Ultima Online - Rose tinted glasses time.

I've many a time posted about UO - so I'm probably just saying what I've said many times before.

I'm in the UK but I played in the beta of UO thanks to an old friend of mine I met on a BBS in the US.
At the time we were all on 14.4k modems and all of the servers were in the US.
You can imagine the speed we would get, but even in those days the game was extremely playable.

Over the years I believe I have played nearly every single MMORPG released.
Some I played for many years (although nothing I played for longer than I played UO).
A few only lasted a few months before I just got bored or realsed that people were simply playing to get to the highest level as quickly as possible - nobody seemed to be enjoying the journey and enjoying the actual game and in my eyes this just seemed like a complete waste of time.

UO was difficult and I know this put a lot of people off.
It took me 9 months to make a GM Blacksmith in those early days - people just wouldn't stand for that kind of wait these days.
They want everything now and if it takes more than a few weeks to achieve the "top of their trade" they just aren't interested.
As shown in the later days of UO after the introduction of easy land and "power hour".
What took me 9 months could now be done in a matter of weeks.
But whereas I'd spent weeks and months at the many public forges repairing weapons and armour, making things and getting to know numerous people the new breed were simply logged in, used to repair some stuff, make some new weapons/armour and then logged out - they never left a players house.
Everyone had a GM Smith/Tailor on their account....the days for the professional were numbered.

UO was special as there were no levels.
The only way to improve a skill was to actually use it and you had to use it in increasingly difficult situations.
You want to GM Swords then you start with smacking bunnies, but at the high end you had to fight big creatures that actually could kill you.
There was no just killing easy things, level up and then magically you were suddenly better at using a sword.

Time and time again I hear the word "grinding" used in modern MMORPG's
As a Blacksmith I'd sometimes spend 2-3hrs with nothing more than a pack mule and some pick axes going up and down a mountin side mining ore to turn into metal.
2-3hrs doing the same thing over and over again.
Not once did I see this as grinding or boring - these days if somebody has to do the same thing for 10 minutes then its "grinding".

UO was a special game but at the same time most of the gamers were from a different time.
We saw UO as a place to log into, and simply "hang out".
The amount of times I'd log in and then see 2-3hrs had passed and I hadn't moved from my house or the bank, we'd just been chatting away.
The game was living and breathing and we felt part of it.
We were in it for the long haul and we knew that if we wanted to get GM status in half of the skills we wanted we were looking at a years work.
Today's players want instant results.
Being able to max a WOW character from scratch in less than a month.
Everyone saying "Game only gets fun when your maxed" and "Just grind up those levels for a few weeks" - what are they actually getting from the game?
They are in and out within a few months as they have done everything.

Take me back to a pre-Trammel UO with PK'ers in the deep dungeons and the wilderness, a risk to reward ratio and a system that doesn't rely on levels and I'd be back in a flash.
 
Oh man why oh why has this been posted! The fantastic memories I have of UO have all just come flooding back! UO was the best MMO around. I don't know how it did it, but it seemed to get everything right. As has been mentioned above, it was a living, breathing world that the players actively shaped. These days everything is handed to you on a plate to ensure that you keep paying your subscription. But what most MMO makers don't realise, is that if you give the players the tools to create the entertainment themselves, they will keep coming back to the game over and over again. I can remember the countless times that I logged into UO, and just stood around for about 10 minutes thinking to myself, "Christ, I have so much that I can do tonight, but I just don't quite know where to start". These days, you log into WoW or whatever, and you pull up your quest log and away you go. The varied choice no longer exists and it's a real shame to be honest.

I miss the rush you'd get when you saw those little words at the bottom of the screen: "You have left the protection of the town guards". That little jagged road leading from Britain out to the moongate just to the west, leading you outside the guard zone and into the area where the plethora of player vendors were used as bait by countless PKers somewhere in the vicinity. Those uber-tough fights that you had with the mongbats that littered the area south of Moonglow, on the run to the moongate. The fact that mongbats actually caused you to be so immensely afraid as a new player in those earlier skill percentages. The thrill you got when you bought your first set of armour and nice weapons, only to venture out through the mountains near the x-roads and be completely annihilated by the PKers there, despite you thinking that you were ready for the fight. The feeling of achievement that you had when you stole your first ship from that hapless victim, and then discovered that there was countless treasure in the hold for you to plunder! Or, the deal you tried to strike with the local PK guild that frequented Shame, asking them to help you kill some players that you had a bounty on, only to be ganked, ressed by them, and then ganked, over and over again. Frustrating, but also seriously cool. Or when you realised that you're out of bandages, and instead of running out and buying the cloth to make them, you head over to the farms outside of Yew and actually shear them off the sheep there with your blade, and then mercilessly slaughter them so that they'll respawn and you can get some more wool. Then it's off to the nearest tailor shop, or your house if you were lucky enough to have one, to make some more bandages. Seriously, how many other games create such an atmosphere? I really wish that there was something that could be done to get a new UO out there, or at least a new MMO with a similar ruleset. UO was simply the best MMO out there, because it gave you endless opportunities for fun and adventure.

