I'd like to see this community break free of UO entirely; to do that, I think the major opportunity lies in the pairing of PlayUO, RunUO, and the protocol between them. For various reasons, we're currently strapped by the server's expectation of what the client can and will say, what the protocol allows, and so on. I'd like to see divergence from plain vanilla in various ways, many of them implying different functionality in the client.
I don't find all that much virtue in mirroring OSI capabilities. I look at them as a source of prerendered graphics, and so forth.
I think if OSI adds new graphics to their client, or new functionality to their server, that we might capture those things, but not worry particularly about compatibility with their servers or their client. Or if we did worry about those things, we'd slow our worry, and not spend time trying to do it their way.
On another subject, there is a sad ongoing brick wall in the community, in that generally no matter how creative we are, we are basically limited by what graphics the system allows us to express. Developing clothes, items, all the rest, and making it look like it fits right into the play environment, is a royal sumbitch. As a consequence, all new stuff lives within the constraints of those older graphics. Would be nice if that problem went away...
I'm hoping KR, with its new graphics, also affords us the opportunity to breath new life into RunUO. About the time KR comes out, assuming that some good ole fashioned reverse engineering is needed, might be a good time to do a good rethink of the nature of the complete system that PlayUO + runuo special protocol + RunUO affords us.
C//