Incorrect. Both Everquest (blue) and Asheron's Call (purple) grew to over 480,000 subscriptions over a period of more than two years with no significant effect to the growth rate of Ultima Online (Violet). This is because the MMO market has been expanding exponentially since inception.
...................................
Heh, The PINK line is UO's line in the graph not the violet line. So as not to further skew this chart here is a link to the source of the entire chart and not just a small portion of it.
Draw your own conclusions as to whether EQ, T2A, or any other major event had any flattening effect on UO subscriptions.
Incorrect. Both Everquest (blue) and Asheron's Call (purple) grew to over 480,000 subscriptions over a period of more than two years with no significant effect to the growth rate of Ultima Online (Violet). This is because the MMO market has been expanding exponentially since inception.
Actually the purple line is UO which peaked at july 2003 at 250k way after trammel .The light blue is indeed EQ1 peaking at 550k in 2004 .The violet is actually AC1 which has been on decline since it peaked in 2001 at just over 100k.
The graph shown is from mmogchart.com and can be seen at the 120-700k sub section.I am sure it was not an attempt to mislead anyone like sempiternal did with roma victor but purely a misreading of the graph
If there were no UO, there would be no MMORPG industry as we know it. Think of what was before UO in terms of online gaming. MUDS and some primitive multiplayer RPGs offered through providers like AOL and Prodigy. UO is THE game that opened up a whole wide world of what MMORPGs could be conceptually. Sure we can cringe at the 2D graphics, simplistic by today's standards, but the game has been around for what? 10 years? Most Americans don't have cars that've lastest them that long. Kudos to EQ for bringing the MMORPG into the 3D realm, but whether you're a PvPer, a PvEer, an old school fan of the single player Ultima series, or a pen-and-paper gamer who was ushered into the computer age thanks to Lord British's creative vision, we all owe some debt of gratitude to this game.
Sorry, the release of EQ1 started an immediate decline in the growth of UO. Them's the facts, sorry.
And WoW came along and buried EQ. And a few years down the line, some other game that's now but a glimmer in a young design team's eyes will knock WoW off it's throne. So goes the vicious, magical circle of life. Does anyone have a Kleenex?
Since then no MMORPG has been able to intrigue me as much, hopefully Darkfall Online will release in a near future, the only game true to the MMORPG premise - to come.
Does this even need to be discussed? Isn't it a bit LATE to be discussing this? UO died, no questions, end of discussion, with the introduction of Felucca and Trammel YEARS ago. It was just a downhill spiral once Garriott left.
Sorry, the release of EQ1 started an immediate decline in the growth of UO. Them's the facts, sorry.
And WoW came along and buried EQ. And a few years down the line, some other game that's now but a glimmer in a young design team's eyes will knock WoW off it's throne. So goes the vicious, magical circle of life. Does anyone have a Kleenex?
Incorrect. Both Everquest (blue) and Asheron's Call (purple) grew to over 480,000 subscriptions over a period of more than two years with no significant effect to the growth rate of Ultima Online (Violet). This is because the MMO market has been expanding exponentially since inception.
Actually the purple line is UO which peaked at july 2003 at 250k way after trammel .The light blue is indeed EQ1 peaking at 550k in 2004 .The violet is actually AC1 which has been on decline since it peaked in 2001 at just over 100k.
The graph shown is from mmogchart.com and can be seen at the 120-700k sub section.I am sure it was not an attempt to mislead anyone like sempiternal did with roma victor but purely a misreading of the graph
The violet line is UO, it also has a red average growth line through it showing how remarkably stable UO's rate of growth was. Purple is darker and has a more blue hue to it, in this case it is AC.
Everyone missed the point though. You can clearly see that the entire time that UO had NO TRAMMEL at all, the continued growth of both AC and EQ had no significant effect on the growth rate of Ultima Online. This was in response to someone claiming that after EQ was released, UO's subscription numbers dropped, which is false. In fact, they kept growing and they kept growing at relatively the same rate that they had since UO was released.
It was not until after UO copied EQ with a consensual environment called Trammel that UO's numbers began to fall. Why play the old consensual UO when there is a better consensual option of EQ?
