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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

#181

Post by space_fountain »

the_gipsy wrote: post #173
space_fountain wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting sort of off subject, but one of the things I liked about this set of mods was that they were entirely server side. It got a bit awkward in that it required text commands in the place of interfaces in a lot of places, but it meant that the difficulty of getting people to join was a lot smaller. I think at the peak it was still fairly small but a healthy 100+ on most days. My first big bit of software developme…

Do you happen to know any active copycat servers?

Haven't played personally, but https://www.reddit.com/r/civclassics/ seems to stil be kicking.

Re: Ultima Online spent years developing a system that was destroyed by players

#182

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

Raph_Koster wrote: post #115
ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apropos of nothing, I've always found the behavior of the players of MMOs and online games one of the clearest telltales that sociopathy is a lot more prevalent that most people think it is.

The term I used at the time was "virtual sociopath" -- you'd think sociopathy is more common if you glance at forums today, too... but there's a huge element of disinhibition brought about by non-personal contact. It doesn't mean the person is like that in person at all.

> It doesn't mean the person is like that in person at all.

While I defer to your expertise, I have to say I find it a bit difficult to believe. Being in an online game just changes the form of interaction between people, not the fact that they're interacting. (We couldn't, for example, say "Oh, X is a jerk over the telephone but s/he's not like that in person at all".) These players know full well that there was another human being at the other end of their misbehavior.

Whatever the online analogue of "in vino, veritas" might be, I would be willing to bet that it's true and that these players are actually revealing a significant aspect of their true nature.

Re: Ultima Online spent years developing a system that was destroyed by players

#183

Post by etxm »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #182
Raph_Koster wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The term I used at the time was "virtual sociopath" -- you'd think sociopathy is more common if you glance at forums today, too... but there's a huge element of disinhibition brought about by non-personal contact. It doesn't mean the person is like that in person at all.

> It doesn't mean the person is like that in person at all. While I defer to your expertise, I have to say I find it a bit difficult to believe. Being in an online game just changes the form of interaction between people, not the fact that they're interacting. (We couldn't, for example, say "Oh, X is a jerk over the telephone but s/he's not like that in person at all".) These players know full well that there was ano…

Role playing.

Re: Ultima Online spent years developing a system that was destroyed by players

#184

Post by shagie »

jghn wrote: post #119
Raph_Koster wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The term I used at the time was "virtual sociopath" -- you'd think sociopathy is more common if you glance at forums today, too... but there's a huge element of disinhibition brought about by non-personal contact. It doesn't mean the person is like that in person at all.

via hanging around magical bubba, xavori and that gang I also came across many, well, less refined types who fit this mold. Meet them in RL and they were perfectly normal. They just saw UO as a different kind of game as other folks did, something more akin to Quake where it was no holds barred PvP. There were multiple folks I knew who couldn't understand that someone wouldn't view the game that way.

The article Hearths, Clubs Diamonds, Spades: Players Who Suit Muds ( https://mud.co.uk/richard/hcds.htm ) looks at that aspect. The types of players the designers design for and the types of players that the game creates aren't always in alignment.

One of the games that I've played over the years that specifically embraces this is Kingdom of Loathing.

Re: Ultima Online spent years developing a system that was destroyed by players

#185

Post by ztorkelson »

uo_throwaway wrote: post #89
nrb wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I generally agree (object serialization was rough, and stop-the-word saves have been a constant issue for the entire life of the project) but the things it did well were done outstandingly better than POL, Sphere, UOX, Wolfpack, etc. I think the killer feature of RunUO was that it compiled the C# “script” files and linked them at runtime, eliminating the need to attach a scripting language that provides some limited…

It actually falls over around 1000 clients if they're actually playing and encountering one another at any regularity. I have been contributing to a new RunUO based shard ( http://www.uooutlands.com ) that has become extremely popular and hit 2k clients online. The lag was pretty extreme at first, but after a few weeks of studying CPU profiles I rewrote a lot of the map search algorithms, plus a few other things, and…

Congratulations on the launch! I’ve heard great things about Outlands and have been meaning to log in and check it out.

It’s been a long time since I was involved in the RunUO community, but as I recall, one of the biggest limiting factors on scalability was activated NPC/AI. Range queries and movement were the two big pieces, so I’m sure your improvements would have a big impact there.

We ran load tests on Hybrid with over 10k clients (not just idle, mind you, but moving and talking and whatever else we were able to throw in to the load generators), and the server was able to keep up just fine. That was on mid-2000 era hardware too, but then again, RunUO wasn’t built to really take full advantage of multiple cores.

