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UO should have been our future

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  • SkarothlockSkarothlock Member Posts: 89
    Originally posted by RajCaj

    Originally posted by Skarothlock


    To the whole, WoW raids aren't challenging argument:
    If you "cheat" and your whole raid looks at the strategy guide and watches the videos then there is no intelectual challenge.  If, on the other hand, you go into the encounter blind, it is very challenging because your whole raid will have to be very observant as to what killed them.. a lot of things can be going on in a boss encounter.  Then you have the challenge of organizing your team in such a way that they learn form the information you are gaining (as you are getting your ass kicked) so that you are able to move past that section of the fight... In WoW, many bosses are multi-stage fights.  It would take you a long time, even with good players to defeat each boss, this is especially true for casual guilds who do not have the opportunity to stay on a boss all week until he is learned and downed.
    Challenge is, facing a difficult problem that requires thought and effort to be solved.  The above is a challenge.  Is it also challenging to go farm materials when there are pkers out to get you, yes.  Because you enjoy one form of challenge over the other doesn't mean that one is more challenging than the other.
    WoW's challenge is taken away by information web sites.  If you really want challenge in WoW raiding, join a guild that will not look at the videos and walkthroughs... sure your "progression" will be slowed but your challenge, and feeling of accomplishment, will be much greater.
    WoW is a race now.. which is sad, because it really is a good game. (am done with it though)
    Skaroth

    I agree with much of what you said....expecially the last part about it being a race. 

     

    It's fine and all in theory to say that if people want a real challenge, they can attempt boss fights blind.....but the reality is a very different thing.

    Endgame raiding guilds require that you have a certian level of gear before they will even consider your membership.  If your gear isn't good enough, your considered a liability to the group and will not be asked to join. 

    Hell.....its hard these days to get in a simple 5 man heroic dungeon run without overgearing the instance. Group leaders will not let you join because it will require a longer dungeon run. 

    Gearscore is a 3rd party service that creates a numeric rating of each piece of armor / weapon and generates a total score.  if your score isn't at a certian level, you get booted from the group before you've even had a chance to display your ability to play your character.

    Aside from the minority, most people are in such a hurry to get GEAR.....which is a drawback of a gear centric system.



     

    I haven't played since June and I know the game has changed since I left but... I played on an RP server for two reasons

    1) more mature player base

    2) so I did not have to see names like "Chucknorrisrulz" etc

    I know they x-servered the grouping system which blurs the lines of the servers more, much like the x-server battlegrounds.  The attitude of players wanting everything to be quick and easy is the problem, WoW itself provides plenty of challenge to those who wish to seek it.

    Good luck finding people who want challenge though

    Skaroth

     

    See the violence inherent in the system!

    image
  • Lizard_SFLizard_SF Member Posts: 348
    Originally posted by Marcus-



     
    I  played a macer some time after release, and did very well thanks..
    Yea, the game was released with bugs, what was it, 13 years ago? It was I believe, the 3rd graphical MMO created, and the biggest of its time... Not too shabby in my opinion.  Well, theres games being released today with just as many bugs and just as many problems..
    You mentioned the rose colored glasses.. Personally, I look at UO for the world it created, not just the nuts and bolts of the game itself..  The point of the thread is further development of this type of game, not recreating the game itself...
     

     

    The point isn't the bugs; the point is that many of the "unique" aspects of UO were a combination of bugs and, more importantly, poor design in terms of understanding what they wanted their target audience to be, what they wanted the rate of progression to be, what skills should do, etc. Games today may well ship with far worse bugs and many major design flaws -- insert your favorite example here -- but the one mistake they don't repeat is not knowing what their goals were. You won't see another UO because no other game will come out with such a poor understanding of the marketplace and its niche. To be fair, it's very hard to argue anyone could have understood what the MMORPG marketplace would look like prior to UO, and UO assumed it would be something like the social MUSH and Ultima CRPG communities, mixed together. Everquest, which was well into development when UO shipped, chose to pattern itself on DikuMUD, and THAT was much closer to the truth. Since then, of course, the MMORPG market has developed its own, unique, character, and games target specific subsets of that.

    Things like mixing useless and absolutely essential skills into the same resource pool, the lack of clear goals, assuming that social issues could be resolved by players, and many other things, were not the result of software bugs, but of deeper design errors which no company today will repeat, due to UO as an example. UO had enough virtues that it had sufficient inertia to carry it past those early years, give it time to define itself, and hold on -- but with that wonderful 20/20 hindsight, it could have been much more successful. I don't wish to come off as too critical of the designers; a lot of what was learned could only have been learned by harsh experience. This buys them a pass; it doesn't buy a pass for those who, today, look back on a broken design and declare it superior.

    You want a worldbuilding/sandbox game? You play A Tale In The Desert. You want sociopathic PVP? You play Darkfall. You want sophisticated economic and social simulation (and some cool pewpewpew laser action?) You play EVE. You want the ultimate (so far) evolution of the DikuMUD Skinner Box model? You play World of Warcraft. All of these games know what they are and know what they want to be and succeed, to varying degrees. (I have not had played DF, because I don't play any MMORPG these days without a trial account, but the fan boards indicate it does what it set out to do.) Ultima Online was a "throw it against the wall and see what sticks" design, and that lucky or unlucky combination of factors is unlikely to happen again.

