Hands down the greatest game ever made. To me this wasn't just a game, it was everything to me. It will always be one of the best memories I will ever have in my life running around in Britannia
I absolutely loved Ultima Online in 98-2001 or so. I was SURE there would be a game like UO but bigger and better ANY DAY now... That day kept coming and going. It wasn't until almost 20 years later that I discovered DayZ and finally found a game that brought some (but not all) of the things I loved about UO back.
It was a hardcore game, didn't hold your hands. Death around every corner outside of town, mostly from players. The criminal system was awesome, it spawned player guilds building outposts of "evil" in the middle of nowhere. Entirely player driven economy and crafting. Did so much right from the start. Today's MMO still pale in comparison. Too much dumbing down.
Yes! We always remember the tragedies and especially when we manage to overcome the odds. This is especially amplified when its against other players or player guilds.
Yep. Hate to sound like a broken record but that's why I love DayZ. Takes hours to find gear. Seeing another player can make your hands shake as you can lose it all when you die. Your camp can be looted just like having a house looted in UO. Unfortunately not many publishers want to take on the risk of making a truly free open world game these days.
Played this game on and off throughout the years. To know that 90% of the original game made by a small group of people in a freezing building under constriction... Speaks worlds about the passion they put into Ultima Online. I salute the founders, what they accomplished given the technologies and limitations of their time was nothing short of a miracle.
Thank you for putting these together. The youngsters whom used to played this game are all getting old now. I am getting old, but Ultima Online have always been in my heart.
I wish that I could say that I was in fact Rainz. The murderer of Lord British! It's with great honor though that I was at the event when it happened and I do remember freaking out when Daemons were casted and chasing people around and killing them. I'm almost 37 years old now and UO gave me the greatest joy for 15+ years and I actually still play the UO Outlands server. Ultima Online was by far the greatest most memorable game I've ever played in my life and I've been gaming now for 30+ years. Nothing will ever top UO. After losing my best friend (Pico) to suicide I actually wrote and released a song called "GHOST". Him and I played side by side on Napa Valley for 10 years. I decided to name the song "GHOST" because it's my way of trying to communicate with him after he passed the way you tried to communicate with ghosts in UO. 😥 Napa Valley OG Pico & Agent Orange
Dude, that name Pico stands out to me... I used to be a Counselor on Napa Valley (Counselor Morpheus - yeah I had just seen the Matrix) and when I was done with my mandatory 6 hours of shifts I would hang out with people long after solving the ticket and just play with them (ab)using feign animations (as a counselor you could perform all the animations through commands.) So I would run along with PKers and pretended to be part of the mana-dump (even though I couldn't cast spells) or run up to random people, play the death animation and go invisible (which made my tenure as a counselor rather short, because the senior counselors were not too thrilled with these antics.) I remember one time spending hours with a couple of dudes in their house and when I read the name of your friend that memory began to tingle, but of course I could be completely wrong. My condolences, I can't even begin to imagine how hard it must be to lose a loved one in such a way. At least you've transformed a portion of the pain in to creativity with a pretty dope song and there's some recognizable material there (I've battled the depression demon as well.)
I played on Pacific, then Baja and finally Atlantic. Started right before Renaissance. My first death from a pker was a guy named Piatchi who lured me to a castle with promises of treasure. Once inside, he locked the door and casted blade spirits. Good times.
Not to mention: - lots of other popular franchises being killed - beloved game studios closed - tons of people that worked in those studios fired - popularising the practice of releasing unfinished games and making fool customers pay for the "privilege" of working as beta testers - popularising the concept of making 60+ USD games partially pay-to-win can also be attributed to "And then Electronic Arts happened!" (although to be fair the last one as well as making PC gaming stupid and ridiculously expensive was started by Activision with Call of Duty but EA was very quick to crank it up to 11)
A benchmark game. It was so great seeing PKs and RPs experiment with forming a player town in Baja in the emergent gaming days of '98. So much joy and agony wrapped up in many great stories to fondly look back on.
@@CameronForresterseriously! Since finding Outlands a year ago, they've captured the magic and I've been playing since. Hook up with Pwnstrr on his stream nights and you'll find yourself instantly in great company! Not sure what magic they've managed to capture that original UO just doesn't have for me but Outlands has really recaptured the magic feel of my original UO days
UO is easily my all-time favorite game to date. Easily. Nothing has ever come close, nor will it, because of the freedom of UO and the time period it came out in. The Internet was new, you didn't have all the information online like you do today (videos, websites, youtube, etc.) and people simply didn't know what to do/expect. Tons of friends and memories from that game. Played from Day 1 to 2003 on/off: Atlantic > Chessy > Europa and ended my days on AOL Legends. Too bad I had to sacrifice most of my high school life in the process. Oh well. But things worked out. :)
Yep. I will say one of the only games to give me a thrill like UO is DayZ. In fact, one of the creators of DayZ, Brian Hicks was a huge oldschool UO fan. I agree though, it was such a magical time that will never be possible again.
Hahaha, I remember my friend was over and I just logged in to refresh my houses around 2000. Lost a villa worth about ~$300 on Ebay at the time, I was furious. My friend couldn't understand why I was so mad about a game. No idea how that house fell to this day, I'm fairly certain I had refreshed it somewhat recently.
Dallas, oh wow. Maybe you just didnt click the house sign to check its state. Its amazing how much some of those houses and castles sold for in real money.
I started playing UO in 2000, and played until about 2005. It was an amazing experience. Truly eye opening. It had such a great community. It was so easy to find friends to play with, because the whole concept of playing massively multiplayer was still so new to us in 2000. The entire community felt like a bunch of excited kids. By 2005, most of the people I'd played with during my first couple years had moved on to other games, and UO's player base had gotten a lot more jaded. Player interaction, even among the players that remained, seemed to have dropped off significantly. But dammit, if UO in 2021 was still the way it was in 2000, I'd totally get back into it. A shame there will never be anything quite like it, because we have changed. The novelty is gone. We're no longer pioneering. But I made friends on UO that I still talk to, to this day. Friends who continue to share important moments in life with each other: the births of children, the deaths of loved ones, my two bouts with cancer. Friends who still burst out laughing whenever anyone mentions the PK'er Ur_Ugly_Mom, one of the most feared PVP'ers in Felucca (partially because he had a crazy fast connection, at a time when most other players did not), who got killed by the biggest noob in our guild because he got stuck between a couple brushes and was left unable to move. Friends I know will be part of my life until we die. Even if we haven't actually played together in nearly 20 years.
Ah man I wish there was no "moving on" stuff. I know you're time limited. I could listen to UO design talk all day. Thank you for this post mortem. UO was huge to my childhood and got me into programming. Omg, LLTS.. Long live the syndicate.. And Shadow Clan was my most fun ever on Catskills.
This game along with Diablo I around the time were completely mind blowing. I still remember the tension of leaving Trinsic seeing other players waiting at the edge of town to kill me before they addressed that. The whole idea of having to work with real people and figure out who to trust was amazing. And the ability to place a house, amazing.
Same here. I couldn't play it at the time, not sure if it was because my computer wasn't good enough to run it or whatever, but was always intrigued by this game.
UO was my first online game and I will always have fond memories of it. The game design was just brilliant and still holds today. Player driven economies, player driven world, these fundamentals make or break MMOs.
To this day all I have wanted out of a MOM is UO2. The freedom to play how you wanted. He'll I was nothing but a Smith. Selling weapons to noobies and chatting with my fellow merchants all day
You should give Eco Global Survival a try. It's best played on populated servers. There's a common goal to it and players fit into interlocking roles to achieve that goal. It involves involved cooperation between players, and it supports player economies and gouvernment. It also has an environmental aspect that's pretty robust. To name a few features, animals can go extinct, when you extract materials you can and will polute the world, the oceans rise relative to the CO2 emissions. And much more!
This game was my first ever MMO, I was in high school and a friend in my homeroom casually brought it up one day. Went home and tried it out, instantly hooked. So much was happening during this time in tech. During this game I went from dial-up to the first kind of always connected broadband internet through At&t Broadband at the time (Comcast bought them), GIGANTIC game-changer. This was truly an amazing time, and UO was a fantastic game. Anyone remember black dye tubs? Super rare for a long time, cost at least a mil gold. God I miss that experience. I tried to play again a couple years ago but it wasn't the same.
