Ultima VIII – How to destroy a gaming franchise in one easy step(filfre.net)
filfre.net
Ultima VIII – How to destroy a gaming franchise in one easy step
https://www.filfre.net/2021/02/ultima-viii-or-how-to-destroy-a-gaming-franchise-in-one-easy-step/
217 comments
If you need another data point, I worked on a (non-software) project for Garriott. He was awesome and I'd do it again in a second.
By my guess, you must either be an astronaut or a knight
Sadly, neither. Transport planner working in this Garriott-funded project: https://web.archive.org/web/20150508071259/http://www.austin...
That is really cool. I would be interested in hearing more about what happened with this project
Or perhaps an explorer? Richard Garriott was recently elected president of the Explorers Club.
https://explorers.org/news/news_detail/richard-garriott-elec...
https://explorers.org/news/news_detail/richard-garriott-elec...
I think the fact the commenter here said he would work for Garriott again in a heartbeat, shows the incredible damage that mergers and acquisitions do to businesses.
I am a finance guy, and I think we need to find a way to rework the system to reduce or end a lot of finances excesses. Especially VC pressures, mergers and acquisitions that remove founders, and other issues like that.
I am a finance guy, and I think we need to find a way to rework the system to reduce or end a lot of finances excesses. Especially VC pressures, mergers and acquisitions that remove founders, and other issues like that.
EA also killed Nox and Westwood, and we have some bits and pieces of anecdote about how that went, so I tend to believe what Garriot had to say about that.
Westwood was one of a kind, it still hurts to this day to think how great C&C series could be. Signed: A person who still thinks of the Red Alert expansion and not the Half-Life mod, when he hears "Counterstrike".
I've been re-playing the Red Alert 2 campaign this week and my god this comment hits hard
Red alert is still the best RTS I’ve played. The only thing that comes close is Supreme Commander, and that’s a completely different type of game.
I want a new RA2 :/
I want a new RA2 :/
I donated $500 to the OpenRA project back in 2013 to add support for Tiberian Sun and RA2, and they're still working on it
At this rate I'll just learn C# and join the project I think
At this rate I'll just learn C# and join the project I think
You should, that would speed things up.
I don't know, I think when someone is acquired, there are two things going on:
- people have finally cashed out so motivations are changing
- an investment has been made, so people start accepting business goals are important.
So reading this story I wonder if EA is the villain here, or human nature.
Now I do blame EA for popcap. I'll never forgive Plants vs Zombies 2 with literal pricetags in dollars on all the plants.
- people have finally cashed out so motivations are changing
- an investment has been made, so people start accepting business goals are important.
So reading this story I wonder if EA is the villain here, or human nature.
Now I do blame EA for popcap. I'll never forgive Plants vs Zombies 2 with literal pricetags in dollars on all the plants.
Having been part of a company acquired by EA: It's EA.
Nobody "cashed out", because the stock options turned into so much hot air. You couldn't have pried business goals out of EA with a autopsy kit. They were interested in IP, and in "leadership". They deliberately drove the rest of the business into the ground to get rid of most of the devs.
And, talking to other people acquired by EA, that was far from the exception. In general, anybody who worked for EA in a non-exec role can tell you: If you wonder who the villain is, you could do worse than guess it's EA "leaders"
Nobody "cashed out", because the stock options turned into so much hot air. You couldn't have pried business goals out of EA with a autopsy kit. They were interested in IP, and in "leadership". They deliberately drove the rest of the business into the ground to get rid of most of the devs.
And, talking to other people acquired by EA, that was far from the exception. In general, anybody who worked for EA in a non-exec role can tell you: If you wonder who the villain is, you could do worse than guess it's EA "leaders"
And Pandemic, and many others. I think Bobby Kotick once said something like, if you want to see your game studio shut down, sell it to EA. It's true that founders want to cash out but you can be sure that in all these places there were many people who wanted to keep making games.
The apology is well-written, but I'm not sure it "it highlights all of garriott's mistakes, in detail, and places the blame squarely on his own shoulders".
That was the first time I read the apology, and the apology immediately raised red flags for being one that was only half of the whole picture and engineered to put blames on others; the self-criticism is simply there to induce sympathy.
In my opinion, the fact that there is nothing in that apology that directly addresses the departure of Ultima VIII from everything(?) that fans were expecting then is one of those, and the biggest, red flags.
I would have some sympathy for getting a burnt pizza from a pizza kitchen that's under lots of pressure and the staff are being worked to their bones; but I would not have any sympathy for the manager's apology for giving me a burnt toast made with sliced bread.
I have not played the Ultima games and I don't like EA much.
Edit: missing "to".
That was the first time I read the apology, and the apology immediately raised red flags for being one that was only half of the whole picture and engineered to put blames on others; the self-criticism is simply there to induce sympathy.
In my opinion, the fact that there is nothing in that apology that directly addresses the departure of Ultima VIII from everything(?) that fans were expecting then is one of those, and the biggest, red flags.
I would have some sympathy for getting a burnt pizza from a pizza kitchen that's under lots of pressure and the staff are being worked to their bones; but I would not have any sympathy for the manager's apology for giving me a burnt toast made with sliced bread.
I have not played the Ultima games and I don't like EA much.
Edit: missing "to".
If they'd created burnt toast (how does one do toast with non-sliced bread?) because the managing company had declared that the pizza must be shipped before the pizza dough was ready, you'd have some sympathy, no?
The jury has been in on EA for a long, long time: they milk franchises ruthlessly and eliminate talent and entire acquisitions the second it fails to meet their terrifyingly all-consuming goal of gigantic profits.
The jury has been in on EA for a long, long time: they milk franchises ruthlessly and eliminate talent and entire acquisitions the second it fails to meet their terrifyingly all-consuming goal of gigantic profits.
I know EA is the evil empire and whatever else but it doesn't seem obvious to me that Garriott threatening to resign means he would just get replaced. I'd say more likely they would give them more time.
The Ultima fanbase has always had a cultish love of RG for many good reasons, sure. Firing the guy would not be a smart business decision.
We're also only hearing his side of it. I tend to think EA was in the wrong, but also know that it's almost always the case one side of a story is biased, even if unintentionally.
The Ultima fanbase has always had a cultish love of RG for many good reasons, sure. Firing the guy would not be a smart business decision.
We're also only hearing his side of it. I tend to think EA was in the wrong, but also know that it's almost always the case one side of a story is biased, even if unintentionally.
Despite a poor modern track record, EA back then is not the same company as EA today.
The decision makers directly above him could have easily replaced him without actually replacing him, but I don't think they would have cared about the bad PR from cutting him at all. Acquiring a studio or rockstar is both good pr and good for business, but firing be a bad employee or cutting a failing studio is also good for business as far as shareholders and execs were concerned.
The decision makers directly above him could have easily replaced him without actually replacing him, but I don't think they would have cared about the bad PR from cutting him at all. Acquiring a studio or rockstar is both good pr and good for business, but firing be a bad employee or cutting a failing studio is also good for business as far as shareholders and execs were concerned.
In what world do shareholders believe that firing the principal talent, creative director, and founder of a new acquisition--within a YEAR of acquiring the company!--is "good for business"?
Only if you believe businesses are run by mustachio-twirling villains who sit around trying to ruin games for fun.
Only if you believe businesses are run by mustachio-twirling villains who sit around trying to ruin games for fun.
Manager or Exec A closes the deal and acquires a successful moneyfountain studio. Good for business!
Manager or Exec B fires a failing, unsuccessful or insubordinate employee, or saves the company money by reducing headcount and the complexity of running a studio. Good for business!
They're two separate, distinct operations. A and B are not necessarily the same person, though they can be. It's not a planned evil scheme or anything like that; the separation of time alone makes them independent events with independent motivations (in most cases, as tearing down another person's sandcastle to build up your own does happen sometimes too).
"Don't anthropomorphize your lawnmower" and so on.
Manager or Exec B fires a failing, unsuccessful or insubordinate employee, or saves the company money by reducing headcount and the complexity of running a studio. Good for business!
They're two separate, distinct operations. A and B are not necessarily the same person, though they can be. It's not a planned evil scheme or anything like that; the separation of time alone makes them independent events with independent motivations (in most cases, as tearing down another person's sandcastle to build up your own does happen sometimes too).
"Don't anthropomorphize your lawnmower" and so on.
I don't play games (as much) and have never played any of the Ultima franchise.
To answer your business-management-related question though, I am looking at the price of their stock over since 1990.
https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/EA/financials
1990: $0.xxx
2000: $20
2010: $17 (valley between 2008-2013)(the global financial crisis?)
2015: $55
2021: $145 (there is a drop between 2018-2020 down to 100)
Whatever these guys are doing, judging from their stock price, it works. Shareholders like them.
Sales/Revenue filed:
2016: 4.37B
2017: 4.81B
2018: 5.16B
2019: 4.93B
2020: 5.47N
Cash cow...
To answer your business-management-related question though, I am looking at the price of their stock over since 1990.
https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/EA/financials
1990: $0.xxx
2000: $20
2010: $17 (valley between 2008-2013)(the global financial crisis?)
2015: $55
2021: $145 (there is a drop between 2018-2020 down to 100)
Whatever these guys are doing, judging from their stock price, it works. Shareholders like them.
Sales/Revenue filed:
2016: 4.37B
2017: 4.81B
2018: 5.16B
2019: 4.93B
2020: 5.47N
Cash cow...
EA makes 1,5 billion with FIFA ultimate team cards. It's disgusting.
Not if you’re a shareholder, buddy. It’s delicious.
It should be illegal.
A business making money? Outrage!
Yes, certain ways of making money should absolutely be on outrage, sometimes to the point of being made illegal.
Why? It brings tax revenue, and doesn’t harm the environment.
Wait, are people are not part of the environment? Encouraging addiction for the sake of tax revenue is probably not sustainable.
What is 1,5 billion?
Can’t you folks use decimal points correctly?
Can’t you folks use decimal points correctly?
What's interesting in that, is that it claims that non-english speaking countries call the dot a point instead of a period.
As someone in England, I know of no-one who would call it a period rather than a point. Period is considered an Americanism.
As someone in England, I know of no-one who would call it a period rather than a point. Period is considered an Americanism.
Unitedstatians can't.
A lot of businesses buy other businesses simply to shut them down and reduce competition, though.
I read the part about how they regularly brought in dinner and had to work weekends. His may have been a good apology but I'd prefer to work for even a poor apologizer if it meant a better work life balance.
The video game industry probably isn't the place for you, then. All my previous colleagues with that background had horror stories.
It's like Hollywood. There is always a multitude of starstruck 20 year-olds who would happily do the job for free, just for a chance to "make it big". Larger employers count on it and it distorts the salary/work-life balance economics of all the junior and mid-level employees in the industry.
The video game industry is a tournament. I have nothing but respect for the talent it attracts, but you have to be a little bit crazy to enter it.
It's like Hollywood. There is always a multitude of starstruck 20 year-olds who would happily do the job for free, just for a chance to "make it big". Larger employers count on it and it distorts the salary/work-life balance economics of all the junior and mid-level employees in the industry.
The video game industry is a tournament. I have nothing but respect for the talent it attracts, but you have to be a little bit crazy to enter it.
How many video games engineers actually make it big?
Okay I worked in games and Hollywood and I loved ultima8. :/ but on ultima8 sure the bar is sky high to follow up the greatest single player masterpiece and expansion set of all time but it’s also not utterly broken, lost and incomplete like the next game in the series Ascension.
You are one of the crazy ones. The world needs you!
Ultima IV holds a special place in my heart that I'll never forget. I played it as a kid and then played it again, finally beating it just three years ago.
I haven't actually played through more than the first couple of hours of VIII, but probably will eventually. I did really try to get through IX, though and it was really frustrating both how buggy it was and that the hardware requirements were so far ahead of my machine.
Ultima IV holds a special place in my heart that I'll never forget. I played it as a kid and then played it again, finally beating it just three years ago.