  • EthianEthian Member Posts: 1,216
    Originally posted by Getalife

    Originally posted by Knightcry


    I recall in '01 playing Ultima Onlne thinking this is great and I can't imagine what great games this will spawn.  Back then I thought we would see games developed that would offer complex house building, farming lands and herding wild animals into pens to sheer and slaughter. Games with balance in pve and pvp where both aren't game makers or breakers but both are fun. Content that is player created and supported by the company and vice versa.
    Imagine what gaming would be like if gaming went with the UO style rather than the EQ style. I for one think it sounds better than hitting level 9000 and raiding to gain super sayain gear with flames.
     

     

    You mean hardcore gaming style? i am sorry but since MMOs became mainstream its casual players who earn these companies there bread and butter. UO was never mean to be played casually. If i had no life and 12 hours a day to burn i would play games like UO.



     

    12 hours a day? You gotta be kidding me. Any game can be played casually, whether its a sandbox or not. The only reason most consider games like UO hardcore is because theres so much to do which in turn means you'll be playing for a much longer period of time.

    I'm off the themepark MMO bandwagon now, happily supporting a sandbox MMO which puts all other MMOs to shame as far as I'm conserned. The future of online gaming should be sandbox MMOs but companies running games like WoW, LOTRO, and Aion see things differently. It's all bout money as usual. Its sad...

    "I play Tera for the gameplay"

  • Lizard_SFLizard_SF Member Posts: 348
    Originally posted by Ethian



    I'm off the themepark MMO bandwagon now, happily supporting a sandbox MMO which puts all other MMOs to shame as far as I'm conserned. The future of online gaming should be sandbox MMOs but companies running games like WoW, LOTRO, and Aion see things differently. It's all bout money as usual. Its sad...

     

    a)Which game is this? I'm always looking for a new obsession.

    b)You got a better system than money? Haven't seen too many great games coming out of North Korea, lately, Comrade.

  • nariusseldonnariusseldon Member EpicPosts: 27,775
    Originally posted by Lizard_SF

    Originally posted by Briansho



    UO had skill progression. In the early version of the game you didn't know how you were leveling skills until you did a trial and error on what you could do/make. This was more rewarding and helped make character skill hybrids unique. No two people had to exact same character build.

     

    Your last sentence intrigues me.

    In your world, who won the 2008 Presidential election in the United States? (I'm assuming, perhaps incorrectly, that you have a United States and that it had an election in 2008; feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. When the Internet crosses the borders of the infinite worlds of probability, you're not safe assuming *anything*.)

    I ask because, in the world I live in, Ultima Online during the early days pretty much defined uniform builds, as the ease of maxing skills and the constant wild swings in balance meant you were always remaking your character to meet this week's "I win" combo.

     

    Yeh. The TANK MAGE phenomenon.

    Plus, i don't know what Briansho is smoking when he wrote " In the early version of the game you didn't know how you were leveling skills until you did a trial and error on what you could do/make". In BETA which I played, EVERYONE knows that you clicked on a rock AGAIN and AGAIN to level mining (and ditto for OTHER skills). That is why even in beta, the places that you can mine are crowded with players.

    And personally, clicking a rock 1000 times to level up a skill is NOT what i call "rewarding". I would much rather do quests, or instance dungeon runs, or a thousand other things.

     

  • Marcus-Marcus- Member UncommonPosts: 1,010
    Originally posted by Lizard_SF

    Originally posted by Marcus-



     
    I  played a macer some time after release, and did very well thanks..
    Yea, the game was released with bugs, what was it, 13 years ago? It was I believe, the 3rd graphical MMO created, and the biggest of its time... Not too shabby in my opinion.  Well, theres games being released today with just as many bugs and just as many problems..
    You mentioned the rose colored glasses.. Personally, I look at UO for the world it created, not just the nuts and bolts of the game itself..  The point of the thread is further development of this type of game, not recreating the game itself...
     

     

    The point isn't the bugs; the point is that many of the "unique" aspects of UO were a combination of bugs and, more importantly, poor design in terms of understanding what they wanted their target audience to be, what they wanted the rate of progression to be, what skills should do, etc. Games today may well ship with far worse bugs and many major design flaws -- insert your favorite example here -- but the one mistake they don't repeat is not knowing what their goals were. You won't see another UO because no other game will come out with such a poor understanding of the marketplace and its niche. To be fair, it's very hard to argue anyone could have understood what the MMORPG marketplace would look like prior to UO, and UO assumed it would be something like the social MUSH and Ultima CRPG communities, mixed together. Everquest, which was well into development when UO shipped, chose to pattern itself on DikuMUD, and THAT was much closer to the truth. Since then, of course, the MMORPG market has developed its own, unique, character, and games target specific subsets of that.

    Things like mixing useless and absolutely essential skills into the same resource pool, the lack of clear goals, assuming that social issues could be resolved by players, and many other things, were not the result of software bugs, but of deeper design errors which no company today will repeat, due to UO as an example. UO had enough virtues that it had sufficient inertia to carry it past those early years, give it time to define itself, and hold on -- but with that wonderful 20/20 hindsight, it could have been much more successful. I don't wish to come off as too critical of the designers; a lot of what was learned could only have been learned by harsh experience. This buys them a pass; it doesn't buy a pass for those who, today, look back on a broken design and declare it superior.