I brought it up to a friend in high school myself. Fort Lauderdale FL in 99 or 00. I think when i quit in 2003 and switched to free shards was the best idea. The Endless Journey UO now is way too out there for me.
Give "Ultima Online:Outlands" a try. I tried original UO several times again over the years but the magic just wasn't there. This Outlands private free server totally changed that. There is 3k ppl online at any given time, they added and tweaked things just a bit to modernize without losing the original magic... I gave it a try on a suggestion a year ago and man, the magic was BACK. It's that thing you can't quite explain that old original UO had, and Outlands has captured it.
Man... I still remember playing in the beta on the slowest dial-up ever in the mid-90s. Then later played on the baja shard from release for years until they split the shards and made the "safe" version where you couldn't attack or be attacked by other players. Made a lot of friends and good times though. To date this is the only game that really got my heart racing as a death equated to a real loss. Miss spending hours with folks hunting or plotting the next raid. Good times.
I got a tear in my eye when I heard that music playing. Though I was only on it for a short while and I didn't really understand everything, it was still a magical time with friends in a strange new internet world. My very first MMO, but certainly not the last.
I can't even express how much I enjoyed this video. So many good memories. Thanks to everybody who made UO happen and to all who were a part of it. We'll never get those years back that we spent chopping imaginary wood in imaginary forests or hammering out breastplates for hours to get that last bit of skill to be a GM but it was worth it.
Awesome talk - I'm a huge Ultima fan, but never played UO because of personal constraints (I certainly WANTED to play!). Great to hear these little details so many years later. A lot of people don't get the whole Ultima "obsession", but it really was a game series that transformed all computer games in so many ways, and influenced just about everything in some way. Still my favourite series based on countless hours playing V - IX. Thanks guys!
This is a boring story, but it's mine. I remember being 11 or 12. I was at my cousins house and I was staying the night. He was about 14 and had a decent computer for back then. He was playing Ultima Online and I started watching. All he was doing was running around taming animals to level up. That blew my mind and I wanted to play. He was happy to have someone grinding for him so I sat there for 3 hours just taming animals. I didn't see anything else about the game, but I was hooked at that point. I had never played an MMO and you could do things you couldn't in any other game.
I just hopped on SOTA(Shroud Of The Avatar) for the first time and have been researching its origins today, coming across this vid was very special to me.
Dude that literally almost brought tears to my eyes. The syndicate (they were on my server Atlantic ) in the Guinness book of world records as longest fully operational online guild. I wish to god these guys would make a newer more fortified version of UO. Nostalgia is reallllllllllll heavy on this one. Thanks for the vid. 20 years of my life playing this game. Means the world to me
Loved UO... my first and only MMO. Such good times... mining for ore in the mine, trying not to get pk'ed, building up skill at smelting, etc. All the danger associated with being able to be killed by another player at any time, nothing like that anymore it seems. Loved it even with its clunky interface, mechanics, and graphics. Kal Ort Por... can't believe I still remember that even 22 years since last playing, lol.
Heh same; haven't touched this game in decades and I still remember the reagents: mandrake root, blood moss, black pearl. Meanwhile my recollection of chemistry in high school is shoddy at best :)
I would still play it if I had the time and the factions were still heavily active (my most favourite time). God I loved guarding sigils for hours and hours, defending, doing raids, hanging out with in game friends the whole night etc.
31:43 The psychological/sociological information generated by this whole endeavor is staggering - it's a shame it wasn't studied more closely while it was happening.
Spent thousands of hours in UO from release up through the Age of Shadows expansion. Started out as a miner, turned into a PK to steal the ore from other miners, and then pivoted that into a protection racket. What a unique gaming experience. Nothing else has ever come close to the options that UO had. Still my fondest gaming experience 25 years later.
Bounty System was the best, this game was full of personal stories. I still play mmo's and other online games but I don't have quite the same stories that happened in UO. It was truly a great game to experience in the early years.
When T2A launched we discovered that you could block the ladder in the Britain sewer access; even with full stamina you couldn't push through. So we made a couple of new characters (which for some reason we named after the Teletubbies) and have one of us hide on the ladder while the rest of us pre-casted bladespirit to unleash whenever someone entered. After a few days Tinky Winky (me), Po and Dipsy are on top of the board: a couple of newbie characters with bare minimum skills and stats with a couple million gold bounty on their heads. Which of course we collected ourselves on top of all the loot from the kills and that's the story of how I became a UO millionaire.
UO was and is the best game I've ever played. I can easily say it represented a significant part of my life and I'm very thankful for all of the genius and risk that went into it. Thank you!
I remember once spending most of a day at a house "in danger of collapse" ready to place a house as soon as that one poofed. Then the house owner showed up and refreshed it. Good times. lol
I was first introduced to UO around 2001. I was blown away. I recall playing on a friend's account and being fired a horse. After a few hours of playing I asked, how do I save? 😂 I played hard core for years. To this day, there is nothing quite like UO. I had so many years of amazing play time. RP, PVP, everything. I hope and pray we get something similar one day. 😊
This talk was so fun and insightful. If I am not mistaken, childhood friends and I played every Ultima as they were released. We were so hooked and for so many years. If I installed any of the games now and with the utmost certainty, I would be hooked. 😊
Such a great time in my life. Me and my friend started up a guild called Ikari Warriors and using the dye system and the cool Xbows that looked abit like machine guns, gave ourselves titles of Player 1 and Player 2 and 1 was dyed red and the other blue, boots, no shirt, a sash and a headband along with the machine gun xbows. So much fun.
This was the first MMO I played. When I was little, my older brother let me play this on his account while I was home from school, sick for a few days. I was obsessed with this idea that I wanted my character to be an expert swordsman like Rurouni Kenshin lol. I had fun playing on live servers for a rather short time there. My older brother's eventually started playing on private servers and that is when I really got into the game. There really is no game like UO. I hadn't played UO since ML was the newer content, so I don't know what the game looks like now! There are so many things to love about UO, that you don't find in any other MMO. I think the biggest complaint I ever had for UO is how horribly unbalanced magery skill was. Back then I hated PKs, when they would kill me and take things valuable I worked hard for, and one of the servers I spent most of my time on was fel only. Thinking back, I don't hate that there were PKs, you had to bring friends along when you go out, because strength in numbers! It was annoying, but it really forced the game away from feeling like an online solo game at times. I mean, in WoW, a lot of the time when you're questing or gather materials, you're doing these things on your own most of the time. In UO, if someone wants to go mining or anything, they want as many friends to go with them as they can get! One of my most favorite things about UO is that, you weren't forced to be a combatant to progress in the game. You can just fish, mine, and craft all day, and you didn't have to worry about questing to grind levels or anything to progress! The game was simple, and there wasn't a quest grind to end game, there weren't even levels, just skills. It was truly a role playing game.
Honestly UO is the best game I've ever played. 20 years of playing and it still keeps bringing me back (free shards of course; wouldn't touch the current OSI game)
@@bubsnicket nah lost interest. The whole combat system seems nice but way too convuluted for me. Waiting for this SAGAS, not sure if it'll be good but it has good devs behind it.
I’ll never forget playing this and my mom telling me to pause it lol. When I told her I can’t pause it it’s a living breathing world and the look she gave me…”yea ok but dinner is ready” lol
Thanks guys for such great game! Just check what all is in the game and how it works. There was lot of game mechanics and lot of freedom in almost everything. Next big thing was communication, it's simple (text above players head) and it was working, not like in 3D games where text is somewhere in window and nobody care what is going on. This level of freedom and player to player communication creates unique game moments and events. I never played on OSI server but there was lot of free shards (unofficial servers) with various RPG systems, own game mechanics, focus (PVP, PVE, Rolepaying.. and their mixures) and lots of other things. UO is still in various aspects the unbeaten queen of MMORPG games. Even after 20 years.
Good old memories. I still can't forget the adrenaline rush i would get from running away from from pkers and hope that I don't get trapped by one of those thousands of trees while running. I never had such a thrill in a game ever since. I play Rust nowadays to have that same feeling, but nothing comes close to it. Thank you for developing such a great game. You guys are legends!