I haven't actually played through more than the first couple of hours of VIII, but probably will eventually. I did really try to get through IX, though and it was really frustrating both how buggy it was and that the hardware requirements were so far ahead of my machine.
> and that the hardware requirements were so far ahead of my machine.
and everyone's. I actually tried playing it with a ton of video cards because buying video cards was my biggest hobby at the time. I think the Matrox Mystique handled it best overall from what I remember.
and everyone's. I actually tried playing it with a ton of video cards because buying video cards was my biggest hobby at the time. I think the Matrox Mystique handled it best overall from what I remember.
That's mind-boggling. I'd thought it was just me and my budget PC the first time I tried. Why would they set the system requirements so high?
The whole game was overly ambitious all along. I think they were thinking SkyRim and Witcher when the technology was only up to par with Mine-Craft graphics if that. War-Craft3 a game that came out a few years later barely navigated through the glitch metaverse of pre-millennia realtime 3-D graphics.
After reading reactions to this over-apology and the BackBlaze over-apology a while back, I think...
There's no such thing as an exact apology. There's a discontinuity between under-apologizing and overapologizing, there's no point where it's neither an under- or over-apology.
There's no such thing as an exact apology. There's a discontinuity between under-apologizing and overapologizing, there's no point where it's neither an under- or over-apology.
I think the key is to just be sincere and honest. Different people will interpret the apology one way or another, good or bad, under/over apologized. But if you're sincere and honest, you've done your job.
Pagan was pretty bad. I was one of the superfans at the time, I had played every Ultima on my Apple II and then my PC. I was one of the first people to beat Ultima VI and still have my award certificate from Lord British which I got in the mail. I spent late nights tweaking my autoexec.bat and config.sys to get Ultima VII to run properly. Pagan was unplayable on release, it was actually impossible to across the stones leading across an underground river without falling in. Later they released a patch which fixed the most glaring issues and I completed the game, but it left a sour taste in my mouth.
What REALLY killed Ultima was the absolute state of Ultima IX. Also released in an unplayable state, the patches rolled in. Finally after about two months, it was playable but as one progressed in the game, incongruities almost immediately popped out. The lore had been changed, sometimes substantially. And this wasn't the worst thing - it became clear after not too long that the game wasn't done at all. This was later admitted by an Origin team member who released the real plot, and later on people attempted to fan-patch the game to make it more like it had been planned originally.
Of course, EA is to blame for all of this, but Garriott shares this blame for allowing them to take too much control away from his organization and okaying the releases before they were ready.
http://hacki.bootstrike.com/english/nitpicks.htm
Hacki's page is still THE internet resource for the pissed off former Ultima fan.
What REALLY killed Ultima was the absolute state of Ultima IX. Also released in an unplayable state, the patches rolled in. Finally after about two months, it was playable but as one progressed in the game, incongruities almost immediately popped out. The lore had been changed, sometimes substantially. And this wasn't the worst thing - it became clear after not too long that the game wasn't done at all. This was later admitted by an Origin team member who released the real plot, and later on people attempted to fan-patch the game to make it more like it had been planned originally.
Of course, EA is to blame for all of this, but Garriott shares this blame for allowing them to take too much control away from his organization and okaying the releases before they were ready.
http://hacki.bootstrike.com/english/nitpicks.htm
Hacki's page is still THE internet resource for the pissed off former Ultima fan.
Ultima VIII was the first (and only) Ultima game I played. There was so much hype for the franchise and I had never played, so I bought it new and had high expectations...
ooof. i tried to play it but got into some boring dead end where i didn't know what to do next and figured i missed something but realized i just didn't care and would rather do some chores than keep playing.
i was just confused that anyone liked ultima at all and forgot about it.
kind of interesting to see the story behind that game (i forgot about it so much that i never bothered to look into why it sucked so much before today).
ooof. i tried to play it but got into some boring dead end where i didn't know what to do next and figured i missed something but realized i just didn't care and would rather do some chores than keep playing.
i was just confused that anyone liked ultima at all and forgot about it.
kind of interesting to see the story behind that game (i forgot about it so much that i never bothered to look into why it sucked so much before today).
If you're still up for gaming UVII is one of the greatest classic games ever made, IMHO it's still the best open world game and it feels more alive than say, Morrowind or Skyrim or Fallout 4 or anything really. I saw somebody closing their shutters over their windows before going to bed in UVII when I first played the game, so I double clicked the same shutter a minute later and it opened again. As I sat there, just marveling at what I had done and the level of life and interactivity in the game, the woman came back and CLOSED THE SHUTTER AGAIN.
The game is chock full of astounding details like this. Feeling poor? Just thresh some wheat, take it to the mill and grind it into flour and bake some bread and sell it.
The game is chock full of astounding details like this. Feeling poor? Just thresh some wheat, take it to the mill and grind it into flour and bake some bread and sell it.
For added interest, Ultima VII - The Black Gate contains satirical references to the then ongoing conflict (SPOILERS):
- The game's villain, The Guardian, is described as a destroyer of worlds, which is the antithesis to Origin's motto: We create worlds.
- The Guardian uses two acolytes named Elizabeth and Abraham (EA) who, benign in appearance, spread funds throughout Britannia for evil purposes.
- The Guardian has set up three devices named Generators that prepare his conquer of the land in the shape of a Cube, Sphere, and Tetrahedron, respectively (EA logo).
- Alagner's notebook reads: "(...) Already, The Guardian is promising to be a powerful threat. Magic in Britannia has taken a turn for the worse in the past few years.", a possible side reference to EA's push for creative control over RG.
- The game's villain, The Guardian, is described as a destroyer of worlds, which is the antithesis to Origin's motto: We create worlds.
- The Guardian uses two acolytes named Elizabeth and Abraham (EA) who, benign in appearance, spread funds throughout Britannia for evil purposes.
- The Guardian has set up three devices named Generators that prepare his conquer of the land in the shape of a Cube, Sphere, and Tetrahedron, respectively (EA logo).
- Alagner's notebook reads: "(...) Already, The Guardian is promising to be a powerful threat. Magic in Britannia has taken a turn for the worse in the past few years.", a possible side reference to EA's push for creative control over RG.
> I THOUGHT I CLOSED THIS!
The World Building was incredible. Nothing quite like it since which is surprising. The NPC schedule system is actually quite simple. Simple systems that allow for the bank heist :)
If I ever create a game it will be very focused technically on world building. Multi-resolution AI system to create those local details and also track NPC schedules, movements, and etc globally.
The World Building was incredible. Nothing quite like it since which is surprising. The NPC schedule system is actually quite simple. Simple systems that allow for the bank heist :)
If I ever create a game it will be very focused technically on world building. Multi-resolution AI system to create those local details and also track NPC schedules, movements, and etc globally.
I agree wholeheartedly but it can’t go without saying that this is most true when you take into account the Forge of Virtue expansion and to a lesser extent The Silver Seed which added even more detail to the world.
It only killed the franchise if you don't count Ultima Online, which is probably one of the most important games in video game history.
If you zoom up a bit from the level this article is in, as I understand it, while Ultima was on the rocks anyhow, it was Ultima Online that comprehensively killed the franchise by being too successful. Rational business logic said to pour the effort into the moneymaker UO and the single-player Ultimas couldn't compete for resources.
IMHO, there would still have been a lot of winds against the series anyhow. The exponential increase in the difficulty of technology was not playing well with Origin's high level of aggressiveness on that front. And perhaps a bit more controversially, the series just wasn't headed in a good direction; after the impressive founding of the series' reputation on the virtue system in 4 and 5, the series was headed ever faster into a nihilistic undercutting of its own foundations. (And I'd highlight the undercutting aspect over the nihilistic aspect; while I'll cop to being less impressed with nihilism than probably the average HN reader, nihilistic RPGs aren't intrinsically a bad thing, but in this particular case it undercuts the foundations.) Even a fully-realized Ultima 8 was never going to fit the series very well, and IMHO could even have ended up with a worse story in some aspects than we got.
IMHO, there would still have been a lot of winds against the series anyhow. The exponential increase in the difficulty of technology was not playing well with Origin's high level of aggressiveness on that front. And perhaps a bit more controversially, the series just wasn't headed in a good direction; after the impressive founding of the series' reputation on the virtue system in 4 and 5, the series was headed ever faster into a nihilistic undercutting of its own foundations. (And I'd highlight the undercutting aspect over the nihilistic aspect; while I'll cop to being less impressed with nihilism than probably the average HN reader, nihilistic RPGs aren't intrinsically a bad thing, but in this particular case it undercuts the foundations.) Even a fully-realized Ultima 8 was never going to fit the series very well, and IMHO could even have ended up with a worse story in some aspects than we got.
Well, I distinctly remember there being a lot of hype a while after Ultima IX came out that Ultima X would be a reimagining of UO in 3D. I'm not sure how much of that was wishful thinking on the part of gamers that were looking for a silver lining in the steaming pile that was Ultima IX (me included) and how much of that was founding in fact, or at least the plans of Origin/EA. One would think if UO was so successful they would want to funnel people into something new with even more longevity.
On a side note, Ultima IX was not only not a good game, it's the only game I know of that ever sent me a complete set of new CDs with an updated version on them months after release without me even specifically requesting it. I still remember the mostly (entirely?) blank white tri-fold (or quad fold?) cardboard CD enclosure it came in with all new disks. I don't think I ever used them, partly because I already had that version or one better from the internet prior to it arriving, and partly because the game still had such horrible performance on my moderately good system that I had already given up on it because the gameplay itself wasn't nearly good enough to make me subject myself to that.
On a side note, Ultima IX was not only not a good game, it's the only game I know of that ever sent me a complete set of new CDs with an updated version on them months after release without me even specifically requesting it. I still remember the mostly (entirely?) blank white tri-fold (or quad fold?) cardboard CD enclosure it came in with all new disks. I don't think I ever used them, partly because I already had that version or one better from the internet prior to it arriving, and partly because the game still had such horrible performance on my moderately good system that I had already given up on it because the gameplay itself wasn't nearly good enough to make me subject myself to that.
UO was my #1 gaming experience and sadly like others have mentioned: probably won't have that exceeded by an MMO again. However, there was a brief moment when Sierra had more control over the LOTR MMO (known as Middle Earth Online) and it looked very similar to early UO.
I've always been searching for another MMO experience. Eve Online was close but not quite the same. While not exactly an MMO experience, Rust is the closet modern approximation that I've experienced.
ARK: Survival Evolved is a much better example of a game in the UO/Eve Online spirit. While also being a cutthroat PvP sandbox like Rust, it has complex politics and power games between massive inter-server tribes, making it more MMO-ish.
> probably won't have that exceeded by an MMO again
It'll happen once VR takes off, even if that takes another 20 years to happen.
It'll happen once VR takes off, even if that takes another 20 years to happen.
UO is the only game that allowed players to completely dictate the social norms between players and didn't allow players to box themselves into their own segregated safe experiences. It's easy to understand why MMO's evolved away from this approach as they attempted to reach the masses, but there's an entire audience looking for something else that got abandoned. It's a shame, really.
Shadowbane allowed this too. Was a great experience with the natural politics emerging since resources were fairly scarce and you needed to stick together to survive and not get your things taken from you.
> didn't allow players to box themselves into their own segregated safe experiences
For the first year or two at least.
For the first year or two at least.
> It only killed the franchise if you don't count Ultima Online, which is probably one of the most important games in video game history.
And Ultima Online has been running since 1997 and is still going ?!?!
https://uo.com
That it is still "Online" with active players is an extraordinary accomplishment. It really is one of the most important games in video game history.
(Note FFXI and WoW are also remarkably long-lived MMOs.)
Also imagine playing a full MMO on a 233 MHz CPU with 32MB of RAM and downloading updates via blazing fast 56kbps dial-up internet...
