Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Quick (I Hope) question about Ultima Online (UO)
AlBQuirky
Member EpicPosts: 7,432
I never played UO. I have seen many posts about how UO did not have "leveling zones." I am curious how they accomplished this?
Did they have Mobs of differing difficulty in the same zones?
Did they even have zones?
Just curious is all 
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
Comments
Ultima Online was / is my favorite MMO of all time. This is surprising since they used an engine from the 90s and still managed to accomplish things developers today won't even consider. That said --
They also did some rather unique things that aren't found in most main stream games today. There were no levels in the game -- there was only stats and skill point percentages. You acquired skill point percentages by performing the skills. It could be done on anything -- training dummies, monsters, wild animals or even going up to a friend and hitting them (as it was a FFA PvP game). You could keep on hitting each other and healing each other with bandages (healing others was faster than healing yourself, and you got healing skill from doing this as well).
You obtained stats by also performing actions. Lumberjacking and mining tended to get you the most strength over time (or at least that was the thought) than any other actions. Playing the lute sometimes got you dexterity. Etc.
Monsters had no levels, as you said. But they were as powerful as you'd expect them to be. A rabbit you could one shot. Deer two or three shot, or shoot with a bow (also getting you dexterity and archery and perhaps anatomy... which swords to people also got you. Anatomy increased damage in conjunction with weapons, in addition to increasing your ability to heal with bandages). Then you would have things like bandits -- stronger than wild life. Orcs. Elementals, Giant Snakes, Skeletons, Liches, Dragons, etc. Things you expect in a fantasy world, and they were as powerful as you'd expect. Dragons had something like 800 HP. In addition, these mobs were pretty much where you'd expect them to be. Orc parties in the wild or on the road, bandits on the road, Dragons in caves or islands or fiery places (depending on their own element time), Giant snakes in swamps and jungles... Skeletons and liches near graveyards (liches usually at night) or they may wonder at night deep in the forests. Etc.
Your own stats were capped at 225 (thanks to the poster below me for the correction). This meant you could have any amount of stats you wanted, up to that cap. So 100 HP / Strength, 75 dex, 50 int... or something like that. It's actually been too long for me since I played the game seriously, and much has changed since the old days. So as strong player could have 100 HP and a myriad of other skills (with a 700% cap on skills -- 100% being a max until they changed that to 120% later on).
All of these combined had synergies that increased the power of the other -- Bandaged healing / anatomy = high, fast healing that could also cure poisons or even revive the dead. Taking on things like dragons may require a tag team of healing or one of the first cases of "tanking"... even though there was no provoke in the game. You just took a monster to a corner, your friend was behind you so they couldn't get hit, and you fought it (also a good way to get skill). Tamers could also tame Dragons with their music and skill in animal taming / lore / animal anatomy (Musicians could actually play such lovely music as to have a beast attack another beast while also having their tamed creatures attack something else via their taming skills). They were, obviously, quite powerful and could solo many hard mobs. You could have several dragons at a time, up to a point where they put a cap on that. Tamers were traditionally people who farmed hard mobs for gold and the like. Though dragons could be tricked into portals to other destinations, so you have good control over it (this is in PvP).
There were no real zones. Though every now and again you would notice your character freeze for a split second before being able to move. So technically, there were zones handled by different servers, but it was essentially seamless (for the time) with no loading screen. The same goes with dungeons -- all open and public to everyone in the world. If you saw something that is strong in fantasy, chances are it was. You tended to spend your first week as a newbie trying to make money -- maybe mining and selling the ingots or using the ingots to rise blacksmithing and making yourself armor and selling your armor off. Armor also required stats -- something like 70 STR for plate, or some such. There were no classes, and even a mage could wear plate if they had enough strength (though I believes casts would fail a bit more often, even if they were Grand Masters... or 100% skill level).
Once you were at 100% skill level with something, you were called a Grand Master on your puppet (equipment) page. If your fame was high enough, it would show your title and that you were a Grand Master. The entire game was very complex and had massive amounts of synergies for everything. It was also one of the first Sandbox MMOs. The skill level usually meant your chance to hit (though 100% was not always 100% as your opponent's stats were taken into account) with synergies providing the attack power (such as anatomy).
Few things...
Stats were capped at 225, not 300 as the poster above said. Most mages would run with 100str (hp) 100int (mana) and 25dex (stamina). This was in pre-cast days where you could cast a spell but leave the cursor up, equip a weapon such as halberd that was able to "insta hit" a target meaning that even though it was a large slow swinging weapon when you equipped it you could instantly swing it once, then cast your spell followed up by another (generally explosion + ebolt because explosion had a delay before it hit the target and ebolt was almost instant so both spells would hit at the same time along with your halberd melee hit).
There were various dungeons with various difficulties. Each dungeon had their own spawns and the deeper into the dungeon you went the more difficult monsters became so a low skilled player could enter any dungeon and likely find creatures to kill near the entrance (though Destard had dragons at its entrance so there are some examples where that was not the case). As the players skills increased they could go deeper and fight harder mobs.
UO was a very community driven game with very tight knit guilds. More often than not you ventured into these dungeons with buddies or guild mates to tackle tougher mobs. But a skilled player could always outperform his characters skills/stats which IMO is what made it a great MMO. Just because you played a lot and had skills maxed out did not make you good like today's MMO's.
I could go on and on and talk for days about what made UO great and what sets it apart from every other MMO since but I just get pissed off when I think about it because no developer has tried to recreate it.
Indeed. I've went on for days about how the game sets itself apart from everything we have today. Though in the end you just sound like a broken record, and nobody believes or cares that it was perhaps one of the best iterations of an Online RPG that was ever made. It's all about instant gratification nowadays and the concept of "end game". Housing is starting to become a popular feature nowadays for MMOs, but ultimately the type of sandbox UO was make any housing system of today look like child's play.
Also, thanks for the corrections to my post.
Thanks for the replies and insights. I had to rework my thoughts on how UO operated, but I LIKE it
[EDIT]
I totally forgot about UO's skill based character development
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR