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Revive UO?
Motear
Member Posts: 18
Who here still plays UO (Ultima Online)?
I stopped after EA stepped in...Why do you think UO has failed after being so successful at start?
I know I for one I saw so much corruption, exploitation, and frankly just dumb moves forward (Neon colored items everywhere??). What's with so many expansions? What do you think should happen? Let it die, who cares, or it will revive?
1. What do you think caused the failure of UO?
2. What did you turn to after UO?
3. What would you do if you were EA? Or what would you do if you were in control of the whole game?
I for one would start over from the beginning, go back to the drawing board and see what made UO so popular in the first place.
UO: Kingdom Reborn had a touch up of graphics which was nice, but the feel failed.
UO: SA ...Just another expansion.
And what happened to the original story???
I no longer play, but every time I think of a MMORPG for some reason I get flashbacks of the endless hours trying to GM.
Comments
I would love to see an Ultima Online using the Torchlight game Engine.
1. I think Age of Shadows is what lead to the fall of UO.
Don't get me wrong, I absolutely loved the customizable housing... but aside from that the expansion was pretty bad. The worst of it was the complete shifting of the game from being mostly skill influenced, to very heavily gear influenced, which I felt just ruined the fundamental point of the game.
2. After UO I played SWG, the 'other' best sandbox MMO... until SoE destroyed it.
3. I wouldn't have driven Richard Gariott away. I wouldn't have gotten rid of server events. I wouldn't have shifted the game focus to be gear heavy. I would have added features to promote the game community, such as by allowing players to form towns. Added significantly more open land to cut back on the urban sprawl, and mechanics to encourage spreading out into the wilderness, aside from it being the only place to built.
havent these guys released an expension in the last quater if i recall.
My personal opinion is this...
I don't think going from a hard core pvp mmo to a "carebear" (trammel) mmo did anything to hurt thier subscriptions numbers.
I'm willing to bet that it increased them. For every vocal hard core pvp'er out there, I suspect there are several less vocal carebears. If WoW were a hard core pvp game I seriously doubt it would have the sub numbers it has today.
To say that UO's has "failed" at all is in my opinion an over statement.
I will agree that it (like most other mmorpg's) has declined in popularity over the years but I would attribute that to direct competition with Everquest , aging graphics and then later to the seemingly endless list of mmorpg's , f2p and p2p that have arrived on the scene in the last 10 years. All you have to do is look at the list of MMO's generated on this site alone to know that the competition is tough. Why should a 10 year old sprite based game hold anyone's attention for 10 years?
It was a great game. It is the MMORPG that got me hooked on the genre. Questionable decisions were made over the years but were these decisions made because of dropping subscriptions or did subscriptions drop because of the changes that were made? Once WoW comes out...how do you compete? You can't really (in my opinion).
If UO stayed the way it was pre-trammel I seriously doubt it would have lasted very long. As much as it infuriated some people ... I would argue that it was the people who had enjoyed the their status in game as griefers/gankers/bullies who were the most vocal about it. I would also argue that carebears out number pvp'ers by a significant margin. I'm not saying they (pvp'ers) do not deserve to have a game (Darkfall, Mortal Online, EvE). I do feel that any game developer that commits itself to a pvp full loot model is admitting up front that they are most likely not going to become a block buster title like World of Warcraft. CCP has demonstrated the viability of a full loot pvp model. I'm hoping Darfall and MO are successful as well.
I've tried to embrace the full loot full pvp model myself but I gain very little pleasure (with exceptions) in taking someone else's stuff and I certainly do not enjoy losing items I have worked hard and long to obtain. I totally understand the appeal it offers to some but its just not my thing.
So that is my take on "UO". It was/is not a failure. It was/is a success. Its slow decline is more a natural process than the result of any decision made by the developers.
To reduce "urban sprawl" in real life you would encourage people to live in the city. Your suggesting they move further out in the wilderness which by definition is what Urban sprawl is (if I'm not mistaken).
To reduce "urban sprawl" in real life you would encourage people to live in the city. Your suggesting they move further out in the wilderness which by definition is what Urban sprawl is (if I'm not mistaken).