Incorrect. Both Everquest (blue) and Asheron's Call (purple) grew to over 480,000 subscriptions over a period of more than two years with no significant effect to the growth rate of Ultima Online (Violet). This is because the MMO market has been expanding exponentially since inception.
dude you like to argue too much even when wrong (reminds me of your RV days).
Why not just say "opps i misread the chart" like anyone else would do.
The same site you took the graph off shows AC at a peak of 120k and even says so in its analysis.http://www.mmorpgchart.com/
Only EQ1 peaked above 500k not both as you state.
Also same website you are quoting from says UO peaked after its third dawn expansion which was after trammel.
Pointless using a website as reference then denying what is on it mate.
What I stated is entirely accurate, you read it wrong. 480k is the total of both. Both games grew to a total of 480k subscriptions with no significant effect to the growth rate of UO. You even checked the original chart and were still incapable of figuring out what I meant!
Get a clue. What I stated is entirely accurate, you read it wrong. 480k is the total of both. Both games grew to a total of 480k subscriptions with no significant effect to the growth rate of UO. You even checked the original chart and were still incapable of figuring out what I meant! That's par for you.
Dude you just love to argue when wrong.
EQ1 alone grew to 460-550k subs at its peak and AC1 peaked at 120k.Even at the low estimate of mmopgchart.com thats still 580k for both.
How can we fugure out what you meant when you read out the data wrongly?
Originally posted by MaeEye Originally posted by sempiternal Did you ever roleplay back in 98 or 99 before Trammel? That was when the UO audience was the most mature and was the height of roleplaying in Ultima Online. There were dozens of roleplaying guilds, player establishments, player towns, and player events on every shard and many of them such as taverns had regular hours of operation, every day. Ultima Online is now a mere video game chatroom for kids, the disabled, and poor; an empty shell of it's former glory.
Semp, you name me one game out in the industry that keeps it's strength after 8-10 years. No game will. Even the monster WoW won't keep it's glory all those years. Most games that people stick with seem to have their magic moments in the begining. It's not because of the rules, but mainly because it's a new experience for the people and no one forgets new experiences throughout their lives. Then they get upset when something is change just the slight. I'm sorry, but there is no way a game with ancient graphics, and is almost 10 years old going to hold the same amount or more in the player base, it's just unrealistic. In a matter of time, WoW will begin to lose it's player base, and I think Blizzard is aware of this too....which is why they are currently in development for another MMo.
It would have been really great if UO2 and UO:X would have been released. The ultima universe would still be very active and who knows what we would be playing right now. It's sad to think about, but what's in the past is already set. UO was a great thing for games, it was the first big MMo that started the fire that we know of today.
Sure, I miss the great days of t2a. I miss the dwelling community and the thieves and PKs. I will never have an experience like that, shiverying and shaking when I see a red name across my screen. But that also comes with the new experience, to capture that again something totally new and unlike anything else will have to be created. It will come around again someday.
I can name you 1 game that at least kept their subs and greatly increased them over 4 years : EVE Online. And I think I know why, they stayed true to their PVP combat, their full sandbox type of game and their 1 server for all vision, while improving and expanding on it and keeping adding new features.
So it IS possible, honestly, if not for ToA and Buffbots and the lost Realm pride ( due to bad executed mergers ), DAoC would still go strong today.
But, besides EVE online, I cant think of any game that keeps growing strong nowadays. WoW is not a good example imho, WoW will fall as hard as it once has risen. I think that most new subs in wow come from Asia and new markets. Honestly, when I look at my real life friends, they will jump to the next best thing any day now.
greetz
If you are interested in subscription or PCU numbers for MMORPG's, check out my site : http://mmodata.blogspot.be/ Favorite MMORPG's : DAoC pre ToA-NF, SWG Pre CU-NGE, EVE Online
If they made an OLD SCHOOL UO server that I could play on, that wasn't a cheap player made rip off, I would prolly not give a damn about Age of Conan, as I would still be content on playing UO. I would pay 19.99 a month for it too. That game still has a market, but no product to deliver it. I KNOW that a few people I played with in UO ages ago who would do the same. I have a few people from UO in my guild still, Over 5 years since we've played it, but were still guildmates. I think UO's awsome community made that possible.
