18 Years On, Ultima Online Is Still Going 75
An anonymous reader writes: Ultima Online was released in September, 1997. It was the game that popularized graphical MMOs, and somehow, it's still running. Rock, Paper, Shotgun took a dive into the game to see how much it's changed, and who still plays it. As the community has shrunk, it's become increasingly tight-knit, and giving up the game now means giving up a social circle for many players. Even though newer MMOs have eclipsed the game's functionality, UO has a dedication to the full adventuring experience that later games haven't replicated. From the article: "While initially I couldn't understand the appeal of Ultima, when I decided to shake off the limitations of an early level character and simply explore for myself, I found a game world with a lot to offer. Player created civilizations, unique monsters, and the sheer mystery of the world combine to keep this ancient MMO compelling. For all the ways in which the genre has improved, Ultima Online remains one of just a few MMOs that let you live an alternative life. That feeling of ownership ... combined with the diversity on offer, keeps players coming back day after day."
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"I found a game world with a lot to offer. Player created civilizations, unique monsters, and the sheer mystery of the world combine to keep this ancient MMO compelling. For all the ways in which the genre has improved, Ultima Online remains one of just a few MMOs that let you live an alternative life. That feeling of ownership
Does that help, or should someone post an mp3 of themselves readi
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tell that to all the people who play nethack.
Does Ultima Online help with burnout? (Score:1)
Do playing games like Ultima Online help with avoiding or treating the burnout that some programmers face due to the stresses of their jobs?
Today I read about the harrowing experience [reddit.com] of one programmer. He wrote that
I'm currently in a state where I litterally just can't write code. At all. I get dizzy, headaches, I've even cried a few times just at the sight of my text editor.
and
A little over a month ago, only 3 years into the project, I blew up. One day I woke up, sat in front of my computer and broke up in tears. Called the boss to tell him I couldn't work for a few days. To this day I still can't code. I'm not even sure I will ever be able to code again either. For now I'm looking at applying for Walmart for an undetermined amount of time.
I know he is probably not alone. So when a programmer is in a similar situation, will playing an online game like Ultima Online help at all? Will it provide an escape and a way to relieve some of the stresses and burdens that have built up? Is participating in a MOOC a better idea?
Re:Does Ultima Online help with burnout? (Score:5, Insightful)
No to all of your questions. Better go skydiving or crocodile hunting instead.
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No, it won't (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem arises when you make bad associations over the years.
Your brain is an association engine - it silently catalogs all the feelings you get when doing something, and uses this information for prediction in the planning [brain] section.
Over the years, you've built up associations between programming and discomfort in various forms. Now, when you consider going to do some program, your brain automatically recalls all the pain and discomfort that this brings.
The planning section uses the risk/reward equation, and there's usually other values to consider. Normally, the "value" you get from programming is enough to outweigh the discomfort you get. You get rewards for doing it, like interacting with people, figuring out problems, and so on. Getting money is more of an intellectual reward - there's no "feeling" associated with money per-se. (Unless you're Scrooge McDuck and feel joy over just having money. Most people aren't like that.)
Over time, the negative value of the discomfort has grown, relative to the positive value you get from completing goals, learning new things, or social interactions.
It's the same as a lathe operator who gets back pain from stooping over all day long. He'll eventually get tired of doing something he once loved, even if he doesn't remember the pain.
It's *very* difficult to reverse this. You have to build up positive associations, and enough of these to compensate for the negative history.
You can try adjusting your work environment ergonomically: make it more physically comfortable to type, for instance.
You can try getting into a new field: switch from web work to microcontrollers, for instance.
You can try switching to a new environment: shop your resume around, and join a small company with a manager/people you really like.
You can try rewarding yourself for completing goals: promise yourself a slice of pie if you complete such-and-so task today. (Make sure you realize "this pie is because I completed such-and-so" task while you're eating it.)
You can try taking a vacation, but that won't fix the underlying problem.
Good luck!
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For me, what helps is messing around with "side projects" that are not perhaps officially sanctioned, but are tangentially related to my job. You'll want to be careful with these, some bosses may not appreciate it, but perhaps it's not programming that's the problem but the company you're working for...
So for example, hacking into our software to expose security flaws. Spent a day screwing around and turning a "theoretical" problem into a real one and upping the priority of security in general.
Reading up
Custom shards saved that game (Score:5, Informative)
A good shard (UO-speak for a custom server) would have great GMs regularly creating events for their players. I've played through a week-long monster invasion on Minoc, a war between Trinsic and Yew, a murder mystery involving 100+ players, and more custom "dungeon" areas than I can count. The last dungeon I remember was a play on Alice in Wonderland.
