The Forgotten PC Games 07.10.08: A Shadow of Its Former Self

Posted by Chris Vicari on 07.10.2008

When risk and consequence was actually common in online games, Ultima Online stood above the rest for delivering an engrossing and open-ended online experience rife with danger. These days UO caters to a namby pamby group of individuals who want everything handed to them on a silver platter. Witness the demise of one of the greatest few.



Before there was World of Warcraft, Age of Conan, Everquest or one of the many variations of the same coma-inducing formula, there was Ultima Online, a game that stood on its own before it was subsequently taken behind a dumpster and shot multiple times in the spinal column. UO was the game that practically kick-started the MMO scene back in 97, coming out a couple years after the first MMORPG, Meridian 59. Developed by Origin Systems and Richard Garriot, UO introduced many things MMOs these days take for granted while other aspects have otherwise been ignored to cater to a more expansive and instant gratification crowd. Eventually it turned into one of these games itself, but more on that later. Having played UO for nearly eight years, it saddens me to think about what happened to this gem of a game.

A Sandbox – The Rare Breed

UO was one of the rare breeds of MMOs that are considered to be sandboxes. In sandbox MMOs, unlike their more linear brethren, players can do whatever they want to whenever and wherever. You can place houses, run a tavern or other place of business, hunt, mine, fish, treasure hunt, kill other players or steal from them. Grind is minimal as there are no levels to achieve only skills to gain. The skill system was also open ended and a player could be whatever they wanted. A lockpicking thief, a jack-of-all-trades craftsman, a bard tamer or a tank mage, all options were available and hybridization was encouraged. Before it fell from grace, UO was an open world with very little restrictions.

Consequences

UO was and still is a game that offers true consequences for your actions although these days those consequences have nearly been abolished. If you were killed, your belongings could be taken by other players and you had the choice of either fighting back or heading to town to restock. Thieves skulked around peaking into people's backpacks to steal their hard-earned goods. Murderers roamed the countryside looking for players to kill and loot. Nothing was safe and because of this bustling communities developed to help protect the innocents or just kill them more efficiently. The only other commercial MMO to offer similar gameplay is EVE: Online.

The Golden Age

At its peak, UO boasted around 100K subscribers. Even though this number pales in comparison to WoW and Lineage 2 numbers, where WoW has more than nine million and Lineage 2 over 14 million, it was an accomplishment in those days. While arguments still rage about what caused UO's descent into oblivion, I can honestly say it was a combination of things ranging from extremely poor decision making, loud-mouthed whiners demanding more items over bugfixes and just simple excuses. Sadly UO's golden age was extremely brief as game developers began to cater to players who, to put it bluntly, were a bunch of pussies. These players no longer wanted to risk anything and the community degenerated into a gimmie-gimme mob with an insatiable appetite for items. Ring any bells?

Let the good times roll. Oh wait, they don't exist anymore.

The Descent

After years of flooded complaints about being incessantly killed, stolen from or griefed, developers finally gave in and released the poorly-implemented Renaissance expansion in 2000. Instead of making a new land mass for players looking to escape from player killers and thieves, the developers in all their wisdom duplicated the entire game and inevitably split the entire playerbase in half. Now split into two lands called Trammel and Felucca, one side offered complete sanctuary from ruffians while the other was old UO with all the trimmings. There was no longer the need for players to protect each other and no longer a purpose for Guilds to form to combat PKs. Since Trammel had the safety, it allowed griefers and scammers to flourish. This particular expansion wasn't completely terrible since UO saw its highest subscription numbers during this particular time period, but it helped pave the way for future whiners looking to abolish even more risk in the game.

The Age of Shit

The actual name for this "expansion" was Age of Shadows, but Age of Shit is far more appropriate and it's the name it was given by the majority of the playerbase. AOS was the final nail in the coffin for UO as all risk was completely and utterly removed. With this expansion came new and overpowering skills and weapons, on top of that the item system received a complete revamp. The transformation from a skill-based MMO into an item-based and item-whoring game was achieved. There were no longer set item properties and everything turned into numbers, percentages and resistances. Instead of having an Accurate Broadsword of Power (a somewhat powerful item) you had this garbage:

I didn't know I needed a math degree to loadout my character.

With every item being practically unique in its own way, the system of looting other people's stuff would obviously no longer have a place in the game. The answer came in the form of a wonderful system (please note the sarcasm) called Insurance. For a small sum of gold, you could insure your items so they could never be looted or stolen ever again! A wonderful addition! Considering that it went against the grain of everything Ultima and most importantly challenge, it was the dumbest addition in history. The entire thieving profession was abolished and risk was a thing of the past. Coupled with overpowered skills and items, players could easily solo most of the game with no trouble at all. With insurance there was no longer a need to purchase weapons and armor from crafters since there was zero chance of losing anything ever. Due to these reasons, UO's community has all but shattered because players no longer have to help each other to get by.

The funny thing is lead developers at the time came out and admitted they were heavily influenced by Diablo 2 and WoW when it was in development. So instead of coming up with something original, the developers decided to copy off existing games. Oh ya, they also boosted the subscription rate as well. Very smart. Subscription numbers plummeted after this and UO has never been able to fully recover since.

Two failed sequels and they still couldn't get it right

In 1999, Origin/EA unveiled Ultima Online 2 later renamed to Ultima Worlds Online: Origin. Boasting fantastic graphics for its time and potentially some of the greatest combat mechanics ever seen, UO2 was a game with a huge amount of hype and anticipation. Years into development though, EA decided that it isn't in their best interest to compete with themselves so they decided to cancel the project claiming they wanted to shift more of their attention to UO instead, which never happened. UO received small bits of content that was going to be available in the sequel like new monsters and such nothing great. Five years later, EA decided to axe their own advice and started developing yet another sequel for UO called Ultima X: Odyssey. In doing so, EA eventually canceled the game because the dev team dissolved.

Inaction

Currently UO is plagued with cheaters and scripters who are crippling the ingame economy while forcing many players to quit the game, but developers have done next to nothing to solve the issue other than a few showboat maneuvers. Suggestions to help fix the myriad of other problems have otherwise been ignored and most players believe they are just being milked for all their worth while EA shifts its attention to Warhammer Online, yet another WoW clone.

The great game that could have been

Ultima Online could have stayed as one of the most unique MMOs on the market if a vocal minority and an incompetent dev team hadn't fucked it all up. UO once offered a truly unique experience, but tried too hard to please the masses and be like all the rest. What we're left with is a hollow husk of a game that is best left ignored to die. It really pains me to say it as UO was a big part of my life for a long time, but it's just not the same anymore. Any remnants of Old UO have all been lost to the sands of time. What a shame.