OK ABOUT the whole UO was at its peek near 3rd dawn therefor that was the best game version is wrong. UO was about What you had! People loved their real estate, I know my girlfriend kept her account because she didnt want to lose her house atleast 6 months after she quit playing. Just because subscriptions were HIGH doesn't mean it was the best. People didn't quit SOON as the game changed. People stayed around and slowly started quitting. We didn't see the effects of trammel for about a year and a half. Ask 20 people that used to play UO when was the best time in UO, and you'll most often hear "Befor Trammel"
I can name you 1 game that at least kept their subs and greatly increased them over 4 years : EVE Online. And I think I know why, they stayed true to their PVP combat, their full sandbox type of game and their 1 server for all vision, while improving and expanding on it and keeping adding new features. So it IS possible, honestly, if not for ToA and Buffbots and the lost Realm pride ( due to bad executed mergers ), DAoC would still go strong today. But, besides EVE online, I cant think of any game that keeps growing strong nowadays.
I really like the single server design that EvE is using - one world for all players. Roma Victor is also doing this.
Once more companies begin to realize that MMOGs are an entertainment service rather than a commodity and focus more on support and upgrading and maintaining a brand name's technology and content to keep current and competitive, we are likely to see more very long lived MMOGs, even ones that continue growing for years on end.
EA really screwed the pooch with Ultima Online in that they kept designing the game year after year merely to sell boxes off shelves by offering incentives rather than focusing on customer service and subscriptions and refining and improving game-play and keeping the game upgraded with the latest technology.
Where EvE has done it right, UO has done it wrong.
If there were no UO, there would be no MMORPG industry as we know it. Think of what was before UO in terms of online gaming. MUDS and some primitive multiplayer RPGs offered through providers like AOL and Prodigy. UO is THE game that opened up a whole wide world of what MMORPGs could be conceptually. Sure we can cringe at the 2D graphics, simplistic by today's standards, but the game has been around for what? 10 years? Most Americans don't have cars that've lastest them that long. Kudos to EQ for bringing the MMORPG into the 3D realm, but whether you're a PvPer, a PvEer, an old school fan of the single player Ultima series, or a pen-and-paper gamer who was ushered into the computer age thanks to Lord British's creative vision, we all owe some debt of gratitude to this game.
Does anyone even know UO or EQ was in development first? Remember UO was in very terrible shape when it came outit , probably 100% worse than Vanguard but we put up with it b/c it was the first mmorpg.
I completely agree. Now when I play the only Evil that I see is FL which I've been battling all my six years of playing. Back before samurai Empire (which I will get back to) Aos gave Uo that feeling of good vs evil. With the Noble paladin, and the dark necromancer. Now it seems like the necromancer and the paladin are butt buddies.
I remember back during Aos when I meet lord British in game when he was rallying us up to go fight Orc! He gave out sashes and gave speeches! It got you so wrapped up in mob mentality that you would have killed yourself for him. But even though we were charging on to fight some crappy little orcs and orc brutes we all were so excited to be part of something. Now, Uo has the town crier spam all day "Hey! um god what was I gonna say???? oh oh ya, imps in moonglow! uh..... go fight, be brave?" and So everyone stays in Luna carrying out with their business.
The point of Medieval was brought up also. Samurai Empire...... I took my break from the game right when this was released. I come back and WOW!!!! it's so gay..... The only thing Samurai Empire did besides lower economy cost for doom arties was ruin pvp. Now when you dismount someone they turn into a wolf or llama and run off as fast as a speed hacker (will be brought up later). Also Bushido junkies that have legendary bush and parry so you can't ever hit them with anything.... That includes magic and weapons. I do not get a medieval feel from Luna when theres a ninja siting next to me spaming his sweet sword for 2mil. They also ruined the pet system with things like foxes, and birds and dogs. Dragons, and Mares, and War horses are all good medieval pets. A fox with 6 tails is not.
