Ultima Online Devs Building Player-Run MMORPG
An anonymous reader writes: "A group of former developers for Ultima Online has created a game company called Citadel Studios, and they're working on a new MMORPG called Shards Online. '[CEO Derek] Brinkmann described the game as a player-run MMO, which means at the highest level they can run their own servers and change the settings of that world, altering how long nighttime lasts or how quickly players can gain skills. On the next level down, server administrators can take the form of god characters, who can spawn monsters in the world, create items and launch live events. And in the level below that, players can modify the gameplay code. ... The game is set in a multiverse, where players can travel through different worlds. While all the worlds are unified by the same rule-set, Cotten told Polygon that they are each themed differently, and these themes will offer players a different experience. There's a world inspired by high fantasy. There's a world that is coming out of a steampunk industrial revolution. There's a world that consists of a coliseum in which players can fight each other in player-versus-player battles.'"
*cough*MUD*cough*
I remember day-dreaming about an MMO like this ages ago when they were just coming into the mainstream. I was thinking one based on Feist's "Hall of Worlds" concept. Each player would start on a pre-fabbed world, and after levelling a bit, make their way into the Hall, where they could connect to player-generated worlds which served as dungeons against which to test their skill. After progressing sufficiently, they could gain control of their own world, and create another dungeon to add to the Hall of Worlds.
Still think it'd be a good game; I'd like to play it.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
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And allow me to dust off my crystal ball to predict how this is going to run.
- People will flock to the "shards" where they gather xp the fastest, then complain about the lack of content.
- Balance will be completely off whack because you go to shard A, get weapon A1, go to shard B and get armor B1 because the monster that carries said armor is very susceptible to A1 (which does not matter since nothing like it exists in world B), then go to shard C where every monster gives tons and tons of xp and loot but is really hard to kill... unless you have weapon A1 which deals a damage these mobs don't have any resistance to (because it uses a different ruleset) and wear armor B1 that makes you invulnerable against mobs on shard C (because they use a different formula to calculate armor which makes the armor rate on B1 insanely huge against shard C while it would be quite normal for shard B).
- Interesting, well designed worlds filled with lots and lots of detail that will be deserted because the builder also took balance seriously, while the shards with no meaningful texturing where you mow down mobs by the dozen for free loot will be overrun, in turn giving wizzes the message that players don't give a shit about eye candy and just want free stuff, culminating eventually in the black room with rows and rows of defenseless drones dropping the Ultrasuperspecialawesome Sword of Pwnage with a dropchance of 99.9999% (with an error margin of 0.0001 due to a spawning error caused by the amount of mobs dying at the same time).
- Dozens and dozens of "twisty passages, all looking alike" because for some odd reason wizzes love to create mazes about as much as players loathe running through them.
Oh yeah, I'm so looking forward to that again!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Would the lack of pubic hair be a problem?
So, it's like DikuMUD with graphics. I for one, welcome these ideas from 25 years ago! Combine that with Ultima VII-grade graphics and you have a winner in my book!
This looks like DayZ, but with magic. Where as DayZ seems to have a love-it-or-hate-it vibe, this just looks lame.
This won't result in primarily altruistic and cooperative gameplay experiences but rather a tasteless mish-mash of anarchy.
Game code will be properly abstracted from engine code and it will be open source? Sure ....
Unless they give true full source code access the best players will be able to do is turn some near irrelevant dials and connect some blocks together to form a "new" quest, just like all these other MMOs which promise players will be able to develop content.
It's not a problem if each server is just it's own persistent world ... let characters from the official servers import into persistent worlds, but not export.
I wouldn't play such an mmo. It sounds like a chaos for gameplay to me....
Sort of like the different forks of NetHack? ;-)
Ezekiel 23:20
This has been going on for years already. RunUO.
Reminded me of Second Life too (game aspects of), where you had many people clueless what to do without specific direction, a lack of cohesion of design, and some outright bad decision making that impacted others.
gibe moni plos
My idea was:
Have a MMORPG that players can host on their own server.
Everyone can host their own server.
There's no rules against hacking cuz you can't stop it anyway
Have a main server which allows people to buy virtual goods.
Allow players to make their own meshes they can sell on the main server's virtual good server, and get a cut.
God spoke to me
Kinda sounds like one *I* would play in....
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
I think this idea really matches what I see in a lot of young gamers now. If you've spent any time on Minecraft lately, you'll find a tremendous diversity of play styles and server types. Having a professionally produced, nicely scaling MMORPG that the players can bring their creativity to, could provide a nice market for them.
AKA Mirage Online / Player Worlds? Yeah .... thought so.
Can't wait for the Rift for this!
Oh, wait, FB bought it.
Sounds to me like they were getting high one day, thinking they need to get back into the MMO forefront after a decade and a half, and someone had just experienced "Nomic" for the first time ever.
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