Lord of Ultima:Facebook

[Hunters' Moon]

I was under the impression that Lord of Ultima was ran by a former Developer that has left EA some time ago. I saw the link on the homepage of FB and clicked. It said I could use my EA username(email) to play. I just find it interesting that EA has branched out to FB "social" gaming.

 

[G.v.P]

Lord of Ultima began as a browser-game, maybe a year or two ago now. You have to be online 24/7 or else everything you design will be destroyed by other players. I played it for awhile with a friend but we both sort of got bored of it. It's beyond basic, and there aren't many frills unless they've updated it a lot since I last played.

At the FFX meet-up I asked Cal and the team if they received any kick-backs from Lord of Ultima but he said no in a way which suggested they had nothing to do with the game whatsoever, and no connection to the game either. In hindsight, hopefully they knew of its existence, at least ;P.

Lord of Ultima - Free MMORTS - Play The Best Web Strategy MMO

 

[Tina Small]

On their call last Thursday with industry analysts who track EA's stock, company executives said Sims Social has done so well since its launch earlier this year (June, I think) that it's now the #2 game on Facebook. They also said their FIFA (soccer) game is available on 11 "platforms" now, including Facebook. Through Playfish and Popcap, relatively recent additions to EA, I'm sure they'll be rolling out quite a few more games on Facebook.

 

[Ahuaeyjnkxs]

I can imagine them up in the black tower...

Ahhh do you see this big pile of cash !

You know what... lets have fun with it, like some glutton would play with food !

*places a pathetically small pile of money on the side*

That, at least, should go back to UO, they could hire more staff and make it great again, since its part of what made us great !

*turns around as if nervous, and gets a roleplay bubble to the head*

Oh hello ? anyone else there ? I can smell you !

*feels air moving*

Theres someone stealthing !!! AHH THIS IS SO OLD SCHOOL !

Let them take the money !!!

hahahaha, oh I haven't laughed like that in YEARS !!!!

Let him take it, he deserves it !!!

*we see a guy dressed up as a mime faking he is stealthing, but in truth we see em*

*censored part : insert here*

Have you all noticed how all browser games are the BEST game ever ?

they all are, what a joke

 

[Tina Small]

Lord of Ultima began as a browser-game, maybe a year or two ago now. You have to be online 24/7 or else everything you design will be destroyed by other players. I played it for awhile with a friend but we both sort of got bored of it. It's beyond basic, and there aren't many frills unless they've updated it a lot since I last played.

At the FFX meet-up I asked Cal and the team if they received any kick-backs from Lord of Ultima but he said no in a way which suggested they had nothing to do with the game whatsoever, and no connection to the game either. In hindsight, hopefully they knew of its existence, at least ;P.

Lord of Ultima - Free MMORTS - Play The Best Web Strategy MMO

I think you can buy "diamonds" through the in-game shop and use them to acquire other useful items. I believe one of them is something called an "orb of peace" that lets you take a break for some set period of time. I believe they also added a feature called "night protection" so you don't have to play 24/7. Haven't taken the plunge yet to actually try the game yet, but have been picking through the wiki a bit to learn more about it.

 

[Hunters' Moon]

I think you can buy "diamonds" through the in-game shop and use them to acquire other useful items. I believe one of them is something called an "orb of peace" that lets you take a break for some set period of time. I believe they also added a feature called "night protection" so you don't have to play 24/7. Haven't taken the plunge yet to actually try the game yet, but have been picking through the wiki a bit to learn more about it.

So it shapes up as a type of Backyard Monsters game huh? Can't be attacked if you have the screen up and playing.Once you log off,your "fort" is fair game.

 

[Woodsman]

On their call last Thursday with industry analysts who track EA's stock, company executives said Sims Social has done so well since its launch earlier this year (June, I think) that it's now the #2 game on Facebook. They also said their FIFA (soccer) game is available on 11 "platforms" now, including Facebook. Through Playfish and Popcap, relatively recent additions to EA, I'm sure they'll be rolling out quite a few more games on Facebook.

The Sims online Facebook game is insane.

Gamasutra - News - GDC Online: Balancing Metrics And Creativity Key To Item Sales In The Sims Social

The company tracks over a terabyte of daily data to analyze how players are using The Sims Social, with an entire team of analysts and product managers running usability tests and market research at the same time. "What they're doing looks a lot more like e-commerce than game design," he explains.

Some results include that new items sell "incredibly well... we have to release new items every week." Consumable, repeatable items are also strong performers and are easier to scale. Functionality trumps decoration when it comes to the volume of items sold.

Finally all items aren't equal. "There are some aspects of virtual items sales that do not reveal themselves through analysis," Mapham said. The team works hard to balance the bottom line-oriented product management and metrics with the work of artists and designers who try to create appealing, exciting new items and experiences for players, and Mapham describes an excellent collaboration between both sides.

