Ultima Online, PvP, and MMORPG's

[TechRookie16]

I loved Ultima Online. When I first started playing (around 98-99) I was in 7th grade. I didn't quit for good until my senior college year. I wasn't good at the beginning but I kept practicing dueling, and practicing, and practicing. I slowly became an incredible PvPer and I loved rolling into Buc's Den and later Yew moongate by myself or maybe one or two other guildmates and taking on like 15 people. Running around, picking off weaklings, and just cycling them with well timed explosions, lightnings, harms, and weakens until collapsed. I rode with UO even during all the ridiculous expansions that followed because even when items were required of you, it still came back to an impressive level of skill and timing. I loved Felluca based because it forced hunters and merchants to adjust to the war outside city walls and added a level of fear that I never felt in any other game. (Who doesn't remember seeing those red names appearing as they quickly approached to the mine and the panic of dropping the ore and having one attempt to time a perfect execution of recall scroll to rune, and if somebody was blocking that location...)

I'm giving this background because after about 2 years of playing games like Skyrim, Witcher 2, Total War series, NBA 2k12 etc. I've realized I miss the excitement of old UO but even of more recent UO. I could try to buy a used blank account as skill gain isn't exactly difficult (it would need to be used so I could have the appropriate months to have the ever important 720 skill points) but something in me tells me I should never return to UO. It's partly my way of protesting EA and letting them know I'm not satisfied with their current product. I could join a free shard but there is a reluctance to join something supported by, simply put, "gaming enthusiasts". My main reason for avoiding a free shard lies mostly in the fact that instead of having a world brought to life by workers, traders, and pvpers for good and evil; it's more a world built just by PvPers. I could create my own shard and try to create a shard rewarding activities inside and outside city gates but that would be more of a job and I already have one of those.

I appreciate you reading if you've made the journey this far. I hope you read this and if you do read this, regardless of your interest, I would be pleased if you gave me some sort of response because I enjoy your opinions. Or maybe if you want to respond with some more nostalgia, how enjoyable is it to remember such an enjoyable, erred game.

But now that you know my passions in gaming, what would you suggest? I haven't researched MMORPG's in a while, so I'm clueless on all of the new ones and most of the old.

In advance, thank you

 

[Geosurface]

I absolutely loved Ultima Online. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4m0Yd-LY-M

I started on like, Halloween 1997. I actually knew ahead of time how unhealthy my addiction could become to something like that (oh I was sooo right, and not just about UO but WoW etc) and I said, much as I wanted to, I wasn't going to play.

But my evil friends showed up at my front door with a copy of it they'd bought for me. Mother fuckers...

So, we played an absurd amount over the next couple of years. First on Lake Superior, later on Great Lakes. We were all 17 when we started in 1997.

We were real d-bags in that game, probably because we were teens.

• I'd ride around the city of Britain on a horse yelling "HORSE FOR SALE 500 GOLD!" then when someone gave me the gold I'd just ride off at breakneck pace. This was before they allowed pets to go into the trade window so it was just a trust thing. Eventually I had dedicated people who would look out for me and try to warn others. My name at that time was Street Justice. I had a house in a cool meadow in the woods south of town and I'd have to be very careful riding down to it since I was so hated, I couldn't ride on the road I had to ride through the woods, fast as I could, and always super paranoid of being caught.
• We would block off the bridge near Minoc with sacks of flour and use newbie archer characters equipped with bows, arrows, and bone armor we had left behind a tree or something for them on our main characters. We'd click "hide" until they went invisible and then ambush people with arrows once they lifted up the first flour sacks but weren't yet past the later ones. Even newbie archers when there are 4 of them can do some nice damage. People would panick too which helped us.
• We'd go to the Wind Zoo (the only place with respawning wild animals AND guard coverage) and we'd tame a rabbit and a bear, then put the bear on follow to the rabbit and untame the rabbit. Now you'd have a tame bear moving like it was wild, and most wouldn't notice it was following the wild rabbit. They'd attack and we'd call guards, they'd die instantly for harming our pet and then we'd loot them clean. A variant on this was that if you tamed a panther that was attacking someone it would still stay hostile to that person. So friend 1 would tame panther attacking friend 2 and then friend 2 would run past random person screaming "HELP!" then random person attacks panther trying to be nice, we call guards, loot him clean. I think we were responsible for [tame] being added later.
• We got a nice little house placed where you weren't really supposed to, behind the alchemist shop in Vesper near the bank. We'd say whatever we had to to get people to come back there and click our guild stone. Little did they know, we'd already done half the process of putting them in our guild and all that remained was for them to touch it. We'd tell them they were just reading our charter, we'd offer them gold, a ship, a house, whatever to get them to click it and then we'd slaughter them in town. You could attack guild members with no consequence. But if anyone hastily tried to help us loot our victim, we could then call guards on them and they would die. Sometimes there'd be a big pile of bodies from this. We would laugh so hard.
• Like you mentioned, no other game caused me as much fear and excitement. For some reason, my heart would just POUND when I was chasing someone through the streets, or if I was chased. Usually I was the chaser though.

