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Why dont they make another Ultima type mmo?
MaGimpHand
Member Posts: 6
I dont understand it. Its not like Ultima Online wasnt successful. It was loved by all who played it. At first there were two. There was Uo, then came everquest. Two types of mmo's. Now, only one has survived, the Everquest style quest based rpg. I say what the hell? What happened to the Ultima style. The free play style. I loved not doing endless amounts of quests to gain skills. Instead I gained them by doing them. A much more realistic approach in my opinion. If I liked doing a certain thing I could get better at it by doing, instead of leveling and dumping points into it. The chat over the head thing was cool too. I didnt have to read a box of endless text. If someone was talking to me I just looked at their character. I didnt have to type backslash t/w/x/y/z to talk to someone. I could get where I wanted in the game without any combat at all if I wanted. If I just wanted to tame, I could tame. I didnt have to fight shit and dump points into taming. I had a boat, a house. I could collect neat rare things for my house. Thats why games like wow get so boring so fast. All you do is kill shit, in order to get some shit to kill shit with. And not to mention, if you ever want anything nice in wow, the only way to get it is not to put in your time, but simply join a guild where your a slave who plays his character to make some raid leader and his core group of friends better. Why should I have to farm for some guys I dont know to get my gear? In Uo I could kill almost any monster by myself if I was good enoug. Or if I wanted a rare, I could put the work in and get up at 4 in the morning and try and beat everyone to the item at server birth. How come no other mmorpg developer has given any kind of thought to creating another game like the early Ultima Online?
Comments
Because no one wants a modern day 2d type game. Times have changed, since 3d is being perfected, people dont wanna be held back by dated graphics. I mean i like games like maple story, but its free and people dont wanna pay for a game that isnt giving all that it could be.
I actually prefer Ultima Onlines graphics to the newer games, but thats not what I was talking about. I was refering to the style of play, not the graphics.
oh so you mean, more in depth gameplay. More life like. Make houses and stuff like that. Well EQ2 has a room feature where u can decorate it and stuff. It would be cool, to have like a family and stuff. I know maplestory has a couple feature and you can get married.
Then Blizzard came around, took everything EQ did right, did it better, and made WoW. Now UO is dead, and EQI is dying or dead.
But to put it shortly, the market moved on to something different. Regardless of what players -say- they want, developers are hearing something else.
UO was the best gaming experience I've ever had but it was also at times the worst. It was wide open and chaotic like the myth of the old west and it didn't take long for the more nefarious gamers to exploit it to their full advantage. The outcry that came from it easily topped anything that has occurred since which forced OSI down the eventual path the game took. So while I miss it I also know it was poorly designed and doomed to fail in it's original form. Which I imagine spurred Verant to take the anti -uo path with EQ which has endurred ever since to become the safest way to develop an mmo. I can't think of anything that has been super successful since that has varied from the well worn path. And I am still in love with the skill based character system over level based and still hold out hope for it to reappear in a successful game.
Theres a lot of mmorpg players begging for somthing different. There almost has to be somthing different for the market to expand. Why make 10,000 wow clones. Wow has the market cornered on the quest based mmo's. The only way to compete with it is to make somthing different. Its natural that they all want to take wows formula and copy is because its so successful, but I cant believe not a single developer has had the balls to try somthing different.
I agree lots of players want something different. But will it succeed? Who knows? Forums like this say one thing, but then reality turns out to be different because what you see here ISN'T the majority of player. So do you, as a developer:
A) Make a new, different, radical redesign of a game that you can't garauntee will sell, or;
Most would take the safe road.
