Here we go again….

After writing one review of this game years ago, I find myself writing another now that I see this game has been brought back to Steam.

Instead of copying the long-winded review that had thousands of views and likes, I’ll shorten it a bit

Uncharted Waters Online (UWO) WAS a great game. It had everything going for it; a huge open world, player driven politics, crafting and economy, and regulated, yet open world PvP. The game world is based off of the real world and with a bit of history knowledge and geography, one could even use a modern day atlas to navigate around the game.

Quick anecdote of one of my first harrowing experiences in the high seas in this game: Upon my first trip around the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, I found my little ship got infested with rats, got hit by 2 storms, and narrowly avoided some pretty nasty NPC pirates.

Once I reached India and loaded up on as much spice as I could carry, I took off for home.
Long the way, I lost much of the cargo to 3 fires and more rats. By the time I made it back to England, I was still able to net a tidy little profit of just over 1 million Ducats (dollars).

The overall trip took me just over 2 hours.

A while later, I followed a quest line in my city and it talked about Magellan’s voyage around the world, so I soon followed in his footsteps. This quest took me almost 2 days to complete, without the assistance of any other players, or cash shop items. The reward was about 5 million Ducats, if I remember right.

I mention those little stories to show that this game used to have a huge potential for fun! It was severely mishandled at every step of the way though.

To start with, the developer is a familiar one for anyone with some overall video game knowledge. KOEI TECMO, is the modern company that used to simply be Koei which was founded in the late 70’s and released game series such as Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Aerobiz, and Dynasty Warriors. They have NOTHING to do with this game anymore though, so don’t let their name listed on Steam fool you.

Years ago, in the mid 2000’s, this game was released for an Eastern audience and was a huge grind-fest. A few years later, the game was released for a Western audience under the Netmarble developer. After that, gPotato picked it up and finally, we have Papaya Play now in charge of it. So this game is several generations removed from its original form by its original developers.

Each of these shifts in ownership, added, removed or outright neglected parts of the game. The biggest damage was caused by a disastrous imbalance in the game’s economy while with Netmarble, but at the time, the company was in turmoil due to inside scandal, so this game was left hanging in limbo… with broken features that destroyed the economy and no one at the helm willing or able to fix that.

Subsequent publishers capitalized on this imbalance and instead of hard resetting everything back to their defaults, they introduced major cash shop changes that addressed this by injecting more artificial currency into the game, along with means to gain even more once in the game.

This leads us to where the game is in its current state.

If you log in for the first time, upon completing the now-abridged tutorial portion of the game, you will find yourself playing a delightfully atmospheric, fun little trading and pirate ship fighting game - much like a very detailed, in depth version of Sid Meier’s Pirates!

After a while though, you’ll notice something is amiss.

The quest rewards will pay you a few thousand, maybe even 100,000 ducats for high level quests. Or, as I mentioned in my anecdote, you could rake in about a million for a 2 hour spice trade after you’ve ground out the insane amount of levels required to haul that cargo.

If you go to an NPC shop, you will see some pricey items, but well within your achievable price range. But now… take a look at those player vendors sitting afk in the street. You will see player made items with stats just above NPC items that sell for a few hundred MILLION ducats. You’ll see moderately good player made items, including ships, sell for easily over ONE BILLION, that’s 1,000,000,000 Ducats.

At this point, you can now see that there are almost 2 games taking place within one another at the same time. You have the original developer-made game that’s chugging along reliably, introducing new players to the world and catching your attention with quests and story lines. Then on the other… you have the player-trillionaires, who have taken advantage of the imbalances in the game from day one, and ravaged the economy to suit their own needs.

This isn’t a matter of “gittin good” at the game. You will simply never be playing the same game at the same level as they are, yet they can influence, interfere and change the game for you on a whim, due to some of the in-game mechanics that worked really well when money was limited, but are now in the hands of the few elites changing billions, if not trillions of Ducats back and forth. You will not and cannot compete with this.

