4 ms·

For me no game can approach closed beta UO. It was that perfect time of advanced for its time game and naive for its time player base. By the time open beta sho

by jghn 12y ago

For me no game can approach closed beta UO. It was that perfect time of advanced for its time game and naive for its time player base. By the time open beta showed up the writing was already on the wall. The promise of UO was limitless - a complete sandbox where anything could happen, but in a world where the Ahole didn't exist. Within a month it was obvious that wasn't going to be the case. I still had tons of fun in the 2.5 years I played UO because I embraced the aholes - while I wasn't one of them I definitely played their game in an attempt to combat them continuously. For the UO players I was 99.9% red because often the biggest turds were blue, but really I didn't care - I only fought turds regardless of the situation. It was still an amazing game, I have friends to this day that I met there, and many of them had specialized stories - e.g. the person who was an "interior decorator". That's what she did, she took in game gold to design the decor of your in game building. I haven't seen a game since where that was really a viable occupation.

wingerlang 12y ago
> she took in game gold to design the decor of your in game building. I haven't seen a game since where that was really a viable occupation Second life
Kiro 12y ago
I was a looter and a griefer. Would you have killed me?
- Kiro 12y ago
  Not sure if I'm getting downvoted because I was a looter/griefer or because of my blunt question. If the former I want to point out that looting/griefing was a big part of the game and not a destructive element. Stealing from other players was a skill where you advanced just like in swordsmanship or magic. It would flag you as a criminal but still a valid profession. Good looters and griefers gained world-wide recognition and stardom. Just check out the Galad the Looter and Belan the Looter comics.
  - corobo 12y ago
    Your downvotes are likely to be as you're not really adding to the conversation "Would you have killed me?" results in "Yes, I would have" or "No, I would not". Not really an interesting place to take the thread
    - Kiro 12y ago
      I was thinking it could lead to an interesting conversation about the good old days in UO but maybe I was wrong.
  - teddyh 12y ago
    A looter and griefer is a valid profession in the game just like in the real world there exists professional hitmen. It is an actual occupation which puts food on the table, yes, but…
    - Kiro 12y ago
      Exactly and that's what made UO so awesome - you could actually roleplay for real. Subsequent MMOs lacking the option to be evil and "harm" other players are missing such a vital part that I feel they belong to a completely different genre. I hope I will experience another game with the same dynamic interactions one day.
      - mattmanser 12y ago
        Whoosh, that went over your head. The implication of his post is that aholes, to use jghn's term, like you ruin MMO games for everyone else. So the 5% like you, who are impossible to manage, are the ones who cause heavy restrictions on what exactly you can do to grief or PVP. Because it's not that you sometimes grief other players, it's that you constantly grief other players. And there's almost always no consequence, unlike real life where even the most violent societies acting like that there'd be a good chance you'd end up hanging from a tree, "game over", so you wouldn't act like that. In an MMO you just respawn. Your fun is to make other people miserable.
- jghn 12y ago
  My character used a real system of right and wrong and not the overly simplistic system (pre and post noto system) to judge things. So if you were stealing from people, etc - then yes. I didn't really care about looting in general (my char viewed it as simple scavenging), unless you were doing it to my friends. In practical terms, generally griefers, PKs and NPKs were my enemies.
- jghn 12y ago
  I'll also say that my favorite tactic was often labeled a griefer tactic although I'll still vehemently disagree with that assessment. In the first couple of months I had a lot of advantages. I'd already been playing for months so was familiar w/ the ins and outs of the game - this led to me being one of the first GM mages on the server (when magery was the only way to really fight). I had a fast connection and single digit pings when most people were just starting to get 28.8 modems - I was often accused of cheating as I'd appear to warp around people's screens (from my perspective I could easily overtake people who were riding horses when I was on foot). While I wasn't particularly good at PvP from a player skill perspective, I had enough advantages that I could count on 2 hands the number of people I actually feared. At the time many new players would find themselves dastardly due to clicking on the wrong thing once or twice - they didn't even mean to do anything wrong and half the time it was due to lag. So what I'd do is dress up in newb gear, hang outside the dungeon near Britain and pretend to be very lagged. At the time you couldn't see people's skill levels (stuff like this is why they put that in) so you'd just see my character name, that I was dastardly, I appeared to be a n00b and I could barely move. So then these brave souls would attack me, often in a pack - not because they actually thought I was a bad person but because they a) could and b) I was an easy target who couldn't fight back. I'm sure you can see where this is going, after I'd wipe the floor with their whole crew they'd come back and call me a cheater and a horrible human being. Sorry, I wasn't the one attacking a defenseless n00b. And yes, one could argue this from an RP perspective that in fact my char was a criminal and they were meting out justice but approximately 0.1% of people actually were doing that despite what they'd claim, the rest were just being turds.
  - Kiro 12y ago
    That's an awesome anecdote. I remember a guy with low ping wiping out my entire guild. We were running around getting slaughtered with our guild leader shouting to stay calm and regroup but it was a massacre. There were also some really famous warriors who could turn a battle later when factions were introduced (the game had already lost most of the fun but faction war was a fun feature).

