[Eru]

To elaborate more, I'd place portals to the casino only in towns near banks. I might also put some at the entrances to the common dungeons, but they won't be as common as pits runes used to be.

There would be a single gate inside the casino for leaving, but it would be one of the Rune Library scripted gates. If you've seen the one in the Tourney Rally Area, you'll know what I mean. You step on the gate and you get a menu that lets you pick where you want to go, and it also has a charge that would automatically deduct from your player or bank. That way there aren't gates/pads everywhere, also if someone steps on the gate, you can never be sure where they're going, so that will keep people from camping out near the pads waiting for someone to step on them so that they can gank them. Some people like this, but I'd rather have people play than sit around watching the teleporters like a trap-door spider. There's a lot more to the game than pretending to be AFK near the telepads.

The idea would be to have a central travel hub where people are more likely to meet other players, but where it won't hinder normal world exploration. The places you can go to and come from will be purposefully limited and there shouldn't be any incentive to stay there other than just to socialize or play casino games.

[Bolingbroke]

Well guys. What I'm about to say won't be received well but it's the truth. This shard is a joke.

I played the original IN from the beginning. It was a great shard with a great player base. I didn't play IN2 or any of the other incarnations of IN. By this time I had moved on to other MMO's. But the last couple years I've come back to UO, the only MMO that I've ever really loved, and have been playing on several different servers. So when I saw that IN was back I decided to check it out.

The OP asks why there are so few people on. To me the answer to this is pretty simple. This is not a serious server. Serious servers don't give away gold and skills.

I couldn't believe that my starting character was aloud to have GM healing, 90 magery, 90 resist, and 90 archery.

then I almost fell out of my chair when i was given 1000 gold just for typing .vote

where is the fun in the game when you are given everything?

this kind of stuff goes against everything we know about MMO's and why people play them. People want a sense of accomplishment with their characters. When you give everything away you are removing that drive for accomplishment.

[XoD174]

Well guys. What I'm about to say won't be received well but it's the truth. This shard is a joke.

I played the original IN from the beginning. It was a great shard with a great player base. I didn't play IN2 or any of the other incarnations of IN. By this time I had moved on to other MMO's. But the last couple years I've come back to UO, the only MMO that I've ever really loved, and have been playing on several different servers. So when I saw that IN was back I decided to check it out.

The OP asks why there are so few people on. To me the answer to this is pretty simple. This is not a serious server. Serious servers don't give away gold and skills.

I couldn't believe that my starting character was aloud to have GM healing, 90 magery, 90 resist, and 90 archery.

then I almost fell out of my chair when i was given 1000 gold just for typing .vote

where is the fun in the game when you are given everything?

this kind of stuff goes against everything we know about MMO's and why people play them. People want a sense of accomplishment with their characters. When you give everything away you are removing that drive for accomplishment.

Well man obviously you didn't play XUO (original TUS XUO of course) It was a GREAT shard with big player base. And there were free starting skills (100 magery and 100 swords) and there was a great PvP system i ever seen! And i think you understans that free starting skills gives a good start point to the all new players! This system can be changed in future when server will have at least 100 online, but for now it is very good way!

[Mystic Edge]

I rather like it here and glad i didn't have to have a huge time sink into it. Yeah IN1 was great and all, but more people now in days don't want to level a character like they did on IN1. I've seen more old IN'ers come back and say they don't want to macro skills and just be given there old IN character back. Lets face it this game is classic but very old. Believe it or not, some actually are mad at the skill leveling in crafts more then what they are given to start with. To me yeah there was a lot of that sense of accomplishment on IN1 with what skill works properly. However, The skill that are easy are just the combat and pve skills. Crafts are still hard to gain here so in a sense your still getting that accomplishment feel. If there were a lot more players from IN1 that came here complaining what was stated I'm sure things would be changed, but the IN1 community 10 years ago either have moved on from mmo's and don't have the time now or are completely into something else. No one now in days whats to manually macro gathering skills and be watching there computer screen to hope they don't get .killed from macroing over 2 hours or disconnected.

