Just to summarize… My past few days playing Ultima have been AMAZING. It’s honestly like I am playing a brand new game, something I didn’t feel was possible. I even went and pvp’d against a guy who used to absolutely dominate me, and I held my own (he still won handily cuz I have NO idea what pvping actually is, but at least this time it actually felt like a battle and not just something I had to immediately stop what I was doing and run from).
For context, I play on Atlantic.
This is the first time I have been able to play the game, in any capacity, with little to no lag since I came back to the game about 3 years ago. I did a bit of thinking, I did a bit of investigating, and I spent a bit of time inside the lions den (the *** discord server), and I spent a bit of time looking at a slightly older version of the *** client’s code – which is on GitHub. There’s a lot of fear – from EVERYONE, there’s a lot of anxiety, finger pointing, blaming, negativity, and most of all, an insane amount of division amongst our players.
After experiencing the game WITHOUT the players who are using that client, the lag was GONE. It wasn’t just at events, or semi populated areas, it was everywhere. So, being the inquisitive person I am, I wanted to find out why.
The TLDR is this: Using **** and it’s “features” is acting like a DDoS attack on the live servers. It is literally breaking the servers.
Do I expect the average player, or user of **** to understand this? Absolutely not. They were shown a glimpse of power, which other people had already been using, and were drawn in by the allure of being able to do things in a better way than the average player.
The simplest way to explain it is this. The UO client you run on your computer subscribes to the server to play on. Within each client, you do things, like opening your backpack, opening a door, toggling attack, putting on a piece of gear, moving an item in the world, casting a spell on a client. There is an upper limit on what the client can support in terms of sending data to the server, and thus an upper limit on the information the server sends back to you. MOST actions in CC/EC/CUO are limited to a few actions at once (many of you might be familiar with the phrase “You must wait to perform another action”). This limit of actions is 100% on the client side, and not the server. This in and of itself is very, very crucial, and one of the primary reasons **** has an advantage. The packets being sent from *** are able to include *MORE* actions than a human would ever be able to do. There are built in restrictions, disallowing users from doing specific back to back actions, and some actions are given different priority, but the basics of it are as simple as that. Not to mention, knowing which ports to and addresses to sniff and the fact that your password is stored un an unencrtypted way, everyone using *** was willingly handing their password and account information to this guy HotRide.
Another aspect of a game, or any simulation, runs on a timing system, or as some people know it a “tick”. Each tick, a certain amount of action and data is transferred between the client and the server.
An example would be this. A person in an approved client sees a skeleton they want to attack. They toggle their war on, they walk over to it, and they wait to see if they hit. They wait to see if they need to drink a potion. They wait to see if they need to move. They WAIT. The only interactions happen when the user themselves decide to take an action, and only then is the server pinged for data.
Now lets examine that in ***, the same basic example. The script detects that there is a nearby hostile that the script is specifically searching for, by querying for all nearby targetable enemies and parses that data. It then makes requests for information about the unit, including hot bars, and determines if it should proceed forward. Movement commands are issued, followed by more checking to see if the hostile is within range or not (more querying the server). Each tick, the **** client is now determining and parsing, requesting tons more data. Have I lost too much health? Have I lost too much mana? Have I lost too much stamina? Is there a better enemy to move to? Which ability do I run next? All of these decisions are based on packets received from the server, which are issued and requested at MUCH greater levels than a standard user, in front of a standard client.
The order of magnitude and levels of stress that a scripter is putting on the server compared to a regular player is insane.
These groups of entitled cheaters were breaking the game. Whether they knew it or not, the result is the same. They were causing extraordinary amounts of packets to be sent to and from the server and their clients, and as such, ruining the experience for all of the people who were NOT using ****.
Now, those players are players and lovers of UO, for one reason or another. And they have supported these games – as many of us all have. From the sound of it, most of them want to “take their ball and go home” as I have noted previously. However…
I believe that Broadsword / Bonnie / Messanna / Kyronix / EA / circumstances / whatever you want to say, did them a disservice by allowing these clients to be used for SO LONG and so prolifically. It is their responsibility to retain them as customers – if they wish to do so. SOME of them have decided to attempt to make the other clients work, however begrudgingly. This would be the ideal solution, for everybody involved. Any macros or scripts they build with the existing clients would then be their own creations, and PVP, farming, PVM… whatever it is, would be entirely something they contributed to in order to create and enhance their experience.
There are however, the majority of these people who are NOT going to even attempt to play normally, and need / want their scripts. MY PROPOSED SOLUTION FOR THEM…
Would be to open their own shard, in which other clients are allowed to be used. Make it something that things cannot go onto or off the server, and allow whatever nonsense these people want to use. I’m not exactly sure how you would handle getting things TO the shard, but in this way… They could script to their hearts content, without disturbing other players who use the game without using *** or other cheating clients.
My theory would be this…. Those players, who have cheated for all these years – if they ever went to a shard like that, would quickly lose interest, as they no longer hold any advantages over a person who played the game through regular means.
Anyhow, those are my thoughts on this whole thing, it’s an incredibly bold move on managements part, and genuinely, I hope we find a way, as a community of people who love this crappy 27 year old game, to find a way to move forward. Together.
One other thing I feel should be done… I feel, if the BS team ever does decide to offer an olive branch, to return to the fold and these user’s reject it… Burn their houses down. All their stuff inside. Then ban the accounts.
If I need to edit this post so that it can stay up, please feel free to let me know how.
