Anyone played Ultima Online?

[adams]

I loved the old Ultima games when I was a kid, and I'm sitting here looking at the Ultima Online site wondering if I should give it a try. What do you say?

 

[Ranger X]

My ex-roommate used to play that. There is a monthly fee and in that game, death is very critical. You lose like skill points, experience points, and stat points? Something to that extent and I hear a group of guys go around PKilling people and stealing their goods off of their corpse.

 

[frail]

Ultima Online used to be great. It's been over 3 years, at least, since i've quit. Played for a little over 6 months and to me UO was way more addicting than everquest ever was. For now though, I really wouldn't bother with it. Origin made so many changes to the game, etc that it has probably lost all its fun. Like I said though, 3 years is a lot of time. When I played bugs ran rampent, going from nothing to something in one day. You used to be able to do whatever you want whenever you wanted to. Now it seems they added a lot of restrictions, etc that lost the gameplay value.

 

[b0red]

Don't play, unless you have good self control.

I quit both UO & EQ! Now I'm FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!

Besides, isn't UO2 coming out soon?

 

[eia430]

I used to play UO-Rennisance about 6mo back and played it for 3mo. I enjoyed the game but quickly learned that I had plenty of reasons to HATE origin (the makers of UOR) The servers are always down and they always go down without warning and you loose 5hrs of game time here 3 hrs there which represents a lot of money (if you were gathering resources). The game councelors (those from origin that "helped" people) don't give a rat's behind about your problems and always give the SAME ANSWER like a broken record... "I'm sorry there's nothing I can do about that" Origin just gives one lie after another weather its a promise of features on the box that you read as you bought the game that don't exist when you hook up on-line. Or weather it's a promise that on such and such a date this feature will be delivered. It actualy got so bad that a lot of people protested in masse on-line in-game by wearing red robes and meeting at one location (300+ people) What do the Game dorks do? (the Origin game councelors) they don't like mass protests that are make origin and themselves look like idiots by having EXTREMELY unhappy customers so they start throwing people in jail (in-game) for no reason at all, rather randomly.

I was never thrown in jail but that experience left me with such discust that even though I hated to throw away 3months of game time, I realized that Origin does not deserve my $10 a month. So I quit the game entirely.

If you plan on playing Ultima Online do yourself a favor by going to their website and reading their disclaimer. Basicly if you buy the game at a store, take it home and all it does is lock up on your computer (or otherwise does not do what it is supposed to do)you are $hit out of luck. They have ZERO warranty on their product not 90 days not 30 days but ZERO warranty. They are not willing to back up their product AT ALL WHATSOEVER and will even put it down on paper. If you are going to spend $10 a month for on-line gaming do yourself a favor and spend it with a company that gives a rats A$$ about their customers and their product. Play Asheron's call, or Everquest, Ultima Online is actualy a pretty decent game (play wise) but it's owned and operated by the biggest piece of $hit company (origin).

 

[wyvrn]

A lot of people where I work play EQ during all of their spare time. It is all they talk about, all day long. Talk about needing a life!

 

[The Wildcard]

Yeah Everquest is much bigger and popular.

 

[Spindler]

whatever you do.... DO NOT BUY ULTIMA ONLINE OR EVERQUEST!!!!! ...unless you plan to lose complete control over your life!!

i played both and on both instances, got so addicted to it that i had no life whatsoever, and before i realized it, i had lost all i had. i ended up not going to classes and failing a semester and ended up quitting my job so i can have more time to play!!!!! i was seriously out of my mind during that phase of my life. i breathed and lived UO first, then when EQ came out, lived and breathed that. i'd sleep about 2 hours a day just so i can have more time to play. i hardly ate anything and lost about 30lbs. i really stank up the place as i rarely took a shower anymore as i hardly left my apt or talked to anyone. i lost all my friends, my girlfriend, my car, got evicted from my apt, but most of all, i lost a good year and a half of my life to those games :frown:

now i finally got my life back on track after having to face some brutal and harsh realities about what i've become with help from my family. if i could change what i did, i definitely would. heed my advice, you dont even want to get a taste of it. its more addicting than crack.

i'm sure some of you will make fun of this post but this is all true. sad, yes, but very true. i just really dont want to see anyone go through this. i never realized a computer game can have such a powerful influence over me til it was too late.

p.s. thank god i had the will power to not sign up for asheron's call. i was in the beta testing phase of AC, as well as UO and EQ and thats where it all started.

 

[SJ]

Everquest may be more popular but it is equally flawed, and butt ugly as UO.

 

[StageLeft]

spindler

I share your pain.

Lets see what UO did to me between Sep'97 and Dec '97.

