MMO's are currently massively disappointing to an old UO player :(

[micrometers]

What annoys me about MMO's is how much they are streamlined now, so that they feel more like beat-em-ups with some art assets rather than a real world with real rules.

WOW does generally do a good job, but one change that really really irked me over the years has been giving the shaman and paladin class to both factions. That was for balance reasons, I get it, but that was one of the more interesting RP aspects.

 

[Nebor]

Sounds like a griefer's paradise. I love it.

It was everyone's paradise, all things to all players.

 

[Arglebargle]

It was everyone's paradise, all things to all players.

Well, since it was the only one out there, it was both heaven and hell.

 

[Cuda1447]

I'm surprised you're not playing on some UO shard.

Are there really any decent ones out there with decent player bases anymore?

 

[darkxshade]

I've only ever played 2 MMOs, DaoC for several years and WoW until the first expansion. Both times I got very far in terms of ranking, reputation, and wealth and in the end, I find myself missing DaoC and wishing I was still in it while quitting WoW felt natural. In fact, I felt glad I quit WoW.

 

[Axon]

Yeah, the days of UO's style of play are essentially long gone. There are some games that maintain that hardcore attitude, but most don't want to put such efforts into a game only to have it potentially stripped away by one death.

 

[NikolaeVarius]

Just get back into Eve Online. It's the best MMO out there today.

Everything you talk about is in that game. I don't see how you could have a game that isn't 100% based off absolute sandbox freedom and expect it to NOT have a steep learning curve.

 

[Cuda1447]

Talk to me about Eve. Is it free to play or a monthly fee? Sell me on it, sir.

 

[maniacalpha1-1]

I tried Eve a while back and the thing I didn't like about it was that you fly your ship by proxy, that is, you issue commands almost like an RTS and your ship executes them. I hated that so much I didn't want to go any deeper.

 

[Nebor]

EVE isn't even remotely comparable to UO. It's a space game for crying out loud. Sure, it's open ended and basically everything is player run, but it's so much more complex than UO... I played EVE, it really didn't do it for me, at all.

 

[NikolaeVarius]

Talk to me about Eve. Is it free to play or a monthly fee? Sell me on it, sir.

Monthly fee, 15 dollars a month,

Game is 100% all about freedom to do anything you want. No level system, it's basically "skill points" that are garnered through time. Basically if you want to train "Cruisers 1" you just buy the skill book and assuming you have the prereq's, you just set it to be trained and after about several hours you will have Cruiser 1, this of course is contrasted with cruiser 5 which will take about 3 weeks of real world time to train.

It's a dog eat dog world. In Empire space or "safe space" you are theoretically "safe" from being killed, but that only means a guaranteed death for the aggressor in empire space. However, there is nothing stopping you from killing a target in Empire space before NPC police blow up your ship. If you die in a ship, the ship is lost, the contents of the cargo are mostly gone, and if your escape pod gets blown up, you lose implants. This of course could be worth billions upon billions of ISK, thousands of dollars of real world money.

Or you can go into uncharted space, no NPC police, just you, the universe, and the thousands of players vying for control of it. If you don't pay attention you WILL Die. And you WILL lose everything on your ship. Wars involving hundreds of ships on the same system occurs, as well as cat and mouse games between smaller gangs vs entire fleets. There are player owned stations that mine minerals on moons which can be invaded, and destroyed, or blockaded.

Eve is a game where if you suck and don't learn how to play, you're going to quit pretty fast, because you simply will not have the skills needed to survive.

There is really nothing today that compares to Eve at all. The concept of being able to lose everything you ever had in one second due to not paying attention is an amazing system. Complexity allows for amazing things, people have HUGE speadsheets with hundreds of updated module and item costs and have trade routes running through the entire galaxy with billions of isk running through their wallets. Station management is insane with shit tons of raw materials being mined, conversion of raw materials into usable minerals, and finally manufacture into modules or ships.

My favorite memories involve futile last stands and guerilla warfare against Red Alliance. One day in 00 space, we were going along normally, the BOOM 200 ships who somehow managed to elude our scouting parties warp into the system and start destroying mining ships left and right as we start going on alliance chat trying to put together an effective defense. It was the start of a long two weeks where our 200 man alliance fought against an alliances several times larger than us. Capitals ships EVERYWHERE. We got wiped out. I still had when I quit several hundred million isk worth of modules in that 00 station that I cannot claim because the entirety of space is now claimed by RED.

 

[maniacalpha1-1]

Have any old MMORPG games been set up around the idea of capturing entire cities/sections of the game world? And once captured, for example, the guards of such city will always recognize the members of the faction/guild/etc that currently holds the city as friendly?

I would love to see a game like this where guilds or factions or whatever can hold a city, and they can choose to either kill all who try to enter(and set the NPC guards to do the same) OR they can use it to their advantage and charge admission of some kind, gain commission off item purchases from NPCs, etc. The game could be specially balanced so that you sort of need to visit various cities, they could make quests/etc easier, but not that you MUST do it, there'd be workarounds.

And of course, you could organize massive raids to take over a city, whether simply because it's PvP and that's what you do, or because the owners are not allowing/charging too much to enter.

 

[Maximilian]

Sounds like a griefer's paradise. I love it.

