In the old UO(First couple years), things could happen in game that would just be awesome, like finding a fallen house or looting something really kewl off some dead guys corpse. On the other side, things could happen that really pissed you off, like getting killed while looting a house that your stole a key to or just getting murdered randomly. Now it is just one big happy world where nothing bad ever happens but nothing really good even happens(except maybe getting an artifact which never happened to me).
In recent years of UO there is no benefit to team work, anything I could do in the game, I could do by myself and not have to share loot. I think this is due to the fact that skill gain is just incredibly easy now, I remember playing a character a year or more and never getting my skills as high as I wanted them, now it takes maybe 2 weeks, in a month you could build a whole account full of decent characters.
In summary they made a bunch of really worthless changes to the game, I could go on but I wouldn't be telling players anything they didn't already know.