Suffice to say, UO was the pinnacle of gaming, and every MMO since has failed to recreate the awesome PVP feeling. Part of that is because UO benefited from being the only game in town for a while.

Oh another thing I did that I laughed so hard about was that I made a fake tanner character and I got the movements of how an NPC would wander around it's shop just right... I'd walk around in a special orange shirt I obtained from killing a real tanner NPC, and once people put down a big stack of leather hides on the ground in the tanner shop I'd come over slowly and steal them. They never figured it out, because they never suspected it was another player. It was so great.

 

[AlexAL]

Dude you were brilliant. And I would have hated you to no end.

 

[Appledrop]

damn im a bad boy UOer too
remember selling renamed runebooks to sound like they were something rare... sold a lot of them

 

[TechRookie16]

From gating people to fel with a dispel field on the other side to killing afk people at the gate (explosion, run.. explosion, run.... explosion/flamestrike) I did it all as well but probably the one of my more unique schemes was when doom was released:

I would set up two packhorses with exact names on top of each other. If somebody in Luna or Brit was selling an artifact I would tell them I could dupe it for them. I would explain that I couldn't actually dupe the item but I could dupe packhorses and anything inside would be duped as well. I would take them to the packhorse and as long as they didn't look at their journal it was a done deal. You would say watch.. throw a lot of fancy schmancy jargon and take a little time then call the horses, WHOA- 2 HORSES WALK FROM ONE! Then you would say I don't have to own the horse and you would friend the packhorse to the unfortunate individual (which at the time appeared exactly like transfering it unless you put your cursor over the horse) The would except and call it to them. Once they dropped the artifact in the packhorse, BOOM- grab, recall.

 

[nsafreak]

Sounds like you're looking for a game with actual consequences when PvPing which there doesn't seem to be an abundance of when it comes to MMOs nowadays. Seems like most of them, at least the ones with large publishers behind them, don't have much in the way of consequences if you get killed in the world while PvPing. The only one that comes to mind for me is EVE Online. I've enjoyed it the 7 years I've played so far but it is most definitely not everybody's cup of tea. You might want to read through the EVE Online thread and see if it's something you're interested in.

 

[TechRookie16]

Not sure how I feel about sci-fi but if you're good enough at PvP, can you solo and take on numerous opponents etc. I like games that reward players for actually being skilled

 

[Chiropteran]

But now that you know my passions in gaming, what would you suggest? I haven't researched MMORPG's in a while, so I'm clueless on all of the new ones and most of the old.

In advance, thank you

I've been searching for the same. Apparently those style games don't exist any more, despite a real cult following.

Either you have WoW style no-consequence pvp, or you have the mortal online/darkfall/eve online games which supposedly have pvp with consequences, but pve is also a freaking huge grind and pain in the neck which you need to jump through before you can even try to play the pvp game.

No game seems to get it right anymore.

 

[Geosurface]

Another story:

One time my friend's little brother logged in after months away, when he'd logged out he was just in an open area out in the woods. But now, there was a very large house placed on top of him. He was walking around in the house and told his brother, we told him "DO NOT LEAVE THAT HOUSE NO MATTER WHAT" we had him hide in a closet or something, and since there was no world map at that time all we had to go on was the shape of the coastline he was near, on his local radar, and the type of trees. We had him take a screenshot and upload it to me and another friend.

