Post: #1

I've used Sphere forever, my first server was back in the 51a days when Sphere was the dominate server emulator, of course, over the years we have lost steam to RunUO.

Personally, I think it's because RunUO is a "full server out of the box", while Sphere is a functional server, but not a full and ready to go one. We require a lot more pre-setup to make an OSI-style shard.

But, I don't think that matters. My perception of Sphere now is that Sphere is an "Engine emulator", allowing us to make a Ultima Online style game. Be it OSI's version of UO or our own.

A lot of people know about my work trying to remake my own MMO with UO's engine, and I feel it could not of done this as easily with RunUO. When I started Aetharia, I sought out SphereServer to see if it was still around and also looked into other emulators like RunUO. What I found was Sphere was still in my eyes, the best for the task of creating a world. RunUO may be written in C#, and technically may be just as customizable as Sphere, but I find Sphere a much easier platform to "Develop" on.

Sphere's system is both deep and complicated, yet simple at the same time. Where as RunUO is a huge cluster of "WTF am I looking at!!?" trying to make heads or tails of even simple things. Of course my old 51a background made it a lot easier to pickup 56b, but I actually know C# programmer (amateur level), and RunUO is still a mess to look at.

The main thing that made me stick with Sphere, was reading the RunUO forums. You'll see people talk about adding custom scripts, new content, etc, but a lot of these posts more talk about it as "Some extra thing to do ON TOP of their pre-designed OSI style shard". Sphere on the other hand seems to be full of people who want to either make their own custom servers, or take the default OSI style server and improve upon it. While RunUO feels like people just wanted to "mod" their OSI shards with minor features.

So all in all, I think Sphere is a better platform for people who want to "Create" a world, where as RunUO is a better platform for people who just want to run a vanilla like-everyone-else server.

Also; This community is a lot nicer. The RunUO community has that "Arrogant programmer" feel written all over it.

I hope Sphere cam come back up on top, or at least on par with RunUO's popularity. It's a shame, because I personally think Sphere is the superior product. It's just getting ignored.

An MMORPG based on the Ultima Online engine.
Completely Custom Map, GUI, AI, Combat, Skills, Crafts, Art, Music and so much more.
http://aetharia.com - Home of Ambition!