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"The open-ended nature of UO was something that other MMO companies tried to avoid in order to provide a more predictable gameplay experience for players, Vogel said.
"[There] is a little bit of scariness about [freedom] because frankly when you give people a simulator and the ability to do anything in the world you have to have limits, you have to have constraints that they understand."
I love that statement, and it's very true. but here is my issue with it.
UO: it was a murdefest for sure back in the day. Can't blame them though, they had no idea what was going to happen.
MMOs today: too many restrictions. However, PvP is very controlled for the most part.
What Uo needs to learn from this: it's possible to have open world sandbox and keep murderfests a bit under control. you can't just ignore the issue and hope it goes away, plus you can't shun PvPers. Games like WoW (Hell I think all of them) have Factions, they tell you "you hate this faction, kill them!!"... and it works! Horde kill Alliance and vise versa. And when you die to them you don't hate the player who killed you. Instead you channel that energy into a "for the Horde!" mentality and it no longer feels like you were griefed, more like 'caught at the wrong moment'.
I know UO tried a crappy version of factions. but you have reds joining true britts... uhh, really? UO failed in giving us a "for the Horde!!" passion in factions. They needed to create a feeling where we disliked the other factions with passion, and no longer looked at PvP as personal attacks, more like part of the rivalry. So our passion gets channeled in a positive way, not a negative.
Back when our Mage Tower was up and running, we have sooo many fights there. Rival towns/guild would declare war on us and come invade us. And that was fun, very very fun... Because it had a purpose to it. Not a gankfest, steal all your stuff, hump your corpse and call you a noob feel to it.
... I don't think what I'm saying is coming out right so I'll stop. Bottom line, NO GAME has made an honest to God attempt to find the happy medium... well, except for maybe EVE.
/Rant
"[There] is a little bit of scariness about [freedom] because frankly when you give people a simulator and the ability to do anything in the world you have to have limits, you have to have constraints that they understand."
I love that statement, and it's very true. but here is my issue with it.
UO: it was a murdefest for sure back in the day. Can't blame them though, they had no idea what was going to happen.
MMOs today: too many restrictions. However, PvP is very controlled for the most part.
What Uo needs to learn from this: it's possible to have open world sandbox and keep murderfests a bit under control. you can't just ignore the issue and hope it goes away, plus you can't shun PvPers. Games like WoW (Hell I think all of them) have Factions, they tell you "you hate this faction, kill them!!"... and it works! Horde kill Alliance and vise versa. And when you die to them you don't hate the player who killed you. Instead you channel that energy into a "for the Horde!" mentality and it no longer feels like you were griefed, more like 'caught at the wrong moment'.
I know UO tried a crappy version of factions. but you have reds joining true britts... uhh, really? UO failed in giving us a "for the Horde!!" passion in factions. They needed to create a feeling where we disliked the other factions with passion, and no longer looked at PvP as personal attacks, more like part of the rivalry. So our passion gets channeled in a positive way, not a negative.
Back when our Mage Tower was up and running, we have sooo many fights there. Rival towns/guild would declare war on us and come invade us. And that was fun, very very fun... Because it had a purpose to it. Not a gankfest, steal all your stuff, hump your corpse and call you a noob feel to it.
... I don't think what I'm saying is coming out right so I'll stop. Bottom line, NO GAME has made an honest to God attempt to find the happy medium... well, except for maybe EVE.
/Rant
O
olduofan
Guest
Interesting read
Kinda seems the trends with EA have been around from day 1 and are still with us, which a lot of players feel is the reason uo is not growing
Kinda seems the trends with EA have been around from day 1 and are still with us, which a lot of players feel is the reason uo is not growing
W
Woodsman
Guest
EVE is it to me. You can lose a lot in EVE, a lot more than most of us ever lost in UO, up to and including the equivalent of houses, and that does turn people off to it. On the other hand, you can also win big. EVE Online just keeps growing and growing, so it is a counter-argument to those who think that no holds barred PvP can't exist in MMOs past a few years.