Despite its early 2000’s charm, atmosphere, anime style, and mechanical depth, UWO is a shell of its former game. Ironically, the reason for its death are the few players who still play it and migrated accounts with it for years. The publisher releases cash shop updates to attract their attention to spend money, but does nothing to reset and fix the game since they can make more money off this dead horse, if they just feed more Pay to Win at it.

Avoid this game for any serious play time; you’ll just get frustrated and then disappointed.

First off, I've played with friends on this game for approximately 6 years over 3000 hours worth, main account was through the papaya site. Replaced my computer last year and decided to reinstall it on steam. I used to use Steam as well for a second account. We had a blast and it was THE best tutorial into a deep complex game I have ever seen. Since they changed hands, me and a friend decided to get in. I was horrified when I got in and saw what I did... I had to get in from the papaya site.

BIG PROBLEMS:
1. First of all you can't choose your account anymore from steam.. hence had to use papaya.
2. Secondly, They did away with the whole life and meat of the game. When I say tutorial, I mean a tutorial that barely scratched the surface but took you week or two to get through it. it gave you so many resources, skills, insight. etc. ALL GONE They just drop you in, hand you a knife and another item, and say right click and drag around to change your camera view and basically good luck. If you are a new person it tells you that you cannot participate in the 3 schools and quests for those schools.
3. The game is a ghost town but for bots. It's all ruined... the magic of the whole game gone.

I have millions of currency and high level skills that we as a group enjoyed working with as a team .... every one of us just uninstalled it and said good bye... UWO died before we got back to it. I have never been so heart broken over a game that died... but this one...I'm shell-shocked at how they just ruined it. It's not a wonder it is dead, new people get in and just log out not knowing what to do. The cities used to be busseling last year... now even the largest cities are ghost towns.

I should make it clear I’m not recommending supporting this game monetarily, I would suggest you don’t buy anything from the cash shop, what I encourage players to do is give it a try and play without spending money, especially if you have some friends to bring in.


PROS:

- Unique MMORPG that focuses on 3 types of playstyles: adventure, merchant, battle (maritime).
- Freedom to choose what skills you want, and focus on whatever combo of playstyles you prefer.
- Encourages the cooperation with other players who will cover the skills you don’t have, up to 5 players can work together as a team for most of the game’s content.
- Game’s goals and endgame depend on what you want to do and what you like instead of forcing everybody to focus on the same goal (most MMORPGs focus on PvP as the late game content for example)
- Focus on the journey to get to a goal instead of the goal itself, something most MMOs don’t offer.
- Sailor Trainers, volunteers that offer information in regards to any question about the game’s content
- An overall nice and friendly community.
- Not necessarily a pro or a con, it seems like most of the high level community tends to be on the older side. I mean they even use the term „toon” for their characters. Maybe you can take this as a pro for having a more mature playerbase?

CONS:

- Way too many conveniences/privileges/unique gear exclusive to the cash shop. Someone has to pay to get them in the game.
- Cash shop ships are better than the ones you make in terms of base stats when comparing them at equal level requirement.
- A lot of information about the game’s content is outdated, and you have to use about 3 websites if you want to get your info about something.
- The gigantic amount of grinding for some skill may turn away some players.
- The combination of the cons above coupled with the fact that the game’s progress can get wiped upon changing publishers can heavily turn away any player from investing time or money into the game.
- Game encourages you to work with other players, but due to the potential cons of working with others, players have started a trend of using alts to cover the skills they lack on their main.
- Because of the con stated above, it’s hard to find players to work with long term that don’t use alts (the ones with alts don’t need you basically). You’ll have to bring existing friends.
- Some skills can be considered mandatory, but there aren’t that many.
- Some people will help you but they may require you to join their Company (guild). For info in general just ask the Sailor Trainers.
- Random disconnects unrelated to your internet connection.