    You want a worldbuilding/sandbox game? You play A Tale In The Desert. You want sociopathic PVP? You play Darkfall. You want sophisticated economic and social simulation (and some cool pewpewpew laser action?) You play EVE. You want the ultimate (so far) evolution of the DikuMUD Skinner Box model? You play World of Warcraft. All of these games know what they are and know what they want to be and succeed, to varying degrees. (I have not had played DF, because I don't play any MMORPG these days without a trial account, but the fan boards indicate it does what it set out to do.) Ultima Online was a "throw it against the wall and see what sticks" design, and that lucky or unlucky combination of factors is unlikely to happen again.



     

    Those who have played SWG at release might argue with you about a developer now knowing what their goals were..  ; )

    but i definetly understand your point.

    From what I understand, Darkfall has your sociopathic pvp, and your world building. Perhaps not to the extent of UO, I'm not really sure, time constraints kept me from playing, but i may check it out again in the future.

     I just don't believe that a sandbox can only do one thing. Did UO get lucky in the amount of things it did? Ya.. I believe you're right in the regard.  I agree, players will never police themselves, so you expand (depending on your point of view) and go faction. Is this free for all PvP, no, but it could be the further development of the sanbox...

     SWG was on the right path, granted it still needed a lot of work.

    Koster may have taken the sandbox mentality a little too far. At release, there was very little to do. The carrot back then was Jedi, thats what (almost) everyones focus was. The "world building" was pretty decent (player towns etc), the crafting was (arguably) one of the best (player run economy) but the GCW, and the PvE were poor at best (imo).  I believe the only dungeon back then was the Correlian Corvette... There was some pretty good quests, but those obviously were mixxed in with your kill 20 of those, and heres 20k credits.. The game certainly needed work...

    What they did next.. well thats stuff of legend... :)

    You could of course use this as an example of your point, they couldn't do it all....

    As i have said throughout this thread, I don't believe remaking UO is the answer to what the sandbox crowd is looking for, you stated that way better than I could.... But i do believe that a sandbox game, done properly, could really flourish in todays market, I'm just shocked none of the big boys has seen enough to take a chance.. Especially with the "success" of DF and EvE..

     

  • WraithoneWraithone Member RarePosts: 3,806
    Originally posted by Briansho


    What's with the whining about ganking? If you learned how to play the game you knew how to not get ganked. I didn't pvp much and I knew how to get out of situation. Why cry? It's like whining because you keep dying in Team Fortress 2 and you expect no one to ever attack you. If it's a feature of the game why not learn how to play the game?

     

    Oh please... Thats been the lament of gankers and griefers from the start, when the Dev's finally do something to protect their business model.  "Know how not to be ganked".  Is code for "roam around in packs like we do".  Since out gearing/leveling their victims is seldom enough for gankers/griefers, they need numbers as well.  TF2 is a FPS game thats based much more on skill, than the typical gear based MMO.  Its always amusing to listen to some ganker/griefer babble about their 733t skillz, when what they really mean is they are dripping in high end epics, have 20-30 levels on their victims and roam around in packs.

    Such attitudes are why games that allow ganking/griefing are limited to niche markets in the west.  It also tracks with the evolution of Concord in Eve, and the various other anti ganker/griefer actions in the games since Trammel.

    "If you can't kill it, don't make it mad."
  • WraithoneWraithone Member RarePosts: 3,806
    Originally posted by Lizard_SF

    Originally posted by Ethian



    I'm off the themepark MMO bandwagon now, happily supporting a sandbox MMO which puts all other MMOs to shame as far as I'm conserned. The future of online gaming should be sandbox MMOs but companies running games like WoW, LOTRO, and Aion see things differently. It's all bout money as usual. Its sad...

     

    a)Which game is this? I'm always looking for a new obsession.

    b)You got a better system than money? Haven't seen too many great games coming out of North Korea, lately, Comrade.

     

    You MUST have faith in the Dear Leader! ^^ Some of the Korean guilds give an entirely new meaning to the word obsessed. I swear some of them must play their toons in rotation or something.  Don't even get me started on how bad ganking/griefing is in far too many of the eastern games.  Its tolerated much more in the east than it ever has been in the west.  Its also why so many eastern games don't do nearly as well in western markets.

    "If you can't kill it, don't make it mad."
  • RajCajRajCaj Member UncommonPosts: 704

    Couple of last points and I'm done....

    1. Regardless of everything thats been said about the hard knocks up bringing in Ultima, the UO community (as a whole...not just talking about the evil PKs) was a smart and resorceful group of people.  Most people only got fooled once.....and the game's approach to items meant that a player wasn't forced into quitting the game because he/she lost their goods as a result.

    Fast forward to today, and I see players in WOW running around and doing things in wreckless abandon.  I see people in BGs and PvE dungeons doing things that leaves me completely dumbfounded.  The same guy running solo into overwhelming numbers repeatedly, massive displays of herd mentality, and out right refusal to critically think.  I blame the mollycoddeling many games have adopted in the name of getting more generic gamers playing a very specific genere.

    2.  Gear driven games makes people do funny things.  It makes people who dislike PvPing queue up for a PvP match who have no ambition or want to PvP.  It makes people who's been suited up with gear by a guild drop tag and abandon all those people so that they could get in another guild thats progressed further along.....just to get access to better gear.

