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Why Are There No Popular Ultima Online-Like MMOs?
eldavojohn writes "I have a slightly older friend who played through the glory days of Ultima Online. Yes, their servers are still up and running, but he often waxes nostalgic about certain gameplay functions of UO that he misses. I must say that these aspects make me smile and wonder what it would be like to play in such a world — things like housing, thieving and looting that you don't see in the most popular massively multiplayer online games like World of Warcraft. So, I've followed him through a few games, including Darkfall and now Mortal Online. And these (seemingly European developed) games are constantly fading into obscurity and never catching hold. We constantly move from one to the next. Does anyone know of a popular three-dimensional game that has UO-like rules and gameplay? Perhaps one that UO players gravitated to after leaving UO? If you think that the very things that have been removed (housing and thieving would be two good topics) caused WoW to become the most popular MMO, why is that? Do UO rules not translate well to a true 3D environment? Are people incapable of planning for corpse looting? Are players really that inept that developers don't want to leave us in control of risk analysis? I'm familiar with the Bartle Test but if anyone could point me to more resources as to why Killer-oriented games have faded out of popularity, I'd be interested."
A lot of of the people who rave about pre-Tramell UO are people who fit the "Multi-player appeal to the Killer" label Bartle uses.
Sadly they needed 1000s of "Multi-player appeal to the Socializer" players to feed on. Beign griefed is not fun for such a person so UO failed to grow. No other game that allows griefign will be fun so you won't see them get developed or launched.
WoW allows griefing on PVP realms - you have to opt in. Most of those realms are empty for the same reason.
1000s Warcraft Gold while you sleep
Casual gamers are what makes up the bulk of MMO subscriptions. These gamers don't want to be robbed of their progress by full-loot, robbery and other nasty things.
The casual gamer will happily spend his $15 if he knows nothing stands between him and the phat loot but time.
"Total destruction the only solution" - Bob Marley
My title sums it up really. Wow in particular has ceased to be a world full of adventure and exploration and has rapidly become just a game full of people who complain if there is anything to do that slows down their getting their loot. The whole game has shrunk from a huge world full of adventure into a tiny game with about 10 instances and raids that people do over and over and over, and complain if there is anything that slows that down. Many other games have followed WoW down this route, and yet I think it's success was despite that, not because of it. The other games may well be "obscure" but that doesn't mean they don't exist or they are no fun to play. Does it matter is there are 3 servers full of people you'll never meet in game, or 200?
That's just bullshit, starting from scratch is equally fun and you don't "lose" anything in the process.
EVE is a slow moving game and there's a point in not letting everyone fly everything from the start.
But to answer to your main point - it's /perfectly legal/ to purchase a character with 30M SP from the EVE forums (check the Character Bazaar part), if you don't feel like starting from scratch - you're allowed to buy a character.
So I guess I'll see you tomorrow then...
In Eve, the PvP happens alongside (well, sorta -- too complex to go into detail about here) the PvE. Players can build their own "home" -- a space station (but it's not a home for one character, it needs to be built by -- and more importantly -- defended by, a group of people). You can steal from the weak, who in turn hire mercs to have their revenge. Pretty much a complete player-run economy.
No Elves in lederhosen frolicking about in the woods hoping to steal a kiss, but then again, there are the Gallente...
to play and put every 2-3 hours of your daily life into a game to increasingly progress and then get jumped on by a random group of 2-3 somewhere and all your progress stolen.
it only works when you are a teenager and you have unlimited time in your hands, so you can stomach the loss. but doesnt work for people with little time.
back then in uo days we had that kind of time, and we were stupid enough to stomach that kind of gameplay. but, curiously, i see that contrary to what we did back then, kids of today's generation do not waste their time in that fashion. they just go play proper mmos.
that kind of gameplay only can work in a setting in which you are not required to put inane amounts of time to make progress. if you could make up for the stolen items/whatever in a single session (2-3 hours) that would maybe work. but, else, cant.
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I'm playing (well, trying to, it's laggy and buggy) the open beta of Mortal Online, and I've followed Darkfall a little, as well as playing EVE and a bunch of others MMOs. What I've learnt there is it is very, very hard to balance a game that allows players to act against each other freely.
Most MMOs restrict PvP to zones, disallow looting, etc. etc. - all those restrictions are mostly there because they make balancing a TON easier. Just read the Mortal Online forums and you can see how difficult it is to get thieving right. If it's too difficult, nobody will use it and you can just as well leave it out. If it is too easy, it attracts all the griefers and assholes who don't steal from people to advance their own character, but merely to annoy other players.