I. PROS

Most games force you to be a generic class and be good with that role. This game offers the possibility to play it as PvP based or as peaceful as you want. Do you like collecting, finding treasure, and learn some stuff about general history? Then you’re definetly going as an adventurer. Do you like making lots of in game money and crafting stuff both for you and your team? Go with the merchant. Do you like the PvE combat? Maybe you want to compete with others, or even be a pirate? Then consider the maritime route.

But guess what, you have the freedom to combine these preset paths however you want. You don’t have to focus on just one of them. You can be a peaceful adventurer that’s just interested in making money and collecting discoveries. Or maybe you want to be a merchant who can pick up a fight with pirates. Or you want the full game experience and focus on everything. Nobody can tell you that what they picked is better than what you did.

The outdated information in this game is countered by Sailor Trainers. These are special characters of volunteers who focus on helping anyone if they have any questions. They have a mandatory shift monitored by the publisher. The downside is that they aren’t always around even with those shifts.

II. CONS:

The cash shop offers a lot of things that can give advantages. From in game money to exclusive cash shop items and privileges. It doesn’t mean you can’t acquire them for free by working hard on your in game money, but the inflation makes it hard for players to compete with the market, especially for new players. But for this particular game, I don’t think this issue is that big, since you’re not forced to compete with others.

The grinding is tedious no matter what you do. Which is unfortunate especially for adventuring as it should focus on finding new things constantly.
Game had a wipe around 2 years ago because of the publisher change, which caused a lot of veterans to abandon the game. Since the game isn’t popular, it means it can die again in the near future.

III. Addressing some negative opinions

1. „There’s forced PVP, you can be plundered by pirates”
It’s a challenge you’ll have to adapt to. The game offers ways to avoid having your items stolen. The Storage skill counters the Plunder skill, so invest into it. As a merchant your trade goods are at risk so get Camouflage Hold or even Improved Hold on your ship.
If you’re focusing maritime or adventuring, there’s ships with Emergency Acceleration or even Heavy Bombing, enabling you to either speed up away from the enemy and retreat, or slow them down with normal shots from your stern cannons.
If you get shipwrecked, use the Rescue skill and go to the nearest town. You have like 5 minutes of being immune from any attack after someone attacks you. Also 1 hour protection from that particular pirate.
Or you can just enroll yourself in a Company and do activities in unsafe waters together with other players. If you get attacked by a pirate, plunder the attacker.
Most importantly: there aren’t that many players to begin with. I’m not sure where the fearmongering started. I’ve been on the sea from Africa, to India, to South-East Asia, and even the Caribbean a lot of times, and I only got attacked by a pirate once. Simply set your status to Private and you’re good to go.

2. „Cash shop is P2W, don’t bother playing”
Why not? You care so much about the advantages that cash shoppers have over you, almost as if you want to be some top tier hardcore player yourself among them, but you’re not willing to play the game without spending money? The, you know, hardcore path?
There’s no F2P MMORPG out there that doesn’t offer P2W elements or at the very least a shortcut-to-win model. If you’re that concerned with equal opportunity over anything else, play MOBAs, FPSs or RTSs, not MMORPGs.

3. „Everybody uses alts, I don’t wanna use alts”
Then don’t use alts. Get friends that play with you. Work together and cover each other’s skills. You’re playing an MMO.

4. „Your progress is not future proof, it can be lost at any time”
Yes, that applies to every MMO out there hosted by a company.
The only online games where you can consider your progress future proof are the ones where you make your own servers. And that’s if you own the servers yourself.

5. „Indian/SEA spice trading and Nanban trading needs a ton of cargo space and time wasted”
Go for Rare Trade Goods. Check as many regions as you can for what items are categorized as such, research where to get those items, store them in your quarters and sell them when the price gets to the highest value before going down.
Most of these items have a low base value, getting towards 100x times their price at max. I recommend having Foodstuff Trading and Fishing skills because those items usually belong to those categories or are acquired that way. Other skills may include Seasonings, Textiles and Spice Trading.
I mean a lot of these items compete with spice prices. Some like the Spanish Mackerel can get up to a price similar to Nanban Trade Goods.