I was in residence at university taking a total of 5 courses. I failed two of these and bum-rushed the other 3. I would stay up LATE into the night, waking far too late to go to class. Given that going to the mealhall for food would take too long I lived on chef boyardee with my hot pot and skim milk powder mixed with water and quik chocholate syrup. Although I managed to keep my relationship with my girlfriend I always just wanted to play. I'd tuck her in at night a floor above, and rush down for a late night gaming session. The guys on my floor would come in and watch me play and laugh at the same time of how bloody addicted I was. I'd still go to the parties sometimes but if there was one on my floor you knew what I was doing.

My brother and I finally stopped (both were playing for the same 3 months) on xmas eve and I felt a wave of relief wash over me. Sure I'd lost my months work - and we were extremely competent and even famous characters on the server by that time - but it was good to be over. Summer of '98 I played for 3 months again, screwing over my summer courses. That was it, I had to stop... but I didn't.

Summer of '99 I played one last time for about a month but UO was not like it was before. All of the patches and "balancing", finally I quit and knew that that was it. I am never going to play an online massive multiplayer game again - they are just too goddamned addictive - and my life isn't lacking, I enjoy life...but when you have some free time you want to fill these start flowing over wildly.

spindler

Did you really have ALL of those things happen? I tugess it takes on different people in different ways...as bad as it was for me, it was worse for you. Sorry to hear it We are brothers in grief

 

[Spoooon]

My brother used to play. This made him quit:

He was a low level guy. He finally got some decent equipment. A high level guy sees him in town. The high level guy is decked out in badass armor and weapons. He chased my brother down and killed him. When my brother looted the corpse, the high level guy was waiting. After the corpse was looted, the high level guy killed my brother's character again.

That would make me so mad...

 

[Pretender]

I have to also advise against UO. It is an excellent game (although I know there are 20 people right now ready to say EQ will kick it's ass, it's just a matter of opinion), and can be very fun, but for 2 important reasons, it's not worth it:

1) The game is starting to appeal towards newbies and screwing everyone else. For reasons I won't go into (mainly because only people who've played will understand), it's safe to say that OSI (Origin Systems, Inc, the company that owns UO) is messing up the balance of the game. It's still fun to play, but most of the original fun in the game that existed a year or 2 ago is gone, and much of the game was redone, IMHO, for the worst.

2) The game is very time-consuming, as mentioned by a few of the testimonials above. My friend, who also played the game last year, failed practically a whole half a year's worth of HS classes due to cutting school to play, and since he started again this yr, has also been cutting school quite often. I also did pretty bad in school, but wasn't as addicted. If you are strong-willed, you can probably get away with playing quite a bit in the beginning then being able to play a little bit once in a while, but if not, you'd better be ready to either get rid of the game, or a large portion of your life.

 

[Spindler]

skoorb,

i'm glad to see that you are no longer under the influence of the dark gaming force it is good to hear from someone who has gone through some similar experiences. yes, all the above really happened. i can relate to eating canned goods as well. i remember there was one week when i literally ate nothing but spaghetti-o's straight from the can without even warming it up and washed it down w/ room-warm water. all of which i placed next to my desk so i didnt have to go to the kitchen. it was just enough sustenance to keep me alive so i can keep feeding my gaming addiction.

i think my case was one of the more extreme ones. i really have no idea how you managed to pass the semester and keep your girlfriend! amazing feat i am just glad that we are both over these phases of our lives. i can look back at it now and finally laugh at what happened.

you are definitely stronger than me you managed to walk away from it a 2nd time when you started to play it again. i dare not try it again for i know i will lose control of my life if i do. it is good to hear from a fellow brother in grief i wonder if there's any more of us out there?

 

[Mucman]

I lost 4 months of my life to a text-based MUD! I will only start an on-line RPG if I am out of school and have a minimal of responsibilites (sp?). I always have the desire to start playing again but I find myself keeping myself busy so I don't start. The only exception I am making to this rule is for Middle Earth. I will monitor it strictly though. I will keep to a realistic maximum of 4 hours a day (I know it should be lower but I am being realistic). I can't believe I am planning my life around the release of an RPG due in 2 yrs!

 

[ElFenix]

whiners. i've had an account active for more than 3 years now, played it on and off. never really controlled my life. but i've gotten so i can build up a completely bad ass character without resorting to cheating or macroing in about 3 weeks. less if i try hard. the game really isn't all that hard to get to high levels. death is a bitch, if you don't insta-ressurect you'll lose most of the stuff you have on you (some things you can't lose) and if you insta-res you'll lose skill points (not stats, and there is no experience in the game) and then be killed again.

the servers do go down quite a bit, i think lake superior may be the worst one as far as history goes but they just brought in completely new hardware for that shard. so it should be good. haven't really played since the new hardware went in. the game is a lot more open ended than either EQ or AC. and i heard they're going to make the graphics engine 3d. but thats only what i heard, from someone else who heard ad infinitum.

to back up what spindler said, spring 98 i was taking 16 hours, and because i was up so late playing UO i couldn't get up to go to class. so i completely blew 2 classes, got a bunch of C's in the others. great semester, that one. and then that summer i spent the whole time on a cable modem playing uo, quake2, and reading tom clancy novels. i would go to sleep at 6 or 7 am then wake up in the afternoon. i did manage to keep showering though.

mucman: what have you heard about middle earth?!? last i knew of it the game developers had gone through two companies and its future was very unknown.