I haven't played UO in about 10 years, but custom shards gave hands down the best MMO experience I've ever seen even compared to current games.
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Now why would you assume that she's gay?
Pay to Play? (Score:1)
Seriously? This game is still a pay to play kind of game?! The kind of servers needed to run this thing probably cost less than $50 per year. This guy could essentially run this thing in his basement with his home internet, come on now...
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Three words, my friend: Sunk Cost Fallacy.
Re:Ultima is for cows. (Score:5, Funny)
One UO Freeshard I play has animal breeding. You can tame and then breed animals to get more powerful pets which you can then use to take down monsters in the dungeons.
I bred cows all the way to "max." My cows slaughter dragons with ease.
Breeding cows in UO turns out to be tricky. See, there's a bug: cows and bulls can't breed together, they're considered separate animal types. But all cows are female, so cows can't breed with cows either. You first have to magically transform some of the cows to the male gender before you can breed them. And it takes 20 to 30 generations to breed an animal like cows up to the game's max.
Thus I refer to my cows as "Daemonic Transgender Inbred Battle Cattle."
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Were you not paying attention? I have mad cows. Plural.
Trammel killed Ultima Online (Score:2)
Now the same guy who killed UO with UO:R, went to kill off SWG with NG is begging for money on kickstarter to get new pay2win project going - Crofwall.
Re:Trammel killed Ultima Online (Score:5, Insightful)
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Fucking EA bro. The fuck everything the touch. Another CLASSIC they killed (among others, but this is the one which causes a blood-lusting hatred of EA) is Sim City. STILL waiting on an actual sequel to SC4, smfh
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Evidently Cities: Skylines [steampowered.com] is quite good. I haven't played it yet, I just bought it during the recent steam sale...but it has overwhelmingly positive user reviews. Might be worth checking out as a spiritual successor to SC4.
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No reason to upgrade power sources as they last forever. Just keep adding more.
No natural disasters, or riots.
But overall, it is very well done.
Had SC5 been good, they would not be enjoying the popularity they currently have.
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Trammel was badly implemented. Involuntary PvP systems don't mix well with non-PvP systems.
Several Freeshard Trammels which do away with PvP entirely are a blast to play. The uber-pvp freeshards that do away with Trammel also work fine.
The trick is this: they're really two very different games which attract two very different kinds of player.
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Completely disagree with your first statement. I played UO for 4 years (Lake Superior FTW). I lost many friends who quit due to rampant unwanted PK'ing.
By the time Trammel came out most of us stayed for a little while and then said "Fuck it." The game was already old to us "veterans". New content only delayed saying goodbye.
Yeah the 3D clients were a complete clusterfuck. They actually shipped more then one 3D client? wow.
UO Renaissance was like kicking a dead horse. The people who stayed weren't inte
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What killed it was when they patched the game so that slimes no longer *split when struck*.
Props to anyone who remembers that. Mad props to anyone who knows what that has to do with me. Oh, and if anyone does remember me from back then.. I'm sorry for looting your house on Atlantic. In hindsight, 18 years later, I can see how I should have asked first. I was just a Borrower and not a thief so if you're still interested in getting your shit back you know I'll get ya the next time, brah! :)
Makes sense (Score:1)
I'd never leave Ingress because all the players in my neighborhood are now my friends.
Besides, once you find a game you like, nothing, not even a really good knock off, is ever really quite the same.
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Ingress is different. With Ingress, you're playing with real people in real space. The players you go up against are really near you - you're not playing against some asshole you'll never meet that lives halfway across the globe. Not so with MMOs.
You do kind of build friendships in older MMOs. MMOs that have Looking For Raid systems kind of kill that because you end up running content with random assholes you've never met before and will likely never meet again. You don't build a social system. You don't ca
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Ingress is different. With Ingress, you're playing with real people in real space.
This made me giggle. When I played there would so many people cheating in various ways it made me pretty sad and angry. One guy bragged about having 8+ accounts that he played all from his house spoofing. If one got banned he didn't care because he has others and would just power level another one up within a day.
I quit because of two reasons, Players cheating (on both sides) and Niantic being very disorganized with how it would pick and choose which rules to enforce.
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I've found that EQ1 is still pretty good... but you have two choices:
Play on a timelocked server, where there is relatively not that much content... but it winds up grindy.
Play on a regular server and get your levels and AAs so you can group/raid.
