Show HN: Moongate – Ultima Online server emulator in .NET 10 with Lua scripting

Post by jghn » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 12:39 AM UTC

mapt wrote: post #60

stackghost wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The truth is though there was no “bad experience”, it was all just an experience. I mean there absolutely were bad experiences. Griefing drove lots of players away, which is why they implemented Trammel.

You approach that from a game design perspective to reduce the reward and set bounds on how much fun a player is allowed to destroy maliciously and what kind of counterplay is available, but if you completely eliminate it the world loses a lot of its drama. Conflict drives narrative.

Post by mbonnet » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 1:24 AM UTC

squidleon wrote: post #19

haolez wrote: post #18

UO was the only game that I've ever played where you had "commoner" players. A lot of players failed to scale up, or to obtain top notch equipment. But the game was fun even for underpowered players, so they kept playing. The really powerful players were famous, like celebrities. It's very different from modern games, where each player looks like the fantasy version of a Marvel super hero.

This is such a good observation. UO had a real economy and social hierarchy because power wasn't handed to you. You could spend months as a fisherman or tailor and still have a meaningful experience. The gap between a grandmaster swordsman in full plate and a guy selling fish at the Britain bank was enormous, and both of them were having fun. Modern MMOs are theme parks where everyone gets the same ride (with pay per…

Post by NDizzle » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 2:10 AM UTC

haolez wrote: post #116

NDizzle wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it was kind of the only game in town. Sure, you had Dark Sun Online and Meridian 59, but in 96/97 you were playing UO if you liked the idea of online worlds. I think the barrier to entry is the equivalent of several complete, fun, balanced single player games operating together in balanced harmony. Not impossible, but highly improbable.

Btw, I've never met a player of Meridian 59, but seeing YouTube videos about it, it might have been popular in my community if we had access to it at the time. Looks super interesting, although it didn't age well, of course.

Post by jghn » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 2:30 AM UTC

chongli wrote: post #134

jghn wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> UO had a real economy Sort of. They disabled big parts of the "real economy" in beta. Turned out that players didn't like it that NPC shopkeepers kept standard working hours and didn't want to buy their 5000 skullcaps from their skill grinding. Likewise they even more quickly got rid of the real ecology feature, both because it was computationally intensive but also because players would strip mine the ecology.

They disabled NPC participation in the real economy. This gave way to the real player economy which took place in player-run shops built inside player-owned and customized housing. Players didn't buy those 5000 junk skullcaps either. They wanted stuff that was actually valuable, which meant those practice items were recycled or thrown in the trash. I remember when the UO team added trash barrels and created the "Clea…

Post by block_dagger » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 4:53 AM UTC

haolez wrote: post #18

UO was the only game that I've ever played where you had "commoner" players. A lot of players failed to scale up, or to obtain top notch equipment. But the game was fun even for underpowered players, so they kept playing. The really powerful players were famous, like celebrities. It's very different from modern games, where each player looks like the fantasy version of a Marvel super hero.