Ultima Online

What's this, you say as you rub your eyes in disbelief. Is it... The Game Archaeologist, long since thought lost in his expedition to Atlantis (and the trials therein)? It is indeed, my friends. TGA has been a long-running passion of mine on Massively, but I needed a break for a while to recouperate and refocus. However, as of late I've felt the call of neglected classic MMOs and wanted to make sure that they were getting some column love here on the site.

So going forward, expect to see The Game Archaeologist pop out of his hidey hole once or twice a month to talk about our old favorites and perhaps pontificate more on the history of MMO development. Sound good? Did you miss me at all? You totally didn't, did you.

If you've been out of touch with classic MMOs, I've done the legwork this week to provide you with the 10 important and relevant news items that are sweeping through this aging yet still vibrant community. Read on, McDuff!

Continue Reading

It looks as if yesterday's EA layoffs are hitting MMO gamers closer to home than originally thought. In a post today on BioWare's Warhammer Online forums, Mythic's Timothy Chappell announced that he has been let go. Chappell was the community manager for Warhammer Online, Ultima Online, and Dark Age of Camelot.

I am very sorry to say that I was informed that my position was no longer needed. Though I had many titles I was handling for Mythic, I grew to love and appreciate all the communities and only wish I could have had more time or resources to get more involved with them. Though I had only been in the position for a little over a year, I will miss a great many of you and hope that you keep in touch.

The news is of particular concern for Warhammer, which also lost its lead developer earlier this week. Ultima Online, by contrast, assured players of its continuing operation in a producer's letter last week.

[Thanks to Fozee for the tip!]

Ultima Online producer Bonnie Armstrong has penned a new producer's letter designed to do two things. One is to disseminate some of the ideas in the pipeline for 2013, and the other is to quell any community uncertainty stemming from the recent EA layoff announcement.

Some of the coming updates include a second house on Siege, more accessible veteran rewards, and vendor search functionality that should eliminate the need to use third-party script sites to find who's selling what. Read all about that stuff and more at the official UO website.

Gamers aren't letting up on Electronic Arts for its record and attitude. The games publisher was voted "Worst Company in America" for a second year in a row in The Consumerist's poll. EA trounced the other finalist, Bank of America, with 78% of the tallies.

The Consumerist provided commentary as to why EA earned that reputation with customers and what it could be doing to not earn this title next year. The site identified EA's three main problems as failing to provide a product people want and like, failing to sell products at reasonable prices, and failing to support its products.

EA COO Peter Moore posted a letter last week responding to the probable second win, admitting mistakes while attempting to refute popular complaints. His response to the poll? "We can do better. We will do better."

On his personal blog, Raph Koster announced that he has left Disney to become an unemployed game developer. The big question is, of course, what's next for the driving force behind Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies. The answer is... he doesn't know.

However, Koster does indicate that he is open to working on another traditional MMO, but not one born of Kickstarter. "I suspect that those of you who want this all want me to make a worldy MMO," he writes. "I may yet make one of those in the future, but I don't think that you can raise enough money on Kickstarter to do it justice."

Koster says that he might be doing some consulting, writing, and speaking, but what he wants to do most is to "simply start making games." He claims that GDC inspired him to get back into the game-making business, big-time. He also says contrary to some rumors, he is not working with Richard Garriott on Shroud of the Avatar.

With Brad McQuaid's return to EverQuest in the news this week, nostalgia has invaded our comment section. The most veteran of our MMO commenters mused about the days of meditating into spellbooks, losing levels on death, embarking on corpse runs, and waiting on the boat. No one even mentioned camping for jboots, begging to be put on a list for a spot in a dungeon group, or having your raid planejumped right before your eyes!

I think old-schoolers know that the old days had more than their fair share of problems, which is why most of them are probably playing Guild Wars 2 or The Secret World and not Asheron's Call or Anarchy Online. Or are they? Are more people living in classic MMOs than they let on?

My first was Ultima Online, and yes, I do poke my nose in once or twice a year, but it hasn't been my "main game" in a truly long time. What about you guys? Do you still play your first MMO? And if you've ever gone back, was it as you remembered?

Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!

A few weeks ago I asked everyone to send me in screenshots of pre-2004 MMOs... and only Brad delivered. Seriously, people, you've been shown up by Brad. Brad gets the gold star. Brad gets the golden ticket and can come on a once-in-a-lifetime visit to see the fabled Massively word factory. Brad is my hero.

Brad (if you didn't catch his name) sent us in this shot of Ultima Online: "So much fun with vendors! This is a shot of Angelica's on the Chesapeake Server -- a popular shopping spot in Felucca to grab gear on the go. It was one of the few player-owned vendor spots in a protected zone near Lord British's Castle. This would have been taken around 2002. Notice the detail of the fish tank made from stacked cloth and the flowers made with an onion and two cooked eggs!"

Yes. Notice Brad's eggs, people. In them you can see the reflection of your failure. Aw, just kidding!

