41–50 of 75 posts
sooo many memories. got into it with Sphere (51 and 55) if my memory doesn't trick me. was there ever a working port of the client for OSX ? would love to revamp it.
Then RunUO came out and took the emulator scene by storm
Is this better than a server emulator?
My first real programming achievement was building a website for an Ultima Online shard. I wrote some really terrible PHP and HTML, but it worked for 20+ years afterwards. Great memories! I was surprised that there is still an active community around UO! In any case, this is very cool. Thanks for sharing!
> I was surprised that there is still an active community around UO! If it was an MMO, or online, there's private server communities for it endlessly. I forget the name of the game, maybe it was City of Heroes? It was shutdown for years, and then boop, someone popped up a Private Server years later. Heck, and I've mentioned it before, the Shockwave Online games of old have some niche communities rebuilding the server…
I still have an inkling to get back into MapleStory custom servers (or other MMOs) but to be honest something about the vast open world that is empty of players is really creepy/sad/liminal to me. I'd want to take a spin at adding some "life" to the servers, even if it is just extra player-ish NPCs.
I was too young for Ultima era but what was the experience like playing an MMO in the late 90s and early 2000s ?
Then WoW happened.
The UO emulator scene got me into network programming. I've never seen an online game capture so many ancillary/emergent/accidental gameplay mechanics as well as this, somehow all the 3d MMOs seemed to downgrade a lot of the interesting economics, building, exploring that UO delivered. PvP and quest type stuff is probably a lot better in other games but it was still compelling and you could realistically play solo or…
> somehow all the 3d MMOs seemed to downgrade a lot of the interesting Unfortunately two things turned out to be true: 1) Most people don't want any of this and prefer to be on rails 2) The two groups of people most attracted to a game like this wind up in a dynamic where one group will leave the game if the other is present. Whereas the 2nd group requires the 1st to want to play.
I played UO a lot when younger, on Neverlands shard, and none of my friends knew how to write code for EasyUO, so I had to learn it. Good times!
I was too young for Ultima era but what was the experience like playing an MMO in the late 90s and early 2000s ?
A lot of grinding, first and foremost. The idea of a massive multiplayer game was new so just having the thing itself was enough to get you excited to go in and spend days repeating the same 5-second loop to get a level. It was also a much more social thing, servers were usually small (and niche) enough that you would know most people by nickname, know when someone new entered, etc. Most games were mostly sandboxes s…
Before they finally patched the hole, I used to enjoy running through crowds of high level monsters in dungeons to get a whole parade of them chasing me, then quickly casting a portal into the middle of town, usually next to the bank, then ducking behind the portal without going through, as the whole line of monsters walked towards me and popped through the portal and into town!
Also, you could tame animals to make them your pets.
So 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.