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Imagine Nation has always had a great community and a large following. We proved this to be true with the 200+ players that showed up for our launch of IN:R about 4 months ago. However, creating a true Sphere replica was a lot more time comsuming and difficult then we had antisipated. In an effort to keep the spirit of Imagine Nation alive we decided to do something big. Here are the details. This was written by Maka, the admin of XUO. However, it should give everyone a firm understanding of what is happening and what is to come. The current ETA for this project to be complete is January, 2007.
What’s this?
This is supposed to be an insight on our project, Imagine Nation: Xtreme (IN:X), that hopefully will reignite a fire in the sphere community. We will provide you with information about our two current shards, Xtreme Ultima Online and Imagine Nation: Reborn, benefits of the merge, an outline of the server features, staff structure and the whole idea with this merge.
First off
You guys need to know that this server won’t be launched until we find it to be perfect. We will not start a half done shard and get you disappointed and I will not merge the players of XUO to something below their standards. I just want to let you know where you can place your expectations, as XUO is a 90% Sphere replica.
Why merge?
XUO and IN has been around for about 6 years as separate communities, might seem a little strange to merge now, but we are doing it! The old Sphere .51 community is dieing out. People have lost trust in Sphere cause of the instability, and frankly, you are very limited with such an old emulator. I (maka) have been running my sphere replica for about half a year now and I’ve managed to create a very stable and good PvP shard that resembles sphere to about 90%. IN have recently done the same thing but the community was not pleased with the results. The idea now is to merge INs devoted and active player base with the knowledge and result of XUO. XUO is solely a PvP server, not much to do on it besides competing. IN is a more environment based server, where the thing is more about the feel, but with flawing PvP. Merging these two servers will give you a server with decorated and interesting dungeons, accurate Sphere PvP, larger community, new features and that sphere feeling you’ve been missing. Imagine Nation:Xtreme will be the perfect hybrid between PvP, RP and PvE. Here is an outline of the IN:X features.
- Community merge. IN has had a peak of 200 players and XUO has about a 40-50 people on average.
- 95-99% sphere replica. PvP, skills, text and fonts and housing will be like its supposed to be. The “feel” is what’s important.
- IN:X re-scripted on RunUO 2.0, a lot of new features enabled. Saving while playing, support for new UO versions (such as UO:KR), generally less lag the scripting utilities of the .Net 2.0 framework. This will be needed to run a RunUO shard in the future.
- Staff merge. The active staff members from both shards get to stay. This means that the staff will cover more time zones and that your pages won’t go unanswered where ever you live. More developers also means higher frequency and quality of updates.
- A 4x1.8GHz computer with a 155Mbit connection. The computer and the connection are both sponsored; this means that no donations are required to keep the server alive.
- New scripting features, such as PvP ladders, filters, vote system and IRC clients.
- The PvP ladder keeps track of everyone joining events, every kill that is guild related
and duel stone kills. Here is a small preview:
- [Filter command filters away all sounds and animations that are out of sight. This is perfect is situations such as events, where there’s a lot of sound, and reduces your lag.
- An in-game IRC client that uses the OSI chat interface. It is now easy to be on IRC!
- A vote system that rewards you for voting and encourages players to bring players.
- An event supply system in certain events. This system ensures that everyone has the best possible gear and makes special events less item based.
- Two huge communities now becoming one, more players online and an active forum.
- An interesting worlds to explore with new armors, monsters and decorated dungeons. You will now enjoy riding through Destard, Hytloth and Wrong.
- Extended advertising options. This means that we can use the donation money to buy banners and text links on the different top lists and use Google as an advertising method. In the end it sums up to more new players joining!
- GM (skill) reward items. Have you spent time to get that skill? Now you’ll get something special for it!
- RP and PvP reward items, you will be rewarded for winning the (Tournament, Guild or Duel) ladder or completing that quest you’ve been working on.
- Advertising on ConnectUO and UOGateway. XUO could not do this due to the name.
Staff members
There are obviously a lot of questions regarding the staff. I’m sure that some of you guys are worried about cheating now that we merge our two servers and you get staff members that you are unfamiliar with, but don’t be. The staff team on both shards has been picked for a reason and we are only granting access to the active ones. We don’t want people with staff accounts that don’t do anything for our community and we do not want your pages going unanswered. We will also take various actions to prevent cheating, just in case. An example is that we will implement a system that tags every staff made item with the account of the staff member that created it. This means that it will even be easy for a counselor to detect a cheated item. There will also be 2 people with access to the logs, besides me and Coldrake, which will read the logs on an every day basis to make sure nothing is done illegally. There will also be two higher staff members, like head GMs, which will be there to server your specific need. These head GMs will have the title of “PvP blabla” and “PvE blablabla” and they will be your go to guy if something under those categories is wrong. You will obviously be able to go to someone else, but these two will have “special” insight in their fields.
(Skill and item)Transfers
Transfers will not be the same for both the servers. XUO will get PvP skills and the players from IN will get X amount of craft skills and the choice to take those craft skills in combats instead. This has been done due the different skill gains of our servers. IN:Rs skill gain is A LOT(1 week for alch, 1 week for magery) harder than the XUO one, so we see it no more than fair to grant them the crafts. This will also stimulate an economy where everyone doesn’t have everything, just need to find that vendor! XUO players will also get an X % of their money them from the server, we know it’s a drag to start over and over again, but this time you won’t have to. An advance method will be used to "transfer"(sell) all your items into gold and them bring them with us on IN:X. PvP(XUO) and RP(IN:R) rewards are also discussed in this transfer.
Web site
We will have a new and exiting web site that gives a breath of fresh air to the community. This is important to us as the web site is one of the main factors if a player joins the server or not when they see our server for the first time. It will be content rich, easy to navigate and most important, you will be able to see that its IN:X you are visiting. There will also be assigned people writing and updating the news section so that the site stays updated and fresh.
Advertisement
This new server will be better in every way, including this one. We will offer you guys to donate, and the donations will go the the server web site and advertizing. We already have a few hounded $ in our donation stash and we have been sponosred with ad space worth a few hounded. Advertizing methods we will use will include google, adbride and the various top shards.
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