UO Beta vs SotA Beta

Well I agree it's not much of a comparison.. at least not on a 1 to 1 level. Origin had primary control over UO I think until Richard left the company but they did act as publisher for Origin since U7.. I think they bought Origin right after Ultima VI? But all that is mostly moot to the discussion. Origin had a really small budget for UO because EA didn't want to do it until Origin offered free CDs for the beta and got a huge response.

Anyway.. back to the topic at hand..

 

You'll be eating those words come release time.

 

I hope so.

 

Not seeing it either. Couple of hundred? Sure we have that now. Couple of thousand? Yeah sure this game can reach 2,000. Couple of hundred thousand players easy? Nope, not seeing it.

 

Not free, they didn't have the budget at the time. So they decided to charge $5 per disk. If I remember the story from LB and DS correctly EA expected no more than 15k units to ship of the game. Beta blew them out of the water with 50k people responding and actually paying the $5.

They did a great stand-up during the UO 20th rehashing old inside stories from when first developing UO. There is a video out there somewhere.

 

Oh that's right there was a small cost. My bad. Long time ago. I've still got my beta CD around here somewhere. I just remember it was really insignificant.

 

I hope SOTA can find a way to create enthusiasm at launch that even approaches UO. That would be victory. Perhaps our favorite astronaut/magician has a rocket/trick up his sleeve.

 

Assuming that Port pushes ahead with tbe launch sometime in the next 3 months, the year following would be the sweet spot to fix things. It gets much harder after that - just my two cents.

 

Link please

 

I like your sentiment, however I have to disagree with this part. There is very little to almost negligible character customization compared to modern games...even single-player ones. SOTA really needs to work on that.

 

Origin Systems was purchased by Electronic Arts on September 10, 1992.
Ultima Online Launched September 24th, 1997.

I agree completely.

 

Not that that's a bad thing. There should be a niche for a MMO that isn't a total theme park, for people who care about stats and some moderate amount of complexity. For a long time, FFXI was in that space, but it got old and declined, and they eased up on difficulty and inconvenience. But it's still hard to get through the main story quests without a wiki to tell you where the hell you have to go next.

 

Weins's third eye hath opened

 

Gives a whole new meaning to "We're working for YOU"... we thought "you" was loyal backing players...

 

UO beta - dropping the a bomb
SotA in development - dropping the h bomb

dont know about you guys, but i am getting some goggles.

 

The thing about UO Beta was that it blew our minds in RL. It represented a real in practice experience of a third world, the virtual, being integrated into the world of the physical and the world of the imagination, a real shared concrete imaginary experience.
Consciousness has changed so much that we take it for granted now, but it was revolutionary at the time. It was profound.

 

And that is why so many forget or forgive its many flaws.

 

Which is sad because hundreds of thousands COULD happen.