Seriously, am I the only one yearning for a return to the glory days of UO?
I liked UO because it wasn't about who was the highest level or who had the best equipment. It was a far more social game than any other game to be released since. It was about friends and killing stuff and almost entirely player-driven economy.
I'm getting sick of these MMOs that come out that are all clones of each other. The industry needs someone to branch out away from the traditional race/class archetype and give us a sandbox again. I liked being a warrior who could cast 8th circle spells. The simple inventory and weapon/armor system wasn't a hindrance to the game...it's what made the game good. There wasn't any min/maxing to get my resistances just so and my dex and str just yay. It was nice to know that if I'm going to Deceit today, I'll need my silver weapon, otherwise my "kryss of power" would be sufficient.
I find myself trying all these new games, and none of them suck me in the way UO originally did. WAR is a flat out clone of WoW. And every other game takes the race/class denotion way too far. UO was great because everyone was pretty much on an even keel, it's just that they did things differently, and no one could do everything.
We need someone to break the mold of where current games are going and bring a return of the online sandbox. Seriously, UO had the best of everyone: economy was player-driven, housing was by far the best of any game ever released, mounts were fair and useful but not overpowering (and why the hell can't any other game do mounted combat?), the game rewarded use of a skill and not time put in, the game was almost perfectly balanced, PvP was exciting and dangerous at the same time, etc, etc. The list goes on. Virtually every aspect of an online game was perfected in UO.
And then came UO:R. Made the game too easy. Then came AoS, which made the game like every other game...races, classes, and an inventory system that was no longer brilliant in its simplicity. Raids were the norm, and the player economy broke down. There was no more PvP at this point, no more risk.
Some people might point to UO's subscription numbers and say "well, it only had 200K at its high point, WoW has 11 million". Well, yes, that's true, but look at the total number of people who played online games at the time. 200K in 1998-99 was virtually the entire MMORPG market. Back then, "always-on" internet connections were not the norm, most people wouldn't accept paying a monthly fee for a game, and social networking an unknown concept. So, yes, while the game never reached 11 million players, one has to keep perspective...there weren't 11 million people capable of playing MMORPGs in 1997, let alone willing.
Now that the genre is more mainstream and accepted, I'd bet my damn life that a similar sandbox type game would be not just successful, but a complete blockbuster hit. A game doesn't need a contrived, poorly written "storyline" to be fun. It just needs to be fun. Ditch the story, ditch the race/class strife, and bring us back the glory days of games that were played just for the sake of being fun.
I liked UO because it wasn't about who was the highest level or who had the best equipment. It was a far more social game than any other game to be released since. It was about friends and killing stuff and almost entirely player-driven economy.
I'm getting sick of these MMOs that come out that are all clones of each other. The industry needs someone to branch out away from the traditional race/class archetype and give us a sandbox again. I liked being a warrior who could cast 8th circle spells. The simple inventory and weapon/armor system wasn't a hindrance to the game...it's what made the game good. There wasn't any min/maxing to get my resistances just so and my dex and str just yay. It was nice to know that if I'm going to Deceit today, I'll need my silver weapon, otherwise my "kryss of power" would be sufficient.
I find myself trying all these new games, and none of them suck me in the way UO originally did. WAR is a flat out clone of WoW. And every other game takes the race/class denotion way too far. UO was great because everyone was pretty much on an even keel, it's just that they did things differently, and no one could do everything.
We need someone to break the mold of where current games are going and bring a return of the online sandbox. Seriously, UO had the best of everyone: economy was player-driven, housing was by far the best of any game ever released, mounts were fair and useful but not overpowering (and why the hell can't any other game do mounted combat?), the game rewarded use of a skill and not time put in, the game was almost perfectly balanced, PvP was exciting and dangerous at the same time, etc, etc. The list goes on. Virtually every aspect of an online game was perfected in UO.
And then came UO:R. Made the game too easy. Then came AoS, which made the game like every other game...races, classes, and an inventory system that was no longer brilliant in its simplicity. Raids were the norm, and the player economy broke down. There was no more PvP at this point, no more risk.
Some people might point to UO's subscription numbers and say "well, it only had 200K at its high point, WoW has 11 million". Well, yes, that's true, but look at the total number of people who played online games at the time. 200K in 1998-99 was virtually the entire MMORPG market. Back then, "always-on" internet connections were not the norm, most people wouldn't accept paying a monthly fee for a game, and social networking an unknown concept. So, yes, while the game never reached 11 million players, one has to keep perspective...there weren't 11 million people capable of playing MMORPGs in 1997, let alone willing.
Now that the genre is more mainstream and accepted, I'd bet my damn life that a similar sandbox type game would be not just successful, but a complete blockbuster hit. A game doesn't need a contrived, poorly written "storyline" to be fun. It just needs to be fun. Ditch the story, ditch the race/class strife, and bring us back the glory days of games that were played just for the sake of being fun.
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