> Multiplayer Online Game - which can also be played solo player / offline
I remember when UO came out...I never played it but I wondered if it would be the end of good single-player RPGs. Luckily, it wasn't, but it was basically the end of Ultima as a series, though arguably it wasn't a causation. In any case, it's hard to imagine an RPG world that could be designed successfully to be a MMO and a good single player experience.
Good single player experiences are bespoke storytelling affairs...and to abstract it out to accomodate MMO interaction would seem to necessarily dilute it.
Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I'm not at all against games that just end, rather than try to shoot to be a world in which you can fully "live a life" and in which the world is infinitely evolving. It's not that such a prospect isn't interesting, it's just that it inevitably leads to the kind of feature creep that leads to bugs and outright brokenness (insert reference to SimCity). I'm OK with games ending after 50-100 hours (or even 10, in the case of the Portal series), if those hours were fantastic.
I'd contribute if Lord British were going to make a modernized version of Ultima VII. Even though the limits of its world are obvious in retrospect, it really was way ahead of its time in creating a believable digital world for the single-player, and the constructs it used to maintain that facade (and have a story arc) would not have worked if it were a MMO.
Ultima VII has remained my fondest memory of an RPG. It was a world that, in comparison to its contemporaries, was practically alive, a living, changing place (that I could visit with my specially tweaked CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT). I think TES has done a good job of taking up the mantle that Ultima VII set down, but for me nothing will duplicate the childhood wonder of encountering the level of immersion and detail that Ultima VII offered.
About simulations: after playing MUDs I wished for evolving worlds, player clans with the ability to claim territory and build structures, NPC factions that battled among themselves, ecologies, simulated NPCs that responded to invasions and events, the works. These have been achieved to some extent in recent games, but maybe the magic lies in the storytelling in the end.
Maybe what we need is professional scripters running MMO cities: imagine Lord British essentially playing himself as a full-time job, with the ability to spin quests and stories that permanently change the fabric of the world, fight off invading lords, launch expeditions, rezone areas, fund guilds, run his realm. That way we can have complex world simulations, player-driven clans, and the human storytelling element, all richly combined.
(I wish I'd played UO, it sounds fantastic. Realistically, I won't have the time or energy to play SotA intensively, but I'd certainly like to try it. Too bad it isn't 2.5D isometric...)
Yes, my experience compels me to agree. The best compromise I've found are Diablo-style co-operative stories, where multiple people can go through a very engrossing story as a group of adventurers, and progress to the game's final end. I argued that the great failure of SW: The Old Republic was that it removed the one element that made Knights of the Old Republic such a success: the engrossing single player story.
Massive online environments, by definition, prohibit a single character from being important. The natural solution is the instanced single player game, allowing large party sizes which scale difficulty based on the encounter. A corollary of this is that any true, persistent MMO must be sandbox type, allowing individual players extreme freedom to write the stories. The best example of this is EVE, and a lesser known korean RPG Lineage: The Blood Pledge, which allowed players to control castles of each kingdom, creating incredible game histories due to player competition alone.
It is clear that the single player co-op and the MMO are now distinct genres, catering to different play styles. Attempts to bridge this gap have generally failed from a storytelling perspective, even in great games such as Guild Wars 2 and The Old Republic.
I agree with you that trying to merge multiplayer with singleplayer would be a very difficult affair. I think swtor attempted this, but I cannot say because I never played it.
I am excited to see if anyone takes up the idea of making something akin to the elder scrolls franchise and adding small scale multiplayer into it. Not specifically co-op but just where multiple people are dropped into the world together and then left to their own devices.
In a game where up to say 10 people were allowed to wander free it would be fun to have rivalries and alliances arise as people try to further their own goals.
What saddens me is that this sort of idea seems to be forgotten completely in lieu of the industry direction that seems to suggest the only multiplayer fantasy rpg games we'll ever get are shameless wow clones.
I would love to be wrong by the way, if anyone does know of any of these sorts of games feel free to correct me.
