More MMO, less single & multi player

I'm curious the single player side is very well taken care of? There is literally no information other then they have said they are going to have one.

 

@Rune_74 - are you honestly worried with RG and Tracy Hickman writing the story? You've got two great world crafters building a new universe. I for one, believe the story will be fantastic.

A lot of the features that'll make the online portion fun will make the single player game fun. Crafting, Adventuring, and Questing are both online and offline components. As such taking care of the underlying systems will make both modes more fun.

You are correct though almost no information exists on the gameplay mechanics in the game at this point. Hopefully that information will come forwards soon.

 

I agree 100% and have similar feelings about the necessity of pushing the MMO qualities in my thread: https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?topic=hopes-and-concerns

The beauty of UO was not that you COULD play with friends, it's that you had to interact with potential friends and potential enemies. The world seemed realistic, and the current trajectory of SotA seems like that openness and wonder will be heavily shrunk. I don't want to follow a scripted, planned story the whole time (some overarching story is fine, sure), as UO's world would have been way worse if I had quests telling me where to go all the time to progress, or quest rewards where they handed out Katanas of Vanquishing or something...

As I wrote about in my thread up there, this game is being pulled in too many directions to please too many subsets of fans. I'm super biased, but I think the amount of people who would support and flock to a UO-style, massively multiplayer environment is the largest BY FAR considering the current MMO market and the huge amount of nostalgia that hundreds of thousands are probably waiting for.

 

Hi, have been lurking since the SOTA site opened but I feel compelled to post after reading this thread.

I was a UO subscriber from 1998 until about 2003 when the game started to go downhill. Hands down my favorite game of all time and I am not at all interested in any mmo's out there right now. My best gaming memories of all time come from UO.

I don't have a ton of time to game any more and although SOTA looks like it will be good I may or may not play. If I do it will maybe be purchasing the box version some time shortly after release.

However if an MMORPG option where I played with everyone becomes available I would pay to preorder and alpha/beta test. I would be willing to pay a subscription for many years if it is similar to UO. I have been missing real uo all these years. I play on free servers from time to time still. This appears like it may be our only chance to have something similar made. I think everyone who wants this should post maybe Richard will give us something. I'd be glad to shell out 15-20 dollars per month plus prebuy to make this happen.

Maybe if everybody who wants this stops lurking and posts RG and co. will make it happen. PLEASE GIVE US A NEW UO with great risk/reward AND storyline. PLEASE make pk'ing like it used to be maybe with more safe zones than the old days so risk is slightly less. SOTA could be that game!

 

These are EXACTLY the types of people and posts that I was hoping to attract! As I stated when I first started this thread, I believe that there are a LOT of "homeless" MMO Gamers out there who have all be left with nothing really worth sinking any time into since UO...

We move from game to game, fully knowing that it isn't going to be anything like UO, but each time hoping that maybe THIS next game will fill some of the void that EA left us with when they bought and destroyed our beloved Ultima Online.

I know that this player base is massive, and if word got out that RG himself was essentially "rebooting" UO, they would flock to this game by the thousands, if not tens of thousands. And I'm sure that all of these players would be more than willing to not only pre-order, but shell out a monthly fee in a heartbeat! I'm sure they would all be willing to even pay more monthly than any other MMO out there currently charges... And they would do this because THIS is the game they have been waiting for for YEARS!

SO PLEASE, all like-minded players, PLEASE... add to this thread, if we make our voices heard early enough, then maybe, just MAYBE... there will actually be a small shred of hope that all those gamers left homeless, could finally have a home once again!

 

One of the greatest gaming memories for me is definitely Ultima Online... I remember driving from Vancouver Canada to Bellingham in the US because the game was sold out everywhere around town...

I remember starting the game and exploring the town, Trinsic was the staring town for me I believe... My first moment of truly knowing that I was playing a great game came when I ventured out of town and encountered a group of mages. These guys were pk'ing everyone and even though they beat me to a pulp I loved every minute of it... the freedom of exploring and interacting with others in a real virtual world complete with the very real risk of losing everything I carried made this game a real exciting experience.

I loved Uo and played it for at least 2 years.. please, please bring it back. I certainly don't have as much time to play these days but I will happily pay a monthly fee and play as much as possible..

Either way, it's great to see something new!

 

Getting on my soap box for a second..