The last point I am bringing up now because just talking about this is making me think of going out and buying DAOC, is speed hacking. Sense the day I begun in 5th grade!!!!! I am now a junior in high school. Speed hacking has been a major problem with people using it to their advantage in pvp. FL doesn't use it as much <---- But they used to use it so much that when you went to Fel you lagged and you died. You wouldn't realize it for 2 mins because the lag was so heavy. It's still used today to raid peoples champ spawns. Also to kill a mob of people. Example, One archer vs six of us. He out run all of us on foot and was going so fast he killed 4 of us before we could even get him to 1/4. Not because we suck or he was insanely good. But because he had us lagging so bad and was moving so fast it was impossible to catch him.
Aos gave Uo that feeling of good vs evil. With the Noble paladin, and the dark necromancer. Now it seems like the necromancer and the paladin are butt buddies.
That would have actually been a good idea - designing the game so that along with the special powers of the paladin and necromancer came the added risk of being killed by the opposing faction anywhere, including in Trammel. But, since that would have been a good game design, obviously EA did not do it - EA's game design is that the paladin and necromancer in UO are nothing but words, they are completely invincible to each other everywhere except Felucca, where everyone can be attacked anyway.
If there were no UO, there would be no MMORPG industry as we know it. Think of what was before UO in terms of online gaming. MUDS and some primitive multiplayer RPGs offered through providers like AOL and Prodigy. UO is THE game that opened up a whole wide world of what MMORPGs could be conceptually. Sure we can cringe at the 2D graphics, simplistic by today's standards, but the game has been around for what? 10 years? Most Americans don't have cars that've lastest them that long. Kudos to EQ for bringing the MMORPG into the 3D realm, but whether you're a PvPer, a PvEer, an old school fan of the single player Ultima series, or a pen-and-paper gamer who was ushered into the computer age thanks to Lord British's creative vision, we all owe some debt of gratitude to this game.
Does anyone even know UO or EQ was in development first? Remember UO was in very terrible shape when it came outit , probably 100% worse than Vanguard but we put up with it b/c it was the first mmorpg.
That's a new question for me. I always assumed that UO had started development first, because it came out first.
However, UO was definitely not the first MMO, it was just the first to break 100,000 subscriptions.
The Realm and Meridian 59 both preceded UO and reached tens of thousands of subscribers. If I recall correctly, The Realm came out nearly a year earlier and had 30,000 subscribers at the time when UO only had 50,000; that's pretty decent competition. Also, shortly before Meridian 59 launched, they had 20,000 participants and it came out well before UO. So, UO was not the first, UO only took MMOs to another level by using the popular Ultima franchise and with the luck of the eBay viral marketing phenomenon to break past 100,000 and leave the other two behind only in the tens of thousands.
As for which development was started first, UO or EQ, I'll have to get back to you on that one.
Does anyone even know UO or EQ was in development first?
From wikipedia, UO began development in 1995 and EQ began in 1996. Interesting that EQ began development before UO was even released - didn't know that.
UO History
Ultima Online is the product of Richard Garriott's idea for a fantasy game involving several thousand people who can all play in a shared fantasy world. There were a number of prior games that allowed hundreds of people to play at the same time, including The Realm Online, Neverwinter Nights (the AOL version), and Meridian 59. However, Ultima Online was intended to be a significant improvement over the previous games, both graphically and in game mechanics. The initial team was composed of Garriot, Starr Long, Rick Delashmit and, a bit later Raph Koster, who became the lead designer for the project. Koster wrote a number of public "designer letters" and usually went by his nickname of Designer Dragon.
The project started in 1995 and was shown to the public at E3 in 1996. At the time (in the mid-1990s), Ultima Online was a very expensive project and quite risky for the company. The development cost was much greater than traditional computer games, it relied on people accessing servers with modems, and it attempted to transform the Ultima series into an entirely new genre. Ultima Online was an ambitious game on a number of fronts, such as:
Players may buy housing and build houses within the persistent landscape (this is still an uncommon feature in many online games).
