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I recommend Ultima Online
nate1980
Member UncommonPosts: 2,063
I recently created a thread where I discussed how I'm trying out the games that started it all. Well, right now I am on the UO 14 day Trial. I'm playing with a friend who played UO for many years.
I've spent the last 3 days being objective and critical in my evaluation of UO, but despite my criticalness and objectivity, I still find UO to be a very entertaining and well made game. I plan to subscribe to the game after my trial is up.
When it comes to graphics, UO is an old game. It's a top down 2D game with a very recent graphics update that doesn't hide that it's still 2D. However, if you still like playing old NES, SNES and older console games, then the graphics won't bother you. While they won't spark the desire to make a screenshot album, they do the job of showing you what things are, where things are, and what you look like. In other words, it does a good job of representing what things look like and what you look like. While I've often times found it hard to go backwards in time graphically, I'm finding it refreshing to retrace the genres roots and the graphics don't bother me at all.
With an older game comes less intuitive controls, but any veteran to the genre will figure the controls out within an hour. I don't mean movement or combat controls either. I mean the controls that allow you to interact with the environment.
What's great about UO is the skill-system. There are 50 skills, and you can raise skills anywhere from 1 to 100. If you find Power Scrolls, you can raise them up to 120 even. So with 700 skill points, you have to make choices and believe me when I tell you that choosing betwee 50 very interesting and useful skills is tough. Luckily, there's a lot of information to help you on the Internet and a very helpful and active community. Which brings me to my next point.
I haven't met such a great community since my early days playing DAoC. I've not seen one troll, one asshole, or any other type of unsavory person. One might attribute this to a small community, but much to my surprise the community isn't that small. The game has over 10 servers with most of them ranging from Medium to High population. That's more servers than Vanguard and WAR combined. However, I don't know the server cap, and with what's likely to be older servers, the cap cold be smaller than say a Vanguard server. At any rate, you see people bustling about all the time, so the world doesn't feel empty. This makes me believe that mmodata.net is right about UO having 100k players, which is respectable, especially for a 12 year old game. The game just released an expansion too, while DAOC hasn't, which is a 3 years newer game and is developed and serviced by EA Mythic as well. A company doesn't create an expansion for an older game if it's not active, while not expanding a newer game.
I'm relaying my experience with UO, because I think UO is a diamond in the rough. People rarely consider going back in time to play MMORPG's, but in this case I think it's worth it. My favorite features so far, aside from the variety of skills is mounted combat. Horses are extremely cheap to buy, and you can go anywhere (so far) with them. You don't even have to dismount to fight or loot, or sell with NPC's.
One last thing. In my opinion, when it comes to features and stuff to do, more is better. Modern MMO's are getting better and better at making combat fast-paced and fun, but they're neglecting many other things that make the game fun overall. This is the reason why I went back in time to play a MMO, because I'm tired of shallow heavily combat oriented games that are super easy to beat that all play the same one MMO to the next.
Comments
I enjoy the new UO.
While I understand the frustrations of the hardcore pvpers the game still has tons of gamplay options, much more than current mmos.
I resubbed a couple months ago, bought the expansions and had a good time. I'm unsubbed now but I will continue to play on and off since its an enjoyable experience.
Even as a more pve oriented game UO is one of the better sandbox games out today.
PLaying: EvE, Ryzom
Waiting For: Earthrise, Perpetuum
The best things about UO people who mention it never realized is what they couldnt implement on it due to technological limitations at the time. Things that were on the feature list to be implemented, but had to be left out. Stuff that even todays games just barelly scratched the surface of inovation.
There was severe lag and performance issues back when UO was launched.
People left UO when 3d Graphis competitors came as people saw it as a natural evolution, a technological superior. People didnt realized that you measure a game by its design decisions (even 12 years later people still dont know how to measure a game: WOW, Aion, etc).
At some point around 2000, UO expansion Renaissance changed some core design philosophies, adding the Felluca world, they made it so the Trammel world didnt allowed players to freely kill each other.
This helped put the nail on the coffins, and could be seen as the first revolution of players against developers design decisions, the first rage quits.
Then, when people started trying out different games, they always missed aspects that made UO unique, some didnt quite understood what exactly was missing.
People waited for a new version of Ultima Online to be released, the Ultima Online 2. It never came. I dont want to talk about that.
Then, the bulk of players never looked back and as the time passed and the genre became more popular, the standards and original concepts of a MMORPG got diluted and blend, everything became simplified, blend, limited, linear, for the sake of philosophy of design decisions structured on "balance" wich caused side effects on every aspect of the game, affecting the genre forever, well up untill now...
Then after that came the wave of philosophy design decisions of developing the most time consuming content with the minimum of effort, using scripts and procedurally generated content, recycled content and so on to give an appearance of game.
UO had a full spectrum of social and economic aspects and combat was a mere fraction of the tools available at players.
Human factor of RPGs reached its Golden Age.
The next chapter of the MMORPG history are yet to be written.
I also recommend Ultima Online, but as it exists nowadays, its just a shadow of its former self.
I've been tempted so many times to give UO a try, there just never seems to be enough time (or money) to squeeze it in.
Perhaps one day
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
New Client or Old Client?
And UO has about 100k accounts, so a guess is about 60k players as many have 2 accounts for houses.
A server has normally less than 7000 accounts as each account can have 1 house players tend to have houses on each account and about 7000 houses is the max for a server.
Without doubt UO is the best online MMO roleplaying game in the hands of one of the most incompetent companies.
Anyone who doubts that explain 3 failed client updates and cancelation of UO2, UOX and the secret project.
I fall into this same category.
New Client, although I don't like it as much as Kingdom Reborn when it comes to looks.
I fall into this same category.
That understandable. Just remember that the longer you wait to try the game out, the more money the community earns, and the more expensive things will become due to the natural inflation of economies over time. Ordinarily, a dwindling player-base would also add to the urgency, but UO has had a stable 100k active accounts since 2007 according to mmodata.net.
My point is that the longer you wait, the less likely you'll actually play it. New games are coming out or has already came out with plenty of good reasons to play those. While UO isn't the first game in the genre, I definitely see where a lot of newer games got their features. DAoC borrowed a lot from UO, and I imagine EQ as well.
I played UO from the T2A expansion, onwards until after the Renaissance and release of Trammel. I can never go back.
Without the community that I played with, there is really nothing there for me. The players in UO were very real to me and I have never since experienced the feeling of community and belonging as I did in this game.
I've been tempted many times to go back, but I just can't bring myself to do it. The game is not what I remember and I'd rather let it live on in my memories as what it was, rather that it has become.
That said, I encourage others to try it out. It's really quite different than any other game out there.
Your comments on the controls got me thinking about how far games have de-evolved in the last 10 years in the name of innovation.