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We Burned Down Players’ Houses in Ultima Online

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Re: We Burned Down Players’ Houses in Ultima Online

#191

Post by Kiro »

5560675260 wrote: post #184
meheleventyone wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the point of an MMO is to share a space with thousands of people so individual servers with differing rules don’t really work in that context. And individual servers doing moderation is the same as individual server based games doing moderation, it’s just a difference in scale. I’m sure there are loads of other games people can play. For example Rust is infamous for a lack of moderation and has all the racist and…

Ultima had plenty independent (pirate) servers with vastly different cultures and even game mechanics. Even WoW, I think, has servers with different moderation - those that require roleplay and those that don't. Unified experience IMO would be a detriment for most games.

Those servers still had moderation. Very different from "no moderation".

Re: We Burned Down Players’ Houses in Ultima Online

#192

Post by barsonme »

arduinomancer wrote: post #46

This is pretty specific but does anyone remember in one of the Runescape open betas back in the day there was a duping bug? I think involving a chest? If I recall it was really easy to do and by the end of the beta like everyone had totally jacked up gear Of course it all got reset eventually since it was just a beta but I recall it being pretty hilarious to play during that period

The part hat dupe trick!

Re: We Burned Down Players’ Houses in Ultima Online

#193

Post by viridian »

altairprime wrote: post #98
registeredcorn wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To welshwelsh's point, he wasn't advocating for no moderation, but rather good and limited moderation. For example, I doubt most would have an issue with something like moderation over cheating.

Most cheaters do — but they’ll represent their viewpoint in terms that claim a “greater cause”, such as individual liberties or rights or whatever, so that they can try to rabble-rouse the crowd against enforcement in order to continue cheating. (This occurs with kernel anti-cheat drivers, for example, but there’s no way to measure what percentage of folks that is.)

Christ, if a game needs access to my operating system runtime to function, I think I'll just play a different game. Might as well just give them every file on your computer and a list of every connected device at that point.

Re: We Burned Down Players’ Houses in Ultima Online

#195

Post by bastawhiz »

> Not that I’m saying MMOs need blockchains; but it turns out Proof-of-Work ledger technology had a use case here! (No wonder Amazon now offers a similar service: QLDB).

For one, QLDB isn't proof of work. It's centralized: if you think you need a blockchain within your own data center to establish consensus, you don't.

Blockchains are only useful when there is no central authority, which isn't the case with (all?) MMOs. Badly written blockchains have double spend issues. Video games with race conditions and no locking controls have duping problems. Blockchains only manage to eliminate the centralization (in theory), not the bugs.

Re: We Burned Down Players’ Houses in Ultima Online

#197

Post by v8xi »

philliphaydon wrote: post #103
erichurkman wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As someone who got involved in an open-source version of the Ultima Online server, this is a fun read Ultima Online emulators were what took small interest for me and blew it up into a career. But for me, it was pre-RunUO: SphereServer (aka GrayServer, I think) and UOX3. C++, with its own scripting engine built in. It wasn't exactly closed or open source. It also got me into Linux: while some emulation servers were…

There was another server software prior to SphereServer, which I just cannot remember the name of. Despite running a server off it for 2 years. Probe is one of the developers of Sphere who was admin to NOS (Novus Opiate Seclorum) I believe he rebuilt NOS on POL which ultimately died :( After NOS died I was admin for a shard which I think was called UOX, and built a server called Alphanine which we had ~250-450 player…

I was like 10 years old when I started playing on free shards - was even GM on one that had about 100 players and I remember putting an event together with giants invading a town and I had made a whole mini town out of little model houses in the mountains...

There really was something about it...I used to play with my brothers and we were just the absolute worst griefers but man did we have fun. For us, it was the lawlessness of it all. That you could actually steal from other players and it was a valid part of the game with skills like hiding and stealth to make it easier... My favorite was filling a pack llama with greater explosion potions, "all drop" and then magic missile-ing it in the middle of a crowded bank to kill everyone nearby.

Re: We Burned Down Players’ Houses in Ultima Online

#198

Post by nicolas_t »

b0afc375b5 wrote: post #144
synicalx wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember when MMO's were fun like this :(

Maybe we just grew old. I recently paid real money just to support a private server of my favorite childhood mmorpg. After playing a couple of days I got bored and never played again.

Which server and game was that?

Re: We Burned Down Players’ Houses in Ultima Online

#199

Post by andrepd »

pmoriarty wrote: post #88

This reminds me of the assassination of Lord British: [1] "Lord British was a player character created by Richard Garriott, the producer of Ultima Online. Using this character, Richard acted as Ultima’s King and would sometimes interact with other players. Lord British had considerable protection from an entourage of bodyguards and was even explicitly coded to be invulnerable to virtually any attack. During the game’…

Ultima Online was an absolutely amazing game and it's pretty telling that despite all the technological advances since, no game whatsoever came as close as Ultima Online to fulfilling the promise of the Computer MMO: a virtual, shared, persistent world.

Maybe Star Wars Galaxies was the one who came closer.

Re: We Burned Down Players’ Houses in Ultima Online

#200

Post by v8xi »

Misdicorl wrote: post #107
aasasd wrote: post #105

I continue to be burdened and mystified by a memory from an article circa early-mid 2000s, about UO or a similar game, if there was one: that in the game, when one was being robbed or beaten, they could summon some wunderpolice, whose representative immediately teleported to the scene and instantly killed the culprit. However, if the alarm was false, then the supernatural officer killed the player instead. The implic…

Yeah it worked like that. Saying "guards" would instantly summon the guards if any criminal was present and subsequently murder the criminal(s). Nothing about incorrect summoning though. Most people had a macro invoking "guards" "bank" abd "vendor buy" all at the same time. The interface was mud like and the first (?) command in a statement that was valid would execute.

Though at the beginning the guards didn't teleport and instakill you, instead they would have to chase you - I don't remember if their hit was an instakill but I do remember a before/after of when suddenly you could not escape the guards.
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