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tonelok
Sep 29, 2001

Hanukkah came early this year.

Strotski posted:

Every once in a while I remember Ultima and what amazing of an experience it was and I realize I'd hate playing it today.

I have a love/hate relationship with it. I was playing when it started in '97 (lived in Austin, roommate was on the UO team, friends with a bunch of the Origin folks), had a blast the first several years, watched it almost implode multiple times pre-Renaissance. I stayed pretty steady through 2010-ish, and then came back off and on for large chunks of time through 2015 and then sporadically after, was very disappointed they almost pulled off a total client rebuild into a true 3D system a couple of times (which would have changed everything) and then ran into problems/got cold feet/had a dumbass player revolt.

It's a genie that can never be put back in the bottle. Pre-UO:R/Tram, many people didn't see how bad things were getting with players leaving because they were PKed/lost everything one too many times. Saw a couple of people almost come to physical blows at a UO get together at the Texas Renaissance Festival, because the organizers had the bright idea of A) getting some UO team members to come, which guaranteed a lot of UO players would follow and B) had players wearing name tags with their chosen character name and shard listed underneath.

Really disappointed we never got a true UO2 released to the public - it was aggravating seeing stuff in UO2 (technically Ultima Worlds Origin or something like that) that wasn't in other MMOs, and then UO2 is killed, and that stuff starts appearing in other MMOs. There was stuff in UO2, that popped up in WOW when it launched a few years later, that is taken for granted now.

As I said, got to see from "behind the curtain" thanks to a roommate and friends, was a counselor (until they hosed that up because of the lawsuits against EA), was in the running for being an EM a few years ago, but had to pull out due to our youngest being born.

And EA would have let it die a while back if the Broadsword guy hadn't stepped in to save Dark Age of Camelot and UO. Between him and 30,000-35,000 Japanese players (like half the player base is Japanese), they are the reason it's still around. EA likes having the "longest-running MMORPG" around (sorry Meridian 59), but they give no shits about trying to make it better.

And like Kumba said, they have 6 people on the dev team (not counting EMs/GMs). I know a couple of them (the producer has been around with UO forever, and I have sometimes questioned whether she has helped or hurt UO) and it's still amazing when they pull off some decent additions. I suspect they farm out some of the art stuff though.

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Node
May 20, 2001

KICKED IN THE COOTER
:dings:
Taco Defender

Strotski posted:

I played on some renaissance type server around 2003, it had a feature of typing "You see X looting the corpse of Y" above your head on the server side every time you looted off anyone's corpse.
The reason that is interesting is because you could set up same macro message to type that in the same font in chat, which would show up in the same spot above your head.
If anyone saw you looting someone in a town with that message and you were blue, it was generally assumed you were looting a PK and it was a free-for-all looting frenzy at that point.

So naturally I created 2nd account with a stealther, put a bunch of stuff on him to entice looting, killed myself in a busy spot near the bank in Minoc during off hours.
Then I ressed with a stealther near my own corpse, went into hiding, and started waiting for someone to come near.
When they did - I would start the macro that typed "You see X looting the corpse of Y" at a believable pace, and started moving items in my own corpse on 2nd account while in hiding.
To the observer it looked convincing, so naturally they began looting free stuff off of a red "PK", got flagged, I called guards and they were immediately killed. All that was left was to wait till guards despawned, loot them, recall and repeat that a few hours later or in another place.

Every once in a while I remember Ultima and what amazing of an experience it was and I realize I'd hate playing it today.

I loving love Ultima Online.

kumba
Nov 8, 2003

I posted my food for USPOL Thanksgiving!

enjoy the ride

Lipstick Apathy
we are a week away from the 3 year anniversary of me making this thread

lol

jabro
Mar 25, 2003

July Mock Draft 2014

1st PLACE
RUNNER-UP
got the knowshon


And probably the 2 year 51st week anniversary of the devs acknowledging New Legacy.

Freakazoid_
Jul 5, 2013


Buglord
I don't have anything to add really, I was fine memory holing this whole thing and I think everyone else was as well.

Rufio
Feb 6, 2003

I'm smart! Not like everybody says... like dumb... I'm smart and I want respect!
drat I been thinking about UO lately and have no idea why. Anyone here who used to play on Lake Superior and used to post on the Chuea boards?

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kumba
Nov 8, 2003

I posted my food for USPOL Thanksgiving!

enjoy the ride

Lipstick Apathy

Rufio posted:

drat I been thinking about UO lately and have no idea why. Anyone here who used to play on Lake Superior and used to post on the Chuea boards?

if you want to get back into UO, a bunch of us play on the Outlands free shard which is a spiritual successor to the T2A era

join us here!!!

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