Now and then...

Eyrothath

I am going to go through UO and talk about what I find to be the best additions of today and the best additions from when UO came out.. Back in the day, PvP was much better to be honest, you had total freedom in this game, there was danger everywhere, thieves all over, there was no insurance, anyone could attack you on sight? Do I miss this heat of battle? Absolutely.. The game was very buggy back then I will admit, and less polished, but it had a lot going for it.. Age of Shadow was a total re-vamp..

Less item based, like, they had a entirely different system. PvP was more based on skill, and people would always have to group to fight dragons, etc..

No safe zones. Full loot. PvP everywhere with accountability.

The game was a true medieval game back then, and that is what people loved so much about it.. It had a lot of D&D players and fans of Lord of the Rings, and real life role-players, it was very adult, in fact, the game had a M for Mature rating! They also had a bounty system which is no more. The game resembled a true renaissance type of world.

Was no customizable housing like today, which was a downfall, houses back then would decay as well if you did not login and visit them after like 14 days or so, but friends of your house could also refresh them for you. The reason why was because there was so many subs back then, today we do not need house decay, as you can find huge house plots just about anywhere.

Sea-sawing the stats! That is what we called it where you sea-saw with your stats by raising and lowing certain skills that you work, and you max your stats out in about a day or so.. For a loooong period of time we could not do this, stats would only go up a certain amount per day, and it got to be very frustrating.. We can sea-saw with our stats again though.. This was a very good change that they did, and was very high on demand..

Player Looting: Back then we could loot in TRAMMEL, if a corpse was bones, we could loot the player, this was actually a bug fixed when AoS released.. You could also attack NPC's and loot them, back then NPC's would give you counts if you killed them, you could always go to buccs den and kill them, and become a red very, very fast.. People would constantly get on though butt naked, and just fill up Britannia with dead corpses and it would lag the servers..  Sooo you can't attack NPC's anymore, it sucks, I know, this is the one thing I miss..

I am gonna finish this later..

 

 

Stellos

Well put.  I miss the environment that you have described.  The bounty system was fun and made for a scare when you ran into one of the top ten murderers on your server since there was full loot and you'd sometimes have some pretty valuable stuff on you.  Finding a plot for a house was difficult though at a certain point.  However, most of us had more than one house including a tower or bigger!  So I guess I can't complain.  I don't know if that is accurate that you can find huge spots of land in today's UO though...I wouldn't think that is true otherwise everyone would have a castle since the value of gold in UO has dropped dramatically. 

Anyway, you're absolutely right in your description.  I wish they could make a game like this using today's technology.  And no Darkfall and Mortal Online aren't going to cut it:)

Mystic_Fuzz

While I do miss the old style gameplay, there were a lot of changes that needed to be made. There were, and still are, many bugs and exploits that have been around forever that were never taken care of and probably will never be taken care of. The game is so far out of wack now that there is no way it will ever recover, nor will a lot of players, like myself, go back to it.

There is certainly a lot of nostalgia to UO. I miss having a world that was built for PVPers, PVMers, and casual gamers alike. I miss having a crafter that was actually useful. Now UO and most other games are all item based. I miss the danger of having to mine for ore while not knowing if someone was going to PK me around the next corner. You had to adapt back then and put fighting skills on all your characters as a means of survival. There was also none of this Lower Reg stuff so macroing wasn't really an issue as it is now.

Which brings me to my next complaint: macroers. It has been a problem for years, it was a problem when I left the game. I can't imagine much has changed. EA became very lax on the issues of cheaters and dupers over time and it was only a short time before the economy was thrashed.

Word on the street right now is that Garriott might or might not be trying to get back into the Ultima series with a new MMO. At the very least, he seems to be highly interested in doing a new fantasy MMO. I would hope for an updated version of the old style Ultima we all grew to love that had something for everyone that appealed to PVPers and PVMers alike. I really hope this is the case. I don't know that Mortal can pull off being what UO should have been.