GameSpot gave it 4.9/10. ;-)
And Ultima Online has been running since 1997 and is still going ?!?!
https://uo.com
That it is still "Online" with active players is an extraordinary accomplishment. It really is one of the most important games in video game history.
(Note FFXI and WoW are also remarkably long-lived MMOs.)
Also imagine playing a full MMO on a 233 MHz CPU with 32MB of RAM and downloading updates via blazing fast 56kbps dial-up internet...
GameSpot gave it 4.9/10. ;-)
With the pace of technology today UO is probably just running in a VM on some machine somewhere, barely taking up enough resources to notice
It's effectively "free money" for EA now I suppose
It's effectively "free money" for EA now I suppose
Everquest is still alive too, and it is older than WoW or FFXI.
Ultima Online is the best gaming experience I ever had. In my opinion, nothing has come close to it in regards to game dynamics, was a proper open-world sandbox.
As I never found anything close to Ultima Online, I basically stopped gaming entirely. UO raised the bar too high.
As I never found anything close to Ultima Online, I basically stopped gaming entirely. UO raised the bar too high.
It's incredibly sad that by far the best MMO experience --- indeed one could say the only game which lived up to the promise of a shared, virtual, persistent world --- was also one of the first.
It was all downhill after WoW. It was a great game, but it was precisely because it was so good that it soon hegemonised everything. Rather than being one possibility out of many, it became "the" MMORPG, in that due to its success every subsequent game copied WoW, often superficially, and maybe even sometimes accidentally. Its specific conventions became the genre itself.
It was all downhill after WoW. It was a great game, but it was precisely because it was so good that it soon hegemonised everything. Rather than being one possibility out of many, it became "the" MMORPG, in that due to its success every subsequent game copied WoW, often superficially, and maybe even sometimes accidentally. Its specific conventions became the genre itself.
EVE Online as well but that’s quite a different flavour. I played loads of UO back in the day and spent four years working on EVE. Very few games come close to touching either in terms of being so complex, almost to the point of being real spaces to navigate and live in.
I'd just like to point out the 'played UO' and 'working on EVE' =]
I love EVE, I just can't find the time to work on it anymore.
Haha, in my case I literally worked at CCP making EVE rather than the second job it can become playing it. Still some of the best community moments were with that job and the awesome people that play EVE. I had several great Fanfests.
Tibia comes pretty close The older versions, anyway. Apparently it even started as a copy of Ultima. Never found anything close to it either. Every kid in my school played this game... It was like an IRC client with a fun game embedded in it.
Tibia was absolutely HUGE in my country (Poland) around 2002 and it was my first and last major experience with MMO. I remember it was the only time back then I voluntarily woke up early in the morning long before the school because the servers were usually empty at that time and the spawn locations were full of monsters which meant quick exping :-) Trying to sign in after the school usually took a looong time but once you did it, it truly felt like going to a different universe.
Some time ago I got a craving to play the Tibia version from my childhood and it turns out there's an active server called [1] Classictibia where you play using the 7.1 client version on a faithful recreation of the world from that time - a real blast from the past!
[1] http://classictibia.com/
Some time ago I got a craving to play the Tibia version from my childhood and it turns out there's an active server called [1] Classictibia where you play using the 7.1 client version on a faithful recreation of the world from that time - a real blast from the past!
[1] http://classictibia.com/
It's being revived: https://uo.com
They've tried so many times to "fix" it. At this point, I think UO Outlands is probably the best UO experience you can get.
I played UO on an unofficial RPG shard for about one year. The server was was only up only a few hours during the evening (and would often crash), most of the mechanics weren't implemented, and those that were were often buggy. It still was one of the best (if not the best) gaming experience I ever had as well.
Same here - though Dark Age of Camelot came close. It wasn’t sandboxy but the RvR did scratch the PvP itch!
Nothing has come close and nothing ever will. Mainly due to the fact that it wasn't just the game mechanics; but that all player types had no other option except to play UO. This, combined with the game mechanics, is what made UO a one-of-a-kind experiences. I feel blessed and honored to have had the opportunity to be a part of it. After so many years failing to find a UO replacement; I've accepted this conclusion as reality and as result, have stopped searching.
Star Wars Galaxies was another absolute gem at its prime. I never played it, but reading stories about the game makes me feel it's the one game apart from UO which truly came close to fulfilling the promise of a "virtual, persistent, shared world".
I played SWG from its release until its final shutdown, though I had several months-long breaks during the run.
I posted a few articles on my blog after it was shut down in 2011. Here's one of them, going into the crafting system:
https://benovermyer.com/post/2012/star-wars-galaxies-craftin...
I posted a few articles on my blog after it was shut down in 2011. Here's one of them, going into the crafting system:
https://benovermyer.com/post/2012/star-wars-galaxies-craftin...
Just want to say that I really liked the blog posts. Very insightful.
When I wrote the post I mentioned, it felt like just writing down my feelings on an extant system.
Now, ten years later, it feels like I documented a part of history that hasn't replicated itself. I can't help but feel really sad about that.
Now, ten years later, it feels like I documented a part of history that hasn't replicated itself. I can't help but feel really sad about that.
Raph Koster had a lot to do with both Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies. In some ways he's as influential as Lord British in this space.
https://www.raphkoster.com/games/books/postmortems/
He has a book called Postmortems where he compiled essays (many found on his web page) about his early days writing MUDs and developing fantasy worlds, including UO and SWG.
https://www.raphkoster.com/games/books/postmortems/
He has a book called Postmortems where he compiled essays (many found on his web page) about his early days writing MUDs and developing fantasy worlds, including UO and SWG.
DAoC had some of the better PvP mechanics of that generation of MMOs. I played DAoC for years, and eventually moved to WoW for a little while. WoW always felt too easy and never really gave me the same rush that DAoC did.
I still remember the day I gave a friend of mine my DAoC accounts. He later sold them when he quit, and gave me some cash back :)
I still remember the day I gave a friend of mine my DAoC accounts. He later sold them when he quit, and gave me some cash back :)
I earned my college spending money arbitraging UO real estate between in game gold and Ebay prices. It wasn't a huge amount of money, but I recall earning well over minimum wage per hour.
There are plenty of great, free Ultima Online servers to play on. No need to stop playing!
I only very briefly play UO. I'm curious if you could give more details of how how it was different to make it the best experience you ever had. What are games today missing?
Not the OP and I didn't play UO, but I did play a peer game out at the same time, Asheron's Call. AC, UO, and of course EQ were the big 3 early MMOs.
Anyway, there was definitely more community back then, if only due to how there were basically no modern quality-of-life considerations. No auto-group finder, minimal instancing (no instancing?), loss of items on death... you had to lean on others to help you out and they would, because eventually they'd need your help.
A classic example is doing a corpse run to recover your items. In a modern MMO, you die and can rez at some convenient spot with all your items. No real loss or penalty for tough fights, no risk.
In AC, you lost xp on death, lost items on your corpse, and had to make your way back to your body to erase the xp penalty and get your stuff back. I think the timer was something like 3 hours before your corpse would decay and either anybody could loot your body or time items disappeared. I think UO and EQ were the same. Some of the most memorable corpse runs where when you lost your armor and had to get some friends to come with you since you were now half naked and perhaps weaponless.
Anyway, there was definitely more community back then, if only due to how there were basically no modern quality-of-life considerations. No auto-group finder, minimal instancing (no instancing?), loss of items on death... you had to lean on others to help you out and they would, because eventually they'd need your help.
A classic example is doing a corpse run to recover your items. In a modern MMO, you die and can rez at some convenient spot with all your items. No real loss or penalty for tough fights, no risk.
In AC, you lost xp on death, lost items on your corpse, and had to make your way back to your body to erase the xp penalty and get your stuff back. I think the timer was something like 3 hours before your corpse would decay and either anybody could loot your body or time items disappeared. I think UO and EQ were the same. Some of the most memorable corpse runs where when you lost your armor and had to get some friends to come with you since you were now half naked and perhaps weaponless.
It was a incredible world to discover and explore (especially custom servers with custom maps and content). There was no 'point' to the game, i.e. no final destination or quest to complete... in fact there were barely any quests at all. It was all just up to you. However you wanted to play you could. I.e. you could just have a blast logging in and hanging out in a player's house which they converted into a bar and play chess chatting about w/e. I even played some great roleplaying shards which were legit, e.g. a LOTR one and it was soo epicly awesome. Good pvp dynamics. I did love the ruthlessness of losing everything when you died. I loved how custom shards could tweak so many of the variables pretty easily. I just have so many absolutely golden memories, hilarious and absurd memories. Idk... it's just really hard to convey how the game was the best. I think a lot of is just because it let you do whatever you wanted, but also provided you with fun PvE, PvP, roleplaying, etc.
What are games today missing? They're not persistent open-world sandbox games. Sure we have open-world games, but they're not sandbox and often not persistent, and we have sandbox but they're not open-world and often not persistent too.
I can't do it. I can't adequately describe what games today are missing which UO had. It's a quality of the combination of all the features UO had that just resulted in the best memories and fun I've had when gaming. I just don't see enough support for player-generated content as UO had, which I suspect is a big part of it too.
What are games today missing? They're not persistent open-world sandbox games. Sure we have open-world games, but they're not sandbox and often not persistent, and we have sandbox but they're not open-world and often not persistent too.
I can't do it. I can't adequately describe what games today are missing which UO had. It's a quality of the combination of all the features UO had that just resulted in the best memories and fun I've had when gaming. I just don't see enough support for player-generated content as UO had, which I suspect is a big part of it too.
Thanks for the writeup!
I played a bit of UO, but I played a lot of Star Wars Galaxies, which was in many ways the spiritual successor, as Raph Koster was the lead designer of both.
Raph came from a background of roleplaying in MUDs, and both UO and SWG had very active roleplaying communities. He designed games that brought together a diverse set of player types and nudged them toward interacting with and depending on each other. In SWG you could (if so inclined) play for months without ever picking up a weapon or venturing outside a city. Professions like Dancer, Image Designer, Tailor, Merchant, Architect, and Politician were on equal footing with the combat professions and you had a certain number of skill points to distribute between all ~30 of them.
Entire player-created cities with shuttleports and malls and parks were constructed, mayors were elected and set policies. City founders worked to entice the best crafters to set up shop in their town (due to an incredibly deep crafting system that resulted in a wide range of qualities and styles of crafted items - people ran full-time businesses just staying on top of the frequently changing mineral deposits and mining high quality materials to sell to crafters). You could place almost any item in your house or guild hall, people decorated elaborately to make their towns and spaces unique.
The planets were huge and very little was marked - you would just go adventuring. One time very early on in the game, someone was running around Mos Espa on Tatooine, getting together a group to head out to Fort Tusken. Like most people at that point, I hadn't been there and didn't know where it was, so I joined up. Once we had assembled a full group of 20, we met on a bridge and headed out, running across the countryside in a line behind this guy for 15 minutes straight. Later they would add mounts and vehicles to the game - early on there was a lot of running. Finally we arrived, and he instructed us to wait outside the fort. He ran in and pulled a couple Tuskens over, and they handily slaughtered our entire host in seconds.
At this time the game still had corpses, so we all woke up as ghosts back in town and had to run all the way out again.
I remember that and other moments from SWG like actual events that happened in my life, moreso than any other game I've played. It's basically inconceivable to me that something like that would happen in a game like WoW where every quest and character and item is fully mapped out and codified, and you largely progress along the rails. In SWG you picked a starting profession and were dropped off in a city, and that was basically it. You had to go run around and observe and talk to people to figure out what you could do. There was so much wonder. UO and SWG were committed to creating rich virtual worlds where players had the tools to write their own stories together. I believe they were ahead of their time and we will eventually see more games like this.
EvE online has largely taken up this mantle and has done amazing things, but the space-based gameplay is a turn-off to many.
