Mythic Bails Out Ultima Online Team [Archive]

Evil Avatar

07-02-2006, 07:12 AM

The official Electronic Arts Ultima Online website (http://www.uo.com/) has word that Mythic Entertainment, the developers of Dark Age of Camelot and the upcoming Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, are going to try to breath some life into the dead horse that is Ultima Online.

These are exciting days for MMORPG fans here at EA. With the acquisition of Mythic, the UO team will be working with the creative folks who brought us Dark Age of Camelot and are hard at work on the spectacular-looking Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. I’m thrilled that the UO team and Mythic will work together to forge Britannia’s future.

There is much to talk about with our new partners, and it will take some time to review and finalize our plans. Because we need to take that time, we are postponing the announcement that we were going to make this week. The in-game fiction cycle will take a break for a bit and will return soon.

Sazime

07-02-2006, 07:20 AM

The fact that game like UO and EQ are still running amazes me. Have any MMOs ever really died?

Klade

07-02-2006, 07:20 AM

Fantastic, lets take a functional working team and split them up so that their talent goes to 7 year old pieces of crap that only an accountant with eyes on expansions could love.

Grifter

07-02-2006, 07:21 AM

I don't even like MMO's but I can feel the pain of hundreds of thousands of Warhammer and DAoC fans. Why can't EA just die. Can you imagine the amount of talent that would be set free in the world if EA were to just disapear?

Derella

07-02-2006, 07:24 AM

The fact that game like UO and EQ are still running amazes me. Have any MMOs ever really died?
A couple have. Asheron's Call 2, and Earth & Beyond.

Lekon

07-02-2006, 07:38 AM

Ah yes. Earth and Beyond.. I did so love that game for a month or so. The travel times just turned me off so much though. It took half an hour to do some trade routes, at full warp on a fast ship. And when you had to fly on a planet, somehow you suddenly went to a slug's pace. Other than that, it was remarkably pretty of a game.

Ultima Online... so many good memories. I loved the quest writing I got to do, still talk with several friends who were other Seers/quest makers in their programs. I also remember how much everything changed for the worse not two weeks after EA bought out origin. Ugh.

holysin

07-02-2006, 07:45 AM

Ultima Online... so many good memories. I loved the quest writing I got to do, still talk with several friends who were other Seers/quest makers in their programs. I also remember how much everything changed for the worse not two weeks after EA bought out origin. Ugh.

Hmm...
Didn't EA buy Origion in 1992, some 5 years before Ultima Online was released?

Lekon

07-02-2006, 07:49 AM

Not from what I recall. I pretty specificly remember the purchase time as it was when several of the gm's Disappeared, and a few new folk came in with marketing attitudes. Gone went most of the ideas of quests and such. They basicly tried to do as many shardwide quests as they could for a bit, before figuring out what 90% of the seers told em from previous experpience: UO's server architecture can't HANDLE that many people in a quest area at once :p

Edit: My mistake. The time of the change was when they fired half the dev team/the dev team left. It was when Raph Koster and the crew went to Sony to work on SWG, and riiiight after they'd announced UO2, and right before they canceled it. (Bastards, that game had such promise)

A lotta weird crap all happened at once. It was less than two months really that sweeping "Changes" had been made.

About the only reason most of the Seers stayed was because of the head of the seer program, the GM in charge that is, was a guy who was beyond saintly. He was a remarkable fellow that was just great to work with.

I know a few of those folk ended up in other companies, probably a lot at NCsoft now. As far away from EA as they can get.

Lexicon

07-02-2006, 08:14 AM

HellbenderX

07-02-2006, 08:28 AM

The fact that game like UO and EQ are still running amazes me. Have any MMOs ever really died?
Yes. And EA is responsible for killing the majority of the ones that have died. :(

-H

lockwoodx

07-02-2006, 08:49 AM

Meridian 59 by 3DO stuidos officially died. Same with NWN back when it was featured via AOL. The Realm is on the brink but still there by some amazing miracle.

Klade

07-02-2006, 09:27 AM

Isn't the Sims Online dead as well? Also Myth Online first turned singleplayer update, then died completely.

Savok

07-02-2006, 09:40 AM

Well they fucked that up sooner then I expected, they're getting better.

EGO

07-02-2006, 10:02 AM

I like how no one can see anything positive coming from EA.

