Ultima Online

Gameplay

Ultima Online continued the tradition of previous Ultima games in Many Ways, due to goal Advancing technology and the mere fact That It Was Origin’s first persistent online game, new game mechanics Many Appeared. Partially designed as a social and economic experiment, the game has played a role in the game.

Worlds

Ultima Online has started with a single world, with specific expansion packs adding additional territory and new worlds. The second world was the “Lost Lands”, with additional land, dungeons, creatures, and terrain. The third was Trammel. Felucca is one of the world’s finest producers. ^[5] The two kinds of servers were “normal” with both Trammel (consensual PVP) and Felucca (non-consensual PVP) ruleset and “siege” servers with non-consensual PVP and no item insurance. Siege servers support one character slot on an account, limits to ways of traveling and other limits. ^[6]

The worlds in Ultima Online include:

• Felucca – The original world, which evolved to include dead trees and tombstones to distinguish. It’s a harsher rule set where player killing is more common. ^[5]
• Trammel – Supported a rule set that does not allow non-consensual PVP and additional open land for player housing. ^[7]
• Ilshenar – Added dungeons and monsters and evolved to include new land, designed by Todd McFarlane . ^[8]
• Malas – Included a Player versus Player arena and space for 1500 new homes. It featured Dungeon Doom, the then-largest dungeon, and two cities: Luna (the “City of Paladins”) and Umbra (the “City of Necromancers”). ^[9] Malas is a series of islands in a starry void ^[9] and is distinguished by a darker artistic style. ^[10] Malas was praised for its variety of creatures and geographic features. ^[9]
• Tokuno – Group of islands based on Feudal Japan .
• Ter Mur – Land of the Gargoyles. The capital, Ter Mur, features space for player homes. ^[11]

Expansions

Throughout Ultima Online ‘ s history, there-have-been Many major additions to the game. Expansion packs have been released regularly, in the form of landmass, art, quests, items, or game mechanics.

Booster packs

At a public relations event on August 28, 2010 it was announced that the development team was moving to a “booster” style development process. ^[16] [17] The stated goal was to release two boosters per year. ^[18]

Development

Ultima Online is the product of Richard Garriott’s idea for a fantasy game involving several thousand people who can play in a shared fantasy world. Prior games Hundreds of people allowed to play at the time Sami, Including Habitat(beta-tested in 1986), The Realm Online , Neverwinter Nights (AOL the view) and Meridian 59 ; However, Ultima Online is much better than these games, both graphically and in game mechanics. The initial team was composed of Garriott, Starr Long , Rick Delashmit, Phillips and Scott, a bit later Raph Koster, who became the lead designer. Koster wrote about “designer letters” and usually went by his nickname of Dragon Designer. Koster drew inspiration from prior online games, ^[20] such as DartMUD . ^[21]

The project started in 1995 and was presented to the public at E3 as ” Ultima Online: Shattered Legacy ” in May 1996. Originally claimed to have more than 3,000 participants in the preliminary alpha testing . ^[22] The development cost was much greater than traditional computer games; it relied on people hosting servers via modem. Ultima Online’s features include persistent player housing, skill-based character progression, ^[23] a craft-based and player-driven economy, ^[24] and unrestricted player-versus-player combat. ^[25]

An artificial life engine has been implemented in the game. This is an introduction to animal behavior that would be useful in the game. ^[26] However, this feature never made it beyond the game’s beta stage. Richard Garriott explained:

We thought it was fantastic. We’d spent an enormous amount of time and effort on it. But what happened was all the players went in and just killed everything; so fast that the game could not spawn them fast enough to make the simulation even begin . And so, this thing that we’re going to do, we’re going to be literally never- ever – ever -and we’re just coming out of the game, you know, with some sadness. ^[27]

Beta and murder of Lord British

Lord British was Garriot’s in-game alter ego , who was killed during an in-game appearance at Ultima Online ‘s beta test on August 9, 1997. During a test of the population stress test, a player known as “Rain Field”. Producer Starr Long blamed it on human error: Lord British’s character, like others, had been made invulnerable to this kind of attack, but by design the invulnerability did not persist over several game sessions. When the server crashed shortly before the incident, Garriott forgot to reset its invulnerability status. Shortly after, administrators banned Rainz’s account of the beta test for multiple exploiting, rather than reporting, bugs. According to Origin, he was not banned for murder but rather Beta testers protested Rainz ‘ The following are some of the actions that have been taken in the past, including the following: MMOCrun calls the most memorable event in MMORPG History.^[28] [29] September 1997 was the last day of the original beta test . ^{[ clarification needed ]} Shadowlords, demons, and other evil creatures slaughtering every character in sight.