So cool hearing this. I'm 47 and played from Ultima 2 to Ultima 8 - huge fan of the games and was always eagerly looking forward to the next one. When the virtues were introduced in U4, no game since then has matched that complexity. Games now are just kill kill. UO was awesome also.
Agreed. I played Ultima V and VI on an ancient black and white screened PC with two floppy drives (REAL floppy drives) and no sound card - still loved it so much. I'm so disappointed with the modern "kill everyone/take everything" type of game that is trendy nowadays.
Nearly failed Uni due to playing UO. Had to make life changing decisions. Had a 18 year break. Back at it again playing and building my channel on UA-cam showing how much fun it is even though it is 2022.
Loved UO. I didn't beta test but started on day one (still have my map and pin) and was robbed entering town and murdered trying to mine near minoc and lost my shovel. Spent 3 years playing way to o many hours till I tired of trammel and never looked back. My brother started at the same time using my account till he got his own and he still plays to this day.
listened to this whole video doing my rounds here at work. whole discussion caused me to "nearly" cry from all the nostalgia several times over. we'll never see the amount of dedication and love they had displayed in a game ever again. RIP Ultima Online. Legend of all Gaming.
This was the scariest, funnest and most engaging game Id ever played. The sense of adventure, the absolute fright of getting robbed/pk'd, and the freedom to explore has never came close to being matched to this day. Thank you to the people responsible for this.
1997! That's when I started playing it! I played until 2005. Best game ever, best memories of my teenage times. This game was the motivation I had to start learning English. It is maybe the reason why I don't even live in my country anymore. It is the reason why I never got to enjoy ANY other MMORPG games ever released. UO caused a butterfly effect in my life and probably many other people's life. The only thing that could possibly make me go play a game at the age of 38, is Richard Garriot remaking this game, fresh! 100% skill based as it was, free interaction between good and evil, player killing, no item "insurance", you die, good luck, you revive with nothing. No other game could ever cause so much excitement on people, no other game could make you sweat when dueling, none could make you cry when you lagged to death, absolutely none made your heart beat 10 times faster when you were raid by red players. Oh! What when you were actually part of the red? Saw a bounty on your head? Felt special when someone knew who you were? If these guys taught me how to code, I'd quit my life and rebuild this game myself.
One thing I absolutely LOVED was the lack of structured quests. People would have needs and send you to do stuff if I recall, but there was no one with a glowing ! over their head with a fixed quest that would spawn things for you to fight. When EQ, WoW, etc came around and had that leveled, structured, quest-based system, it just seemed boring. There's still nothing that's replicated the chaos, and fun, of UO. I fear there never will be.
UOL was great because it was a first. I played it in 98 and 99 but then Everquest was released, I left UOL, joined EQ and never looked back. Objectively I enjoyed my EQ time much more even if I loved my 2 years on UOL as long as it lasted.
This should have been at least 90 minutes and I believe this would still have one of the highest ratios of "interesting thoughts and facts" per minute of any talk I've seen. I think my favorite point was about the "small and agile team" aspect, I find it fascinating how we can apply natural observations to an artifical construct like a video game company as it highlights how organically we function and that it is in fact an universal rule we can't escape. I think anyone running a company or leading a project would benefit immensenly from considering this aspect. Not that "small and agile" is always superior to "big and powerful" but the idea that it can be superior in certain circumstances.
Same people, different model. When you start game to be pay for win, your DEVs are focused mostly on appealing staff and presents to buy for real money, not fixing bugs :-(
yeah, shroud was such a failure. I backed it at the start for quite a lot, when they advertised it as the succesor to UO. had such hopes, after a couple of alpha builds, it was apparent the only aspect of UO was carebear dance parties :( sold my backing and broke even, but so disapointed it wasnt UO reborn. All they had to do, was take UO pre ninja, elf shit (id even accept the chiv/necro stuff) and put fresh graphics in it, and some new content, with the old mechanics
It's incredible how by barrelling ahead and just solving problems which came up they pioneered so many innovations which are common today. Multi server seamless load balancing? People are still arguing about whether that's even possible with Ruby programming, when for these guys it was real 20 years ago. Imagine if more people today could think and handle challenges like these folk
I used to play this game from 1997 - 2001 and have very fond memories of it but at around 23:30 he says the servers were seamless. This couldn't be further from the truth. The servers that ran sections of the map used to have a server boundary between them and transitioning from one to the other there was a noticeable 1 to 3 seconds pause between servers. So much so that if you were being pursued by someone you could effectively hide in the boundary by crossing back and forth.
I will never forget the first time going to a dungeon. It was Despise where the ogre lords are. Me and a friend I met in game took me there. We see a guy with just a katana and he did not have any armor. He kept telling everyone there that he got pk'ed by this blue player. The blue player took all his items and someone at the dungeon gave him the katana he had. We were there around a half hour and the blue pk shows up. The guy with the katana traps him in a corner and proceeds to pk him. He took all the guys stuff and got his revenge. No one helped the trapped guy in the corner. The katana guy turned grey and no one there attacked him because of the story he told everyone there. No one ressed the guy that the katana guy killed. He had to run out of the dungeon. I was thinking, "Wow what kind of a game am I playing." That had me hooked. I did not pk people, but when Trammel released I lost interest in the game. The excitement of playing was totally gone for me.
Yes, people like to say that Trammel was the place for people who were not PKs to go, but in reality it eviscerated a lot of the excitement, danger, and overall perilous feeling that one could have when leaving town in Ultima Online. It was this innate mixture of all player types that created the core beauty and magic of UO, fracturing the population destroyed that without a doubt.
I was invited by a real life Friend to play Ultima Online in September of 1997 [and I am still playing accounts that have never been inactive or suspended] and have experienced everything mentioned in this Video and so much more. Both my Christianity & my fictional love of Charlemagne & Paladins made me one of those folks who eschewed all of the darker impulses embraced by so many. EA allowed/financed the creation of Ultima Online which is awesome that it got launched but at the same time destined for decline due to EA's involvement. If only the group in this Video [or one similar] could take what they learned Not To Do or To Do and Create Ultima Online 2020. UO provides Players almost unlimited Choices of how to distribute Skill Points, what Role to Play, and how to "live" in a Massively Multi-Player Virtual World. My Idealism wants to Believe UO may either be Saved or Re-Created without the mistakes and errors. If not, that is truly a shame. Shroud of the Avatar is not the virtual world or game that meets my Hopes and Desires. Maybe at age 63 I just need to "grow up" and move on but Like Peter Pan "I Won't!" I do want to Thank everyone who brought me Ultima Online. I do wish the current UO was fully Free To Play without all the restrictions because I may no longer afford all the accounts I once had. Awesome Video!!!
I can relate to your experience (though I'm a little older and my Christianity came later) - but alas, I think what they actually discovered is that human nature (fallen human nature, if you like) does not have the inherent "goodness" that would be required for an on-line persistent MMO with virtue-type morality systems. I remember reading about Richard Garriott discovering after they made this whole elaborate ecosystem with animals/food/etc, that the players just basically slaughtered every living thing for the XP or loot. The real model of human nature reflected in an MMO is something like Day Z or Scum - basically brutality, everyone-against-everyone slaughter. Which totally disproves the notion that "everyone is basically good". That's my view anyway - the single-player Ultimas worked better with the virtue system because it gave you a choice and rewarded those who played following the virtue system. Once you put thousands of total strangers into a new fantasy world - without screening in advance - you quickly see how rare morality and decency are. Pretty sad, really. I never played UO, but it looked pretty awesome and I probably would have if I'd been able to afford the internet fees and membership, etc. It came out when I was already a young adult as well, so I was too busy by then. It may just be that UO was something that could only happen when it did - just look at the trouble with making Shroud of the Avatar, dealing with all the in-game purchases, land ownership, etc.
I played in shadowclan orc clan on catskills (and later siege perilous) GMs/game devs showed up one day and officially gave us the deed & ownership of the little NPC orc fort, and it only existed on that server no mmorpgs do fun GM events any more
I’d say the current MMO team that has followed the model of and learned the most from UO would be the Runescape Classic team, obviously followed closely by WoW. UO amd it’s creators really are the Tolkien of the mmo universe.
