Also: millions?  Ah, hyperbole.

  "Just admit it, no one want to play french and he is mad about it."

  Um, no. If I wanted more people to play French, would I have written all that I have said in this review -- namely, that the French were not only under-represented, but led by a dysfunctional coterie of selfish hardcore players? Chances are that, having read the review, you'd want to stay away from this madhouse, this sinking ship, and pick another nation. All fine by me; France can't be helped.

  I just wanted to chronicle my experiences in this game, that's all.

  "Meanwhile, this guy come in and post about the translation, hey fellow, you forgot one thing. netmarble is a KOREAN company and they took this game license and be glad about it. because no US/EU company can ever get that license off KOEI to speak for the last 5 years. Just be glad, you get to even play this amazing game."

  A badly translated game just makes you look amateurish, especially when there are probably thousands of professional translators they could have hired. Instead, we get English as she is spoke.

  "This is one horrible review of the game, why?

  here are the reasons:

  1. He never mention about adventures or even maritime to speak of. He talks as the game is call Spice water online or trading water online."

  On this point, I will admit that I did not really talk much about adventuring and maritime.  What could I say about adventuring apart from "I tried it, and found it boring, so I stuck to other things"?  It is precisely because I did not want to say this that I chose to mention as little as I could about it.  As for maritime, it's pretty much the same as adventuring, except that it's all gear/skill-dependent, less intricate than, say, Pirates of the Burning Sea, and grindy. And events are abused to hell.

  As far as trading is concerned, though, you're right: Spice Water Online could be an appropriate name for it.

  "2. he focus his talking in multi-client which are all banned by now"

  A point of semantics. It's still perfectly legal to use more than one account, as long as you're using one account per computer.  If you have five computers, Netmarble thinks it's fine.

  And you're forgetting something else: Apart from those multiboxers who are used by gold sellers, no player has a real incentive to use multis for making money and investing, because there is something bigger to wreck the game now: investment bonds.

  "3. He focus on investment and how people put so much money when he can't flip those port to french because he playing the under dogs."

  Let's just say that I won't grind myself out of my mind just for trying to catch up with nations with ten times as many players;  I'm not Monsieur. But you're overlooking another key point: investment bonds have nothing to do with grinding; rather, they have to do with not even playing the game and buying those from the cash shop directly.

  "4. He mention about companies tools, what else you want? You got a guild house, a kick and invite tool, a place to sell. What you want? a castle? a flag with your name on it? Maybe you should change that city name into your name and change history forever."

  Now that would be something -- some form of recognition between dropping endless amounts of money in towns the rest of your nation doesn't even care about, because they are not called Genoa.  Seriously, I'd expect better company management tools.  I know it's a minor point which probably affected 40-50 people in all, but getting an artificial cap on the number of company members is just ridiculous, not to mention that you can't even give your deputies the power to fire someone, or have more than two deputies; small details that seriously get in the way of efficient management.  When I used to be a company leader, I even felt I had to stay in Europe in case hell broke loose, as it did when I was in South Africa, 30 minutes away from the closest company administration office.

  "Hey fellow, put your level and in game name here as well, so we will see what level you are for real. you talks as you are one of those level 65 65 65 players. I am pretty sure you aren't at least for someone who did 3 week of tutorial, i doubt you are even pass 20."

  That's another thing: I don't think I know anyone who is level 65 in all categories, except one of your Chinese hardcore grinders. What a good example to give!

  But since you insist, I'm 35/55/20: http://img542.imageshack.us/img542/3706/profileofme.png

  I'm sure that whatever my stats are, they will never be enough for you anyway, Commodore Grinderton.
• Vetarnias Member UncommonPosts: 630

  May 2011

  Part IV of my review is now posted, with more cash shop follies.
• cagan Member UncommonPosts: 445

  May 2011

   It was a grindy/fun few months but its coming to an end.

   

  Everywhere I look I see M. Armored Vasil. ships which are sold by cash and better than anything i can get before lvl 64.

   

  I used to do sewing / casting in dutch ports but now they all switched hands thanx to investment bonds. Both oslo and hamburg are gone from dutch. I cannot compete with 1 billion investments where I make only like 10-20 million per Southeast asia trip.

   

  This game is fastly becoming a pay to win game, I seriously cannot wait for the next cash shop item, maybe a submarine that can teleport between ambon and seville for only 20.000NC or a lottery reward?

   

  I realize the company needs to make money but seriously those investment bonds in a TRADING GAME?

   

  My friends list is going inactive as days go by, 3 of my 4 friends I started playing with already quit, I might log once in a while till a new MMO comes out but thanx to the greedy provider, another great prospect is gone....