    It makes people ebay ingame currency and items....and as a consequence it attracts china farmers like the plague.   It causes eliteism among the playerbase and its causes MAJOR problems balancing the game.

    3.  Creating any MMORPG game that doesn't cater to all of the console gamers, First Person Shooters is very hard on the developers due to the unwillingness of the publishers to fund anything thats not able to achieve a certian % of the new and expanded MMO playerbase. (IE, the consoles and FPSers)

    Lastly....and this may just be me....I have never had the adreneline rushes and sweaty palms / pits in WOW, Warhammer, Aion that I experienced in Ultima on a weekly basis.  Just Sayin....

  • JeezesuzJeezesuz Member Posts: 70
    Originally posted by RajCaj


    Couple of last points and I'm done....
    1. Regardless of everything thats been said about the hard knocks up bringing in Ultima, the UO community (as a whole...not just talking about the evil PKs) was a smart and resorceful group of people.  Most people only got fooled once.....and the game's approach to items meant that a player wasn't forced into quitting the game because he/she lost their goods as a result.
    Fast forward to today, and I see players in WOW running around and doing things in wreckless abandon.  I see people in BGs and PvE dungeons doing things that leaves me completely dumbfounded.  The same guy running solo into overwhelming numbers repeatedly, massive displays of herd mentality, and out right refusal to critically think.  I blame the mollycoddeling many games have adopted in the name of getting more generic gamers playing a very specific genere.
    2.  Gear driven games makes people do funny things.  It makes people who dislike PvPing queue up for a PvP match who have no ambition or want to PvP.  It makes people who's been suited up with gear by a guild drop tag and abandon all those people so that they could get in another guild thats progressed further along.....just to get access to better gear.
    It makes people ebay ingame currency and items....and as a consequence it attracts china farmers like the plague.   It causes eliteism among the playerbase and its causes MAJOR problems balancing the game.
    3.  Creating any MMORPG game that doesn't cater to all of the console gamers, First Person Shooters is very hard on the developers due to the unwillingness of the publishers to fund anything thats not able to achieve a certian % of the new and expanded MMO playerbase. (IE, the consoles and FPSers)
    Lastly....and this may just be me....I have never had the adreneline rushes and sweaty palms / pits in WOW, Warhammer, Aion that I experienced in Ultima on a weekly basis.  Just Sayin....

     

    Very nice post and I totally agree.

  • nariusseldonnariusseldon Member EpicPosts: 27,775

    Fast forward to today, and I see players in WOW running around and doing things in wreckless abandon. I see people in BGs and PvE dungeons doing things that leaves me completely dumbfounded. The same guy running solo into overwhelming numbers repeatedly, massive displays of herd mentality, and out right refusal to critically think. I blame the mollycoddeling many games have adopted in the name of getting more generic gamers playing a very specific genere.

    That makes the game fun. You can try a boss again and again. You can run into a dungeon just to see it. WOW encourages risk-taking and people take advantage of that. It is just good game design. Games are for entertaining people. I don't want to play a game as if i am in real life watching every step of the way.

    Plus, you can only do crazy things solo, or with a like minded group. Most group will kick you if you do stupid things and cause them wipes.

    Don't forget games are for fun, not for building characters or training people to be smart. We have universities to do that.

  • manateememanateeme Member Posts: 2
    Originally posted by Lizard_SF


    Man, I wish I could score the backward-pointing rose-colored glasses franchise for MMORPG.com. I'd make a fortune.
    Let's look at UO as it REALLY was, shall we?
    One skill -- magic -- dominates *everything*. I wanted to play a non-spellcasting character, and was pretty much told "U R moron", except they probably spelled "moron" wrong, too. Beyond that, everything from FOTM, except that they patched so frequently back then in a desperate attempt to make the game playable it was more like FOTW.
    Due to very poor game design, you could get to 7*GM in 2-3 days of play. There was very little to aspire to since you could "max out" trivially. (This is part of what led to the incorrect impression that UO was supposed to be a PVP game -- there was pretty much nothing else to do.)
    What? You can´t even GM 7x that fast with todays wierd system and helpfull tools like ala scrolls and soulstones.

    get real. GMing a skill "back then" took time , alot of time.
    And Magery was in no way the only way to go. If you sucked then yes , if you had a mind of your own and was willing to use it.. then
    The "morality" system was a pathetic sick joke, leading to things like "red names" macro-pickpocketing each other for an hour to "Go blue". Or they'd just give their stolen goods to a blue alt. (Not to mention the 200 or so ways you could trick someone into attacking a guard, or that blues could use to harass/grief, knowing they couldn't be attacked.)
    The quests. Yes, folks, there WERE quests in UO at launch. They were all "Hello, yournamehere! I need RandomItem! I'll give you RandomGold for it!" On more than one occasion, I bought the item the quest giver needed FROM the quest giver, then turned it into him for a healthy profit. Programming at its finest!
    Uh..? No? Around the start there where not even any escort quests. Stop lying to yourself please?

    I don´t know just when the naturalist quest came around (the -one- your talking about) but it was far later then even t2a.