I startet 1998 on catskills on a 28k modem lol. My first Internet bill was around 400 USD (in europe we have to pay each MB), my mum nearly killed me :) good old times
I used to hire like 30 NPC's and make them follow me to bank where I would then line then up to yell at them about FREEDOM. Man there were a TON of laughs from all the silliness and lawless crap going on. Was so much fun
Heh, I was one of the beta testers for Ultima back in the mid 90s. I got the beta CD and free access to it for several months. It was a pretty great game, wild west.
I was able to catch the tail end of the UO days when PKers ruled the shards. I had to learn how to get good at running, hiding, and eventually PvP to protect myself. I died a lot, it was so much fun, it was the best. So many corpses, dead bodies, ghosts, and battles, and looters [which i was one], omg it was chaos but soooo much fun with so many people. Those were the days. I can still remember hiding on a house porch / entryway fearing for my characters life because of all the loot he got from someone else's PK.
Blazah NYOB I remember my first run in with a pk....I stood there watching my corpse being lotted and then the next part I thought goodness he just took my head!!!!
Good game I played it alot. The dude listing those specs in the beginning was off by many years, those specs sound more like a high-end 386DX 33MHz around 1990 when they became affordable. The specs in 1995 for a high-end pc were more like a Pentium 133, 32mb ram, S3 virge 4mb, Soundblaster AWE32, 2gb hdd and a 33.6k modem.
I was a beta tester for UO 3D. I still have my installation disk. I glued cork to it and use it as a coaster for my coffee. I've also been a Counselor on a free-shard for a while. At one point I had three accounts. I gave one away to a guy who gave it to his girlfriend for her birthday and sold the other two accounts for a modest profit.
We raised and wrecked empires, we made gods then tore them apart in baying mobs. We wrote stories I can still retell nearly 20 years later. UO gave us the tools to do it all and we feasted on its bones. The very best of times
I really miss this game. I joined in 1998 and played through until around 2005. UO Renaissance killed the game. The risk vs reward is truly what made the game. All that was taken away when carebear land Trammel was released. EA just wanted to keep up with the competition that made pvp consensual. No more risking losing your hauls of loot, ore, fancy weapons and armor. Just trying to keep up with the competition I guess. Literally no MMORPG has come close to the fun and enjoyment I had playing UO prior to UOR, it really saddens me. I don't do the custom servers because there are none that are ran like basic UO, and they don't have enough people on. It would be nice is we could have a basic MMORPG like UO again. I don't need fancy graphics or consensual pvp. Oh, and if you're still reading this, I am uncredited as the one who submitted the idea for checks(cheques) and a transfer system that was more honorable and secure when buying houses from players who otherwise would scam you. I submitted the idea after I got scammed for the 2nd time. They obviously liked it and according to how I proposed the idea, they ran with it almost to the T. It was nice to have a impact on the game.
One of the craziest things about siege perilous was that the random events came back. 20 years later I'm still sad that that server got wiped because of dupes. And yes, I was a PK and a thief/stealth house looter on pacific for a while. I left the game because I really enjoyed the always on pvp outside of the few select city/town areas. I think the final straw was the house lock down system. It totally killed one of the things I did most often, which was stealing a key and rune or stealthing into a house and looting. I attempted a return in the early 2000s, but it was too different. Tram and fel were weird and I missed being able to stalk players and learn their patterns to be able to get the big scores. UO was one of my favorite games of all time and I'm sad that I'll never get to play it again. Especially with how many games are out there now, it just isn't the same mishmash of different kinds of people all living in a world. Also, after EQ and WOW I don't think people are as interested in having their items be part of a rougelite pvp system. But anyway. if anyone who is part of the UO design team from 97-2005(ish) thank you very very much for countless hours of enjoyment and memories of game play that will last a lifetime.
I started playing UO when I was 10 years old (20 years ago)... Never found anything quite like it... am hopeful to see how New World from Amazon turns out...
Ohh hell yeah. "Hey man can you open this for me?". Or poisoning food and giving it to people. Though you had to have the good stuff or the person would easily survive. Fun times.
The dial up days; I wasn't on broadband until 98. So, the game was definitely slow on my USR X2 56k. I remember being logged one day in 97, still a noob and the game was lagging, sitting in the center of the screen with my pet bear in the wilds somewhere. Another character appeared on the edge of the screen. Next time I saw him he was right next to me and after that he was gone ...WITH MY BEAR. If you are out there I want my bear back please!
UO is simply the best MMORPG ever and nothing has since come close, even tho it's been more than 20 years. It's amazing how nobody was able to create anything similarly good. And it's also very sad.
Hands down the greatest game ever made. To me this wasn't just a game, it was everything to me. It will always be one of the best memories I will ever have in my life running around in Britannia
Truth^^
I spent so much time in front of the bank in Britian just picking up things people would drop.
its still alive and kicking, check outlands discord. player activity is as if it released yesterday
Was definitely lightning in a bottle. Every aspect unique and groundbreaking. Not just the code but the culture... everything! L337@SFuc
Yep come play uo outlands. It's everything that classic uo was and more. It's amazing
You would think that online games have advanced a lot in all these years, but after watching such video, realise how much they actually degraded.
I absolutely loved Ultima Online in 98-2001 or so. I was SURE there would be a game like UO but bigger and better ANY DAY now... That day kept coming and going. It wasn't until almost 20 years later that I discovered DayZ and finally found a game that brought some (but not all) of the things I loved about UO back.
It was a hardcore game, didn't hold your hands. Death around every corner outside of town, mostly from players. The criminal system was awesome, it spawned player guilds building outposts of "evil" in the middle of nowhere. Entirely player driven economy and crafting. Did so much right from the start. Today's MMO still pale in comparison. Too much dumbing down.
Just like they say in this post mortem - People complain about PK's but almost everyone's favorite memory relates to some kind of evil doer.
Yes! We always remember the tragedies and especially when we manage to overcome the odds. This is especially amplified when its against other players or player guilds.
Yep. Hate to sound like a broken record but that's why I love DayZ. Takes hours to find gear. Seeing another player can make your hands shake as you can lose it all when you die. Your camp can be looted just like having a house looted in UO. Unfortunately not many publishers want to take on the risk of making a truly free open world game these days.
"We didn't know what was impossible, so we built it anyway." Inspiring.
I nearly lost my job and my wife I was so obsessed with this game.
My first school drop out was in part due to UO. It is a hell of a drug. Got my fix again with UO Outlands
I'm still playing! On Outlands
well loss of the wife wouldnt of been a total loss... gotta keep that job though to pay for the monthly online subscription
On of us... On of us... On of us...
Worth it.
Played this game on and off throughout the years. To know that 90% of the original game made by a small group of people in a freezing building under constriction... Speaks worlds about the passion they put into Ultima Online. I salute the founders, what they accomplished given the technologies and limitations of their time was nothing short of a miracle.
Thank you for putting these together. The youngsters whom used to played this game are all getting old now. I am getting old, but Ultima Online have always been in my heart.
I wish that I could say that I was in fact Rainz. The murderer of Lord British!
It's with great honor though that I was at the event when it happened and I do
remember freaking out when Daemons were casted and chasing people around
and killing them. I'm almost 37 years old now and UO gave me the greatest joy
for 15+ years and I actually still play the UO Outlands server.
Ultima Online was by far the greatest most memorable game I've ever played in
my life and I've been gaming now for 30+ years. Nothing will ever top UO.
After losing my best friend (Pico) to suicide I actually wrote and released a song
called "GHOST". Him and I played side by side on Napa Valley for 10 years.
I decided to name the song "GHOST" because it's my way of trying to communicate
with him after he passed the way you tried to communicate with ghosts in UO. 😥
Napa Valley OG
Pico & Agent Orange
Dude, that name Pico stands out to me... I used to be a Counselor on Napa Valley (Counselor Morpheus - yeah I had just seen the Matrix) and when I was done with my mandatory 6 hours of shifts I would hang out with people long after solving the ticket and just play with them (ab)using feign animations (as a counselor you could perform all the animations through commands.) So I would run along with PKers and pretended to be part of the mana-dump (even though I couldn't cast spells) or run up to random people, play the death animation and go invisible (which made my tenure as a counselor rather short, because the senior counselors were not too thrilled with these antics.) I remember one time spending hours with a couple of dudes in their house and when I read the name of your friend that memory began to tingle, but of course I could be completely wrong.