It is unbelievably difficult to find the correct balance once your game has a certain amount of complexity, because all those features interact with each other. EVE did one thing right, and that's why they are still top dog. By setting things into space and a SciFi setting, they eliminated a lot of complexities. The seperation of the game world into solar systems is a natural seperation that players accept. It solves a ton of technical issues without the disturbing portals of other games. The whole cloning and insurance system covers the looting, death and resurrection part from a believable angle that gives the designers lots of freedom in tweaking things. And finally, having security ratings from 1.0 to 0.0 with a smooth transition from "carebear space" to "free for all hardcore space" is a brilliant idea.
Any MMO that doesn't learn from EVE is doomed to fail, I say. And I don't play EVE any more, it's not my game. But they made a good number of brilliant design decisions and have the ability to learn from their mistakes. Kudos for that. Now if you look back at the failed or failure-in-progress games, you will often see devs fanatically defending an original vision that turned out to be impossible to implement. Those who can not adapt, fail.
I still hope MO turns out to be right, but my hopes are fading.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
1) Getting your shit stolen isn't fun. 2) A game has to be pretty lame if you're spending time in your virtual "house." I don't need to log on to sit around my house.
what was that ? 10 minutes wait to gather some 10-20 or so people to create a raid, 10 minutes to go to the location of the raid, 10 minutes of killing lowbies there until the high levels come, 10 minutes of killing 2-3 high levels until a serious raid forms up from the other side and arrives in your location, then 30 seconds of pvp, death, 5 minutes of running from gy, rezzing and repreparing. after 10 minutes, going back again.
all that 1-2 hour hassle for only a total of 5-10 minutes of pvp. fuck that
there is a reason why pvp battlegrounds are accommodating over 8000 players at godforsaken 03.30 at night in eu servers alone - instant, incessant action.
Read radical news here
Wow... you sound like you've actually played the game, but have some extremely odd notions about it.
T2, in and of itself, doesn't take that long. With a knowledgeable friend and/or careful planning, you could do it before finishing a three-week trial if they didn't limit those ships to non-trial accounts. You can certainly do it in a month or so. Sure, an Interceptor or Assault Frigate is no Black Ops battleship or Command battlecruiser, but it's Tech 2 and perfectly usable in PvP. Of course, well within the trial period (I've done it), you can have a powerful T2-fitted Rifter or similar. Sure, it's T1, and it's a frigate... but hell, with the right fittings you can kill interceptors (despite them being T2) in such a ship. That said, a tech 1 hull with tech 1 fittings can still be perfectly valid as a PvP ship, for roaming gangs or gate camping or scouting a convoy or any number of other things. If you want, that's a valid approach right up through battlecruisers and battleships; the largest non-capital military ships, and you can get to battlecruisers in about a month if you really push it.
For large ships, T2 does indeed take longer. A Vagabond (T2 cruiser) - one of the best PvP ships for solo or small gang warfare, due to its incredible speed, decent durability, and decent firepower - will take at least two months to train for (longer if you want all the support skills that such a ship's pilot ought to have, but not *much* longer). Of course, that's not really a *large* ship, although a well-fitted one can kill most battlescruisers. Command ships are at least a few months more, and at a guess I'd estimate 8 months for a T2 battleship. Of course, it's not like you can't do anything until you get there. Fly a T1 frigate until you can fly a cruiser or T2 frigate. Fly cruiser or T2 frigate until you can fly T2 cruiser (Vagabond or similar). Almost any combat ship can be valuable in PvP, and even relatively new characters can have the skills to succeed in solo PvP if they get a pointer in the right direction.
The times above are assuming you train straight for that ship's skills; after over 2 years of EVE I still can't fly Black Ops because honestly I don't give a damn. They're awesome ships, and fill a very valuable tactical role... and yet their hulls alone cost several times what I spend on a fully fitted fleet battleship or even T2 battlecruiser. Most of my PvP is in a T1 battlecruiser, because frankly the Hurricane is fantastic PvP ship; it's got DPS comparable to a battleship, can tank well enough, is fast, and full fittings, rigs, and insurance for one costs like 70M tops (of which you'll get 30-odd million back from the insurance if you die). I use a fully T2 fit (rigs aside), and the skills necessary for my exact fit would probably take about 7 months or so to train from a new character. Within three months though, you could be perhaps 90% as effective; it's not actually that important to have a T2 MWD, or even T2 guns.
