More MMO, less single & multi player

Sorry for the long post, I just feel very strongly about this, and found it difficult to sum my feelings up about it into a shorter post... Anyway:

In one of the interviews with RG that I was watching, I saw him say that he was originally planning on making this game out to be an MMO, that would have the ability to be played offline for a short period of time before having to be "re-synced" so to say back to the online servers. The main reason for this is when you're traveling, or don't always have an internet connection, it would still be nice to be able to log in and take care of a couple things you've been meaning to do, or just to be able to kill some time and play your favorite game even though you might not have internet access at the moment.

He then went on to say that after proposing this idea, he got a lot of players telling him that they would prefer it the other way around, another "Single Player" Ultima with the ability to go online if you so choose, but from what I'm seeing in these forums, it seems to me that almost everyone here loved Ultima Online, and are all hoping for kind of a "UO Reboot", myself included. I personally think the original idea of an MMO that could be occasionally played offline is a great idea, but the other way around... Not so much...

I would SOOOO much rather see a "New" UO, with all the features that made UO the masterpiece that it was, with as many of its flaws removed as possible. Ultima Online was the single greatest game I have ever played for any system or platform, and would love nothing more than to see it returned to it's former glory.

I can tell you right now that a new single player Ultima, with the ability to go online does not really interest me very much. I mean... I still backed the project on kickstarter, and I will still play it either way because I think that Richard Garriott is an absolute Genius, and anything he creates will be brilliant, but I am certainly not nearly as excited for it as I would be if it had been advertised as a "New UO"...

I know that he also said that for those who wish it, the game could feel very MMOish, but the key there is the "ish". Any way you look at it, MMOish is still not an MMO, a game with only one server is not an MMO, and a game where you can only see a hundred other players at a time is definitely not at MMO.

As I previously stated, I am still looking forward to the game, I am still more than willing to help contribute to the game, I think Richard Garriott is brilliant, and I'm sure he is going to make an amazing game. It just seems to me that easily more than 50% of the people backing this game on Kickstarter would prefer a full out MMO over the type of multi-player that is currently being produced.

I think I would literally have an orgasm if I woke up tomorrow to see a new headline on the news feed for SotA that they have decided to go full out MMO with the ability to have an added "Offline" mode if you so choose.

Just my two cents =P

Sorry for the lengthy post.

 

P.S.

Quite honestly I doubt that it's realistic, or even possible for that matter for them to switch the path that the game is already currently on and shift it more towards an MMO environment.

It just seems to me from everything I've read, (and I have read A LOT of posts and other people's opinions) and a good majority of this community would agree with me and would much rather prefer a full out MMO as opposed to what is currently being designed...

 

A handful of people on an internet forum isn't always that reflective of a market. The ex-UO crowd is a very busy one as people like us simply don't have a game these days to play.

Also try be respectful to the fact that the previous Ultima games were a bigger deal to a lot of people than UO was, and this game is initially seeking to bring a return to the original Ultimas.

 

I feel the exact opposite way. I want to have more single player in the game, more story. I want to be the only hero. I want to save the world. I want my tasks to matter. If I kill the dragon, he should stay dead. I want to have choices with consequences that affect the world.

There are so many MMORPGs out there. The market is oversaturated. Imho this is why Kickstarters for SP-RPGs are very successful. Many people want to experience a great story in a game again.
If they want to play a MMO they can choose from hundreds or even thousands of MMORPGs - so I really doubt that doing "just" another MMORPG would have been successful. As for me: I would not have pledged for another MMORPG.

 

Twiztid, good post!

I'm starting to see a strategy that is not usual to MMORPGs.
Portalarium want to be independent, and have found Kickstarter as a tool.
Get funding for your project in the early days.

I just hope that they have a responsibility to their backers.

The single player offline mode is a way to Alpha test. It might become a MMO , but 20k+ Kickstarter Alpha testers want to be involved in development. That testing will have to be done offline through specific Alpha testing.

Everything will come together much later to create a MMO.
Ultimate Collector I reckon was Portalarium's test of their database technology.
I think we could be looking at a future of a meld between virtual and real economies. Damn, It's happened.