My condolences, I can't even begin to imagine how hard it must be to lose a loved one in such a way. At least you've transformed a portion of the pain in to creativity with a pretty dope song and there's some recognizable material there (I've battled the depression demon as well.)
🙏
Ultima Online is the reason I first got internet service in my house.
Same. AOL Dial Up. Great lakes. Bowen Oldcode. Played from release until the end of T2A.
Same, also the reason I had to beg my parents to pay an extra $10/month on top of that. That wasn't easy.
@@LatchkeyKidX You quit even before Renaissance? There's a true veteran.
I played on Pacific, then Baja and finally Atlantic. Started right before Renaissance. My first death from a pker was a guy named Piatchi who lured me to a castle with promises of treasure. Once inside, he locked the door and casted blade spirits. Good times.
I played on a banner hacked netzero isp.
A fast explanation for many of the problems that plagued later Ultima games:
"And then Electronic Arts happened!"
EA fked #8 U5 and 7b were the best single player Ultimas.
Not to mention:
- lots of other popular franchises being killed
- beloved game studios closed
- tons of people that worked in those studios fired
- popularising the practice of releasing unfinished games and making fool customers pay for the "privilege" of working as beta testers
- popularising the concept of making 60+ USD games partially pay-to-win
can also be attributed to "And then Electronic Arts happened!"
(although to be fair the last one as well as making PC gaming stupid and ridiculously expensive was started by Activision with Call of Duty but EA was very quick to crank it up to 11)
@@There-Is-No-Virus I loved U6, as well as the ones you mentioned
@@There-Is-No-Virus Yes those games still is amazing
'Destroyer of worlds'
A benchmark game. It was so great seeing PKs and RPs experiment with forming a player town in Baja in the emergent gaming days of '98. So much joy and agony wrapped up in many great stories to fondly look back on.
I know the team will never read this, but thank you so much for making that game. I hope a true successor to UO will come one day
You're welcome :)
Outlands has been a blast since I jumped in a couple weeks ago
@@CameronForresterseriously! Since finding Outlands a year ago, they've captured the magic and I've been playing since. Hook up with Pwnstrr on his stream nights and you'll find yourself instantly in great company! Not sure what magic they've managed to capture that original UO just doesn't have for me but Outlands has really recaptured the magic feel of my original UO days
UO is easily my all-time favorite game to date. Easily. Nothing has ever come close, nor will it, because of the freedom of UO and the time period it came out in. The Internet was new, you didn't have all the information online like you do today (videos, websites, youtube, etc.) and people simply didn't know what to do/expect. Tons of friends and memories from that game. Played from Day 1 to 2003 on/off: Atlantic > Chessy > Europa and ended my days on AOL Legends. Too bad I had to sacrifice most of my high school life in the process. Oh well. But things worked out. :)
Yep. I will say one of the only games to give me a thrill like UO is DayZ. In fact, one of the creators of DayZ, Brian Hicks was a huge oldschool UO fan. I agree though, it was such a magical time that will never be possible again.
haha same, high school, college ....nvm still went on to postgrad after spending 3x the amount i should in college over uo....its called persistance:)
Catskills, Had a warrior with lumberjack and used swords...and one that was a blacksmith...with a small tower outside Trinsic.
Dallas Van Winkle wow hijack the video much with your Z
@@stevecosmolove1045 Drawing comparisons between two games isn't hijacking the video you ape
20 years later, somebody still pissed about their house decaying ;D
that want happen now
Hahaha, I remember my friend was over and I just logged in to refresh my houses around 2000. Lost a villa worth about ~$300 on Ebay at the time, I was furious. My friend couldn't understand why I was so mad about a game. No idea how that house fell to this day, I'm fairly certain I had refreshed it somewhat recently.
I made millions of gold through IDOCS and buying and selling houses.
Dallas, oh wow. Maybe you just didnt click the house sign to check its state. Its amazing how much some of those houses and castles sold for in real money.
still do castles go for about $1000 luna house anywhere from $500 to $3000
Man this game was amazing.
Started playing at 9 years old on Baja, at launch thanks to my awesome dad!
Baja Shoutout!
I started playing UO in 2000, and played until about 2005. It was an amazing experience. Truly eye opening. It had such a great community. It was so easy to find friends to play with, because the whole concept of playing massively multiplayer was still so new to us in 2000. The entire community felt like a bunch of excited kids. By 2005, most of the people I'd played with during my first couple years had moved on to other games, and UO's player base had gotten a lot more jaded. Player interaction, even among the players that remained, seemed to have dropped off significantly. But dammit, if UO in 2021 was still the way it was in 2000, I'd totally get back into it. A shame there will never be anything quite like it, because we have changed. The novelty is gone. We're no longer pioneering. But I made friends on UO that I still talk to, to this day. Friends who continue to share important moments in life with each other: the births of children, the deaths of loved ones, my two bouts with cancer. Friends who still burst out laughing whenever anyone mentions the PK'er Ur_Ugly_Mom, one of the most feared PVP'ers in Felucca (partially because he had a crazy fast connection, at a time when most other players did not), who got killed by the biggest noob in our guild because he got stuck between a couple brushes and was left unable to move. Friends I know will be part of my life until we die. Even if we haven't actually played together in nearly 20 years.
Thanks.
You should try uo outlands it’s a really good ultima shard and it’s the most popular right now you should give it a chance
Ah man I wish there was no "moving on" stuff. I know you're time limited. I could listen to UO design talk all day. Thank you for this post mortem. UO was huge to my childhood and got me into programming. Omg, LLTS.. Long live the syndicate.. And Shadow Clan was my most fun ever on Catskills.
Was hoping to see a fellow cats player
Was thinking the same. No need to rush abotu time for this gem!
This game along with Diablo I around the time were completely mind blowing. I still remember the tension of leaving Trinsic seeing other players waiting at the edge of town to kill me before they addressed that. The whole idea of having to work with real people and figure out who to trust was amazing. And the ability to place a house, amazing.
Never played it and it is still very interesting to hear all those stories!
go try it man still alive and well and free 2 play.
If you want to try it you should play UO Forever, it's free to play and is based in the era of classic UO. Great community.
You really have no idea what you're STILL missing out on..
Don't go to UO Forever, check out UO Renaissance. It's the best iteration of UO and true to its prime form.
Same here. I couldn't play it at the time, not sure if it was because my computer wasn't good enough to run it or whatever, but was always intrigued by this game.
UO was my first online game and I will always have fond memories of it. The game design was just brilliant and still holds today. Player driven economies, player driven world, these fundamentals make or break MMOs.
Yep, sadly very few exist. UO just did so many things right, it's truly a miracle that the game ever came to be.
To this day all I have wanted out of a MOM is UO2. The freedom to play how you wanted. He'll I was nothing but a Smith. Selling weapons to noobies and chatting with my fellow merchants all day
You should give Eco Global Survival a try. It's best played on populated servers. There's a common goal to it and players fit into interlocking roles to achieve that goal. It involves involved cooperation between players, and it supports player economies and gouvernment. It also has an environmental aspect that's pretty robust. To name a few features, animals can go extinct, when you extract materials you can and will polute the world, the oceans rise relative to the CO2 emissions. And much more!
This game was my first ever MMO, I was in high school and a friend in my homeroom casually brought it up one day. Went home and tried it out, instantly hooked. So much was happening during this time in tech. During this game I went from dial-up to the first kind of always connected broadband internet through At&t Broadband at the time (Comcast bought them), GIGANTIC game-changer. This was truly an amazing time, and UO was a fantastic game. Anyone remember black dye tubs? Super rare for a long time, cost at least a mil gold. God I miss that experience. I tried to play again a couple years ago but it wasn't the same.
I brought it up to a friend in high school myself. Fort Lauderdale FL in 99 or 00. I think when i quit in 2003 and switched to free shards was the best idea. The Endless Journey UO now is way too out there for me.
Give "Ultima Online:Outlands" a try. I tried original UO several times again over the years but the magic just wasn't there. This Outlands private free server totally changed that. There is 3k ppl online at any given time, they added and tweaked things just a bit to modernize without losing the original magic... I gave it a try on a suggestion a year ago and man, the magic was BACK. It's that thing you can't quite explain that old original UO had, and Outlands has captured it.