We examined this screenshot in detail and tried to compare the coastal shape to a world map assembled on a website or may be even our cloth map, can't remember exactly.

It took us hours but we finally figured out where this house was.

We then looted it ABSOLUTELY dry, we even insisted on hauling all the ore and heavy stacks of stuff that wasn't all that valuable out into the woods, far enough away we didn't think they'd find it. All we left was a book on the floor in the living room with some rude thing written in it by us, can't remember what.

Another similar time was when we got ahold of this guy's recall rune, house key, and boat key. This guy had a nice place. We recalled there, looted all his stuff, loaded it all up on HIS boat which was parked out front, and we were getting ready to cast off and set sail with all his worldly belongings when he recalled home himself.

He had just enough time to see us sailing off with all his furniture on the deck of his boat, and treasure chests full of all his valuables. He managed to cast one "corp por" at us as we sailed away and I think we were probably all laughing as hard as we ever did in our lives.

Or when we had a vendor scam where we'd say an empty spellbook was full, or put two black pearl next to eachother to look like a stack and name it 500 black pearl or something and someone would pay a shit ton for one pearl.

We were evil, but it was so fun.

Oh and remember the guild stone killable scam I detailed in my previous post?

One time we found a guy in Occlo who was still flagged green (in our guild) and thus killable. He was with some friends outside the reagent shop in Occlo.

We walked up to him and he was like "these are the assholes who killed me in Vesper!" to his friends.

We said "the guards won't mess with us because we're too powerful, and we're going to kill you again, and there is nothing you or your friends can do about it"

he was like "yea right lol" (did people say "lol" back then? not sure, this was like 1999)

we struck him down and his friends stood in shocked silence for a minute and then ran like hell screaming "guards!!!" ineffectually.

 

[nsafreak]

Not sure how I feel about sci-fi but if you're good enough at PvP, can you solo and take on numerous opponents etc. I like games that reward players for actually being skilled

Well the game partially relies on skill and partially upon the ship you're flying. You can't for example use a tech 1 cruiser to take down a pair of battlecruisers unless the pilots are extremely bad. And while maneuvering does take some degree of skill in single ship combat the firing of your weapons does not. If you're looking for a game where you can go in on day one and start killing folks based on pure skill then no EVE online will not have a high likelihood of that happening. You can play the game without doing any PVE (I started off as a pure pirate and did nothing but pvp) but when you start off you're going to need friends to help you out for the simple reason that you won't be able to solo the vast majority of targets you may choose to engage. After enough time in game you'll have the skills & funds necessary (provided you pirate well enough) to buy the ships you need but it's definitely one of the rougher ways to play.

 

[power_hour]

I loved Ultima Online. When I first started playing (around 98-99) I was in 7th grade. I didn't quit for good until my senior college year. I wasn't good at the beginning but I kept practicing dueling, and practicing, and practicing. I slowly became an incredible PvPer and I loved rolling into Buc's Den and later Yew moongate by myself or maybe one or two other guildmates and taking on like 15 people. Running around, picking off weaklings, and just cycling them with well timed explosions, lightnings, harms, and weakens until collapsed. I rode with UO even during all the ridiculous expansions that followed because even when items were required of you, it still came back to an impressive level of skill and timing. I loved Felluca based because it forced hunters and merchants to adjust to the war outside city walls and added a level of fear that I never felt in any other game. (Who doesn't remember seeing those red names appearing as they quickly approached to the mine and the panic of dropping the ore and having one attempt to time a perfect execution of recall scroll to rune, and if somebody was blocking that location...)

I'm giving this background because after about 2 years of playing games like Skyrim, Witcher 2, Total War series, NBA 2k12 etc. I've realized I miss the excitement of old UO but even of more recent UO. I could try to buy a used blank account as skill gain isn't exactly difficult (it would need to be used so I could have the appropriate months to have the ever important 720 skill points) but something in me tells me I should never return to UO. It's partly my way of protesting EA and letting them know I'm not satisfied with their current product. I could join a free shard but there is a reluctance to join something supported by, simply put, "gaming enthusiasts". My main reason for avoiding a free shard lies mostly in the fact that instead of having a world brought to life by workers, traders, and pvpers for good and evil; it's more a world built just by PvPers. I could create my own shard and try to create a shard rewarding activities inside and outside city gates but that would be more of a job and I already have one of those.