People keep forgetting that WoW raids had no room for failure in the endgame even after it starting becoming super popular. All the user-friendly stuff came later. You had to depend on each other, people often went flat broke because gear was absurdly expensive. AND, the PVP servers weren't totally dead until around the time Burning Crusade came out. I've always had the impression that making risks a non-issue was sending mixed messages to the point that people just burned out. Ultima Online was also thematically out of alignment until the first expansion.

Day Z kind of captured the appeal of Ultima Onlines open PVP on a basic level for me. The social aspect is a consequence of the life and death struggle between players and the flow of the world in a way. You aren't strong enough to just go off and be rambo. So you have to make connections and find security in numbers. When I'm playing alone in that kind of situation, I hate it a lot. It's terrifying to play alone because I don't wanna lose stuff, but then I play with friends or other players, its extremely reassuring. When I'm alone, I cope by taking less risks. That is what keeps me coming back, and even all those other things that are unrelated become more thrilling because the burden of risk is never out of sight or mind. I think UO was slightly too risky in some ways, but it would have been better if some were altered and others were softened... not sequestration of its pillars...

That said, I'm fine with how ever this first game turns out, but I would really like to see a spiritual successor at some point. All I can say about the MP aspect other than what I've already said... is that Lord British ignored his gut feeling and players and the outcomes weren't the best.

Right now the best I could hope for with this game is a return to Open World with an Isometric POV. It's easier to make high quality and quantities of content with 2D sprites, and the power of modern computers means that you can do absolutely absurd things with particle effects and voxels. The POV particularly reduces workload and increases fidelity, because you don't have to bother with height as much, and voxels make that kind of stuff easy. In fact they could probably cut down on time by trying out volume rendered voxelization. It's too hard to compete against huge studios with sweatshops and contractors creating all the models at the same time. 2D is a more productive format for Startups and Indies, in my opinion.

 

Both Burton Flester, and Luitpold...

EXCELLENT POSTS!! EXCELLENT!

KEEP IT UP GUYS, LETS GET THIS THREAD HUGE AND HOPEFULLY BE HEARD!

 

+1

Coming from UO camp. I too hope that SotA can replace UO as my favourite MMO of all time.

 

I think SotA will exceed our expectations. However this through about less single and multiplayer is strange to me. With only one "shard" there will be many more players connecting. Of those players some will be SPO, and FPO. The rest of the players will be OPO.

OPO said there would be dozens of people to interact with at a time. That's a lot if you really think about it a minute. Also keep in mind the people you interact with will not be playing SPO or FPO (if they aren't your friend). Let that sink in for a moment.

The point is the people you interact with will be full OPO. So why be worried about the people you can't see. Let's say there's only 100,000 people playing OPO... would that be enough for you? Honestly I think after people finish the 40hours of content the vast majority of people will switch to OPO eventually if they aren't already. Otherwise why not play offline. So don't worry we will have lots of interaction.

 

thread not through

 

Consider the chat here on the forums. Frequently there are more voices talking over each other in there than can be followed, and often it is about inconsequential things. How about if all 17000+ contributors were in there simultaneously spamming each other? It would be pretty worthless, right?

So it is with seeing everyone in game, most of whom are doing things you don't care about, like dancing naked outside the Ironforge Bank in WoW

I'm looking forward to SotA filtering that nonsense out.

 

As a huge fan of the single player Ultima series, as well as Dragonlance, I am intrigued by the notion of a Richard Garriott and Tracy Hickman collaboration.I discovered both around the same time (mid high school, Ultima IV and Dragons of Autumn Twilight), and these two worlds are still my favorite fantasy settings.

I am, or was (before it became the shiny, gaudy, cumbersome thing it is today), a big UO fan as well, and have long dreamed of a sequel. Nevertheless, I am think that these two ideas might be better served as separate, though related entities. I realize that this is the case to a degree, though I would like to see it taken a bit further, personally. I do think that I understand to a degree the motivation behind the current setup, but am not entirely sold on the idea. I will have to wait and see how it develops.

At this point I am merely curious. I have not backed the Kickstarter as I am not yet convinced that this is the project for me. I also fall firmly in the UO2 camp, and would personally prefer a stand alone MMO version of SotA. I would even entertain the notion of these various other modes of play, though I think that the MMO version should be entirely separate experiences all around.

My ideal game, and one for which I would be willing to pay a monthly fee, as well as purchasing the game, and even supporting a Kickstarter project, would be a spiritual successor to UO (ideally with the original lore, which I love, but I realize that this is unfortunately impossible).

