I was sent this excelent article this morning. It's and interview with a couple of the game designers published just prior to UO:R and has a lot to say about why UO is so brutal, and why staff will not help you.
Great reading.
http://www.villagevoice.com/2000-02-08/ ... y-ethics/1
Great quote: "Next to the rough-and-tumble world of Ultima, EverQuest looks as plastic and contrived as Disneyland."
Bloody Ethics: It's not a game, it's a world
Re: Bloody Ethics: It's not a game, it's a world
good read!! In so many ways it seems MMOs have only gone down hill. I don't know of any other MMO that gives UO's freedom to do as you want. This actually creates content in itself, instead of developers constantly trying to keep people on the treadmill with more expansions. Le sigh, I just can't see how gaming companies have missed this obvious flaw for a decade now.
Re: Bloody Ethics: It's not a game, it's a world
In reality, OSI didn't believe a financial model where the GM staff would have to intervene all the time to police player's actions was economically sustainable.
They were of course proven incredibly wrong and that mistake cost them the market they had created.
They were of course proven incredibly wrong and that mistake cost them the market they had created.
Re: Bloody Ethics: It's not a game, it's a world
I wouldn't be so quick to say gaming companies have been missing something. While I too enjoy the free for all style of UO, it's not a sound business model for a game. The stark reality of gaming is, most people do it casually, for fun. They aren't overly competitive, they have 1-2 hours a night to dedicate to the game, and they want to get right into the action.
Games like UO and Darkfall are destined to be niche games because they are mainly only going to appeal to hardcore gamers. The sandbox nature of these games always results in a large amount of abuse, and most casual gamers don't enjoy getting railed and having their stuff taken on a regular basis. They also lack the motivation to make their own fun in the sandbox environment. The profit margins just look better for games that are a little more forgiving.
That's part of the reason UO freeshards do so well. There just aren't many alternatives for sandbox gaming, because companies would rather do what is more profitable. Lack of profit leads to a lack of innovation in the genre, so UO is still pretty much the best sandbox experience you can have, all these years later.
Games like UO and Darkfall are destined to be niche games because they are mainly only going to appeal to hardcore gamers. The sandbox nature of these games always results in a large amount of abuse, and most casual gamers don't enjoy getting railed and having their stuff taken on a regular basis. They also lack the motivation to make their own fun in the sandbox environment. The profit margins just look better for games that are a little more forgiving.
That's part of the reason UO freeshards do so well. There just aren't many alternatives for sandbox gaming, because companies would rather do what is more profitable. Lack of profit leads to a lack of innovation in the genre, so UO is still pretty much the best sandbox experience you can have, all these years later.
Re: Bloody Ethics: It's not a game, it's a world
UO was just a very special game because it was first. Most people had no clue what they were really buying when they picked up the box off the shelf of a CompUSA back in the fall of '97. You had the folks coming from diablo expecting a frag-fest, you had the folks who'd played the Ultima single player games expecting the furthering adventures of Lord British, you had the hard core RP'ers coming from their pen & paper games or text MUDs, and tons of other folk who just got sucked in.
IMO, the free shards never come close to recreating that environment because there are choices now. What they draw from primarily are the players OSI or EA pissed off with each subsequent patch, nerf, or expansion; but even the diehard UO gamers have choices and can go play a free-trammel shard if they so wish.
In the beginning you truly had something akin to victims, heroes, and criminals ... because no one really opt'd in to the experience that UO turned out to be. I had a lot of fun trying to be a hero. It clearly was the harder path, but the problem was never with the folks who picked their side and wanted to fight ... it was everyone else who had little interest in continuing to play the role of a victim once they actually had a choice in the matter. And the fight quickly devolved from a battle between the "good guys" and the "bad guys" to a battle between the folks who gave a darn .vs. the jerks who didn't.
The typical player didn't deal well with having their character killed and looted, but that wasn't enough for the griefers and jerks. Exploiting someone out of their house wasn't enough either. UO is littered with cases of harassment, accounts being hacked, no end of foul language, and even virtual rape.
It wasn't a "second life" or a new society, it became a social experiment to see how foul people could be when they didn't have to worry about the person on the other side punching them in the face or calling the cops.
One thing about any social venture whether it's a game, a message board, or whatever is that if you cater to the lowest common denominator then eventually that's all you'll have left. The fact there were some players willing to get in to that muddy sandbox and play in spite of the scum is a testament to how much the game was loved, but it still makes for a piss poor economic model.
IMO, the free shards never come close to recreating that environment because there are choices now. What they draw from primarily are the players OSI or EA pissed off with each subsequent patch, nerf, or expansion; but even the diehard UO gamers have choices and can go play a free-trammel shard if they so wish.