Raph came from a background of roleplaying in MUDs, and both UO and SWG had very active roleplaying communities. He designed games that brought together a diverse set of player types and nudged them toward interacting with and depending on each other. In SWG you could (if so inclined) play for months without ever picking up a weapon or venturing outside a city. Professions like Dancer, Image Designer, Tailor, Merchant, Architect, and Politician were on equal footing with the combat professions and you had a certain number of skill points to distribute between all ~30 of them.
Entire player-created cities with shuttleports and malls and parks were constructed, mayors were elected and set policies. City founders worked to entice the best crafters to set up shop in their town (due to an incredibly deep crafting system that resulted in a wide range of qualities and styles of crafted items - people ran full-time businesses just staying on top of the frequently changing mineral deposits and mining high quality materials to sell to crafters). You could place almost any item in your house or guild hall, people decorated elaborately to make their towns and spaces unique.
The planets were huge and very little was marked - you would just go adventuring. One time very early on in the game, someone was running around Mos Espa on Tatooine, getting together a group to head out to Fort Tusken. Like most people at that point, I hadn't been there and didn't know where it was, so I joined up. Once we had assembled a full group of 20, we met on a bridge and headed out, running across the countryside in a line behind this guy for 15 minutes straight. Later they would add mounts and vehicles to the game - early on there was a lot of running. Finally we arrived, and he instructed us to wait outside the fort. He ran in and pulled a couple Tuskens over, and they handily slaughtered our entire host in seconds.
At this time the game still had corpses, so we all woke up as ghosts back in town and had to run all the way out again.
I remember that and other moments from SWG like actual events that happened in my life, moreso than any other game I've played. It's basically inconceivable to me that something like that would happen in a game like WoW where every quest and character and item is fully mapped out and codified, and you largely progress along the rails. In SWG you picked a starting profession and were dropped off in a city, and that was basically it. You had to go run around and observe and talk to people to figure out what you could do. There was so much wonder. UO and SWG were committed to creating rich virtual worlds where players had the tools to write their own stories together. I believe they were ahead of their time and we will eventually see more games like this.
EvE online has largely taken up this mantle and has done amazing things, but the space-based gameplay is a turn-off to many.
It was a great experience. And I'll cherish it. Free servers aren't the same. Might setup a server on my local network some day to play with my kid.
Due to an unstable modem connection during the UO timeline I never could play.
UO always seemed like more of a sand boxy 'lets see what happens' kinda world. Meanwhile MMORPGs all seem to be more 'lead you by the nose progression'.
I miss more of the 'lets see what happens' kinda games.
UO always seemed like more of a sand boxy 'lets see what happens' kinda world. Meanwhile MMORPGs all seem to be more 'lead you by the nose progression'.
I miss more of the 'lets see what happens' kinda games.
MMORPGs have always been a mix of both. UO was definitely one of the most sandboxy, but it also demonstrated why a sandbox full of children needs a supervisor.
UO was definitely a new direction, considering for online you had MUDs or limited graphical games like The Shadow of Yserbius.
However it was quickly eclipsed by Everquest which came in 99 and I would say is far more important to the MMO landscape than UO ever was. Asheron's Call quickly followed EQ and while it never had the numbers was the first no zone MMO - you could travel anywhere and no load except into dungeons which were nothing like what people are used to today.
It was certainly a time for experimentation to see what players liked and disliked and for all sorts of fun bugs if not exploits in each game to rile a community.
However it was quickly eclipsed by Everquest which came in 99 and I would say is far more important to the MMO landscape than UO ever was. Asheron's Call quickly followed EQ and while it never had the numbers was the first no zone MMO - you could travel anywhere and no load except into dungeons which were nothing like what people are used to today.
It was certainly a time for experimentation to see what players liked and disliked and for all sorts of fun bugs if not exploits in each game to rile a community.
Just hopping in to agree about UO, one of the primary gaming experiences of my life. A fascinating culture, community, and experience. Chesapeake baby.
UO was great. Lots of games from long ago that were good:
- legend of mir 2
- phantasy star online (dreamcast)
- lineage
- myth of soma
- ragnarok online
- many more
- legend of mir 2
- phantasy star online (dreamcast)
- lineage
- myth of soma
- ragnarok online
- many more
Yeah. Had friends who played Ragnarok. So many memories of dead games... How many are still online? I know Tibia still is, they emailed me a free week of premium last christmas.
Ragnarok Online is still alive and evolving, there's also a non-complete, but still super fun and playable mobile version, which is not the cash-grabby kind of mobile MMORPG (even though... of course you can pay to advance faster)
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I tried to like it again and again but I just couldn't. It was always a super boring experience.
I preferred Meridian 59 and later DAOC. EQ wasn't my thing either, so much downtime. 1 minute of fighting 5 minutes of waiting.
UO endless whacking of rocks and chopping of wood. One time I did that 3 days only watching the screen and I wrote an automation script to do that. After that I never looked back.
Ultima Underworld however was awesome and when thinking back was a true gem.
Ultima Underworld however was awesome and when thinking back was a true gem.
I couldnt make myself play that and eq. The amount of repetitive tasks was just daunting. It felt like these games were designed by sadists
The thing I really loved about Ultima Online is you could have fun without caring about that. I mostly just hung out in the "town" my guild created and built furniture / organized our resources and managed our vendors. Most of my skills didn't ever get far beyond newbie level.
That's unthinkable in WoW - the game is 100% focused on progression and advancement.
That's unthinkable in WoW - the game is 100% focused on progression and advancement.
>Most of my skills didn't ever get far beyond newbie level.
This is the best test for whether a game really allows freedom in player interaction. If players can have fun and build characters without ever relying on game-mechanical progression, they have true freedom. I made more money in UO running dice games next to the bank than running dungeons.
This is the best test for whether a game really allows freedom in player interaction. If players can have fun and build characters without ever relying on game-mechanical progression, they have true freedom. I made more money in UO running dice games next to the bank than running dungeons.
UO was incredible. I learned ASM and how to use a debugger because of that game. Released open source tools to patch all 100+ versions of the game client. Some day I'll make a proper sequel. There's been no better balance of risk vs. reward since UO...I think a couple titles have come close, but nothing has captured the magic of T2A.
Ultima 6 and 5 have been remade by modders for the Dungeon Siege engine (full remakes with functionality and systems not just a re-skin/tribute)
Ultima 6 - http://u6project.com/wp/ (sorry for non-https link)
Ultima 5 - https://wiki.ultimacodex.com/wiki/Ultima_V:_Lazarus
Worth a shot if somebody finds the originals too difficult to get into now. (Though gameplay is brutal regardless, I keep running out of food when adventuring - the map doesn't show your position, you need to use landmarks (eg; follow the edge of this lake) and the compass to orient yourself)
(disclaimer: I did some map/dungeon building some 15 years ago for the U6 one)
Ultima 6 - http://u6project.com/wp/ (sorry for non-https link)
Ultima 5 - https://wiki.ultimacodex.com/wiki/Ultima_V:_Lazarus
Worth a shot if somebody finds the originals too difficult to get into now. (Though gameplay is brutal regardless, I keep running out of food when adventuring - the map doesn't show your position, you need to use landmarks (eg; follow the edge of this lake) and the compass to orient yourself)
(disclaimer: I did some map/dungeon building some 15 years ago for the U6 one)
There are also the open-source Ultima game engine remakes:
Nuvie (for Ultima 6, Martian Dreams, and Savage Empire) - http://nuvie.sourceforge.net
Exult (for Ultima 7 and 7.5) - http://exult.sourceforge.net
Pentagram (for Ultima 8) - http://pentagram.sourceforge.net, now merged into ScummVM - https://www.scummvm.org.
All of these use the original game files to play the games and offer improved user interface options, higher resolutions, graphics scaling, wider fields of view, gameplay improvements, etc. These are a great way to play these old games on a modern computer.
Nuvie (for Ultima 6, Martian Dreams, and Savage Empire) - http://nuvie.sourceforge.net
Exult (for Ultima 7 and 7.5) - http://exult.sourceforge.net
Pentagram (for Ultima 8) - http://pentagram.sourceforge.net, now merged into ScummVM - https://www.scummvm.org.
All of these use the original game files to play the games and offer improved user interface options, higher resolutions, graphics scaling, wider fields of view, gameplay improvements, etc. These are a great way to play these old games on a modern computer.
For those who look first at a project's last release, Exult could seem like abandoned software but it's really not - it's done and finished like xterm. There's (almost) nothing left (of consequence) to do. Which is not to say it's perfect, but it's stable, allows you to complete the entire game and all side quests, allows a bigger viewframe which of course breaks the game in some ways but is an extremely useful comfort addition, etc.
Nuvie is also good and has seen much more rapid progress in the last decade. It's great that these projects exist and of course dosbox will run both games smoothly and has for a long time too.
I'm more skeptical of the remakes myself, the original graphics in VI and VII still look great, it's one thing to give, say, a 3D shooter game the enhanced remake treatment. Real-time 3D rendering speed and quality has improved by leaps and bounds yearly or so for decades now. But pixel graphics can't really be improved with any technology ducks to avoid scaler warring and you lose all the charm by translating the games into the 3D rendered realm.
Nuvie is also good and has seen much more rapid progress in the last decade. It's great that these projects exist and of course dosbox will run both games smoothly and has for a long time too.
I'm more skeptical of the remakes myself, the original graphics in VI and VII still look great, it's one thing to give, say, a 3D shooter game the enhanced remake treatment. Real-time 3D rendering speed and quality has improved by leaps and bounds yearly or so for decades now. But pixel graphics can't really be improved with any technology ducks to avoid scaler warring and you lose all the charm by translating the games into the 3D rendered realm.
> Exult could seem like abandoned software but it's really not
There is a new release within the last year. And there are still lots of commits happening, including several within the last 24 hours.
There is a new release within the last year. And there are still lots of commits happening, including several within the last 24 hours.
Neat. I know the original plan was to have an editor / scripter to create your own games ala Gary's Mod too. I still have Exult installed on my old Zaurus SL-5500, lol.
There is also a project called "Ultima 5 Redux" in the works by an Ultima 5 fan. https://u5redux.wordpress.com/2020/04/06/first-dev-vlog
I stumbled across it during a nostalgia binge during "lock down" last year. It appears to be under development in the author's spare time. The latest git commit was four days ago at time of writing this comment.
For you and those that played any of the 4-7 for comparison, how was the change in map scale compared to pace of wilderness? I was reading this https://simblob.blogspot.com/2014/05/map-homunculus.html?m=1 and it shows dev reasoning for the changes, but I'm curious how gamers actually took it. Was it better before or after?
The single-scale, continuous world is undeniably better. It is arguably less realistic geographically, but it makes the world more vibrant and lifelike. For example, the player can follow the NPCs as they travel between towns or meet each other in the wilderness or the player can chase a creature from the wilderness into town to be killed by guards. Instead of the world feeling like a bunch of disconnected silos, everything is connected on one seamless map.
Also, even though the wilderness is geographically smaller in the single-scale games, it feels bigger because the player has to traverse the wilderness at 1X speed. Also, to make travel more interesting and to encourage exploration, the developers fill the wilderness with secrets, side-quests, hidden items, creatures, etc. The wilderness becomes part of the game, whereas in the older games the wilderness was just a bunch of blue or green on a map.
Also, even though the wilderness is geographically smaller in the single-scale games, it feels bigger because the player has to traverse the wilderness at 1X speed. Also, to make travel more interesting and to encourage exploration, the developers fill the wilderness with secrets, side-quests, hidden items, creatures, etc. The wilderness becomes part of the game, whereas in the older games the wilderness was just a bunch of blue or green on a map.
Wow. Is Pagan universally reviled? Perhaps because I was never an Ultima fan (didn't play the series) I actually liked Pagan: the graphics, the huge world, and the plot in which there was some sort of conspiracy of fake elemental "gods". I wasn't emotionally involved with Britannia, so I didn't care that the game wasn't set there.
It's news to me that this game was a disappointment to fans.