The game has an awesome concept, tainted by the publishers. Play the game without spending any money. Preferably with your friends.

I've played this game daily for over 6 years, way over 15.000 hours.
So I could say a lot about it.

But if you want a short version: Dont bother investing much time in this game; its an old, outdated, grindy mmo with a too small population, many scammers and cliques. And there will be a new Uncharted Waters MMO next year, wait for that one!

This game is most likely not going to last for much longer. And you cant even play most other games while you have uwo on, due to its anticheat gameguard.

So first I will tell what happened in this game since Papayaplay took over, until its re-release at Steam.

UWO RECENT STORY

This is the 3rd release of Uncharted Waters Online in steam, this time from papayaplay, who wiped the global server around october of 2017, when they deleted the investiments of everyone, both beginners and veterans, and then restarted with a new server.

They told players that the wipe was made to implement pvp changes(which was proven a lie after a patch mistake after). We all know it was to increase their $$$ from the p2w.

That said, they gave no bonuses to previous steam players who restarted, and completely ignored steam players until now.

The previous gm(Sheebs), got rehired by papayaplay.

He is someone who never bothered to learn or play the game himself, even after around 2 years doing translations and then becoming the main gm taking over gm Coolwind.

Also, many people got their Credit Card info stolen during that period, used to buy things in online shopping. Since some of the same previous staff got transfered from Ogplanet to Papaya, yes I get paranoid.

UWO GRAPHICS & UI

Very old graphics. They are still fine if you dont care so much about them, good enough to be playable.
But the interface is extremely outdated, and if you are battle focused player, you cant reassign most controls. Lefthanders might have issues.


UWO PLAYABILITY

There are 3 main branches in this game: To adventure, to trade and to fight.

If you are a new player planning to fight, I tell you right now, look for another game. You've arrived too late. You will need to do too much grind, and most good players quit.

Some players will tell you that its not that much grind, but they had years ahead to practice and learn, and wont really teach you much at all. The game has p2w ships and equipments. Some players are ok with it since they dont have jobs, so they have time to play with multiple characters at the same time and will keep trading with them, grinding ducats for months, so they can get better ships, improve them, and equipments.

If you just want to casually adventure like in the console game, then its fine.

If you want to casually trade like in the console game, then you will have a rough start.

The game is slow and unfriendly to new players. Most players nowadays play with multiple alts, doing "nanban trade runs" to farm the game currency.

If you are a new player and wishes to compete in fights with the few veterans that didnt quit this game, be prepared for a very rough ride.

All your equipments are constantly losing durability in this game, so you lose a lot of your time ingame just trying to fix or get replacements.

CONCLUSION

1. Used to be an interesting game, its ok if you just want to adventure casually like in the console version
2. Too much mismanagement
3. Showing its age, with outdated graphics and interface
4. Intrusive anticheat that bugs running other games
5. No more events like it used to in the past(halloween, valentine, St. Patrick, etc
6. P2W specially if youre new and wishes to fight.

I PLAY THIS GAME OVER 5000 HOURS ( 4000 Hours when OGP was publisher on steam and 1000+ hours on Papaya play oficial site)

AND IN ADVANCE SORRY FOR MY BAD ENGLISH

ABOUT FREE TO PLAY
Many of free to play games tell you they are free but they are really not,and I play many free to play games wich has add-on or paid expansions, or that you need to have a premium subscription to use something, go somewhere or do something in the game. Uncharted Waters Online content is completely free and you don't need to pay nothing.

UWO have premium items such as expansions to your inventory, ship speed up booster, skill proficiency rate booster, experience gain booster etc. that you can pay but you don't need it because there is enough content in the game that will help you out to eventually level everything without the help of premium stuffs. You don't really need the expansions to your inventory because you can make as many alts as you want and store your items on them . The games content is completely free.