I appreciate you reading if you've made the journey this far. I hope you read this and if you do read this, regardless of your interest, I would be pleased if you gave me some sort of response because I enjoy your opinions. Or maybe if you want to respond with some more nostalgia, how enjoyable is it to remember such an enjoyable, erred game.

But now that you know my passions in gaming, what would you suggest? I haven't researched MMORPG's in a while, so I'm clueless on all of the new ones and most of the old.

In advance, thank you

That was an awesome tale that made me regret never even trying UO. Now the question is there anything like that? I haven't found it. EVE is close but not sure you will get that same feeling. Its more of an alliance type game that requires a serious investment of time and effort. UO sounded a bit more adventuresome and daring. I would love to play something like that.

 

[Blueoak]

UO was awesome. It's in my top 3 games of all-time. Unfortunately, there's probably going to be nothing like it again.

 

[TechRookie16]

That was an awesome tale that made me regret never even trying UO. Now the question is there anything like that? I haven't found it. EVE is close but not sure you will get that same feeling. Its more of an alliance type game that requires a serious investment of time and effort. UO sounded a bit more adventuresome and daring. I would love to play something like that.

It was a great game and to a certain degree still is. Mages were slightly overpowered but also much more difficult to operate. Mage dueling was more of a dance, and the spells consisted of mostly level 1 - level 4 spells (small dmg spells that cast extremely quick, even though it wasn't uncommon to mix a well timed level 6 or even 7 spell in a duel) But field battles with a mage consisted mostly of high level spells (there is 8 levels total) and precasting or consisting of a large dump of spells at once. The reason it was so valuable to be able to duel too (and a lot couldn't do both) is in a battle amongst 15-25 people you could be trying to do a massive dump on a selected target with your guildmates and the next moment you could get seperated from the pack, being chased by one person and the ability to turn around and start cycling them with dueling based spells, you usually could drop them immediately.

The problem with current UO is they have tried to appeal to the everyday gamer. Warrior skills might still be a slight step below mages, and may require a little more skill then once upon a time ago when really you just went into war mode and double clicked your opponent. (It was slightly more advanced then that, but not by much) But the problem is, you can have success by just rounding up 4 or 5 archers/throwers (both don't require any timing, just double-click your target and keep on him) and turn up your speed hack (another epidemic, which if you really want to PvP well in UO right now, you gotta use it)

So instead of PvP that seemed more like a dance, now you walk into the 2 or 3 areas still active with PvP and you have 10 guys running around shooting bows, and basically PvP happens like this now:
- You have a group of archers
- Couple stealther/archers (these guys can move on foot undetected)
- Stealth archer uses heavy x-bow and dismounts
- A handful of archers with composite bows use armor ignore or moving target repeatedly with their imbued perfect suits and bows that once would take a whole UO career of putting together parts for one perfect suit for your PvPer)

Usually if the person doesn't know what he's doing (and a lot of the times even if he/she does) they're dead within a few seconds. If you have some people healing and you can teleport (cast teleport on the screen repeatedly until you get to a point of safety) or you can circle up and you have a bandade macro saved in your UOassist program. (because typically by now your warhorse will be dead) then if you can heal and jump on.

The problem is UO PvP is now endorsing numbers and it is also aiming to take the casual gamer in trammel (safe lands which consist of about 90% of the land) and bring them to felluca to do a little pvp then jump in a moongate and bank sit.

So if you do try out UO, don't expect anything different from all other common MMORPG's. They've conformed to the industry.

 

[darkewaffle]

Might want to try Day Z.

Material consequence/material victory is a waste of time to me though. I don't want their stuff, I just want to win.

 

[clok1966]

and hence the reason PvP only game has never succeded.. a game without reasons or repercustions dont last.. None has. There has to be a reason to not kill noobs.. but there never is. Any game that has had it.. the game has died.. no fun if they have to pay a price for being a asshat. A True PvP server needs 'gank at anytime" but it also needs.. 'you ganked and got caught, lose something" .. I suggest you go read some of the excellent research on PvP in open world gaming. There is a reason it doenst work in almost anything but FPS.