This version would basically be a pre-T2A rules set, but more feature heavy. Basically, a skill-based sandbox environment; non item-centric, and with a similar, if not identical PvP system, as well as towns with insta-kill guards. It would include more skills, more crafting possibilities, and more innate systems to support user created "content" and encourage emergent behavior. It would put the players in charge of their destinies as well as the direction of the game world. One server with no Trammal/Felucca split, in which different sorts of players can carve out their own niche (bear in mind here that I am at heart a casual sort of "reactive" roleplayer, and not much of a PvPer or even a crafter for that matter). It would essentially be an enhanced version of the original UO, without any unnecessary linear/themepark elements tacked on.

I think a storyline is great for a single player game, though I personally do not see the need in a sandbox environment such as UOs. Thus I would omit stories, quests, and the like, in favor of player-based interaction and ownership of the world. That said, I think a single player version with Tracy Hickman and RG at the helm is a fantastic notion. I do enjoy well-developed lore in an MMO, but only enough to flavor the world, and give me an understanding of that world and of my character's place within that world.

My best times in UO involved my interactions with other players, often PKs, or dungeon crawls and hunting parties gone awry. Anything could happen. This was enormously more interesting than anything scripted could have been.

Again, this is merely my opinion on the issue, as a fan of all things Ultima. It is what I would personally like to see, not what I necessarily think should be the focus of SotA. I agree with the consensus that RG is a fantastic game designer, as is Tracy Hickman for that matter, and expect that SotA will be a truly interesting game. It simply remains to be seen if it is the game for me, as somoen searching for a truly diverse sandbox environment, such as UO in its heyday.

 

Excellent post Archaaz!

A true, unscripted sandbox style MMO to be the spiritual successor of UO would be an AMAZING thing! I can honestly say that I would back it, buy it, pay a monthly fee, and love every freakin minute of it!

Putting SotA aside for a minute... It honestly surprises me that nobody has tried to create a new version of UO yet. Obviously it couldn't be called the same thing, or have the same names etc... But with UO still being the longest running MMO, and the enormous fanbase it had/has, I wonder why no one has tried to recreate the magic that UO had in its heyday...

 

Thanks, Twiztid. That is a fantastic question, and one I have long pondered. I feel that more often it than not it is pandering to too many tastes, and perhaps a bread and circuses syndrome.

Admittedly a few have tried, Mortal Online and Darkfall, for example where no doubt largely inspired by UO. I followed both for a time, but after seeing the results, I opted to try neither; too much hack and slash, not enough balance (at least from what I saw and from those I have spoken with who were also following/playing the game).In short not enough of that UO sandbox magic. I cannot truly judge the games on their own merit, having not tried them, but I know my tastes enough to know that they were not for me. I am still waiting for just that right mix, one with enough checks and balances to assure that all the various systems and possibilities are accounted for and come together.

I am currently following a couple of potential sandboxes, also Kickstarter projects (which I will not name here). Of course, it could well be that something about SotA strikes my whimsy. We shall see.

 

It's seems way simpler (to me) to just make it a MMO/OL-RPG.

 

I can't really see this game doing battlegrounds very well at this time, and it doesn't really seem like a popular topic either.

However dueling is inevitably going to come up, as well as obvious PvP tendancies in some manner.

 

Didn't bother to read the whole thread, or really anything to be honest. But I want to share my thoughts on their system already announced. My first thoughts were that it's perfect and that remains to be my opinion. I don't like the subscription based game model and I also don't like the item shop and ad supported game model, both are nauseating. What they've announced is what I've been dreaming of, a non subscription multi-player game that can be played offline with new content coming in the form of expansions. The vast majority of the time I saw another player in game in other MMO's I had no interaction with them at all, it was just like the video said and the MMO part amounted to nothing more than seeing other random players pass by. I love the idea of being able to interact with other players in a limited social area like towns and cities but I don't care to see any other people in the wild areas of the game.

 

I really hope they bring the online multiplayer in a more MMO direction too, and agree with what a lot of you said. I am a huge fan of all of the Ultima games, both single player and UO. I like how they are separating the two, with an offline and online mode. I have high hopes for an MMO style online mode and am crossing my fingers for more or less an Ultima Online 2. I pledged at the Citizen level. I have faith in you RG, please make it so!

 

Sounds like you will be able to play the story while in MMO mode.
http://youtu.be/z8YYrOc-n3M?t=37m46s watch this video startign at 37min.