I grew up on the Ultima series - in fact it is exclusively the reason I became a programmer and game developer. I do not know how good this recent iteration will be, but at least it looks like Richard is keeping a close ear to his community. In all honesty though I would have settled for a 2D/isometric non-MMO (in the spirit of Ultima 7) -- I think that's where his original fans lie.
My Ultima experience started with VI, but I remember distinctively walking into Electronics Boutique and seeing Ultima VII on the shelf for the first time. I could not believe the screenshots were real, it looked like everything a RPG should be.
Ultima VI is was really got me into coding world simulations, but Ultima VII really showed the potential of the genre. I think that's why Ultima VIII and IX were such a disappointment.
The interactions, exploration and focus on virtues that hooked me into these games. I could care less about the graphics if these elements are well done in the new game.
I have the exact same experience. Ultima7 made me a developer, and was my first dive into editing bash scripts (that fucker was impossible to get working in windows95). Enabling the debug mode and hacking on gumps was my favorite pass time.
It was Ultima III that first made me realize that all data lived on the disk and that I could alter all of it. And I did. Maybe I'm weird but it's fun to read the assembly for Ultima 3.
I was stuck in the Apple world so I stopped playing after U5. I bought the Ultima-giftpack on GOG.com before Christmas, but still have only had the time to work through the first 3. I'm savoring them, still.
But I guess the more power to semi-independent studios we can give through Kickstarter the better.
I like the $10 "guilt pledge": "If you ever pirated an Ultima game or used an exploit to grief other players in Ultima Online, here’s your chance to repent! For your $10 donation you will receive a clear conscience and Lord British's undying gratitude.".
You're probably thinking of Kickstarter in its original "support a cool project to make it happen" mindset. Like most high profile projects, this isn't like that. It's one part marketing, one part a pre-order system, and one part a market research tool. In that light the personal wealth of the project owner is irrelevant.
Don't spend a penny of your money toward it if you don't want to / if you disagree with it.
And $1 million? It's going to cost radically more than that to launch the product. You do realize how much even a mid size title costs to make these days, right? All $1 million does is get the ball rolling (barely).
Try $15 to $30 million dollars just to build it out.
I don't think personal wealth of an owner has anything to do with a business. I'm probably a greedy SOB, but that's his money, not the company's money.
If the company can't exist without him paying his own money into it, then the company probably shouldn't exist.
I find it laudable if an owner would help float a company through a short bad period using their own money, but I wouldn't expect them to beggar themselves (or not get paid back) just to keep a failing company running.
For something different, here is a soon to be launched kickstarter. From someone not as successful as Mr Garriot but if you played Dark Age of Camelot you might be in love already
I am going to rant about graphics here. The graphics on this game look 8 years old. A game doesn't need to look fantastic to be good but surely a new game should have good graphics. I am not talking about realistic graphics. Simply esthetically pleasing graphics. The graphics in the video look like something from runescape...
Looking elsewhere. Is this game not called 'Ultima Online' because Garriot doesn't own the rights? A sequel in all but name?
While the vision sounds promising I worry about broader appeal. Who is this game for? Tabula Rasa failed pretty badly. I don't quite see the appeal of this game. Most MMO's have a clear goal. Even if that is the same. "Level up, do quests, reach new areas, get gear." Perhaps I misunderstand but the goal of this game seems to be 'explore for yourself.' I don't think that is enough to pull people in. I have played the Ultima series. I still give Ultima Online a spin every couple of months and this new game doesn't pull me in..
The video left me feeling like the game is a time sink without getting the reward of getting little achievements like gaining levels and discovering new gear. The very things that make such games addictive.
When I saw the title my first thought was "TAKE ALL MY MONEY NOW." After seeing the video I think perhaps there is a reason why EA didn't take the franchise further.
Imagine how poorly something like Minecraft would sell today. Minecraft was amazing when it was released with a 256 color palette in 1993, but nobody would go for that today.
People want graphics, not great gameplay...
No, they want great gameplay first, and great graphics second. That has always been true and will always be true.
This is so great. I'm such a damn UO fan I can't even put it into words. I'm not a "gamer", but UO was the __best__ game I've ever played. No game, as far as I can tell, has even come close to replicating the brilliance of UO around 1998-1999. It probably gave me some of my best childhood memories, and it was also the first time I was ever called a "fuking n00b" on the internet.