 

Just a few days ago I would have passionately disagreed. I LOVED the single player Ultimas and lately if I hear MMO I think of all the WOW clones out there and WOW itself of course. I do NOT want that.

BUT I completely forgot how UO was back when I played last in 2001 and just reacativated my account a few days ago. You won't believe just how amazing this game still is, it's overall so much better than WOW & clones. And I am not saying that because I am blindly hating wow. I played it long and did a lot of raiding and pvp (not hardcore, but not casual either).

The sum of all features of UO create an atmosphere that is unlike any other MMO. It immediately changed my whole perception of MMOs again. I suddenly enjoyed being in that virtual world again. I didn't feel stressed I truly enjoyed it. If I would tell you why I would need to write an essay.

But the bottom line for me is now: Yes I want SOTA to be a true MMO. Imo that doesn't mean less single player, why should it? Just please create a true MMO experience with tons of players not just friends or very few strangers. Lots of players is essential for the experience that UO was. PVP and many other aspects would be boring any other way.

Combine U7 and UO add some great graphics and you have the ultimate RPG!

 

I agree. The game can still have a great single player element and be an MMO at the same time.

 

I blindly backed this game without reading anything at one of the highest levels possible on the assumption it would be a sequel to UO. The more I learn about Shroud's single player gameplay the less excited I get. It's not that the Ultima games were bad or unfulfilling it's that NOTHING comes close to Ultima Online. I want new UO not new Ultima.

I don't see the point of owning a house in this game without risk of getting pk'd. I can handle monsters in my sleep.

I would love to see them switch that "open world" mode meant "mmo mode". Don't limit the number of players on screen, don't limit the interactions I might experience. Feel free to leave the Online Singleplayer mode but prevent it from accessing some areas that need PVP in order to function.

 

@Lord_Darkmoon:

Imagine I would compare Ultima VII to Diablo. You would feel the urge to kill me right? Well I would feel the same urge trust me

The single player Ultimas are so unique and special. They offer so much other RPGs don't especially not a hack&slay RPG like Diablo.

What I am trying to say with this is:

You saying this would just be another MMO, or that UO is just like any other WOW clone is like me saying any single player Ultima is like Diablo. You can NOT compare that! Please believe me.

I L O V E single player Ultimas. In fact I was so disappointed back then when it was announced that the next Ultima would be Ultima Online. I saw my favorite series going in a direction I did not like and in fact I didn't start to play UO before 2000.

You have no idea what feeling that was. Suddenly I realized how wrong I was, was angry at myself for missing the first years of that exceptional game.

I dare to bet you did not play UO. I don't mean this in any negative way, I just see myself in you. What you wrote there could be my words.

My words from a few days ago actually because see, I stopped playing UO in 2003. Not because I didn't like it anymore but for a lot of real-life reasons (work etc..). Later my friends started to play WOW and me too because I had time again. I then started playing other MMOs like Rift, Lord of the Rings, SWTOR, Conan (not in that order).

I started to hate MMOs. Everything is the same. There is no essence in those games that makes them special.

So when I read/heard that SOTA would be focusing on single player and Multiplayer was not MMO style I was actually relieved because like you I thought that there are more than enough MMOs out there and I want a game with SOUL again.

Well I simply had forgotten just how special that online game Richard Garriott created was until I tried it again recently and everything came rushing back.

Trust me when I tell you that UO was/is NOT like all those MMOs out there, not at all. It is not WOW jsut like Ultima VII (or 4,5,6,8,9) is not Diablo. It plays different, it feels different, it has SOUL.

So yes, now I made a 180? turn and actually WANT this to be another MMO like UO, not like all the others.

It should still have the single player storyline like old Ultimas. It would be the perfect combination (excuse me for posting this again) of U7 and UO.

I hope you understand the people who want this to be an MMO (too) a little better now.


@Andrew: I want both, why should one exclude the other?

 

I didn't really word that bit well. You don't need to exclude one mode from the other. What I meant was this

If unobtanium ore spawns in only a few locations in the world and those are PVP locations (in order to make it hard to obtain) then the "single player / friends only" modes should warn and force you over to the online mode for the duration of that area. That way everyone trying to get their hands on unobtanium ore has to risk the same challenge.

My REAL primary concern is how many people is "dozens" of players in an area? Is it 24? or 80?

