Ultima Online - New legacy

Man of Honour
Joined
17 Aug 2007
Posts
29,062
One of THE greatest MMOs of all time but..and this is the big one...one of the things that made it one of the greatest MMOs of all time was the userbase at the time. The MMO world, and indeed the wider online gaming world, was a much different place back in 1997. I hate to be the old fogey but online gaming was simply a nicer place back then, players tended to be more mature, polite and older (due to the large costs of online gaming, I remember playing UO in 1997 on dialup where I had to pay per minute that I was connected to the internet...my phone bill for each month was HUGE, online gamers today have no idea just how lucky they are in having a flat monthly fee for internet access). That userbase which made UO so SO phenomenal in 1997 just isnt there any more and broadly speaking online gamers today are not as community focused as they were in 1997, trolling and being "edgey" is more like the online userbase today.

A truly legendary MMO and if only MMOs had decided to follow the UO model, rather than the WoW themepark model, the genre could have become incredible, rather than stale like it is today.
 
Caporegime
Joined
8 Sep 2005
Posts
29,975
Location
Norrbotten, Sweden.
All of the above and.....

Corp Por Vas ort flam An ex por, Kal vas flam in Nox, Corp por, OOoo OoO! ... Roughly translated to **** Y**

Efour spasms uncontrollably as his body is wrecked with pain.

lol the days.

Absolutely zero point going back to the game however as its never the same, the people have changed, MMOs have changed.
 
Soldato
Joined
31 May 2005
Posts
15,623
Location
Nottingham
One of THE greatest MMOs of all time but..and this is the big one...one of the things that made it one of the greatest MMOs of all time was the userbase at the time. The MMO world, and indeed the wider online gaming world, was a much different place back in 1997. I hate to be the old fogey but online gaming was simply a nicer place back then, players tended to be more mature, polite and older (due to the large costs of online gaming, I remember playing UO in 1997 on dialup where I had to pay per minute that I was connected to the internet...my phone bill for each month was HUGE, online gamers today have no idea just how lucky they are in having a flat monthly fee for internet access). That userbase which made UO so SO phenomenal in 1997 just isnt there any more and broadly speaking online gamers today are not as community focused as they were in 1997, trolling and being "edgey" is more like the online userbase today.

A truly legendary MMO and if only MMOs had decided to follow the UO model, rather than the WoW themepark model, the genre could have become incredible, rather than stale like it is today.

The PC gaming community at the time was MUCH older than it is now. Sure, there were still idiots, I remember meeting them in UO but nothing like todays bunch of misfits. Just getting "online" took an element of commitment from the player which meant only serious players were around for the most part.

The over privileged ***** who game now are for the most part, not the type of people I would want to play with.

The lack of dedicated servers has also contributed to the lack of "community" feel in games.

"The internet" before it became infected by capitalism was a wonderful place with wonderful people.
 
Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
7,836
Location
Scun'orp
Back in the day of course if you wanted to chat with someone in game you had to use the in game text chat with speech appearing above your head. This meant anyone passing by could join in or you could just sit and watch what people were chatting about. Nowadays with the likes of Discord, any established group are simply not going to use in game text chat, and so that feeling of being able to chip in has completely gone forever, applies to all sorts of games I imagine, but the feeling in UO was utterly kyboshed if you ask me. I saw this for myself when I did one of those "Come back to Britannia" months several years ago, there were groups of people hanging around places like Brit Bank, but no text chat appearing on screen, completely killed the experience.

This shard resetting thing sounds interesting at least, but I can't help thinking it is just another elaborate ruse to get you to become attached to some item or other you will only be able to keep if you sign up for the full sub by transferring it to a main shard before the wipe. I get my UO fix on one of the free shards nowadays, but it is no more than logging on to visit the old maps areas and kill a few monsters like the old days. Sounds like this resetting shard idea is along that sort of line with an added RPG feel, which if they can pull it off sounds like it would offer the same feel of just logging on for a casual bash, but with the problem of having no housing for free accounts and so forth. Will see how it develops I guess.
 
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