Patria Regis was created from January to March of 2001 as an alternative to hack and slash UO shards. Patria Regis stresses role-playing and political interaction rather than simple monster-questing, skill-worshiping and malicious strong vs. weak Pking. The shard has been developed in such a manner that guilds form political entities whose interactions drive most of the gaming.
Role-playing is a central necessity to the general theme of Patria Regis. For this reason, all applications for membership are reviewed for role-playing potential and willingness. Lack of role-playing in-game is generally frowned upon and total disregard of role-playing is considered grounds for expulsion from the game.
In order to drive interaction between guilds, guild membership is basically mandatory. There is a guild in every major city and membership is not difficult. GMs can assist players in finding the guild that is right for them. In order to enforce the mandatory nature of guilds and to promote a more fearful look at death, resurrections are performed only as a function of guild membership. There are no healers in Patria Regis, nor does the spell 'Resurrection' exist, nor can individuals with a high enough skill in healing resurrect other players. Instead, each guild is in possession of what is known as a 'Resurrection Tile.' These tiles can only be used by members of the guild to which they belong. In addition, they can only be used a total number of times per week equal to one and one half times the guild's membership. For instance, a guild of 50 people would get 75 resurrections per week. This is in order to ensure that, in times of peace, resurrections do not get gobbled up too quickly but, in times of war, resurrections can run out rather quickly, allowing one guild to cripple and defeat another.
Laws will be mandated by the guilds themselves. For this reason, while PKing is generally accepted by the GMs, it may not be accepted by the dead player's guild. Some guilds, on the other hand, encourage it and may even have the guards turned off in their cities. Of course, wars between guilds will inevitably involve PKing, but thanks to UO's guild system, members of one guild who kill members of a warring guild do not lose karma, nor are they labeled as murderers.
Macroing is not allowed in Patria Regis. GMs keep a keen eye out for anybody breaking this rule and violators will be punished in a variety of ways, including expulsion.
We are using a new map which is entirely different from the regular UO map. This means new cities, new landscape and new NPCs. Of course, if, at any time, a player has a question about the theme of Patria Regis or any rules of game-play, feel free to page a GM.
There are no extra races in Patria Regis. We rely on the single race for the game because we do not see the need for extra races in order to promote a political theme. As far as we can tell, the only advantage to a race/class system is to add an extra dimension to role playing. We also believe, however, that it is entirely as possible to make a dynamic character using the single race as it is using several races or classes, so long as the player has sufficient imagination.