A skill system without the more traditional experience-based levels or classes.
Many different trades or crafts can be performed by the players to create an in-game economy.
Players could be freely attacked anywhere in the game, even in cities (this has since changed).
Upon release in mid-1997, Ultima Online proved to be very popular, reaching 100,000 paying subscribers within six months of release. Subscriptions grew for several years reaching a peak of some 250,000 paid accounts. Origin was able to make a great deal of money from the monthly fees required to play Ultima Online and many other companies took note and began development of their own massively multiplayer games. The most successful games after Ultima Online have been EverQuest (released in March 1999), Dark Age of Camelot (released in October 2001), and World of Warcraft (released in November 2004). The Korean massively multiplayer game Lineage was very much inspired by Ultima Online, as have many other subsequent online games.
EQ Development history
The design and concept of EverQuest is heavily indebted to text-based MUDs, in particular DikuMUD, and as such EverQuest is considered a 3D evolution of the text MUD genre like some of the MMOs that preceded it such as Meridian 59 and The Realm Online. John Smedley, Brad McQuaid, Steve Clover and Bill Trost who jointly are credited with creating the world of EverQuest have repeatedly pointed to their shared experiences playing MUDs such as DIKU and TorilMUD as the inspiration for the game.[2]
Development of EverQuest began in 1996 when Sony Interactive Studios America (SISA) executive John Smedley secured funding for a 3D version of text-based MUDs following the successful launch of Meridian 59 the previous year. To implement the design Smedley hired programmers Brad McQuaid and Steve Clover who had come to Smedley's attention through their work on the single player RPG Warwizard. McQuaid soon rose through the ranks to become Executive Producer for the EverQuest franchise and emerged during development of EverQuest as a popular figure among the fan community through his in-game avatar, Aradune. Other key members of the development team included Bill Trost, who created the history, lore and major characters of Norrath (including Everquest protagonist Firiona Vie), Geoffrey "GZ" Zatkin who implemented the spell system, and artist Milo D. Cooper, who did the original character modeling in the game.
EverQuest launched with modest expectations from Sony on March 16, 1999 under its Verant Interactive brand and quickly became successful. By the end of the year, it had surpassed the leading competitor, Ultima Online, in number of subscriptions. Numbers continued rising at a steady rate until mid-2001 when growth slowed. As of 2004, Sony reports subscription numbers close to 450,000. SOE released a Mac OS X version of EverQuest in 2003, incorporating all expansions through Planes of Power. Development of the OS X version has languished since then, but the server remains up and running, supporting a small but enthusiastic user community.
Comments
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Heh, The PINK line is UO's line in the graph not the violet line. So as not to further skew this chart here is a link to the source of the entire chart and not just a small portion of it.
Draw your own conclusions as to whether EQ, T2A, or any other major event had any flattening effect on UO subscriptions.
http://www.mmogchart.com/
This site gives a great "big picture" view of the early years of nearly all mmogs.
beer is good for what ales you,
R
Actually the purple line is UO which peaked at july 2003 at 250k way after trammel .The light blue is indeed EQ1 peaking at 550k in 2004 .The violet is actually AC1 which has been on decline since it peaked in 2001 at just over 100k.The graph shown is from mmogchart.com and can be seen at the 120-700k sub section.I am sure it was not an attempt to mislead anyone like sempiternal did with roma victor but purely a misreading of the graph
And WoW came along and buried EQ. And a few years down the line, some other game that's now but a glimmer in a young design team's eyes will knock WoW off it's throne. So goes the vicious, magical circle of life. Does anyone have a Kleenex?
UO pre-trammel defined MMORPG for me.
Since then no MMORPG has been able to intrigue me as much, hopefully Darkfall Online will release in a near future, the only game true to the MMORPG premise - to come.
I CREATED MYSELF!
"<Claus|Dev> i r pk"
SW:TOR|War40K:DMO|GW2
Does this even need to be discussed? Isn't it a bit LATE to be discussing this? UO died, no questions, end of discussion, with the introduction of Felucca and Trammel YEARS ago. It was just a downhill spiral once Garriott left.