There are a lot of things I’d do differently if I had the opportunity to go back and redesign it from the ground up, but the simple single-threaded concurrency model is not something I’d want to change without great care. For all the scalability problems RunUO had, I think the concurrency model contributed significantly to its approachability, and I’d be very cautious of making any changes which would complect game logic with concurrency control.

I’ve heard quite a few stories (and now I’m hearing a few more) of folks whose path into software development started by tinkering around with RunUO. In fact, a few of my closest friends (and some now colleagues) took that same path. I am filled with a weird mix of pride and abject humility whenever I have the opportunity to see how the project has touched people all over the world, often in ways I could never have anticipated.

Please do share your changes back. I’d love to take a look at them, even after so many years.

-krrios

Re: Ultima Online spent years developing a system that was destroyed by players

#186

Post by andrepd »

chii wrote: post #127
andrepd wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That’s the thing about UO... nobody was the hero, everyone was just trying to survive and thrive in their own way; whether that meant crawling the dungeons as a warrior, bard, tamed, or caster; terrorizing those same dungeons as a player-killer out to strip the dungeon crawlers of all their loot and gear; or, spending your days baking bread or running your own player shopping mall, your only limitation was your effo…

> we're stuck with WoW (and its clones), which was an excellent game in its own right, but it wasn't a true MMO because most companies didn't realize what they were copying when they copied WoW. True MMO - aka, a sandbox game. See this very indepth critique, if you want more about this topic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvK8fua6O64

I knew which video you were talking about after reading your first sentence hehe :)

Re: Ultima Online spent years developing a system that was destroyed by players

#187

Post by Raph_Koster »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #182
Raph_Koster wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The term I used at the time was "virtual sociopath" -- you'd think sociopathy is more common if you glance at forums today, too... but there's a huge element of disinhibition brought about by non-personal contact. It doesn't mean the person is like that in person at all.

> It doesn't mean the person is like that in person at all. While I defer to your expertise, I have to say I find it a bit difficult to believe. Being in an online game just changes the form of interaction between people, not the fact that they're interacting. (We couldn't, for example, say "Oh, X is a jerk over the telephone but s/he's not like that in person at all".) These players know full well that there was ano…

Actually, we do in fact say that X is a jerk over the telephone but less so in person. It's pretty well studied. The generic term is "psychological disinhibition" and it used to come up all the time around the issue of email and tone.

Re: Ultima Online spent years developing a system that was destroyed by players

#188

Post by jghn »

Raph_Koster wrote: post #121
jghn wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

via hanging around magical bubba, xavori and that gang I also came across many, well, less refined types who fit this mold. Meet them in RL and they were perfectly normal. They just saw UO as a different kind of game as other folks did, something more akin to Quake where it was no holds barred PvP. There were multiple folks I knew who couldn't understand that someone wouldn't view the game that way.

Of course, even those two were quite different; Xavori roleplayed a lot whereas IIRC Bubba didn't bother.

I think the key difference is that one was a RPer who PKd and the other a PK who RPd. Most of the folks who hung around that Silk's Tavern group, both villains and good guys & myself included had a thinner veneer of RP than folks like Xavori. It's a big reason why it was never hard to concoct an IC reason why we were all banding together against a troupe of jerks, red or blue.

Re: Ultima Online spent years developing a system that was destroyed by players

#189

Post by jghn »

jghn wrote: post #29
swozey wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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? Th…

I remember it well. I played on Lake Superior which had a smaller but also prominent RP scene at the time, albeit more villain oriented. For instance one of our more well known RPing PK guilds was featured in Wired: https://www.wired.com/1998/05/ultima/ . The two groups had a bit of a rivalry on the then main message board, Crossroads of Britannia. LS called the Catskills group "Care Bears" and they called us "The Bi…

Realized I meant Chesapeake. I was thinking that the Orcs were on a different server and sure enough I was the wrong one.

Re: Ultima Online spent years developing a system that was destroyed by players

#190

Post by jghn »

Raph_Koster wrote: post #139
jghn wrote: post #8

The 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…

> once EQ showed up and redefined the genre. I don't think I would frame it that way; more like it reverted the genre back to the Diku mold. See 1. https://www.raphkoster.com/2009/01/09/what-is-a-diku/ 2. https://www.engadget.com/2015/01/03/the-game-archaeologist-h...

Fair point. I'd say that by genre I meant MMO and not MU*, but it was so nascent that I don't think it'd be accurate anyways. I was mainly channeling one of the key designers, Brad I think, throwing hand grenades into online discussions.
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