Congratulations! I don't know how busy player-run shards are these days, but I look forward to exploring this once you've gotten it a bit further.

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tarellel 13 hours ago | parent | next [-]

UO Outlands has been pretty popular for a few years. They’ve implemented a lot of custom aspects (specialties), craft, new dungeons, land, as well as weekly quests and events. My brother and I play it a few hours a week. It’s incredibly popular for the nostalgia and its player base seems to be pretty consistent. It reminds me of early UO where your exploring, learning, and dying a lot. And there tends to be players everywhere you go.

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squidleon 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Thanks! There are still a few active shards out there, mostly us "old guys" in our 40s chasing the nostalgia of our teenage years. UO has a way of never really dying. Combat and skills are still a ways off, but the foundation is solid enough that I'm adding features every week (in spare times,) I'll keep pushing updates!

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D13Fd 14 hours ago | parent [-]

UO was such a big part of my life back then, it’s great to hear that it’s still going. Maybe I’ll set up a server to play with my kids - although they’ll never be able to get the full experience with player killers, trolls, scammers, people hawking their stuff at the bank, dragon trainers, etc.

	▲	HanClinto 11 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I've been tinkering with the same thing -- wanting to set up a little server so that we can all play together as a family. We've enjoyed Diablo 2, Minecraft, and Terraria as a family, but I feel like it would be fun to set up a little UO server. I'd really like to find a good tutorial for how to set up a chill / casual-friendly server (I like there to be some grind, but I don't want it to feel like "stock" UO) -- so something with accelerated skill gains and whatnot. I don't know if there are "family-friendly" presets for such things, but so far Copilot has been reasonably helpful at helping me along -- I just don't have it all working yet. If you have any resources you come across, I would be interested in comparing notes. :)
	▲	squidleon 14 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		That's a great idea, UO is honestly perfect for playing with kids. The crafting, housing, exploring dungeons together. And who knows, maybe you become the dragon trainer this time around!
	▲	Fokamul 14 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		There are several PvE UO servers, which are heavily against griefing. So I would say, pretty safe environment to play there with your kids and still with other people.

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Fokamul 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Most active is UO Outlands. Several thousands players?

They've reworked a lot of systems and it's basically 100x better than original UO.

There are several systems in place, which original devs wouldn't even dream of and saying that, official Ultima Online is still running. :D

It's PvP server, but with balanced PvP which really works for everyone. Not like original devs, they just dropped PvP because cookie-cutter players cried.

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squidleon 13 hours ago | parent [-]

Outlands is impressive from a technical standpoint, they've put an insane amount of work into it and the player count speaks for itself. I played there for a while.

Personally though, I feel they've overengineered it a bit. So many custom systems layered on top that it starts to feel more like WoW with UO graphics than actual UO. The original charm was in the simplicity you, a sword, and a world that didn't care about your feelings. But that's just my taste, and clearly thousands of players disagree with me, so what do I know. And yes, the fact that official UO is still running in 2026 is both beautiful and insane

	▲	devin 11 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		This was the bummer to me when I tried it. I liked the bug-ridden classic experience before the notoriety patch. I recently tried https://www.classicuo.eu/ ClassicUO, and the nostalgia was incredible. Granted it is not playable, but there is something about that experience that all of the assistants, hotkeys, etc. fail to capture.
	▲	nzeid 10 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> and a world that didn't care about your feelings Dead on.