In any case, the suggestion that you can't PvP for a freaking year is *complete* bullshit. It's not typically practical to try PvP in your first week, but I have a friend who tried the game and was brining his cruiser on roaming gangs with me before his two-week trial ended (you can get three-week trials now, and early characters now receive a bonus to skill training speed to get them started even faster). Hell, I don't even suggest rushing T2; cost for cost, T2 hulls aren't close to worth it. T1 is easier to train and typically the hull costs literally 1/10 as much, for a ship that is well over half as effective.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
While you can be griefed on a PvP server, all that does is make you lose time. You have to go back to where you were. In the event someone is camping you, you can't do anything until that's cleared up, but that's all. You don't lose gold, experience, loot, etc. So it is annoying, but little more. However in UO you stood to lose a lot, and most people don't like that.
You are correct in that what it comes down to is that there's few people who like this sort of thing. There are a fair number who like to be on the giving end, but less who are willing to be on the receiving end. So even if you decided to make a game that catered to grifers, you'd have the problem that many griefers wouldn't want to play it. Since it would more or less be a griefer only fest, they wouldn't have casual players to pick on and it wouldn't be fun for them. A large number of them aren't interested in an equal playing field where they might be griefed as well. They want a situation where they can band together with other griefers to pick on the weak, but that doesn't work.
As such there will be a small market for games like this. You can see this well with EVE. Not only is it rather small, compared to other MMOs, but many of the player base positively HATE WoW. I don't mean they dislike playing WoW so found a new game, I mean they hate that WoW exists and that people play it. Now why would that be? Shouldn't affect them. The reason is because they want all those casual people to come play EVE. They want weak, inexperienced people to pick on and take advantage of. They are mad that these people have other places to play.
What it comes down to is people play games to have fun. What fun is for various people is different, but for an extremely large amount fun means "Not losing everything because of a jerk." They want something akin to a single player game with checkpoints and quick saves and such. A situation where you don't always move forward, but you never move backward. They don't want the equivalent to a single player game that deletes your save if you die.
As such, game companies will make games like that. If they don't make games people want to buy, they'll not be in business for long.
Years ago, I played UO and enjoyed it.
For all of 5 days. Then it became a cringe-making hell for me.
Unless you were one of the uber-elite of gamers out there who knew how to level to demi-godhood on the servers, you were their prey.
The game became less and less fun the more I tried to simply to do something...anything to get better than a lowbie character, the more frustrating it became. I tried mining, and was frequently killed for my hard work. Logging, anything...I was a target for players who wanted nothing more than to kill and enjoy the sweat off of their victim's brow. I couldn't earn money, couldn't advance...
In fact, the only thing I was great at was dying.
Not exactly something I want to sink money into month after month. After 15 days, I gave it up as a bad idea.
Everquest came along with something that allowed the PvP'ers to have their fun and would leave us casual players to progress at our own pace. There was no real need to level to the max in nothing flat just to stay alive, one could enjoy the game. World of Warcraft did something different, but has the same result.
Why are games going this way? Because look at the "Make Love, Not Warcraft" episode of Southpark. Once someone was able to kill at will and in fact seemed to get off on ganking lower-than-he characters...people stopped playing the game. The Fictional Blizzard company in the episode saw millions of their user base turning off their computers and going outside to play.
The real Blizzard and other companies running MMORPG games would have a very real version of this problem. In fact, once EQ came out, people jumped from UO to it and most of them said that EQ was far superior not for graphics, or world development...but for the simple fact that they could PLAY the game and not flee anything that was controlled by another player.
That's why everyone maximizes game play and leaves options for people to decide to play PvP without interfering with everyone else who doesn't want to play that game.
Sure it sucks for the PvP'ers, but that's why there are PvP servers. If you want to be that kind of player...there's your world to do it in.
-- Wiccan Army, 13th Airborne Division "We will not fly silently into the night"
No, he wants to be a griefing fucktard and then get camped by angry vigilantes. Griefing with impunity, especially by abusing game mechanics, is the domain of *non*-pvp oriented MMOs.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
Actually, "be able to" never played much of a role in UO griefing. The only question was whether you want to be a griefing fucktard or not. Most of the exploits were so trivially simple, that if you could click with a mouse at all, you'd be perfectly able to. (And if you can't click, you wouldn't play UO in the first place.) There were no twitch-reflexes or l33t PvP skillz involved, just the willingness to be a griefer or not.