In the beginning you truly had something akin to victims, heroes, and criminals ... because no one really opt'd in to the experience that UO turned out to be. I had a lot of fun trying to be a hero. It clearly was the harder path, but the problem was never with the folks who picked their side and wanted to fight ... it was everyone else who had little interest in continuing to play the role of a victim once they actually had a choice in the matter. And the fight quickly devolved from a battle between the "good guys" and the "bad guys" to a battle between the folks who gave a darn .vs. the jerks who didn't.
The typical player didn't deal well with having their character killed and looted, but that wasn't enough for the griefers and jerks. Exploiting someone out of their house wasn't enough either. UO is littered with cases of harassment, accounts being hacked, no end of foul language, and even virtual rape.
It wasn't a "second life" or a new society, it became a social experiment to see how foul people could be when they didn't have to worry about the person on the other side punching them in the face or calling the cops.
One thing about any social venture whether it's a game, a message board, or whatever is that if you cater to the lowest common denominator then eventually that's all you'll have left. The fact there were some players willing to get in to that muddy sandbox and play in spite of the scum is a testament to how much the game was loved, but it still makes for a piss poor economic model.
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archaicsubrosa77
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Re: Bloody Ethics: It's not a game, it's a world
That pretty much sums it up and it all turns spy vs spy. Blue and Red don't make a difference to moral and ethics. There is a way around everything.
The red might have just made the mistake of maybe killing the blue healer/gater/equipment carrier of another red, or the newb character in the way of his EV. After that everyone tries to kill him and sick of running he kills his aggressors, or out of paranoia that it just might be an alt of his victim seeking revenge.
Cookie cutter temps are dissolving as ingenuity is on the rise, and I swear I see more allegiance amongst reds then I have seen with any of the blues guildies or not. To be honest though most blues are under the suspicion that the other blue is perma-grey or plotting against them caring more for the bird in hand then to notice the two cats in the bush.
Fear is the divider the isolator the scatterer,as desperation is the need to escape it to grasp for another like it was your last breath. The pompous security the blues feel leaves them, as alone as they were in the city they are in the wilds. Outside of the guardzone many defend their hunting grounds. They are the guards and you are the grey. Don't be like the ogre that heads straight in to be whacked.
Indeed this is an entire world. Mighty empires and orginizations of murder and crime both run rampant in self interest.Those whom are bent on keeping you down so you'll need them, buying the lands and homes to loan out to you. They make you feel comfortable so that you will war on their side. Little guildy clans of bigger kingdom alliances are most whom venture out. They are fullfilling their destinies, I tell you do not lose sight of your own.
Now everyone looks for their weaknesses, sees fault in their design. Where they dare not look to displace their arrogance...there shall you hide dear new player. And in those faults, carve the niche for yourself.
The red might have just made the mistake of maybe killing the blue healer/gater/equipment carrier of another red, or the newb character in the way of his EV. After that everyone tries to kill him and sick of running he kills his aggressors, or out of paranoia that it just might be an alt of his victim seeking revenge.
Cookie cutter temps are dissolving as ingenuity is on the rise, and I swear I see more allegiance amongst reds then I have seen with any of the blues guildies or not. To be honest though most blues are under the suspicion that the other blue is perma-grey or plotting against them caring more for the bird in hand then to notice the two cats in the bush.
Fear is the divider the isolator the scatterer,as desperation is the need to escape it to grasp for another like it was your last breath. The pompous security the blues feel leaves them, as alone as they were in the city they are in the wilds. Outside of the guardzone many defend their hunting grounds. They are the guards and you are the grey. Don't be like the ogre that heads straight in to be whacked.
Indeed this is an entire world. Mighty empires and orginizations of murder and crime both run rampant in self interest.Those whom are bent on keeping you down so you'll need them, buying the lands and homes to loan out to you. They make you feel comfortable so that you will war on their side. Little guildy clans of bigger kingdom alliances are most whom venture out. They are fullfilling their destinies, I tell you do not lose sight of your own.
Now everyone looks for their weaknesses, sees fault in their design. Where they dare not look to displace their arrogance...there shall you hide dear new player. And in those faults, carve the niche for yourself.
Derrick wrote:I wish it were possible that a mount could be whacked while you are riding it, but to the best of my knowedge it is not.
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nightshark
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Re: Bloody Ethics: It's not a game, it's a world
The greatest thing about UO 99, was that there wasn't really an alternative. Good and evil were thrown into the same game to do battle, whether they liked it or not. I had a lot of respect for the players who followed the virtues and did it well (though, always more inclined to evil myself - anything for a quick gold coin). Everquest made a dent in subscriptions, but not massively from what I could tell. Though UO:R was a crap publish, it was bearable and increased subscriptions if anything. It was the beginning of the end though, and the majority of PvP'ers on our shard made a timely exit sometime around publish 16 (game imbalance went through the roof), the rest of us leaving on AoS release - it was no longer anything like the UO we knew (the true death of OSI servers).
