5 ms·

Still hopeful that someone will make a new exciting sandbox MMO that fills the gap left by UO.

by victorclf 4y ago

v8xi 4y ago
there with you - UO was the greatest game I ever played
- axus 4y ago
  A game development pair working on a kind of similar MMO for the last 10 years. "Haven and Hearth" has all the house building, player killing, crafting, and trading. No pre-made safe zones, though, and it resets every year or two. I think all of these small, independent efforts fall under the radar without the advertising of more expensive games. I don't know if UO was well-advertised at the time, but it was certainly the only option at launch!
  - nerdix 4y ago
    UO was well advertised before launch. One of my most prized possessions as a kid was a summer of 1996 (want to say June) issue of PC Games magazine that had an in depth preview of UO. It came out about a year before the game actually launched. I probably read that article about 100 times. I was never going to get my parents to pay the monthly subscription fee so that magazine and my imagination was the closest I got to UO until I was in college and could afford it myself (that was during Age of Shadows and EverQuest had already supplanted it as the most popular MMORPG) In the late 90s, Ultima was still one of the biggest (if not the biggest) PC/Western RPG franchises. UO launched before Ultima 9 kind of killed the franchise. I'd be surprised to find anyone who was really into PC gaming during that era that hadn't heard of Ultima Online.
no_wizard 4y ago
It appears to be still around? https://uo.com/ https://uo.com/ EDIT: looks like it changed hands a number of times, very unlikely its as good as it once was, I imagine
- cottenio 4y ago
  Not really “changed hands.” Stages: 1. EA with original Origin devs 2. EA post-Origin 3. EA, integrated into Online group (with Westwood) 4. EA Mythic (UO & DAOC) 5. Broadsword (owned by the former GM of EA Mythic under a licensing deal) I think that’s fairly accurate. Older devs correct me if I’m wrong.
hoten 4y ago
I've been working on this sort of game for awhile now. Never too seriously, though that will change in 2023. Hardly worth sharing at this point, but I will anyway. https://hoten.cc/gridia/play/ https://hoten.cc/gridia/play/ I need to seriously think about what I want out of this game (more of a mmo game engine), but "UO-like" is definitely top of mind.
- alexose 4y ago
  I was excited to play but I couldn't make it past the character creation screen. There's a bug preventing me from spending all of my attribute points.
  - hoten 4y ago
    Huh, that's odd. I can't figure out how to get that problem to happen. Not even selected a preset works? By the way, if you manage to get it to work, make an account starting with '@' to get admin privileges. You could also explore the local play–it's the same server code, but running in a web worker instead of on my server.
    - victorclf 4y ago
      I got the same bug when I clicked create button without filling the "character name" field. Great demo btw!
      - hoten 4y ago
        ooooh yup that'll do it, thanks!
chongli 4y ago
Sadly I don’t think it can be done. I mean sure, the game could be written, that’s not a problem. The trick is to get people to show up and in particular get players to play who aren’t “UO fans.” UO was amazing because a ton of people played it who weren’t UO fans or even MMO fans because such things didn’t exist. The players were simply RPG fans wanting to try something new and what happened was magical and serendipitous. Now any game that tries to do the same will only attract UO fans or classic MMO fans. That original audience of people who were essentially naïve but open to a new experience are gone.
- jghn 4y ago
  It doesn't help that the majority of people who bemoan the loss of games like UO quickly reveal themselves to be the sort of psychotic players who are the exact reason games like that no longer exist. You'll hear things like "I miss being able to slaughter dozens of people and take all their stuff". Ok great, but your average player hates that sort of game. And you need a high prey/predator ratio to satiate such desires. I say this as someone who thinks of early UO as the best game they've ever played. I didn't mind that type of player, even spent most of my time fighting with/against them. But I also recognize that this segment is why we can't have nice things.
  - chongli 4y ago
    I am one of those rare people who actually really enjoyed the thrill of playing a miner (or some other crafter) and having murderers show up and try to kill me for my valorite ingots. It felt like high stakes (in game terms, low stakes in real life terms) hide-and-seek! Over the years I ended up wearing many different hats, of course. I had red characters and thieves and mage-thief hybrids (by far the most annoying character for people to play against). I participated in guild vs guild combat, I had a tamer, a bard, a smith, a fisherman. I loved everything there was to do in UO. On a free shard I even dabbled in programming, writing a bot to automate shearing sheep and storing the wool in the bank. That shard had a really high spawning rate for sheep so I was able to earn enough gold to purchase a keep to share with my friends in about a week of real time!