They remain two of the best games I have ever played. Looking at the games the team have made brings back a lot of good memories. Wing Commander Privateer was also phenomenal at the time.
I'm glad that "Meaningful PvP" was singled out. PvP is important to me and its one of the things that Ultima Online got right that vast swaths of MMOs since have floundered with (in my opinion).
In parts of the world (Felucca[1]), UO was a rare RPG where anyone could kill anyone, for any reason, but with the repercussion that they would be branded a "Bad person" (visible with a gray or red name instead of blue). Stealing from good people corpses also did this. Anyone can attack and kill bad persons, and if you killed even more people you were a murderer and it took a very long time to return to normal.
You want to use super awesome powerful gear? None of this sissy MMO stuff. Die and you lose it, and your enemy (or his enemy!) gets the spoils.[1]
Those are the two criteria by which I think "meaningful PvP" should be judged:
1. Can I kill anyone? (ie, in WoW you can't kill 90% of the people you see, they have to be in an arena/faction/alliance).
2. When you kill someone do you actually win something? (preferably something of theirs), and when you die do you actually lose something (preferably the equipment you risked to try and have a more favorable fight).
Ultima and UO were very big into morality and moral dilemmas, which is a thing I love in both single and multi-player games. Some of the Ultima games featured very interesting choices, like whether or not you should kill "evil" (possessed) children or leave them alone.
In UO, if you did have a "bad person" title and wanted to know how much time you had left before you would be considered blue again, you had to type:
"I must consider my sins"
~~~
The other problem I have with a lot of MMOs is that the power of your character is simply how much time you sink into the game. Essentially, MMOs are games that reward wasting time.
UO had so much more than that. The class-less system definitely helped, and UO was a game where treachery and sneakiness really paid off, if you wanted them to. Lots of ways to nearly instantly kill or entrap people lead to a lot of very exciting plots where guilds might be laden with spies. Absolutely nothing like the limited PvP found in many modern MMOs.
In a lot of ways UO was the Diplomacy (diplomatic back-stabbing board game) of MMOs. And it was great.
See also outworlder's wonderful comment explaining UO 90 days ago[2]. Also considerably interesting was the economy of UO[3], which was wrought with a good deal of experimentation.
~~~
Also, if you played UO, you'd know that property taxes are a wonderful idea. So many people land-rushing to get the largest properties possible, who then sat on them and never built anything! (Or never played, while newcoming regulars had zero chance of ever finding a home at a reasonable price)
~~~
[1] In the beginning there was only Felucca. And an insurance system was added later (2005ish?) where you could pay a certain amount per item to not lose it on death. Both were attempts to make the game less harsh. Like a lot of later patches, this was unpopular with older players and popular with newer players. Over its lifetime, UO did a lot of things to make the game world less cut-throat, which will always be controversial. Some realms rules stayed more "hardcore" than others as a compromise.
Richard Bartle: "[without permanent death] Newbies (and not-so-newbies) feel they can never catch up. The people in front will always be in front, and there's no way to overtake them. The horizon advances at the speed you approach it." [2]
While UO was my favorite game of all time, this is not UO. I won't be helping fund this. Garriot does not have a track record anymore. He's had failure after failure post-UO.
He needs to take a step back and look at the successful games that have taken off recently that have roots in UO. My best example is DayZ. You run around with items that if you die fall on your body. Weapons have low relative value like UO. You can trust no one. People love the hell out of this game and it embodies what UO was to a lot of people. Unforgiving and harsh, but so much fun.
I'm disappointed where he's going with this but with what he's made post-UO I'm not surprised. I never expected him to create the next UO.
I played back before the trammel/felucca split. (I was a beta player -- people who play MMO betas these days are spoiled compared to how UO beta was; I still have the install CD that we had to pay s/h for! Ah, 1996.)
I still think the split was a bad idea. I think of Eve now the way I thought of UO back then: if you can't afford to lose it, don't leave town with it.