Unsurprisingly given what I wrote above, I absolutely loved Worlds of Ultima: Savage Empire. Also not set in Britannia but in a pretty cool pseudo Aztec world.
It's news to me that this game was a disappointment to fans.
Unsurprisingly given what I wrote above, I absolutely loved Worlds of Ultima: Savage Empire. Also not set in Britannia but in a pretty cool pseudo Aztec world.
Well, the PC was truly booming when U8 dropped and I hoped it would recapture the Garriot touch from the 1980's.
U3 was my intro which was a huge world and an epic grind for gold. U4 blew us all away with its depth. Remember at the time titles like Bards Tale and Wizardry were the main go-tos for party based RPG. So U4 was truly epic with it's NPC interaction and depth of plot.
But this was still the 1980's when Apple //e's mostly dominated the computer game scene. The big switch to PC happened around U5, but for those of us still shelling out money for the franchise, it became repetitive with U6 and U7. Odd that Garriot would blame EA for the NFL cycle when Ultima started to feel like it.
Ultima Underworld was a fun preview of 3D and a refreshing departure from the tops down U# series, but U8 just ... hurt. I had bought my first Pentium machine and was quite disappointed with how much of a departure it was. You literally leveled up by whacking things, anything, thousands of times. The plot was lame, the game play was uninteresting.
But I was already bored of Ultima titles by that point, so it was more tedious than reviled. I think until UOnline, U4 was the high watermark, IMHO.
Great article though, it was written with care by a fellow enthusiast of times long gone.
U3 was my intro which was a huge world and an epic grind for gold. U4 blew us all away with its depth. Remember at the time titles like Bards Tale and Wizardry were the main go-tos for party based RPG. So U4 was truly epic with it's NPC interaction and depth of plot.
But this was still the 1980's when Apple //e's mostly dominated the computer game scene. The big switch to PC happened around U5, but for those of us still shelling out money for the franchise, it became repetitive with U6 and U7. Odd that Garriot would blame EA for the NFL cycle when Ultima started to feel like it.
Ultima Underworld was a fun preview of 3D and a refreshing departure from the tops down U# series, but U8 just ... hurt. I had bought my first Pentium machine and was quite disappointed with how much of a departure it was. You literally leveled up by whacking things, anything, thousands of times. The plot was lame, the game play was uninteresting.
But I was already bored of Ultima titles by that point, so it was more tedious than reviled. I think until UOnline, U4 was the high watermark, IMHO.
Great article though, it was written with care by a fellow enthusiast of times long gone.
I agree the article is great, as is most of the series from that website.
> The plot was lame
I can't agree with this. It was thrilling and involving!
It probably has to do with what you said: you had expectations about Ultima. I didn't. That it was action oriented didn't bother me, for example. The other game I liked was Savage Empire, which is not set in Britannia either (I liked it more than Pagan, I'll grant you that!).
> The plot was lame
I can't agree with this. It was thrilling and involving!
It probably has to do with what you said: you had expectations about Ultima. I didn't. That it was action oriented didn't bother me, for example. The other game I liked was Savage Empire, which is not set in Britannia either (I liked it more than Pagan, I'll grant you that!).
The problem that U8 had was that the rest of the Ultimas were mindblowing and pushing the frontiers of what a game could be with every release.
U5 built a massive world. U6 took it further with npcs with lives and schedules instead of just being a static display in a shop, U7 built on that and felt like a living world. U8 took us out of the britannia we loved, and put us into a much smaller world with no companions. It would have been fine as a different game, or as a section of a larger game.
Also... I hated the jumping puzzles because the movement was so clunky. I'm pretty sure those existed, but it has been 20 years so maybe I'm remembering that wrong.
U5 built a massive world. U6 took it further with npcs with lives and schedules instead of just being a static display in a shop, U7 built on that and felt like a living world. U8 took us out of the britannia we loved, and put us into a much smaller world with no companions. It would have been fine as a different game, or as a section of a larger game.
Also... I hated the jumping puzzles because the movement was so clunky. I'm pretty sure those existed, but it has been 20 years so maybe I'm remembering that wrong.
I fully agree.
The atmosphere, the mystery around the pentagram, the "There are people yet I am somehow alone" feeling, the hostile environment and most of all, the music and sounds that put you somewhere between fear and despair made a great experience back then - so immersive that I had to stop playing at night because I felt fear.
The atmosphere, the mystery around the pentagram, the "There are people yet I am somehow alone" feeling, the hostile environment and most of all, the music and sounds that put you somewhere between fear and despair made a great experience back then - so immersive that I had to stop playing at night because I felt fear.
> Wow. Is Pagan universally reviled? Perhaps because I was never an Ultima fan (didn't play the series) I actually liked Pagan ….
The article touches on this:
> Indeed, it’s quite common to hear today that Ultima VIII really wasn’t a bad game at all — that it was merely a bad Ultima, in departing way too radically from that series’s established traditions.
The article touches on this:
> Indeed, it’s quite common to hear today that Ultima VIII really wasn’t a bad game at all — that it was merely a bad Ultima, in departing way too radically from that series’s established traditions.
Same, I had played 7, which was AMAZING, and 8 was fun. But I was young and not a long time fan of the franchise.
Ultima 7 utterly blew my mind as a kid. I remember one evening coming downstairs to dinner after playing it all day, and realised my whole sense of reality was somehow altered... there was an entire living world in that computer. That feeling completely changed me.
U8 was pretty great too, but somehow not the same as U7; what was gained in graphics quality was lost in sheer scope and detail.
U8 was pretty great too, but somehow not the same as U7; what was gained in graphics quality was lost in sheer scope and detail.
Same, but I quit after Ultima 7.2. I remember trying 8, and just never getting into it. Huge disappointment, as 7.2 had improvements over Black Gate, and I just expected 8 to be an iteratively better new adventure. I wanted Ultima 7.3 and instead got Diablo 0.1.
It was the only one I ever played, I got a copy with my soundcard in the first PC my parents bought (along with Wing Commander and Syndicate). I loved it, despite it being really challenging for me.
Wait, was this..
The Soundblaster "Edutainment Pack"? I have a feeling I got the same exact package.
The Soundblaster "Edutainment Pack"? I have a feeling I got the same exact package.
Yeah I think so. Blue disk with yellowy/gold writing but looked exactly like this in terms of text: https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/NbYAAMXQCtlRRfqO/s-l500.jpg
Same here! Pagan got me into RPGs.
Yes. I definitely enjoyed U8. It's the only Ultima I've finished so far.
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Except for Ultima 9 and UO, I finished every other Ultima, starting from III. In fact, Ultima 3 was either the first game, or at least one of the first games I ever played.
The game world in every game was amazing in their time, the most interesting combination of ideas and stories I have ever known. Every game in the series attempted to be a pioneer in some way or another, and almost every one succeeded at it.
Which makes it triply sad how fast and how deep the series fell after 8. Even though very different, 8 was still solidly Ultima. It tasted like it. It also tasted like it was not quite Ultima, and of course now we know why. The bean counters ruined it, like they ruin most artistic things. Well, ultimately Garriot ruined it, because he sold Origin Systems.
And now we have Shroud of the Avatar, in which Garriot and the whole management team became bean counters as well and the game is, well, not very good. It probably too tried to pioneer something but I'm not sure what that is.
The game world in every game was amazing in their time, the most interesting combination of ideas and stories I have ever known. Every game in the series attempted to be a pioneer in some way or another, and almost every one succeeded at it.
Which makes it triply sad how fast and how deep the series fell after 8. Even though very different, 8 was still solidly Ultima. It tasted like it. It also tasted like it was not quite Ultima, and of course now we know why. The bean counters ruined it, like they ruin most artistic things. Well, ultimately Garriot ruined it, because he sold Origin Systems.
And now we have Shroud of the Avatar, in which Garriot and the whole management team became bean counters as well and the game is, well, not very good. It probably too tried to pioneer something but I'm not sure what that is.
I think Garriot is no longer involved with Shroud of the Avatar, I'm not sure of the details but it seems he sold or left the thing in 2019 and probably stopped actively working on it earlier than that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Garriott#Games
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Garriott#Games
According to the current head of Shroud of the Avatar:
"Richard is still involved in SotA. He's never really worked on SotA except for the story stuff. So what he did for Episode 1 is same stuff he's doing here. He also does push, sometimes wacky, but usually good ideas on the project and he continues to do that stuff as well, but he is primarily a story guy."
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/fr...
The only one I played was Ultima VII. Found a few easter eggs, then one day I'm walking through the woods and get attacked. Two of my people are on the ground, bleeding out. They are completely clipped behind trees and I couldn't figure out how to heal them. And that was the end of that.
Older me probably could have worked out the UI (maybe clicking on the character image) but young, post-fight me got lost and felt helpless, which is exactly the sort of thing you should not feel in an adventure game.
Older me probably could have worked out the UI (maybe clicking on the character image) but young, post-fight me got lost and felt helpless, which is exactly the sort of thing you should not feel in an adventure game.
I have fond memories of playing Ultima I through Ultima V on green screen Apple //e and //c computers.
Monitor III for the win! I'll never forget looking at Ultima through that monitor's silk-like anti-glare texture while being serenaded by the restful tones of a Mockingboard...
Ultima music on the Mockingboard was the best. Thinking of the Ultima II-IV era IIRC. I listened to it hour after hour at my buddy's house and never got tired of it.
+1 for the Monitor III. I remember being amazed to see the early Ultimas in color, because for me they’d always just had different “patterns”.
I also started with U3, on an 8-bit atari.
Played through U7.5 but passed on 8 and 9.
I think the series probably peaked with U6.
I think the series probably peaked with U6.
Everytime someone mentions UO, my heart start racing.
I spent several years within this world, met hundreds of friends I already forgot, tried countless tournaments, fights and lived so many memories.
Maybe it's just nostalgia, but this game showed me, what it means to love something you spend your free time with. Maybe it even transfered somehow to programming later on.
I spent several years within this world, met hundreds of friends I already forgot, tried countless tournaments, fights and lived so many memories.
Maybe it's just nostalgia, but this game showed me, what it means to love something you spend your free time with. Maybe it even transfered somehow to programming later on.
The only ultima games I played before seeing VIII were Underworld games I and II, and they were pretty great. (Probably, I is my second-favourite RPG from the 1990s, bested only by the great Betrayal at Krondor.)
8 was a huge disappointment. I couldn't figure out how to do _anything_, the movement and controls were so thoroughly broken, that I gave up in 30 minutes, completely frustrated, not being able to figure out how to do anything.
8 was a huge disappointment. I couldn't figure out how to do _anything_, the movement and controls were so thoroughly broken, that I gave up in 30 minutes, completely frustrated, not being able to figure out how to do anything.
Forget the 90s; I have yet to play a better CRPG than Betrayal at Krondor.
I get where you are coming from, but I had a blast with Gothic 1/2 and Mass Effect 1. Running through haunted forests or driving or roaming desolate planets, under the double suns is a very special experience, evoking memories of Star Control 2. I can't quite compare those two with Krondor, that's why I have put Krondor into special 90s category.
(speaking of Mass Effect, a lot of people seem to love the second part, 'because it is so character driven', but I felt myself confined to corridor missions. The freedom of descending on a planet and driving it around was the most appealing part of ME experience, which was absent from 2 & 3 installments)
(speaking of Mass Effect, a lot of people seem to love the second part, 'because it is so character driven', but I felt myself confined to corridor missions. The freedom of descending on a planet and driving it around was the most appealing part of ME experience, which was absent from 2 & 3 installments)
I haven't played either of the Gothic games so I'll have to give them a try. Anything reminiscent of SC2 can't be all that bad!
The same site did a great post about BaK https://www.filfre.net/2019/10/betrayal-at-krondor/
Underworld were not real Ultima games. At least the first one was a different game on which they stamped Ultima for brand recognition
Underworld developer here. We certainly started it before we got the deal with Origin, but a lot of the design was done afterwards with the fact that it was an Ultima in mind. I'll grant that its Ultima-ness was thinner compared to many of the games with Roman numerals on them.
