Ultima Online by Broadsword

[Stradlin]

Over the last few days, I've seen people quite  matter of factly stating what a dead game Broadsword's  Ultima Online is.  Has happened few times too many for my taste, so I figured I'd go pay this old flame of mine a visit and tell people a bit of this dead game and how the corpse twitches!

Ultima Online was released in 1997. We speaking of a game that was developed back when consumer level internet, modems, ability to play multiplayer games over net  seemed like a fresh, exciting thing for most. When UO was new, ability to chat to somebody living in a different country was still something normal consumers were just gradually discovering.  There had been one or two MMos before, but UO was the first one that actually worked to some degree.

How on earth can this game still  be up and running, maintained and alive? This is a much more interesting question than repeated declarations of its death.

 
When trying to explain what kind of a game UO is, and just how different it is, and how on earth it still remains profitable for EA, it makes sense to talk about player houses,pvp  and pets! Ultimately game being alive revolves around those three things. Player Houses generates best stories(at least for a non pvp'er) so we start and perhaps end  with that!

 

Player Housing in UO
After experiencing Housing in UO, virtually all other player housing in all other MMOs feels bit..lesser than. Nothing in Ultima Online is instanced.   House you build and design is there for everybody to see and visit. ..If you leave the door open that is.  Houses placed on remote locations have virtually no value now - you couldn't find a buyer for a small house in the middle of nowhere. However, houses placed close to major cities are extremely sought after and fought over  even today, as are plots that can hold a large castle.

Currently, a house placed by a player stands for three months after their monthly subscription runs out. Then it collpases and all of the items, valuables player has gathered lay around for others to loot. These are always kinda morbid, melancholic and exciting moments. Years and years worth of digital lives, wealth and memories of somebody who has moved on just spill out and are there for anyone to loot for next few hours..before disappearing entirely. Some people approach these collapsing houses  like total vultures, just jump there to pick through the corpse of a house, loot all valuables and sell it on for profit. Others are more like historians, wanting to preserve memories or loot rares for their own collection. Some are creepily fascinated by what sort of trail the former owner has left behind: Player written books are a common thing in UO. Memoirs, diaries (in ic and ooc format alike are common. If a player owned castle falls in areas where pvp is allowed, guilds will wage a literal war over this collapsing castle.

Something like five years back,I was saddened to see Deepwater Public Library was about to collapse. This place is just what the name implies - a library of player made books sitting in an ancient, largely collapsed playertown. Had this been a large house or a castle  full of valuables, collapse would have turned into a major pvp event. Large guilds would have shown up,fought for the control of the surroundings of the collapsing house, winner clearing the valuables and, had in been a castle that fell, placing their own castle on the spot that just came free. 
....But these are but old books! Not many care of old books. They have no real monetary value. So it was just I, vulturing away half rotten book cases and stashing them away before they'd get deleted from the game world.  I disliked the idea of so much history of the RP community of the server disappearing, so I build a brand new Deepwater Public Library in the place where old had fallen and placed the original book collection back on these  brand new shelves. Today, it hosts hundreds and hundreds of utterly ancient player written stories once more accessible to all who'd care to  read them. 

There aren't many games where you get to do something like this. 
 

 

New Deepwater Public Library in all its glory!

You can decorate houses, just like you deco them in SWTOR. In UO, you can also build them, literally from the ground up. Wall and floor tiles, roof, windows..you have a pretty nice toolset for making (a 2d version of!) more or less anything you can imagine.

 

Bulk of the collection consists of ancient journals describing various in-game events taking place in late 90s and early 00s, when town  of Deepwater was at its busiest.  Town itself died long before UO reached peak of its popularity. People had no real concept of "Roleplaying in MMOs" just yet, but that's what they pretty quickly  ended up doing anyway. Some vampire had denied the result of an election!

 

 

 

Since you obviously want to read more about Deepwater Public Library, here's a link!