Continue Reading

One of the issues plaguing player housing in MMOs is what to do with those houses after the player-owners have left the game or stopped paying for their subscriptions. In Ultima Online, the granddaddy of all MMO housing, your home drops to the ground if you haven't paid your sub in 90 days (and your shardmates can loot all your stuff in a grand free-for-all!). In Star Wars Galaxies, your house stayed standing until it ran out of pre-paid maintenance money, which worked pretty well to help the active players reclaim city space until maintenance was turned off for a few years in consideration for hurricane victims.

Even games with instanced housing feel the space crunch. In Lord of the Rings Online, failure to pay your maintenance fees in-game leads to the eventual return of your lot to the public pool and your having to buy back all your loot from an escrow NPC.

MMO developers are torn between the desire to lure back former players with the promise that their houses are still intact and the desire to keep the world, instanced or not, clear and open for paying or active players. So what do you guys think -- what should be the more dominant goal? If you step away from a game, should your character's home decay? And if it did, would you ever return to the game?

Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!

One of 2004's most anticipated MMOs, Ultima X: Odyssey, was struck down by parent studio EA near to its completion date. The strong interest in this title coupled with the advanced state of its development has always been one of the most maddening "what if?" scenarios in the industry.

While it is slightly outside of our power to restore the Ultima X project and push it out the door, the folks over at Ultima Codex unearthed a 34-minute gameplay video to at least show us how this title looked in action. Clear out a half-hour and check out what could have been with the following footage!

[Thanks to John for the tip!]

Continue Reading

I took only a single marketing class in college, so by no means am I an instant expert in anything but being on the receiving end of marketers' nefarious experiments to manipulate me so that I buy their stuff. I did take away the lesson that all marketers are professional liars who have no shame or dignity. Pretty much the same as a blogger, so I guess I have a backup career.

Believe it or not, MMOs get off easy when it comes to notorious marketing campaigns. Anything on the following list, good or bad, is a pale shadow of what we've seen in the larger video game industry. Still, there have been plenty of attempts to promote MMOs in ways that make us either applaud or laugh at the studio (and sometimes both at once, which takes coordination).

After doing some staff polling and internal polling, here are 10 memorable marketing campaigns from the era of MMORPGs. Maybe they're all winners in that they got noticed by at least one person, even if they're the most foolish notions in history. Here we go!

Continue Reading

Ultima Online is well-known for being a player housing paradise, and it looks like the ability to make a comfy nest for oneself will get even better with the next game update. Producer Bonnie Armstrong posted a preview of what players should expect in the near future.

The big news is that the UO team is considering allowing players to have houses on both Siege Perilous and standard shards, opening up the possibilities for multiple home ownership. Houses will also get a new theme pack that includes interactive gadgets. The art team continues to work on hi-res versions of house items, although this is "slow going" as it's a huge project.

The UO team is also working on revamps to weapons and armor, the ability for players to run for ambassadorships of towns, new instruments, and a new global arc.

As another gaming year spins to a close, we here at the Institute for Digital Interactive Entertainment have been holding our archaeological department hostage with a trained buffy-tufted marmoset until it delivered a final report. After hours of begging and infected monkey bites, the head of that department, Prof. Justin Olivetti, Ph.D., handed us a scrap of urine-soaked paper with the following article inscribed.

While the Institute strongly suggests that you ignore this report and instead work on your button-mashing exercises, the board of directors stated that all such papers must be posted for the public to see.

This report is presented in the Yetbari typeface and contains a sequential series of items that number between 11 and 13.

Continue Reading

It's not a good time to be a player on Ultima Online's Atlantic server, to put it lightly. Mythic was forced to rollback the game (and players' progress) yesterday on Atlantic to a backup from two weeks ago. Atlantic is the highest-populated shard in the Western hemisphere.

The official announcement cut straight to the point: "Due to issues beyond our control, I am sorry to have to inform all of Atlantic that we had to revert to a Dec 5th backup. We have tried to retrieve a more current backup but we have been unable to do so due to corruption issues."

Mythic said that it will be compensating affected players with a month of free game time, although that's undoubtedly small consolation to those who have lost progress and acquisitions during this period. Apart from the short announcement, there has been no additional communication from the studio on the issue.

[Thanks to Brad for the tip!]

This past week, the Money Gnomes at Turbine tested the waters with the idea of selling a $50 horse in Lord of the Rings Online. Oh, not just any horse, mind you: It's a toy hobby horse. For $50.

The representative who asked for feedback on the item and price-point probably caused herself internal hemorrhaging by stating, "This is not a joke." The fans responded, "Of course, and the sky is made out of blue cheese." At the very least, it allowed the more creative players to come up with humorous expressions of incredulity. The fun finally came to an end when the studio announced that the "experimental" price point was a failure.

Of course, this is by far not the first time a game studio's attempted to sell a ridiculous item, an item with a ridiculous price point, or both combined. If you sell it, after all, the rubes will come.

So in the spirit of a $50 hobby horse that costs something like $20 in real life to acquire, here are 10 completely ridiculous items that we've seen in MMO cash shops.

Continue Reading