Ultima Underworld II, of course, was designed to be an Ultima game from the start.
Ultima Underworld II, of course, was designed to be an Ultima game from the start.
I've always felt that UW1 is massively underappreciated for the impact it had on computer gaming. It's been attested that John Carmack was inspired to create the engine that would eventually become Wolfenstein after seeing Underworld at a 1990 software convention and saying that he could write a faster texture mapped engine.
It had an enormous impact on me as a child discovering games in the mid 90s. I got a copy of UW on a games CD I got bundled with a Creative Soundcard[0]. This also came with so many other fantastic games, of which another was Ultima VII.
[0]https://archive.org/details/creative-labs-ea-compilation
It had an enormous impact on me as a child discovering games in the mid 90s. I got a copy of UW on a games CD I got bundled with a Creative Soundcard[0]. This also came with so many other fantastic games, of which another was Ultima VII.
[0]https://archive.org/details/creative-labs-ea-compilation
Oh, wow. Thanks for many happy hours then)
By the way, the most ingenious thing UW did was its acrobatics mechanics, when you subtly could jump for longer and longer distances, and I didn't even realize that it was increasing up until I restarted the game and suddenly found out that I can't make a rather casual jump over some chasm, which could be easily jumped over in previous save. I don't think I ever saw such things in other games, only some platformers have shown something resembling that.
By the way, the most ingenious thing UW did was its acrobatics mechanics, when you subtly could jump for longer and longer distances, and I didn't even realize that it was increasing up until I restarted the game and suddenly found out that I can't make a rather casual jump over some chasm, which could be easily jumped over in previous save. I don't think I ever saw such things in other games, only some platformers have shown something resembling that.
Just so you know those games were badass! I had so much fun playing them. Elder Scrolls came out later and that was the first fantasy FPS game that I has as much fun with as underworld.
I still remember the uncountable hours I played Underworld I & II. Thank you for these games.
I had a lot of fun with Underworld and I am someone who played Ultima IV and VII. Great game!
Since I experienced Underworld first, it was the reverse to me: other Ultimas felt not real Ultims games.
I feel like a lot of this comes from an "Ultima fan" perspective where Ultima VIII "ruined it" because it was too different. Conversely, I played it first, and enjoyed it; it did many things no game I'd played before had tried, although was not short of many flaws (which tbf the post-release patch resolves quite a few of). Playing other Ultimas later, they were in many ways good but also felt a bit trite in their morality.
I don't think it's trivially an awful game. I've heard a lot about how wonderful Ultima VII is, but more recently I get the impression (after reading articles like http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2020/08/ultima-vii-black-gate...) that there's another side to it: also dramatically flawed in many ways, maybe less obviously so than Pagan but the writing may have already been on the wall. Assuming everything just went terribly at the end and blaming on "the bean counters" seems a bit lazy to me.
I don't think it's trivially an awful game. I've heard a lot about how wonderful Ultima VII is, but more recently I get the impression (after reading articles like http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2020/08/ultima-vii-black-gate...) that there's another side to it: also dramatically flawed in many ways, maybe less obviously so than Pagan but the writing may have already been on the wall. Assuming everything just went terribly at the end and blaming on "the bean counters" seems a bit lazy to me.
> I feel like a lot of this comes from an "Ultima fan" perspective
I think that's selling The Digital Antiquarian (filfre.net) short. It's an impressive body of scholarship. If the author has a fandom bias, it's for text adventures, not Ultima.
I think that's selling The Digital Antiquarian (filfre.net) short. It's an impressive body of scholarship. If the author has a fandom bias, it's for text adventures, not Ultima.
I agree. I liked Ultima 8. Don't get me wrong. 7 and 7.5 were better, but 8 was still enjoyable. I was disappointed when they didn't release an expansion pack.
Both Ultima VI and VII are divisive points for series fans. The issue comes down to what level of detail and scale is really desired.
The earlier games do a better job of staying coherent to their main questlines: while there's some NPC interaction, you're expected to be in puzzle-solving mode for the bulk of it, looking for hints to the next item or location. This presentation of the game as a "solvable puzzle" was the norm for 80's gameplay, since the capacity for simulation was so limited.
With VI, suddenly the gameplay occurs at a single uniform scale and camera perspective. It's still using tiling compression to achieve that scale, so there is visible repetition, but the effect is that now it's easy to get lost. This is carried forward into the interactions, which now have a larger depth and persistence to them, and not everything is puzzle-centric. Ultima VI is coherent to Origin's motto of the time, "we create worlds", but at the expense of being a consistent "questing" experience. The increase in detail rather adds new "and now the hero must go to the toilet" style moments that break with the scenario.
Ultima VII just goes even farther down this path - it's very much a world, to the point of still rivaling AAA experiences of more recent years, albeit at a fraction of the graphical fidelity, with the absolute minimum of animation that could suffice. Playing it for long periods can leave you with a headache because the perspective and scale and detail combine into composited scenes of dense, tiny pixel blobs all representing various objects - the eye never gets a chance to rest. While the game is not overtly that tricky, it still draws on many of the tropes of older RPGs in this highly detailed setting, which adds a sense of unease: Sometimes a thing triggers in a dungeon and you're just not quite sure if it was a programming bug or it was intended as a trap.
And it's so hard to stay focused on the main quest in VII without being systematic about it that most players will likely have their fill long before that. Besides the issue of getting lost and having trouble finding an NPC when they move around on a schedule, there's still no quest tracking(this just wasn't a thing yet), but it does automatically give you keyword topics, so you can blunder around, trigger a lot of things and then forget what happened, where previously you were going to have to take notes anyway just to know what topics to type in.
And Ultima VII has some of the simplest, least gratifying combat in the series - there's no more turn-taking and it nearly plays itself, with the tactical decision making coming mostly in preparation and various gimmickry with the engine. The combat is a small element supporting the world instead of a definite thing explored on its own terms.
Lastly, in a literal sense Britannia started getting smaller with VI and VII, when you look at how much the towns are getting crammed together. The sense of "travel" isn't there because the landscape is truncated.
So in that light, VIII is a continuation of several trends. It's more graphically intense(actual animation now), but it made further cuts to the RPG framework, and further pushed the detail instead of the overall worldbuilding scope.
I think the main issue Ultima had with these later games was with making the increased detail cohere well. It made the programming more fragile, stretched the asset counts, and pushed people's PCs to the limit while being less of a straightforward dungeon crawl each time and a little more of a tech demo, and then with VIII finally hitting a point where the production process didn't get to fully flesh it out. The baton of detailed worldbuilding was passed to Ultima Online, which I do think deserved all its success.
The earlier games do a better job of staying coherent to their main questlines: while there's some NPC interaction, you're expected to be in puzzle-solving mode for the bulk of it, looking for hints to the next item or location. This presentation of the game as a "solvable puzzle" was the norm for 80's gameplay, since the capacity for simulation was so limited.
With VI, suddenly the gameplay occurs at a single uniform scale and camera perspective. It's still using tiling compression to achieve that scale, so there is visible repetition, but the effect is that now it's easy to get lost. This is carried forward into the interactions, which now have a larger depth and persistence to them, and not everything is puzzle-centric. Ultima VI is coherent to Origin's motto of the time, "we create worlds", but at the expense of being a consistent "questing" experience. The increase in detail rather adds new "and now the hero must go to the toilet" style moments that break with the scenario.
Ultima VII just goes even farther down this path - it's very much a world, to the point of still rivaling AAA experiences of more recent years, albeit at a fraction of the graphical fidelity, with the absolute minimum of animation that could suffice. Playing it for long periods can leave you with a headache because the perspective and scale and detail combine into composited scenes of dense, tiny pixel blobs all representing various objects - the eye never gets a chance to rest. While the game is not overtly that tricky, it still draws on many of the tropes of older RPGs in this highly detailed setting, which adds a sense of unease: Sometimes a thing triggers in a dungeon and you're just not quite sure if it was a programming bug or it was intended as a trap.
And it's so hard to stay focused on the main quest in VII without being systematic about it that most players will likely have their fill long before that. Besides the issue of getting lost and having trouble finding an NPC when they move around on a schedule, there's still no quest tracking(this just wasn't a thing yet), but it does automatically give you keyword topics, so you can blunder around, trigger a lot of things and then forget what happened, where previously you were going to have to take notes anyway just to know what topics to type in.
And Ultima VII has some of the simplest, least gratifying combat in the series - there's no more turn-taking and it nearly plays itself, with the tactical decision making coming mostly in preparation and various gimmickry with the engine. The combat is a small element supporting the world instead of a definite thing explored on its own terms.
Lastly, in a literal sense Britannia started getting smaller with VI and VII, when you look at how much the towns are getting crammed together. The sense of "travel" isn't there because the landscape is truncated.
So in that light, VIII is a continuation of several trends. It's more graphically intense(actual animation now), but it made further cuts to the RPG framework, and further pushed the detail instead of the overall worldbuilding scope.
I think the main issue Ultima had with these later games was with making the increased detail cohere well. It made the programming more fragile, stretched the asset counts, and pushed people's PCs to the limit while being less of a straightforward dungeon crawl each time and a little more of a tech demo, and then with VIII finally hitting a point where the production process didn't get to fully flesh it out. The baton of detailed worldbuilding was passed to Ultima Online, which I do think deserved all its success.
Ultima VIII was an excellent game and many friends spent hours into the game doing things completely unrelated with the quests. It was such a classic that it followed into the Ultima Online which was the first truly successful MMORPG which events went to be copied WOW. Unless you say WOW is also terrible and the end of the Warcraft franchise, no amount of revisionism can change reality.
Are you thinking of Ultima VII? It was indeed an excellent game where you could do endless things unrelated to the main quest, and was the precursor to Ultima Online (set in the same world, mostly similar game engine).
This article is about Ultima VIII, a very different experience.
This article is about Ultima VIII, a very different experience.
I played every Ultima from IV through UO. I have such fond memories in VII of finagling a cannon into the back of a cart and driving around with my own artillery. Aiming was tough, but it was fun.
I had a great time in UO and spend a surprising amount of time making and selling furniture. My career ended when I entered the game, only to discover that a house had been placed on that location and I was unable to open the door to exit. :(
I had a great time in UO and spend a surprising amount of time making and selling furniture. My career ended when I entered the game, only to discover that a house had been placed on that location and I was unable to open the door to exit. :(
I had a buddy who had gotten to max level poisoning and he would just go around poisoning fishsticks and leaving them innocently on the ground for people to find and innocently eat and the die instantly. The amount of crazy things you could do in UO when it first came out was awesome.
In UO, I once suckered a new player into buying a dragon that wasn't even mine, just with proper timing of pretending to give commands and its natural behaviors. Player was maaaad when realized she'd been taken. But it was kind of neat to realize a whole new dimension of player interaction had opened up with UO. And it scratched a bit of the Ultima 7 itch. At some point the game turned into a grind though, and a lot of players were grinding more than I ever would. The pattern got kind of boring. Have a friend that still plays it though.
I love that. That's hilarious.
I think games now are so focused on providing a slick game experience to everyone, and it make things so predictable and controllable that it takes a lot of the whimsy and delight in discovering something new and unexpected.
World of Warcraft is the perfect example of that, it really nerfed a lot of the whimsy out.
I think games now are so focused on providing a slick game experience to everyone, and it make things so predictable and controllable that it takes a lot of the whimsy and delight in discovering something new and unexpected.
World of Warcraft is the perfect example of that, it really nerfed a lot of the whimsy out.
Hah, I was definitely a 1-time victim to a trapped chest in the middle of a forest. My ghost got to watch my corpse get looted.
I also remember going all-in on fencing because the super-fast attacks, while not super effective, would give someone enough pause for me to run away.