    You could pick cotton and spin it into wool... which sold for less than the cotton. Now, I agree the labor theory of value is bunk, but unprocessed raw material shouldn't sell for less than processed in ANY economy. This is a minor point, but it's typical of the overall poor design of the major game systems, poor design that many people look back on as "features". The broken morality system wasn't "broken", it encouraged you to be "clever". The uncounted exploits -- things like gaining immunity by standing in a wall of fire in a peaceful zone where it couldn't damage you -- were "features". Standing on server boundaries and killing people as they lagged across them was "tactics". The various bugs in the trade interface, house security, and so forth "made the game challenging". Standing at a point the guards couldn't reach and fireballing people, while your buddies looted with impunity, since looting corpses originally carried no morality hit? "Canny play".
    The useless skills: There were eight potions, each color-coded for your convenience. You had a skill which would let you identify a potion by taste. The point of this was....? Now realize that "Potion Tasting" and "Magic" came from the exact same pool of skill points. Gee, which should I work on raising? Hm, hm, hm.... (Remember Camping skill? Or cartography, BEFORE they added in treasure maps, and all you could do was waste paper and ink making a map which showed you, uhm, the same thing you saw on the cloth map included in the game?)
    Grats! You fail at even understanding the point of UO. UO wasn´t about what the game told you to do. It was about what you wanted to do , alot of skills and items had no other value then the value you found in them. For purposes such as roleplaying (wich in UO was massive and awesome) Carto and taste had it´s uses.
    The unbelievably broken spawn engine. UO promised a "real ecology" where players could impact the world. Kill all the rabbits, and the wolves would move into town, etc. What actually happened was that the rate of slaughter and especially hoarding meant the sophisticated resource recycling engine never, ever, worked, and it was quietly dropped and replaced with a more standard spawn system in short order -- just not quickly enough to stop some people from quitting because they could spend an hour hunting and not find so much as a rabbit to kill.
    Banks piled high with the corpses of bald thieves, created and disposed of by the hundreds, in the hopes of grabbing a key or other valuable from some poor sucker. (Not to mention people running everywhere, because if you stood still to talk to someone, someone else would pick your pocket. Great way to build community, folks.)
    Yep. And people learned , adapted and the naked thieves went away.
    Ultimately (heh), the real problem with UO is that it didn't know what it wanted to be. It was marketed first to fans of the Ultima CRPG series, who expected a deep and rich roleplaying experience, heavily story driven and focused on morality. Then it was invaded by hordes of battle.net kiddies, who thought that if there was something moving in a game, whether it was a rabbit, a merchant, or another player, the only thing to do with it was kill it. People put up with UO for a year or so, as the devs promised to fix everything, but then EQ came along and sucked out all the people who wanted to go kill monsters and follow storylines, and without unarmed miners to kill, the PKers had nothing to do. The Trammel/Felucca split proved, beyond doubt, that most people DIDN'T want to experience the thrills of living in virtual Mogadishu for 12.00/month, and those who did were fickle and problematic audience.
    Ultima is still around because eventually it did fix most bugs, balance most issues, and decided to focus on world/community/sandbox, and held onto those players who liked that sort of thing, but it never became as big as the early reaction meant it COULD be. EQ quickly reached many times the player base UO had, and thus became the model for almost every successful (and many unsuccessful)  games to follow, culminating, of course, in WoW.
    Eventually, someone will find a way to combine sandbox/community play with a rich questing/story environment, and I think *that* game will be the one to dethrone WoW. What it won't be, though, is "UO 2.0". It will need to challenge a number of conventions, and do so in a way which is playable by the masses, not just by the people willing to devote 10 hours a day to a game. Someone mentioned Fallen Earth -- after a lot of soul-searching, I decided not to turn my trial into a full sub, mostly because the game basically allows you to max out nearly every skill, and a world of basically self-sufficient crafter-combatants doesn't seem sustainable to me. But it's definitely on the right track, combining a lot of quests and storylines and a rich world background with an environment that encourages, "Hey, let's see what's over there!" freeform gameplay and self-directed character development.
    Ultima Online was what you made it into , if you played UO hoping it would show you the way to fun ofcourse you would be disapointed. If you played UO and created your own fun , then you had fun.

     

  • nkryptiknkryptik Member Posts: 36
    Originally posted by Knightcry


    I recall in '01 playing Ultima Onlne thinking this is great and I can't imagine what great games this will spawn.  Back then I thought we would see games developed that would offer complex house building, farming lands and herding wild animals into pens to sheer and slaughter. Games with balance in pve and pvp where both aren't game makers or breakers but both are fun. Content that is player created and supported by the company and vice versa.
    Imagine what gaming would be like if gaming went with the UO style rather than the EQ style. I for one think it sounds better than hitting level 9000 and raiding to gain super sayain gear with flames.
     

     

    To this day I still cannot understand why UOX was never fully developed and released.  I guess that as just another casualty of EA buying out a game and killing it.  For those that do not know Origin was the company that designed and owned UO until they partnered with and were then bought out by EA.

     

    The biggest I miss is actually seeing a real GM not come Customer Service rep calling themselves a GM who could just walk over to a broken item and fix it on the spot rather then wait for 3-5 days for a macro generated response and wait months for a patch, I as well miss the city control where if your faction controlled a city the other 3 factions could only enter IF that citys Sheriff did not hire guards, even that cities Finance Minister could jack the NPC prices through the roof so no one at max level sat around and said naw I'm not in the mood, or complain they were bored, there were cities and control or factions to kill, this game took skill or you got killed and anything and everything on your person was looted clean and you were left with nothing but a death shroud.  Another big thing I miss was no Action House and 5K people with ad-ons that cut your prices because you have to travel to a blacksmith shop and pay a real person to craft your gear not loot some dumb token 95 times for a chest piece. and repairs were done be smith for tips.  Uo only made 2 real attempts to make the game easier they put in a dual facet systems where each map was identical one was all out pvp and the other was only pvp if you were in the Order or Chaos guilds or your guild was at war with another guild, then they put in the quest system to see if that made things a little easier for the players.