Origin era (1995-2004)

In September 1997, Ultima Online launched and opened the first game servers to the public. ^[30] Upon release, Ultima Online proved popular, reaching 100,000 paying subscribers within six months, causing severe lag problems. In 1999, the company opened the world to support the rising popularity of the game, in Japan , Europe and South Korea . In 2000, Garriot resigned from Origin, taking Lord British with him. Game players created their own fanfictionspeculations as to why the Lord had vanished. In February 2000, a large in-world event had a massive army of undead lay siege to the Britannia city of Trinsic. The event ran concurrently on all servers over several months. Another server opened in Australia during this time. In May 2000, Ultima Online ‘ s second expansion Ultima Online: Renaissance Dramatically altered the game. It split the game world into two parts called Trammel and Felucca , one was a consensual PVP zone, while the other was non-consensual. In November 2000, Ultima Online’s first official fanfest was held, called the UO World Faire in Austin, TX . ^[31] In March 2001,Ultima Online ‘ s third expansion | Ultima Online: Third Dawn was released. It added a new area to the server called Ilshenar. This new area could only be accessed with a new game client that launched with the expansion. The original game client could be used in the previous server areas. In January 2002, Ultima Online ‘ s second official fanfest Was called Expired Online Worlds FanFest, aussi Held in Austin. Players were able to meet the developers, as well as Todd McFarlane . February saw the release of Ultima Online ‘ s fourth expansion Ultima Online: Lord Blackthorn’s Revenge. Notably, it enabled access to the areas previously only available to the third Dawn game customer. In February 2003, Ultima Online ‘ s fifth expansion Ultima Online: Age of Shadows Was released. It is the most important game of the game. Around March 2003 Ultima Online reached approximately 250,000 subscribers. In February 2004, Origin Systems shut down. Ultima Online no longer had a named studio managing it. Development headquarters moved from Austin to Fairfax, Virginia .

Electronic Arts era (2004-2006)

The sixth expansion, Samurai Empire , launched in November 2004 was Japanese-themed. It offered two new professions, the Ninja and the Samurai , as well as new Japanese-themed tile sets. New lands, the Tokuno Islands , were added, with the cities being styled after ancient Japanese cities.

Ultima Online was the first MMORPG to reach the 100,000 subscriber base, far exceeding that of any game that went before it. ^[32] Subscriber numbers peaked at around 250,000 in July 2003, but then began a steady decline. In 2008 the game had around 100,000 subscribers. ^[33] As of April 2008, Ultima Online has a market share of 0.6% of the massively multiplayer online game subscriptions. ^[34] This may be part of the 2004 release of World of Warcraft , which has quickly established a market share of the game and has attracted scores of players from preexisting games in the genre.

Expansion number seven, Mondain’s Legacy , launched in August 2005. It featured the second player race, Elves . The upgrade is a major upgrade, as did the crafting system. Spellweaving was added to the skills. Many new dungeons were added. This expansion was the first that was available online. Mondain’s Legacy was the last expansion, with updates becoming more irregular after that point.

Mythic Entertainment era (2006-2014)

In June 2006 Electronic Arts Purchased Mythic Entertainment , the Dark Age creators of Camelot . Mythic was tasked with managing EA’s MMORPG portfolio, including Ultima Online . That month was also announced that the anti-cheating software PunkBuster would be integrated into Ultima Online . This marked the first time PunkBuster would be used with an MMORPG to help curb cheating and exploiting . However, it was never integrated into the game, and in November 2006, Electronic Arts put the PunkBuster integration on indefinite hold.