It's wild. It's been close to 20 years since I played, and seeing that login screen - the chest thing with jewel buttons - gets me sort of excited.
Man... I still remember playing in the beta on the slowest dial-up ever in the mid-90s. Then later played on the baja shard from release for years until they split the shards and made the "safe" version where you couldn't attack or be attacked by other players. Made a lot of friends and good times though. To date this is the only game that really got my heart racing as a death equated to a real loss. Miss spending hours with folks hunting or plotting the next raid. Good times.
I got a tear in my eye when I heard that music playing. Though I was only on it for a short while and I didn't really understand everything, it was still a magical time with friends in a strange new internet world. My very first MMO, but certainly not the last.
I can't even express how much I enjoyed this video. So many good memories. Thanks to everybody who made UO happen and to all who were a part of it. We'll never get those years back that we spent chopping imaginary wood in imaginary forests or hammering out breastplates for hours to get that last bit of skill to be a GM but it was worth it.
Awesome talk - I'm a huge Ultima fan, but never played UO because of personal constraints (I certainly WANTED to play!). Great to hear these little details so many years later. A lot of people don't get the whole Ultima "obsession", but it really was a game series that transformed all computer games in so many ways, and influenced just about everything in some way. Still my favourite series based on countless hours playing V - IX. Thanks guys!
Still play to this day. Going strong since 1997. Still the best gaming experience I've ever had. Nothing else even comes close.
This is a boring story, but it's mine. I remember being 11 or 12. I was at my cousins house and I was staying the night. He was about 14 and had a decent computer for back then. He was playing Ultima Online and I started watching. All he was doing was running around taming animals to level up. That blew my mind and I wanted to play. He was happy to have someone grinding for him so I sat there for 3 hours just taming animals. I didn't see anything else about the game, but I was hooked at that point. I had never played an MMO and you could do things you couldn't in any other game.
I just hopped on SOTA(Shroud Of The Avatar) for the first time and have been researching its origins today, coming across this vid was very special to me.
Spend 5 years in this game from 1999 up to 2004 thanks you all
Dude that literally almost brought tears to my eyes. The syndicate (they were on my server Atlantic ) in the Guinness book of world records as longest fully operational online guild. I wish to god these guys would make a newer more fortified version of UO. Nostalgia is reallllllllllll heavy on this one. Thanks for the vid. 20 years of my life playing this game. Means the world to me
Loved UO... my first and only MMO. Such good times... mining for ore in the mine, trying not to get pk'ed, building up skill at smelting, etc. All the danger associated with being able to be killed by another player at any time, nothing like that anymore it seems. Loved it even with its clunky interface, mechanics, and graphics. Kal Ort Por... can't believe I still remember that even 22 years since last playing, lol.
Heh same; haven't touched this game in decades and I still remember the reagents: mandrake root, blood moss, black pearl. Meanwhile my recollection of chemistry in high school is shoddy at best :)
I would still play it if I had the time and the factions were still heavily active (my most favourite time). God I loved guarding sigils for hours and hours, defending, doing raids, hanging out with in game friends the whole night etc.
31:43 The psychological/sociological information generated by this whole endeavor is staggering - it's a shame it wasn't studied more closely while it was happening.
Spent thousands of hours in UO from release up through the Age of Shadows expansion.
Started out as a miner, turned into a PK to steal the ore from other miners, and then pivoted that into a protection racket.
What a unique gaming experience. Nothing else has ever come close to the options that UO had.
Still my fondest gaming experience 25 years later.
The best experience. Wild wild west.
Bounty System was the best, this game was full of personal stories. I still play mmo's and other online games but I don't have quite the same stories that happened in UO. It was truly a great game to experience in the early years.
When T2A launched we discovered that you could block the ladder in the Britain sewer access; even with full stamina you couldn't push through. So we made a couple of new characters (which for some reason we named after the Teletubbies) and have one of us hide on the ladder while the rest of us pre-casted bladespirit to unleash whenever someone entered. After a few days Tinky Winky (me), Po and Dipsy are on top of the board: a couple of newbie characters with bare minimum skills and stats with a couple million gold bounty on their heads. Which of course we collected ourselves on top of all the loot from the kills and that's the story of how I became a UO millionaire.
UO was and is the best game I've ever played. I can easily say it represented a significant part of my life and I'm very thankful for all of the genius and risk that went into it. Thank you!
I remember once spending most of a day at a house "in danger of collapse" ready to place a house as soon as that one poofed. Then the house owner showed up and refreshed it. Good times. lol
I was first introduced to UO around 2001. I was blown away. I recall playing on a friend's account and being fired a horse. After a few hours of playing I asked, how do I save? 😂
I played hard core for years. To this day, there is nothing quite like UO. I had so many years of amazing play time. RP, PVP, everything. I hope and pray we get something similar one day. 😊
It took FOREVER to get my animal taming up high enough, but it sure was incredible when I finally had my NightMare and White Wyrm combo.😊
@@elocc9570 I replace that combo by an unicorn and rune beetle later on :D
This talk was so fun and insightful. If I am not mistaken, childhood friends and I played every Ultima as they were released. We were so hooked and for so many years. If I installed any of the games now and with the utmost certainty, I would be hooked. 😊
Something else that's awesome is Richard garriot actually endorses the free shards. He appeared, as Lord Britsh, in uof and a couple others.
Such a great time in my life. Me and my friend started up a guild called Ikari Warriors and using the dye system and the cool Xbows that looked abit like machine guns, gave ourselves titles of Player 1 and Player 2 and 1 was dyed red and the other blue, boots, no shirt, a sash and a headband along with the machine gun xbows. So much fun.
Dude that's amazing and hilarious.
AWESOME!!!
I was fascinated for this game 18 years ago. The only game I still have vivid memories of me playing. Thanks to you all.
This was the first MMO I played. When I was little, my older brother let me play this on his account while I was home from school, sick for a few days. I was obsessed with this idea that I wanted my character to be an expert swordsman like Rurouni Kenshin lol. I had fun playing on live servers for a rather short time there. My older brother's eventually started playing on private servers and that is when I really got into the game. There really is no game like UO. I hadn't played UO since ML was the newer content, so I don't know what the game looks like now!
There are so many things to love about UO, that you don't find in any other MMO. I think the biggest complaint I ever had for UO is how horribly unbalanced magery skill was. Back then I hated PKs, when they would kill me and take things valuable I worked hard for, and one of the servers I spent most of my time on was fel only. Thinking back, I don't hate that there were PKs, you had to bring friends along when you go out, because strength in numbers! It was annoying, but it really forced the game away from feeling like an online solo game at times. I mean, in WoW, a lot of the time when you're questing or gather materials, you're doing these things on your own most of the time. In UO, if someone wants to go mining or anything, they want as many friends to go with them as they can get!
One of my most favorite things about UO is that, you weren't forced to be a combatant to progress in the game. You can just fish, mine, and craft all day, and you didn't have to worry about questing to grind levels or anything to progress! The game was simple, and there wasn't a quest grind to end game, there weren't even levels, just skills. It was truly a role playing game.
Honestly UO is the best game I've ever played. 20 years of playing and it still keeps bringing me back (free shards of course; wouldn't touch the current OSI game)
Outlands?
@@bubsnicket nah lost interest. The whole combat system seems nice but way too convuluted for me.
Waiting for this SAGAS, not sure if it'll be good but it has good devs behind it.
@@Baz87100 convoluted in what way? You mean the split between PvP and PvE stuff? Or the progression?
I’ll never forget playing this and my mom telling me to pause it lol. When I told her I can’t pause it it’s a living breathing world and the look she gave me…”yea ok but dinner is ready” lol
Had the same situation with my mom back in burning crusade haha
@@PySnek I remember my dad played a lot of Eve Online in the mid 00s and would back me up whenever I said that to my mum haha
I love how they shit all over EA through the entire thing.
Just wanted to thank you for hosting this talk.. wish it was longer!
Thanks guys for such great game! Just check what all is in the game and how it works. There was lot of game mechanics and lot of freedom in almost everything. Next big thing was communication, it's simple (text above players head) and it was working, not like in 3D games where text is somewhere in window and nobody care what is going on. This level of freedom and player to player communication creates unique game moments and events. I never played on OSI server but there was lot of free shards (unofficial servers) with various RPG systems, own game mechanics, focus (PVP, PVE, Rolepaying.. and their mixures) and lots of other things. UO is still in various aspects the unbeaten queen of MMORPG games. Even after 20 years.
