

Former Ultima Online developers working on MMO offering 'unparalleled freedom' - yiedyie
http://www.polygon.com/2014/3/29/5559608/shards-citadel-studios

======
mdisraeli
I used to run Stratics' UO Ideas Den[1], a forum for players to suggest game
changes on the semi-official fansite. One of the most popular requests was for
just this - for Origin/EA/Mythic to offer official "grey shards".

Grey shards were the name given to player-run servers running re-
implementations of Ultima Online, to which the official clients could be
hacked to connect to. Some of these got extremely successful, and I'm fairly
sure many of the developers now work in the game industry. Some were simply
opportunities to remove changes they didn't like (like removing the no-PvP
lands). Others were completely new worlds. And some had dedicated teams who
ran plot and tried to make the worlds seem alive.

Of course, over its years, Ultima Online did go through a number of these
changes naturally in one form or another. PvP only servers were launched, and
at various times they recruited players to run events and story arcs.

But what kept Ultima Online going wasn't just the old guard PvPers and the
addicts to the original 2D low-res client. There had always been a very strong
player community on some shards, with NPC towns used as a basis for player
plot and story telling.

he tools UO offered were fairly unique as far as this went. You could build
your own house, and eventually not only decorate it but design the layout from
scratch all by yourself. The player NPC vendor system that allowed people to
run shops was clunky, but still very impressive in terms of how creative
people got and how many players simply role-played tradespeople and didn't
really do the whole PvP/PvM thing. _You could place objects on the floor, some
of which would even block movement_ \- emphasis added for anyone who hasn't
tried any of the popular MMOs to make clear that this still is a rare feature.
The crafting system again was very in depth, too.

And then there's fishing. A skill that tbh was pretty boring to use, but
combine that with trade and you could enjoy yourself out on the oceans in your
boat. Treasure hunting was another path you could dedicate your characters to,
which included figuring out where in the world a map was showing, and needed
skills in lockpicking and dealing with monsters.

The skill system was again something we don't see a lot of. Mostly this is
because it is fairly complex and dull to level up at the same time. Any
character could train in any skill, if they had the room to grow or were
willing to give up another skill. You could really twink out with
complementary fighting skills, be a tradesperson who gathered their own
resources, or you could build a completely and utterly useless character,
grandmaster at everything that by themselves were useless, and together only
had value for roleplay purposes.

And we did just that! Ultima Online had a skill called "Begging", used to get
small quantities of money off NPCs. The higher the skill, the slightly more
you'd get. Some of us would roleplay beggars, avoiding all skills that we
roleplayed as being "evil". We would come up with character backstories, and
try to earn money off other players by any lawful means that wasn't using an
'evil' skill or against your personal ethics.

Speaking of that, the things the rules used to let you do against other
players, and the fun you could have in the PvP areas... Originally, when you
died your kit stayed on the corpse, and in PvP areas anyone could loot it ;)

And if it were not for Ultima Online, we wouldn't have the games we now have.
Not only was it the first proper MMORPG (or second if you count Meridian 59),
but it also inspired many other games. Jagex, one of the UK's most successful
MMO developers was founded by a team recreating UO in java - the game that
became Runescape! That game inspired another open-world java game, Wurm
Online, which Notch worked on. Notch, of course, later developed Minecraft,
and you might be able to see the similarities ;)

Finally, If you're into game design theory, one of the original development
team of UO is now a key player in that area of academia, having published A
Theory Of Fun - [http://www.raphkoster.com/](http://www.raphkoster.com/).

[1] Old UO player? Europa? Stratics bod from 2002-2007? get in touch! :D

 _Edit:_ And how could I have forgotten to mention the amazing bit of work
that was Nick Yee's Daedalus project!
[http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/](http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/)

~~~
erichurkman
Stratics was amazing, thanks for that. I had a lot of fun writing tips and
guides for hunting down rare objects [objects that were part of the game
world, but would become lootable upon game maintenance periods that occurred
weekly].

Ultima Online was my first foray into massively multiplayer gaming. I remember
lining up for the T2A expansion. Good times.

I worked on a few UOX shards (the first successful UO emulator) before getting
involved with SphereServer. UOX had some rudimentary scripting, but Sphere
took it a step further. I wouldn't call its source code elegant at all, and it
was often a race to update the server for any major client changes that Origin
released. SphereServer's scripting language was certainly -interesting- by
language definition. It reminds me a lot of DwarfFortress's RAW formats.

I later moved to RunUO, which is what replaced most SphereServer shards. A
full C# backed emulator, where the game logic was written in real .NET code,
backed by a rich API. It was like night and day comparing the old UOX system
to RunUO. It wasn't really until RunUO that full Origin game clones came
about. You can even jump on shards -today- that clone the game rules from
1997/1998.

The early Ultima Online was a brutal game, of which most modern multiplayer
games pale (except perhaps Eve). One foolish or accidental mistake could set
your character back weeks or months, and there was no game mechanics recourse.

'Vas Ort Flam' or 'Corp Por' or 'Kal Vas Flam' – run, you're about to die.

