I played it only for a few days because they had high level players going around killing newbies for fun. My first step out of town some guy kills me in one shot. I went back to continue and he does it a second time and third time. Eventually gave up in frustration.
Ultima Online spent years developing a system that was destroyed by players
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Re: Ultima Online spent years developing a system that was destroyed by players
#12I played it only for a few days because they had high level players going around killing newbies for fun. My first step out of town some guy kills me in one shot. I went back to continue and he does it a second time and third time. Eventually gave up in frustration.
Sounds like the spawn system in most games.
Re: Ultima Online spent years developing a system that was destroyed by players
#13I played it only for a few days because they had high level players going around killing newbies for fun. My first step out of town some guy kills me in one shot. I went back to continue and he does it a second time and third time. Eventually gave up in frustration.
lol owned
Re: Ultima Online spent years developing a system that was destroyed by players
#14I played it only for a few days because they had high level players going around killing newbies for fun. My first step out of town some guy kills me in one shot. I went back to continue and he does it a second time and third time. Eventually gave up in frustration.
lol owned
Think you mean oOooOO OooOoOOo
Re: Ultima Online spent years developing a system that was destroyed by players
#15UO was such a cool and open experience. I enjoyed it over the next generation “turn in quest” rinse repeat MMOs. In UO I played a blacksmith and a beggar. My friend played a miner and a fanatical priest. We never set foot in a dungeon and saved up enough virtual money to buy our own house.
Re: Ultima Online spent years developing a system that was destroyed by players
#16It had to be balanced around the main carnivore species ruling the online world, the players. Which apparently wasn't done, and then simple respawn with some simple dynamic rules based on population and rate of death, would have done it much better.
My understanding was that part of the problem was that they expected more of the RPing MUD crowd to show up, not the typical gamer crowd. Whether or not their calculations would have been similarly incorrect even if their userbase predictions were spot on is another question altogether
The Catskills server was the roleplay server and it had actual die-hard roleplayers, the Origin storytellers (counselors? I forget) did a lot of work to help them with events, etc. For instance an entire clan (Shadowclan Orcs) took over the NPC owned Yew Orc Fort. There were big Pirate groups too in Buc's Den. I remember the Paladins of Trinsic, Yew Militia and the Undead (they may have been called something else? They had the Necropolis).
It was some of the most fun I've had in a game ever.
The servers really had different cultures. I really loved Siege Perilous while it was doing the Color Wars. The map was 4 castles with 4 different teams, you'd spawn inside your team castle surrounded by chests full of GM weapons/armor that made you immediately become a GM of that item (say Grandmaster Halbredier) then run out and fight the other teams. It was almost like a Battlefield game. Then they changed it to some boring mode for beta testing.
I was 11-12 when I got into UO in 1996. I could talk about it all day. I miss it.
The 2nd Age I think is when I quit. Whenever they added riding cockroaches and neon colors and all that other stuff.
Re: Ultima Online spent years developing a system that was destroyed by players
#17The promise of alpha/beta era UO really died quickly. Even more rapidly not long after that once EQ showed up and redefined the genre. There were other cool ideas beyond the ecology that got the axe pretty quickly. For instance originally NPC shopkeepers kept hours so you had to show up when they were around. Player didn't like this as it was inconvenient so they made them permanently stationed. Similarly there was a…
The earlier economy you describe sounds a bit like Dartmud. I think they gave in eventually too and started supplying the shopkeepers with new money every so often, however some of them still retain in-game "opening hours".
Re: Ultima Online spent years developing a system that was destroyed by players
#18The promise of alpha/beta era UO really died quickly. Even more rapidly not long after that once EQ showed up and redefined the genre. There were other cool ideas beyond the ecology that got the axe pretty quickly. For instance originally NPC shopkeepers kept hours so you had to show up when they were around. Player didn't like this as it was inconvenient so they made them permanently stationed. Similarly there was a…
Also there were things like the "Clean Up Britannia" event, where players were encouraged to cull their item collection in exchange for neon hair dye and other goodies: http://www.uoguide.com/Clean_Up_Britannia_(1999)
Re: Ultima Online spent years developing a system that was destroyed by players
#19I played it only for a few days because they had high level players going around killing newbies for fun. My first step out of town some guy kills me in one shot. I went back to continue and he does it a second time and third time. Eventually gave up in frustration.
Sounds like the spawn system in most games.
It's exactly why later MMOs had PvP rules. Even WoW's PvP servers didn't allow PvP in the starting areas.
Re: Ultima Online spent years developing a system that was destroyed by players
#20Direct link to actual source (includes transcript if you prefer reading): https://video.arstechnica.com/watch/war-stories-ultima-onlin...