Ultima Online Vets - See how bad it is now for free

eric_knapper said:
I still have most of the gear that you gave me when you left Hybrid Kainz. Although I haven't played in a while I still log in every other week just to refresh the houses and yes it's just chock full of reds everywhere.
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Blimey. I can't even remember giving gear away lol.

Yeah hybrid was pretty much a joke. Our four odd neighbours were all reds and would repeatedly meteor swarm our house till me and my mate would die whilst inside. Its rubbish like that, which lead to the inception of trammel in the first place, and the downfall of a great game.
 
If anyone is in contact with Sm0lfen still, would be good to get some details off you - Played with that guy every day for years, haven't spoken to him for time.
 
Finaly got round to giving this a go at the weekend. Spent good half hour trying to find a town, logged in at the location of my old house in Fel and for the life of me couldnt remember where it was, took ages before I actualy started to remember places. Went over to tram to find some shops to restock rune books, plenty of shops but hardly anyone selling anything, found a couple that seemed very over priced but guess most people have more money than they know what to do with.

Amazed at the amount of space to place houses in tram, went to malas and what used to be full of ugly custom houses was now empy fields. Did find a couple of decent shops there though, and seems I have a small fortune in junk sitting in my various characters banks. So found a remote location in tram, placed a small house and loaded it up with goodies. Maybe someone will find it
 
I remember reading a comic/log of someone playing UO in character years ago, I tried searching for it a few years ago but came up blank. I seem to recall it was a guy dressed as a jester who wandered around asking stupid newb questions but I cannot remember it/find it to save my life. Don't suppose anyone else remembers this?
 
shock33 said:
I remember reading a comic/log of someone playing UO in character years ago, I tried searching for it a few years ago but came up blank. I seem to recall it was a guy dressed as a jester who wandered around asking stupid newb questions but I cannot remember it/find it to save my life. Don't suppose anyone else remembers this?
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ImaNewbie :D
 
Do you remember pvping on 56k then some 1337 Swedish guy on a 10ms pinging connection would burst onto the scene and just murder everyone at once.... You couldn't even keep up with them on a horse.
 
Ham said:
ImaNewbie :D
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Yeah, the comics were very funny


I remember when they were doing testing with factions, I'd go round creating runes for various places where one faction congregated then go over to the other faction and open a portal, queue loads of noobs jumping into the portal and getting slaughtered :D
 
Efour2 said:
Do you remember pvping on 56k then some 1337 Swedish guy on a 10ms pinging connection would burst onto the scene and just murder everyone at once.... You couldn't even keep up with them on a horse.
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Hahaha, I remember this so clearly. Made me rage everytime!

I started playing UO when Renaissance was released, I was only about 12 or 13 at the time. Played it for years and ended up being a GM in 7 skills.

One thing that really knackered the game up was the introduction of elder scrolls (I think thats what they were called) that allowed you to get to levels above 100, it was ridiculous. They were so expensive to buy and as a lowely warrior I could never afford them.

Does anyone know whether custom servers still exist? Where you could just log in and type "set <skill> 100"? It was basically purely for PVP sake.
 
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Stelly said:
Briefly, what happened with Ultima Online? Was suppose to be massive

Stelly
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It was massive, it was at it's peak towards 1999-2000 iirc with iirc from SirBruce's mmo charts about 500-700k of subscribers. Europa was massive in terms of population. I remember I could wander upto vesper bank and see well over 50 players there alone, whilst West Brit Bank would be a lagfest since it would be crowded.

The problem with a tile based isometric game is that you get colossal levels of interactivity possible vs 3D level based games. Sadly with tile based gaming you also get a ton of bugs/exploits, which plagued UO.

EA/OSI tried to move onto a 3D iso client but failed horribly, and ended up using bits of artwork from the more popular 2D client. Every step they made towards 3D was just like treading through treacle - and this was at a time when MMO's were at their peak, not like today where the only real remaining MMO's are WoW and Eve.

EA/OSI then stunned the world with the announcement of Ultima X: Oddysey, a full 3D world running off an Unreal x engine. Work was progressing well...until EA decided to relocate and consolidate all their game company offices to San Francisco, including OSI who were based in Texas iirc? Several key OSI dev's wouldn't make the move (e.g Callandryll) and so UO:X died fast.

Age of Shadows killed the game for most people when it turned the game overnight from a skill based game, into an item based one with the introduction of lame artifacts e.g eye candy.

:(
 
Yep it was amazing whilst it pretty much had a free market share- the only other game was EQ1 at the time that held a candle to it really.

The introduction of the scrolls and the new Stat system "Luck?" and other ridiculous crap killed it for most people, and besides DAOC was just coming out too if i recall so people where moving on.

I truly blame UO or my gaming addiction, it was the brilliance of that game that really started so much off. I still know people that i game with now that i met through ganking and messing about thieving stuff at Brit moon gate.

FML lol
 
Another thing which hugely contributed to the demise of UO was the introduction of Trammel.

The game itself was very much about a world where the player was free to do as they pleased, to choose to be good or bad, to form communities within the game adhering to commonly shared beliefs, be they "right" or "wrong". The game was alive with the kinds of activities and stories only possible in such environments. Sure, people didnt like that it was a rough and tough world where leaving the safety of the towns was REALLY leaving the safety of the towns, some complained and cried out for a place where such things wouldnt happen and the world was a safer place... what they didnt realise at the time though was that by making the world a safer place they were removing a crucial dynamic to the game, in effect changing the very premise (freedom of choice for the player to be and do what they want) the game was built upon.

So Trammel and Felucca were invented to replace the single old dangerous world. The result? People flooded to Trammel where they wouldnt get hurt, at first people were happy... but then after a period of time they realised that things had become stale and dull, the challenge of their characters existence was gone and without challenge things become very boring and so they left.

At least thats how it all worked out for me and my friends. We found solace at the time in Daoc we recaptured some of the dangers of early pre-trammel UO to an extent.
 
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