There was some other great stuff, like kiting mobs to town to get killed by guards, being able to keep your bank chest open wherever you went, that one time a guy killed Lord British, etc.
I also remember going all-in on fencing because the super-fast attacks, while not super effective, would give someone enough pause for me to run away.
There was some other great stuff, like kiting mobs to town to get killed by guards, being able to keep your bank chest open wherever you went, that one time a guy killed Lord British, etc.
I remember really enjoying playing marbles in Ultima VIII. Also being able to climb meant the world felt much more explorable than other games. Somehow I remember the game fondly overall, despite never bothering to finish.
Ultima IV and XIII are both in my favorite games of all time. They are very different but I thought XIII was the coolest game I had ever played at the time. My first CD-ROM game as well.
April 16, 1992 - Ultima 7 is released
September 1992 - Origin Systems acquired by EA for $35m
March 15, 1994 - Ultima 8 released
...
I will credit Garriott and Molyneux as being some of the most [overly] ambitious game designers, and this is not at all a bad thing in my opinion. Not everything they did worked, but when it did, they created history. And even when it did not work, at least they attempted to break new ground.
September 1992 - Origin Systems acquired by EA for $35m
March 15, 1994 - Ultima 8 released
...
I will credit Garriott and Molyneux as being some of the most [overly] ambitious game designers, and this is not at all a bad thing in my opinion. Not everything they did worked, but when it did, they created history. And even when it did not work, at least they attempted to break new ground.
> Not everything they did worked, but when it did, they created history.
This reminds me of Seymour Cray... he had his share of setbacks, many due to ambitious designs, but when he succeeded, it was historic. (CDC6600, 7600, and Cray 1 come to mind immediately)
This reminds me of Seymour Cray... he had his share of setbacks, many due to ambitious designs, but when he succeeded, it was historic. (CDC6600, 7600, and Cray 1 come to mind immediately)
Ultima 8 was the end - the jumping Super Mario mechanics and crappy story.
I was playing the Ultima and related rpg games on my c64 (and later Amiga) way back then, auto duel, Moebius, bards tale, wasteland. The closest thing to those in modern games that I've really enjoyed was Witcher 3 and DLC, Far Cry 5, and most recently the Panam quest line in Cyberpunk 2077.
GTA and other games are more about repeatable grind and forcing users to buy in game currency, less of a story line and game play. Look at what they did to Cyberpunk 2077, forced it to be released and it has the same repeatable side quest issue. Watch Dogs Legion story was mediocre story line, but the gfx are pretty darn good. Control had a very interesting story line and good gfx. Death Stranding was interesting but boring walking around.
World of Warcraft is all over the place, its really trying to force people into guilds, and the casual aspect isn't as fun, and the gfx are really outdated.
Its almost like, the games out now are super high quality gfx with shitty story lines. Or outdated gfx and good story lines. Is there any game people are even looking forward too anymore? Really feeling let down in the story/gfx department of newer video games.
GTA and other games are more about repeatable grind and forcing users to buy in game currency, less of a story line and game play. Look at what they did to Cyberpunk 2077, forced it to be released and it has the same repeatable side quest issue. Watch Dogs Legion story was mediocre story line, but the gfx are pretty darn good. Control had a very interesting story line and good gfx. Death Stranding was interesting but boring walking around.
World of Warcraft is all over the place, its really trying to force people into guilds, and the casual aspect isn't as fun, and the gfx are really outdated.
Its almost like, the games out now are super high quality gfx with shitty story lines. Or outdated gfx and good story lines. Is there any game people are even looking forward too anymore? Really feeling let down in the story/gfx department of newer video games.
This was a brutal takedown of Garriott, which I think is fair. The guy was a visionary, but lost touch with what made Ultima great after Ultima VII.
What's not mentioned is that Ultima Online destroyed any chance that the Ultima franchise would ever come back as a single player game. So much was left on the table after Ultima VII that this is really a shame.
I'm working on something that is highly inspired by Ultima 6 & 7, but is it's own thing. These are my takeaways of what I set out to share and improve upon (from the U7 model):
- shares the skewed 45* orthographic view... I love this perspective.
- world is much larger than Ultima 7's, underworld is substantially larger.
- NPCs have needs (think Tropico) and that will influence what they do
- story driven, but many in game events are unscripted
- similar inventory style to Ultima 7 (bag if items), but much easier to organize
- everything is interactive (bake bread, forge a sword) but not streamlined like a modern crafting system
- camera view is further out, so the game feels much larger than Ultima 7 ever did
- more consistent pixel art (not a mix of scanned graphics and hand drawn pixel art)
- real-time pausable combat- combat un U7 is terrible and a step back. I'm attempting to make it less chaotic, but not take away from the immersion.
- the world has a stability factor, so good and bad events can happen if the conditions are right
I think, if done right, one can take the spirit of the Ultima series forward from where Ultima 7 left off. What I'm doing is currently at the stage of mechanics building, but I encourage anyone to make the development effort if they are so inclined. There's a great game to be made if someone can take the torch from Ultima 7 and made a proper modern inspired game.
What's not mentioned is that Ultima Online destroyed any chance that the Ultima franchise would ever come back as a single player game. So much was left on the table after Ultima VII that this is really a shame.
I'm working on something that is highly inspired by Ultima 6 & 7, but is it's own thing. These are my takeaways of what I set out to share and improve upon (from the U7 model):
- shares the skewed 45* orthographic view... I love this perspective.
- world is much larger than Ultima 7's, underworld is substantially larger.
- NPCs have needs (think Tropico) and that will influence what they do
- story driven, but many in game events are unscripted
- similar inventory style to Ultima 7 (bag if items), but much easier to organize
- everything is interactive (bake bread, forge a sword) but not streamlined like a modern crafting system
- camera view is further out, so the game feels much larger than Ultima 7 ever did
- more consistent pixel art (not a mix of scanned graphics and hand drawn pixel art)
- real-time pausable combat- combat un U7 is terrible and a step back. I'm attempting to make it less chaotic, but not take away from the immersion.
- the world has a stability factor, so good and bad events can happen if the conditions are right
I think, if done right, one can take the spirit of the Ultima series forward from where Ultima 7 left off. What I'm doing is currently at the stage of mechanics building, but I encourage anyone to make the development effort if they are so inclined. There's a great game to be made if someone can take the torch from Ultima 7 and made a proper modern inspired game.
Also, another thing is how almost everything was able to be put into your inventory and moved around. Forks, Plates, Curtains, Candleholders, Chairs, etc.
I remember taking over a house in the first town and stealing so much stuff from everywhere to decorate it.
I haven't seen that kind of dynamic item management in a game engine I don't think ever since. The worlds have become super static.
I think that lent a lot of magic to the game as well.
I remember taking over a house in the first town and stealing so much stuff from everywhere to decorate it.
I haven't seen that kind of dynamic item management in a game engine I don't think ever since. The worlds have become super static.
I think that lent a lot of magic to the game as well.
This was a core feature in Ultima Online as well as Garriott's Shroud of the Avatar. I'm not going to Criticize Ultima Online, but it was never my thing as pivotal as the game was.
Garriott tried to create this level of immersion in Shroud of the Avatar, but it was absolutely done to a fault. I hated going into towns, everyone's houses looked silly and out of place. Cities just looked like giant swap meets. Gamers are terrible designers.
In Ultima 7, it was single player so you weren't there to impress anyone or get a laugh. It was pure immersion. I had such a fun time as a kid discovering all of the weird things I could do in the game.
Garriott tried to create this level of immersion in Shroud of the Avatar, but it was absolutely done to a fault. I hated going into towns, everyone's houses looked silly and out of place. Cities just looked like giant swap meets. Gamers are terrible designers.
In Ultima 7, it was single player so you weren't there to impress anyone or get a laugh. It was pure immersion. I had such a fun time as a kid discovering all of the weird things I could do in the game.
I was a huge Ultima VII fan and played the game for hundreds of hours. I remember getting Ultima VIII and playing it for an hour or two and never playing it again. But until reading this article I didn't understand why Ultima VIII didn't capture my interest like VII did.
I understand how fans of the series got disappointed by it.
To me, a total neophyte to the series, u8 served like a nice introduction. The linear plot makes it easier to not get lost (this was pre-internet, if you got stuck you bought a paper guide). The graphics were nice, well animated (for the time). The jumps were not great but not a huge hassle, at least not for someone used to platformers, as I was. I found the different kinds of magic interesting, and I liked the titans. The inventory management system, with bags for reagents, and keys hidden behind cushions in drawers, was something I had never seen before.
My favorite bit was the fire mage that would teleport to your location and insta-kill you if you attacked a citizen.
I had an honest good time with it.
To me, a total neophyte to the series, u8 served like a nice introduction. The linear plot makes it easier to not get lost (this was pre-internet, if you got stuck you bought a paper guide). The graphics were nice, well animated (for the time). The jumps were not great but not a huge hassle, at least not for someone used to platformers, as I was. I found the different kinds of magic interesting, and I liked the titans. The inventory management system, with bags for reagents, and keys hidden behind cushions in drawers, was something I had never seen before.
My favorite bit was the fire mage that would teleport to your location and insta-kill you if you attacked a citizen.
I had an honest good time with it.
I loved 8, even though it's very different to 7. Pretending to be virtuous, looting in secret and making spells by drag and drop was great.
It was my first role playing game.
I went into every house and stole everything I could find.
Then the kids in town started to throw rocks at me.
After that I deleted the game, because a deinstallation routine was not necessary.
Great times!
I loved Ultima VIII because of the little details, like the sounds of the Avatar steps changing according to the surface that he was walking on.
Origin reminds me of what happened to Bioware , selling out to EA that is used to reselling filler paste games like Madden XX or FIFA XX is just the death of a gaming studios.
I am glad that Steam/GOG/Xbox/Sony with digital downloads lowered the barriers to entry for independents to make and publish fun quirky and enjoyable games again.
I am glad that Steam/GOG/Xbox/Sony with digital downloads lowered the barriers to entry for independents to make and publish fun quirky and enjoyable games again.
This is the icing in the cake
>> In truth, jumping in Ultima VIII wasn’t “kind of busted” at all; it was completely, comprehensively busted. Figuring out where any given jump would land you was a black art, thanks to the sloppy mouse cursor and the impossibility of accurately judging depths in the game’s canted isometric view. The only way to get anywhere was to save before each jump and give it a try, then reload and adjust until you got it right. After four or five attempts, you might just manage it if you were lucky. Then you got to rinse and repeat for the next jump, out of what might be a dozen or more in all to get across a single obstacle. In order to fully appreciate the horror of all this, you have to remember that every single save or restore would have taken on the order of 30 seconds back in 1994.
>> In truth, jumping in Ultima VIII wasn’t “kind of busted” at all; it was completely, comprehensively busted. Figuring out where any given jump would land you was a black art, thanks to the sloppy mouse cursor and the impossibility of accurately judging depths in the game’s canted isometric view. The only way to get anywhere was to save before each jump and give it a try, then reload and adjust until you got it right. After four or five attempts, you might just manage it if you were lucky. Then you got to rinse and repeat for the next jump, out of what might be a dozen or more in all to get across a single obstacle. In order to fully appreciate the horror of all this, you have to remember that every single save or restore would have taken on the order of 30 seconds back in 1994.
A departure from the series, but it doesn't change the fact tha Ultima VIII was a gem and easily one of the best rpgs I ever played. There was something absolutely amazing about how little hand holding it provided, especially playing back when I had no internet to help me out.
Me and my brother, we loved Ultima VI and Ultima VIII. I guess we were an exception :)
I loved Ultima VIII. It had a great story, cool lore. There were parts that seemed missing, but it added to the mystery of the world. I really liked how you could master the various elemental schools, yet there was never enough resources or time to cast spells in many fights and water was completely impossible to master. I ended up mostly running away from most fights and still remember the exciting side track to fetch a maze from underground. I couldn't fight any monsters there, they were too difficult, but managed to grab the mace and escape. Was a great start of the adventure.