Bans a perma, but so are sigs in necro posts.
EAT ME MMORPG.com!
I can't disagree with that observation at all!
Actually the purple line is UO which peaked at july 2003 at 250k way after trammel .The light blue is indeed EQ1 peaking at 550k in 2004 .The violet is actually AC1 which has been on decline since it peaked in 2001 at just over 100k.The graph shown is from mmogchart.com and can be seen at the 120-700k sub section.I am sure it was not an attempt to mislead anyone like sempiternal did with roma victor but purely a misreading of the graph
The violet line is UO, it also has a red average growth line through it showing how remarkably stable UO's rate of growth was. Purple is darker and has a more blue hue to it, in this case it is AC.
Everyone missed the point though. You can clearly see that the entire time that UO had NO TRAMMEL at all, the continued growth of both AC and EQ had no significant effect on the growth rate of Ultima Online. This was in response to someone claiming that after EQ was released, UO's subscription numbers dropped, which is false. In fact, they kept growing and they kept growing at relatively the same rate that they had since UO was released.
It was not until after UO copied EQ with a consensual environment called Trammel that UO's numbers began to fall. Why play the old consensual UO when there is a better consensual option of EQ?
Why not just say "opps i misread the chart" like anyone else would do.
The same site you took the graph off shows AC at a peak of 120k and even says so in its analysis.http://www.mmorpgchart.com/
Only EQ1 peaked above 500k not both as you state.
Also same website you are quoting from says UO peaked after its third dawn expansion which was after trammel.
Pointless using a website as reference then denying what is on it mate.
Get a clue.
What I stated is entirely accurate, you read it wrong. 480k is the total of both. Both games grew to a total of 480k subscriptions with no significant effect to the growth rate of UO. You even checked the original chart and were still incapable of figuring out what I meant!
That's par for you.
EQ1 alone grew to 460-550k subs at its peak and AC1 peaked at 120k.Even at the low estimate of mmopgchart.com thats still 580k for both.
How can we fugure out what you meant when you read out the data wrongly?
It would have been really great if UO2 and UO:X would have been released. The ultima universe would still be very active and who knows what we would be playing right now. It's sad to think about, but what's in the past is already set. UO was a great thing for games, it was the first big MMo that started the fire that we know of today.
Sure, I miss the great days of t2a. I miss the dwelling community and the thieves and PKs. I will never have an experience like that, shiverying and shaking when I see a red name across my screen. But that also comes with the new experience, to capture that again something totally new and unlike anything else will have to be created. It will come around again someday.
I can name you 1 game that at least kept their subs and greatly increased them over 4 years : EVE Online. And I think I know why, they stayed true to their PVP combat, their full sandbox type of game and their 1 server for all vision, while improving and expanding on it and keeping adding new features.
So it IS possible, honestly, if not for ToA and Buffbots and the lost Realm pride ( due to bad executed mergers ), DAoC would still go strong today.
But, besides EVE online, I cant think of any game that keeps growing strong nowadays.
WoW is not a good example imho, WoW will fall as hard as it once has risen. I think that most new subs in wow come from Asia and new markets. Honestly, when I look at my real life friends, they will jump to the next best thing any day now.
greetz
If you are interested in subscription or PCU numbers for MMORPG's, check out my site :
http://mmodata.blogspot.be/
Favorite MMORPG's : DAoC pre ToA-NF, SWG Pre CU-NGE, EVE Online
If they made an OLD SCHOOL UO server that I could play on, that wasn't a cheap player made rip off, I would prolly not give a damn about Age of Conan, as I would still be content on playing UO. I would pay 19.99 a month for it too. That game still has a market, but no product to deliver it. I KNOW that a few people I played with in UO ages ago who would do the same. I have a few people from UO in my guild still, Over 5 years since we've played it, but were still guildmates. I think UO's awsome community made that possible.
