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Chev posted:If you turn to literature for help, both Bartle and Koster's definitions for what they call virtual worlds come down to the same three criteria, that they can host multiple users shown as avatars, in a spatially defined world, and that that world has some measure of persistence, ie changes made to the world by players will continue to exist for some time even when players aren't around. Persistence of the player avatar (appearance or inventory) don't qualify as changes to the world. Yeah I would consider Sea of Thieves to be an MMO. Just an incredibly shallow one with nothing to do.
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Jun 29, 2021 21:36
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So what exactly did you do in Ultima Online? What would an average play session look like?
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Jun 29, 2021 22:32
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punk rebel ecks posted:So what exactly did you do in Ultima Online? What would an average play session look like? Anything you please, basically. If you've got a stable of alts it's even more so whatever you felt like doing, especially during Renaissance when they added Trammel. Want to go gently caress some fools up in factions? Do that. Want to mine some ore and craft some plate mail? Do that. Want to take your tamer bard into Destard and kill some dragons with your dragon? Do that. Want to leave trapped explosive boxes for newbs to find in Felucca? Do that. Sail on a boat and fish up treasure maps? Do that. Hang out in West Brit Bank and do nothing? Do that. In UO it really felt like the possibilities were endless because of the design. It was truly a great game.
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Jun 29, 2021 22:43
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punk rebel ecks posted:So what exactly did you do in Ultima Online? What would an average play session look like? Basically the same things you'd do in Everquest or Runescape but before either of those existed.
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Jun 29, 2021 22:54
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dreffen posted:Anything you please, basically. Sounds like Kenshi. Zaphod42 posted:Basically the same things you'd do in Everquest or Runescape but before either of those existed. RuneScape was boring outside of the quests though.
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Jun 29, 2021 22:57
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punk rebel ecks posted:Sounds like Kenshi. I bought Kenshi years ago has that actually gone anywhere?
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Jun 29, 2021 23:00
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dreffen posted:I bought Kenshi years ago has that actually gone anywhere? It's been fully released for years. The guy is actually in the middle of making a sequel.
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Jun 29, 2021 23:37
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whoops wrong thread
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Jun 30, 2021 00:01
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We need Smythe in here to retail us with UO tales.
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Jun 30, 2021 00:24
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punk rebel ecks posted:It's been fully released for years. The guy is actually in the middle of making a sequel. Wild. I may just go re-download that then!
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Jun 30, 2021 00:28
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punk rebel ecks posted:It's been fully released for years. The guy is actually in the middle of making a sequel. Is it good?
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Jun 30, 2021 00:50
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Apparition posted:Is it good? It's basically Mad Max Runescape with zero quests and more freedom. I had fun with it for 20 hours or so but got bored not long after because with most of these sandbox games I quickly do most things I want to do that don't require an enormous amount of playtime. It's on sale right now on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/233860/Kenshi/
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Jun 30, 2021 01:03
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punk rebel ecks posted:So what exactly did you do in Ultima Online? What would an average play session look like? This just reminded me of this website I used to read all the time over a decade ago. Looks like it's still up. I remember it being hilarious and making UO look amazing, but then again it may just have been because I was a dumb teenager when I used to read it. I'd check out some of the older stories from 2004 or beyond, look for a longer one with pictures: http://www.spleens.net/spleenshots/ Edit: Two stories I still remember to this day: http://www.spleens.net/spleenshots/newbieisle.htm http://www.spleens.net/spleenshots/doaisle.htm retpocileh fucked around with this message at 01:39 on Jun 30, 2021 |
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Jun 30, 2021 01:04
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retpocileh posted:This just reminded me of this website I used to read all the time over a decade ago. Looks like it's still up. I remember it being hilarious and making UO look amazing, but then again it may just have been because I was a dumb teenager when I used to read it. So what was going on? The guy killed people and dragged their corpses to a deserted island so they couldn't leave once they found their corpse?
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Jun 30, 2021 03:55
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It's difficult to really accurately state the level of freedom in UO to someone who never played it. No classes, no artificial restrictions on pvp (before Trammel), things persisting in the world until they decayed, wether that was a sausage or your very own mage tower. And every single freedom was metagamed to it's logical ultimate conclusion. Someone pitching games like EQ or FFXI as free just makes my eyes roll so hard I almost pass out.
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Jun 30, 2021 11:08
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No levels especially made it very open ended. There were no "oh you want to be X level to go there" kind of situations. Especially in a group you could just go wherever and try to contribute with whatever skills and gear you had.
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Jun 30, 2021 12:18
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It's a comparative thing. EQ is a much more interesting experience than the "theme park" but UO was the king and it's always been a shame it wasn't the model going forward. SWG was probably the last biggish MMO we'll see of a similar model.