I'm pretty sure you could give me the full UO style experience if the number was in the 40+ range but below that I'd start to get worried that I might be missing friends, guild mates, player vs player opportunities and the like.

 

Lastly I want to add that I don't need hundreds of players on screen, end game raids, or scripted events. I want the unscripted events that came from hanging out with a few of my UO friends, guild mates, and "drama" that happened just from people interacting.

I'm sure I'll get some of that but I worry that SOTA will never provide me the opportunity to get a frantic ICQ from a friend being chased in Felucia and gating in a bunch of people to fight Chaos faction people. Or the experience of doing a dungeon crawl in the pre-tram days.

The things I loved about UO can just be turned off in SOTA. And I think most people WILL leave the game in its default setting. I'm really curious if the default is the "MMO style" or "Friends Only" mode.

 

Yeah exactly! Those random events or the big player driven communities (player cities) just would not happen / would not be the same if you only ever see some "selected" players.

I trust RG that he knows what he is doing I also know that he revolutionized single player and online RPGs and I think he has a very interesting concept here that many including us don't fully understand. We should not be like the publishers that don't like it because they don't know it.

BUT the whole Multiplayer thing doesn't seem to be fully developed yet. In all the videos I saw they were talking about "they don't know yet how EXACTLY that OPO mode will look like" ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=PQowuSParmA ). So I see hope there and I see an opportunity for us to voice our wishes and I don't think we alter his overall vision with the wish for an MMORPG mode. I think it would just enhance his vision.

 

I don't like this idea at all, I have no urge for UO 2 I want my single player play. To me Ultima is not UO, it is the numbered Ultima's. I realize the UO players are more vocal, but god, some of us do not want that at all.

 

My favorite is SPO, FPO, OPO
Sometimes SPO, not sure why yet, maybe found a secret place/thing I don't want to share
FPO Usually I'll use this to play with friends that I've made ingame

OPO when i go to a city or town & just hang out, I'll see all the others that have this set(changeable in town/safezone). Remember there is only 1 shard, so it'll still give me 70-100 players from the possible 10,000 that are there in that tile AND that includes anyone I already know.

I love that feature

 

I, as well, would love OPO to be a full and open MMO as UO was.
Ideally, I would wish for a completly open PvP with a better handled notion of risks than in UO (for example, PKs couldn't simply wait a few minutes to get back in town without getting swarmed with guards, etc..).

I understand some people don't want PvP. That is alright, the friends and single-player modes can be activated by these peoples. But for the OPO part, it would be so cool if we could have a real MMO experience, with breathing streets flowing with people on the most popular cities, where you could really see the world as if you were a part of it.

The actual OPO just sounds like playing on a small portion of the world without getting a good grasp of the what is going on and what our character should be logically able to perceive.

That is my opinion. Let's wait and see !

 

@Andrew I for one could do without the risk of PKing while owning a house.

I was waiting outside an EB store in Australia on release day of UO waiting to play what I thought was going to be the game to end all games.

I bought it, went home and installed and then developed my character. Egan, the wandering healer. Not a cleric, a healer who healed with herbs and bandages. I was going to steer right away from my normal hack and slash character.

I got him dressed in his monkish robes, his healing bag over his shoulder and left the city, intent on helping fellow adventurers who may need my skills.

Two minutes out of the front gate I was cut down by a giggling simpleton who stole my meagre possessions and left my corpse by the side of the road.

"What the?" I thought. So I revived and decided to go another way. That was was obviously dangerous. Shortly after, dead in a ditch again.

I dispensed with the healer idea by now, as all he did was get killed. When I eventually learned that the only way to avoid getting murdered by griefers was to wait until some ungodly hour and sneak out to finally build my hut, I had a short period where a friend and I would hunt deer, make leather armour and then run back to the far away city in the dead of night to sell.

Then a PKer found the hut, camped it and slaughtered us...again and again and again.

Fun times. And a risk I wasn't prepared to accept, so I uninstalled the game and never played it again.

There should always be an option available to avoid such "risk", simply because of the propensity of some internet denizens to not RP, but rather do their utmost to spoil the enjoyment of a game for someone else.

