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UO Going F2P So Why Look for Old School When You Can Return to the Original? - Ultima Online - MMORP
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
UO Going F2P So Why Look for Old School When You Can Return to the Original? - Ultima Online - MMORPG.com
Ultima Online News - Why bother looking for a game that brings back fond memories of more "hardcore" MMO days when you know that Ultima Online, the game that many feel is the standard for what today's MMOs should be, is going free to play? Broadsword has announced that Publish 99 will bring the F2P "Endless Journey" to Ultima Online, though there are some restrictions in place. Rest assured that there is still a subscription option available with no restrictions.
Comments
I looked at the difference between f2p and sub accounts and f2p account will make it impossible to play the game.. they restrict you so much that it would be pointless after a few hours of gameplay.
I wonder what they were thinking when they thought it would be a good idea. Reminds me of that f2p in ArcheAge fiasco.
cant place storage boxes.. cant visit private houses ... the list goes on and on and on ..
I played it when it was a full PVP (no Tramel in sight) and if you die whatever you had on you is dropped on the floor for anyone to pick up. So yes, it was very important to have tons of gear and sets and resources safe and ready for you to be used in YOUR house or your friends house. The problem with public housing is that anyone can come in and steal from you while you working on something or kill you.
If you go full PVE route and i am not even sure it is possible since the skill scrolls are only available in PVP zone (or that might have been changes) then it would not be as important.
The point is do you really want to pay $12 per month (or whatever it is) for an 18 years old game?
Was big on UO when it first released and for a while during Renaissance. While I don't know what some of the latter stuff are on the list, some of the major features for playing the game are limited or non-existent for endless journey accounts. Being unable to be a co-owner or house owner in particular is meh -- though I'm thinking they're just looking to see how many come back before potentially unlocking it. Having no retainers, box placement / access, mail access, etc. is also bad -- as well as the resource gathering being restricted to basic ore and wood (no mention of bank access, so I'm hopeful it's accessible for endless journey accounts). Though I'm fairly sure the game has move away from crafted items being pretty much the best things you're able to get.
If their goal was to do as the title of this thread suggest and ask "why play there when you could play here", it's the above. Those modern ones have no restrictions on house owning and basically why people play the style of game as a whole. Given that they're not giving all expansions for free and want to sell the latest three or four or whatever, as well as many the restrictions in place, this is merely to get people to play and see if they want to subscribe and then make money off of that and expansion sales.
Though I wouldn't recommend buying any expansion with housing and gathering and retainer and mailbox restrictions in place (if you don't want to commit to a lifetime sub -- you will also likely lose your house after a short time. This is bad if you custom built it since you put some much resources and time into it). Those were the main focus of the game for most. Potentially being unable to become a Knight of Justice is also a "why should I" portion as that is / was part of the PvP system. But new systems I'm unaware of that might be in may still be worthwhile as a whole to try.
With that I feel the need to emphasize that I haven't played since before they added skills into the game. It might be best if they just start "Legacy Servers" to get people back in. Start as they started and release expansion at an increased speed up to Mondain's legacy and then sell expansions with people that grow up with it, or come back for that. Then rethink the whole optional subscription thing, restructure their cash shop and push it.
They could even call it something like "Ultima Forever" -- a play on a previous thing they had -- and make it a box purchase B2P thing.
Also no bank storage access and yes, those things are absolutely necessary in current UO.
I used to go back on and off. This was my first and favorite MMO but when Age of shadows came out and tried to mimic it into Diablo 2 loot-fest it pretty much destroyed the great things about this game.
Again, maybe it's just me.
http://www.uorenaissance.com/
http://www.uoforever.com/
http://www.uosecondage.com/
Oh and the game had a subscription for 20 years, I dunno wtf they are thinking with the free2play crap... the people who want to play this already are... and by the sounds of it the free2play is going to be useless and you might as well pay anyway if you want to actually play. (if your not on a free shard)
"classification of games into MMOs is not by rational reasoning" - nariusseldon
Love Minecraft. And check out my Youtube channel OhCanadaGamer
Try a MUD today at http://www.mudconnect.com/This to me looks more like a free trial version of the game. Most people who play it more then a brief period will be forced to subscribe to really enjoy it.
Tibia is cheaper too I think, only 10.55 USD when I paid for it but that will fluctuate depending on the Euro to US currency ratio. I think UO is the normal 15 USD price that most MMOs use now.
But mostly both payment systems are the same once UO goes free to play, I find it far too limiting as a free player in Tibia. Because not using boats is terrible (makes it near impossible to get around if not outright impossible to many places, but they do list areas that only premium players can go)...but not being able to use the marketplace is terrible too, cause you can earn so much gold on it that without it, its way too hard to get gold. Plus can get supplies and other stuff too.
