An entrepreneur is trolling runuo and every player

[CrazyIdeas]

Serious if you take a look at where all potential players are congregating before choosing a shard to play on, it's like google: uo top 200. yet everyone of those shards really only possess enough of the runuo archive to prop up the appearance of a coherent game just to fuel a donation store...

there's a disturbing pattern that a lot of these shards are only partially complete and actually appear to be really similar to eachother... there's only a few real shard shining through the mess.

 

[CrazyIdeas]

obviously the top progrmmers of runuo originally designed all these systems im sure they have got a shard, where's it?

 

[Vorspire]

I work with multiple shards these days, the most recent being PandoraUO, UOUnbound, UOFreedom, UOHorizon and UOForever.
I agree, there are many "cash cows" out there where the owners just want to make a quick buck and split, but you will find that the top 50 or so shards (as listed on top-lists) are legit and have been around long enough to have grown apart from each other feature-wise.
The reason a lot of shards are so similar is because there are more people than usual who are just trying out being a shard owner, most have little development experience and it takes a lot longer to become 'unique'; professional developers are hard to come by these days, which is stifling the RunUO community.

 

[Doctor Mephisto]

UOUnbound looks to be a the most promising answer to this. I'm working on my own non-donation shard again whether or not I have players.. its a hobby to me, but will definitely be checking that shard out for sure.

The achievement system alone will make the game even more interesting than the same old boring thing. I'd rate that over 9000