Ah this is awesome! It's great to see you all again.
Good old memories. I still can't forget the adrenaline rush i would get from running away from from pkers and hope that I don't get trapped by one of those thousands of trees while running. I never had such a thrill in a game ever since. I play Rust nowadays to have that same feeling, but nothing comes close to it.
Thank you for developing such a great game. You guys are legends!
Agreed. But I guess there's no market for hardcore games anymore. Imagine today's players losing stuff they worked on for years. Impossible lol.
So cool hearing this. I'm 47 and played from Ultima 2 to Ultima 8 - huge fan of the games and was always eagerly looking forward to the next one. When the virtues were introduced in U4, no game since then has matched that complexity. Games now are just kill kill.
UO was awesome also.
Agreed. I played Ultima V and VI on an ancient black and white screened PC with two floppy drives (REAL floppy drives) and no sound card - still loved it so much. I'm so disappointed with the modern "kill everyone/take everything" type of game that is trendy nowadays.
I've never played Ultima Online... but I found this video fascinating.
Nearly failed Uni due to playing UO.
Had to make life changing decisions.
Had a 18 year break.
Back at it again playing and building my channel on UA-cam showing how much fun it is even though it is 2022.
Ultima Online was the first MMORPG I ever got into. Truly amazing.
Loved UO. I didn't beta test but started on day one (still have my map and pin) and was robbed entering town and murdered trying to mine near minoc and lost my shovel. Spent 3 years playing way to o many hours till I tired of trammel and never looked back. My brother started at the same time using my account till he got his own and he still plays to this day.
I actually did beta test and my pentium 120 couldn’t handle it. Had to upgrade that bad boy to a 133 😅
listened to this whole video doing my rounds here at work.
whole discussion caused me to "nearly" cry from all the nostalgia several times over. we'll never see the amount of dedication and love they had displayed in a game ever again. RIP Ultima Online. Legend of all Gaming.
This game was great first MMO I played, a world of discovery and wonder.
This was the scariest, funnest and most engaging game Id ever played. The sense of adventure, the absolute fright of getting robbed/pk'd, and the freedom to explore has never came close to being matched to this day. Thank you to the people responsible for this.
Ah this is awesome! It's great to see you all again. Again.
The best game ever made. I started playing in 1998 and still do 🥰
1997! That's when I started playing it! I played until 2005. Best game ever, best memories of my teenage times. This game was the motivation I had to start learning English. It is maybe the reason why I don't even live in my country anymore. It is the reason why I never got to enjoy ANY other MMORPG games ever released. UO caused a butterfly effect in my life and probably many other people's life. The only thing that could possibly make me go play a game at the age of 38, is Richard Garriot remaking this game, fresh! 100% skill based as it was, free interaction between good and evil, player killing, no item "insurance", you die, good luck, you revive with nothing. No other game could ever cause so much excitement on people, no other game could make you sweat when dueling, none could make you cry when you lagged to death, absolutely none made your heart beat 10 times faster when you were raid by red players. Oh! What when you were actually part of the red? Saw a bounty on your head? Felt special when someone knew who you were? If these guys taught me how to code, I'd quit my life and rebuild this game myself.
Kal Vas Flam :D Best Game Ever Made so many night´s into day play Ultima Online
Corp Por
In Vas Mani Banker Sell Por Ort Grav
i wish to lock this down
I wish I could hear the q&a after
Whatan amazing video. Thank you UO team, for all your contributions!
One thing I absolutely LOVED was the lack of structured quests. People would have needs and send you to do stuff if I recall, but there was no one with a glowing ! over their head with a fixed quest that would spawn things for you to fight. When EQ, WoW, etc came around and had that leveled, structured, quest-based system, it just seemed boring.
There's still nothing that's replicated the chaos, and fun, of UO. I fear there never will be.
UOL was great because it was a first. I played it in 98 and 99 but then Everquest was released, I left UOL, joined EQ and never looked back.
Objectively I enjoyed my EQ time much more even if I loved my 2 years on UOL as long as it lasted.
Thanks for all the content GDC!!!
For all the content that allows a comment section at least.
After 18 years still playing! Because best sandbox mmorpg game ever.
which server? im on playground - the free one
@@There-Is-No-Virus come play lost lands thats a free second age server
stronghold crusader was also special in terms of what you could build, although not massively multiplayer. Those are my top 2 all time.
This should have been at least 90 minutes and I believe this would still have one of the highest ratios of "interesting thoughts and facts" per minute of any talk I've seen. I think my favorite point was about the "small and agile team" aspect, I find it fascinating how we can apply natural observations to an artifical construct like a video game company as it highlights how organically we function and that it is in fact an universal rule we can't escape. I think anyone running a company or leading a project would benefit immensenly from considering this aspect. Not that "small and agile" is always superior to "big and powerful" but the idea that it can be superior in certain circumstances.
In a couple of months, Garriott will be doing a postmortem for Shroud of the Avatar. This is good practice for him!
lol that game is such a failure I cant believe its made by the same people who created the gem that is UO
Same people, different model. When you start game to be pay for win, your DEVs are focused mostly on appealing staff and presents to buy for real money, not fixing bugs :-(
Wait, they also have an active series for postmortem's of bin fires?
yeah, shroud was such a failure. I backed it at the start for quite a lot, when they advertised it as the succesor to UO. had such hopes, after a couple of alpha builds, it was apparent the only aspect of UO was carebear dance parties :( sold my backing and broke even, but so disapointed it wasnt UO reborn. All they had to do, was take UO pre ninja, elf shit (id even accept the chiv/necro stuff) and put fresh graphics in it, and some new content, with the old mechanics
I trusted him on that... aaaaaaaand the 2D Simmetrical Ultima Online is better graphically than Shroud of the avatar lol
I admit it. I played from 1998 - 2006(ish) . . . .then came back in 2023. Delighted thr game still ran. Sad at the downgrade of 3d.
It's incredible how by barrelling ahead and just solving problems which came up they pioneered so many innovations which are common today. Multi server seamless load balancing? People are still arguing about whether that's even possible with Ruby programming, when for these guys it was real 20 years ago. Imagine if more people today could think and handle challenges like these folk
I used to play this game from 1997 - 2001 and have very fond memories of it but at around 23:30 he says the servers were seamless. This couldn't be further from the truth. The servers that ran sections of the map used to have a server boundary between them and transitioning from one to the other there was a noticeable 1 to 3 seconds pause between servers. So much so that if you were being pursued by someone you could effectively hide in the boundary by crossing back and forth.
44:51 this happened to me in 97' when the game was still pretty new. I got gated to an island and the GM told me to find my own way off.
I will never forget the first time going to a dungeon. It was Despise where the ogre lords are. Me and a friend I met in game took me there. We see a guy with just a katana and he did not have any armor. He kept telling everyone there that he got pk'ed by this blue player. The blue player took all his items and someone at the dungeon gave him the katana he had. We were there around a half hour and the blue pk shows up. The guy with the katana traps him in a corner and proceeds to pk him. He took all the guys stuff and got his revenge.
No one helped the trapped guy in the corner. The katana guy turned grey and no one there attacked him because of the story he told everyone there. No one ressed the guy that the katana guy killed. He had to run out of the dungeon. I was thinking, "Wow what kind of a game am I playing." That had me hooked. I did not pk people, but when Trammel released I lost interest in the game. The excitement of playing was totally gone for me.
Yes, people like to say that Trammel was the place for people who were not PKs to go, but in reality it eviscerated a lot of the excitement, danger, and overall perilous feeling that one could have when leaving town in Ultima Online. It was this innate mixture of all player types that created the core beauty and magic of UO, fracturing the population destroyed that without a doubt.
I was invited by a real life Friend to play Ultima Online in September of 1997 [and I am still playing accounts that have never been inactive or suspended] and have experienced everything mentioned in this Video and so much more. Both my Christianity & my fictional love of Charlemagne & Paladins made me one of those folks who eschewed all of the darker impulses embraced by so many. EA allowed/financed the creation of Ultima Online which is awesome that it got launched but at the same time destined for decline due to EA's involvement. If only the group in this Video [or one similar] could take what they learned Not To Do or To Do and Create Ultima Online 2020. UO provides Players almost unlimited Choices of how to distribute Skill Points, what Role to Play, and how to "live" in a Massively Multi-Player Virtual World.
