Q-Are there differences between the shards?
A-Yep
:)
More and more players are expanding their UO careers to other shards, their are a lot of different reasons, you might get a better connection on one, or like the Player base a bit better on others. You might be frustrated with the Bugs and downtimes of a particular shard, or you would just like to Expand your UO presence into a multinational Character :) Lets start with the primary differences on a programming level, I have here 2 screen shots of the exact same location on 2 different shards Baja and Lake Superior respectively.Baja/Felucca just North of Minoc:
Lake Superior/Felucca just North of Minoc:
Most shards look like Baja in this area. Not all of LS has redwood trees, but right here it sure does!.
One of the reasons that all the other shards can be doing fine and LS will be plagued with problems, or Vice versa when a new patch is crashing almost every shard but LS chuggs merrily along is that LS to my understanding is run independently and on its own set of hardware (different hardware than most of the other shards in UO). If you move along lake superior on either the felucca or the trammel side you will notice some subtle, and some not so subtle differences in the terrain and possibly a few other areas.
The next area has to do with the spawn engine. Its not that is "different" from shard to shard, it works the same and is remarkably consistent on each of the shards. What is helpful to understand however is that is also has a Planned Random factor. Spawn frequencies, quality, types, and numbers are influenced by Time and traffic, however it still has a random factor.
When Trammel first came out it was for some people a HUGE pain to find stables that sold riding horses, when they would talk about it on the message boards others who had no trouble buying horses couldn't understand what the problem was.
It wasn't really a problem at all, it is just a difference in the shards. For the most part when a new NPC stable master spawns he has about a 1/3 chance of caring Riding horses in his inventory, the other 2/3 of stable masters only sell pack horses/pack llamas etc but not riding horses. So you could buy a riding horse in Minoc on some shards, but were out of Luck on others. That is random. Baja and Catskills each have 1 stable master at the west Briton trammel stables, at the Baja one you can buy Riding and pack horses, but at Catskills you can only Buy the pack horses.
In addition to the type of stable masters being random, to a degree the number of stable masters can be different as well. For example, Trammel West Briton stables on most shards have 1 stable master, on Atlantic they have 2. There are a lot of factors the influence the spawn engine one way or the other. One could develop a migraine trying to figure it all out, Its a bit easier just to remember that the game is 98% the same on all the shards, but occasionally there will be a difference.
Baja Trammel west Briton stables:
Another area that I want to get into is the social programming differences. On most shards there is an Open field just north of the Briton Moongates in the guard zone, but on Atlantic there is what looks like a fair, or outdoor chapel of some sort. Items that only exist on one shard are famous for producing rares. A good example is the Mallet and Chisel connected. Those were taken from constructions sites until the OSI remembered to lock them down. The interesting thing is connected Mallet and Chisels Exist on most shards (not all) however Every shard has construction sites, but very few shards (none that I know of in fact) have the same construction site. SO BE AWARE of the differences. in your shard. It would be inaccurate for most shards to say "The connected mallet and Chisel spawns at the Trinsic construction site. Because only 1 shard (Sonoma I think) has a Trinsic construction site. It would be more accurate to say "Check all constructions sites, their are Connected Mallet and Chisels spawning occasionally"
Catskills:
If your reading on a message board that a new kind of item was found on a certain shard but no one has reported seeing it there yet on other shards, before you write it off, think about if it was going to spawn on your shard where might it spawn, It could easily be like the Mallet and chisel.