New games like old school Ultima Online

[Drakhar]

UO was fun, but I miss classic EQ more

I would play an old school-inspired MMO for sure (and assumingly with the same type of old school players). But yeah I'm pretty sure the game would flop hard from a combination of lack of prospective players and being spoiled by WoW and other MMOs.

[Rocketsurgeon]

UO never stuck with me the way DAoC did for PvP and purpose. No matter what your flavor, the old guard of MMOs got a lot of things right. Surely enough people still want those things for a game to be successful if they focused on them. You might never get a million players, but theres nothing wrong with that.
Right now I think the big problem is with investors moreso than the players. They dont want a profit, they want to be the biggest hit on the street. They want to have WoW numbers without the time and effort put into reaching them.
I have a hard time blaming sheep for where the shepherds herd them. Hopefully, the indie wave in gaming will hit MMOs and there will be a new generation of niche games.

[Future]

Nothing like a good old champ spawn, holding choke points for sometimes hours...

[COOLFACE]

Meridian 59 is the beef tho.

[Moomurr]

Ah i loved UO. A game so hardcore that even the mobs looted you.

Ah good old UO. Many great time were had on the Europa shard. Much Role-Playing , player run towns , Pk's , Anti-Pks , IdoC camping , nicking a blokes house key and robbing his house , calling your mule 'You' while training stealing and having the whole bank area stop for a second , queing up behind 12 people just to get a set of 'Lord Ulysses' verite plate!!.... i could go on all day!!

May be rose tinted but i have played nearly every mmo thats come about trying to chase the joy i found in Ultima Online , before Trammel , but alas nothing has come close.

You could never have the game play like that again sadly. You would be banned these days for opening a portal with one of your 'Death Runes'

[Metallikiddd]

Fun side-note: The person in charge of the expansion that utterly decimated Ultima Online (Age of Shadows. It basically turned UO from a skill-based game full of earth tones, into a gear-based RNG grind-fest full of neon colored weapons and "epic gear) was a gentleman who went by the name of "Evocare" at the time. You might know him as Tom Chilton, World of Warcraft's very own Kalgan. I've never figured out why driving a spear into the side of the greatest online game ever made should qualify you to head up World of Warcraft's PvP development, but... what do I know?

Yea WTF was Mike (the CEO) thinking when he hired this asshat?! He RUINED everything with Arena plus he poisons and corrupts everyone and everything he touches. GC came under heavy fire but it wasn't his fault. It was Kalgan who made GC mess up with is evil aura. All of this should have been plenty enough grounds to FIRE him.

[Ighox]

Other than maybe EvE there isnt a single MMO out right now where PvP has any consequence. PvP in games today is nothing more than zergfests because you know you have nothing to lose.

There's a ton of other full loot PvP MMORPG's out there, with various degrees of success.


And no, most of the "new" MMORPG crowd wouldn't like it but that doesn't really matter, there's a big enough niche crowd that enjoys sandbox games so that people keeps trying to create the games.
It's just a matter of time before someone creates a truly successful sandbox MMORPG that fits for everyone in that niche crowd.

[leipuri]

I remember how when you started you got pretty much nothing and had to figure out how you were going to move forward. I remember trying everything like doing some lumberjacking for wood to be able to make myself bow and hunting some birds for feather so I could make arrows and then hunt some wildlife. There wasn't some quest soon as you enter game telling you needed to save town from attacking enemies, but you were left to discover stuff by yourself or ask other players (bit like minecraft). Like you found out or someone told you that using scissors on sheep would get you wool which you could use on loom to make bolts of cloth and then use tailoring to craft cloth, if you owned house you could use wood you were lumberjacking to make your own loom to your house.

I am hoping Archage will be good because it looks like it got inspired by UO and I remember in some interview they even admitted that UO was inspiration for them.

If I could make mmorpg I would add security zone/loot system like in eve-online (where less secure system give different resources), crafting bit like in minecraft, event system like Guild Wars 2 instead quests there would be some rare on going events in world and housing/vendor systems like in UO where houses were part of actual game world than some instances.