Ditto :awe:

 

[KMFJD]

Have any old MMORPG games been set up around the idea of capturing entire cities/sections of the game world? And once captured, for example, the guards of such city will always recognize the members of the faction/guild/etc that currently holds the city as friendly?

I would love to see a game like this where guilds or factions or whatever can hold a city, and they can choose to either kill all who try to enter(and set the NPC guards to do the same) OR they can use it to their advantage and charge admission of some kind, gain commission off item purchases from NPCs, etc. The game could be specially balanced so that you sort of need to visit various cities, they could make quests/etc easier, but not that you MUST do it, there'd be workarounds.

And of course, you could organize massive raids to take over a city, whether simply because it's PvP and that's what you do, or because the owners are not allowing/charging too much to enter.

Shadowbane and Darkfall

 

[Cuda1447]

For anyone whose interested, I've found a UO shard with about 1000 active players on at any given time. Its based on a lot of the old rule sets.

Im actually thinking of picking up and playing a bit, but I'd like to have some AT guys with me, if any of you are interested.

 

[maniacalpha1-1]

Shadowbane and Darkfall

Reading about Darkfall it seems interesting. Anyone know if it's worth getting into it now? ie, will it take a long ass time to get up to speed?

 

[BoberFett]

I had such high hopes for SWG back in the day. More of a playground than an MMO. Too bad SOE borked it so badly and never finished the damn game. Instead of fixing the problems and building on what they had done right, they reinvented the game every year. Tragic, it could have been so incredible.

 

[zokudu]

UO was garbage the only people who enjoyed it were griefers and jerks as said above.

I was all kinds of into SWG though just for the fact of it being very player driven. Too bad they ruined that one too.

Also this is totally a repost. Theres a thread that gets bumped with essentially the same OP every few months,

 

[Nebor]

UO was garbage the only people who enjoyed it were griefers and jerks as said above.

I was all kinds of into SWG though just for the fact of it being very player driven. Too bad they ruined that one too.

Also this is totally a repost. Theres a thread that gets bumped with essentially the same OP every few months,

I loved UO, and I wasn't a jerk or griefer at all. I used one character for everything, he was a grandmaster bowyer back when that took about 8 months to accomplish. So it's not like he was totally dedicated to combat, but I could hold my own and was part of an active anti-PK guild. UO was like real life, there are good guys, and there are bad guys, and then there's all the people just trying to do their own thing.

 

[maniacalpha1-1]

Now, I understand that back in UO's day, that was like what, the only graphical MUD around?

But now, when games have both PvE servers and PvP servers, who's the real griefer? The PKer, or the people who knowingly choose PvP, then call people griefers for killing them?

 

[rstrohkirch]

For anyone whose interested, I've found a UO shard with about 1000 active players on at any given time. Its based on a lot of the old rule sets.

Im actually thinking of picking up and playing a bit, but I'd like to have some AT guys with me, if any of you are interested.

http://www.gamesites200.com/ultimaonline/

Plenty of people still play and there a decent amount of 500-1000 active player servers

 

[Nebor]

Now, I understand that back in UO's day, that was like what, the only graphical MUD around?

But now, when games have both PvE servers and PvP servers, who's the real griefer? The PKer, or the people who knowingly choose PvP, then call people griefers for killing them?

I played Vanguard at release on the PvP server. There no rules, no off limits areas, nothing. As in UO, I was interested mainly in crafting and participating in the economy, and as I worked to increase my crafting skill, I would regularly get ganked by people 30+ adventuring levels ahead of me. Of course, in Vanguard you only lost 10% of your cash when you died to another player, so usually it was easier to just give them all of my money rather than sit there and get killed for an hour and not get any crafting done. And I never complained one bit.

 

[maniacalpha1-1]

I played Vanguard at release on the PvP server. There no rules, no off limits areas, nothing. As in UO, I was interested mainly in crafting and participating in the economy, and as I worked to increase my crafting skill, I would regularly get ganked by people 30+ adventuring levels ahead of me. Of course, in Vanguard you only lost 10% of your cash when you died to another player, so usually it was easier to just give them all of my money rather than sit there and get killed for an hour and not get any crafting done. And I never complained one bit.

My first MMO was Everquest, on Rallos, so I'm kind of partial to the idea of having a level range, ie you can attack anyone within 5 levels up/down, instead of level 100s being able to attack level 1s. But you should never blame the players taking advantage of it, but instead the gaming company. of course, Rallos allowed anyone to attack anyone, most PvP nowadays is apparently faction based like TOR is, Empire can only attack Republic, an Empire player can't attack another Empire player.

Level 100s giving support to their buddies who are level 10 as they attack people between 5-15, that's OK.

Of course, I also like the idea of 1 item loot plus all coin currently on the body as well.

 

[pontifex]

i always find it funny that it seems like the only people who like the permanent death/looting players/hardcore game styles are people who like to grief other players.

basically the people who like being jerks to other people. must have something to do with small penis, no friends, no gfs, etc.

 

[Nebor]

i always find it funny that it seems like the only people who like the permanent death/looting players/hardcore game styles are people who like to grief other players.

basically the people who like being jerks to other people. must have something to do with small penis, no friends, no gfs, etc.

You're excluding the masochists like myself, who are mainly interested in crafting, but enjoy arbitrarily losing everything at the whim of some angry 15 year old griefer.