Perhaps that wasn't the best choice of words on my part.
What I was trying to get at, was essentially to add so much land mass that the housing was more spread out and scattered, rather than being tightly packed in every inch it could be placed.
Trammel was the bullet-to-the-head to 'official' UO. I truly believe that. I attempted to play on official UO servers recently, and didn't even recognize the game. I remember when they announced the creation of Trammel, I was dissapointed. I knew Trammel would bring death to UO's PVP.
The only good memory I have with Trammel was the initial housing rush. Everyone logged onto the game at 'X' hour, the servers were incredibly laggy, and everyone had their deeds ready to place. I actually was able to place a 'two story log cabin' right at the Brit 'X-Roads'. Perfect location......for PVP...but FUCK YOU TRAMMEL!
Anyway, I currently play Darkfall, and still play UO on an extremely popular player made server.
I think the introduction of Trammel killed UO. I wouldn't have mind Trammel that much if Trammel wasn't a carbon copy of Felluca(and Brittania) without any downsides. They should have made Trammel a region that bordered Brittania with new dungeons and areas for housing. I couldn't find any reason, other than PVP, to play the Felluca facet. They should've done what CCP did with EVE Online, make PVP and non PVP zones with different rewards.
Right now I would definatly play UO again if they made a pre-trammel server with maybe a few things of post T2A, like customable housing. Combine the good PVP aspects of both pre and post UO:R like pre-casting/instant hit and archery/inscription/poison skill changes.
And no matter what anyone says, making it FFA full loot PVP would relegate it to small niche status with no more than 250K players. That might not be a bad thing to many people's eyes, but EA is never going to develop a game for that small a target market.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Played it since day 1, left like some of you after EA took over and introduced Trammel, and slowly killed the story line and started adding things that were not supposed to be in "Ultima", from pottery, to architecture, cyber blackthorn (or he looked like it), samurais and whatnot.
They also never fixed the overpowering lamers...err tamers, so anyone that wanted to immerse into the role of a heavy plated halberd fighter was pretty much dead in any situation.
The graphics never bothered me, in fact to this point in 2010, I'm still looking for RPG's that look similar.
Like some above me, I left for DAoC when it released with my UO guild, ironically I left DAoC shortly after EA took over.
As to what could be done to revive it? Besides taking it back to at least the Delucia/Papua expansion (forgot the name), they would need to increase the world, as it was it was huge enough to get lost for hours (without UOAM
) but the houses and castles everywhere was a problem that could be addressed, have the option of running the game in the old over the head 3rd person view, or over the shoulder like The Witcher, which would require 3d graphics when in that mode.
I loved the old UO crafting so wouldn't change that, likewise for the magic.
But most important would be to actually make publicity for it, bring players into the story. WoW might be a pile of it, but they did something right that no other MMO had done at the time and for a while after, publicity, get it in magazines, banners on the net, then on TV and so on, that's what gave them the numbers.
now THAT would be a fantastic idea. The guys behind torchlight are already making an MMO, however. No idea what direction / target audience they are aiming for.
Fail???
How do you call a game that still has an active sub base after 13years and just released an expansion a failure?? This may be the funniest thread EVER!
www.90and9.net
www.prophecymma.com
Depends on one's metrics of failure.
Take subscription numbers for example... not doing so well compared to what they were in the game's prime.
Depends on one's metrics of failure.
Take subscription numbers for example... not doing so well compared to what they were in the game's prime.
You mean to say that the game isn't doing as well as when it was at its best?
Isn't that implied with prime?
Depends on one's metrics of failure.
Take subscription numbers for example... not doing so well compared to what they were in the game's prime.
You mean to say that the game isn't doing as well as when it was at its best?
Isn't that implied with prime?
Yes, having 10-25% less total subscriptions than the maximum amount is still pretty respectable. Having less than 25% of the peak amount... not so much.
Long and short of it: They did - They cancelled a good looking 3D MMO to focus on the then failing UO. They tried very hard to revive it with the graphical update and such (the game has a healthy sub base thou steady around 90-110k, correct me if I am wrong) but the overall game for people who used to enjoy PvP is dead since its UO mixed with WoW gear now.
I play all ghame