In August 2007 Ultima Online: Kingdom Reborn was released. This is the first major overhaul of the client and artwork systems since Ultima Online: Third Dawn . The final expansion was Stygian Abyss (2009), which focused on the gargoyle race. After Stygian Abyss The development model shifted from expansions to “booster packs” that were intended to be smaller. However, the first booster pack High Seas of 2010 was also the last.

Broadsword era (2014-present)

It was announced on February 6, 2014 that development of the game would be transferred from Mythic to Broadsword, which would take over future development. ^[35]

Other releases

Ultima Online has had several special releases that were not expansions, but came with boxed or in-game extras.

• Ultima Online: Charter Edition (September 30, 1997) Was available to pre-order from Origin Systems at the launch of Ultima Online and in small quantities Alongside the standard retail box. It included a lithograph of the Ultima Online artwork by the Hilderbrandt brothers and a pewter pin badge bearing the Ultima Online logo. The box was not signed by Richard Garriott, but simply bears a digital signature of his Lord British signature. The Charter Edition included the cloth map which was also a feature of the standard box, and included three months of subscription time, as opposed to the standard box.
• Ultima Online: Discovery Edition (February 1, 2000) was released to the Australian and New Zealand markets at the same time as the launch of the Oceania server for the region.
• Ultima Online: 7th Anniversary (September 25, 2004) Ultima Online’s seventh birthday. It included a more recently patched CD. This release was contained in a small cardboard box containing a triple-CD jewel box, featuring Ultima Online: Age of Shadows , but also included Ultimate IX: Ascension install and play discs as a bonus. A glossy booklet showing the history of Ultima Online expansions was included that contained historic art and an interview of the Ultima Online team and community leaders. It included a code for an in-game gift, one of which was Ultima Online’s famous Hilderbrant print, an extra character slot and 7 buddy registration codes.
• Ultima Online: Gold (July 18, 2005) The Ultima Online: Samurai Empire . This edition came with an Advanced Character token code and quick-start manual.
• Ultima Online: The Eighth Age (September 25, 2005) was a boxed game CD with an array of in-game tokens. The release was to celebrate Ultima Online’s eighth birthday. The box included an patched game CD, a glossy booklet featuring an atlas of Sosaria , an in-game tokens for an anniversary gift (choice of 8), a character transfer, an advanced character, a 45-day free trial code and a time- limited blue soulstone.
• Ultima Online: 9th Anniversary Collection (October 31, 2006). Formerly known as “Eve of a New Age.” This is a game that has been upgraded to 9 “Heritage Tokens”, “Crystal” and “Shadow” items which match the new game in the game, and waiters, which took the form of NPCs. These could be set to announce a player’s presence in a house or to follow the player around the map. The Heritage tokens could be redeemed for several types of items including armor, weapons, and house decoration items in various themes (3 fruit trees, a set of rugs, tables, a broken furniture set, a “dark” or evil furniture set more).
• Ultima Online: Kingdom Reborn (June 27, 2007) introduced a new client with new graphics and interface. This client was never finished and was replaced by the Enhanced Client in 2009.

Shard emulation

Fans of Ultima Online reverse-engineered the game to produce servers emulators of the original Electronic Arts servers. ^[36] With emulation server software it is feasible to customize MOST aspects of the game and supporting broad numbers of concurrent players were single server.

Customers

Electronic Arts Provides customers with the standard qui players are allowed to connect to the Ultima Online servers, though Some third-party customers made Were.

Original customer

The original Ultima Online Client is a crisper, simpler artistic flavor that some people find more attractive than the 3D client. Some of the graphics used are high-resolution versions of graphics used in Ultima VIII: Pagan .

Ultima Online: Third Dawn Client

The customer 3D Was Originally released as a share of the Ultima Online: Third Dawn expansion, profit received poor reviews due to performance issues (especially memory leaks early on) and sub-par graphics. An update to the 3D client was made on January 30, 2006 when characters and creatures from the game were scaled down to smaller sizes. As of early May / Late April 2007, the Third Dawn is a client and its successor is the Enhanced Client. Electronic Arts Ultima Online servers do not allow third Dawn client to connect.