by jghn 12y ago

wingerlang 12y ago

> she took in game gold to design the decor of your in game building. I haven't seen a game since where that was really a viable occupation Second life

Kiro 12y ago

I was a looter and a griefer. Would you have killed me?

Kiro 12y ago
Not sure if I'm getting downvoted because I was a looter/griefer or because of my blunt question. If the former I want to point out that looting/griefing was a big part of the game and not a destructive element. Stealing from other players was a skill where you advanced just like in swordsmanship or magic. It would flag you as a criminal but still a valid profession. Good looters and griefers gained world-wide recognition and stardom. Just check out the Galad the Looter and Belan the Looter comics.
- corobo 12y ago
  Your downvotes are likely to be as you're not really adding to the conversation "Would you have killed me?" results in "Yes, I would have" or "No, I would not". Not really an interesting place to take the thread
  - Kiro 12y ago
    I was thinking it could lead to an interesting conversation about the good old days in UO but maybe I was wrong.
- teddyh 12y ago
  A looter and griefer is a valid profession in the game just like in the real world there exists professional hitmen. It is an actual occupation which puts food on the table, yes, but…
  - Kiro 12y ago
    Exactly and that's what made UO so awesome - you could actually roleplay for real. Subsequent MMOs lacking the option to be evil and "harm" other players are missing such a vital part that I feel they belong to a completely different genre. I hope I will experience another game with the same dynamic interactions one day.
    - mattmanser 12y ago
      Whoosh, that went over your head. The implication of his post is that aholes, to use jghn's term, like you ruin MMO games for everyone else. So the 5% like you, who are impossible to manage, are the ones who cause heavy restrictions on what exactly you can do to grief or PVP. Because it's not that you sometimes grief other players, it's that you constantly grief other players. And there's almost always no consequence, unlike real life where even the most violent societies acting like that there'd be a good chance you'd end up hanging from a tree, "game over", so you wouldn't act like that. In an MMO you just respawn. Your fun is to make other people miserable.
jghn 12y ago
My character used a real system of right and wrong and not the overly simplistic system (pre and post noto system) to judge things. So if you were stealing from people, etc - then yes. I didn't really care about looting in general (my char viewed it as simple scavenging), unless you were doing it to my friends. In practical terms, generally griefers, PKs and NPKs were my enemies.
jghn 12y ago
I'll also say that my favorite tactic was often labeled a griefer tactic although I'll still vehemently disagree with that assessment. In the first couple of months I had a lot of advantages. I'd already been playing for months so was familiar w/ the ins and outs of the game - this led to me being one of the first GM mages on the server (when magery was the only way to really fight). I had a fast connection and single digit pings when most people were just starting to get 28.8 modems - I was often accused of cheating as I'd appear to warp around people's screens (from my perspective I could easily overtake people who were riding horses when I was on foot). While I wasn't particularly good at PvP from a player skill perspective, I had enough advantages that I could count on 2 hands the number of people I actually feared. At the time many new players would find themselves dastardly due to clicking on the wrong thing once or twice - they didn't even mean to do anything wrong and half the time it was due to lag. So what I'd do is dress up in newb gear, hang outside the dungeon near Britain and pretend to be very lagged. At the time you couldn't see people's skill levels (stuff like this is why they put that in) so you'd just see my character name, that I was dastardly, I appeared to be a n00b and I could barely move. So then these brave souls would attack me, often in a pack - not because they actually thought I was a bad person but because they a) could and b) I was an easy target who couldn't fight back. I'm sure you can see where this is going, after I'd wipe the floor with their whole crew they'd come back and call me a cheater and a horrible human being. Sorry, I wasn't the one attacking a defenseless n00b. And yes, one could argue this from an RP perspective that in fact my char was a criminal and they were meting out justice but approximately 0.1% of people actually were doing that despite what they'd claim, the rest were just being turds.
- Kiro 12y ago
  That's an awesome anecdote. I remember a guy with low ping wiping out my entire guild. We were running around getting slaughtered with our guild leader shouting to stay calm and regroup but it was a massacre. There were also some really famous warriors who could turn a battle later when factions were introduced (the game had already lost most of the fun but faction war was a fun feature).