E.g., since the summary mentions housing _and_ thieving together, that combination simply meant using a clipping bug to steal someone's furniture through the walls. There were no player or character skills involved at all. You didn't even need to be able to lockpick their lock or evade notice or anything. Just click yourself near a corner and do it. That was all.
So, yes, everyone could do it. Maybe not "back", but rather to some other victim, but they could do it, if they wanted to. Some of us simply weren't inclined to spread the grief around.
E.g., you could trap the lock on a chest and leave it by the roadside. (Heck, that was the _only_ use for tinkering skill anyway.) Then some hapless brand-new player would stumble upon it, try to open it, and die. Or poison some food, put it in a sack, and leave it by the roadside. Same deal.
There wasn't even any "social engineering" involved or anything. Just wait for some newbie to spring the trap, before even knowing what they're doing in the game.
E.g., even straight player-killing actually rarely involved any bravery or combat skill at all. Most of those did stuff as lame as waiting until some miner is overloaded with ore, so they can't get away, then gank them. Or they actually grouped to muster the balls to attack some newbie.
Even the character skills involved, were often just gotten through some exploit. E.g., at launch the infamous drop-and-pick-a-coin trick, repeated for a couple of hours, would get you to the strength cap with no risks or adventuring or skills involved. Just brainless clicking or using a script were enough.
Again, it was nothing that a casual player couldn't do if they wanted to. The coin trick was well known very soon, for example. But some people chose to do stuff like role-playing, or building their dream mix of abilities, instead of doing the one-track-minded griefer build.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
This is the same dynamic that killed Asheron's Call 2. The entire gameworld was set up to be a sanctioned grief-fest.
95% of the players spent time hating on the "carebear" players (the ones in the non-PVP server). The non-PvP'ers, meanwhile, all bailed because most of the game's content meant interacting with the griefing fucktards.
The rest of the players went to the "faction" servers or the "hardcore" servers, where you either griefed the other faction with impunity, or griefed everyone with impunity. Or, if you weren't one of the cheating motherfuckers who used exploits to get to the level cap 2 weeks after game launch, ran around getting griefed till you found a griefer-guild to powerlevel you, or left the game.
And no, there aren't enough "hardcore griefers" to spend enough money supporting a game like that with a subscription model. So it folded. Big surprise. Jessica Mulligan, who had previously said that PvP is only fun if "consensual", went on to design a gameworld setup where getting griefed was a way of life.
I am reminded of George Lucas saying "A special effect without a story is boring" in 1977. Hey George, regarding Episodes 1-2-3 (Ep1 especially)...?
Well, your analogy has merit in its own right, but it's actually a bit mis-leading in the context of UO and generally of online griefing.
RL oppressing and exploiting the masses was at least generally done for personal gain. Some guy got to make some money or have a big castle or whatever, by oppressing those peasants.
In UO the somewhat surprising thing for many players was that a lot of people were not motivated by any kind of gain. They just wanted to make _you_ miserable. There was not even an attempt to enforce their will upon you, as in "you must do X because I'm the boss." They just wanted to make you miserable, that's all.
My perfect example is the way some people tried (and for a while succeeded) to screw up the economy. It's not the most grief-worthy thing, mind you, but it's an illustration of something done not just without any personal gain, but often even at a personal loss.
E.g., UO at launch required two wolves to make a third wolf. Some people took it upon themselves to exterminate the wolves, not to gain anything themselves in the process, but to keep the other players from having stuff to kill.
E.g., UO at launch tried to have a maximum total quantity of metal in the world, including in swords and armours and whatnot, and would only spawn more ore when some metal items got destroyed. (Sold to vendors, despawned, etc.) That was their idea of enforcing some realistic level of supply and demand. But then some people started filling their and their alts' bank vaults with swords and armours and whatnot, just to prevent more ore from spawning. Not to corner the market and make a profit later, or any other kind of realistic motivation. Just for the sake of screwing up the economy for everyone else. Just to keep _you_ from finding ore if you want to play a smith.
E.g., even plain old ganking, the stereotypical ganker didn't even own anything other than a cheap replaceable halberd. They didn't even bother getting new armour after being killed, but would just run around in their death shroud. They didn't kill you for your money or your posessions, except in as much as to prevent you from enjoying those money or posessions.
