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The UO Factor
Andurin
Member UncommonPosts: 125
How come people that played pre-uor Ultima Online can never find an MMORPG that can keep their attention like UO did?
I am not talking about the people that were begging for trammel, I'm talking about the people that loved to PVP and loved the feeling of danger no matter where you were in the game.
They're are a lot of us, we can play WOW or whatever for about a month but then after that we just loose interest.
What is it or was it about UO?
Comments
Well, unfortunately for everyone, this feeling is not UO related but "First-MMO" related. Its having the first feelings of climbing over a mountain and looking into the scenery, your first kill, the first awesome item you obtained. The first experiences are the strongest, and after, we stumble around, trying to repeat these feelings, but with no success(for some).
My first-MMO is EQ, and i've never had a similar experience yet.
It was about letting the truly skilled player shine. You could gain a huge reputation in that game if you killed a lot of players. With each player you killed you would amass great amounts of wealth from their loot. I remember killing about 40 players in one day coming to my in game house to find stacks and stacks of bags of other peoples loot.
That was what made UO good.
- Killing massive amounts of players and gaining reputation this way.
- People would call you names when you entered town.
- PVP Skill
The list goes on and on.
LuzArius
Nex Imperium
- Pacific
- Siege Perilous
Simply put Freedom.
It was not first mmo syndrome, as Meridian 59 was my first..it did not last long. and as far as Official servers are concerned I played EQ which came after UO longer.
It honestly came down to the simple fact that UO created the best all around system. Was it flawless? hardly..plenty of flaws. But as far as that style of PVP game there has yet to be a single game that comes even close to matching it.
Before anyone states anything EvE is a different style..I am referring to the swords and sorcery setting.
Ultima Online came into play right as the PC game industry was taking off. I mean really taking off as thousands and thousands more computers were sold for personal home use, and PC games became a truely decent medium for making money.
Now, really UO didn't have anything before it but the various MUD's and a couple of other low key games mentioned in this thread. So they had the oppurtunity to set the vision for the genre, and they truely set out to make a role-playing game, and not a defined role playing game like EQ and now all it's clones.
Origin wanted to make a world where players were allowed to play a role, any role they chose (within the confines of what was possible anyways) and they set out to do just that, and I think they accomplished it very well. In the early days of UO you really could do what you wanted, their were well known PK's, and well known Anti-PK's, smith's at the forge you knew by name, and on and on. Basically as much as possible was run by the players. It was truely an RPG game in the sense of relating to living an alternate virtual life.
What some people fail to forget, possibly because of how old the game is, and most of the average gamers now have probably never even seen the game. At the time of UO's prime though, it was the money making powerhouse of the times, at least comparitively speaking to today's game, when they launched to an much, much smaller market.
Then the boys over at Sony picked up on this new style of game, and knew that the way to make money in the future was MMORPG's with re-occuring revenue generated by monthly fees and keeping the game fresh. They also knew they had to top UO's top-down 2D engine, and as 3D was starting to become mainstream, they were the right development at the right time. They started unleashing screens of this amazing 3D world they were building (back then, trust me, it was nothing short of amazing, like the leap from Nintendo to Playstation) and success of the game was obvious from the get go. People ate up EQ like it was the best thing since sliced bread, and for you youngsters, it was. Everyone wanted to explore a 3D world, with huge monsters, and big open areas. At the time it was like gold.
Now anyone that denies that UO and EQ are the real success of MMO's is crazy. I don't care what came before them, they set the stage, they lauched to large audiences, and they made MMO's what they are today. The problem with that is everyone seems to have forgetten the three letters at the end of the MMORPG that the people at Origin aimed for.
EQ, while a fine game, is also the doom of the market, and the reason for the lack of innovation and continuation of EQ clones that we are now all playing. EQ introduced defined classes in a medival world, which apparently just having a fantasy setting gets a game the RPG label after the MMO part, which I think is a false advertisement. Sure you can chose your class, spout off some "Thees" and "Thou's" and pretend you are roleplaying, but really your role was defined for you the moment you picked your class. Then to take it even farther you weren't "Hilsbob of the Hill People" you were "Puller, Healer, Support, etc." and slowly but surely the RPG element was eliminated, and the defined role stepped in, and there you were. In UO I was "Lujan" in EQ I was "puller".
The problem lies in money in the market. EQ was such a huge, huge success that the fundementals of UO and Role Playing were forgotten by Developers when the realized they could make a huge monthly income, but they were scared to base it off any other design then EQ's proven money making powerhouse. So until someone attempts, and accomplishes returning to a truely player driven, Role playing game, that makes money and is successful, we will continue to level from 1 to 50 in a defined role, in a world already laid out for us. We will continue to be just another Mage, or just another Warrior, because in the end we all end up the same as the rest. No one will run because the see the name "Dantrag" (Famos PK on Catskills UO), it will just be "Here comes that 50 Warrior" and you will go through the motions of how to defeat that defined class that everyone knows how to beat, and it leaves no mystery to their strategy.
Luckily it seems that gamers are finally getting tired of the same old poo-poo, and hell me may even see an indie development firm sucessfully complete and populate a new MMORPG (POBS). Which to me seems like it would be impossible today without big financial backing, but it is hope on the horizon. When games like this come out, with innovation, thought, and new ways of doing things people will start to open their eyes and realize that every game they have played since EQ became the huge success it was, that they are really only playing a clone of EQ.
Um... you are speaking for a minority of the players of Pre-UOR UO.
I played UO from Beta 2. But I was only active in the game for about 2 years, I pretty much stopped playing regularly when EQ came out.
I played EQ actively for 3 years and on-and-off for about 6 or 7 total. (Much more actively than in UO, which I only actually logged into about 3 or 4 times a year)
I played DAOC for almost 2 years before leaving it (and haven't gone back)
I played SWG for a year.
I am currently playing EQ2 and PlanetSide (and I've been playing planetside fairly regularly since beta).
I will be the first to agree that the SKILL system in UO has yet to be matched. And the SKILL system is what made UO so great. But there have been other games that i've truely enjoyed, some more than UO.
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online.
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Still in: A couple Betas
Lujan, I hate to break this to you. But UO and EQ were in development simultaneously EQ went into development shortly before UO hit the shelves in late 1997... EQ went into development in late '96/early '97... EQ was based on MUDS. UO was based off the Ultima series of PC RPG's.
That's why they are so different.
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online.
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Still in: A couple Betas