OK ABOUT the whole UO was at its peek near 3rd dawn therefor that was the best game version is wrong. UO was about What you had! People loved their real estate, I know my girlfriend kept her account because she didnt want to lose her house atleast 6 months after she quit playing. Just because subscriptions were HIGH doesn't mean it was the best. People didn't quit SOON as the game changed. People stayed around and slowly started quitting. We didn't see the effects of trammel for about a year and a half. Ask 20 people that used to play UO when was the best time in UO, and you'll most often hear "Befor Trammel"
You want to quote me where I was discussing "peak" subscription numbers? You are so lost.
I really like the single server design that EvE is using - one world for all players. Roma Victor is also doing this.
Once more companies begin to realize that MMOGs are an entertainment service rather than a commodity and focus more on support and upgrading and maintaining a brand name's technology and content to keep current and competitive, we are likely to see more very long lived MMOGs, even ones that continue growing for years on end.
EA really screwed the pooch with Ultima Online in that they kept designing the game year after year merely to sell boxes off shelves by offering incentives rather than focusing on customer service and subscriptions and refining and improving game-play and keeping the game upgraded with the latest technology.
Where EvE has done it right, UO has done it wrong.
UO started my MMO days so sad to see it sux now....poor Ultima may you rest in peace alongside WoW
Does anyone even know UO or EQ was in development first? Remember UO was in very terrible shape when it came outit , probably 100% worse than Vanguard but we put up with it b/c it was the first mmorpg.
I completely agree. Now when I play the only Evil that I see is FL which I've been battling all my six years of playing. Back before samurai Empire (which I will get back to) Aos gave Uo that feeling of good vs evil. With the Noble paladin, and the dark necromancer. Now it seems like the necromancer and the paladin are butt buddies.
I remember back during Aos when I meet lord British in game when he was rallying us up to go fight Orc! He gave out sashes and gave speeches! It got you so wrapped up in mob mentality that you would have killed yourself for him. But even though we were charging on to fight some crappy little orcs and orc brutes we all were so excited to be part of something. Now, Uo has the town crier spam all day "Hey! um god what was I gonna say???? oh oh ya, imps in moonglow! uh..... go fight, be brave?" and So everyone stays in Luna carrying out with their business.
The point of Medieval was brought up also. Samurai Empire...... I took my break from the game right when this was released. I come back and WOW!!!! it's so gay..... The only thing Samurai Empire did besides lower economy cost for doom arties was ruin pvp. Now when you dismount someone they turn into a wolf or llama and run off as fast as a speed hacker (will be brought up later). Also Bushido junkies that have legendary bush and parry so you can't ever hit them with anything.... That includes magic and weapons. I do not get a medieval feel from Luna when theres a ninja siting next to me spaming his sweet sword for 2mil. They also ruined the pet system with things like foxes, and birds and dogs. Dragons, and Mares, and War horses are all good medieval pets. A fox with 6 tails is not.
The last point I am bringing up now because just talking about this is making me think of going out and buying DAOC, is speed hacking. Sense the day I begun in 5th grade!!!!! I am now a junior in high school. Speed hacking has been a major problem with people using it to their advantage in pvp. FL doesn't use it as much <---- But they used to use it so much that when you went to Fel you lagged and you died. You wouldn't realize it for 2 mins because the lag was so heavy. It's still used today to raid peoples champ spawns. Also to kill a mob of people. Example, One archer vs six of us. He out run all of us on foot and was going so fast he killed 4 of us before we could even get him to 1/4. Not because we suck or he was insanely good. But because he had us lagging so bad and was moving so fast it was impossible to catch him.
I agree 100%, I have played many other MMO's, and most are shallow and devoid of the freedom UO has.
That would have actually been a good idea - designing the game so that along with the special powers of the paladin and necromancer came the added risk of being killed by the opposing faction anywhere, including in Trammel. But, since that would have been a good game design, obviously EA did not do it - EA's game design is that the paladin and necromancer in UO are nothing but words, they are completely invincible to each other everywhere except Felucca, where everyone can be attacked anyway.
Does anyone even know UO or EQ was in development first? Remember UO was in very terrible shape when it came outit , probably 100% worse than Vanguard but we put up with it b/c it was the first mmorpg.
That's a new question for me. I always assumed that UO had started development first, because it came out first.