    Live GM ran in game events were awesome where the GMs had and area setup that was just for that event and they controlled the spawn rates and could even toss in the odd boss level mob if there were enough people and people call this sandbox?  No sandbox is where you run the same stuff everyday to get gear wait 3 weeks and run it all again for more gear 3 more weeks run it all again for more gear.  If anyone thinks this is not sandbox then it dang well is a hamster wheel because you do the same ting over and over and over again.

    I just hope EA are waiting for everyone to start getting tired of the repetition and out of no where give us that UOX instead of partner with another company, hire the best public relations in the business and build hype about another game that is WARHAMMER!!!!!!!! <----------- GARBAGE!

  • MotearMotear Member Posts: 18
    Originally posted by manateeme

    Originally posted by Lizard_SF


    Man, I wish I could score the backward-pointing rose-colored glasses franchise for MMORPG.com. I'd make a fortune.
    Let's look at UO as it REALLY was, shall we?
    One skill -- magic -- dominates *everything*. I wanted to play a non-spellcasting character, and was pretty much told "U R moron", except they probably spelled "moron" wrong, too. Beyond that, everything from FOTM, except that they patched so frequently back then in a desperate attempt to make the game playable it was more like FOTW.
    Due to very poor game design, you could get to 7*GM in 2-3 days of play. There was very little to aspire to since you could "max out" trivially. (This is part of what led to the incorrect impression that UO was supposed to be a PVP game -- there was pretty much nothing else to do.)
    What? You can´t even GM 7x that fast with todays wierd system and helpfull tools like ala scrolls and soulstones.

    get real. GMing a skill "back then" took time , alot of time.
    And Magery was in no way the only way to go. If you sucked then yes , if you had a mind of your own and was willing to use it.. then
    The "morality" system was a pathetic sick joke, leading to things like "red names" macro-pickpocketing each other for an hour to "Go blue". Or they'd just give their stolen goods to a blue alt. (Not to mention the 200 or so ways you could trick someone into attacking a guard, or that blues could use to harass/grief, knowing they couldn't be attacked.)
    The quests. Yes, folks, there WERE quests in UO at launch. They were all "Hello, yournamehere! I need RandomItem! I'll give you RandomGold for it!" On more than one occasion, I bought the item the quest giver needed FROM the quest giver, then turned it into him for a healthy profit. Programming at its finest!
    Uh..? No? Around the start there where not even any escort quests. Stop lying to yourself please?

    I don´t know just when the naturalist quest came around (the -one- your talking about) but it was far later then even t2a.

    You could pick cotton and spin it into wool... which sold for less than the cotton. Now, I agree the labor theory of value is bunk, but unprocessed raw material shouldn't sell for less than processed in ANY economy. This is a minor point, but it's typical of the overall poor design of the major game systems, poor design that many people look back on as "features". The broken morality system wasn't "broken", it encouraged you to be "clever". The uncounted exploits -- things like gaining immunity by standing in a wall of fire in a peaceful zone where it couldn't damage you -- were "features". Standing on server boundaries and killing people as they lagged across them was "tactics". The various bugs in the trade interface, house security, and so forth "made the game challenging". Standing at a point the guards couldn't reach and fireballing people, while your buddies looted with impunity, since looting corpses originally carried no morality hit? "Canny play".
    The useless skills: There were eight potions, each color-coded for your convenience. You had a skill which would let you identify a potion by taste. The point of this was....? Now realize that "Potion Tasting" and "Magic" came from the exact same pool of skill points. Gee, which should I work on raising? Hm, hm, hm.... (Remember Camping skill? Or cartography, BEFORE they added in treasure maps, and all you could do was waste paper and ink making a map which showed you, uhm, the same thing you saw on the cloth map included in the game?)
    Grats! You fail at even understanding the point of UO. UO wasn´t about what the game told you to do. It was about what you wanted to do , alot of skills and items had no other value then the value you found in them. For purposes such as roleplaying (wich in UO was massive and awesome) Carto and taste had it´s uses.
    The unbelievably broken spawn engine. UO promised a "real ecology" where players could impact the world. Kill all the rabbits, and the wolves would move into town, etc. What actually happened was that the rate of slaughter and especially hoarding meant the sophisticated resource recycling engine never, ever, worked, and it was quietly dropped and replaced with a more standard spawn system in short order -- just not quickly enough to stop some people from quitting because they could spend an hour hunting and not find so much as a rabbit to kill.
    Banks piled high with the corpses of bald thieves, created and disposed of by the hundreds, in the hopes of grabbing a key or other valuable from some poor sucker. (Not to mention people running everywhere, because if you stood still to talk to someone, someone else would pick your pocket. Great way to build community, folks.)
    Yep. And people learned , adapted and the naked thieves went away.
    Ultimately (heh), the real problem with UO is that it didn't know what it wanted to be. It was marketed first to fans of the Ultima CRPG series, who expected a deep and rich roleplaying experience, heavily story driven and focused on morality. Then it was invaded by hordes of battle.net kiddies, who thought that if there was something moving in a game, whether it was a rabbit, a merchant, or another player, the only thing to do with it was kill it. People put up with UO for a year or so, as the devs promised to fix everything, but then EQ came along and sucked out all the people who wanted to go kill monsters and follow storylines, and without unarmed miners to kill, the PKers had nothing to do. The Trammel/Felucca split proved, beyond doubt, that most people DIDN'T want to experience the thrills of living in virtual Mogadishu for 12.00/month, and those who did were fickle and problematic audience.
    Ultima is still around because eventually it did fix most bugs, balance most issues, and decided to focus on world/community/sandbox, and held onto those players who liked that sort of thing, but it never became as big as the early reaction meant it COULD be. EQ quickly reached many times the player base UO had, and thus became the model for almost every successful (and many unsuccessful)  games to follow, culminating, of course, in WoW.
    Eventually, someone will find a way to combine sandbox/community play with a rich questing/story environment, and I think *that* game will be the one to dethrone WoW. What it won't be, though, is "UO 2.0". It will need to challenge a number of conventions, and do so in a way which is playable by the masses, not just by the people willing to devote 10 hours a day to a game. Someone mentioned Fallen Earth -- after a lot of soul-searching, I decided not to turn my trial into a full sub, mostly because the game basically allows you to max out nearly every skill, and a world of basically self-sufficient crafter-combatants doesn't seem sustainable to me. But it's definitely on the right track, combining a lot of quests and storylines and a rich world background with an environment that encourages, "Hey, let's see what's over there!" freeform gameplay and self-directed character development.
    Ultima Online was what you made it into , if you played UO hoping it would show you the way to fun ofcourse you would be disapointed. If you played UO and created your own fun , then you had fun.

