18 Years On, Ultima Online Is Still Going

An anonymous reader writes: Ultima Online was released in September, 1997. It was the game that popularized graphical MMOs, and somehow, it's still running. Rock, Paper, Shotgun took a dive into the game to see how much it's changed, and who still plays it. As the community has shrunk, it's become increasingly tight-knit, and giving up the game now means giving up a social circle for many players. Even though newer MMOs have eclipsed the game's functionality, UO has a dedication to the full adventuring experience that later games haven't replicated. From the article: "While initially I couldn't understand the appeal of Ultima, when I decided to shake off the limitations of an early level character and simply explore for myself, I found a game world with a lot to offer. Player created civilizations, unique monsters, and the sheer mystery of the world combine to keep this ancient MMO compelling. For all the ways in which the genre has improved, Ultima Online remains one of just a few MMOs that let you live an alternative life. That feeling of ownership ... combined with the diversity on offer, keeps players coming back day after day."

Comments

Re:Ultima is for cows.

[Spazmania]

One UO Freeshard I play has animal breeding. You can tame and then breed animals to get more powerful pets which you can then use to take down monsters in the dungeons.

I bred cows all the way to "max." My cows slaughter dragons with ease.

Breeding cows in UO turns out to be tricky. See, there's a bug: cows and bulls can't breed together, they're considered separate animal types. But all cows are female, so cows can't breed with cows either. You first have to magically transform some of the cows to the male gender before you can breed them. And it takes 20 to 30 generations to breed an animal like cows up to the game's max.

Thus I refer to my cows as "Daemonic Transgender Inbred Battle Cattle."