I played an awful lot of Ultima Online in my youth, primarily on emulator servers, with which I later got pretty heavily involved on the development side.
It was a truly special game in its heyday; there have been many attempts but no successes at recreating what made UO so special. The adrenaline of PvP in that game is something I've only seen matched in a small handful of titles since.
From everything I've read and watched, Eve Online comes (came?) pretty close to the same general feeling/atmosphere of UO but to be honest I've avoided Eve because I don't want to get hooked. I don't have time for an MMO addiction these days.
I used to play a shard called Novus Opiate. It was the biggest early shard.
After it died I went on to run a couple of servers and teaching myself to code. Alphanine and Sacred.
When I wanted to drop out of school I wanted to do 3d animation to make a game like UO. But realised I have 0 talent in design but I love programming. So ended up doing that. Thankfully I never became a game dev tho. The stories scare me.
After spending my entire childhood wanting to be a game programmer I had one short summer job at a big studio during my university years and was immediately put off by the terrible working conditions.
Years later I heard that there were good studios which treat you right so I left my job in surgical simulation and finally started as a game developer. That was seven years ago. It's tough at times but I haven't ever regretted it. There are plenty of good employers out there, these days.
Exact same experience, except I've never gone back to a career in game development... although I've considered it at various points in my software dev career.
While software development in general is fun and continuously challenging there's a very special excitement to looking at what you're actually doing and going "holy shit, we make games!". I've had those moments when I'm in a meeting discussing design details and considerations when suddenly it just strikes me that we're sitting there discussing how to make a game more fun and that's part of our job.
I'm also really happy when people ask me what I do for a living and I can link a flashy trailer instead of trying to describe some web backend thing for a service they never heard about.
edit: probably the biggest advantage in game development is the unique atmosphere brought about by the shared deep passion for games throughout the company.
Nice to know there's good places to work in the gaming industry. I think I'm scared due to the number of bad stories that popup now-n-then and the over-worked scenarios to meet deadlines.
I think the problem now is I would like to build a game similar to UO but unless I did it myself I don't think it will ever happen. Kinda like the plot of Mythic Quest on Apple TV. He starts his own company to make the game of his vision.
I was so afraid of losing my good equipment I never carried it. I would PVP in underwear, with GM made items and reagents and pots. That's it.
I liked how I could chop a body up and spread the pieces which is really fun when you are at war with your neighbor and you see their ghost standing over their dead body saying OOOoooOoo OooOOOO
I never played UO but read a fair bit about it. I was under the impression that all of the gear was perfectly mundane (player crafted often, no bonus stats, magical properties, etc) and skill/ability was entirely based on your character skill choices and their respective levels? Or was there slightly superior weapons/armor that was so rare you never used it since your gear was fair-game upon death?
Did you lose gear from both monster and player kills?
The vast majority of gear used by people was crafted by others, but higher level monsters dropped magic items that increased their accuracy, damage, or durability. Or, had a "slayer" affix against certain enemy types that caused additional damage toward them. For example, might find a "Silver Katana of Vanquishing" that would vastly increase damage against liches or other undead, which would have been a highly coveted item (and a nice prize for a PK who found you deep in a dungeon with practically no escape).
Yes there was more rare gear, like bone armor that you didn't want to be ganked.
When you died, by either monster or player, your corpse contained all your possessions. If you could get resurrected in time or you had help you could get all your stuff back.
In the game's early incarnation this was the case. After a while there was special materials for weapons, and armour; Items with special properties; echantment; etc. Eventually the power creep accelerated to ridiculous proportions after WoW had set new precedents.
It's almost worth creating a novelty HN "UOGhost" account, doing something extremely obnoxious to get it shadow banned, and then haunting around replying "OOOooOooOoo OoooOOO" to live people's comments.
It was a truly special game in its heyday; there have been many attempts but no successes at recreating what made UO so special. The adrenaline of PvP in that game is something I've only seen matched in a small handful of titles since.
The closest thing is probably heavily modded private servers in various games, that are still big enough to feel like mini MMOs. Minecraft has some for sure. Project Zomboid recently. Some very specific Rust or GTA servers. In the past there was some permadeath Neverwinter Nights persistant worlds (there might even still be.)
Check out the new UO Overdrive free server. They recreated that PVP but with a much more modern client and user experience in general which I think is worth checking out if you enjoyed that kind of PVP in those days.
