The Case for Ultima Online Being Around For a Lot Longer

[Abe Sargent]

Ultima Online is still running. That might surprise you. After debuting as the first graphical MMORPG, UO set a lot of newly blazed ground. It also set the standard for what MMORPGS could bring and only WOW would break the UO standards a bit here and there.

Just recently UO celebrated its 17th anniversary. It will make it to 20, and keep going. It's a unique game for a variety of reasons, and it stands the test of time despite it's aged nature and the bad stuff.

So let's get over the bad stuff now.

1). In many shards, UO has a wrecked economy. 17 years of constant shards has resulted in an avalanche of gold. Everyone is (mostly) in end of the game mode where you have tons of extra cash, all of the best equipment, and tricked out characters

2). UO is an old game engine that debuted back in the 90s, and the enhanced client you can use isn;t that great nowadays compared to others.

3). UO has suffered serious power creep.

So that's the bad.

But teh good?

1). UO is still a unique RPG in terms of mechanics

There are no levels. No XP. You gain skills by using them. There are no classes. You can combine any number of skills that you want, within the skill cap (you have a cap of 700 (720 after vet stuff) so you can usually get 6-7 skills on there, and you can choose what and where). Your character is your own, and many skills have obvious interactions and others more subtle ones. I have a Mage with poisoning, because I can use it to enhance the power of my Poison and Poison Field spells. Both of which are pretty nasty with full poison.

2). Crafting is a vital part of UO. Much of UO's power creep came from allowing players to craft and build their characters up. You can make the best item for your characters with Blacksmithing, Arms Lore, Carpentry, Tailoring, Tinkering, Fletching and Imbuing. So players can make the best stuff out there pretty regularly.

3). Housing is a vital part of UO. You can plop down a house, and then you can customize the foundation, walls, and such, from tons of options. Once you've done so, then you can decorate it until you heart is fully contended You can craft furniture, decoration, and more to make your home truly unique and your own. I had a house Ibuilt like a pier, that I just sold about two weeks ago to upgrade for a Fort, the second largest home possible in the world.

4). They've added lots of mini-systems in the game. There are numerous subsytems in the game. Some debuted with it. You could grab a fishing pole, fish up some fish (and occasionally junk), sell or eat the fish, and then grab a boat, sail into the seas, and fish up treasure maps, messages in bottles, and of course, sea serpents and such from the deep. Then you could open the MIB, read the SOS attached, head to the coordinates with your boat (bring a sextant) and then fish up the remains of the destroyed boat. Then you get some good stuff.

Another subsystem was treasure hunting, which I loved. It was awesome. You grab a tattered treasure map, and then decode it with your Cartography. You head ot with a shovel and sextant, and dig up the ches,t and handle the spawn. Then you have to pick the lock with Lockipicking,and deal with the traps. (I use Magery rather than Remove Trap skill). Pop that bad boy open and loot away - but be prepared to deal with monsters attacking you!

And they've added loads more. There's an epic gardening system - grab dirt, water, and plant bowls. Find seeds on enemies and then plant them. Raise them for ten days, and feed, water, and deal with any infestations, diseases, r whatnot. Then you can cross pollinate them with other plants, collect their seeds or other things (some plants have resources), and then turn it into a decoration, and remove the need to care for it and put it around your house to spruce the place up. You can get different colors, different plants, and different resources.

They've added aquariums to hold and feed your fish and more. There are a lot of new subsystems in the game that appeal to different players.

5). Tons of new lands. Tons of new worlds to explore, new dungeons and more.

See UO began by always adding in expansions to flesh out the game. But then they decided to just change the game based on updates and publishes instead, so now you have a variety of ores to mine with that Mining skill and a pickaxe, or a variety of wood to harvest form a tree with the Lumberjacking skill. These have different values and colors for using to make weapons, armor, and such.

Tons of changes have been layered into normal updates.


So the game has kept moving in order to keep people playing. One of the changes they introduced where character tokens which you can (usually) purchase online. You can move a character permanently to another shard, for example. You can change your name, gender, race, or use one to build a quick character to get you caught up.