The progression of UO over time is not unlike that of most computer games over a longer period:
We used to have 3 lives, and pixel perfect jumps. Not a "100 life" buffer with health packs or -worse- life regeneration if you hide behind a tree. Or a completely safe MMO world like UO ended up as. Few went to the Dark Side of the UO world.
Most games have become movies, with little chance of anything bad happening to the viewer except getting popcorn hitting the back of your head.
UO was exciting when you thought you might get jumped and killed. It made you think hard about what you took out hunting.
If you are interested in a game that holds similar mechanics, take a look at Darkfall(http://www.darkfallonline.com/), while it is shutting down, the 'sequel' is being released. It offers the same full looting, full PvP experience. The only area where time-sinking customers benefit is from the fact you can build your own strongholds to store things if your toon gets killed.
UO PvP was the golden era of my gaming experience. I was Dread Lord Phlux on Napa Valley shard and was playing from beta through go-live for ~2 years.
I worked in the Intel Game Developers Lab at the time and we had ~6 accounts machines all right next to one another. We had 100 hide and also had Great Lord Phlux characters as well.
It was so much fun logging in as Great Lord Phlux and people just saw "...Lord Phlux" and would attack my good rep character and lose their rep!
So many great memories on UO.
I long for such an experience again, and since I have been playing the ultima series since Ultima II on the Apple IIe - I will always support this series...
Per the title of this post, it's not exactly "Ultima" or a sequel. As found on the official site's FAQ:
"But is this the Ultima sequel I’ve been waiting for?
This is NOT an “Ultima”, as that is a trademark owned by Electronic Arts. Ultima fans know though, that great RPG’s can be been played anywhere; on earth, in space, in Britannia and in many other lands. I am creating a new land for Shroud of the Avatar, which will adhere to the design principles that all of my FRPG games adhered to."
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?page_id=19
> Since then, most every other RPG has focused more on level grinding then “role playing”, which has been reduced to a few initial character choices... Less open. Less immersive.
I don't think this team has played any RPGs over the past decade. Non of them are like this other than JRPGs. It lessens his project's credibility.
It is somewhat interesting that an online multiplayer game is having more difficulties raising funding than Torment, a single player RPG.
Both seemingly have similar old school appeal, though the Planescape Torment audience is maybe slightly younger (5-8 years?) compared to fans of Ultima.
I'll admit, while I threw a good chunk of money at Torment, this Kickstarter is less appealing to me just because it is Online.
I also feel that there is some ambiguity over the vision of this game. The FAQ says this isn't an MMO , but you have online property you can buy and it has PvP? I am seriously confused as to the genre of this game. Confused people don't pledge.
> From Lord British's Treatise on "What is an Ultimate RPG?":
> * Fully interactive virtual world - If it looks usable, it should do something
> * Deep original fiction - Ethical parables, cultural histories, fully developed alternate language text
This reminds me of the first Deus Ex. Wonder if they'll be able to pull it off.
I played Quantum on Atlantic and Heroku and later helped run parts of the Dr.Twister network :). Short of WoTMUD early UO is the best pk system I've ever experienced. I still talk of game memories with my brother and my friend Jason that played Sir Alf.
I don't think the felucca 'carebear' world helped the game. Yes, there were some issues with griefing -- but the playerbase was in control (I admit I'd polymorph into a slime around coveous, flag myself gray, and have people attack me to freely pk them).
When Sir Alf and I used to raid this RP heavy village, and we became a nuisance -- they hired guards...real players -- to keep us at bay. Eventually they befriended us and paid us in regents and offered protection.
We once betrayed a friend in-game and the father called us -- I learned peer mediation from UO :)
The timing on this and the Torment kickstarter is truly impeccable, with all the hate at DRM, EA. What better way to vent frustrations than help support the revival of the old-school?
Personally, I really hope this succeeds. If KS represents the next generation of game studios/production, then I'm all for it.
Inevitably, there will always be tension between the creative aspects of one's vision and the need for viable product to keep the lights on.