 

Perhaps I worded the title of my post incorrectly, so let me clarify...

When I say More MMO, less single player, I do NOT mean in any shape way or form that I want them to develop the single player facet of this game any less, or take anything away from it. My title was referring ONLY to the online portion of the game. I want the online portion of this game to be a full scale MMO, not a single player game that gives you the option to play online with a handful of friends whenever you like.

Now there is no reason that these very same features I am talking about cannot be included in the game as well. From what I understand, they are planning 3 modes for this game as it stands now. Single player, FPO, and OPO, and I think that is great! The only portion I am referring to is the OPO. I don't want my OPO experience to be like Diablo only with more players... I want my OPO experience to be like UO was... Just an updated, improved version of UO

Like a previous poster said, I miss the days that I would get a random ICQ from a buddy of mine who was getting ganked while trying to mine ore, and from that single ICQ, the situation would slowly escalate into a full out war of PKs, Anti-PKs, and crafters all going at it in a big open field. Gates opening up left and right, dragons being ported in, people standing on the sidelines healing their friends who are currently fighting, bodies littered everywhere, and ghosts running around spamming the oh so nostalgic "ooOoOoooOooOOOOo".

To Lord_Darkmoon:
You clearly did not play UO in it's "Glory Days", or if you did, you definitely did not get too involved in it, because UO was ANYTHING BUT another WoW clone. In that aspect I agree with you 100% The absolute LAST thing I want is another WoW clone, which is what it seems like everything single F'ing MMO that gets released these days is... And that is very disappointing. WoW has become the "Norm", and everybody is so damned afraid to go against the norm, so all we get is MMO on top of MMO of all the same friggen thing, just tweaked a little differently, and I personally CAN NOT stand it. When I heard that Lord British himself was releasing a new game, words cannot even begin to describe the joy and excitement that I felt when I believed I was FINALLY going to be able to play a new MMO that brought back all the things that I love. All the things that made me fall in love with the genre in the first place!

And to rune_74:
If the Single Player Offline, the SPO, and the FPO are all left the way they are, what should it matter to you if the OPO mode is a full MMO experience? I see this game as an opportunity to literally be the greatest RPG of ALL TIME, and that is mainly due to the fact that all of these modes can co-exist in the same game. I promise you that I had no intention of asking for the single player and friend online portions of this game to be changed in any way at all. All I want is the OPO mode to give me back all the things in UO that were taken away from me when EA destroyed the game.



If the OPO mode of this game can deliver a full MMO experience, then my friends... We are on the horizon of quite literally the greatest RPG of all time! The ability to have all of these modes co-existing together in the same game with solve SO MANY problems that plague MMO's today. The people who want another single player Ultima will have that, the people who want an online experience will have that as well. The carebears who hate being ganked and want to play in peace with have that as well with the FPO mode, and all the others like me, who are DESPERATELY looking forward to the new home they have not been able to find since UO will have that as well!

Richard Garriot is an absolute GENIUS, and I'm sure anything he creates will be PURE GOLD! I just got very excited about the idea of a new UO, and felt that stripped away from me after finding out that this will not even be an MMO. Don't get me wrong, I am still super excited for the game, I am still glad that I made a large donation to help back the game, and I am still going to play this game for absolutely everything that it's worth! I would just really really really really like to see the OPO version of this game function as a full scale MMO, rather than a single player game with an "MMOish" feel to it

 

I would actually like to see it to be more like a MMO too.

And note that just because it's named MMORPG doesn't mean it's a wow-clone, ever heard of UO or EVE? I bet you atleast heard of UO...

 

I did play Ultima Online when it was released. But even back then I missed having a story I could experience with quests to do, I missed having NPC-party members. UO is not like WoW for sure, I totally agree with that.

And I am glad that RG will try to please the SP-players as well as the MP-players. And I hope that he succeeds.
I also do not have a problem with the OPO-mode being like an MMO as I don't have to use it if I don't want to. But I also hope that the devs don't neglect the SP-part of the game to make it more like an MMO.

I prefer having a story in a game which I can experience alone. Just like reading a good book.

 

Well you can still have a story in a MMO and you can still have NPC party members (think about GW) but I don't think this game will have any npc party members atleast I haven't seen anything about it.