UO has technically better housing and far far better crafting though than Tibia. Tibia you can cook stuff, but I think thats as indepth as it goes. I haven't found any crafting outside of that. And housing is pretty simple (and most houses are pretty small)...but the one bonus of Tibia housing is you can live in a city if you want or rural (which is nice to have the option). None of that bullshit housing in the boondocks and far away from the city. But UO is better tech wise, you can do so much with UO houses.
Tibia is sorta more like a LOTRO house, but with far more freedom to decorate the inside of it (since you can place items anywhere and make pretty awesome themes), since LOTRO you can't freely decorate since its hook based.
Tibia though can be cutthroat to get a house. You place a bid on a house (through the website, which is weird but it works I guess)...and then wait 7 days to win (or lose) the bid. The more popular houses take a lot of gold and luck lol.
BDO housing is so amazing as well. You can really customize the interiors of those (more than Tibia), AND you can live in the huge cities in the game...its surprisingly rare in an MMO to be able to LIVE in a city when in real life (especially past, but still present as well), it was and is RARE to live outside it. Whats the bullshit housing design with that in MMOs? I know UO is old, but bad bad design. Not even realistic at all lol. I know Vanguard saga of heroes had same problem too, couldn't live in the city and that was sorta a newer MMO.
One of the best housing (probably tied with BDO for 3rd best) goes to EQ2. A lot of people play EQ2 just cause of the housing. WoW can you do amazing things with EQ2 housing. And you can live in a city too, so its very realistic.
But both EQ2 and BDO have instanced housing (same with LOTRO sorta with the cloned neighborhoods), so people can't really visit your house (BDO is the same) unless they actually look for it. LOTRO you can sorta, but too many neighborhoods.
Tibia and UO at least have housing in the world. So anyone can run by and check out your house.
I dunno what housing I like better though, between Tibia and UO. In UO, its too hard to find good locations for a house since every spot is taken and the good spots actually have botters that take them...it takes ages to find a good spot. I guess thats why devs go the instanced route. But in UO, decorating the exterior (and interior) of a house is pretty superior to Tibia, though despite being "superior", tibia is really up there still.
But Tibia has tons of decorations as well (some interior tibia houses look pretty great), MUCH easier to get a house (even Antica the most popular server has houses open in GOOD spots) and its far less cutthroat than UO. In UO you really are limited to the shitty locations. Decorating is really almost the same as UO, except can't customize the exterior of it or place the house where you want to. But decorating the interior is almost the same, though UO is quite a bit more indepth.
For the reason of the ease of getting a house, I'd probably put Tibia as #1 for just that reason. That and can live in a city...dunno whats up with games not realistically having houses in a city lol.
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
Wildstar is supposed to have amazing housing. But I dunno cause don't really like Wildstar so never played long enough to get a house.
Vanguard had terrible housing. Worse housing than any I've ever seen...the houses were so far out of the way it was like going from san francisco to the middle of australia on a hot australian summer day lol. And decorating and designing houses in vanguard was lame as hell...terrible terrible terrible housing. Though, building the house was fun...the only sorta good part about that housing system lol. It required getting people together to help build it. But even LOTRO had 100x (literally) better decorating of a house than vanguard did...and that is really sad.
Asheron's Call was okay, it had more decorating than LOTRO cause of its age. I think most of it was rural...but it wasn't the worst. And there wasn't any big city in AC, it was all pretty tiny stuff...it was old though, so that was limited cause of the 3d stuff and its age. So it didn't really have cities, more like rural towns :P so the whole game was rural. So of course housing would be rural, so at least it makes sense for that game.
And...outside of those I dunno anything about any other housing for MMOs. My favorites (definitely not in order) being UO, Tibia and EQ2. They all have downsides/upsides between the three.
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
This isn't a signature, you just think it is.
Actually, there is insurance that you apply to items. Also you have approx 5 minutes to get back to your corpse and collect the items that are in it. In the new enhanced client you can see where the healers are and your corpse so getting back to your body is much quicker now. UO has always been realistic as being resurrected you come back with nothing. Insurance was implemented to help people negate the loss of high end items. The amount use to be 600 gold per items but now scales with the items value. (you choose which items to insure) stackables and containers and cursed items can not be insured.
Some monsters have sticky fingers and will loot you, but they like pouches and gold and stacked items, but will take weapons, clothing and other things too.If you venture into Felucca, players can loot your body too and take stuff. But you just have to kill the monsters or other players to get it back.
But for those that want that feeling of playing UO like it was in the beginning, which is one of the things that many people complain about, insurance, you can always play without it to relive the feeling of OMGooses I'VE GOT TO GET BACK TO MY BODY TO GET MY STUFF BEFORE SOMEONE LOOTS IT!!!!