 

[SJ]

Origin Systems Inc, is not a company its a Brand, and its actually just Origin. EA owns UO, they make the choices what to do. Just like Westwood Studios, is a EA Brand. EAs in control now, has been for awhile.

 

[eia430]

elfenix, you said...

"whiners. i've had an account active for more than 3 years now, played it on and off. never really controlled my life. but i've gotten so i can build up a completely bad ass character without resorting to cheating or macroing in about 3 weeks."


Whiners? our warnings are not meant for you, they are meant for people that have lives... school, work,etc. We are trying to tell them the increased likelyhood that on-line RPG's will dig into their prior commitments. If you can build a "badd ass" character in 3 weeks in UO then you must spend more than 8hrs or more a day playing. If you can call us whiners then you shouldn't have a problem being called a lifeless looser.

 

[Mears]

Hey mucman, what MUD was that?

 

[StageLeft]

Mucman

Text-based MUDS are just as bad. I never got into them but while I was playing UO two guys on my same floor in residence failed out of university that year (the MUD based on Jordan books). One of these guys would sit in his room ALL day and ALL night with the door locked. His only calories were from coke, and he chewed tobacco all day long. His bed consisted of a mattress and a pillow (I swear to god, nobody knew where his blankets were). It was a sad, sad thing to behold. Every so often he would empty his full 2L bottles of Coke full of chewing tobacco spit because he would spit into the bottles and thats where the spit would go. He had gallons of coke-colored spit. The guy was _the biggest loser_ I have ever met or come across in my life. Not because of the MUD but because of himself

Elfenix

You should have seen UO when it first came out - with macroing it was possible to get a master fighter in a matter of hours - and I'm not talking about the bug they had during the first couple of days, but for months it was that easy. Even a master mage could be gotten to quickly if you had the money.

 

[Xcrown]

Dont waste your time with an outdated game with outdated graphics, horrible lag, even worse custumer service, and where you can get banned from the game at any second if you do anything at all that they dont like. No questions asked. I wasted 6 months on this game and cant belive to this day that I actually played that game. Sure, it was fun, but not worth 10 bucks a month.

Xcrown



Oh, and it has almost nothing to do with the original Ultima games.

 

[Mucman]

The MUD I was addicted to was MUME (Multi Users in Middle Earth).

Here is where I get my Middle Earth info... looks like EA will be taking over!

http://me.stratics.com/

 

[Mucman]

Now I think I am getting addicted to Rune

 

[Mears]

Mucman, if you ever want to experience a truly great Middle Earth Mud, check out www.angband.com It is the biggest Tolkien based Mud online. Very detailed and has a lot of users.

 

[DaBoneHead]

From a reformed UO'er...


I got started with UO just after beta, and played for a total of 3 years. I was addicted. I quit 4 times in that three year period, largely because of my frustration with Origin. They would just throw features in without testing them, and throw off the system, completely unbalancing the way characters had been developed, and rendering a character you may have been building for months worthless. Regular like clockwork, they did this.

Anyways, there are much better RPG's out there than UO. I am playing asheron's call, and if you ask me, the way they do level advancement is the way it should be done... no stat limits. Also, UO focused on PKing, stealing, and just generally anti-social skills. Whereas I am impressed by how AC makes people work together, and help one another out. I have yet to meet an asshole in AC, whereas UO was filled with them. The only thing UO has over AC is that the system of trade-skills. Sometimes you don't feel like dungeoun running, and just mining and making armor is something you might want to do... chatting with people over the anvil...

Stay away from UO. Origin is suck. UO, though it could have been great, sucks. It always will while Origin is managing it.

 

[StageLeft]

Those anti-social things you mentioned are why I enjoyed UO - sometimes. Many people were nice, but anti-social things prospered with the PKing. I watched my brother play EQ when we quit UO and I was like "whats the point?". All you're doing is fighting monsters, without proper PvP it gets so damn boring...Oh sure you can have "legal PKing" on some servers and what not, but then its just dueling. If you can't prey on the weak or the unsusepecting it takes a lot of fun away. When I say this the first 3 months on UO (right after beta) I was not a PK and was only PKed once. Some people were pked all the time because they were stupid

Even when I was not a PK I found it added massively to the game.

And yes, Origin is suck, they totally F**ked the game over so many damn times!