Interesting read.
Interesting read.
<green> grats pink and co. .... the 3 of you f---ing scrubs together can blow up a bard. IMPRESSIVE
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Natty Bo
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Re: Bloody Ethics: It's not a game, it's a world
The guys I played with back on Drachenfels called UO "Life" (after what one of their wives named the game) and it wasn't far from the truth.
I have the best job: I get to legally deal drugs, electrocute you if I feel the need, and if I'm of a particular mood make fun of what ails you in the "kindest" of ways.
Re: Bloody Ethics: It's not a game, it's a world
EQ didn't appeal to the PvP population. UO lost a number of rp'ers and PvM'ers to EQ - at least the ones who couldn't deal with the grief factor.nightshark wrote:Everquest made a dent in subscriptions, but not massively from what I could tell.
The other factor when looking at population is to consider churn. The population may have continued to grow for quite a while, but that still doesn't speak to how many players quit during the time and what the cost was to existing and established communities that were often the backbone of the game.
For instance, there was a period of time on Siege where if a new guild came to the shard trash talking and acting like complete jerks, almost everyone would gang up against them and drive them away. In fact it was necessary as blues couldn't take the murder counts necessary to shut down their new members in training. Heck, there was even one time in Siege where the shard recognized there were too many pks and not enough antis and a number of formerly pk guilds joined the anti side. But they didn't turn blue - they turned good. For quite a while after that noto-Pk'ing was monitored and discouraged and a red neutral guild like mine could easily co-operate with the blue guilds, but over time as the community broke down we were just as likely to get attacked by the side we thought we were helping and we had to just stop.
So yeah, there was new population coming in, but the backbone of the shard was dissolving and in this case running off to games like ShadowBane, DAoC, Counterstrike, etc.
Re: Bloody Ethics: It's not a game, it's a world
I am new so I dont know if anyone has linked this one in the past or not, apologies if it has been, but this too is an excellent read about T2A written during the "modern UO" era by someone who definitely "gets it".
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/ultimaon ... ?id=202762
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/ultimaon ... ?id=202762
Re: Bloody Ethics: It's not a game, it's a world
A sandbox type MMO isn't necessarily a niche game. EVE Online has over 200K subscriptions all over the world. That pales in comparison with WoW's 1M but it's still a sizable chunk of players. There's definitely a fairly large base of players out there who still love to be challenged and enjoy the risk without any tears shed from grief since it's all a game. Account hacking on UO is probably just as commonplace as in any other online game. Hell, you're probably just as likely to meet someone in EQ who knows how to masquerade packets and then keylog your shit so he can steal your money because you weren't nice to him. Do unto others 
Everyone figures out some way to grief other players in any game. In WoW it's the jerk who joins your PUG and then leaves half-way through the dungeon after stealing something his class doesn't need. Not quite as bad, say, as killing you and then stealing the stuff you worked hours for but it's still got that level of irritation for people who get upset over this kind of stuff. It's a whole different ball park with EVE considering you can literally "play to pay" via in game currency, which can be stolen by other players easily because there's no bank that's NPC run in that game. There's no doubt, though, that there's an increasing base of gamers who never experienced a truly difficult game. Try handing R-Type or Contra to someone who plays every version of Madden that comes out or most any other "modern" gamer. The industry is watering things down because many people are lazy and don't like a challenge, yes (and it's definitely making them sales) but there'll always be recruits in the "HxC" division and people making games for them even if it is at a smaller profit margin.
Everyone figures out some way to grief other players in any game. In WoW it's the jerk who joins your PUG and then leaves half-way through the dungeon after stealing something his class doesn't need. Not quite as bad, say, as killing you and then stealing the stuff you worked hours for but it's still got that level of irritation for people who get upset over this kind of stuff. It's a whole different ball park with EVE considering you can literally "play to pay" via in game currency, which can be stolen by other players easily because there's no bank that's NPC run in that game. There's no doubt, though, that there's an increasing base of gamers who never experienced a truly difficult game. Try handing R-Type or Contra to someone who plays every version of Madden that comes out or most any other "modern" gamer. The industry is watering things down because many people are lazy and don't like a challenge, yes (and it's definitely making them sales) but there'll always be recruits in the "HxC" division and people making games for them even if it is at a smaller profit margin.
Re: Bloody Ethics: It's not a game, it's a world
This article made me even more thankful for this shard. It's never boring wondering around here. I was farming bloods today and around the time I ran out of stamina overloaded on loot I was beset by two reds. Did they get me? No, a strength and recall, luckily reflection was on, but it sure makes it fun.
Re: Bloody Ethics: It's not a game, it's a world
I think this shard does an excellent job of capturing UO of old. I do miss my champion spawns but thats about it.
Re: Bloody Ethics: It's not a game, it's a world
That was a great read! 