The difference obviously is that EVE embraced PvPing from the beginning and never pretended to be anything else, while somehow still providing a home for some who don't like to PvP, which I always thought was odd. Vogel and the others didn't have that luxury since they had no idea what was going to happen. As much as they learned from the UO beta, there is so much they didn't learn.
In response to the WOW post above...
You ever play pvp in WOW? I found it to be opposite of how you say, though it's split into two parts, the arena pvp and the world pvp. The arena pvp felt more like a match of counter strike than anything else, it was ok but lost my interest fast. The world pvp amounted to basically take your level 60 to a level 20 enemy zone and see how long you can one hit kill newbies there before the enemy level 60's come. Once they come and the pk's get outnumbered....not an issue..bubble hearth! Not that it mattered either way. I would say pvp in wow is the ULTIMATE form of griefing.
UO is not the same game it used to be, and that's partly why it has failed to grow. In making UO easier, and a bit more of a grindfest, it attempts to be more like WOW, Everquest and the other big players, sure it draws in some playerbase...but when it comes down to it now you have a 10 year old game trying poorly to rip off gameplay elements from far, far newer games. Why play a WOW clone running the UO client when you can just play WOW in the WOW client? Meanwhile EA had their lunch eaten by the freeshards attempting on their own to progress on the classic UO "open world" feel, some of the larger ones with populations bigger than half the OSI shards combined. A classic shard would go a long way towards fixing that, but in itself is not enough. UO needs to quit trying to emulate the success of other games and needs to just be itself, go back to pre-ren and instead of hastily releasing an expansion to cater to the newly discovered "casual" MMO market, work from the classic ruleset to progress keeping that huge open world FEEL of old UO.
You ever play pvp in WOW? I found it to be opposite of how you say, though it's split into two parts, the arena pvp and the world pvp. The arena pvp felt more like a match of counter strike than anything else, it was ok but lost my interest fast. The world pvp amounted to basically take your level 60 to a level 20 enemy zone and see how long you can one hit kill newbies there before the enemy level 60's come. Once they come and the pk's get outnumbered....not an issue..bubble hearth! Not that it mattered either way. I would say pvp in wow is the ULTIMATE form of griefing.
UO is not the same game it used to be, and that's partly why it has failed to grow. In making UO easier, and a bit more of a grindfest, it attempts to be more like WOW, Everquest and the other big players, sure it draws in some playerbase...but when it comes down to it now you have a 10 year old game trying poorly to rip off gameplay elements from far, far newer games. Why play a WOW clone running the UO client when you can just play WOW in the WOW client? Meanwhile EA had their lunch eaten by the freeshards attempting on their own to progress on the classic UO "open world" feel, some of the larger ones with populations bigger than half the OSI shards combined. A classic shard would go a long way towards fixing that, but in itself is not enough. UO needs to quit trying to emulate the success of other games and needs to just be itself, go back to pre-ren and instead of hastily releasing an expansion to cater to the newly discovered "casual" MMO market, work from the classic ruleset to progress keeping that huge open world FEEL of old UO.
my server might not have been too bad then. Only place it was a problem was the barrens.
what I meant was if I was out and a rogue jumped me and handed my ass to me. I knew it was his 'job' to kill me on sight.
Also like you said, that might be some major grief the way you said. However it will also pull people together, Alliance attacking your town? Horde show up to defend. Everyone knows their "place". In UO you had to ICQ your guildmates and have them try and get your stuff back. do I like WoWs way better? no. Just saying i understand how Blizzard takes certain 'control' over the issue.
CCP did an amazing job with EVE. I myself am not a fan of the starship aspect of the game (I hear now you can leave your ship a little?). But the time I played it was amazing.
Exploration in low spec was the closest I've felt to the old days of UO. I'm out exploring, could get jumped at any time. If I act fast enough i can escape, too slow I lose my ship and cargo... ahhh, that's what is missing from most games... thrill