SotA is NOT UO or Ultima I-IX. It's a clean slate. Yes, it's good to have discussions about PvP and whatnot, because we are passionate about these things that have been with us through the years. On the other hand, consider why RG chose to go through Kickstarter. It's to free himself, his idea, from meddling managers who only care about the bottom line, the lowest common denominator, and not the creative aspects. And that's what kills art.
I would prefer that we discuss what new and interesting behavior could arise if a certain gameplay mechanic were implemented, instead of "SotA needs PvP/perma-death/what-have-you because every other MMO has it".
Man, Ultima Online was so good. I would love to see this.
And corpse-looting gave PvP adrenaline rushes and was something that UO did really well. Without that huge sense of having something to lose, the fights become meaningless and stale. Like in gambling.
Kickstarter should spin out their video games category into its own brand. After all of the long-dead series/genres they've been reviving, they're the most beloved "publisher" in ages, the direct opposite of EA/Activision.
I was going to back then until I realised it's an MMO. Not since 1995 did I ever want anything to do with MMO's and I have no intention of playing them.
Please give me a meaningful single player experience.
[+] [-] gebe|13 years ago|reply
Kickstarter has been really great so far for people, like myself, who were and are very fond of the "old school" type of RPGs.
[+] [-] pearle|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Semaphor|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mercurial|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lilsunnybee|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danso|13 years ago|reply
I remember when UO came out...I never played it but I wondered if it would be the end of good single-player RPGs. Luckily, it wasn't, but it was basically the end of Ultima as a series, though arguably it wasn't a causation. In any case, it's hard to imagine an RPG world that could be designed successfully to be a MMO and a good single player experience.
Good single player experiences are bespoke storytelling affairs...and to abstract it out to accomodate MMO interaction would seem to necessarily dilute it.
Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I'm not at all against games that just end, rather than try to shoot to be a world in which you can fully "live a life" and in which the world is infinitely evolving. It's not that such a prospect isn't interesting, it's just that it inevitably leads to the kind of feature creep that leads to bugs and outright brokenness (insert reference to SimCity). I'm OK with games ending after 50-100 hours (or even 10, in the case of the Portal series), if those hours were fantastic.
I'd contribute if Lord British were going to make a modernized version of Ultima VII. Even though the limits of its world are obvious in retrospect, it really was way ahead of its time in creating a believable digital world for the single-player, and the constructs it used to maintain that facade (and have a story arc) would not have worked if it were a MMO.
[+] [-] creamyhorror|13 years ago|reply
About simulations: after playing MUDs I wished for evolving worlds, player clans with the ability to claim territory and build structures, NPC factions that battled among themselves, ecologies, simulated NPCs that responded to invasions and events, the works. These have been achieved to some extent in recent games, but maybe the magic lies in the storytelling in the end.
Maybe what we need is professional scripters running MMO cities: imagine Lord British essentially playing himself as a full-time job, with the ability to spin quests and stories that permanently change the fabric of the world, fight off invading lords, launch expeditions, rezone areas, fund guilds, run his realm. That way we can have complex world simulations, player-driven clans, and the human storytelling element, all richly combined.
(I wish I'd played UO, it sounds fantastic. Realistically, I won't have the time or energy to play SotA intensively, but I'd certainly like to try it. Too bad it isn't 2.5D isometric...)
[+] [-] FD3SA|13 years ago|reply
Massive online environments, by definition, prohibit a single character from being important. The natural solution is the instanced single player game, allowing large party sizes which scale difficulty based on the encounter. A corollary of this is that any true, persistent MMO must be sandbox type, allowing individual players extreme freedom to write the stories. The best example of this is EVE, and a lesser known korean RPG Lineage: The Blood Pledge, which allowed players to control castles of each kingdom, creating incredible game histories due to player competition alone.
It is clear that the single player co-op and the MMO are now distinct genres, catering to different play styles. Attempts to bridge this gap have generally failed from a storytelling perspective, even in great games such as Guild Wars 2 and The Old Republic.
[+] [-] Lockyy|13 years ago|reply
I am excited to see if anyone takes up the idea of making something akin to the elder scrolls franchise and adding small scale multiplayer into it. Not specifically co-op but just where multiple people are dropped into the world together and then left to their own devices. In a game where up to say 10 people were allowed to wander free it would be fun to have rivalries and alliances arise as people try to further their own goals.