Comments
I played an awful lot of Ultima Online in my youth, primarily on emulator servers, with which I later got pretty heavily involved on the development side.
It was a truly special game in its heyday; there have been many attempts but no successes at recreating what made UO so special. The adrenaline of PvP in that game is something I've only seen matched in a small handful of titles since.
From everything I've read and watched, Eve Online comes (came?) pretty close to the same general feeling/atmosphere of UO but to be honest I've avoided Eve because I don't want to get hooked. I don't have time for an MMO addiction these days.
I owe my entire career to UO.
I used to play a shard called Novus Opiate. It was the biggest early shard.
After it died I went on to run a couple of servers and teaching myself to code. Alphanine and Sacred.
When I wanted to drop out of school I wanted to do 3d animation to make a game like UO. But realised I have 0 talent in design but I love programming. So ended up doing that. Thankfully I never became a game dev tho. The stories scare me.
After spending my entire childhood wanting to be a game programmer I had one short summer job at a big studio during my university years and was immediately put off by the terrible working conditions.
Years later I heard that there were good studios which treat you right so I left my job in surgical simulation and finally started as a game developer. That was seven years ago. It's tough at times but I haven't ever regretted it. There are plenty of good employers out there, these days.
Exact same experience, except I've never gone back to a career in game development... although I've considered it at various points in my software dev career.
While software development in general is fun and continuously challenging there's a very special excitement to looking at what you're actually doing and going "holy shit, we make games!". I've had those moments when I'm in a meeting discussing design details and considerations when suddenly it just strikes me that we're sitting there discussing how to make a game more fun and that's part of our job.
I'm also really happy when people ask me what I do for a living and I can link a flashy trailer instead of trying to describe some web backend thing for a service they never heard about.
edit: probably the biggest advantage in game development is the unique atmosphere brought about by the shared deep passion for games throughout the company.
Nice to know there's good places to work in the gaming industry. I think I'm scared due to the number of bad stories that popup now-n-then and the over-worked scenarios to meet deadlines.
I think the problem now is I would like to build a game similar to UO but unless I did it myself I don't think it will ever happen. Kinda like the plot of Mythic Quest on Apple TV. He starts his own company to make the game of his vision.
I was so afraid of losing my good equipment I never carried it. I would PVP in underwear, with GM made items and reagents and pots. That's it.
I liked how I could chop a body up and spread the pieces which is really fun when you are at war with your neighbor and you see their ghost standing over their dead body saying OOOoooOoo OooOOOO
I never played UO but read a fair bit about it. I was under the impression that all of the gear was perfectly mundane (player crafted often, no bonus stats, magical properties, etc) and skill/ability was entirely based on your character skill choices and their respective levels? Or was there slightly superior weapons/armor that was so rare you never used it since your gear was fair-game upon death?
Did you lose gear from both monster and player kills?
Yes, everything dropped on your corpse on death.
The vast majority of gear used by people was crafted by others, but higher level monsters dropped magic items that increased their accuracy, damage, or durability. Or, had a "slayer" affix against certain enemy types that caused additional damage toward them. For example, might find a "Silver Katana of Vanquishing" that would vastly increase damage against liches or other undead, which would have been a highly coveted item (and a nice prize for a PK who found you deep in a dungeon with practically no escape).
Yes there was more rare gear, like bone armor that you didn't want to be ganked.
When you died, by either monster or player, your corpse contained all your possessions. If you could get resurrected in time or you had help you could get all your stuff back.
In the game's early incarnation this was the case. After a while there was special materials for weapons, and armour; Items with special properties; echantment; etc. Eventually the power creep accelerated to ridiculous proportions after WoW had set new precedents.
It's almost worth creating a novelty HN "UOGhost" account, doing something extremely obnoxious to get it shadow banned, and then haunting around replying "OOOooOooOoo OoooOOO" to live people's comments.
The closest thing is probably heavily modded private servers in various games, that are still big enough to feel like mini MMOs. Minecraft has some for sure. Project Zomboid recently. Some very specific Rust or GTA servers. In the past there was some permadeath Neverwinter Nights persistant worlds (there might even still be.)
Check out the new UO Overdrive free server. They recreated that PVP but with a much more modern client and user experience in general which I think is worth checking out if you enjoyed that kind of PVP in those days.