   
• Quizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,483

  May 2011

  What if there were no special investment bonds?  Would that make it interesting to sail back and forth trading all day, every day, trying to make more money to flip ports?  That seems to be what people are asking for.

  Here's a hint:  in the console games, it isn't.  Once you can do Madiera's gold for Genoa's silver with ten full rigged ships and do a few round trips of that, it's like, okay, that's enough, can I do something else now?  And that's even though it only takes a minute or two to sail from one port to the other.
• NortonGB Member UncommonPosts: 279

  May 2011

  
  Originally posted by Quizzical

  What if there were no special investment bonds?  Would that make it interesting to sail back and forth trading all day, every day, trying to make more money to flip ports?  That seems to be what people are asking for.

  Here's a hint:  in the console games, it isn't.  Once you can do Madiera's gold for Genoa's silver with ten full rigged ships and do a few round trips of that, it's like, okay, that's enough, can I do something else now?  And that's even though it only takes a minute or two to sail from one port to the other.

  I agree with you, in the case of the 20x50 million investment bonds they are too huge or released too early before all the update pathes were in place for conventional traders to compete with, thus they are currently un-balancing the game because of their large size IMO.

  Incidentally the op might be interested in a guide that I have recently posted that explains all three forms of donation needed to develop ports in UWO. with an extract from his informative review above.

  Also another that explains the greater importance of influence with an Investment FAQ
• Teala Member RarePosts: 7,627

  May 2011

  To the OP.  Put this in a blog here on MMORPG.com.  It would be a shame for such valuable information to be lost and buried over the course of people simply posting in this games forums.   It was a really good read and others thinking of playing the game should read what you have written.    Thanks for all the info!
• Vetarnias Member UncommonPosts: 630

  May 2011

  Originally posted by Quizzical
  
  What if there were no special investment bonds?  Would that make it interesting to sail back and forth trading all day, every day, trying to make more money to flip ports?  That seems to be what people are asking for.
  Here's a hint:  in the console games, it isn't.  Once you can do Madiera's gold for Genoa's silver with ten full rigged ships and do a few round trips of that, it's like, okay, that's enough, can I do something else now?  And that's even though it only takes a minute or two to sail from one port to the other.
  

  No, it's not what I'm asking for. I did not play the console Uncharted Waters games (though I'm tempted to try them if I can find them legally), but I did play quite a few PC games where trading was the main activity (the Patrician and Port Royale series). You traded around, made money, developed your hometown, became influential. What made those different is that you could have several ships at sea in different locations at once, and you did not have to sail them around. Here, you're limited to your own ship, which you can't sail by just putting in the destination and stepping back. You must stay around and keep an eye on it, becase of the incidents that can happen at sea, the usual stuff put in to fight botters (gusts of wind and large waves that can steer your ship in another direction, fires, scurvy, etc.).

  Yes, trading around can get repetitive, especially if you're a power gamer doing the same route for hours. I know I wouldn't go through that, and I used to complain about hardcore gamers who did it, because it forced everyone else to ride their coattails. I did mention Monsieur and that other player who went into full paranoid mode because we took Mozambique; and that was just in France.

  Most of the legitimate hardcore grinders seem to be gone now, because of multiboxers; those who remained, like Monsieur, just embraced multiboxing to remain competitive. Now multiboxers seem to be gone, too. Guess what killed them? Investment bonds, especially the billion-ducat lottery prize. Some see that as a good thing because of this, but bonds killed off all trading in the process.

  The problem is also that there is nothing much to do with your money except investment. A few days' casual trading would probably net you enough money to buy the best ship of your level (at higher levels anyway; a few hours will be enough as a newbie to upgrade your ship). You can upgrade your house, which is only good to store more items. There is nothing in the vein of what we could call status spending, conspicuous consumption and so on. I can't avoid comparing it to Puzzle Pirates, where it's all about social standing: the furniture, the various types of housing, even the colour of your clothes. There is nothing of that here; clothes are chosen based on their function (i.e. the skill bonuses they give) rather than their appearance.

  Put those together and you get a pretty good impression of what made people quit. If social status in MMO's is what mattered to you, UWO seemed shallow because it offered no opportunity to show it except by topping an investors' list, or by people clicking on you and and noticing your court rank, which traders could increase by, guess how, investing around. Money is only good for investing, and it is made particularly easy to acquire once you know the basics of what to buy and where to sell it. The bonds, however, allowed you to bypass all this by just hitting the cash shop; unlike sailing boosts and so on, bonds rewarded those who did not even play the trading game at the expense of those who did.