[Thayet]

Hi, I am an active player of UL and I'm here to tell you about the game. I'm going to do my best to be thorough and impartial though, and list as much information about the game having played it for some time now. Obviously I like the game because I'm still playing it. That doesn't mean I think the game is perfect, though I do think that if you're looking for an immersive roleplay-enforced high fantasy setting with limited mechanical support, UL might be what you're looking for and you should give it a shot.

This is sort of a review of all my experiences in the time I've played the game, both the good and bad. I'm hoping to give prospective players a glimpse into what the game has been like for someone who came in cold and has been trying to push their way into things.

I'll start with the good, and move into the neutral and the bad. I'm apparently running into a character limit here, so I'll have to split this into two posts. Oh well.

Firstly, there are absolutely amazing options for item customization. There is a very wide selection of accurate period clothing ranging from the 1500s to early/mid 1800s, particularly for western European cultures. It's very obvious whoever wrote the clothing shops did their homework and it's very easy to build yourself a complete wardrobe of any particular style you like. If you're into playing dressup, UL's options are incredible even now I am routinely impressed by the level of detail and variety of selection available. I seriously can't sell this aspect hard enough.

The world is fairly massive and most of the writing is above average to excellent. There are picture maps made by one of the players available of almost every area in the game that show the room-by-room layouts as well as list shops and things of interest. There are a number of things you can interact with, places you can poke around in, and little neat things you can find. A verb called pathfind will also let you get directions to the closest room whose name matches your argument, so it's very hard to get outright lost while exploring.

There are hundreds of verbs and adverbs plus an open freeform emote/act verb if those don't suit your needs. There is a pose verb that lets you set up a line everyone sees when looking in a room, so people can know the second they walk in if you're laid out in a bloody pool or doing a handstand or whatever. The mechanical support present for interacting with various objects is fantastic and extremely extensive. Even if a verb doesn't exist there's very little you can't do with emote/act within reason, and people are fairly good about playing along.

UL is RP mandatory and they absolutely mean it. I've never seen anyone be OOC on purpose in this game. There is a global OOC chat channel which gets some use, but as far as actual in-game stuff goes everyone is universally pretty tight about it.

There is extensive background lore and history for the game's setting and most of the game's areas and races. Because the game is nearly two decades old, there are occasionally some contradictions, retcons, or stuff that doesn't make sense, but this gets addressed and fixed as it's brought up. Due to the game's longevity, there's also vast amounts of actual played game history to uncover, and a handful of PCs that were around at the game's start are still playing.

The experience and leveling system is the best of any game I've played and is extremely conducive to encouraging roleplay. When you gain experience it's stored in a buffer and is absorbed over a set period of time. The buffer will allow you to accumulate hours or even days' worth of experience during which you can go sit around roleplay with people, and all the while you're steadily moving toward your next level instead of falling behind like you would in a lot of games.

There is decent class variety and most of the obvious fantasy tropes (bard, fighter, wizard, etc) are available. Professions are not guilds (they're chosen OOCly in chargen), and your chosen profession can have as much or as little to do with what your character actually does as you want, within reason. All Empaths are empathic and a little psychic by definition, but not every Empath is healer, for example.

UL has a system called fame which lets you use accumulated currency of the same name to buy various things such as change the descriptions of items, your character's own physical description, add verbs to items, and a variety of mechanical changes and benefits (stat respecs and the like). Staff vets almost everything, and they're extremely flexible in how they'll let you modify an item or other description. Getting a completely custom description, wardrobe, armor, and weapons is not actually very hard and there are very few limits on what you can actually modify. I adore this system and the options it opens up as far as tweaking your character to be exactly what you want them to be.

The interactions/creative teams are pretty great about supporting player-run events provided you give them enough notice. Within reason you can get items to use as props, write your own food or drink (and even be rewarded with fame for doing so), and request interactions or responses from staff-run entities. This can and frequently does blow up in unexpected ways, which I consider a good thing.

Event staff does appear to reach out to new players to specifically involve them in things on occasion. This is nice to see, and a pleasant change of pace from other games, where it seemed like only established players ever got any kind of involvement in staff-run events and roleplay.

Most players and staff are extremely accommodating when it comes to accepting however you're choosing to present your character. If you want to make a grizzled war veteran, you can do that and people generally won't try to challenge you or be strangely aggressive about it which is something I've seen in other games. It's still a skill-based game, so you're not going to come out of chargen with the ability to kill all the dudez, but if you have the ability to really sell a character it's very nice to see how willing some players are to encourage whatever you're doing and roll with it. There's a certain level of suspension involved in certain kinds of scenes, so if you do something like (for example) get into a barfight with someone who is level one million, most people are cool enough to not simply wipe the floor with you but act out a scene where you both take a few hits. To that end, there are a lot of tools available to adjust your characters' effective skill so even newbies can land a hit on you if a scene calls for it. This is really very nice to have!

Due to a recent influx of visually impaired players, the developers have recently implemented a number of quality of life changes for visually impaired users and have been very responsive to requests for changes to both the game and the website to make it more accessible. This is great, both for visually impaired users, and because it shows the devs actually care about the kind of thing, which I think is nice.

The dev team, and the lead dev Auchtor in particular, is fairly incredible. UL is overall pretty underdeveloped, but what exists is excellent. They are responsive to player requests and seem to take genuine pleasure in what they do.

There are a number of players that make UL an absolute joy to play in. These people are supportive, helpful, mature, and welcoming even if their characters aren't. I've been playing MU*s for over ten years and some of the best roleplay and scenes I've ever been involved in and some of the most complex and interesting characters I've had the opportunity to interact with have been in UL.

Mechanics instability is a thing. UL is heavily in development and at any given moment everything you know will suddenly be wrong. Fortunately, when this happens, the changes are fairly well documented and free restats and the like are handed out to everyone. These are usually very positive changes long-term but can be a little frustrating short-term while readjusting.

Skill contests involve an offensive number versus a defensive number. A "to-hit" is derived from these numbers, with an equal offense and defense having a to-hit of 69 (so things favor the defender). Then a 1d100 is rolled and if the result is equal to or greater than the to-hit, the offense succeeds. The rolls for most skill checks are transparent and let you see the numbers involved for almost every contest, which takes a lot of the mystery out of whatever task you're doing. Combat in particular is extremely simple and only grows slightly more complex as you continue to level and mobs get harder and have larger or more dangerous.

Despite being fully customizable in chargen, stats for a given class are going to be pretty much set and there isn't really a lot of room for variety. Certain builds are flat-out objectively mechanically superior and there are not, currently, a whole lot of mechanical incentives to attempt to think outside of the box. On the bright side, that does simplify chargen once you figure out what all the stats actually do, and there are some ongoing efforts to allow for more variety in builds.

PvP/PK exists but is pretty rare and isn't super supported by mechanics or staff. If you're into conflictual RP there are plenty of people who will indulge you, but there are far fewer willing to take a fall. This isn't exactly unique, because very few people play text elves in order to be anything other than the hero. That said, there are a couple of players who seem to relish being on the losing side for the sake of other players, or at least seem to tolerate it pretty well.

I'm running into the character limit here, so I'll continue in another post if I can.