poll ] SotA or UO2 which do you want?

The direction of both UO sequel projects seemed very un-Ultima-like.

If the games were pitched as new MMOs in new worlds with no connection to Ultima, so be it. But calling them Ultima games just seemed wrong.

 

From a gameplay and story aspect, a lot of that made sense under the lore they were establishing. Lord British tries to undo the Sundering caused by the shattering of the Gem of Immortality. Lord Blackthorn opposes, and the Reformation ritual gets disrupted with some destructive effects. Basically, Blackthorn uses Juka technology (future Gargish mutated race that was enslaved by Exodus, and who rebelled) to fight against magic, and creates Technomancy as a result.

The Meer (from Sosaria's past) are a cat-like feral people (ala SI) that are lithe and nimble. And modern day Britannians are stuck in the middle of both, so there's the world of UO2. To be fair, their development team seemed to care about working from established game lore, shockingly enough, and did a decent job explaining it through web stories and prequel novels. Austin Andrews wrote the prequel trilogy, and I got to personally talk to him about it. He tried to keep within the Ultima lore, which was probably why the whole thing got scrapped by EA, and turned into hodge-podge expansions later. (Why, yes, I -am- bitter.

Interestingly, they were trying to make a very fluid 3D environment (including using motion capture), so stuff like the kung-fu movement, dancing, jumps, flips, etc were intended. Also, the story explained pretty well how you could have robo-steampunk tanks, vibrational swords, clockwork-like armors, and other technology along with more classic medieval fantasy fare. I -REALLY- liked how they portrayed Blackthorn, since he was actually a nuanced and developed character (weird half man/machine that he was), and had actual objectives and reasons for his opposition to magic.

EA, though, in their classic fashion cancelled the game, took Robo-Thorn and made him a bad "Rawr! Eeeeeevil!" Saturday morning cartoon villain, and otherwise just hacked and chopped elements from the unfinished game to shove into later UO patches. I shouldn't have been too surprised, not after their complete lack of attention or care for U9's connection to the Ultima games.

 

UX:O (or Odyssey) was complete crap, simply because it tried blatantly to take U9's background and (lack of) lore, and cram that into an "Ultima"' title. It was actually intended to be the sequel, hence the X in the title, and fan reactions were livid and loud. No thanks, EA, we didn't want to play around in crazy psycho Avatar/Guardian's delusional brain, so they could pull a Dallas/dream excuse to further crap on the series' lore.

 

Thanks for the excellent background on this! While I do commend them for trying to stick to established lore, I just didn't like the direction it was heading. And worse, the art direction and visual presentation of it. It brought in some things I personally didn't like. Especially the wushu and kung fu moves. I'm fine with bringing some amount of tech into a fantasy realm, with clockwork being the norm. Steampunk is ok but not to my taste at all. So definitely cybertanks and the whole industrial style just didn't do it for me.

 

A similar game as UO.

EA wont make that game but someone else could.

 

Why should anyone spend money developing a clone of UO when UO is still live?

 

I was talking about old UO, the UO that don't exist anymore.

UO of today is a completely different game compared with the one i played up to some months after Age of Shadows february 2003.

 

And there are literally free shards for old UO, with very small player communities.

I've logged into a few and they are ghost towns.

If there was this MASSIVE OVERWHELMING demand for that, wouldn't those shards be swarming with players, especially at a price of free?

There is no evidence there is demand for people willing to pay for something they don't even seem to want en masse for free.

 

Without going into specific details so the moderators don't get upset, there are communities that are vibrant and others that are not for those games. Personally, I played on, helped ran, and even hosted for quite some time, a particular world based entirely around the storyline of post-U7, and we had a blast doing so. There was vibrant RP, detailed storytelling, and a world that was dedicated to the familiar, but with new additions as well.

Speaking from the technical aspects, it also could be a pain in the backside for maintenance. There's no way (especially at that time) to have the bandwidth, computing power, or even programming expertise available to make it feasible for huge numbers of players. Even the programs used by those games are essentially someone's back-engineering to make similar systems look and feel like the original design, but rarely do they work precisely the exact same way, since it's NOT the same actual engine code.

It's also interesting to see sometimes how passionate players can be, and how inventive and resourceful their efforts can lead to some excellent creations. Just looking at single player projects like U5: Lazarus and The U6 Project, where fans grouped together for their collective knowledge and expertise, and recreated these stories and gameplay features using entirely different tools than originally intended. Since I've gotten to work with some of that, I applaud their creative successes.

