slashdot.org

[Chaos]

Games: Why Are There No Popular Ultima Online-Like MMOs? on Monday February 22, @04:45AM
Posted by Soulskill on Monday February 22, @04:45AM
from the risk-is-not-our-business dept.
games
eldavojohn writes "I have a slightly older friend who played through the glory days of Ultima Online. Yes, their servers are still up and running, but he often waxes nostalgic about certain gameplay functions of UO that he misses. I must say that these aspects make me smile and wonder what it would be like to play in such a world — things like housing, thieving and looting that you don't see in the most popular massively multiplayer online games like World of Warcraft. So, I've followed him through a few games, including Darkfall and now Mortal Online. And these (seemingly European developed) games are constantly fading into obscurity and never catching hold. We constantly move from one to the next. Does anyone know of a popular three-dimensional game that has UO-like rules and gameplay? Perhaps one that UO players gravitated to after leaving UO? If you think that the very things that have been removed (housing and thieving would be two good topics) caused WoW to become the most popular MMO, why is that? Do UO rules not translate well to a true 3D environment? Are people incapable of planning for corpse looting? Are players really that inept that developers don't want to leave us in control of risk analysis? I'm familiar with the Bartle Test but if anyone could point me to more

come on guys this our call

[oinasz]

UOSA ftw!

...unless he really needs the game to be 3d - EVE would be better for him then :S

[Chaos]

Am I the only one that thinks this is big??

[Biohazard]

Am I the only one that thinks this is big??

do you have the link? did you post a response?

[Sir Vellucius]

I completely agree 100%. I think what happened was UO was a realistically primitive game and way ahead of its time... We all remember the days when OSI heard the cry of the ever-loyal subscribing newb and changed the way the game was played (why else do we play this shard? T2A!)... It's gotta be a common sense fact, it was newbified cause of money. And when 3D games came around like EQ, AC, AO, etc, they only brought in the aspects of UO that made them money which wasn't even an actual part of the game, but rather a method or formula, if you will - it was simply catering to newbs and start with "trammel", no felucca. The actual THRILL of interacting with other players is gone in most MMO's. It's only really found in monsters and loot (which innately is only applicaple to your character in most cases by the way, not the environment like UO.) And where do you think griefing really came from? Probably "dastardly" players trying to figure out ways to be dastardly in a world where their own evil free will has been taken away from them. Balance has been lost... I dunno, but I could go on forever about this. But if you ask me the objective to 3D MMO's today is to keep players busy doing THE SAME THING FOREVER (omgosh i cant stand it - just level, level, level, raid, raid, raid) in a pretty, eye-candy-filled world and do what the newbs ask (who are loyal subscribers) to keep them busy doing the same thing forever. I don't see any cool in game interactions going on there. WoW is even down to "instanced" quests where they group you with people from other shards for one mission at a time - you ever gonna see that person again? Hell no - way to go Blizzard, you just turned real people into NPC's...

What is going to be done to change this? I don't know for sure, but for me, MMO interaction/psychology/culture and e-societies have always fascinated me since the beginning days of UO while EQ kept my eyes busy gazing at a beautiful world (for its time!). After 100000000 hours of playing, I put down the mountain dew and snack cakes and I realized I had to do something and began to chase a dream... Game developement.

All I can say is Unreal Engine 3... Open source and uber easy to use compared to starting from scratch. This is why Epic games gives us the engine and editor for free with every purchase of unreals game series. They want us to discover what is being covered up by carbon-copies of the same game. They want us to reinvent the video game. Screw it. With a good team, I'm doin it lol. Wish me luck... I cant sit around and wait for a good 3D UO to come out anymore. I dont care how long it takes

[Biohazard]

you should have posted this shard!!!

edit: i posted the shard and i also see a couple other people posting about it! awesome!!

[kazana]

Haha, the orginal post sounds like a lead on to plug EVE online eventually. With the constant 3D this and 3D that.

And yes, EVE online rocks hard. I dare say that here.

[Oneiros]

I tried playing EVE but I just can't get into the idea that I'm a spaceship. I played Tabula Rasa, which was sci-fi, but EVE really takes sci-fi a step farther. When reading about EVE, it sounds amazing, but I just can't get into it like I could UO, WoW, TR, EQ, or other MMOs.

[soy]

I played eve for about 3 years. It's the closest thing to classic UO I've played, but I too don't like the idea of being stuck in a space ship. Although eve has many nice qualities it does lack some of my favorite aspects of UO, that being the immersion of doing things other than combat or resource gathering. Standing around at a bank, organizing a house, and also exploration (yeah I know we know every tile of UO by heart now, but that wasn't always the case).

That said, eve was fun but I eventually got burnt out on it.

I posted in that thread, trying to be constructive and also plugging t2a.

My main argument is that making games because they will make money is bad and stuff, and that people who hate on UO because griefers can piss in their cheerios are basically pussies who don't know how to play properly. Although, I do miss griefing people like that...

[Olan]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima_online

I read this awhile back and things are explained quite well. Needless to say, I'm glad a shard like this still exists.