In a similar vein, there was a chap who would appear and end your game very quickly if you stole anything from shops. However, the game let you drag items in stores 1 or 2 pixels without triggering the "crime ghost" (I forget who he was) who would end your game. Eventually we worked out you could drag an item to the door, pixel by pixel, then pick it up and run away without being caught.
I may be remembering aspects of this wrong, it was a long time ago!
I may be remembering aspects of this wrong, it was a long time ago!
In the same vein, if you kill (later in the game) the "omnipresent guard", next time you stole something you would be attacked by him regardless, but now his sprite/skin was that of a zombie :) cool easter egg (or bug!).
It was one of those old DOS games where the gameplay sucked, but it kind of contributed to the difficulty and ambience of the game somehow. Fun times.
Ultima 6 is a great game for many reasons. e.g., epic story, seamless open-world, non-linear progression, lots of side-quests/hidden secrets, multiple solutions to problems, plot twists, groundbreaking graphics, great music, etc.
> Origin came up with a relativistic jumping system whereby the length of your leap would be determined by the distance the cursor was from your character when you clicked the mouse, rather than opting for the more intuitive solution whereby you simply pointed at and clicked on a would-be destination to attempt to jump there
My father had all the Ultima games, when I was younger I tried playing VIII and couldn't figure out how to jump properly, which meant I couldn't go anywhere interesting, so I quit. It is very unintuitive to click and hold to jump on a desktop game.
My father had all the Ultima games, when I was younger I tried playing VIII and couldn't figure out how to jump properly, which meant I couldn't go anywhere interesting, so I quit. It is very unintuitive to click and hold to jump on a desktop game.
Exact same experience here. Ultima 8 came free on a CD-ROM that I think accompanied a Creative Sound Card my father had purchased? The same disc had Wing Commander 2...
Anyway, I played Ultima 8 to death as a child - explored the map obsessively. Eventually I hit first jump puzzle and "abandoned" any attempt to play it properly after that.
Anyway, I played Ultima 8 to death as a child - explored the map obsessively. Eventually I hit first jump puzzle and "abandoned" any attempt to play it properly after that.
Many years ago I started playing Ultima VIII out of a nostalgia trip, and not having been exposed much to the legendary Ultima VII before, I thought VIII was a fun game for the most part. Can't remember much of it today, but a really bad experience would have made a more lasting impression ;)
But I also liked Ultima IX (the 3D Ultima), despite being plagued by bugs and terrible performance in the beginning, it was eventually brought into pretty good shape by enthusiasts.
But I also liked Ultima IX (the 3D Ultima), despite being plagued by bugs and terrible performance in the beginning, it was eventually brought into pretty good shape by enthusiasts.
> After acquiring Origin in late 1992, so the story goes, EA forced them to abandon all of the long-established principles of Ultima in order to reach the mass market of lowest-common-denominator players to which EA aspired.
/me raises hand, I'm one of those lowest-common-denominator played who discovered Ultima with VIII and loved it a lot
/me raises hand, I'm one of those lowest-common-denominator played who discovered Ultima with VIII and loved it a lot
>"Tens of thousands of eager Ultima fans, some of whom had been buying every installment of the series for ten years or more, rushed home from their local software stores with Ultima VIII: Pagan in their hot little hands. An hour later, they were one and all sitting there scratching their heads and asking themselves what the hell had happened. Had they bought the wrong game entirely? No, it said “Ultima” right there on the box!"
PDS: Here's what happened, (in one word no less!):
Corporation.
>"Richard Garriott invented a system of ethics, and then each game challenged or threatened that system:
Ultima IV – The Virtues are Confronted
Ultima V – The Virtues are Corrupted
Ultima VI – The Virtues are Attacked
Ultima VII – The Virtues are Ignored
Ultima VIII – The Virtues are Abandoned
Ultima IX – The Virtues are Inverted"
PDS: Now where have I seen this pattern before?
PDS: Here's what happened, (in one word no less!):
Corporation.
>"Richard Garriott invented a system of ethics, and then each game challenged or threatened that system:
Ultima IV – The Virtues are Confronted
Ultima V – The Virtues are Corrupted
Ultima VI – The Virtues are Attacked
Ultima VII – The Virtues are Ignored
Ultima VIII – The Virtues are Abandoned
Ultima IX – The Virtues are Inverted"
PDS: Now where have I seen this pattern before?
>"Richard", they told me, "your release of games is extremely unreliable". They wanted us to change our development process to meet their deadlines. The game we were developing when we sold Origin* was Ultima VIII; EA wanted it on the shelves in time for the following Christmas.*
versus
>Yet the actual EA executives in question have vociferously denied micromanaging the project, insisting on the contrary that it was conceived, created, and finally shipped on terms dictated by no one outside of Origin.
Someone is lying. Either a new deadline was imposed on an existing project by EA executives or it wasn't.
versus
>Yet the actual EA executives in question have vociferously denied micromanaging the project, insisting on the contrary that it was conceived, created, and finally shipped on terms dictated by no one outside of Origin.
Someone is lying. Either a new deadline was imposed on an existing project by EA executives or it wasn't.
The only Ultima game I was exposed to. I found it cool and exciting. Very frustrating, certainly. But I'd not played anything quite like it. I never back-tracked through the series.
I can see why they took the risk to change with the times. Spending 4+ years to create a game targeting the (at the time) smallest audience doesn't sound like a great business venture. Though maybe they should've made it an Ultima spin-off like Underworld, instead of the official VIII.
Interestingly, we've seen some great success stories of franchise games shifting play style. Off the top of my head: Yakuza 7 Like a Dragon, Final Fantasy VII Remake and FFXV.
Interestingly, we've seen some great success stories of franchise games shifting play style. Off the top of my head: Yakuza 7 Like a Dragon, Final Fantasy VII Remake and FFXV.
I think the biggest success story of a shifting play style is GTA. The first ones were 2.5D games with a very different feel.
FF7R... :(
It sold well, so I guess it is technically successful, despite not really feeling successful in terms of being a better game.
It sold well, so I guess it is technically successful, despite not really feeling successful in terms of being a better game.
I loved Ultima VIII. Played it for hours and hours and hours.
Ultima IV is maybe my most favourite game of all time. I still really liked Ultima VIII. It had a great story and was just very different, which I also respected (IMHO sequel-ism is something that often plagues modern games). This article is an interesting opinion piece though. I hadn’t read about the development background of VIII by Lord British so far, worth reading for that alone.
>> Many of our programmers had worked twelve hours a day, seven days a week for ten months. We would bring dinner in for them because we were afraid if they left, they might not come back. The last month or so we gave them every other Sunday off so, as one of them pointed out, they could see their family or do some laundry.
And they shipped a terrible game after all that? Incredible!
And they shipped a terrible game after all that? Incredible!
I'm kind of amazed in retrospect how readily they adapted a late 80s game into a mid 90s MMORPG - and it looks almost exactly the same. It wasn't until the first expansion pack I think, that they added better/real 3D isometric graphics. I never liked the new graphics either, I really wish there were easy to play modern UO worlds, it was quite a fun game :)
This was the first RPG I played, which may have played a part in me not liking RPGs to this day.
The manual was amazing though, with the cool descriptions of the world and all the different types of magic. Game publishers/developers really knew how to make manuals those days. But the game itself just didn't make sense.
The manual was amazing though, with the cool descriptions of the world and all the different types of magic. Game publishers/developers really knew how to make manuals those days. But the game itself just didn't make sense.
Spoony's Ultima retrospective is an absolute classic.
Heres VIII https://youtu.be/wpui9EKNTzE
Recommend finding the whole series.
It might be worth mentioning that in later additions of the game the jump mechanics have been much simplified. Also the game engine was used in Crusader if I am not mistaken.
What do I do if I want to play the Ultima series from I to VII? And - can I somehow do this on Linux rather than Windows (without a Windows VM)? e.g. perhaps with DosBox?
As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, Ultima VII has the Exult project (http://exult.sourceforge.net) which makes playing Ultima VII on modern platforms extremely simple. I'm guessing the earlier games are much easier to emulate using programs like DOSBox.
I beat Ultima 1 on an HP 200 LX. It barely has a number before the (86) on the processor :) Fun fact: it ran fine on half height CGA.
You should be fine with DOSBox.
You should be fine with DOSBox.
EA please let coders take their time with their masterpieces and stop ruining games. Coders, stop taking EA money
I mean, Ultima Online was out there at the time and had a great playerbase. It's not hard to imagine that most of Origin's focus had shifted toward the MMO platform they helped invent.
Ultima online came out 3.5 years after Ultima VIII. I think it's unlikely that serious development effort went into UO during Ultima VIIIs development (Ultima IX and Ultima Online were definitely developed in parallel though).
Ultima IV is free on GOG.
I agree with "Scorpia" that Ultima IV is the greatest game of all time. I
only played the occasional pirated games my brother cadged, so missed
Ultimas 5 through 7. Ultima VIII did come my way, and I remember already
being turned off by the 3dness. I believe I played it all of ten minutes and
gave up.
Lost me when they said Ultima was more expensive to make than Wing Commander. I mean Mark Hamill and Malcolm McDowell can’t have been cheap.
Well, you should then read the entire article again, since you stopped reading, and you stopped reading in a part you read wrong, since nowhere in the article he says Ultima was more expensive to make than Wing Commander, he only mentions "cheaper" Wing Commander "spin offs", and didn't said cheaper in relation to what... it could be cheaper than the original wing commander, that notoriously is credited as being the first AAA game ever (Wing Commander was the first game that splurged millions to make, and it not even broke even, ever. Only reason it is considered a success was that the franchise as whole ended being very profitable and eventually paid off the costs of the first game).
That was Wing Commander 3, which hadn't been made yet. Wing Commander 2 was mostly just using the Wing Commander 1 game engine, which is probably why Snell liked it so much. Savage Empire and Martian Dreams were the "Worlds of Ultima" series of CRPGs, and were based on the Ultima VI engine - very little new programming involved - just new content. That was probably pretty cheap too.
These games all predate wing commander III (which was the first with FMV). Wing Commander I and II both had two expansions that sold well, so it was 6 games with one engine, and with the exception of the base WC 2, had little more novel animation than e.g. Ultima VII.
> But then, for the eighth game in the mainline Ultima series, Origin decided to try something just a little bit different. They made a game in which you played a thoughtless jerk moving on rails through a linear series of events; in which you never went to Britannia at all, but stayed instead on a miserable hellhole of a world called Pagan; in which you spent the whole game adventuring alone (after all, who would want to adventure with a jerk like you?); in which the core mechanics were jumping between pedestals like Super Mario and pounding your enemies over the head with your big old hammer.
ah, so this is where Blizzard got the idea for the travesty that is modern World of Warcraft
ah, so this is where Blizzard got the idea for the travesty that is modern World of Warcraft
Actually Ultima 7 serpent Isle also felt like being on rails (didn't finish it), maybe later it's better.
SI was also clearly unfinished on release, presaging Pagan's disastrous debut. And it was never properly finished, either.
http://hacki.bootstrike.com/english/nitpicks_u7si.htm
http://hacki.bootstrike.com/english/nitpicks_u7si.htm
Ugh - those omissions are not self-serving. The reality (which we all see) is that the dev team f*cking hated the game, probably gave up on quality, and everyone knows it. But saying so is an attack on the people Garriott screwed when he screwed up; the omissions are of other people's contributions to his faults, not his faults themselves.
The apology was _incredibly_ well-written: it highlights all of garriott's mistakes, in detail, and places the blame squarely on his own shoulders: he could say "EA is evil because they enforce business discipline," but instead said "they did their job as a business, and I didn't so mine as a creator."
If anything, this was probably _too_ self-blaming (we all know EA would just replace him if he didn't bow down, accomplishing nothing). But don't criticize him for failing to throw his team under the bus. Knowing very little, I'd love work for this guy, based on that apology alone.