 

i voted something new, but that doesn't mean something new couldn't be an Ultima Online 2 as well as being new. As a spiritual successor I expect that it takes much of the great features of UO and the other Ultimas, and also try lots of new things. However some of the fundamentals that made UO great I hope (expect) to see.

 

Well from my perspective I tried to get back into several versions of UO ever since late 2000's till now but I couldn't because mainly
1) the graphics were too crap for modern day
2) the worlds were overrun with player homes litereally everywhere
3) far too much rampant exploitation in the world

 

The most active server I saw maybe had 100 players. That is fine for a RP community with organized events. But much of the UO world was empty, especially in off hours.

Even if you added every freeshard together on the planet, I'm not sure you'd have 10,000 players. Of those prospective 10,000 players (of which there probably aren't), how many would pay for what they want? And of all those players, there seems to be a big rift in what they want because the free shards are run so differently.

Let's say in a perfect world there are 10,000 players, and every single one of them is willing to spend money. Each pledged $30 to a KS. That's $300,000, and not really enough to fund the development of an MMO.

I'm glad those freeshards exist to create RP communities for those who enjoy that, and those who want to keep Ultima alive. I mean them no disrespect, but there does not seem to be sufficient evidence there is overwhelming demand to make a UO clone financially successful. Yet people keep insisting if someone makes a UO clone, that there is tons of money waiting for them.

 

Actually, it goes even deeper than that. A lot of that "demand" really can't fully agree among themselves what exactly the experience they want to have even from UO. Do they want pre-AoS rulesets? Second Age? Blackthorn's Revenge? (*shudder*) Do they want active PvP? Are they a Siege Perilous-style server? Do they go Felucca only, or use the Trammel rulesets for players as well? Heck, even which actual engine they sometimes use can lead to lively discussions regarding gameplay balance, and how certain effects and abilities are coded.

That's why I'm very certain that why the SotA team will take all of that into account (heck, Start Long -was- one of the main leads on UO originally, he's got some experience, people! , it would be a tremendous headache and impossible Herculean task to attempt to not only precisely recreate UO, but to then attempt to appease and satisfy everyone fully each time they attempted to make balance or gameplay changes.

And to be fair, UO itself is still plugging along with active players after almost 20 years! From 1997 to today, that's an amazing accomplishment especially considering the aging of the client (including their various updates). If SotA can remain active and still popular as long as that, I'll be extremely happy, and hopefully still around until they turn off the lights.

 

You are exactly right. Nobody has the balls to make UO2 because they have no idea how to approach it:

(1) The Ruleset as you outlined
(2) The graphics/point of view (2D/3D mix?)

I for one, do have an idea of how it should be done, but I'd need some backing

 

I would correct your quote to read: "Nobody has the balls to starve in the street from the lack of people paying for..."

You honestly believe in the last 15 years not a single person has pitched or tried the UO open world approach?

The very premise even failed for the very game you are espousing. EA, call them whatever you will, made a secondary server to provide options to expand their base to sustain a steady rate of incoming money. You just don't have the numbers. The closest subset of people to compare that too would be those in the FPS space, and that is completely evident by the adoption of the action MMO style in recent MMO iterations.

The RPG type player you are looking for just doesn't outweigh the non-RPG player, i.e. looting and questing and helping their fellow players from PK, etc... just for the adventure.

This poll is a good indication of the hard core players here, but there are literally thousands other players out there who are not even paying attention to this website.

Is that a hard number? No. But I know from 15 years of MMO forum game experience, pretty much the 10% vocal show up here to kvetch about whatever game, the rest actually vote by playing or not playing, and doing a nice, silent Irish goodbye when the game doesn't fulfill their desire anymore.

 

I'm really surprised by the poll results.

I voted UO2 and expected to see about an 80:20 split in favour of UO2.

 

The only way I could see it working would be with 2 shards one for PvE and the other PvP to bring in as many players as possible. To get the best out of it you could also run shards for F2P & P2W with in game shops for those that like to buy fancy items. 4 games for the price of one.

 

I too would like to see a real UO2 (not the continuation of the original UO2 vision). But you know what, I'm looking forward to the vision for SotA even more.

 

Looking back on that video, I remember seeing it back when it originally came out and thinking : "Wow, look at those graphics!"

Of course, nowadays it looks *so* dated.

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I loved the development teams reaction to EA shutting them down : They got together, and burned all the original physical design documents in a large bonfire.

I thought it was quite fitting.

 

I think that is a common view among the UO crowd. The UO crowd is very vocal, but that doesn't make them the majority.

Also, these forums probably don't necessarily represent the target audience. I'm guessing there are a lot of people who backed the game, but don't frequent the forums.