My Idealism wants to Believe UO may either be Saved or Re-Created without the mistakes and errors. If not, that is truly a shame. Shroud of the Avatar is not the virtual world or game that meets my Hopes and Desires. Maybe at age 63 I just need to "grow up" and move on but Like Peter Pan "I Won't!" I do want to Thank everyone who brought me Ultima Online. I do wish the current UO was fully Free To Play without all the restrictions because I may no longer afford all the accounts I once had.
Awesome Video!!!
I can relate to your experience (though I'm a little older and my Christianity came later) - but alas, I think what they actually discovered is that human nature (fallen human nature, if you like) does not have the inherent "goodness" that would be required for an on-line persistent MMO with virtue-type morality systems. I remember reading about Richard Garriott discovering after they made this whole elaborate ecosystem with animals/food/etc, that the players just basically slaughtered every living thing for the XP or loot. The real model of human nature reflected in an MMO is something like Day Z or Scum - basically brutality, everyone-against-everyone slaughter. Which totally disproves the notion that "everyone is basically good". That's my view anyway - the single-player Ultimas worked better with the virtue system because it gave you a choice and rewarded those who played following the virtue system. Once you put thousands of total strangers into a new fantasy world - without screening in advance - you quickly see how rare morality and decency are. Pretty sad, really. I never played UO, but it looked pretty awesome and I probably would have if I'd been able to afford the internet fees and membership, etc. It came out when I was already a young adult as well, so I was too busy by then. It may just be that UO was something that could only happen when it did - just look at the trouble with making Shroud of the Avatar, dealing with all the in-game purchases, land ownership, etc.
Pinnacle of Online Gaming - theres not even a close 2nd.
I eat this shit up. UO best game ever and nothing has changed.
agree
Seriously man. Best freaking game ever made. Best PvP ever freaking made period
I played in shadowclan orc clan on catskills (and later siege perilous)
GMs/game devs showed up one day and officially gave us the deed & ownership of the little NPC orc fort, and it only existed on that server
no mmorpgs do fun GM events any more
Rellik here! Good times on siege. Orcs were well played. 💪
Hands down best game experience world has ever seen. One day, maybe, we can recreate it
Best mmo to date! But UO for me died with trammel
Orc camps, escort quests, and prisoner rescues definitely added to immersion. Traveling was lot of fun.
I’d say the current MMO team that has followed the model of and learned the most from UO would be the Runescape Classic team, obviously followed closely by WoW. UO amd it’s creators really are the Tolkien of the mmo universe.
I startet 1998 on catskills on a 28k modem lol. My first Internet bill was around 400 USD (in europe we have to pay each MB), my mum nearly killed me :) good old times
I used to hire like 30 NPC's and make them follow me to bank where I would then line then up to yell at them about FREEDOM.
Man there were a TON of laughs from all the silliness and lawless crap going on. Was so much fun
OoooOOOo OoooooOooo OOOooooo OooooOOOOooo
I agree, but we can't speak so negatively of box trappers and townies these days, it might be racist
i dont speak casper!:)
Your spirit speak has increased by 0.5 (15.5)
I can’t rez sorry.
didn't the game have a skill to hear ghost speak? lol I remember sometnhing like that
Heh, I was one of the beta testers for Ultima back in the mid 90s. I got the beta CD and free access to it for several months. It was a pretty great game, wild west.
I was able to catch the tail end of the UO days when PKers ruled the shards. I had to learn how to get good at running, hiding, and eventually PvP to protect myself. I died a lot, it was so much fun, it was the best. So many corpses, dead bodies, ghosts, and battles, and looters [which i was one], omg it was chaos but soooo much fun with so many people. Those were the days. I can still remember hiding on a house porch / entryway fearing for my characters life because of all the loot he got from someone else's PK.
Blazah NYOB I remember my first run in with a pk....I stood there watching my corpse being lotted and then the next part I thought goodness he just took my head!!!!
This was fascinating... and now I want to hear the Galaxies story.
Good game I played it alot. The dude listing those specs in the beginning was off by many years, those specs sound more like a high-end 386DX 33MHz around 1990 when they became affordable. The specs in 1995 for a high-end pc were more like a Pentium 133, 32mb ram, S3 virge 4mb, Soundblaster AWE32, 2gb hdd and a 33.6k modem.
Spot on. I went to university in 1994 and in 1995 I bought the Pentium 133 you are describing. ( in 24 monthly payments)
I was a beta tester for UO 3D. I still have my installation disk. I glued cork to it and use it as a coaster for my coffee.
I've also been a Counselor on a free-shard for a while.
At one point I had three accounts. I gave one away to a guy who gave it to his girlfriend for her birthday and sold the other two accounts for a modest profit.
We raised and wrecked empires, we made gods then tore them apart in baying mobs. We wrote stories I can still retell nearly 20 years later. UO gave us the tools to do it all and we feasted on its bones. The very best of times
I really miss this game. I joined in 1998 and played through until around 2005. UO Renaissance killed the game. The risk vs reward is truly what made the game. All that was taken away when carebear land Trammel was released. EA just wanted to keep up with the competition that made pvp consensual. No more risking losing your hauls of loot, ore, fancy weapons and armor. Just trying to keep up with the competition I guess. Literally no MMORPG has come close to the fun and enjoyment I had playing UO prior to UOR, it really saddens me. I don't do the custom servers because there are none that are ran like basic UO, and they don't have enough people on. It would be nice is we could have a basic MMORPG like UO again. I don't need fancy graphics or consensual pvp. Oh, and if you're still reading this, I am uncredited as the one who submitted the idea for checks(cheques) and a transfer system that was more honorable and secure when buying houses from players who otherwise would scam you. I submitted the idea after I got scammed for the 2nd time. They obviously liked it and according to how I proposed the idea, they ran with it almost to the T. It was nice to have a impact on the game.
I was a house scammer using “transfer pet”. I just needed to name my horse “a tower” and bring buyers to my tower lol
Eve online
One of the craziest things about siege perilous was that the random events came back. 20 years later I'm still sad that that server got wiped because of dupes. And yes, I was a PK and a thief/stealth house looter on pacific for a while. I left the game because I really enjoyed the always on pvp outside of the few select city/town areas. I think the final straw was the house lock down system. It totally killed one of the things I did most often, which was stealing a key and rune or stealthing into a house and looting. I attempted a return in the early 2000s, but it was too different. Tram and fel were weird and I missed being able to stalk players and learn their patterns to be able to get the big scores.
UO was one of my favorite games of all time and I'm sad that I'll never get to play it again. Especially with how many games are out there now, it just isn't the same mishmash of different kinds of people all living in a world. Also, after EQ and WOW I don't think people are as interested in having their items be part of a rougelite pvp system. But anyway. if anyone who is part of the UO design team from 97-2005(ish) thank you very very much for countless hours of enjoyment and memories of game play that will last a lifetime.
I started playing UO when I was 10 years old (20 years ago)... Never found anything quite like it... am hopeful to see how New World from Amazon turns out...
DOWN WITH LLTS! :)
God this game will forever be the best, thank you for this panel/video!
still the best MMO ever made....Loved building/customizing my own houses....stealthing up on someone and stealing something from them.
Played 1997-2007, My favorite time was when they introduced Tinker Traps and when they first released the stealth skill!
Ohh hell yeah. "Hey man can you open this for me?". Or poisoning food and giving it to people. Though you had to have the good stuff or the person would easily survive. Fun times.
The dial up days; I wasn't on broadband until 98. So, the game was definitely slow on my USR X2 56k. I remember being logged one day in 97, still a noob and the game was lagging, sitting in the center of the screen with my pet bear in the wilds somewhere. Another character appeared on the edge of the screen. Next time I saw him he was right next to me and after that he was gone ...WITH MY BEAR. If you are out there I want my bear back please!
UO is simply the best MMORPG ever and nothing has since come close, even tho it's been more than 20 years. It's amazing how nobody was able to create anything similarly good. And it's also very sad.