     



     

    Agree! If you played UO and created your own fun, then you had fun.

  • OclloOcllo Member Posts: 52
    Originally posted by Knightcry


    I recall in '01 playing Ultima Onlne thinking this is great and I can't imagine what great games this will spawn.  Back then I thought we would see games developed that would offer complex house building, farming lands and herding wild animals into pens to sheer and slaughter. Games with balance in pve and pvp where both aren't game makers or breakers but both are fun. Content that is player created and supported by the company and vice versa.
    Imagine what gaming would be like if gaming went with the UO style rather than the EQ style. I for one think it sounds better than hitting level 9000 and raiding to gain super sayain gear with flames.
     

     

    01? That sucks, you got the tail end of the fun. Classic UO was fantastic, I played from 1997 and quit when AoS was released. If EA Games version of UO should have been our future, I would not play. EA Games version of UO is much more item based, gear based and candy landed out than World of Warcraft or any other theme-park MMO out today. Classic UO and EA Games version of UO are two very much different games. My dream is for EA Games to get on the ball and give us older UO players our home back with a classic shard.

     

    When EA Games bought UO and started to run the game, I and so many other classic players were treated very bad. I know it was their goal to chase out the classic players and bring in a new breed of gamers who could not handle UO for what it was. I miss the old days of running through dungeons on my mage toon (while naked) PKing everyone. I miss being in a world were I could be evil, I miss being in a world were I could be good. All these item based, gear based theme-park MMO's make me so very depressed. I did try EVE, I did try Darkfall and did test Mortal online..... they do not even come close to what classic UO was.

     

    I also hear that Richard Garriot is in the works with some Asian MMO game developer making some Ultima style game. I doubt that it will be any good, after all RG imo is a one hit wonder. I mean the moron gave up UO like it was a hot rock and any other game he has made or been involved with are just theme-park games. I think RG is a cocky dip sh** who has no clue what gamers want, he just goes with the flow.

     

    I just wish that some MMO gamers could have had the chance to play classic UO. Free shards do not even come close to classic pay to play.

     

    Oh well /tears off

  • RajCajRajCaj Member UncommonPosts: 704
    Originally posted by Ocllo

    Originally posted by Knightcry


    I recall in '01 playing Ultima Onlne thinking this is great and I can't imagine what great games this will spawn.  Back then I thought we would see games developed that would offer complex house building, farming lands and herding wild animals into pens to sheer and slaughter. Games with balance in pve and pvp where both aren't game makers or breakers but both are fun. Content that is player created and supported by the company and vice versa.
    Imagine what gaming would be like if gaming went with the UO style rather than the EQ style. I for one think it sounds better than hitting level 9000 and raiding to gain super sayain gear with flames.
     

     

    01? That sucks, you got the tail end of the fun. Classic UO was fantastic, I played from 1997 and quit when AoS was released. If EA Games version of UO should have been our future, I would not play. EA Games version of UO is much more item based, gear based and candy landed out than World of Warcraft or any other theme-park MMO out today. Classic UO and EA Games version of UO are two very much different games. My dream is for EA Games to get on the ball and give us older UO players our home back with a classic shard.

     

    When EA Games bought UO and started to run the game, I and so many other classic players were treated very bad. I know it was their goal to chase out the classic players and bring in a new breed of gamers who could not handle UO for what it was. I miss the old days of running through dungeons on my mage toon (while naked) PKing everyone. I miss being in a world were I could be evil, I miss being in a world were I could be good. All these item based, gear based theme-park MMO's make me so very depressed. I did try EVE, I did try Darkfall and did test Mortal online..... they do not even come close to what classic UO was.