However, UO was definitely not the first MMO, it was just the first to break 100,000 subscriptions.
The Realm and Meridian 59 both preceded UO and reached tens of thousands of subscribers. If I recall correctly, The Realm came out nearly a year earlier and had 30,000 subscribers at the time when UO only had 50,000; that's pretty decent competition. Also, shortly before Meridian 59 launched, they had 20,000 participants and it came out well before UO. So, UO was not the first, UO only took MMOs to another level by using the popular Ultima franchise and with the luck of the eBay viral marketing phenomenon to break past 100,000 and leave the other two behind only in the tens of thousands.
As for which development was started first, UO or EQ, I'll have to get back to you on that one.
From wikipedia, UO began development in 1995 and EQ began in 1996. Interesting that EQ began development before UO was even released - didn't know that.
UO History
Ultima Online is the product of Richard Garriott's idea for a fantasy game involving several thousand people who can all play in a shared fantasy world. There were a number of prior games that allowed hundreds of people to play at the same time, including The Realm Online, Neverwinter Nights (the AOL version), and Meridian 59. However, Ultima Online was intended to be a significant improvement over the previous games, both graphically and in game mechanics. The initial team was composed of Garriot, Starr Long, Rick Delashmit and, a bit later Raph Koster, who became the lead designer for the project. Koster wrote a number of public "designer letters" and usually went by his nickname of Designer Dragon.
The project started in 1995 and was shown to the public at E3 in 1996. At the time (in the mid-1990s), Ultima Online was a very expensive project and quite risky for the company. The development cost was much greater than traditional computer games, it relied on people accessing servers with modems, and it attempted to transform the Ultima series into an entirely new genre. Ultima Online was an ambitious game on a number of fronts, such as:
Upon release in mid-1997, Ultima Online proved to be very popular, reaching 100,000 paying subscribers within six months of release. Subscriptions grew for several years reaching a peak of some 250,000 paid accounts. Origin was able to make a great deal of money from the monthly fees required to play Ultima Online and many other companies took note and began development of their own massively multiplayer games. The most successful games after Ultima Online have been EverQuest (released in March 1999), Dark Age of Camelot (released in October 2001), and World of Warcraft (released in November 2004). The Korean massively multiplayer game Lineage was very much inspired by Ultima Online, as have many other subsequent online games.
EQ Development history
The design and concept of EverQuest is heavily indebted to text-based MUDs, in particular DikuMUD, and as such EverQuest is considered a 3D evolution of the text MUD genre like some of the MMOs that preceded it such as Meridian 59 and The Realm Online. John Smedley, Brad McQuaid, Steve Clover and Bill Trost who jointly are credited with creating the world of EverQuest have repeatedly pointed to their shared experiences playing MUDs such as DIKU and TorilMUD as the inspiration for the game.[2]
Development of EverQuest began in 1996 when Sony Interactive Studios America (SISA) executive John Smedley secured funding for a 3D version of text-based MUDs following the successful launch of Meridian 59 the previous year. To implement the design Smedley hired programmers Brad McQuaid and Steve Clover who had come to Smedley's attention through their work on the single player RPG Warwizard. McQuaid soon rose through the ranks to become Executive Producer for the EverQuest franchise and emerged during development of EverQuest as a popular figure among the fan community through his in-game avatar, Aradune. Other key members of the development team included Bill Trost, who created the history, lore and major characters of Norrath (including Everquest protagonist Firiona Vie), Geoffrey "GZ" Zatkin who implemented the spell system, and artist Milo D. Cooper, who did the original character modeling in the game.
EverQuest launched with modest expectations from Sony on March 16, 1999 under its Verant Interactive brand and quickly became successful. By the end of the year, it had surpassed the leading competitor, Ultima Online, in number of subscriptions. Numbers continued rising at a steady rate until mid-2001 when growth slowed. As of 2004, Sony reports subscription numbers close to 450,000. SOE released a Mac OS X version of EverQuest in 2003, incorporating all expansions through Planes of Power. Development of the OS X version has languished since then, but the server remains up and running, supporting a small but enthusiastic user community.