7 ms·

Ultima Online is the best gaming experience I ever had. In my opinion, nothing has come close to it in regards to game dynamics, was a proper open-world sandbox

Ultima Online is the best gaming experience I ever had. In my opinion, nothing has come close to it in regards to game dynamics, was a proper open-world sandbox. As I never found anything close to Ultima Online, I basically stopped gaming entirely. UO raised the bar too high.

dstick 6y ago
Same here - though Dark Age of Camelot came close. It wasn’t sandboxy but the RvR did scratch the PvP itch!
- andrepd 6y ago
  Star Wars Galaxies was another absolute gem at its prime. I never played it, but reading stories about the game makes me feel it's the one game apart from UO which truly came close to fulfilling the promise of a "virtual, persistent, shared world".
  - bovermyer 6y ago
    I played SWG from its release until its final shutdown, though I had several months-long breaks during the run. I posted a few articles on my blog after it was shut down in 2011. Here's one of them, going into the crafting system: https://benovermyer.com/post/2012/star-wars-galaxies-crafting/ https://benovermyer.com/post/2012/star-wars-galaxies-craftin...
    - syoc 6y ago
      Just want to say that I really liked the blog posts. Very insightful.
      - bovermyer 6y ago
        When I wrote the post I mentioned, it felt like just writing down my feelings on an extant system. Now, ten years later, it feels like I documented a part of history that hasn't replicated itself. I can't help but feel really sad about that.
  - myko 6y ago
    Raph Koster had a lot to do with both Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies. In some ways he's as influential as Lord British in this space. https://www.raphkoster.com/games/books/postmortems/ https://www.raphkoster.com/games/books/postmortems/ He has a book called Postmortems where he compiled essays (many found on his web page) about his early days writing MUDs and developing fantasy worlds, including UO and SWG.
- waynesonfire 6y ago
  Nothing has come close and nothing ever will. Mainly due to the fact that it wasn't just the game mechanics; but that all player types had no other option except to play UO. This, combined with the game mechanics, is what made UO a one-of-a-kind experiences. I feel blessed and honored to have had the opportunity to be a part of it. After so many years failing to find a UO replacement; I've accepted this conclusion as reality and as result, have stopped searching.
- matwood 6y ago
  DAoC had some of the better PvP mechanics of that generation of MMOs. I played DAoC for years, and eventually moved to WoW for a little while. WoW always felt too easy and never really gave me the same rush that DAoC did. I still remember the day I gave a friend of mine my DAoC accounts. He later sold them when he quit, and gave me some cash back :)
andrepd 6y ago
It's incredibly sad that by far the best MMO experience --- indeed one could say the only game which lived up to the promise of a shared, virtual, persistent world --- was also one of the first. It was all downhill after WoW. It was a great game, but it was precisely because it was so good that it soon hegemonised everything. Rather than being one possibility out of many, it became "the" MMORPG, in that due to its success every subsequent game copied WoW, often superficially, and maybe even sometimes accidentally. Its specific conventions became the genre itself.
- meheleventyone 6y ago
  EVE Online as well but that’s quite a different flavour. I played loads of UO back in the day and spent four years working on EVE. Very few games come close to touching either in terms of being so complex, almost to the point of being real spaces to navigate and live in.
  - avdlinde 6y ago
    I'd just like to point out the 'played UO' and 'working on EVE' =] I love EVE, I just can't find the time to work on it anymore.
    - meheleventyone 6y ago
      Haha, in my case I literally worked at CCP making EVE rather than the second job it can become playing it. Still some of the best community moments were with that job and the awesome people that play EVE. I had several great Fanfests.
NickBusey 6y ago
There are plenty of great, free Ultima Online servers to play on. No need to stop playing!
milofeynman 6y ago
It was a great experience. And I'll cherish it. Free servers aren't the same. Might setup a server on my local network some day to play with my kid.
matheusmoreira 6y ago
Tibia comes pretty close The older versions, anyway. Apparently it even started as a copy of Ultima. Never found anything close to it either. Every kid in my school played this game... It was like an IRC client with a fun game embedded in it.
- pkorzeniewski 6y ago
  Tibia was absolutely HUGE in my country (Poland) around 2002 and it was my first and last major experience with MMO. I remember it was the only time back then I voluntarily woke up early in the morning long before the school because the servers were usually empty at that time and the spawn locations were full of monsters which meant quick exping :-) Trying to sign in after the school usually took a looong time but once you did it, it truly felt like going to a different universe. Some time ago I got a craving to play the Tibia version from my childhood and it turns out there's an active server called [1] Classictibia where you play using the 7.1 client version on a faithful recreation of the world from that time - a real blast from the past! [1] http://classictibia.com/ http://classictibia.com/
gpderetta 6y ago
I played UO on an unofficial RPG shard for about one year. The server was was only up only a few hours during the evening (and would often crash), most of the mechanics weren't implemented, and those that were were often buggy. It still was one of the best (if not the best) gaming experience I ever had as well.
jedberg 6y ago
I only very briefly play UO. I'm curious if you could give more details of how how it was different to make it the best experience you ever had. What are games today missing?
- fatsdomino001 6y ago
  It was a incredible world to discover and explore (especially custom servers with custom maps and content). There was no 'point' to the game, i.e. no final destination or quest to complete... in fact there were barely any quests at all. It was all just up to you. However you wanted to play you could. I.e. you could just have a blast logging in and hanging out in a player's house which they converted into a bar and play chess chatting about w/e. I even played some great roleplaying shards which were legit, e.g. a LOTR one and it was soo epicly awesome. Good pvp dynamics. I did love the ruthlessness of losing everything when you died. I loved how custom shards could tweak so many of the variables pretty easily. I just have so many absolutely golden memories, hilarious and absurd memories. Idk... it's just really hard to convey how the game was the best. I think a lot of is just because it let you do whatever you wanted, but also provided you with fun PvE, PvP, roleplaying, etc. What are games today missing? They're not persistent open-world sandbox games. Sure we have open-world games, but they're not sandbox and often not persistent, and we have sandbox but they're not open-world and often not persistent too. I can't do it. I can't adequately describe what games today are missing which UO had. It's a quality of the combination of all the features UO had that just resulted in the best memories and fun I've had when gaming. I just don't see enough support for player-generated content as UO had, which I suspect is a big part of it too.
  - jedberg 6y ago
    Thanks for the writeup!
- kingaillas 6y ago
  Not the OP and I didn't play UO, but I did play a peer game out at the same time, Asheron's Call. AC, UO, and of course EQ were the big 3 early MMOs. Anyway, there was definitely more community back then, if only due to how there were basically no modern quality-of-life considerations. No auto-group finder, minimal instancing (no instancing?), loss of items on death... you had to lean on others to help you out and they would, because eventually they'd need your help. A classic example is doing a corpse run to recover your items. In a modern MMO, you die and can rez at some convenient spot with all your items. No real loss or penalty for tough fights, no risk. In AC, you lost xp on death, lost items on your corpse, and had to make your way back to your body to erase the xp penalty and get your stuff back. I think the timer was something like 3 hours before your corpse would decay and either anybody could loot your body or time items disappeared. I think UO and EQ were the same. Some of the most memorable corpse runs where when you lost your armor and had to get some friends to come with you since you were now half naked and perhaps weaponless.
agentultra 6y ago
It's being revived: https://uo.com https://uo.com
- jackstraw14 6y ago
  They've tried so many times to "fix" it. At this point, I think UO Outlands is probably the best UO experience you can get.
User23 6y ago
I earned my college spending money arbitraging UO real estate between in game gold and Ebay prices. It wasn't a huge amount of money, but I recall earning well over minimum wage per hour.