I've tried some of the free shards in the past, but as mentioned before, they are rarely any good. They're extremely underpopulated, and a lot seem to have forgotton about what the original UO was all about. Most have these stupidly ridiculous items that weren't anywhere in existence in pre-Trammel UO, and everyone runs around on their stupid psychadelic mounts as if they're tripping on whatever drug tickles their fancy. UO was best when it was just as it was pre-Trammel, with no special items aside from rares added. Why can't the free shards realise this?

Truly, if there could ever only be one MMO left, and it was UO pre-pub 16, I could probably play that forever. You truly don't know how great the game is until you can no longer play it the way it should be played. I enjoy WoW sometimes, but it just doesn't hold anywhere near the same feel of excitement, enjoyment or apprehension that you would get from playing one hour of UO. It's a shame really, but that's just how it is.
 
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I quit not long after Renaissance was released, after that I tried a couple of MMORPG betas and even the free UO shards but it was never the same. Not really played an MMORPG since.
You were free to do so much in UO and it took time to achieve things. I enjoyed spending most Sunday mornings chopping down every tree in Britain to make wooden shields to sell to vendors, then I'd run all over the town to find the cheapest reagents and wander off into the unknown to fight mongbats, orcs and ogres.
 
Totally agree with chokka and stoofa, people rave these days about one MMO or another, but really none of them know just how fantastic a true MMO world can be. UO was simply the best MMO ever, full stop, period, end of story.

Sure some MMOers today probably couldnt "handle" UO, the fact that you could have your entire belongings taken off you by another player when he killed you, or have items stolen by other players from your backpack while you stood at the bank, or have your body cut into pieces and the pieces spread about all over, or that there were no quests, yes...amazingly no quests ! People made their own content, set their own goals and aims. It was a harsh world, a dangerous world full of risk, leaving town was actually dangerous (be it from monsters or players), there were no levels, no clicking on a monster and knowing whether or not you could kill it, only way to tell was to try and die. The housing, the community, the game as a whole, was simply the greatest, and most true form of MMO ever.

And sadly...I dont think it will ever be repeated because the majority of MMOers today simply wouldnt "stand for it"
 
Tombstone said:
And sadly...I dont think it will ever be repeated because the majority of MMOers today simply wouldnt "stand for it"
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Exactly. The overall mmo nowadays has been dumbed down so heavily to attract more subscribers but that is slowly starting to backfire on companies as player 'migration' from game to game is at a high. No one from a modern MMO could handle UO even now.

Back in the day there was only UO, EQ and that flamin Mir game. DAoC came and blew me away during the beta (fear my sword/shield blademaster), however that suffered hugely with ToA and its artifacts. Age of Shadows changed UO into Diablo 3 and also brought in Artifacts, and that is when UO started down a downhill slope. Eventually I gave up and quit for 'good' but then returned thanks to Kami wanting to try out that pathetic Samurai expansion. :p I then finally quit for good dumping all my possesions around Vesper bank.

Best thing about UO was that it was a living, breathing world. I remember stumbling into that big desert (Compassion?) near Cove and coming across a red dragon. I panicked and ran but the bugger spoke back to me saying don't fear what I couldn't understand. I wasn't dead so I just stood there watching it - it turned out to be a well known GM preparing an area for a quest. That is when I realised how promising the game really was.

When a friend called Tartychops gave me my first ever magical sword, I treasured it wildly and had it repaired and in tip-top shape at the end of every day by our guild blacksmith. I almost cried when a theif stole it, and I was filled with so much rage that I chased him for ages but failed to find him.

It's a shame EA killed off UO:X - Ultima 10 online iirc. The project was going well when EA decided to re-locate OSI to their head offices in San Francisco. A lot of OSI staff including Calandryll (top dog of the project) didn't want to move so the game died horribly.

Awesome memories, and I'm surprised at how many of you lot played it. Slaps to Kami for doing yet another UO thread!
 
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I miss it :( even though I started playing just before pub16 (Lord Blackthorns' Revenge) I absolutely loved it. Such a shame it can't be touched these days.
 
stoofa said:
Time and time again I hear the word "grinding" used in modern MMORPG's
As a Blacksmith I'd sometimes spend 2-3hrs with nothing more than a pack mule and some pick axes going up and down a mountin side mining ore to turn into metal.
2-3hrs doing the same thing over and over again.
Not once did I see this as grinding or boring - these days if somebody has to do the same thing for 10 minutes then its "grinding".
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<3

I remember the first few weeks of me playing, I had a smith and I many times spent a few mins mining the mountains round Minoc, only to realise that the "few minutes" were actually several hours, and that it was now 4am and I had to be up for college/work in 3 hours!:p

Had the same thing with my tamer, would run around the Lost Lands, finding and taming ostards to sell (they sold for 2-3k at the time because T2A was quite new), suddenly realising I'd just been exploring all night, Then running back to Delucia to find someone to gate me to WBB (which would still be packed even at 4-5am!) Oh yeah... and the first time I met a silver serpent, and died within seconds. I have so many memories from that game, and would love to play again, even just pre AoS :)
 
For me it was the simple things in UO that were the biggest immersion factor for me. I played on Europa on the worst 28kb connection way before the broadband days and quit after playing for about 6 years.