It's so pathetic how missinformed people are.

For all the people who romanticize about Origin pre-EA, ask yourself how successfull was Origin really? They had a couple of franchises, but they took too long to actually make the games and when they did, were they that good anymore?

Strike Commander took how long!?!? If it weren't for EA coming in, supporting Origin's burn-rate and putting a bit of structure to that place, they probably would've died a lot sooner.

Now, if you guys are saying, "who needs another MMO, we've got WOW," that's a different story, but saying EA is shitty for shutting down a studio that was hemoraging money and attempting to revive a franchise that they own, versus dumping a ton of money into a franchise they don't own, well you probably don't understand the business of business.

Without EA, we'd probably all still be the 100,000 people playing "hardcore" games sold to us in zip-loc bags, versus gaming being mainstream and a $10 BILLION dollar industry.

Savok

07-02-2006, 10:10 AM

You'll find Sony to be the ones who expanded the industry, not EA.

Also EA killed Bullfrog, so fuck you.

GoblinToe

07-02-2006, 10:22 AM

Umm, I'm sorry, but...WHO CARES? Would anyone here seriously ever pay a monthly fee for Ultima Online ever again? I bought UO at launch and played for my free 30 days, and had a blast, but at the end of that 30 days I cancelled my account due to severe lag.

The game itself was a blast to play. Hanging out in the woods huddled behind a particularly bushy shrub awaiting newbie travelers to happen by...so I could jump out and slit their throats and steal their fews coins and cloth clothing, and if I were lucky, a bundle of freshly cut wood!

To this day, no MMORPG has truly matched the player bought AND placed housing in UO. No one! Yes, yes, there is Star Wars Galaxies, but that games doesn't even count because it sucks so incredibly bad. When you bought a house in UO it was a momentous occasion, and worth every penny. You could store your dead bodies in there, allow friends to use it for storage, or even break into other peoples homes and steal from them, or kill them in their sleep, and then steal from them. Brilliant.

Anyway, the list goes on as to why UO was an excellent game, and I have nothing bad to say about it other than the lag at launch kept me from ever going back.

But, really, do they expect new subscribers at this point with that old haggard engine and lackluster graphics? Maybe I'm not as in touch with the happenings of UO as some of you, but I would think Mythics skills would be better used elsewhere.

EDIT:

Check out this MMORPG chart for UO. After seeing how its retained subscribers over the years, where others have failed, you have to say it's been a survivor. But still, how much life can even a good team breathe into that skagly old engine? It be better to just create a whole new game. Seems like time much better spent. Maybe they should pull UO 2 out from the closet and dust it off, and go from there.

http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart2.html

hotdrop

07-02-2006, 10:49 AM

I would be up for UO2 assuming they could make it exactly like UO1 except with a GFX overhaul and lag fixes

Qoz

07-02-2006, 10:51 AM

They should definately make an UO2, but the success of UO is very much tied to the 2D isometric view. No other MMO does this, so if you like that you have only 1 game (or play single player like Titan Quest).

I loved the 2D because it made PvP something special that no other 3D game matched.

Siraris

07-02-2006, 12:00 PM

I played UO from beta til about a year and a half after final. Without a doubt one of the best computer experiences of my life. The problem was, the game went down the drain after Origin started fixing the bugs. The best part of the game was PKing and finding bugs and glitches. I was in a guild that was very powerful on Atlantic, and we'd have these huge guildwars, it was fantastic. Unfortunately, the game loses some luster when you start dying and losing skill points that are almost impossible to get back.

I don't think anyone can replicate that time, and I feel as if UO would just be like a cookie cutter MMO if it tried to come back now.

michaelwhite

07-02-2006, 12:07 PM

Assimilation Complete.

3dge

07-02-2006, 12:21 PM

Isn't the Sims Online dead as well?

Not according to this site (http://www.ea.com/official/thesims/thesimsonline/us/nai/index.jsp).

Heretic Machine

07-02-2006, 12:38 PM

Ultima Online was the best MMO to ever grace this Earth. Unfortunetly, even if you were to take out the years of bad patches and bad decisions, let's say by going back to the T2A era in both content and policies, it would still never be the same again. The whole RP community (which made the game worth playing to begin with) has been chased away, dispersed across the internet.

The sad fact of the matter? EA is only partially responsible.

EDIT: BTW, I bought the bargain bin Ultima Online collection about six months ago (it might of been a year) just to see how things were. Within a day, within a motherfucking day, I had built a nice sized home in Trammel and fully furnished it.

GreenIce

07-02-2006, 12:59 PM

Hello my name is Ego. I am paid to post good opinions about the Electronics Arts game company.

Bullfrog 4 lyfe.

Sazime

07-02-2006, 01:15 PM

Syndicate 4 |iF3. Yeah, boyee.

I don't see anything wrong with EA helping run UO, but they're much like any other publically traded company. If it doesn't make a profit, they'll can it, reputation be damned. They make a shit-ton of money, your opinion does not matter.

Orosco

07-02-2006, 01:25 PM

I used to play UO when it launched, Catskills server. I remember being amazed, me pointing out other players to my brother, saying something like "Look, its another person, a real person!" when I first started. Such good memories, my hangout was the Moonglow bank, dodging wanna-be thieves in their grey death robes.
It was crazy sometimes, you'd be out somewhere in the woods, killing or whatnot, and then someone would come by. Before all the changes, you could basically kill anyone and loot everything on their corpse, including house keys, as long as it was out of guard range. So whenever someone or a group of people would come near, I'd get this " Uh oh, is this guy gonna be cool or we gonna have trouble" mentality. When I moved from UO to DAoC, I still had that attitude, took me awhile to lose it. Even though realmmates in DAoC couldn't attack you, I still got that "here we go..." vibe for a few weeks.

Its amazing how far mmos have come since then, at launch there was no such thing as a group, no /tell command (ICQ was great back then), people could even have the same character names which lead to great confusion sometimes.

Well, I guess what I'm trying to say in this poorly written post was that UO was awesome, and I'm so glad to have played it when it launched.
If they ever make a UO2, I'll be checking it out for sure.

Heretic Machine

07-02-2006, 01:28 PM

I used to play UO when it launched, Catskills server.

That was the server I played on! Were you affiliated with any particular guild?

Orosco

07-02-2006, 01:40 PM

None too large, was in one called STW, Stone Temple Warriors, my toon was Brak, hung out all the time with a great guy called Kryptkeepa. I used to hang in a player town called Paxlair off and on too, was a cool place. But our guild was pretty small, maybe only like 8-10 close ingame friends. Woot, another Catskills veteran :)

kickmybum

07-02-2006, 01:53 PM

Yes. And EA is responsible for killing the majority of the ones that have died. :(

-H

yeah, EA or Sony.

Siraris

07-02-2006, 02:00 PM

Was anyone here on Atlantic? What guild too? I was in The Mercs.

destoo

07-02-2006, 02:25 PM

I was on Atlantic a lot.
Serpent Cross Tavern was my hanging spot.

So many good stories and adventures there. I really miss it.

BlackPete

07-02-2006, 02:39 PM

I don't know if it's just me, but I actually found this to be good news -- EA basically has unlimited cash, and now UO is getting help from a professional team along with basically unlimited funding -- I don't see how this can not help UO in the long run?

I do hope that they'll do an overhaul of UO (kinda like what they were trying with UXO...) instead of just shipping another expansion pack, though...

thecrazyd

07-02-2006, 02:48 PM

yeah, EA or Sony.
Really? Can you name me a Sony MMO that died?

DigiWiz

07-02-2006, 03:17 PM

Really? Can you name me a Sony MMO that died?

SWG is dead. Or Undead, but it didn't just die, it was killed by Sony and their hugely competent management team.

thecrazyd

07-02-2006, 03:27 PM

SWG is dead. Or Undead, but it didn't just die, it was killed by Sony and their hugely competent management team.
Cry about it. It is still live.

LogainAblar

07-02-2006, 03:47 PM

Cry about it. It is still live.

In much the same way that an irreversibly comatose patient is alive; Sony should've pulled the plug a long time ago.

flinxz

07-02-2006, 04:13 PM

Ultima Online’s glory could come from many features. The fact that I have heard the game simply referred to as a “Life Simulator” or that it truly was/is a “MMORPG” and not an ‘MMOG” is fairly impressive. You can make your character look unique from others or as a guild you could all dress the same. You can make just about any item in the game from weapons to silverware. You can lay down a plot of land anywhere it fits and design your own house using heaps of different tiles. There are no levels in UO (selling point to me but not everyone), you simply gain by doing whatever you want to do. Countless etc… etc…

The real glory of UO is that damn near everyone who played it (“back in the day” or not) typically has a really fun/cool/unique story to tell. It seems with WoW or any other MMOG you get something like this: “Remember when that guy messed up the raid?” “Yeah that was funny”. Those of you who played can fill in the blanks for a UO story.

Not trying to do a sales pitch or anything, but there really is no other that even does 10% of what you can do in UO.

So… good for UO getting yet another expansion and a new ideas to the crew again.

** Edit I have played it for almost 9 years with beta. I do the leave for a few months come back and play for a few months thing.

Demize99

07-02-2006, 04:17 PM

Sazime

07-02-2006, 04:28 PM

Cry about it. It is still live.
As my guitar gently weeps.

What's sounds so frustrating about SWG (as I've never played) is the constant futzing with the way the game plays and the horrible holocron give away they implemented. I dunno, the more I talk to people, the more I hear that the changes made only made the game worse. They just need to get on with SWG II.

Does EA run any MMOs right now other than Sims 2?

flinxz

07-02-2006, 04:43 PM

My impression of UO was that it was so open ended, only a select few very dedicated and strong characters could truely enjoy the game. Somehow getting ganked and having all my items taken isn't something I wish to experience in a game, since that is one of those things I specifically avoid in real life. Thieving is best left performed on NPCs.

You would have had to been there Demize99. The thing with losing all your gear in UO during the early days is that it was 99% easily replaceable. There was no super rare weapon of destruction. Most people just made a weapon or armor piece or got them as loot. The magic items that were in the game did not make as big a difference as ones today do. I think the best in release that was not “pre-patched” was a 25% or 35% damage/armor increase.

Now that there are rare weapons of destruction and whatnot you can "insure" them and not lose them.

dotbomb

07-02-2006, 04:47 PM

Was anyone here on Atlantic? What guild too? I was in The Mercs.

Yeah. One of three PoC founders here on atl. I remember the Mercs. Hung with PoDW too on that server. Had good fun beating down LLTS back then.

Siraris

07-02-2006, 05:45 PM

Yeah. One of three PoC founders here on atl. I remember the Mercs. Hung with PoDW too on that server. Had good fun beating down LLTS back then.

haha awesome. Remember The Pluggers? Man LLTS brings back MEMORIES. Raiding their island and taking over all their buildings. Good times.

Lekon

07-02-2006, 09:09 PM

Well, a couple of people wished for UO2.

EA killed UO2. Twice. They started UO2, then mid development, killed it, and "absorbed" the art/graphics/stuff into UO as a few expansions done in horrid style.
Fast foward a few years: another Ulitma Online, I think it was UX, Ultima Ten of a sort that worked on a virtue system. People were hopeful but several said "THey're gonna kill it and scavenge the coprse for loot!" Four or so months later (Maybe a lil more) Project is canceled and a virtue system is added into UO.

Thaaaats one of the reasons I hate EA.

Anyway: Happier story from UO.
Test server: Bug hunting for a really nasty bug that would make stats reverse if they were put above 150 or so. This was bad because we would try to make someone a 250 str orc, and there was a chance (An often one) That the strength would go -1, which the game read as 65,535, basicly: One hit kills, which we dodn't want.

I go to the britan graveyard, as "A bunny wabbit" a little brown rabbit. With a crossbow. Wabbit heads to one one the crypts in back, and I talk to a few people. People find a talking rabbit, they of course go "Neat!" andsome talk.. then one attacks, and the bug hits, The rabbit now has a -1 dex, so can't move a step, but does have a crossbow that one hits. I impore people not to Attack the rabbit, as my sharp pointy teeth are a ranged attack.

Several hundred corpses later... I found a way to make the rabbit move, so I asked for a carving knife, and well, there were carved corpses/entrails all over the place with this lil brown rabbit sitting there. Very Monty python.

Sazime

07-02-2006, 10:44 PM

Several hundred corpses later... I found a way to make the rabbit move, so I asked for a carving knife, and well, there were carved corpses/entrails all over the place with this lil brown rabbit sitting there. Very Monty python.
Was that on a test server? Because that just sounds like a dev having fun.

EDIT: And yes, great story. Sorry, didn't mean to sound dismissive. :)

Savok

07-02-2006, 11:03 PM

Best story ever

ToeBot

07-02-2006, 11:39 PM

Didn't 'Lum the Mad' take a job at Mythic? That must be some sort of bitter irony.

Ravenlock

07-03-2006, 02:28 AM

Meridian 59 by 3DO stuidos officially died. Same with NWN back when it was featured via AOL. The Realm is on the brink but still there by some amazing miracle.Wait, good God, The Realm is still around? :eek: It can't possibly be making money, can it?

I played The Realm when it was first released ('95? '96? Honestly I can't recall)... I was in the beta, and then subscribed to it for at least 2 years. $50 for a year of unlimited access was a great deal even then, and honestly, at the time it was a really good game.

There were shockingly few idiots on that game, especially in its first year, as there weren't that many 10 year olds who had figured out the internet yet back then. It was a very roleplay-heavy game, even though the engine wasn't really built around roleplaying - the players just wanted to. One of my favorite memories from it was creating a monk character as an alt and sitting in town square accepting donations for the poor, then going out and distributing them to players having trouble "in the wild."

Ahh, the memories. I'm sure it wouldn't be able to live up to my nostalgia now, but it's nice to know it's still around for the (I assume) few who choose to play it.

EDIT: Reading over this thread and seeing all the love for UO, it would be unfair not to state outright that it was UO that made me stop playing The Realm. Every single person I enjoyed roleplaying with on The Realm (and there were a lot of them) jumped ship for UO and had a fantastic time over there. I couldn't afford UO at the time, and so I just didn't play anything. :(

Lekon

07-03-2006, 08:52 AM

Was that on a test server? Because that just sounds like a dev having fun.

EDIT: And yes, great story. Sorry, didn't mean to sound dismissive. :)

At the time Seer Tools hadn't been put in, so for quests and what not we had to have GM's put us in the bodies/stats/etc. The problem with the bug o' doom was it could fubar a quests epic fight into a bloodfest. We did eventually track down the bug by a few other tests, and once we received seer tools (Limited powers to change stuff on our assigned UO servers) The bug was quashed. (Almost at the same time actually.

Another Seer Story: First big event for me, and at the time, I was a fairly big PVPer on the side. So was another seer. The event is that some orcs have stolen a widgit (Can't remember the widigt in question) And the players have to come stop us. Flip of a coin later, I'm Moegub the Orc (Leader of the orcs, black hued) And Seer #2 is my hellhound pet. We place bets.

Much carnage ensues, Seers 3-8 go down in the melee. Me and Hellhound get seperated (The players started using tactics!) And he goes down, then I am swarmed so hard that my 56k modem cries in agony, and I see Moe go down in a slideshow. All our ghosts get teleported back, and the GM in Charge lets us know how we did by "reported murder counts" Me: 56. Him: 44. :D

That was in the eaaarly days of seerdom, when we were still learning how to do everything so that we "Almost" killed players instead of outright slaying. We weren't even set to massive stats then, just given a lot of potions and such.

Edit: Its a bit early so I have to cut the writing short, but later on, Ill tell the story of how I used a bug to get Raph Koster (Then known as Designer Dragon) In UO.

Qoz

07-03-2006, 09:05 AM

Please tell more!
I too played UO from the beginning and I cannot find another MMORPG that awakes the same emotions. Partly due to the design, but mostly because of the timeperiod I think (everyone was a noob at online gaming).

I would loooove if they redid UO with modern graphics, and made some hardcore PvP servers (like UO just when the first expansion came). Wow that would rock.

EGO

07-03-2006, 11:13 AM

Hello my name is Ego. I am paid to post good opinions about the Electronics Arts game company. Bullfrog 4 lyfe.

Umm no assklown, EA doesn't pay my salary, I'm just tired of reading know-nothing fanboys bitch about things they know ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ABOUT!

Bullfrog!?!? Whatever... when was the last time they actually made something that recouped? Hmm? Exactly! Bullfrog killed itself, just like any company that burns more dollars than they take in.

It's business, like Darwinism.

