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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?
As far as penalty driven PvP and PvE (your ship goes boom, no getting it back, and stuff you fit to your ship can go boom with it along with stuff you were carrying)
Owning space regions is expensive & cumbersome, but to be honest I don't remember the housing mechanic real well but it's similar. You can own a Station as well has have Towers referred to as 'POS' (Player Owned Stations)
anything outside of account stealing and real money stealing is allowed and not reversed.
But you're not an elf running around casting things, you're in a space ship.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
Because any private server would suck some subscriptions from them. Companies open source things because they have something to gain from it, or because its EOL and they want goodwill (or want someone else to maintain it). Where's the upside for Blizzard in doing it?
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
You can still play classic UO on independent servers. The biggest one is http://www.uogamers.com/
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 always wondered how long it would take before an Ultima Online post made its way to slashdot. I played several years on the Lake Superior shard, and after finally selling my account and moving on in 2003 i kept in touch with over 25 people that i was friends with from the realm. from those people 4 or 5 were still playing a UO Hybrid on a private server while others merged into other popular MMO's yet i never found anyone that is still playing a particular MMO. I've played Several MMORPGs after UO but i find the same thing to be true: You just cant compare 2D to 3D when it comes to Online Games like UO. The griefing was pretty widespread, even when OSI/EA released a mirrored world (Felucca/Trammel) for the PvE crowd to play in. Insurance on items so you wouldnt lose them quickly came after that, and the good old Ultima that we all knew started to dwindle and lose its sparkle. The Skill based characters with cap limits also made for more interesting PvP, Only the non-elite would complain about Griefing or PKing. Bringing Harrowers into the game with AoS ment actual boss fights with multiple people. And to think that was almost 6 years after they released the game. and its still going on what, expansion number 7 now? The 2D platform made larger fighters and group battles much more fun. Easier to see everything on screen but you have to know where to look to see where the danger is coming from. An old friend of mine once had a long discussion on why UO was so popular, and especially when it came to PvP i believe it to be the most skill based option for gamers out there. When it came to Dueling you had to time everything right, keyboard shortcuts with UOAssist over clicking spells were key, insta-switching weapons and knowing when to time that stun punch or arm a halberd. As for recreating a success of underground status with lost UO players i dont think it will happen... Most people that enjoyed it will just go back to a player run shard that was pre UO:R.
I used to play UO on Siege, the only hardcore pvp server UO has left. I left Siege due to the fact that it didn't have enough players on when i was playing, hours of running around to find a player. Its mostly americans that play there and the europian all leave, because of lack of players in their timezone.
So, i started looking for a new UO like game just like you. I found Darkfall, which was a grindfest and didn't give me the same adrenaline shots UO gave me when running around its forests. Also the Europian server was full of cheats and they didn't wan't to do a server wipe. Recently i tried the open beta of Mortal Online, wow the combat engine really felt sluggish, i hope i was wrong and it will be better, but i haven't logged in after the first hour. Guess thats another game that won't give the UO feel, although its mechanics looked more promising.
But what all these new games lack is the roleplay tools, UO has all these small parts as tables, chairs, flowers, paintings, etc.. You can really build your own scenery to play your character in, combined with a death penalty which makes life in the world much more intense.
If you find a good UO like game, please let me know ;-)
And I agree. Spent 8 years from 1998 to 2006 on UO. Every other MMORPG I tried, guildwars, eve, etc. Didn't give me that warm feeling when I first started UO. Walking up from Vesper to Minoc and didn't know what I will see. And I tried hard, pretty hardcore I'd say spending way beyond normal hours on each games to fully explore the possibilities. Nothing came close to UO.
There's something about playing a medieval fantasy from Richard Garriott who knows his swords and knives. The amount of detail in the games, and mostly the carried over legacy of the Ultima series was what made UO so enjoyable. But even that only lasted a few years. The last few years of my subscription is basically just banking (chats at the bank), and script mining for fun.
You want this. http://uosecondage.com/ "Second Age is a free Ultima Online Shard that can be accessed by anyone with UO client software. Second Age is the most accurate emulation of the UO: T2A era online today. There are no giveaways. On UO Second Age you will build your character(s) from the ground up." Been running for about 2 years now, good user base and well moderated.
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.
Read radical news here
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
I've only yet seen 1 game where I thought looting and theft was done 'right'...
Theft - Have to practice your pickpocket skill to get better at it. The better you get, the higher level person you can steal from and the better stuff you can get from them, and from shops.