The fact that I could mine any mountain or rock I wanted to get ore to smelt into metal, to make my armour swords etc. I could kill any animal and skin it for its hide for tailored items.

I could take my mage out on my boat and fish which was actually useful. Hook up those message in a bottles, go to the location on the map and haul up the treasure chest which always had a treasure map.

From that treasure map, get my treasure hunter out, decode it, get a group, find the spot, dig it up, spawn loads of monsters, kill them, loot, id the items. I will never forget my silver kryss of vanquishing and nearly losing it to a pk.

The days when you feared going into a dungeon not because of the monster threat but because of the constant threat from other players.

The pinnacle of online gaming that will never be touched
 
remember when they brought in runic hammers for smiths? my friend (who i see reguarly to this day who i met on UO) bought me a verit spear for my birthday. man that thing kicked ass. and the AOS came along :/ - i hope to god EA make a pre AOS shard. i would join straight away.
 
I remember installing UO running around and dieing for about the first 2-3 hours. Shame i didnt stick with it as it sounded awesome :(

What dos PK stand for by the way?
 
One of the things I think has affected UO apart from the general mess surrounding the item based game that it is now, is the general move towards Ventrillo/TeamSpeak type internet communication. When I tried the game agan last year I was shocked that virtually no one said anything on screen, I'm guessing that those groups who were stood there were just chatting on Ventrillo or something. One of the best things about UO in the early days was that everyone talked on screen and you could dive in and say whatever. Now all you get is someone spamming gates to their shop and nothing else. That for me was the most depressing change when I tried the game again. I know voice chat is certainly the best method of communication for guild operations and stuff, but it certainly has had a knock on effect for the general enjoyment of the game as a whole. I guess this applies to all MMO's
 
Sime said:
I miss UO :( Probably the first game that got me into PCs really.

Has anyone heard of Mortal Online?

Seems to be a new MMORPG with the same sort of structure and gameplay of Ultima Online

http://www.mortalonline.com

Im quite excited about it :D
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Hmm that MMO looks quite interesting. I just really hope that they can pull off most of what they say on that site, as this has been done a few times already but the games that promised it were never completed. Wish springs to mind, although I don't quite know why that was canned in the end. Anyway, Mortal Online looks quite promising and I really hope it comes to life, and soon :)
 
I was a cheating, lying ******* on UO.. I murdered, stole and pillaged.

And I loved every single second of it, and I loved the simple fact that I was allowed to do that. If people got revenge on me, it was the players themselves (which happened often).. Not a GM telling me my behavior was inappropriate.
 
This sounds like it was a truly awesome game. I missed out :(

Hopefully some day a company can replicate this. I love the idea of being truly fearful of a PKer. Real consequences...not just running back from a graveyard in spirit form.
 
I use to hang out in Brit with my GM stealther/pickpocket, god that was fun. Nothing like hanging out in Inns knowing that people were doing character to character transfers using the Inns furniture to pass the gold, then grabbing it whilst they're logging back in :D

God I was a skumbag!
 
MotherMayI said:
I was a cheating, lying ******* on UO.. I murdered, stole and pillaged.

And I loved every single second of it, and I loved the simple fact that I was allowed to do that. If people got revenge on me, it was the players themselves (which happened often).. Not a GM telling me my behavior was inappropriate.
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See this is one of the ironies with MMOs and me.

At the time I played UO (1997-2001) I hated it when someone stole something from my backpack, or pk'ed me over and over, taking everything I was carrying. At one point I had my house keys stolen, and they stole everything out of my house (back in the days when that could be done), was done by a well known looter called Stan. I quickly recovered and got back on my feet, but at the time I was livid.

AND YET, the thing is that when I finally left UO, I went on to discover that I acually MISSED those things ! I grew to actually miss those house looters, pickpockets, thieves and pk'ers. I missed the unexpected danger, I missed the whole dynamic that a player could actually truly play a bad guy....without GMs threatening to ban them, without the game company saying no, no no...you play, but you play nice you hear.

I found that ever since in MMOs, there just wasnt a sense of danger, oh no..the player killed me...so?? big deal, I will just respawn, no loss. Oh no..the monster killed me...so what? big deal, I will just respawn. It got to a stage of dumbing down, where often I would actually kill myself on purpose just because it meant I respawned closer to where I wanted to be...I was using death as a form of travel. Death had become meaningless, and in turn advancement had become meaningless because it was now simply down to whoever spent the most time playing the game, which in turn meant that the modern MMO had become meaningless.
 
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