Oh and for the Sony fanboy that said, "Sony expanded the market", funny... there was this little game that sucked in a TON of non "gamers" called John Madden Football, LONG BEFORE Sony was doing little more than shitting crap like Dracula CD on the public.

Also, what about "The Sims"? Funny that game has expanded the market too and had nothing to do with Sony, Microsoft or (gasp) Nintendo.

You kids crack me up with your bitchin... remember "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing" and you trolls only know a little, which makes you quite dangerous, I suppose... :rolleyes:

balamoor

07-03-2006, 11:25 AM

Didn't 'Lum the Mad' take a job at Mythic? That must be some sort of bitter irony.

Actually yes he did, and yes your right it is, if however you point it out to him he will throw Plastic D&D mini's at you. :D

jBusy

07-03-2006, 12:15 PM

Umm no assklown, EA doesn't pay my salary, I'm just tired of reading know-nothing fanboys bitch about things they know ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ABOUT!

For being so knowledgeable, I think you surely must have read The conquest of Origin (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/issue/14/4). According to the article, the reasons why Origin was bought are not the same as the ones you listed.

Serapth

07-03-2006, 12:50 PM

Ok... I never played UO (EQ was my first MMO game), but Lum the Mad? Thats a character in Baldurs Gate2:Throne of Baal, and relation?

Crabby

07-03-2006, 01:52 PM

Heretic Machine

07-03-2006, 03:45 PM

Ok... I never played UO (EQ was my first MMO game), but Lum the Mad? Thats a character in Baldurs Gate2:Throne of Baal, and relation?

He also ran the MMO blog back in the day. It was a whole lot like EvAv, and when it went down a little part of me died.

EDIT: BTW, this was before the word "blog" existed.

EDIT 2: A piece of history (http://web.archive.org/web/20001109105500/http://www.lumthemad.net/).

EDIT 3: A little tid bit (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lum_the_Mad): "Lum left Mythic Entertainment's employ on February 17, 2006 on good terms, seeking to move back southwest. His new job is with NCsoft in Austin, TX."

Savok

07-03-2006, 05:57 PM

Umm no assklown, EA doesn't pay my salary, I'm just tired of reading know-nothing fanboys bitch about things they know ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ABOUT!

Bullfrog!?!? Whatever... when was the last time they actually made something that recouped? Hmm? Exactly! Bullfrog killed itself, just like any company that burns more dollars than they take in.

It's business, like Darwinism.

Oh and for the Sony fanboy that said, "Sony expanded the market", funny... there was this little game that sucked in a TON of non "gamers" called John Madden Football, LONG BEFORE Sony was doing little more than shitting crap like Dracula CD on the public.

Also, what about "The Sims"? Funny that game has expanded the market too and had nothing to do with Sony, Microsoft or (gasp) Nintendo.

You kids crack me up with your bitchin... remember "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing" and you trolls only know a little, which makes you quite dangerous, I suppose... :rolleyes:
Yes, we know nothing about the lawsuit over the slave driving assholes that run the place, we don't know how they tried to monopilize sports or how they tried to fuck with Ubi.

Where is Dungeon Keeper 3 you fucking shill? Nowhere because Bullfrog was marked for death the moment it was bought, this is what they do, they buy talented dev houses then dilute them into the main company until nothing is left.

And yeah, EA was doing such a bang up job back in the 16-bit days we were only conisdered nerds and geeks screwing around in our little niche. Those assholes from MS that talk about the "inhale", that seed was planted by Sony.

Lekon

07-03-2006, 09:11 PM

Oooh, lots of fighting over EA. Neat. But, back on Track: Another happy UO story.

In UO, I was a fairly good finder of things, as for awhile, I refused to use runestones, I'd just walk places to see what weirdness I could find. On one of those I met a nice person who later took me on a sea cruise (THe boats in that game were just so cool dangit) And showed me the oddest bug in UO. The Water Tiles. There was a place in the ocean where a little pillar was, and around it, the water was not nailed down. Namely: YOu could go there after every server reset, and pickup "tiles" of water, big square sections of water.