Anti-Theft - Have to practice your 'perception' or/and pickpocket skills. The better you get, the harder you are to rob. In addition, if you see the theft but can't prevent it, you can report to the nearest guard and the town guards will be watching for them. Also, you can immediately attack the robber and killing them is perfectly legal.
Looting - Known as 'graverobbing' because when you die, you create a mini-grave on the spot. The looter has to dig up the grave (takes about a minute) and then can take whatever. The items are marked as being looted for about an hour. Logging off or hiding in a zone where find-magic doesn't work will see the items returned to their owner immediately.
Anti-looting - Killing a graverobber is fair game. For anyone. Pick on a newbie player and you'll likely find the mob has pitchforks and torches. And they are very eager for some excitement.
What you end up with is a -lot- of petty theft that people generally only lightly protect against, with a few people that go totally nuts and fly into a rage about it. And just a little bit of looting, which everyone gets excited about and has fun with.
I'm sure it wasn't easy to come up with the above solution, and it takes a strong community to make it happen... But it's the only one I've seen do it right so far.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Shadowbane had a good run and there are still those of us that would log into it if it was still running. There's an attempt to back engineer the game's server at http://www.shadowbaneemulator.com/ .
I'd love another sandbox fantasy game to come on that market that works as well as world of warcraft but all those I've tried since them have lacked the "flow" that blizzard put into their game to keep me coming back.
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"
Methinks that's missing the point. Judging by the summary, what his friend misses isn't crafting or just housing, but the opportunity to be a griefing fucktard with impunity. He doesn't miss just housing (which half the games have nowadays anyway), but more specifically thieving, which in the context of housing really boiled down to exploiting some clipping bug to nick someone's furniture that per the game rules you shouldn't have had access to. Basically he's missing a game that's equally half-baked, buggy, exploitable, and with equally piss-poor GM support, so he can be as big a griefer as in the good old days of UO.
And I seriously doubt that many games aim for the bottom of the proverbial barrel nowadays. Even those who end up there, it's not by design. They may end up an exploitable griefer's paradise by plain old fashioned half-arsed effort, but not by aiming to be a buggy exploitable mess by design.
Arguably even UO didn't aim to be the mess it was for its first years. Lord British and later Raph Koster didn't as much aim to fuck up, but just found rationales as to why and how the players will do all the policing and content so they don't have to bother with that. (Raph Koster would then take this idea with him to SWG, and contribute to that one's ending up barely niche appeal, in spite of the millions of SW fans who awaited it like the second cumming of the Messiah.) UO was not _supposed_ to be a lawless griefer's paradise and driving almost all the player base off, as soon as the first competitor appeared. It was supposed to be the place where players form their own posses and do their own policing and enforcing the rules, so Origin and EA don't have to spend money and manpower on that. All that happened was simply that that idea didn't work: there was nothing you could do in-character to a griefer seeing his character as just a disposable harrassment tool. Even if you could get a bunch of people to form a posse to hunt him down, that just fed the troll, instead of deterring him.
But anyway UO ended up a griefer's paradise more by simple fuck-up, than by design. People and social dynamics were supposed to take the place of coded restrictions, except they never actually worked that way. And the end result was just the result of that "it never worked as they intended."
So, yeah, I doubt that the guy's friend will find many games which _aim_ to be what he misses.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
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.
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.
Having actually been one of the early adopters of WoW, I wonder where you found that adventure and exploration and where do you think it disappeared. The same original zones are still there, the same quests are there, and people always just wanted a good game.
And most importantly, again, this is the same kind of people we had from day 1, and this is the kind of things they've asked for. I just need to remember the history of the plugins and sites, to realize that the average player always just wanted to be shown where to go to hand it in and collect his loot, and that's how they played the game.
Compared to other games, WoW offered the _least_ mystery and exploration, and people actually _liked_ it that way. E.g., it was very much appreciated that you actually saw a big yellow mark over the head of everyone who could give you a quest. As opposed to actually having to go talk to every single stupid NPC, only to see that 99% still have nothing for you, like in a couple of other online games.
But anyway, really, exactly which place you used to adventure and explore in, that no longer exists?
Methinks that the only thing that changed is you. You were seeing it back then through the eyes of someone who's all new to it, and for whom discovering a new town was an exciting new thing. You're now a jaded old veteran who not only knows exactly where that town is, but also where every single NPC is, and what quests they have, and what items they sell. That's really what killed any sense of adventure and exploration, not anything Blizzard did.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.