[Blackeyecycle]

Ahhh! BRING BACK MY ULTIMA!!!
Miss PK'ing and body looting!! MY house!! AHHHH!

[wayspooled]

On the Catskills server, the Shadowclan Orcs and The Undead, Kinship Village, our guild The Rangers of the Heart and Que's Tavern.

I miss it too.

[Aceblackjack]

I had to respond to this thread after I have read it. There is a game with the feature of being able to stay any level you want and train skills to improve your character. It is called Shadow Worlds, you can find it at shadowworlds.com. The player base is low right now but that is because the non pvp server is down and we are awaiting important updates. I have played Shadow Worlds for atleast 7 years now and I still love it.

There are no specific classes, you build your char how you want and it's not completely level based. My ign on there is Luniz, I hope to see some new faces soon. I thought this game in it's own way is similiar to UO though there arent mounts or houses =/.

[alchemistiko]

i would like to see someone create a Ultima Online like game for browser with player housing, no levels, no quests just pretty much a virtual world set back in a different era...anyone down? on the other hand people could always go play the free shard uohybrid its pretty close to what uo was before age of shadows and there like 600-1000 players on at any time usually like 800

[Surlyman]

Ultima Online...hands down the best role-playing game ever made. WoW, Rift, Diablo, Star Wars, may all have there moments, but they will never match the depth and challenge of Ultima Online. Yes, it could drive you absolutely crazy at times. I remember dying my reagent bags black to hide in the backpacks easier.

How many games can you play were you can run through the woods, chop down a tree, make a bow and arrows, kill a deer and then make some leather armor from the deer? Zero.

How many games make your heart beat out of your chest as you are running away from a giant ogre or PKer because if they kill you they will take away that precious bag of regents which took you 2 days to save up for? Zero.

How many games can you actually have an impact on the environment of the game? Maybe by leaving a trail of gold coins just for fun or poisoning a delicious looking cake just to watch someone greedily scarf it up and then perish at your feet. Zero.

Call me nostalgic, but I ache for a modern version of UO. This game was unlike any other. I believe the pessimistic ones in this thread are wrong. An Ultima Online type game will happen again. We need to all jump on board when it happens. Populate it, share it and keep it alive. Modern MMO's are fun and have their place, but they can't even touch Ultima Online.

Keep up the chatter and keep hoping this type of game will be reborn.

[Ellesarath]

Hi! I am one of the "young" ones who actually were not around when UO had its glory days but my father has played with me on a private shard ^^.
Thus I know a little about the game you hold so dear and I felt compelled to inform you all that there is a *weak* attempt att making a modern UO remake. They have failed horribly but still make a much better reach than games such as WoW.

Game's known as Darkfall and will soon release its second edition which will be a remake of the game, I don't know much about that one but let me share some info on the current version:

Open PvP - attack anyone anytiem, anywhere - but suffer the consequenses of a global outlaw stamp (there is more to this mechanic which I don't know about, esuch as getting rid of outlaw status)

Skill based system where you get better at what you *do* not select from a little list.

Advanced guild systems with structured *war* between these guilds. The guilds can also build forts, and lay waste to other guilds forts. There is supposed to be several kinds of siege weapons allowing for advanced warfare - but I have not taken part in this content but I do believe the trailer even contains *battleships* but not sure on that one.

Mounts can be despawned - turning into small stauettes but while in their non-item form, whether ridden or not they can be slain, stolen and more.

Full player looting enabled - you can loot anything you manage to kill.

A destuctable world where any attack supposedly damages the game world, have not tried this content.

I am not aware of any player specific housing nor of any player owned shops. But there is some crafting and such in-place but far from evey item in the game can be crafted.

Anyway, I think I have said enough about it for now, it is *not* UO but in the modern day and age I am impressed (but unsatisfied) with their efforts.

Ellesarath Moonsnow

P.S a little of topic but I want you all to know I plan on playing Guild Wars 2, it's not even close to UO but I'd love people with your mentality to play, so just throwing it out there! This is the address to my GW2 guildpage - if you are interested signup! epicgw2 . enjin . com / home (had to throw in sapces cause the site wouldn't allow me to post links)

[ita]

This reminds me a little of old Runescape to be honest. It was as close to perfect as I can think of when not counting graphics:P.. and well, the community.