[Bolingbroke]

I rather like it here and glad i didn't have to have a huge time sink into it. Yeah IN1 was great and all, but more people now in days don't want to level a character like they did on IN1. I've seen more old IN'ers come back and say they don't want to macro skills and just be given there old IN character back. Lets face it this game is classic but very old. Believe it or not, some actually are mad at the skill leveling in crafts more then what they are given to start with. To me yeah there was a lot of that sense of accomplishment on IN1 with what skill works properly. However, The skill that are easy are just the combat and pve skills. Crafts are still hard to gain here so in a sense your still getting that accomplishment feel. If there were a lot more players from IN1 that came here complaining what was stated I'm sure things would be changed, but the IN1 community 10 years ago either have moved on from mmo's and don't have the time now or are completely into something else. No one now in days whats to manually macro gathering skills and be watching there computer screen to hope they don't get .killed from macroing over 2 hours or disconnected.

i didn't say a huge time sink was necessary.

What I'm saying is that appearances matter. When a potential new player signs on the shard and sees that they are given gm magery healing archery etc etc and then given free gold 9 times out of 10 they are not going to want to play on this kind of server. And i think this is pretty evident judging by the # of players here.

there are some free UO servers now that avg 500+ players on at a time. What do they servers do right? For one they appear legitimate.

this version of IN would be much better off just making fighting skills gain super fast rather than giving the impression of illegitimacy.

[Elcid]

Better server\host\connection so people from ALL over the world can play. (IN1 could be played from anywhere in the world with an average ping of 200ms, my average to this IN is 500ms)
Easier skill gain, this game is pushing 15 years old, IN has existed as IN, IN2, IN:R, IN:X and now IN(5). No one wants to re-do their characters for a 5th time.

Every other dinamic of the server works.

[Maktor [Daemon]]

i didn't say a huge time sink was necessary.

What I'm saying is that appearances matter. When a potential new player signs on the shard and sees that they are given gm magery healing archery etc etc and then given free gold 9 times out of 10 they are not going to want to play on this kind of server. And i think this is pretty evident judging by the # of players here.

there are some free UO servers now that avg 500+ players on at a time. What do they servers do right? For one they appear legitimate.
this version of IN would be much better off just making fighting skills gain super fast rather than giving the impression of illegitimacy.

I was glad to have 90 magery as a starting skill, along with the other 3 skills it made me jump right back into ultima.
Also, you may only vote once or twice a day (12/24 hrs?) So that gold is just pocket change, but to a newb its a good start since skills like alchemy and scribe can be rather expensive.

This shard does not appear illegitimate at all, being such dedicated and friendly people play here. Ive looked at some of the top shards forums, they appear to be dead. Yes the have large numbers but id rather play here with people who are helpful and much more friendly.

[Rob]

I thought giving incentives to vote for a shard was against the rules of the top lists?

[Eru]

If you abuse it it might be, but I don't think they care much unless people start to complain about it. More specifically, if people who are paying the site start to complain or decide to stop paying. ;P Top sites do what they do because of the advertising revenue and membership fees.

Also, we're not technically buying votes since you can type .vote and get the 1000 gold, then not vote if you don't want to. If you only got the reward after the vote, then it would be more dubious.

[Atlas]

I can't agree with Boiling's logic at all.. I agree with Edge, the starting skills allowed me to jump straight back into ultima and motivated me to start playing again, AND they enable people to become more active, more quickly because there's less time macroing the essential starting skills like magery. It's not like the 4 starting skills are all GM. In fact there are only a few that you can get to 100, and they're easy to macro anyway. Like Edge said, the most difficult skills mostly start at 65 or less. And what is 1,000 gold every 18 hours? It's NOTHING, enough to give a noob a horse once a day, freak out less =p

The shard looks more legitimate than many, many shards I've seen. It has the same feel as when you start out on a UO Gamers server. It's well decorated, the staff is typically active and helpful, and quite a few of the players are too. The skills are 99% bug-free, as well as systems such as spell casting, etc, and the PvP is almost a mirror image of IN1. The only reason we don't seem legitimate is because of the player base, which is honestly irrelevant to legitimacy!

[Habibi Jones]

What Archangel said