What I'm trying to say is that RL history actually favoured more those who actually knew how to profit from others, not the plain old psychopath. To be a successful king RL you needed not just to make the peasants miserable, but to drum up popular support, make alliances, play the piety card big time, etc. UO was the other way around. It favoured the psychopaths who really had no other plan than spreading the grief.
The real key is what you wrote at point 2: the lack of consequences for the griefer. And I don't mean as in "permanent death" or anything, but rather the more mundane realization that there's nothing you can do to someone's character that'll matter, when they only see that character as a disposable griefing tool. It's akin to making a murderer wear a different shirt for 5 minutes as a RL penalty for murder: you can probably see how some people would then run amok every day. Not because they gain anything, but just because they can.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Devloping an MMO is a long, expensive, and therefore risky proposition. Great rewards if you succeed, devastation if you fail. And a failure can poison your future opportunities, too - how many people are going to avoid the next Star Wars MMO after disliking the first?
From a certain point of view, the history of MMOs since the late 90s has been one of a race for each generation of game to copy whatever was most successful from the previous generation. Less risky that way, right? Well, UO wasn't the most successful of its generation; Everquest was, and, in the far east, Lineage was. That's why we got level-based (or level-grind-based) MMOs from there. WoW's absolutely stunning success in particular has locked us into this rut.
The PvP question is an equally important one. People hate griefing, but the *reason* they hate it is mainly the lost time/progress. Games that balance that have a chance to succeed, games that don't balance it very rarely succeed. EVE is the one high-risk success outlier we can point to - but even then, compared to WoW, which one is a developer going to copy? WoW.
In practice, you could probably do a game based on the core ideas of UO, with modern adjustments added in, and be successful. UO had a lot of things going for it. Its approach to a player economy, its complete decoupling of trade skills from combat skills, and its comparatively low dependence on gear were all Good Things, in my opinion. Now add in modern conveniences like a UI that doesn't suck, auction house, soulbind-on-equip/soulbind-on-pickup items, better banking/party/guild/raid support, modern WoW-like quest system, instancing (but don't overdo it - those open dungeons were fun too), and so on. And, when you think about it, those changes would almost be enough to make UO's open PvP bearable, wouldn't they? Most of your good gear would be unlootable, as would the bits of monster parts from your current kill-x-collect-y quests, so there'd not be much penalty for your first player-induced death, and the other guy therefore only stands to lose by sticking around - you'd actually have a chance of killing him and taking back your stuff. The kind of NPC guard presence we see in WoW would also make for a lot less griefing too, since any place with questgivers becomes a small bubble of safety from the standard career criminal.
I am sorry, you are an idiot. If you ever played UO you would know exactly what is missing. After UO turned into a carebear land, there was only one remaining bastion. Siege Perilous. Point is, in "glory days", there were not only PK clans, there were antis as well. It was a continuous struggle between murdering psychotic bastards and those who tried to stop them where later were a minority. People would not just join "good" or "bad" side like in WoW. They would BE good or evil. Good and evil were not hard coded into game. People would shape what good and evil meant. If you met an anti, you knew you are pretty much talking to a paladin. If you met an undead lord you knew they were a psychotic fuck that would kill you, rape you, loot you, dismember you and store one of your organs in a box somewhere as a part of sacrificial ceremony to whatever dark gods they pray. If you are lucky in that order. And you would know that by staring at your own guts in a grey world. OOOOOoooOOooOOOo. Fucking horde in WoW? They are pussies comparing to sick and twisted shit you had to deal with in UO. Instead of "oh cool you are a zombie lol" you would get *stare* *cling* *cling* *swoosh* *don't mind me while energy vortex is chacing you* *o shit it's coming for me now* *OoooOOooOoO*. In UO "evil" was real. I loved it. And I was on the receiving end of it. Why do PKs get all the glory? Why do people always forget those who held the line against them? By playing UO you realize how rare decent people actually are. After that any other MMO with the artificial rules becomes boring. UO was like giving kids a loaded gun and getting them drunk which is not legal in US. You can get a gun tho. The only game that comes close to UO is strangely enough EVE online. In 0.0 space it is just as sick and twisted, except less fun and more of a second job. And don't bitch or I'll feed you to my wyrm...
What I am trying to say in the end is, UO had no rules to guide the players. It was a chaos that gradualy organized itself. This "order" reflects our society. And that view was a good lesson. People are sick and twisted except few exceptions.