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Jun 30, 2021 13:18
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I just found out last night that meridian 59 still exists and is free to play on steam. Like most people I didn't play it when it was relevant but it is charmingly archaic and I had a little bit of fun last night going "hahaha WHAT" at every interaction I had with the ui
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Jun 30, 2021 13:47
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I mean, the reason is that it doesn't work for most players and the handful it does appeal to aren't numerous enough to sustain development. UO - Skills-based mechanics, open world, full pvp. EQ - class-and-level based, world divided up by zones into "you must be this tall to ride" level areas, actual quests and world characterisation. PvP (very) optional. More restricted in every way than UO, immediately outsold it and dethroned it. WoW - "Like EQ but less poo poo" Went nutso gangbusters, sold five copies to everyone on the entire planet, only stopped being number one by the concerted efforts of the current dev team to run this poo poo right into the ground and then start digging. I mean, if people really do just want an open world where then can wander around and do repetitive tasks for small rewards the collective works of Ubisoft are right there.
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Jun 30, 2021 13:54
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That's not really true, though. UOs peak was like a year after eqs release and eq didn't surpass those numbers until like 2002. If someone wanted to argue that trammel is what handed the market to Sony they could, although I think the rolling disaster of origin throwing out a lot of half baked eq killer ideas like a 3d client probably had a bigger impact, and trammel was just one facet (heh) of that.
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Jun 30, 2021 14:18
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Holy lol people have such weird narratives to try to explain why any innovation in an online world is impossible. Bonus points for somehow thinking ubisoft games fill a online gaming niche
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Jun 30, 2021 14:49
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30.5 Days posted:That's not really true, though. UOs peak was like a year after eqs release and eq didn't surpass those numbers until like 2002. If someone wanted to argue that trammel is what handed the market to Sony they could, although I think the rolling disaster of origin throwing out a lot of half baked eq killer ideas like a 3d client probably had a bigger impact, and trammel was just one facet (heh) of that. The argument that Trammel killed UO is not backed up by any evidence. UO’s population peaked in 2003 which was three years after the release of UO Renaissance, which introduced Tram/Fel. It increased the playerbase, provided more room for housing (which was sort of the “endgame” for UO) and was generally well received by everyone except hardcore pvpers, which were always a minority, albeit a very vocal one. 3D competitors killed UO. WoW came out in 2004 and it’s around that time that UO fell entirely off the map. I remember well the allure of a 3D mmo; it was incredibly hard to resist even if the world and gameplay paled in comparison to what UO had to offer. And I agree that it also didn’t help that every expansion after Renaissance added stuff no one wanted to the game, including a completely unnecessary and fugly “3D” client. What’s amazing to me is that the most recent expansion for UO came out only six years ago. 
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Jun 30, 2021 15:14
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kedo posted:UO’s population peaked in 2003 which was three years after the release of UO Renaissance, which introduced Tram/Fel. To the best of my knowledge, this is not true although I may be wrong. My understanding is that immediately after Renaissance's release, UOs player base immediately doubled, but then it stopped growing entirely, where it had grown 50% YoY up to that point (for two years).
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Jun 30, 2021 15:19
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I'm not unsympathetic to how that happened by the way, EQ in its first year gained half as many subscribers as UO lost (even while growing from 100k to 150k net subscribers). Origin execs probably had some spreadsheet estimating what would happen if they could make established players stop acting like assholes and they couldn't understand it back then because the last cell just said "WoW". It's clear when Koster talks about it that everyone was loving tired of morality as a design problem by the time EQ came out and then they had 100k subscribers who were happy to just PvE and he was like "wow you can just do that, huh".
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Jun 30, 2021 15:25
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I’m going off memory and Wikipedia numbers, both have proven to be extremely fallible  Regardless, I agree that EA/Origin was in a very large way responsible for UO’s self-destruction. I created an account a few months ago out of curiosity and it’s unrecognizable these days.
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Jun 30, 2021 15:27
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kedo posted:I’m going off memory and Wikipedia numbers, both have proven to be extremely fallible At the same time, there wasn't a lot of people who just casually played UO. You pretty much played UO or you didn't, it's not like WoW or whatever now where there is a large player base that plays for 30 mins every day and then logs out. It seems like the concept of a poopsocker was less prevalent back them as well since everyone was one to some extent. I remember playing Archeage when it first came out and the entire server was absolutely dominated by an unemployed multiboxer, to the point where trade became difficult to even do. It just made the game feel bad rather than "I need to try harder"
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Jun 30, 2021 15:39
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Itzena posted:I mean, the reason is that it doesn't work for most players and the handful it does appeal to aren't numerous enough to sustain development. I was just saying, the new AC games even have level based zones, if they were just multiplayer they'd be what most people want. Course that engine is nuts already so probably won't happen.