levels and classes = more money is the bottom line, firm developer control. in order to experiment with different powers you must reroll (huge timesink). Levels/Classes allow game devs to totally control your character progression and provide the illusion the game has a lot more content then it really does
graphically, one of the first RPGs on consoles, dragon Warrior, showed you can put you have countless hours on your box guaranteed because players must 'gain a level' to see the cool new area. ive worked on RPGs we imployed LEvels to guarantee our game had a lot of hours and helped provide the illusion we had a lot of content
Levels also make newbies think they are getting rewarded pretty regularly the closer they are together. next, like i mentioned before, Levels allow the game designer to custom tailor experiences to your experience range
It's simply guartanteed money for game devs. not to mention they all play WoW so all their ideas will be derived from that
I personally enjoy skill based games much more when it comes to Coop / Multiplayer RPGs
Yes but it seems like the new games are only doing ok. They arent big hits, because they are the same thing, with a different name and a different graphic. To have the next money maker you have to be different then wow, surley thats understood in the industry. I can understand cloning wow for a certain amount of time, but its scary because its starting to seem like its going to be this way indefinatly. Quest based games dont feel like mmo's. Like Ultima online did. It felt like a massive living world. Now, mmo's are basically one big quest generator.
Hehe no one can read this it's so small muahahaha!!!
Lol I'm just playing with you. But in all seriousness, if there was a UO with this generations type of graphics, it could be almost as popular as WoW.
I'm not sure if it was legit or not, but I looked up "Ultima online 2" in google and found that they are producing such a game..maybe you should look into that.
I'm not sure how much you must innovate to acquire customers with MMOs. It's hard to lockdown all the ingredients but #1 if you grab a popular intellectual property like Harry Potter or Lord Of the Rings, Conan, or Warhammer then you're off to a great start. You basically already have a huge fanbase to work with- advertising already sort of done for you. This has been EA and many other big companies model for years. From there- the model is retain the newbies. Its all about pulling in the newbies. So reward those guys often, quick levels, fast xp, low death penalty, cater to solo, and just reward and reward. After they get past that 30 day trial they're hooked but then gradually you hit them with bigger gaps between levels. but by that time they made friends and have obligations
Also, psychologically 'men' need a 'project'. This might be far flung. But if you're like me- you need an outlet whether it is a car you trying to fix up, a game you trying to beat, etc. Well, MMORPGs sort of make you feel proud when you hit max cap
Its really about simplicity and elegance. Controlling the players progression. reducing their risk (reason why Instances are so well loved by newbies), etc.
We will see more and more simplification unfortunately as game development costs soar.
I want more trendsetters like UO very badly but I have no idea how to sell such a concept to a game publisher. Console games are rewarded for innovation (Oblivion and even Final Fantasy 12 innovated) but MMOs are more about retaining people over the long haul. The bad news is they are also more about attracting newbies which mean making content simple like A-B-C
Maybe we'll see a UO successor if the developer can self finance itself and make something easy for newbies to grasp. Then gradually add on complexity
its difficult to say "why not" with this question, OP. IMHO, it has to do with the technical scope of a game like that added to the simpistic MMO games the market has embraced. Something like a modern Ultima would be a HUGE undertaking. Why would a developer bother when simple works on MMO players? Its the only genre that gets easier / more basic and people love it more. /shrug
EVE's a successful MMOG which is designed largely on the influence of UO. Ryzom too, although I haven't played that in forever.
Torak:
It may be a huge undertaking, but it takes real thinkers who will put their own assets on the line to make it possible. I happen to be one of them, only because I think MMOs currently are only feeding a bad impulse in people (that impulse is that of instant gratification). It's time to break the mold and break the addiction chain that many MMOs depend upon. And it's time to evolve the tools that will make the next generation of games (and AIs) possible. This isn't a time to slouch, or kow tow to some idiotic MBA in a suit. It's time to damn them, spit in their faces, and do it our way. And I don't mean like Sigil. I mean our way, as in GPL, MIT, CC, and other open licenses. It's time to show these idiots what technology can do, much like Alan Turing proposed in his day. Maybe I'm being overly exuberant, or overly idealistic, but I'm getting sick and tired of idiotic, weak minded programmers who take the easy way out in design, making consumers pay for the same algorithm with only a variation on it in variable names and APIs. And especially, to which, have no brains or imagination, so they copy others, then pretend they didn't violate a software patent or copyright by sweetening the bitter taste of plagurism with money under the table. Ultimately, it takes gall to clash with the crowd. I guess I'm getting mine as of late.