dstick 6y ago

Same here - though Dark Age of Camelot came close. It wasn’t sandboxy but the RvR did scratch the PvP itch!

andrepd 6y ago
Star Wars Galaxies was another absolute gem at its prime. I never played it, but reading stories about the game makes me feel it's the one game apart from UO which truly came close to fulfilling the promise of a "virtual, persistent, shared world".
- bovermyer 6y ago
  I played SWG from its release until its final shutdown, though I had several months-long breaks during the run. I posted a few articles on my blog after it was shut down in 2011. Here's one of them, going into the crafting system: https://benovermyer.com/post/2012/star-wars-galaxies-crafting/ https://benovermyer.com/post/2012/star-wars-galaxies-craftin...
  - syoc 6y ago
    Just want to say that I really liked the blog posts. Very insightful.
    - bovermyer 6y ago
      When I wrote the post I mentioned, it felt like just writing down my feelings on an extant system. Now, ten years later, it feels like I documented a part of history that hasn't replicated itself. I can't help but feel really sad about that.
- myko 6y ago
  Raph Koster had a lot to do with both Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies. In some ways he's as influential as Lord British in this space. https://www.raphkoster.com/games/books/postmortems/ https://www.raphkoster.com/games/books/postmortems/ He has a book called Postmortems where he compiled essays (many found on his web page) about his early days writing MUDs and developing fantasy worlds, including UO and SWG.
waynesonfire 6y ago
Nothing has come close and nothing ever will. Mainly due to the fact that it wasn't just the game mechanics; but that all player types had no other option except to play UO. This, combined with the game mechanics, is what made UO a one-of-a-kind experiences. I feel blessed and honored to have had the opportunity to be a part of it. After so many years failing to find a UO replacement; I've accepted this conclusion as reality and as result, have stopped searching.
matwood 6y ago
DAoC had some of the better PvP mechanics of that generation of MMOs. I played DAoC for years, and eventually moved to WoW for a little while. WoW always felt too easy and never really gave me the same rush that DAoC did. I still remember the day I gave a friend of mine my DAoC accounts. He later sold them when he quit, and gave me some cash back :)

andrepd 6y ago

It's incredibly sad that by far the best MMO experience --- indeed one could say the only game which lived up to the promise of a shared, virtual, persistent world --- was also one of the first. It was all downhill after WoW. It was a great game, but it was precisely because it was so good that it soon hegemonised everything. Rather than being one possibility out of many, it became "the" MMORPG, in that due to its success every subsequent game copied WoW, often superficially, and maybe even sometimes accidentally. Its specific conventions became the genre itself.