Ultima Online: Kingdom Reborn client

Ultima Online: Kingdom Reborn was announced in August 2006 and was released August 27, 2007. ^[37] The new client modernized the game’s look, making it easy to add new content without backsliding through outdated and outmoded art, while maintaining the niche market an MMORPG that can run on lower-end computers. Electronic Arts referred to the Ultima Online: Kingdom Reborn client as “2.5d,” meaning that it was written in 3d and then moved into 2d to make it easier for lower-end computers to run. The client is available as a free download.

Electronic Arts originally stated that the Ultima Online: Kingdom Reborn customer would replace the long-standing Ultima Online customer. Support for this client ended on September 9, 2009, to streamline the patch process prior to the release of Ultima Online: Stygian Abyss Expansion. ^[38]

Enhanced Client

A modified version of the Reborn Client, renamed as the “Enhanced Client”, was introduced as part of the Stygian Abyss expansion. It was released as an open beta in July 2009. Changes included enhanced macro abilities, a more configurable interface, changes to the mapping system, and graphical improvements. ^[39] The enhanced graphics of the Kingdom Reborn client had been retired from the original resolution. This graphic set was based on the Third Dawn client and was previously available in the Reborn client as optional original graphics.

Reception

Awards

Ultima Online ‘ s Guinness World Records Guinness World Records Award Winning World Records Guinness World Records: Gamer’ s Edition 2008 . These records include “First MMORPG to Reach 100,000 Players”, “Longest Running MMORPG”, and “First and Only Person to Kill Lord British “, which was made by a player named. ^[40] In May 2001 Ultima Online won the MPOGD game of the month award ^[41] In 2010, Ultima Online was inducted into the Game Developers’ Choice Online Hall of Fame Awards. ^[42] In 2012, Straticspresented Ultima Online With A “Historic Achievement Award” to commemorate “fifteen years of innovation, imagination and dedication in supporting of the Ultima Online community.” ^[43] Time designated as one of the 100 greatest video games of all time in November 2012. ^[44]

Communities

During the game’s May 1996 alpha testing, there is more than a dozen player-created guilds . ^[45]

Shadowclan is a guild that has gained notoriety in the online gaming community ^[46] in 1997 by taking the place of non-player character orcs in Ultima Online . ^[47] Former administrator clan Ogur was interviewed about Shadowclan in Massively Multiplayer Games For Dummies . ^[48] A reference to Shadowclan was written in the official Dark Age of Camelot documentation. ^[49]

Canceled sequels

Two sequels were planned by Electronic Arts, but both were in favor of development.

• Ultima Online 2 , later renamed Ultima Worlds Online: Origin Was annoncé in 1999. It was to add steampunk Elements to the fantasy setting, set in a world Where the past, present and future of Sosaria Were merged by a mistake made by Lord British while attempting to merge the shards of the Gem of Immortality. Todd McFarlane was hired to design the monsters and regions for the game. It was canceled in 2001 before its release, citing the competitive nature of the massively multiplayer online gaming market- Electronic Arts feared the harm would be Ultima Online’s subscription numbers. Some of the monsters and art made for the game were later used in theUltima Online expansionLord Blackthorn’s Revenge .
• Ultima X: Alucinor, created by the Avatar after the events of Ultima IX: Ascension . It was canceled in 2004 when Electronic Arts closed Origin. The Odyssey has been invited to the Bay Area to finish the game. However, only a small number of people accepted the transfer. In the end, Odyssey was canceled because of the development team dissolved.

Controversies

Since the designers of Ultima Online wanted to Provide freedom and sense of agency, It was significant to allow players to act in a villainous role. The consequences of in-game criminality were adjusted over time. As explained by designer Raph Koster, “Being safe from evil is, in my mind, a tradeoff for the fact that you do not get to be heroes anymore, in that you can just opt ​​out of fighting evil. When it is not challenging, it is not challenging, that people would rather fight ‘pretend evil’ than the real thing, but I do not believe it. . ” ^[50]Eventually, the Renaissance expansion created large areas of the game in which it was not possible to harm other players. A significant spike in account reactivation was attributed to this aspect of Renaissance. ^{[ quote needed ]}

Ultima Online was educated player volunteers (“Counselors”) and settled in 2004 without admitting wrongdoing. ^[51] AOL had their personal train service staff hired, then shut down the volunteer program. Microsoft will shut down their volunteer program for Asheron’s Call . ^[52]

References