 

 

 

Edited June 8, 2023 by Stradlin

[Stradlin]

Incredible things about Ultima Online. Chapter one!

 

Original client was made in mid 90's. Various dev teams have tried replacing the client and  its graphics three times, always failing.

 

Around year 2000, they released  expansion called  3rd dawn, which turned player characters bit more three dimensional.  Idea was to watch as players switched to new client, then get rid of the old one.  New client Iooked awful and playerbase abandoned it in favor of the og client. UO was stuck maintaining two clients side by side for five years or so. Then they quietly killed the new client. 

Eventually they  released  another new client with intention to replace the old one. Turns out they made  same mistakes with same outcome once more, client quietly killed later.

 

EA also tried to make UO 2 and some other  mmo lite-themed Ultima. These were discontinued in favor of the og UO.

Today, UO is on its 3rd and likely final would be replacement of the mid 90s client. So again, game  can be ran on two different clients. Enhanced client looks like a cheap shareware game from mid 00s. It also comes with very complicated, clunky ui with tons of functionality. Classic  client looks like a timeless SNES classic from mid 90's but lacks tons of functionality of the enhanced client.

These are mistakes made long before Broadsword became a thing,current small dev team inherited the problems andbad calls of EA 

Edited June 9, 2023 by Stradlin

[WayOfTheWarriorx]

Respectfully, sounds horrific! heh

That isn't an objective statement though. There's no accounting for taste, but definitely not for me.

I wanna kill things, not build houses.

Although destroying houses...that could maybe be fun.

Can you attack other people's structures and take them over by force and kick the owners out if you're in a good mood and don't just kill them outright for resisting your assault?

Pillaging is always fun.

[Stradlin]

1 hour ago, WayOfTheWarriorx said:

Respectfully, sounds horrific! heh

That isn't an objective statement though. There's no accounting for taste, but definitely not for me.

I wanna kill things, not build houses.

Although destroying houses...that could maybe be fun.

Can you attack other people's structures and take them over by force and kick the owners out if you're in a good mood and don't just kill them outright for resisting your assault?

Pillaging is always fun.

 

I'm totally a builder myself! SH decoing is somewhere towards bottom of my top 5  fav things to do in TOR as well.So small wonder I like it so well in UO. It has tons of quite tense combat too, just that when trying to turn it into an interesting read for folks who'll likely never try it, it is much harder than chatting bout some housing ventures.

 

Combat is UO is, often, strangely tense and well balanced. Average  dungeon crawling experience in UO  might not always be dififcult, but it is almost always quite unforgiving. Make a mistake, and game will usually  have you pay for it.  As a tamer(ride your dragon thing to combat,,dismount and  then kill stuff with the said dragon) I use approx as many commands and spells as I'd use as a Sin in SWTOR. In UO, there are many PvE live events where I feel like I have burn through all my gamery gamer skills to win the day.

 

UO has strangely large player base, all things considered. Just that it is extremely scattered; offical servers that I mostly talk about here are bit less relevant, bit less popular and bit less..hyped  than several unofficial, pirated servers are. Latter have more life, perhaps bit more people and much more  action. Many pirated servers have unforgiving old school rulesets. On these servers you, as a house owner, have a literal key to the front door of your house. A thief might literally pickpocket you, steal your key and empty your house of valuables. Or a PK might kill you, and loot your key from your corpse and then clear your house. Production servers in UO have things more safe,there are client-side safety nets instead of literal keys in your inventory. In production UO, things security-wise aren't as fool proof as in, say, SWTOR, but certainly much more fool proof than they are in pirated servers. Lack of these safetynets is usually the key reason why people favor the pirated servers.

 

 

 

Edited June 9, 2023 by Stradlin

[WayOfTheWarriorx]

47 minutes ago, Stradlin said:

 

I'm totally a builder myself! SH decoing is somewhere towards bottom of my top 5  fav things to do in TOR as well.So small wonder I like it so well in UO. It has tons of quite tense combat too, just that when trying to turn it into an interesting read for folks who'll likely never try it, it is much harder than chatting bout some housing ventures.