meheleventyone 6y ago
EVE Online as well but that’s quite a different flavour. I played loads of UO back in the day and spent four years working on EVE. Very few games come close to touching either in terms of being so complex, almost to the point of being real spaces to navigate and live in.
- avdlinde 6y ago
  I'd just like to point out the 'played UO' and 'working on EVE' =] I love EVE, I just can't find the time to work on it anymore.
  - meheleventyone 6y ago
    Haha, in my case I literally worked at CCP making EVE rather than the second job it can become playing it. Still some of the best community moments were with that job and the awesome people that play EVE. I had several great Fanfests.

NickBusey 6y ago

There are plenty of great, free Ultima Online servers to play on. No need to stop playing!

milofeynman 6y ago

It was a great experience. And I'll cherish it. Free servers aren't the same. Might setup a server on my local network some day to play with my kid.

matheusmoreira 6y ago

Tibia comes pretty close The older versions, anyway. Apparently it even started as a copy of Ultima. Never found anything close to it either. Every kid in my school played this game... It was like an IRC client with a fun game embedded in it.

pkorzeniewski 6y ago
Tibia was absolutely HUGE in my country (Poland) around 2002 and it was my first and last major experience with MMO. I remember it was the only time back then I voluntarily woke up early in the morning long before the school because the servers were usually empty at that time and the spawn locations were full of monsters which meant quick exping :-) Trying to sign in after the school usually took a looong time but once you did it, it truly felt like going to a different universe. Some time ago I got a craving to play the Tibia version from my childhood and it turns out there's an active server called [1] Classictibia where you play using the 7.1 client version on a faithful recreation of the world from that time - a real blast from the past! [1] http://classictibia.com/ http://classictibia.com/

gpderetta 6y ago

I played UO on an unofficial RPG shard for about one year. The server was was only up only a few hours during the evening (and would often crash), most of the mechanics weren't implemented, and those that were were often buggy. It still was one of the best (if not the best) gaming experience I ever had as well.

jedberg 6y ago

I only very briefly play UO. I'm curious if you could give more details of how how it was different to make it the best experience you ever had. What are games today missing?

fatsdomino001 6y ago
It was a incredible world to discover and explore (especially custom servers with custom maps and content). There was no 'point' to the game, i.e. no final destination or quest to complete... in fact there were barely any quests at all. It was all just up to you. However you wanted to play you could. I.e. you could just have a blast logging in and hanging out in a player's house which they converted into a bar and play chess chatting about w/e. I even played some great roleplaying shards which were legit, e.g. a LOTR one and it was soo epicly awesome. Good pvp dynamics. I did love the ruthlessness of losing everything when you died. I loved how custom shards could tweak so many of the variables pretty easily. I just have so many absolutely golden memories, hilarious and absurd memories. Idk... it's just really hard to convey how the game was the best. I think a lot of is just because it let you do whatever you wanted, but also provided you with fun PvE, PvP, roleplaying, etc. What are games today missing? They're not persistent open-world sandbox games. Sure we have open-world games, but they're not sandbox and often not persistent, and we have sandbox but they're not open-world and often not persistent too. I can't do it. I can't adequately describe what games today are missing which UO had. It's a quality of the combination of all the features UO had that just resulted in the best memories and fun I've had when gaming. I just don't see enough support for player-generated content as UO had, which I suspect is a big part of it too.
- jedberg 6y ago
  Thanks for the writeup!
kingaillas 6y ago
Not the OP and I didn't play UO, but I did play a peer game out at the same time, Asheron's Call. AC, UO, and of course EQ were the big 3 early MMOs. Anyway, there was definitely more community back then, if only due to how there were basically no modern quality-of-life considerations. No auto-group finder, minimal instancing (no instancing?), loss of items on death... you had to lean on others to help you out and they would, because eventually they'd need your help. A classic example is doing a corpse run to recover your items. In a modern MMO, you die and can rez at some convenient spot with all your items. No real loss or penalty for tough fights, no risk. In AC, you lost xp on death, lost items on your corpse, and had to make your way back to your body to erase the xp penalty and get your stuff back. I think the timer was something like 3 hours before your corpse would decay and either anybody could loot your body or time items disappeared. I think UO and EQ were the same. Some of the most memorable corpse runs where when you lost your armor and had to get some friends to come with you since you were now half naked and perhaps weaponless.

agentultra 6y ago

It's being revived: https://uo.com https://uo.com

jackstraw14 6y ago
They've tried so many times to "fix" it. At this point, I think UO Outlands is probably the best UO experience you can get.

User23 6y ago

I earned my college spending money arbitraging UO real estate between in game gold and Ebay prices. It wasn't a huge amount of money, but I recall earning well over minimum wage per hour.