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Back in the day I hated EverQuest because it killed Ultima Online. It’s funny you mention how hardcore EQ was because UO was even harder. In the early days you

by xwdv 4y ago

Back in the day I hated EverQuest because it killed Ultima Online. It’s funny you mention how hardcore EQ was because UO was even harder. In the early days you could be killed and your entire corpse robbed clean, people could even butcher up your body into discrete pieces and feed them to pigs, or carry your head around like a trophy or turn it in for a bounty if there was one. Also if someone got your house key and they found your house they could just bust in and loot it dry. And if you were killed somewhere like a deserted island that had no place to resurrect you were basically stuck there till someone came to get you. It was so dangerous. But then games like EQ came out and made things easier for players, and that put pressure on UO devs to make their game easier, and eventually with time UO became a boring safe game rather than a true virtual world.

idiotsecant 4y ago
I remember how completely disgusted with EQ 'carebears' the UO community was. It was telling though that asherons call, which was a bit closer to UO than it was EQ, was never as successful. People want boring, safe experiences. Great game though, AC.
- wishfish 4y ago
  > People want boring, safe experiences Looking at the popularity of the Soulslike games, I don't think that's true. I think what people want is a system which feels fair. A big part of fairness is not letting randoms online destroy your stuff & progress. Stories about UO often fall into that vein. Ways in which some player made life hell for another player. Honestly doesn't sound like much fun to me. I can see why many players wouldn't want to be part of such a system.
  - drbojingle 4y ago
    UO sounds like it was modeled off real life then
  - idiotsecant 4y ago
    That's a decent point, except that I don't think the souls experience is actually very 'fair' - it's in fact pretty far on the 'safe' scale! I get as many attempts on a boss in a souls game as I want. My skills increase every time and the boss stays the same. this is inevitably a situation I will win, it's just a matter of time. It feels more fair to me because I have a feeling of 'earning' it, but it wasn't very fair to the boss at all! In actual reality we are wired to seek unfair situations - we intrinsically prefer scenarios in which we have an unfair advantage. Scenarios in which the advantage is unknown or in which we even are disadvantaged are fundamentally unsettling to us because we have been programmed by billions of years of evolutionary programming to avoid those kind of scenarios! Games that present us with these kind of unfair advantages disguised as 'fair' are in fact wildly popular for exactly that reason.

by xwdv 4y ago

idiotsecant 4y ago

I remember how completely disgusted with EQ 'carebears' the UO community was. It was telling though that asherons call, which was a bit closer to UO than it was EQ, was never as successful. People want boring, safe experiences. Great game though, AC.

wishfish 4y ago
> People want boring, safe experiences Looking at the popularity of the Soulslike games, I don't think that's true. I think what people want is a system which feels fair. A big part of fairness is not letting randoms online destroy your stuff & progress. Stories about UO often fall into that vein. Ways in which some player made life hell for another player. Honestly doesn't sound like much fun to me. I can see why many players wouldn't want to be part of such a system.
- drbojingle 4y ago
  UO sounds like it was modeled off real life then
- idiotsecant 4y ago
  That's a decent point, except that I don't think the souls experience is actually very 'fair' - it's in fact pretty far on the 'safe' scale! I get as many attempts on a boss in a souls game as I want. My skills increase every time and the boss stays the same. this is inevitably a situation I will win, it's just a matter of time. It feels more fair to me because I have a feeling of 'earning' it, but it wasn't very fair to the boss at all! In actual reality we are wired to seek unfair situations - we intrinsically prefer scenarios in which we have an unfair advantage. Scenarios in which the advantage is unknown or in which we even are disadvantaged are fundamentally unsettling to us because we have been programmed by billions of years of evolutionary programming to avoid those kind of scenarios! Games that present us with these kind of unfair advantages disguised as 'fair' are in fact wildly popular for exactly that reason.