 

Combat is UO is, often, strangely tense and well balanced. Average  dungeon crawling experience in UO  might not always be dififcult, but it is almost always quite unforgiving. Make a mistake, and game will usually  have you pay for it.  As a tamer(ride your dragon thing to combat,,dismount and  then kill stuff with the said dragon) I use approx as many commands and spells as I'd use as a Sin in SWTOR. In UO, there are many PvE live events where I feel like I have burn through all my gamery gamer skills to win the day.

 

UO has strangely large player base, all things considered. Just that it is extremely scattered; offical servers that I mostly talk about here are bit less relevant, bit less popular and bit less..hyped  than several unofficial, pirated servers are. Latter have more life, perhaps bit more people and much more  action. Many pirated servers have unforgiving old school rulesets. On these servers you, as a house owner, have a literal key to the front door of your house. A thief might literally pickpocket you, steal your key and empty your house of valuables. Or a PK might kill you, and loot your key from your corpse and then clear your house. Production servers in UO have things more safe,there are client-side safety nets instead of literal keys in your inventory. In production UO, things security-wise aren't as fool proof as in, say, SWTOR, but certainly much more fool proof than they are in pirated servers. Lack of these safetynets is usually the key reason why people favor the pirated servers.

 

 

 

Hey, I've never even seen the game, so what the hell do I know?

Thing is, if you, and presumably the playerbase there have fun with it that's all that matters.

I've been Role-Playing my whole life (Mostly Table top, but did some really kickass Vampire the Masquerade LARPing (Live action role play), and I've always been a hack and slash kinda gamer. I'm kinda like a barbarian in that regard.

'Builder' Online RPGs are surprisingly plentiful and popular so there's gotta be something to it. And UO has been around for a long ass time, so what it does it must do it well.

[Stradlin]

1 hour ago, WayOfTheWarriorx said:

 

'singly plentiful and popular so there's gotta be something to it. And UO has been around for a long ass time, so what it does it must do it well.

Oh its more like a lightning in a bottle that manages a large sum out of broken parts! Ig many sandboxes need that to really have a soul. 

 

UO was a cool place to RP as well. After UO, I  Always wonder how mmos would ever  even release without featuring character profiles players could write themselves. 

Edited June 9, 2023 by Stradlin

[ThanderSnB]

Does Broadsword still update UO or is it just maintenance mode? Also, how does Broadsword make money from UO? Does it have DLC or expansions, or just monthly subscription?

[Stradlin]

9 hours ago, ThanderSnB said:

Does Broadsword still update UO or is it just maintenance mode? Also, how does Broadsword make money from UO? Does it have DLC or expansions, or just monthly subscription?

It is a very small but relatively busy dev team. Still making occasional content patches and apparently working for a larger expansion.

 

When it comes to  the modest pile of remaining players, it is prolly more common  for one player to pay subscription for five accounts,than it is to pay for a single subscription. Mindblowing, I know!  This has to do with playerhousing.  One house/account and ppl like their houses! Maybe there's like 4k somewhat active players on official servers...with around 12k active subs between them. UO def  doesn't make  that  much money,but it makes so much more than it costs to run it. In fact, Im tempted to say no mmo has as good profit marigins as UO, heh. 

[Ardrossan]

The only thing I knew about UO before all this--great explanation/analysis @Stradlin--is that their players once PK'd an immortal, godmode avatar of their founding dev in-game. It's a very inspirational story 

Edited June 16, 2023 by Ardrossan

[Stradlin]

10 hours ago, Ardrossan said:

The only thing I knew about UO before all this--great explanation/analysis @Stradlin--is that their players once PK'd an immortal, godmode avatar of their founding dev in-game. It's a very inspirational story 

Haha, yeah that's such an epic story.. Richard Garriott (AKA Lord British, the creator of UO and Ultima franchise in general) gets asked about it in interviews to this day.