The fun: You could walk on these tiles (Put on a brown robe, yell "Jesus lives again!" Then run across water to mess with folk, picking it up on the way by so they can't do the same) You could fish from it. Even in your backpack. Let me say this again. You could fish from your backpack. This was at the time when you could pull up bottles, or even seaserpents. Imagine if you will, a fully armored warrior tossing his line in the middle of the britan bank, and up comes a sea serpent. Warrior runs, 10,000 macroers die.
Other things we did: Tried selling these tiles on vendors. But we'd sell them in a strange way. We'd try selling one for 60,000 and one for 20,000. No one eeeever bought the 20,000 one.

Anyway: The two big things that came of this. One involved two very, VERY confused GM's. In UO beta, there was code to add Z to the level of any boat, making it a flying one. We wondered if you could just sail a boat off a roof... so we went first let the Seer GM know we were doing this, then went to the top of the Yew Crypt, Dropped a ton of tiles, and dropped a ship on. APpparntly some people in thier houses called GM's. Two GM's showed up, and said "What in the...." When we said for them to call the seer gm who explained quick.
We took back the tiles and just left the ship up there, it wouldn't sail off the edge. Quite funny though.

Lekon

07-03-2006, 09:17 PM

Post was running long, so I split it.

Other story. I'd been having fun with the Water tiles for awhile, doing various things with it, and even reported the bug so the GM's didn't think I was a "l3t HaxXor). So anyways, friend of mine mentions that they know Raph Koster personally, I ask him to ask him to come in game. I meet him at Oasis on Sonoma (My haunt at the time.) And tell him to follow me into a Gate for the surprise. Said Surprise: I used a courtyard my guild had walled off to write out "Thnks DD" in water tiles. (Only so much room, to write). So, we get out of the gate, and theres nothing being said. He just walks around the tiles a few times, walking over them. Then finally his lil avatar faces me, and says "How the hell did we miss THAT one?"

We had a nice chat too, even showed him the joy of fishing off a tower roof in the middle of the forest.

Savok

07-03-2006, 09:28 PM

There's something completely lacking in modern MMOGs isn't there.

fiercey

07-03-2006, 11:15 PM

There's something completely lacking in modern MMOGs isn't there.

Hehe, that's about the funniest (and most accurate) response to this thread that I can imagine.

My buddy at work is an "old-school" EQer. He started playing that game during its first month of release and remembers all the bugs and open-ended stuff you could do. I come from the "old-school" of single player games, all the old Ultima stuff, etc., and I remember a lot you could do with items in those games that wasn't meant to be either.

Anyway, both of us truly feel that modern MMOGs are far too *sterile*. You can't affect the environment or other players in any way. It's like living in a rubber room where all the inhabitants are indestructable figments of one's imagination, and the truly insane part is even being there (willingly) at all.

-f

Qoz

07-04-2006, 04:04 AM

(double post.. sorry)

Qoz

07-04-2006, 04:05 AM

It's like living in a rubber room where all the inhabitants are indestructable figments of one's imagination, and the truly insane part is even being there (willingly) at all.
I feel the same way. I just loved how Britain graveyard became the number 1 place to fool around - wannabe thieves og newbies. The environment should be harsh and the players should have options. The problem right now, is the fact that there are actually too few MMORPGS due to the amount of people willing to play. And right now all we see is the McDonalds of MMORPGS (WoW) trying to cash in on standard crap that the casual gamer wants. I hope more people get into online gaming and therefore create a market to support more niche gaming. UO was indeed hard to play, but it was the only thing to play so people did. If introduced now most people would play WOW instead. If the market increases we will see MMORPGS that cater to the niche crowds (both the extreme carebears and the hardcore PvP).

Savok

07-04-2006, 04:24 AM

fiercey

07-04-2006, 05:57 AM

A lot of this reminds me of EVE really. The atmosphere of the place doesn't lend to stuff bard's would sing about (which UO appears to have been crafted by god for), but I've heard some pretty amazing stories.

EVE was insanely boring to me. I was hoping for maybe a 3-D version of the old game Starflight, but alas to no avail. In EVE, travel is about as boring as it gets-- it takes thirty minutes or more real time to get from point A to point B, with nothing happening in between except this monotone ship's computer droning on about "Initiating warp drive", "Approaching stargate". At least in Starflight, your ship would get stopped by various alien encounters along the way, some of which were very interesting and most of which were pretty scary. Also, EVE suffers from the fact that you can't actually land on any of these planets or moons and explore... it had soooo much potential.

-f