Still hopeful that someone will make a new exciting sandbox MMO that fills the gap left by UO.

v8xi 4y ago

there with you - UO was the greatest game I ever played

axus 4y ago
A game development pair working on a kind of similar MMO for the last 10 years. "Haven and Hearth" has all the house building, player killing, crafting, and trading. No pre-made safe zones, though, and it resets every year or two. I think all of these small, independent efforts fall under the radar without the advertising of more expensive games. I don't know if UO was well-advertised at the time, but it was certainly the only option at launch!
- nerdix 4y ago
  UO was well advertised before launch. One of my most prized possessions as a kid was a summer of 1996 (want to say June) issue of PC Games magazine that had an in depth preview of UO. It came out about a year before the game actually launched. I probably read that article about 100 times. I was never going to get my parents to pay the monthly subscription fee so that magazine and my imagination was the closest I got to UO until I was in college and could afford it myself (that was during Age of Shadows and EverQuest had already supplanted it as the most popular MMORPG) In the late 90s, Ultima was still one of the biggest (if not the biggest) PC/Western RPG franchises. UO launched before Ultima 9 kind of killed the franchise. I'd be surprised to find anyone who was really into PC gaming during that era that hadn't heard of Ultima Online.

no_wizard 4y ago

It appears to be still around? https://uo.com/ https://uo.com/ EDIT: looks like it changed hands a number of times, very unlikely its as good as it once was, I imagine

cottenio 4y ago
Not really “changed hands.” Stages: 1. EA with original Origin devs 2. EA post-Origin 3. EA, integrated into Online group (with Westwood) 4. EA Mythic (UO & DAOC) 5. Broadsword (owned by the former GM of EA Mythic under a licensing deal) I think that’s fairly accurate. Older devs correct me if I’m wrong.

hoten 4y ago

I've been working on this sort of game for awhile now. Never too seriously, though that will change in 2023. Hardly worth sharing at this point, but I will anyway. https://hoten.cc/gridia/play/ https://hoten.cc/gridia/play/ I need to seriously think about what I want out of this game (more of a mmo game engine), but "UO-like" is definitely top of mind.

alexose 4y ago
I was excited to play but I couldn't make it past the character creation screen. There's a bug preventing me from spending all of my attribute points.
- hoten 4y ago
  Huh, that's odd. I can't figure out how to get that problem to happen. Not even selected a preset works? By the way, if you manage to get it to work, make an account starting with '@' to get admin privileges. You could also explore the local play–it's the same server code, but running in a web worker instead of on my server.
  - victorclf 4y ago
    I got the same bug when I clicked create button without filling the "character name" field. Great demo btw!
    - hoten 4y ago
      ooooh yup that'll do it, thanks!

chongli 4y ago

Sadly I don’t think it can be done. I mean sure, the game could be written, that’s not a problem. The trick is to get people to show up and in particular get players to play who aren’t “UO fans.” UO was amazing because a ton of people played it who weren’t UO fans or even MMO fans because such things didn’t exist. The players were simply RPG fans wanting to try something new and what happened was magical and serendipitous. Now any game that tries to do the same will only attract UO fans or classic MMO fans. That original audience of people who were essentially naïve but open to a new experience are gone.

jghn 4y ago
It doesn't help that the majority of people who bemoan the loss of games like UO quickly reveal themselves to be the sort of psychotic players who are the exact reason games like that no longer exist. You'll hear things like "I miss being able to slaughter dozens of people and take all their stuff". Ok great, but your average player hates that sort of game. And you need a high prey/predator ratio to satiate such desires. I say this as someone who thinks of early UO as the best game they've ever played. I didn't mind that type of player, even spent most of my time fighting with/against them. But I also recognize that this segment is why we can't have nice things.
- chongli 4y ago
  I am one of those rare people who actually really enjoyed the thrill of playing a miner (or some other crafter) and having murderers show up and try to kill me for my valorite ingots. It felt like high stakes (in game terms, low stakes in real life terms) hide-and-seek! Over the years I ended up wearing many different hats, of course. I had red characters and thieves and mage-thief hybrids (by far the most annoying character for people to play against). I participated in guild vs guild combat, I had a tamer, a bard, a smith, a fisherman. I loved everything there was to do in UO. On a free shard I even dabbled in programming, writing a bot to automate shearing sheep and storing the wool in the bank. That shard had a really high spawning rate for sheep so I was able to earn enough gold to purchase a keep to share with my friends in about a week of real time!