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

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

#141

Post by ajxs »

haolez wrote: post #34
squidleon wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If starting from scratch, what would an MMO need to replicate that? I've experienced it first hand, but I can't grasp why it worked well like it did.

Unfortunately the missing ingredient to recreating UO is a playerbase that can see the virtual world with innocent eyes. This HN post[1] always comes to mind.

By complete coincidence, yesterday I was just looking at the website for a guild I was in 25 years ago on Oceania [2], which is somehow still online! I had a great time playing UO back then, but I don't think the experience can be recreated today. The people have changed.

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33189823 2: http://tdr.iwarp.com/main_nfl.html

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

#142

Post by pjc50 »

deadbabe wrote: post #55
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.

Grief is a natural consequence of player freedom, but it’s not worth giving up that freedom for some safety.

Players don't want to be continually victimized. That game design drives away all but a tiny minority of players.

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

#143

Post by whyenot »

Wow, this brings back memories. I bough a little house and had a bakery outside Trinsic. You could hire a vendor NPC who would sell your wares while you were away. One of my friends had a tower or something, all decorated on the inside with furniture. It has taken 20+ years for World of Warcraft to have housing, and while the current setup is very good, it's instanced and not alive and part of the world the way UO's housing was.

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

#144

Post by Benjamin_Dobell »

Somewhat coincidentally, MoonSharp (the scripting engine Moongate based their Lua runtime on) is alive and kicking again. There hasn't been a release in ~10 years, but I published a beta for v3.0.0 a few days ago.

https://github.com/moonsharp-devs/moonsharp/releases

I'm not the creator of MoonSharp, just a maintainer on Github (who has honestly done very little). However, I consult for Berserk Games, and we have use MoonSharp as the scripting runtime for Tabletop Simulator.

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

#145

Post by DonHopkins »

codezero wrote: post #64
squidleon wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

My friends mocked me for spending months as a llama herder, until I could tame dragons and grief people by pulling them through portals.

Oh yeah, you could tame animals to make them your pets.

One Halloween I logged into UO, and my character had been transformed into a deer, as some kind of a sick joke! All my inventory was gone, and all I could do was deer stuff.

Then some bastard came along and TAMED ME. That totally sucked! I had to follow him around obediently all day. I guess I'm lucky he didn't skin me and make me into leather armor.

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

#146

Post by andrepd »

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…

UO and Star Wars Galaxies were both MMOs with that experience you describe, and I really can't think of any others. For my money the only ones to truly live to the promise of a virtual persistent alternate world.

WoW in 2004 truly scorched the field; after that MMO became synonymous with WoW clone. The same action bar, the same pov, the same control, the same short "kill 10 kobolds" quests with an exclamation mark, the same progression...

I was big into MMOs a long time ago. But I never imagined that 22 years after WoW the field still wouldn't have produced another gem in the level of UO or SWG.

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

#147

Post by idiotsecant »

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…

UO only had this experience because there was nothing else like it, exactly. PVE and PVP players and casual and sweaty tryhard and everyone was in one world, and the game actually forced interaction between those players, often to the detriment of one party. People say they want experiences like that, but they don't. They want a walled garden that isn't too hard and will give them new shoulder pads for spending 2.5 hours grinding after work.

UO was the last MMO that made the mistake of trying to be a world for everyone to live in.

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

#148

Post by andrepd »

faidit wrote: post #111
SenHeng wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always forgot where I parked my boats. Or that I even had one.

I always checked the harbor for unlocked boats and took them on joyrides.

None of these experiences would be possible in a "WoW clone" MMO. Only with the freedom of an immersive sim can these memorable moments happen.

We could do it in 1999. Why has no one done it again? Why isn't there a BotW-engine MMO?

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

#149

Post by prox »

andrepd wrote: post #148
faidit wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always checked the harbor for unlocked boats and took them on joyrides.

None of these experiences would be possible in a "WoW clone" MMO. Only with the freedom of an immersive sim can these memorable moments happen. We could do it in 1999. Why has no one done it again? Why isn't there a BotW-engine MMO?

I think Star Citizen might be the closest thing. It’s certainly unparalleled. There is an interesting talk with the techtool guy from last Thursday.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmxmkx87qcE

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

#150

Post by jghn »

andrepd wrote: post #148
faidit wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always checked the harbor for unlocked boats and took them on joyrides.

None of these experiences would be possible in a "WoW clone" MMO. Only with the freedom of an immersive sim can these memorable moments happen. We could do it in 1999. Why has no one done it again? Why isn't there a BotW-engine MMO?

Because this style of game appealed to two clusters of gamers. The first one is small and niche, and thus not profitable. The second one are the griefers who only want to play if they have victims available, which isn't going to happen in a small & niche game.

These kinds of games *do* exist, they're just, well, small & niche as they've learned to either build in protections against griefers and/or stay small enough to not attract notice. If you find yourself in the first cluster and not the second, you may want to check out the latest project from Raph Koster, aka Designer Dragon from UO. [1]

[1] https://starsreach.com

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