A full TB of data every single day.

And the Ultima producer implied that if he had had any say in the matter, Lord of Ultima would never have been made.

My prediction for the next big EA game on Facebook: SimCity. There are already SimCity wannabes out there making 10s of millions of dollars, including from Zynga. EA ain't going to ignore that for too long.

 

[Ahuaeyjnkxs]

And isn't UO a big medieval simcity ?

THE big medieval simcity 12000 ?

Didn't they even try to modernise us ?

I'm going to say something really insane now, in trebuchet... here it comes :

Hello EA, yes I have the blues. *Jeff can you relay that letter to someone up there please*

Umm... can you please tell us what is going on with this and can we please get ASSURANCE that it will have NOTHING to do with Ultima Online which is a game about virtue.

Isn't that COMPLETELY INSANE ?!! hahaha I said it.

Can we have an official word on this, we are a NICHE game which you can keep as an example of community relations SUCCESS without much staff...

Now is the time to make your move, don't force Jeff's hand like you did the others, please...

I'm almost begging can you beleive it, EA HEAR ME.... I.... AM YOUR SON !!!

*NooooOOooOOooOOoo ; I want nothing to do with you *spit**

Ahhhhhrrrrgggghhhhhh *wind*

....

*to be continued*

 

[Tina Small]

So it shapes up as a type of Backyard Monsters game huh? Can't be attacked if you have the screen up and playing.Once you log off,your "fort" is fair game.

I don't know anything about Backyard Monsters. With Lord of Ultima, it sounds like you can start out with a small village and work your way up to building entire cities and your own empire, and along the way you trade and negotiate with other players, spy, plunder, attack, and lay siege to cities others have built. It's a strategy game and I get the impression that to be successful at it, you really do have to do as G.v.P said and play it 'round the clock. I've also read that someone can actually "win" the game and force everyone to start over, or something along those lines, but that isn't expected to happen very often. Just from what I've read in the wiki, it reminds me of playing Sim City or Sim Tower in a lot of ways, but much more complex and with a totally different setting and with other people involved who are either playing against you, with you, or mostly neutral to you.

 

[Woodsman]

It reminded me of Stronghold in a way, and there is another similar game that it really reminds me of, an RTS that I can't remember the name of.

But speaking of cities and Sims, apparently Sims: Medieval sold very well and was well received. They need to do a SimCity medieval. It would probably sell like crazy and might wash away the memory of SimCity Societies.

Will be interesting to see the eventual Ultima facebook game, and Richard Garriott is dropping hints about his Lord British game. He should have enough cash to go ahead with it.

 

[G.v.P]

I think you can buy "diamonds" through the in-game shop and use them to acquire other useful items. I believe one of them is something called an "orb of peace" that lets you take a break for some set period of time. I believe they also added a feature called "night protection" so you don't have to play 24/7. Haven't taken the plunge yet to actually try the game yet, but have been picking through the wiki a bit to learn more about it.

You're correct on all accounts regarding the diamonds, the orb of peace, and night protection. There's also newbie protection when you first begin, and several servers to play on which are localized to certain regions (North America, Europe). Still, I like to play a game I can pick-up and put down. I doubt I'd play UO, for example, if you had to log-in just to pay for your house (ships are annoying enough as it is).

The game begins with you taking over one grid of land on a gigantic map. That one grid allows you to develop an economy and strengthen the bones of a castle. Or in other words, you have the map grid, then the castle grid, you put buildings on the castle grid using some strategy (quarry building goes next to stone grids for better production, mill goes next to woods, etc.). You get gold and other resources and build up your army, siege weapons, eventually a navy, and merchants. Then you can send your army to raid dungeons, go to fight a monster, attack other player own cities, claim abandoned cities (due to players being inactive for a period of time), attack sea monsters/dungeons, etc, using the map grid. You can also send and receive resources w/ a market, make or join a guild, and create a grid-based city. The end-goal is to own the map, for the most part, which takes forever, but they also had other goals, like owning certain regions of the map grid.

Might sound interesting, but everything is automated regarding combat. You send your army out and then the RNG tells you what happened a few hours, or even half a day, later. It's like a watered down Lords of the Realm: II featuring a much larger map and online play but not enough game to justify the grind. By the way, LOTR II is pretty awesome if you can get it to run on modern computers, hehe. I've heard LOTR III is awful, though, probably because it wasn't made by Sierra.

 

[Basara]

By the way, LOTR II is pretty awesome if you can get it to run on modern computers, hehe. I've heard LOTR III is awful, though, probably because it wasn't made by Sierra.

Actually, gog.com (the same place with Ultima I-3, 4-6 & Underworld 1&2 as 3 separate $5.99 packs) has LOTR Royal Edition, which is LOTR, LOTR II & The LOTR Seige Pack add-on for $5.99, and all gog.com come as pre-packaged set up to run on modern machines (with no DRM). Their version will run on XP, Vista and Win7 (Even 64-bit versions of the OS).