From adding in veteran rewards as a way to say thanks for playing to layering in things like Bulk Order Deeds to give crafters something to quest for, there have been a lot of changes introduced.


Now, here's why the game is feeling pretty good right now:

I thought the game was on its last legs, and I honestly would not be surprised to see it end anytime. Mythic was going to simply spin the wheels until enough people left to call it a day. But now? Not only have the transfer tokens allowed people to move to more populated shards (like Atlantic) but here, let me show you:


This is the timeline of expansions to the UO game:

Oct 23d, 1998 - Second Age
May 4, 2000 - Renaissance
April 6, 2001 - Third Dawn
Feb 12, 2002 - Lord Blackthorn's Revenge
Feb 11, 2003 - Age of Shadows
Nov 22, 2004 - Samurai Empire
Aug 30, 2005 - Mondain's Legacy
June 27, 2007 - Kingdom Reborn
Sept 8, 2009 - Stygian Abyss


UO announces it will move from the expansion model to booster model, and release 3-4 boosters a year

Boosters:

Oct 12, 2010 - High Seas


And that was it. No more boosters, no more expansions, nothing. The expansions always gave new lands to explore, new dungeons to delve, new skills to master and similar stuff. Multiple expanions (Shadows, Legacy, Abyss) redefined the game in major ways.

And then it happened....



Expansion #10 -

Oct 9, 2015 - Time of Legends




And it's a good expansion, not just some money grubbing thing. They took an old Ultima game (Worlds of Ultima: Savage Empires) and created a new area with it's own creatures, savage tribes, and more, all based on a sort of ancient savage world setting. You can head out and face dinosaurs and such.

And that is why I think UO is here for while longer. The lack of classic mechanics help it since there are no level limits or anything holding it down, there's always the need to tweak a template or try out something else. Some new creatures may be heard to fight with animal tamers (people who tame creatures to fight on their behalf) or bards (people who use music to get creatures to do stuff). Some are difficult for mages and others for close-range fighters and others for archers and throwers. It's always a lot of fun, and you need to tweak temples and find new skills to help overcome some obstacle.

And the game just keeps going. New subsystems (you have the 8 virtues from the Ultima game you can work to level up and each requires different ways to do so. For example, to raise honesty, if you find someone's missing stuff (an NPC) you can return it for honestly points). There's always a new place to head to, and changes to old places. Sometimes a publish will hit that will modernize an old dungeon and make it a lot different (as was done to Covetous). And the graphics aren;t that bad now with a lot of throwback games having similar ones.

It's going to last a lot longer. Say hello to our old UO overlords once again.

[Thomkal]

UO is one of the very few MMO"s that I have not tried. Is it still subscription based?

[Abe Sargent]

Originally Posted by Thomkal

UO is one of the very few MMO"s that I have not tried. Is it still subscription based?

Yup sure is.

[Thomkal]

Then sadly I won't be playing it.

[Groundhog]

I'd wager that after 17 years if it wasn't subscription there is no way in hell it would still exist.

[Abe Sargent]

True. Like I said. It brings in the monies.

I'm currently trying out the Chicken Lizards. There are these small creatures you can find and tame called Chicken Lizards. After you've had one for a week you can stable them if you want to use up stable slots instead of having them run around with you) they can bond with you. After they've bonded, if you feed them the right food, there is a chance they'll lay a Chicken Lizard egg (but only a max of two eggs weekly).

You can build Chicken Coops and use those to "stable" three of these if you want, rather than using up space elsewhere.

You can take those eggs and build an incubator and then water them and care for the eggs for three days. If you've cared for them well, then you can hatch them and get another Chicken Lizard. But there's also a 10% chance that they will hatch until a Battle version of the Chicken Lizard, which is pretty nasty and powerful. You can raise the Battle ones, (the more your pets fight, the stronger they get to a max cap) and use them against monster or fight against other battle chicken lizards other players have. My shard has a weekly Battle Chicken Lizard fight.

So I just grabbed a Coop, Incubator, and bought some eggs from folks that set up a vendor in their house, and then grabbed some water and such, and now I'm raising me some chicken lizards, with the ultimate goal of getting a battle or two in there.