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Ultima Online: Fifteen Years & Counting
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
It's hard to believe that the Grandaddy of Them All, Ultima Online, is fast approaching its fifteenth anniversary. We recently had the privilege of chatting with UO Associate Producer Bonnie "Mesanna" Armstrong. It's a short but informative interview about the venerable Ultima Online. Read on!
Ultima Online has been on the market for almost 15 years, can you tell us why you think it has such longevity?
Ultima Online is the ultimate Sandbox. We have something for everyone from designing your house from the foundation up to slaying dragons. We are probably the only game on the market that you can still run on a low end computer, in addition to the personal one on one interaction with the players that has forged an amazing community. I personally have played UO since 1997 and worked on it since 1999 and I continue to learn or see something new and entertaining every day.
Read more Garrett Fuller's Ultima Online: Fifteen Years & Counting.
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Comments
Never played this game. But do hear a lot of positive things about it.
UO today is not what it used to be. It undergone major changes. Havnt played in years so not sure how it looks exactly atm.
Still in it's days (up to first few years after release) it was great game. Everything was player oriented , player-made , alot of freedom. Of course that also created alot of problems and game suffered from many bugs, etc - after all it one of first mmoprg's.
Still apart of maybe SWG no other mmorpg was so rich feature wise.
Maybe ArcheAge will share some similarities, even though ArcheAge will be more casual friendly and also bring many themepark elements.
Even so cannot wait for AA to hit western shores. For it to succeed very good company (caring & having very good GM support + reacting fast to exploiters, botters, etc) have to publish it.
It that kind of company will do it, then this game imo have a chance of success in west.
also pls P2P for AA. Sandboxy features would be ridiculed in microtransaction , item shop based game...
Loved it until they did "care-bear" lands, also there are many free servers to play on out there supporting hundreds of players and endless customization, what-ever floats your boat :P
Oh, man! I'm still in love with this game ...
Feeling so nostalgic right now ...
Haha, yeah. Same here. I just wish I wasnt at work so I can install it XD
This is the game that started it all being the true first graphical mmorpg. Later on a few developers left Origin and created the second biggest mmorpg known as Everquest.
Ultima Online really started it all so here's to UO in it's 15th anniversary
I'm just throwing this out there... but who WOULDN'T want a new Ultima? Online or Off? I mean, seriously.
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Oh wow... OMG!!! i used to love this game!! was totally addicted to it!!! It was so much fun!!!
I still remember my Grand Master Mage, she was a tank mage and of course she was a Murderer from time to time
had so much fun!!! until they created the expansion and the 3D and the carebears land.. that kinda ruined it all... Oh well.. still good memories!!! maybe ill play again someday 
Not me;)
I rather see a succesor to Asherons call speically Darktide server with was alot better then UO in my humble opinion. AC1 this year 13years and counting.
Hope to build full AMD system RYZEN/VEGA/AM4!!!
MB:Asus V De Luxe z77
CPU:Intell Icore7 3770k
GPU: AMD Fury X(waiting for BIG VEGA 10 or 11 HBM2?(bit unclear now))
MEMORY:Corsair PLAT.DDR3 1866MHZ 16GB
PSU:Corsair AX1200i
OS:Windows 10 64bit
UO is still a very feature rich game. It's a shame that there are a lot of players who still refuse to believe anything good came from the game after Age of Shadows.
There is almost a generation gap now, too, where an entire generation will not know what Ultima is; that just sets the game up to be "reinvisioned" for a new audience if EA even decides to bless us with that.
I can't think of a studio at EA that I'd like to create a new Ultima title, online or not. It definitely isn't Bioware or the current skeleton crew running the game, though.
edit: Also, what's with this website's formatting? My post is separated here on the forums but in the comments section they look like a garbled mess?
Yeah ,just not Bioware. They're not suited to create this type of game ,besides imho their games became bit too streamlined compared to Baldur's Gate series times (not that BG was not streamlined ,but just not as f.e. DA2 or ME2 ).
Would require people with vision ,propably team consited from some old mmorpg dev vets coupled with some fresh innovative blood. & given quite a bit of freedom from EA.
Not much chance of that happening propably.
Investors play way too safe in last years in overall AAA games market and even more in mmorpg.
One of the true MMORPGs where the gameplay was so free and you could do pretty much anything, go anywhere. Truly a virtual world.
It had tons of bugs and rampant player killing, in the beginning, but still the feeling not to be on rails and not be sponfeed content by the devs. was so refreshing. Sadly it was only for a niche crowd as most people seem to prefer casual, linear games like WoW over this.
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What world is perfect? UO is a truer reflection of societies making up what their world will be, bugs n all
So much is player generated that the UO Team almost becomes a back up to the players storylines with the Event Moderators catering to each shard. It's good to see Bonnie "Mesanna" get the attention she deserves for supporting UO and the players all these years!
Airmid (Karina)
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Depends what you mean. If you mean an Ultima which is a linear, casual Themepark, I for one would NOT want yet another such game.
On the other hand if you mean a sandbox UO, like the original one but with modern GFX, UI etc probably many Themepark players would not like that.
So it is not really that cut and dry as one might think.
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I think he's also referring to the legacy Ultima had even prior to UO. WRPG and JRPGs both owe a great deal to the early installations of Ultima.
edit: What is going on? My edits aren't showing half of the text I'm editing!
Here's to another 15 years of Ultima Online!
UO was way ahead of its time. There were features in UO in its early years that only now are newer MMOs starting to finally incorporate. It's incredible what UO brought to online gaming and virtual worlds.
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Agreed! Man that would be great.
This was the game that I would wake up an hour or 2 before school to get in some crafting or skill gains....man I was addicted.
I honestly didn't like the griefing. Kinda happy the game is barely on the radar anymore.
One of my fondest memories was standing around the Britain blacksmith with a few other smiths and a line of people with their gear in bags waiting to have it repaired. Everyone chatting about their dungeon crawls and warning of the PK hotspots of the day.
That social element now is pretty much all but lost now, unfortunately. It isn't entirely the players faults because the developers still have to create systems that encourage or at least assist in socializing. Instantly slinging random players together into 15 minute dungeon runs isn't the way to do that.
Which is why I find gamer's pleas for more innovation from developers so depressingly ironic. There isn't really much need to 'innovate', they just need to look at the mechanics that UO incorporated and work off that.
I have so many fond memories of UO... I just wish that Tom Chilton hadn't turned the game into a boring item grinder with the Age of Shadows expansion... who not so ironically jumped ship shortly before the expansion release to move to Blizzard and work on WoW.
This is the game I lost my teenage years to, when other people were in great outdoors i sat in my room playing this game.
I still go back to it for a month once a year, LOTS of good memories.
I know I would. UO was my first MMO and is still the game I compare all others to. None have come close to providing the kind of true sandbox freedom that UO did.