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Jun 30, 2021 15:57
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So for some reason i've been following the development of the sequel to the wildly popular MMO Face of Mankind. They just posted a big update (https://www.mankindreborn.com/2021/06/development-update-20-2/) and looks like they are getting near having an alpha. Basically, its the best cop simulator mmo.
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Jun 30, 2021 16:25
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Lorem ipsum posted:So for some reason i've been following the development of the sequel to the wildly popular MMO Face of Mankind. They just posted a big update (https://www.mankindreborn.com/2021/06/development-update-20-2/) and looks like they are getting near having an alpha. Basically, its the best cop simulator mmo. This actually looks really cool. Is this game newbie friendly at all? Sure doesn't look it.
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Jun 30, 2021 17:11
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These UO stories make it seem like if Gary's Mod was a RPG.
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Jun 30, 2021 18:16
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I remember there was this dude on the Sonoma shard on UO who had a tower right near Brit, and he turned the entire thing into a furniture store. He set up each room in a particular style just like you might find at Ikea or wherever. So one was the dining room with tables, chairs, a serving area, etc., and another might be a bedroom with beds, nightstands, mirrors, whatever. He then placed a vendor in each room that sold all of the furniture from that particular setup. He spent months standing outside the bank offering free ports, and his place was the go-to if you wanted to buy anything for your house. There was another guy who sold archery supplies and his schtick was that he had "shooting range" in his house where you could try out his wares – he had two accounts, one of which had a perma-red character who was trapped behind furniture and would run around yelling things like, "alack, me giblets!" as you filled him full of arrows. There was absolutely no reason for this to exist, but it was hilarious and so I always went out of my way to buy arrows there even though I could find them cheaper elsewhere. UO was the best game I ever played, and the game itself was just okay. The community was amazing.
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Jun 30, 2021 18:24
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Sachant posted:This actually looks really cool. Is this game newbie friendly at all? Sure doesn't look it. I haven't played it, only the predecessor. Likely not though.
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Jun 30, 2021 18:35
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Face of Mankind was.. special. No matter what you did in the game, someone would have a meltdown over it. Like for a bit I sat outside the police hq/prison and hacked the main door open over and over again, which didn't really do anything for anyone but the cop role players got very mad about it nonetheless
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Jun 30, 2021 20:16
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punk rebel ecks posted:These UO stories make it seem like if Gary's Mod was a RPG. When UO was really good it was like when Rust is really good. And when it was really bad it was like Rust the rest of the time.
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Jun 30, 2021 20:25
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30.5 Days posted:When UO was really good it was like when Rust is really good. And when it was really bad it was like Rust the rest of the time. I've never played Rust.
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Jun 30, 2021 21:34
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Big problem with developing virtual world societies is that there is like nothing players can do to each other except willfully trade poo poo, or if we're lucky, open pvp ( but they just respawn with a negligible gear penalty). How are you going to develop any social structures beyond surface level chatting when players cannot do anything to another player. There's simply no incentive whatsoever to give a poo poo about any online "society" If players could destroy another players gear, kidnap each other, banish people from areas, build poo poo together and etc we'd begin to see a much more fully fleshed out "massively multiplayer" social experience. But as things are right now its really just kind of an online hangout. They are mostly glorified chat rooms that lack even a simulacra of the mechanisms of a society
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Jun 30, 2021 21:42
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Everytime a game tries to do that crap it dies because people don't want to be camped 24/7 by hardcores with no life or whatever.
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Jun 30, 2021 21:44
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Ibram Gaunt posted:Everytime a game tries to do that crap it dies because people don't want to be camped 24/7 by hardcores with no life or whatever. I agree with you that the implementation has been lovely but please try to use your imagination
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Jun 30, 2021 21:44
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Jokerpilled Drudge posted:I agree with you that the implementation has been lovely but please try to use your imagination I mean, sure. I'm not saying stuff like what you described couldn't be cool in theory, but I've played MUDS with similar open freedom and either no one does that stuff at large or everyone does and that's the only group of people left after a while.
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Jun 30, 2021 21:46
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Baller Time posted:Face of Mankind was.. special. No matter what you did in the game, someone would have a meltdown over it. Like for a bit I sat outside the police hq/prison and hacked the main door open over and over again, which didn't really do anything for anyone but the cop role players got very mad about it nonetheless Forget UO, now that is the Garry's mod experience. Just one gigantic Stanford Prison Experiment.
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Jun 30, 2021 21:52
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