What saddens me is that this sort of idea seems to be forgotten completely in lieu of the industry direction that seems to suggest the only multiplayer fantasy rpg games we'll ever get are shameless wow clones.
I would love to be wrong by the way, if anyone does know of any of these sorts of games feel free to correct me.
[+] [-] gavanwoolery|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bstar77|13 years ago|reply
Ultima VI is was really got me into coding world simulations, but Ultima VII really showed the potential of the genre. I think that's why Ultima VIII and IX were such a disappointment.
The interactions, exploration and focus on virtues that hooked me into these games. I could care less about the graphics if these elements are well done in the new game.
[+] [-] ralphleon|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danielweber|13 years ago|reply
I was stuck in the Apple world so I stopped playing after U5. I bought the Ultima-giftpack on GOG.com before Christmas, but still have only had the time to work through the first 3. I'm savoring them, still.
[+] [-] Erwin|13 years ago|reply
But I guess the more power to semi-independent studios we can give through Kickstarter the better.
I like the $10 "guilt pledge": "If you ever pirated an Ultima game or used an exploit to grief other players in Ultima Online, here’s your chance to repent! For your $10 donation you will receive a clear conscience and Lord British's undying gratitude.".
[+] [-] jsnell|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adventured|13 years ago|reply
Don't spend a penny of your money toward it if you don't want to / if you disagree with it.
And $1 million? It's going to cost radically more than that to launch the product. You do realize how much even a mid size title costs to make these days, right? All $1 million does is get the ball rolling (barely).
Try $15 to $30 million dollars just to build it out.
[+] [-] thisone|13 years ago|reply
If the company can't exist without him paying his own money into it, then the company probably shouldn't exist.
I find it laudable if an owner would help float a company through a short bad period using their own money, but I wouldn't expect them to beggar themselves (or not get paid back) just to keep a failing company running.
[+] [-] spqr|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] rschmitty|13 years ago|reply
http://citystateentertainment.com/camelotunchained/
Here is a long interview describing the goals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&...
View on what is wrong with MMOs @ 4:16
No more hand holding @ 7:00
Class System - Rock Paper Scissors @ 11:46
Race/Sex Considerations - Choices Matter @ 13:40
Crafting - First class crafting @ 18:18
Random Critical Hits - You will laugh and cry @ 25:17
Randomness for Crafting - Sometimes stuff will go horribly wrong/perfectly right @ 31:11
Leveling - No PvE, unclear on soft vs hard caps at this stage @ 34:07
Kickstarter - Pick your rewards! @ 40:19
[+] [-] trotsky|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bobsy|13 years ago|reply
Looking elsewhere. Is this game not called 'Ultima Online' because Garriot doesn't own the rights? A sequel in all but name?
While the vision sounds promising I worry about broader appeal. Who is this game for? Tabula Rasa failed pretty badly. I don't quite see the appeal of this game. Most MMO's have a clear goal. Even if that is the same. "Level up, do quests, reach new areas, get gear." Perhaps I misunderstand but the goal of this game seems to be 'explore for yourself.' I don't think that is enough to pull people in. I have played the Ultima series. I still give Ultima Online a spin every couple of months and this new game doesn't pull me in..
The video left me feeling like the game is a time sink without getting the reward of getting little achievements like gaining levels and discovering new gear. The very things that make such games addictive.
When I saw the title my first thought was "TAKE ALL MY MONEY NOW." After seeing the video I think perhaps there is a reason why EA didn't take the franchise further.
[+] [-] adventured|13 years ago|reply
People want graphics, not great gameplay...
No, they want great gameplay first, and great graphics second. That has always been true and will always be true.
[+] [-] chjj|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Kurtz79|13 years ago|reply
Incredible titles, way ahead of their time.
Ultima 7 has probably more sophisticated interaction mechanics than 99% of the games today.