-- Brede
Sorry if I sound so "jaded"
But the fact remains that MMOs have de-evolved to a point. I'm not saying games like WoW and GW are not any good. They are great games and I enjoyed them both. What missing from the genre is a MODERN complexe alternive that doesn't start with an E and end with an E.
Weee......there is one game that does it while there are 420,032 (random number don't get excited) WoW / EQ copies. I'm mean honestly, how many times are we gonna get WoW/EQ reskinned? Its obvious its not working outside of those 2 games. Someone needs to ..well you know, grab something....and do something differnet. (its really not all that different) or at least get back on track with what core MMO players are looking for.
I play with the attitude that we just have to make due with what we have. If you want any sort of depth of play the sad fact is you need to reup to the older games.
(Part of the problem in summery is devs chasing the WoW crowd who are a genre onto themselves. I said this a few times before. "MMO players are not interested in more WoW clones and WoW players are not interested in more MMO's". Until this lighting bolt hits someone in the industry we are stuck. There are a few surveys that support that statement. You can also see it in the shrinking player base of just about every other MMO out there. The majority of WoW players are Blizzard fans not MMO fans/players. WoW has not been the boon to the MMO market people think it is. LotRs sluggish performance supports that also.)
Torak: I totally agree on that point. I think WoW is a phenomena of its own creation, really. And as such, I plan to not design a game for WoW players. I'm designing a game that I would play in respect to features I like and concepts I would like to explore. If developers thought of themselves more as authors and creators and less as coders, then their games would probably come out more coherently and depend less on re-inventing the wheel (classes, skills, levels, and what not). As much as folks like to trash Garriott for Tabula Rasa, I think he figured it right, that MMOs won't change through revolution, rather evolution. Even if his game is a waste of time, the fact he still wants to explore other genres, different stories, and different methods of character progression are still refreshing from a developer's point of view. And if the game becomes a success for those reasons, then I suspect more investors will listen to new ideas.
And the same goes for games like AoC and Warhammer, who try to shift players away from the old grinds. Consider how AoC seems to let players build towns. Granted many games before them had that option, but the fact it has to be maintained and defended, will make these towns viable pit stops for players to socialize, regroup from a pvp or pve session and what not. So, that means there could be an entire sub-class or type of players that just go around building towns, maintaining them, and staffing them. It seems silly, but I suspect that feature alone will make AoC more sucessful than merely being true to Robert E Howard's vision of his fiction. UO had this same idea in respect for players making their own houses and castles. I just hope Funcom had that idea in mind for theirs, if not I suspect many players will be more displeased on that point than a misspelling of a minor Conan-verse character or continuity errors. I just hope they, Funcom and other similar developers, understand it does take risk to make it big. Just remember, Blizzard is the exception to that rule, where tried and true can become big.
-- Brede
They were making Ultima Odyssy (or something like that) before it got canned. They even ran some intro's on a couple of those gamer programme's on sky. It looked nice too. but alas it was canned. maybe they couldnt think of something good enough at the time, also several other games were canned around teh same time too. They did say they decided to stick with UO, but i do think that game has seen all it can see now. It should be laid to rest and the company should move forward instead of hanging onto the past.
darkfall looks very promising.
Ultima Online was (and still is) a great game, and the model for the alternative sandbox MMO. A few games have tried to copy it, but have been canned. Star Wars Galaxies was the closest main stream MMO that tried to copy the model (open ended gameplay, non-quest centered, free built houses, user defined skill tree etc), but that too was canned in favour of the NGE (which was an EQ model).
But Ulitma Online is still active (and is certainly not dead). A new expansion just came out, and Kingdom Reborn, EA's new 3d graphical skin for the game, is about to come out. On the servers I go on, the population is thriving, with people everywhere. And this is for a game thats now 10 years old.