Most of premium item can be bought for players for in game money if you realy need some them

But if you want to help developers you can buy premium items for real money, this is up to you to decide


ABOUT THE GAME

In UWO you can be an adventurer, merchant, or a maritimer and you can switch from those classes anytime you want in the game, you are not stuck with one class. For every class there are also jobs that you can be and you can switch any of these jobs anytime you want as well, so you can pick job that is most helpful to your style of playing.

This is a long game and you should not expect quick success and progress, or quick money making in the game.

It is very big with many options and it will take awhile to get started.
Skills are very important in this game,sometimes are a lot more important than your levels.Skills imapct every single thing you doing and how good do it in game. A higher skill rank makes you better is something than the other player with a lower skill rank.
Levels are also important for being able to sail in certain ships, and unlocking certain quests or archive maps if you are adventure player.
Tutorial cover basic things to get you started, but you can use UWO Wiki and Uwo Ivyro pages where older players put large info about classes, jobs, equipement, quest etc. to help new players.
Graphic maybe look a little old and music is simple but this is minor drawback, every game have it.

CLASSES
In UWO you can start your life in 3 mayor clasess.
- Merchants (Traders) are not just for making money,they also craft various items and equipements that is used by other players,there is some of them:
weapons and armors for players and ships
equipements and suits for players no matter what class they are
furniture for your house to store various items
food to replenish your vigor
- Maritimers can be Pirates and Bounty Hunters
Pirates - you can love them or heate them but they are part of this game.You can recognize them by color of they name
Red-attacking every one, and Orange-they dont attack players form same nation
Bounty Hunters (blue name) they hunt down pirates
Maritimers also participate in ESF (epis sea feud) fight betwen nations for teritory nad there is large rewards for participating in ESF,also other 2 clasess can join to ESF
- Adventurers ,they made long sailing and making discoveries like historical sites,marine life,plants,animals,treasure,dungenos etc
There is around 3200 discoveries, aloso map and land charting
Or you can try to combine all 3 clasess in same time like me

COMUNITY

Comunity in UWO is huge.
Players can form Companies (guilds ,aliances ) to work together and help each other
During school ( there is change in tutorial now is diferent than was before ) time you will be in school chat and you can work with other novice players
If you have questions there is always some one to give you a answer or even to help you if you need it

Papaya Play new game publisher , gave veteran players the role of Community Advisor (CA next to their name) in the game to help players with questions since they truly know the all aspects of this game.

There are also Sailor Trainers, experienced volunteer players who will assist players in their game-play, particularly to new players who just started playing

UWO have large mature and helpfull player base

You will see also negative reviews,but those reviews are writen mostly by players that play UWO for few hours only,some players play a couple hundres hours and still dont like game becouse they want to grove fast but they can't and wirte bad review

Of course there is negative side of this game,like heavy skill grind,graphic are a bite dated but you can play it on almost any PC but those are minor drawbacks every game has it.

And longtime players sometimes are giving new ideas via world chat for game,new events ,items,etc

##### For novice players if you need help or advice I will gladly help you,I can be found under the name Krajisnik ( you must be lvl 11 in any class if you want to send personal massage to someone ) #####

NOTICE

I do not play any more on Steam, but play directly through Papaya Play, so it's impossible to see how long I play, as I said in my review at the beginning of 4000 hours on Steam when OGP was a publisher and 1000 hours directly to Papaya Play. The game was removed from Steam when Papaya took over and is now restarted on Steam again. The game on Steam was previously named Uncharted Waters Online: Episode Atlantis, If somebody does not believe it can be checked on my profile, both Uncharted Waters Online games are still memorized with the correct playing time

It's one of the best games ever made. Don't powerlevel, don't allow any players to talk you into skipping ahead with assistance, and don't try to *beat* the game. The starter content and mid game content is leaps and bounds above other games in this genre. Uncharted Waters allows you to literally sail around the world... and it takes time, effort, and patience. It can be scary at times, and at other times exciting, but there are many periods where sailing is all you're doing.