Anyway, I do think a game like this will be released again, when the age of morons ends. I think WoW is largely to blame for the current situation with the MMOs. It is/was so damn popular that everyone wanted to copy it so what we have now is WoW and a dozen of it's less popular clones. However, if WoW should die down to the same level like the rest, different MMOs can start coming out again as there wouldn't be the "universal success formula" any more. Hopefully then games would just be released for different audiences again like single player games.

[asskiller]

I just signed up here to revive this old thread. I want another uo. I signed up to SWTOR and closed my account before the free 30 days was up. When I canceled, I was asked why. I said it's because the only MMO I ever liked was UO. I am sick of these lame ass games that come out and are WoW with a different name. Hopefully I like guildwars 2, I never played the first one. I dont plan to either at this point. I liked being able to pickpocket other players, looting their corpse, getting my corpse looted. I liked having, a house, and a boat. I liked looting from decaying homes. I liked when you were killed you became a ghost and had to get revived by a healer. I remember always trying to return to my corpse with no weapon or armor just to try to get my stuff back. I miss being murdered and robbed by reds at the noob graveyard. I miss my runebook that could take me wherever I wanted to travel to. I remember one of my friends and I trapping another player on our boat and murdering him on the open seas. His ghost couldn't get off our ship lol. When you consider that everyone could buy a house and that there was realestate to plant all of them on. You must realize that the maps were huge. If the graphics werent so freaking old, I would be playing it right now. Sorry for rambling, but I will never play an mmo that is not at least as good as this old ass game. You would think that these days the technology exists to make a better game than WoW. However, developers seem to be developing WoW over and over with a new title.

[Fencers]

You would think that these days the technology exists to make a better game than WoW. However, developers seem to be developing WoW over and over with a new title.

Devs create games with the broadest appeal. Because they make money.

While UO/EQ were great in their day, they had a limited ceiling of potential players. There is a reason why say UO peaked around ~250k players and Warcraft skyrocketed to 11 million.

I am not saying Warcraft was a subjectively superior game. But Blizzard certainly found gameplay nearly ideal in it's goal; making tons of money for a long time.

[asskiller]

Devs create games with the broadest appeal. Because they make money.

While UO/EQ were great in their day, they had a limited ceiling of potential players. There is a reason why say UO peaked around ~250k players and Warcraft skyrocketed to 11 million.

I am not saying Warcraft was a subjectively superior game. But Blizzard certainly found gameplay nearly ideal in it's goal; making tons of money for a long time.

Part of that reason is that when uo was introduced hardly anyone owned a home computer, they were not yet a necessity. When WoW was introduced the computer was commonplace.

[Collected]

Ahhhh UO. I have fond memories of that game.. such as:

- Losing all your gear when you died.. and watching your horse get killed too.
- Being shown around a house owned by a PK and spending most of the time with my mouth wide open at all the gear they had stored away in chests. It really blew me away how much gear they had collected since turning PK. PKs were true outlaws in that game.
- Going hunting for the first time and feeling like I was in the middle of a huge world and wondering if I'd ever find my way back to town.
- The old school auction houses run by the community, where you would show up at a set time in a building and they would auction off items.
- Hiding loot behind walls to transfer to other characters.
- Logging in after a few years of not playing to find I had about 6 loyalty items and giving them all away to randoms at the bank.
- The 'hi bank guards' macro.
- The fun of blocking peoples rune points or renaming runes and sending people to the lich rooms.
- Camping for hours and hours and hours to wait for a tower to collapse so I could claim the land with a house deed.
- Hearing of people who stumbled across fallen down houses previously owned by PKs and looting all of the gear in their chests that was now on the ground.
- Spending an entire Christmas day buying up hides from an NPC and then selling leather bras back to him to make a profit and buy a house.
- Spending an entire day letting my friend kill me over and over so she could get her Great Lady title. Or was it Lady. One of the two!
- Black dye tubs.
- Using the boat hack to get GM in skills.
- Bashing the training dummies to get the first bit of the weapons skills.
- Solo'ing some of the harder content in dungeons by running back and forth behind a wall between shots.