If someone were to take the risk and develop a new game based on this sandbox model, it would indeed do very well. Not the 9million that WoW has maybe (depending on how it looks) but in MMO terms it would be successful. Someone will realise this one day, and take that risk.
Yeah, I remember that. It was UXO. Got canned around the same time as Wish and all of those.
I think one problem with it was it was using the UO title, but the game itself was nothing like UO. The pvp was going to be arena/guild based and stuff. IMO I figure that is what got it canned if nothing else. It would have flopped as soon as people realized how far apart from the origional UO it was.
D.
That made me giggle. I fully agree with that. nuff said, can't say no more.
I don't mean to disrespect the guy, he's done more for the industry then I ever have but how do you from UO to TR? Freeform sandbox to Linear multiplayer rigid console?
One of the key things that has been lost in modern MMOs is the ability of the player to impact the game world in some way. Not necessarily in an epic, massive level but on a level that the player can effect (your builders for example) Houses, towns, real crafting not this crafting tied to combat levels we have now, true alternitive play styles other then whack a mole combat. I thought SWG was onto something unique and good with the entertainers. They had issues to be sure but at least it was an effort. The ability to create.
That diplomacy in Vanguard was another unique attempt to bring something new. We just need for someone to put it all together in something fresh that works.
I don't know to much about AoC, seems like more of the same but they have taken it a step further and actually put you in a single player portion for the first 20 or so levels. Now.........if that isn't a step backwards I don't know what is. I pretty much gave it up after that as it seemed to be following a console formula. (surprise, later on I found out its gonna be on a console
)
It would seem to me you need several factors to make it work
How you could roll that all together into a workable game I have no clue but this would seem to be ideal without getting into specifics.
Would any of this be revolutionary? No.....maybe evolutionary but nothing radical that hasn't already been done in some way.
UO, DAoC and AC are all still viable games. Even SWG with all its issues, still has far more to offer then most modern MMO's. What some of them are missing (DAoC and moreso AC) is a larger player base. A resurgence in the pops of classics would send a strong message. Money talks louder then anything we can type here.
People are moaning that Turbines newest baby, LotR isn't anything to brag about but everything they are looking for is right there in AC, a game made by the very same company. Everyone CLAIMS that gameplay is more important then graphics but no one actually stands behind that. They run like little moths to the newest graphics whoring game and then b*tch when its even MORE restrictive and linear then the last. MMO players need to learn that graphics don't make the game and stop supporting the development model thats currently in place: made the same game with a new skin.
UO, DAoC and AC are all still viable games. Even SWG with all its issues, still has far more to offer then most modern MMO's. What some of them are missing (DAoC and moreso AC) is a larger player base. A resurgence in the pops of classics would send a strong message. Money talks louder then anything we can type here.
People are moaning that Turbines newest baby, LotR isn't anything to brag about but everything they are looking for is right there in AC, a game made by the very same company. Everyone CLAIMS that gameplay is more important then graphics but no one actually stands behind that. They run like little moths to the newest graphics whoring game and then b*tch when its even MORE restrictive and linear then the last. MMO players need to learn that graphics don't make the game and stop supporting the development model thats currently in place: made the same game with a new skin.
Good point but its the claims that these games make that make me try them (foolish to believe all the hype I know) but games like Vanguard(the latest MMORPG I've played) claiming to have a player driven economy when almost everything you NEED could be got of a loot drop or brought from a NPC, this is what annoys me
I still play UO, now in my 8th year. I do always play a second mmorpg on the side as well. Currently LotrO. I like them both for what they are.
I think the playerbase has changed. Even though I think UO has the best gameplay ever, many new mmorpg'ler finding a sandbox style kind of gameplay together with a skills system to confusing. I believe that is why they are making easier games now. It just pulls more players as old style mmorpgs and in the end it makes more players happy. So I am ok with that.
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Do I ever sleep?