And, what is it about #3 in a series of games always seeming to fall short of the previous version's standards? LOTR III, MOO III, Caesar III, X-Com Apocalypse, Fallout Tactics (F3 was game #4), etc. Only Ultima seems to break that trend, but then if you count Alakabeth as the first game, the relatively bad Ultima II fits the pattern.

 

[Tina Small]

You're correct on all accounts regarding the diamonds, the orb of peace, and night protection. There's also newbie protection when you first begin, and several servers to play on which are localized to certain regions (North America, Europe). Still, I like to play a game I can pick-up and put down. I doubt I'd play UO, for example, if you had to log-in just to pay for your house (ships are annoying enough as it is).

The game begins with you taking over one grid of land on a gigantic map. That one grid allows you to develop an economy and strengthen the bones of a castle. Or in other words, you have the map grid, then the castle grid, you put buildings on the castle grid using some strategy (quarry building goes next to stone grids for better production, mill goes next to woods, etc.). You get gold and other resources and build up your army, siege weapons, eventually a navy, and merchants. Then you can send your army to raid dungeons, go to fight a monster, attack other player own cities, claim abandoned cities (due to players being inactive for a period of time), attack sea monsters/dungeons, etc, using the map grid. You can also send and receive resources w/ a market, make or join a guild, and create a grid-based city. The end-goal is to own the map, for the most part, which takes forever, but they also had other goals, like owning certain regions of the map grid.

Might sound interesting, but everything is automated regarding combat. You send your army out and then the RNG tells you what happened a few hours, or even half a day, later. It's like a watered down.

Thanks, G.v.P., that was pretty much the picture of it that I had formed in my own mind already. I saw also that they added moongates that show up one by one until I think you can have eight on a continent or something like that, but can't remember how you get those. Seems like getting them (or more like, "making them appear on their own") required your little empire to become "enlightened" with religion or something like that, and I haven't read yet how you make that happen. I could just be mixing up a bunch of details at this point. LOL I also saw some stuff about constructing hideouts to stash your resources so they would be better protected if someone decides to lay siege to your domain. There's a ton of types of buildings you can have and they look pretty darn cool.

It sounds like it could be an interesting thing to try if you could get a group of friends who like strategy games to play it with you for a few weeks and see how far you get by working together. I think you can form up guilds and alliances and there is some sort of in-game chat system. Trying to play it solo seems like it would be way too ambitious for most people. Just going through the wiki kinda makes my head spin as there's already quite a bit of information in it and it looks like the developers and players tweak it/flesh it out on a very regular basis. The official forum in English already has about 90,000 posts (since about February 2010?) and there are also forums in German and Russian. There are website versions in English, German, Russian, French, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, and Turkish. It runs in your browser, so I suppose people who really get into it could leave it open pretty easily, although I read that it can be a big memory hog and you probably couldn't try to play it on something like a Netbook.

It's clearly not UO (I think the setting is one hour after Sosaria is destroyed and a new earth, Caledonia, has appeared), but it does contain elements that loosely link it to UO and the other Ultima games. The wiki hints that "only time will tell how Caledonia refers to the lands that gave rise to others when the gem of immortality was broken and spread fragments."

 

[Ahuaeyjnkxs]

Travian 2.0

 

[G.v.P]

Actually, gog.com (the same place with Ultima I-3, 4-6 & Underworld 1&2 as 3 separate $5.99 packs) has LOTR Royal Edition, which is LOTR, LOTR II & The LOTR Seige Pack add-on for $5.99, and all gog.com come as pre-packaged set up to run on modern machines (with no DRM). Their version will run on XP, Vista and Win7 (Even 64-bit versions of the OS).

/drool might have to get that, thanks for posting...I've lucked out, over the years...you know how they say don't judge a book on its cover? I did that for Total Annihilation, X-Com: UFO Defense, and Lords of the Realm II; stopped at Apoc and II respectively (wasn't much of a fan of the X-Com FPS direction and didn't really know about III until much later, after which I read bad reviews). As for TA, I bought their medieval attempt, Kingdoms, which played out too much like a watered down Starcraft--which, of course, I played as well--then Supreme Commander, the spiritual successor once Cavedog went under. Except Supreme Commander II was said to be pretty bad, so I stopped there.

I know I've said this before on the forums but I actually loved Apoc ...I could seriously raid the Cult of Sirius all day long. Except, for the sake of UO players, Apoc was underdeveloped as much as High Seas was underdeveloped when it first came out, with several patches to complete the other half of content which should have been included in the first place? Except Apoc never had those patches, so it wasn't the complete game it first set out to be. Still, I enjoyed the real time gameplay (and feel like once the series left Microprose, like how Lords of the Realm II left Sierra, had to be the turning point in the series).