Lord British on what games can learn from Ultima Online

Lord British on what games can learn from Ultima Online

"What Ultima Online did very well, and what I think has never been recaptured, is allow you to become a citizen of that world in a very personal and relevant way that is unique to you and not like anyone else," he told Ars. "As brilliant as World of WarCraft is—of course it's an astonishingly well-done product—but everyone is pretty much a fighter. Your life is, you're a fighter."
Image courtesy the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences

It's that lack of differentiation in experience and jobs that Garriott misses. "There aren't really people that own a shop in town square and that's what they do, and they have a friend who's a fishermen, and that's what he does," he explained. "With Ultima Online, what was so cool about it is that there were people who were just fishermen, and who never fought monsters, who didn't care to buy any armor or craft a sword—they were fishermen."

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I don't play MMORPG's anymore (really only played UO), but didn't Star Wars Galaxies try to capture that element? And wasn't that part of the problem. It seems like the novelty of being a pub owner or a fisherman has really worn off. In UO, it was new and cool, but who wants to do that for months, much less years, on end?

But explore the world, kill monsters, loot, etc.? As long as there is new content, you can do that perpetually!

I think maybe the point he was trying to make was needing more variety. Not necessarily fishermen and bar tenders, but just more variety in ways to interact with the world.

But at some point, doesn't exploring the world and killing yet another kind of monster get old as well ? (I'm not sure about the first part though, I could spend days labelling every pixel of a game to make sure I saw everything).

I don't play mmo anymore, but from my (quite short) time on these, it looks like to me that one of the solution would be to get creative in the way players can interact with one another and with the world around them, then sit back and see what happens.

In Neocron, after reaching near max level, I stopped fighting anything. In a full pvp environment, I would just talk to everybody and deal with faction politics and economics : gather and trade infos with guild leaders (who wants to attack who ? who is unhappy with its guild and could be recruited ? who has the best crafters, and could they be turned ? what resources are there near that stronghold and is it worth the risk of attacking ?), help forming or breaking alliances. It was really fun to play. In Ryzom, with my low level character, I was a kind of caravan leader : there were a few very good foraging points past impossibly high level monsters, and I became very skilled at leading people to these point without getting the aggro. Another nice gig.

Both games weren't that great, but the real question, I think, is, what part of the gameplay can game designers change to allow player create for themselves the role they want, without making it a boring gimmick or something frustrating ?

All the more reason to play MUD's there are a lot of players who are not in to killing their but rather roleplaying.

After all is the most fun thing we can imagine doing in the real world killing?

It is actually sad how killing focused most games are.

I see the focus on killing as some kind of a necessary evolutionary step of the media, in the same way that literature "started" (I know, not only) with glorious war account of who killed how many enemies. Think Troy.

Question is, how much time are we going to be stuck in the epic phase ? I'm looking forward to the surrealists games, the constructivist games, the nouveau game ... not that I would enjoy those (I make a point of keeping myself as stupid as possible) but I can't wait to see the ign reviews, and the crowd of gamers raging because someone is trying to intellectualize their media.

What they need to do is combine the experiences into a fully accessible package, and the only way to do that is to understand game design.

People who understand game design and who're passionate about it, are typically unable to get investors to take a chance - as it will inevitably be seen as. Articulating a fantastic game design is not the kind of thing investors get excited by.

Basically, as long as the WoW-model dominates the market - AAA investors will not be interested in going much deeper than that.

Maybe Guild Wars 2 will be the first step - though it still strikes me as WoW 2 in most ways.

I'd like to be a perfectly normal farmer within such a game - but one Player-Killer would kill my character in no seconds and laugh over my killed character ... And loot it, of course ...

Alrik Fassbauer said:

I'd like to be a perfectly normal farmer within such a game

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What I'd love to be is some kind of lore master. Instead of killing things, I'd like to be able to level up by studying them … and then share the knowledge with the farmers. Ryzom was supposed to do something like that, but they eventually dropped the idea.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

but one Player-Killer would kill my character in no seconds and laugh over my killed character … And loot it, of course …

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I've always thought that, especially in fantasy settings, there are unexploited ways to deal with pk'ers, like to be able for the victim to haunt it's killer (and I mean to really become a ghost and actively go poltergeist on his ass) or to sacrifice it's character to utter some kind of devastating curse (I'd go with the "back to lvl1" curse, myself).

There is law enforcements in a lot of MUDs I used to play… kill an innocent farmer and you're going to be hunted by a lot of guards and other mean stuffs.

Much better than the ghost thing IMHO.

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that a ... friend of mine who deemed himself a knowledgeable and all-around hardcore gamer, confessed in shame that he just discovered the existence of MUDs, and was interested by what he quickly read about it on Wikipedia.

Would you have a website with more infos, or a beginner friendly MUD, to start ? For that friend of mine ?

Actually, Neocron used that mechanic : pk'ers that killed within their own factions had to stay away from the gates of the main town or be shot down on sight by indestructible bots. They could however sneak by the sewer system and then had to fight their way through a neighboorhood made very hostile by the players themselves. However, they weren't hunted outside of the towns, so it wasn't that handicapping. You just had to do you business in the wastes.

Jogurt said:

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that a … friend of mine who deemed himself a knowledgeable and all-around hardcore gamer, confessed in shame that he just discovered the existence of MUDs, and was interested by what he quickly read about it on Wikipedia.

Would you have a website with more infos, or a beginner friendly MUD, to start ? For that friend of mine ?

Actually, Neocron used that mechanic : pk'ers that killed within their own factions had to stay away from the gates of the main town or be shot down on sight by indestructible bots. They could however sneak by the sewer system and then had to fight their way through a neighboorhood made very hostile by the players themselves. However, they weren't hunted outside of the towns, so it wasn't that handicapping. You just had to do you business in the wastes.

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OMG.....

You just started an avalanche of adverts about MUDs from GG.

Have fun

I very much recommend trying a good MUD or two in a gamers' life. They can offer, I am sure still today, what most other MMOGs just can't.

Two sites I have been using in the past :

http://www.mudconnect.com/
http://www.topmudsites.com/

If you can disregard the fancy advertisements of some (pay-to-play) sites, you may just find a gem or two hidden deep in their forums.

I would also very much advise to pick a client before playing, because otherwise it could quickly become a masochistic (telnet commands, doh!) experience for some :

http://www.mudconnect.com/resources/Mud_Resources:Mud_Clients.html

EDIT : The MUD I used to play is still up, even today Not really for the faint of heart, but definitely one of the better.

EDIT2 : Another excellent one, but quite heavily oriented towards PvP.

Many thanks Karmapowered ! I'm gonna have fun looking into this.

Eve online anyone? You don't HAVE to be a fighter there (though it is the most fun for me). And as far as player self-governance, player political power and straight up meta-gaming goes, it is second to non.