~~~
philliphaydon
You worked on UOX Shard or the emulator? I played Novus Opiate, worked on
Alphanine (scripting / GM / Player).

~~~
erichurkman
Both. None of my changes (aside from scripts) for UOX ever made it to the
actual binaries, I joined too late. By the time I actually had the source,
most major servers had already migrated (or died/been reborn) on other
emulators. Prior to that, I did a fair bit with scripting in the UOX
community. Once Sphere was 'stable' (in quotes, since it was never really…
stable… and initially crashed a _lot_ more than UOX!) I jumped to it, since
UOX had, at that point, stagnated and, IIRC, was behind the official client
releases.

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byuu
I really hope they were developers in the old Origin, pre-Renaissance days;
and not developers from the EA, post-Age of Shadows days.

For those not in the know, much of the open-ended nature of the game was
removed or destroyed in order to appeal to the popularity of MMOs such as
World of Warcraft. An entire PvP-free world removed all of the danger of
exploring, item insurance and infinite item durability repair removed all of
the risk of carrying high-end gear, the Doom gauntlet added WoW-style dungeon
grinding, power/stat scrolls brought in near-mandatory guild raiding, endless
new classes brought serious balancing issues, veteran rewards chased off new
players, countless new lands combined with dwindling players made the game
more of a ghost town, etc. The entire game shifted from a social gathering
that was a blast to explore, into a grind-fest treadmill.

I really miss the old game, but not enough to run a hacked client on a fan-
made server with under 200 users that could disappear at any time.

------
MWil
Instead of the split-sharding of servers for people who enjoy different
themes, I always thought a company should explore how much theme could be
changed on the fly depending on the specific individual present in the
environment.

Example: I design a castle which really just amounts to walls + ornaments. For
someone else with "space theme enabled" the castle appears as a floating ship
which is just walls + ornaments at the same scale. Costumes are obviously easy
to deal with. I know it's not without it's limits but it always seemed like
Minecraft's texture packs were a good conceptual start since they can be
server-forced or client-forced.

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BadassFractal
I think every MMO since Everquest has promised unparalleled freedom during
development.

~~~
rkuykendall-com
Did you read the article though? All those other MMOs talk about more player-
in-world freedom, which is just a natural progression. These devs are talking
about taking the role of world-gods that MMO companies are normally restricted
to paid employees, and turning it over to "players" to run and manage their
own servers.

It's like all those other MMOs were promising greater freedom on one axis, and
often delivering it, while this is offering a whole new axis.

------
whyenot
Is Raph Koster involved? It doesn't seem like it. It's great that this project
has some of UO's developers, but without the person who designed UO and made
it such a wonderful sandbox... I don't know, I have my doubts.

------
mentos
I used to run an Ultima Online server on RunUO when I was in high school.
Consumed me for 3 years but was a real blast and gave me the introduction to
programming that would later lead me to majoring in CS in college.

I thought this was going to be about Richard Garriot's new game, 'Shroud of
the Avatar' which he said he would have called 'Ultima Online 2' if he could
have obtained the rights. Apparently 'Shroud of the Avatar' is trying to
finally deliver a true 3D version of Ultima Online, and it looks like they
have reunited a few of the old Ultima Online developers. What I find
interesting is they've chosen to work in the Unity3D engine and have been able
to crowdsource good portions of the map design by releasing various
dungeon/city kits. This got me thinking down a similar path to the 'Shards
Online' developers. Its clear players want to develop their own worlds, its
expensive for developers to do it, so why not try to bring these interests
together?

I'm interested to see if the curated approach of 'Shroud of the Avatar' will
beat out the have-it-all approach of 'Shards Online'.

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philliphaydon
If this has a level based system its an instant fail.

~~~
mdisraeli
I agree with the comment given the background of the devs, but less the
general concept. I think games like Guild Wars (at least the first one) have
shown that levels and classes can work. Similarly the Elder Scrolls games show
alternate approaches that can also work, especially when combined with mods.

But strict levels/classes on a system that is supposed to give players design
freedom? Probably not a wise restriction, especially not if they want to use
their old fan base - which is desperately looking for newer games!

~~~
philliphaydon
Guild Wars worked because it focused on combat and the rest was never a focus,
once you got to level 20 there was a grind for items and nothing else.

The problem with level based systems is you end up with zone restrictions.
There's no reason to explore most of the map because its too low level, items
are not useful, etc.

UO worked cos you could go anywhere, at any time, and harder places usually
meant you needed a few friends to go with you. You could still do it yourself
by pulling and picking off mobs, if they didn't respawn while you were killing
stuff that is.

I miss UO...

The creator of Ultima and UO is making a new game called Shrouds of the
Avatar.

------
JimmaDaRustla
"WHY CAN'T WE GIVE THAT SAME FEELING OF POWER AND EXTRAORDINARY FUN TO THE
PLAYERS THEMSELVES..."

This is something that I don't think will EVER beat Ultima Online - it truly
holds one of the most sentimental gaming experiences for me.