[+] [-] bornhuetter|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jiggy2011|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] simonsarris|13 years ago|reply
In parts of the world (Felucca[1]), UO was a rare RPG where anyone could kill anyone, for any reason, but with the repercussion that they would be branded a "Bad person" (visible with a gray or red name instead of blue). Stealing from good people corpses also did this. Anyone can attack and kill bad persons, and if you killed even more people you were a murderer and it took a very long time to return to normal.
You want to use super awesome powerful gear? None of this sissy MMO stuff. Die and you lose it, and your enemy (or his enemy!) gets the spoils.[1]
Those are the two criteria by which I think "meaningful PvP" should be judged:
1. Can I kill anyone? (ie, in WoW you can't kill 90% of the people you see, they have to be in an arena/faction/alliance).
2. When you kill someone do you actually win something? (preferably something of theirs), and when you die do you actually lose something (preferably the equipment you risked to try and have a more favorable fight).
Ultima and UO were very big into morality and moral dilemmas, which is a thing I love in both single and multi-player games. Some of the Ultima games featured very interesting choices, like whether or not you should kill "evil" (possessed) children or leave them alone.
In UO, if you did have a "bad person" title and wanted to know how much time you had left before you would be considered blue again, you had to type:
~~~The other problem I have with a lot of MMOs is that the power of your character is simply how much time you sink into the game. Essentially, MMOs are games that reward wasting time.
UO had so much more than that. The class-less system definitely helped, and UO was a game where treachery and sneakiness really paid off, if you wanted them to. Lots of ways to nearly instantly kill or entrap people lead to a lot of very exciting plots where guilds might be laden with spies. Absolutely nothing like the limited PvP found in many modern MMOs.
In a lot of ways UO was the Diplomacy (diplomatic back-stabbing board game) of MMOs. And it was great.
See also outworlder's wonderful comment explaining UO 90 days ago[2]. Also considerably interesting was the economy of UO[3], which was wrought with a good deal of experimentation.
~~~
Also, if you played UO, you'd know that property taxes are a wonderful idea. So many people land-rushing to get the largest properties possible, who then sat on them and never built anything! (Or never played, while newcoming regulars had zero chance of ever finding a home at a reasonable price)
~~~
[1] In the beginning there was only Felucca. And an insurance system was added later (2005ish?) where you could pay a certain amount per item to not lose it on death. Both were attempts to make the game less harsh. Like a lot of later patches, this was unpopular with older players and popular with newer players. Over its lifetime, UO did a lot of things to make the game world less cut-throat, which will always be controversial. Some realms rules stayed more "hardcore" than others as a compromise.
[2] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4890513
[3] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4890481
[+] [-] wodow|13 years ago|reply
Richard Bartle: "[without permanent death] Newbies (and not-so-newbies) feel they can never catch up. The people in front will always be in front, and there's no way to overtake them. The horizon advances at the speed you approach it." [2]
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_death [2] Designing Virtual Worlds, 2003
[+] [-] picklefish|13 years ago|reply
He needs to take a step back and look at the successful games that have taken off recently that have roots in UO. My best example is DayZ. You run around with items that if you die fall on your body. Weapons have low relative value like UO. You can trust no one. People love the hell out of this game and it embodies what UO was to a lot of people. Unforgiving and harsh, but so much fun.
I'm disappointed where he's going with this but with what he's made post-UO I'm not surprised. I never expected him to create the next UO.
[+] [-] warfangle|13 years ago|reply
I still think the split was a bad idea. I think of Eve now the way I thought of UO back then: if you can't afford to lose it, don't leave town with it.
[+] [-] Ntrails|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AndyJPartridge|13 years ago|reply
We used to have 3 lives, and pixel perfect jumps. Not a "100 life" buffer with health packs or -worse- life regeneration if you hide behind a tree. Or a completely safe MMO world like UO ended up as. Few went to the Dark Side of the UO world.
Most games have become movies, with little chance of anything bad happening to the viewer except getting popcorn hitting the back of your head.
UO was exciting when you thought you might get jumped and killed. It made you think hard about what you took out hunting.