     

    I also hear that Richard Garriot is in the works with some Asian MMO game developer making some Ultima style game. I doubt that it will be any good, after all RG imo is a one hit wonder. I mean the moron gave up UO like it was a hot rock and any other game he has made or been involved with are just theme-park games. I think RG is a cocky dip sh** who has no clue what gamers want, he just goes with the flow.

     

    I just wish that some MMO gamers could have had the chance to play classic UO. Free shards do not even come close to classic pay to play.

     

    Oh well /tears off

    Richard Garrot was involved in Lineage 2 w/ NCSoft (Korean MMO Giant) and they nearly got it right.  The FFA notiery system was VERY close to what Ultima had and the ability for alliances to control territory & Taxes was similar to Ultima's Faction System.

     

    The problems the game faced had everything to do with the heavily itemized gear and leveling system and less to do with the FFA PvP and player driven endgame content.

  • RajCajRajCaj Member UncommonPosts: 704
    Originally posted by nariusseldon


    Fast forward to today, and I see players in WOW running around and doing things in wreckless abandon. I see people in BGs and PvE dungeons doing things that leaves me completely dumbfounded. The same guy running solo into overwhelming numbers repeatedly, massive displays of herd mentality, and out right refusal to critically think. I blame the mollycoddeling many games have adopted in the name of getting more generic gamers playing a very specific genere.
    That makes the game fun. You can try a boss again and again. You can run into a dungeon just to see it. WOW encourages risk-taking and people take advantage of that. It is just good game design. Games are for entertaining people. I don't want to play a game as if i am in real life watching every step of the way.
    Plus, you can only do crazy things solo, or with a like minded group. Most group will kick you if you do stupid things and cause them wipes.
    Don't forget games are for fun, not for building characters or training people to be smart. We have universities to do that.



     

    Fun for who?  Fun for the guy/gal that runs solo into the group of 5 people?  Fun for the Tank that doesn't watch the group's healers mana and causes the group to wipe?  Fun for the person who doesn't follow directions in a raid and causes the entire raid to start over again?

    Maybe......but its not fun for the rest of the people who are trying to play the game as it was intended.  It's not fun for me to lose a flag i was guarding because my Battleground is full of idiots that are off doing their own thing.

    If they want to play a game where they can do what every they want with out it effecting other people...they need to go back to the single player console game they came from.  They have no business in a game thats put together for objective based cooperative team play. 

    Thats coming from a player's perspective.  From a revenue perspective, they have every right to completely sabatoge the greater effort of the team if they want......and thats the model that Blizzard has taken with World of Warcraft.....and thats a TERRIBLE game design.

    I'm not saying that MMORPGs have to teach you Quantitative Mathmatics or Calculus IV (THATS what Universities for), but they should reinforce basic social abilities and consideration for the cooperative effort if its a Massive Multiplayer RPG.  Just take a look at the Hot Mess that is Arathi Valley (or pretty much any Battleground) for a shining example of your superior "Carrot Only" model.

  • nariusseldonnariusseldon Member EpicPosts: 27,775
    Originally posted by Ocllo



    I just wish that some MMO gamers could have had the chance to play classic UO. Free shards do not even come close to classic pay to play.
     
    Oh well /tears off

     

    I did. I played UO since beta and I jumped ship as soon as EQ was released. EQ was a WAY better game despite all the problems (camping, down-time & stuff).

  • nariusseldonnariusseldon Member EpicPosts: 27,775
    Originally posted by RajCaj


     
    Fun for who?  Fun for the guy/gal that runs solo into the group of 5 people?  Fun for the Tank that doesn't watch the group's healers mana and causes the group to wipe?  Fun for the person who doesn't follow directions in a raid and causes the entire raid to start over again?
    Maybe......but its not fun for the rest of the people who are trying to play the game as it was intended.  It's not fun for me to lose a flag i was guarding because my Battleground is full of idiots that are off doing their own thing.
    If they want to play a game where they can do what every they want with out it effecting other people...they need to go back to the single player console game they came from.  They have no business in a game thats put together for objective based cooperative team play. 
    Thats coming from a player's perspective.  From a revenue perspective, they have every right to completely sabatoge the greater effort of the team if they want......and thats the model that Blizzard has taken with World of Warcraft.....and thats a TERRIBLE game design.
    I'm not saying that MMORPGs have to teach you Quantitative Mathmatics or Calculus IV (THATS what Universities for), but they should reinforce basic social abilities and consideration for the cooperative effort if its a Massive Multiplayer RPG.  Just take a look at the Hot Mess that is Arathi Valley (or pretty much any Battleground) for a shining example of your superior "Carrot Only" model.

     

    Fun for the raid guilds. Fun for the friends who run 5-man together. Fun for people who do WG. You never see a bad player kicked? You never see guild trials & applications?

    There is no bad players in the raids that I go to.

    Plus that i would much rather play with some friendly people than some elite snob who would criticize me not standing at the right place to maximize that 0.1% additional DPS. Blizzard is on the right track. They let players to have choices of what difficulty of content to tackle. 5-man is easy enough that you don't have to be a super elite to breeze through it.

    And to be honest, i don't mind carry some guy with lower dps since it makes little different if i kill the boss in 30 sec vs 20.

    You don't like this model, don't play it. There are plenty (11M+) who do and have lots of fun.

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