 

[videogames101]

Try playing LoL/HoN/DotA 2

 

[smackababy]

The biggest thing UO did was allowed you to have the same name as any other player, similar to the real world. Having a 5 or 6 man gank squad with all the same name (xoiujwnwu or some other random input) and having them all look the same made you godlike in pvp. Groups, even those using vent, had a very hard time selecting a single target because you couldn't call out a name or look.

I spent so much of my time playing UO every MMO feels stale. I hated the AoS patch and sold my account, but the glory days were some of the best gaming I'd ever had.

And clok UO had consequences to just ganking noobs. Stat loss for murders was something very harsh. Sure, there were ways around killing people without being flagged for murder, but it took some clever tactics.

 

[mizzou]

I absolutely loved Ultima Online. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4m0Yd-LY-M
So, we played an absurd amount over the next couple of years. First on Lake Superior, later on Great Lakes.

...

 

[Robert Munch]

UO was awesome. It's in my top 3 games of all-time. Unfortunately, there's probably going to be nothing like it again.

Yea, UO is definitely up there for me too. Had a shit load of fun on it back in 97' on the Great Lakes server. The randomness of just encountering a PK put me on high heartbeat in dungeons and the outskirts of town.

The best parts for me though was being a little asshole and teleporting those Elementals from one level of a dungeon to another while people were farming for magic items and gold. Watching people scatter was so much LOL for me.

Tinkerbox trapping and making people grey from taking items off of blue bodies made me laugh so much.

I really <3'd UO.

 

[HydroSqueegee]

nothing has been as good as UO. started in 98 on great lakes but spent most my years playing on Catskills. quit in 2001. just couldnt do it anymore after all the changes they made.
tried a few MMOs after that, but none can compare.

just the rush of running from reds and getting away is indescribable.

 

[Genx87]

UO was the first and best MMORPG I have played. The risk\reward of the game was rather well balanced imo. And the open PVP had consequences inside civilized society. The darwinian approach to the game setup some interesting patterns behavior. Like anti-pk raids. Where groups of people went hunting reds. Player built cities with guard patrol. And it also brought out some rather devious behavior as well.

My roomate built up this character and became well known with people in and around Minoc. But his entire plan was to turn red. The day he did it was rather amusing. People he knew would approach him in the woods and say hello. Then wham, he would take them out. By the end of a couple days he was dread lord and notorious.

Some of the bugs in the game did provide some entertainment. The magic arrow bug had us sitting outside vesper one night killing everybody who came out of the city. So many dead a GM showed up to see what the ruccus was all about.

I also loved the magic traps in and around banks. It was like watching a feeding frenzy as everybody looted the body naked lol

The split really destroyed the game for me. The whole thing changed. And I dont think there will ever be a game like that again. It was too harsh for the avg players. Hell doubt I would even play a game like that again. About the closest I have come since is EVE online.

 

[Markbnj]

I remember porting jerks to the high-end zones in EQ and leaving them there. Closest I ever got to griefing I guess, but they all deserved it.

OP, the only game I know of with the hardcore action->consequences model these days is Eve Online.

 

[nickbits]

UO was great; I wrote a popular utility for the game (UO Extreme). I have yet to create something as popular but I found I enjoyed making the software more than playing the game as time went on.

 

[mizzou]

UO was great; I wrote a popular utility for the game (UO Extreme). I have yet to create something as popular but I found I enjoyed making the software more than playing the game as time went on.

lol you wrote that? Cooool I remember that

 

[PingSpike]

and hence the reason PvP only game has never succeded.. a game without reasons or repercustions dont last.. None has. There has to be a reason to not kill noobs.. but there never is. Any game that has had it.. the game has died.. no fun if they have to pay a price for being a asshat. A True PvP server needs 'gank at anytime" but it also needs.. 'you ganked and got caught, lose something" .. I suggest you go read some of the excellent research on PvP in open world gaming. There is a reason it doenst work in almost anything but FPS.

Can you direct me to some of the research? I'm interested.