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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...
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
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.
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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"