[+] [-] tsumnia|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] samstave|13 years ago|reply
I worked in the Intel Game Developers Lab at the time and we had ~6 accounts machines all right next to one another. We had 100 hide and also had Great Lord Phlux characters as well.
It was so much fun logging in as Great Lord Phlux and people just saw "...Lord Phlux" and would attack my good rep character and lose their rep!
So many great memories on UO.
I long for such an experience again, and since I have been playing the ultima series since Ultima II on the Apple IIe - I will always support this series...
[+] [-] phaus|13 years ago|reply
Most MMOs claim that they won't neglect hardcore pvp, but almost all of them end up catering to the lowest common denominator.
Games where people are allowed to kill anyone, at any time, for any reason are generally economic failures.
I have high hopes for this game, but I remain skeptical.
[+] [-] saraid216|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] erickhill|13 years ago|reply
"But is this the Ultima sequel I’ve been waiting for?
This is NOT an “Ultima”, as that is a trademark owned by Electronic Arts. Ultima fans know though, that great RPG’s can be been played anywhere; on earth, in space, in Britannia and in many other lands. I am creating a new land for Shroud of the Avatar, which will adhere to the design principles that all of my FRPG games adhered to." https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?page_id=19
[+] [-] chaostheory|13 years ago|reply
I don't think this team has played any RPGs over the past decade. Non of them are like this other than JRPGs. It lessens his project's credibility.
[+] [-] Kurtz79|13 years ago|reply
The first Fallout had terrific role playing already, and then all the Black Isle, Bioware, Bethesda titles, the Gothic, Witcher series...
[+] [-] jbattle|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] com2kid|13 years ago|reply
Both seemingly have similar old school appeal, though the Planescape Torment audience is maybe slightly younger (5-8 years?) compared to fans of Ultima.
I'll admit, while I threw a good chunk of money at Torment, this Kickstarter is less appealing to me just because it is Online.
I also feel that there is some ambiguity over the vision of this game. The FAQ says this isn't an MMO , but you have online property you can buy and it has PvP? I am seriously confused as to the genre of this game. Confused people don't pledge.
[+] [-] estebank|13 years ago|reply
> * Fully interactive virtual world - If it looks usable, it should do something > * Deep original fiction - Ethical parables, cultural histories, fully developed alternate language text
This reminds me of the first Deus Ex. Wonder if they'll be able to pull it off.
[+] [-] ordinathorreur|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adamrights|13 years ago|reply
I don't think the felucca 'carebear' world helped the game. Yes, there were some issues with griefing -- but the playerbase was in control (I admit I'd polymorph into a slime around coveous, flag myself gray, and have people attack me to freely pk them).
When Sir Alf and I used to raid this RP heavy village, and we became a nuisance -- they hired guards...real players -- to keep us at bay. Eventually they befriended us and paid us in regents and offered protection.
We once betrayed a friend in-game and the father called us -- I learned peer mediation from UO :)
I got my first case of the shakes.
I wish LB the best in this venture
[+] [-] viseztrance|13 years ago|reply
http://kotaku.com/5989447/richard-garriott-revolutionized-vi...
[+] [-] lordofmoria|13 years ago|reply
Personally, I really hope this succeeds. If KS represents the next generation of game studios/production, then I'm all for it.
[+] [-] brisance|13 years ago|reply
SotA is NOT UO or Ultima I-IX. It's a clean slate. Yes, it's good to have discussions about PvP and whatnot, because we are passionate about these things that have been with us through the years. On the other hand, consider why RG chose to go through Kickstarter. It's to free himself, his idea, from meddling managers who only care about the bottom line, the lowest common denominator, and not the creative aspects. And that's what kills art.
I would prefer that we discuss what new and interesting behavior could arise if a certain gameplay mechanic were implemented, instead of "SotA needs PvP/perma-death/what-have-you because every other MMO has it".
[+] [-] kdazzle|13 years ago|reply
And corpse-looting gave PvP adrenaline rushes and was something that UO did really well. Without that huge sense of having something to lose, the fights become meaningless and stale. Like in gambling.
[+] [-] Apocryphon|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Yuioup|13 years ago|reply
Please give me a meaningful single player experience.