So many memories. Sadly the game went a bit down hill over time and by the time they were offering a way to buy skill progression, I quit along with a lot of my friends and went over to EQ, and then WoW.

[Davlin]

Yes, I am necro'ing this thread. Aside from my own love of UO, I wanted to point out a few things that might misguide some folks.

Origin/OSI/EA/whatever the hell they are now actually allowed people to download the emulator software directly from their website.

This is unbelievably bogus. OSI (or any other derivative of their name) has never offered emulation software for their own game. This poster has mistaken OSI for RunUO, whom developed (and still is developing) the only feasible emulation software available for use by anyone.

These private servers are not cash-cows for the people who run them. It is possible to have paid accounts on some of them...

No, it is not possible to have a "paid" account on a "free" server. Players have the option to donate to the server for a variety of in-game goods/services. Donations are considered to be an act of giving without expectation of something in return, but for the generous support of the server, several Owners tend to give out "rewards" in-game.

there was a VERY popular one several years back called "Defiance" that allowed players to pay monthly fees for extra perks

The server this poster is referring to, is part of UOGamers, a subsidiary that is owned and sponsored by RunUO itself.

I saw a post exactly like this one in another forum where people were giving the OP crap about rather or not posting about private UO servers was illegal like posting about WoW servers, but I can't find that post now.

There is a huge difference between a "free" server emulating World of Warcraft, and that of one emulating Ultima Online. Blizzard actively pursues servers emulating their product while EA has openly embraced the free shard community in the last few years. While it's still "technically" against the ToS, there have been a number of developers working for EA that have acknowledged their own presence on various free shards for the purposes of gauging what players are interested in most, and to formulate new concepts for production servers. Fact is, so long as shard owners are not making personal profit in the way of actual subscriptions, free servers are hardly a blip on EA's radar as they're the primary reason the UO community hasn't vanished completely. If EA were to file injunctions against RunUO and servers using the RunUO software, they'd be losing at least half of their subscription base. If EA were ever to actively pursue any free servers, RunUO would certainly be first on their list... and folks, RunUO is still here.

---

That being said, I think it's fairly evident that I know my way around the free shard community. I too started out with an EA subscription but the creativity and uniqueness residing within the free shard community piqued my curiosity, thus I left the OSI servers and never looked back.

UO is far from dead. While it may not boast the gaudy numbers that WoW puts up, it also caters to a specific breed of gamers that has been mentioned throughout this thread. The days of self-entitlement and monotony began with the launch of WoW and the look-alike clones that came after. In reality, I could cast the spotlight on the likes of Runescape as well (which is a direct knockoff of UO), but Runescape is hardly worth wasting the energy on.

I can tell you all with certainty, that the free shard community is thriving. There is even a breakaway project known as Orbsydia that has been focusing on emulating the latest content produced by EA (Stygian Abyss / High Seas). No need to take my word for it, feel free to Google both projects (RunUO and Orbsydia). RunUO's community alone dwarfs MMO-Champion (no offence). While you're at it, Google some of the bigger name servers such as Pandora, ABC, Second Age, Excelsior, etc.

I myself, have been developing my own server for the last few months and thus far it's been quite successful and been one heck of a blast. Finding interested players can be problematic, but that's simply because the "word" isn't out there. As has been mentioned, it's difficult enough to provide funding for the hardware/connection to support a decent player base of 100-200 players; attempting advertising on the side has proven to be difficult over the years only due to the misconception that it's "illegal". Most of that is fueled by WoW fanatics who are either too young to actually have relevant knowledge or are simply ignorant to the facts.

If I'm infracted for this, so be it. I hardly have the time for WoW anyway (and even if I did, D3 would take priority). If you're interested in more information surrounding the free shard community, or simply want to jump right in to one right away, feel free to check out Imperium UO (www.ImperiumUO.com), check out the Download & Connect page, and then head on over to the forums and signup there for assistance (if needed).

Simply put, UO is far from dead, and the free shard community grows daily. It may never compete with WoW, but it'll forever hold a special place in the hearts of true gamers.