You can fight, trade, adventure... whatever. The only problem here comes from end game greed. There is a definite pay wall that you will hit at around 100-200 or so hours, but you can even get around that with enough clever farming. It doesn't ruin the game AT ALL, unless you're one of those min-maxing idiots who has to be at the top of every chart. If you're him, then either get your credit card ready, or don't play this beautifully made game.

Super Dead Game.... a shell of its former self. non-helpful salty community who trolls new players. terrible new player retention from the Staff. the in game GMs are the same people who play the game and help troll others inside the community chat... only came across a few people in my 40 hours of gameplay.. imo it doesn't live up to what it should be under proper management. Huge balance issues, the grind is very boring. cheers though for atleast giving me the opportunity to taste abit of my childhood nostalgia. best of luck

Beautiful game tainted by a greedy publisher (Papaya) with gambling and pay to win mechanics. A real shame.

This game is not only old, it has been mismanaged by several different companies and mangled to the point of being unplayable. If you do somehow manage to get into the game by concept or franchise, and enjoy it, do -NOT- give them money and buy stuff from their store. You will immediately have issues that cause you to lose some or all of the purchase, and they will blame it on "unforseen circumstances outside the TOS" and you'll be out the money, items, and they won't replace anything.

Grifting at it's best, or worst. However you'd like to look at it.

I would not recommend this game to anyone. I've played this game for 10 years from PapayaPlay and have (regretfuly) spent thousands at there pirate cove which is a gambling system to get better ships etc that players who cannot afford will never have. I was told that Koei has a Japanese server that they pay better attention to and is subscription which in my opinion is discriminatory to those on Maris server which is the EU,N America and other areas that have to go to the pirate cove to throw hundreds of dollars away, while the Japanese server has a subscription. This is how Koei and PapayaPlay gouge others on Maris server with the cash shop. The cash shop is run by a third party PapayaPlay. Also with the current shrinking population of Maris server, there has been a lot of cliquish behavior and many Companies in game are run by the same person which is against policy that is never enforced. Honestly the game is more fun to play when World Chat is turned off. If you do play this game do not go on world chat. The other players do help each other on this chat, however if you disagree with them they will throw a fit and have the rest of the community shun you just for disagreeing. I have never seen such a tight knit community in any mmo and I don't mean that in a good way. It's almost like a cult and I will not endorse anything like that to anyone. You will also be shunned for going the PVP pirate route of the game. I used to PVP as a pirate. People would throw fits about it and forget that its part of the historical sailing game. Most of them will then get others on there (or there hundreds of other alts) in there company (Friendship Builders is the worse for this) who PVP and gang up on you and port camp you and just harass you even if you log back in the next day. I'll try to wrap this up with this last note. There players in game known as Community Advisors [CA]s. They are supposed to monitor World Chat to make sure no one violates Koei policy and help people in game. Most do this and do it well and stay in there respective lanes. However there are a few [CA]s in game that take things too personally and will hold a grudge if you disagree with them. They have been in games for years, and yes they do help people out for the most part. However if you question what they said they would hold a grudge and will try to find ways to kick you out of the game. They also have non [CA] alts who they harass you with. If you get on there bad side they will hold grudges and try to get you banned from the game even if what you say did not violate Koei policy. I have never seen a world chat on any mmo that is as strict as in UWO. or treats grown adults as children, and its not supposed to be that strict and its because of those few who think theyre in charge even though theyre also just players. as long as it is in Koei guidelines. I and many others have filed complaints against those particular CAs for overstepping there duties. Some of the [CA]s think they own the game and all ticket going to PapayaPlay are ignored and they still do what they do. There are a lot better less corrupt (my opinion) games out there. This is unfortunate because this is a really fun game. It can just do without the toxic ingame poitics. Also a subscription instead of the pirate cash cove would be more appealing to new players. Overall, do not play this game unless you like ingame politics and stress.