Timelocked servers have nostalgia value... but it might be too slow and quirky for someone new, and one can wind up hitting a dead-end (can't really solo, no groups), especially when the newness wears off.
There are also plenty of other MMOs still around. DAoC is s
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There are also plenty of other MMOs still around.
Yeah, try Darkfall [darkfallonline.com].
MMORPGs aren't any of those things anymore (Score:2)
Massively Multiplayer
Online
Role Playing Game
That's the initialism (it's not an acronym unless you pronounce it like a word.. Mumorpuguh?). But those words aren't what we should be talking about. The magic is in MASSIVE gaming experiences. MMOs fell far short of being anything more than the logical extension of MUDs and their kin. We keep building out and optimizing in a line forward from those expectations.
At the same time, that polish means we increasingly cast off the quirky, unique, or memorable expe
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Can't watch the video, but I'll just say this:
At the same time, that polish means we increasingly cast off the quirky, unique, or memorable experiences that the older MMOs did provide (even if they did so mostly by accident).
There's a reason that WOW is the only what I'm going to call "AAA" MMO. No MMO since has come close to its subscriber numbers. WOW peaked at 12 million subscribers and the closest competition can't even peak at a tenth of that. (So by "AAA" I mean active player counts in the millions rather than in the hundreds of thousands.)
WoW is still top mainly because with ever new MMORPG launch, players expect it to be as smooth and refined as WoW. This will NEVER happen. WoW has had 10 years to fine tune everything from character control to server stability. When new games launch and people can't login at all within the first 1-2 weeks they tend to give up and move on calling the game a POS.
Oh and one other MAJOR factor that keeps WoW so strong, the game's ability to allow custom addons. That and Blizzards openness with allowing webs
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Tried wow. it felt like everquest in "easy" mode. I could see why it would appeal to many.
Everquest had a sense of wonder I will never feel again. Nothing was documented. Gm's showed up personally to give you your second name or marry characters. It was extremely hard and was a lifestyle. You had to play 40+ hours a week to keep up.
You could lose everything and be badly hurt. You needed other people to survive. The 72 person raids demanded huge political guilds with massive logistics,strategy and ta
Diablo I & II (Score:1)
What's amazing to me is that Diablo I & II (1996 and 2000 respectively) still are selling at $20 (half retail game prices) in places like Target, Gamestop and they are apparently still selling according to employees. I mean they are great games, but obviously they have an unprecedented staying power in the game industry that no other game has had.
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"but obviously they have an unprecedented staying power in the game industry that no other game has had."
Because they were well made, diablo 1+2 were made back before the AAA cash in or "make every game a movie" like call of duty 4 modern warfare took off into full swing.
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It was great at the time, but I could never really go back to D1 after playing through D2. It's maddening that there is no "run" button.
Obligatory Sluggy Freelance MMO reference (Score:2)
http://www.sluggy.com/comics/a... [sluggy.com]
UO, EQ, WoW and now (Score:1)
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The main problem I think is, there's only so many times you can take parcel x to somedude y in the next zone and have it feel like a new and interesting experience. I agree that it would take something like VR to make it fresh again. What I don't understand though is why so many MMOs follow the exact same formula instead of trying something unique.
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What I don't understand though is why so many MMOs follow the exact same formula instead of trying something unique.
Full PvP, sandbox MMORPG with FPS-like gameplay (instead of selecting a target and clicking some OP ability): Darkfall [darkfallonline.com]
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You keep using this word "best". It doesn't mean what you think it means.
> UO was the most popular mmorpg until EQ came out. EQ was the most popular mmorpg until WoW came out. WoW has been the most popular mmorpg ever since.
FTFY.
Your logic is akin to McDonalds being the best simply because they are the most popular.
Quality != Quantity.
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This. I've played several MMOs now, and I find WoW dreadfully boring compared to EVE. WoW has a lot of players because it's simple, but that simplicity turns it into a grind.
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That seems to the common definition of (MMO) RPGS today -- synonymous with grind fest. :-(
Whether it be good games like Path of Exile or bad games like Defiance, Destiny, Diablo 3, Warframe, and toys like WoW -- these games all disrespect the player's time.
Meridian 59 was the first MMO I remember (Score:2)
I wonder if there is still someone out there running the world's last Meridian 59 server.
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Ultima Online is still going... (Score:2)
because it's still wildly popular in Japan. The US shards are, as the author notes, virtually complete ghost towns. I recently went back for a month, and other than banksitters in Luna or house collapses I'd literally go days without seeing another player.
UO Not Just a Fighting MMO (Score:2)
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