Ultima Online

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Ultima Online
Image:Ultima Online 7th Anniversary Ed.jpg
Developer(s) Origin Systems
Publisher(s) Electronic Arts
Release date(s) September 30, 1997
Genre MMORPG
Mode(s) Multiplayer
Platform(s) Windows

Released on September 30, 1997, by Origin Systems, Ultima Online (UO) is often considered the first popular massively multiplayer online game. The game is played online, in a fantasy setting similar to that of the other Ultima games that preceded it.

Contents

Overview

The success of Ultima Online (UO) opened the door for the creation of many exciting new massively multiplayer games that have or are about to hit the market. UO is a third-person/isometric fantasy role-playing game set in the Ultima universe. It is online-only and played by thousands of simultaneous users (who pay a monthly fee) on various game servers, also known as "shards." It is also known for its extensive timing-based player versus player combat system. There have been millions of subscribers. To maintain order in the online community, there are Game Masters who resolve player disputes, police the shard for terms of service violations, and correct glitches in the game.

Several expansions have been released, but its aging game engine and graphics make it fairly outdated compared to competitive, new massively multiplayer games. The original Ultima Online sequel, Ultima Online 2, was to be set in a world where the Past, Present and Future of Sosaria were merged together by a mistake made by Lord British while attempting to merge together the shards of the Gem of Immortality. Ultima Online 2, later known as Ultima Worlds Online: Origin (UWO:O), was described by some as the first attempt at a Steampunk massively multiplayer online game. Todd McFarlane was hired to design original monsters and regions for the game, as well as help shape the story. Unfortunately, it was canceled before its release citing the competitive nature of the massively multiplayer online gaming market. Electronic Arts feared the sequel would harm UO's subscription numbers. Some of the monsters and art made for UWO:O were later used in the Ultima Online expansion Lord Blackthorn's Revenge. A new sequel began development named Ultima X: Odyssey, which was to bring together the stories from Ultima IX and Ultima Online. This was also cancelled in order to focus on other Ultima titles.

Since the release of Ultima Online: Age of Shadows expansion, many veteran players have all but removed themselves from the game to either try new MMORPGs, free shards, or quit entirely. Since Ultima Online's prime in the early 2000's, overall subscriber turnout has been dramatically dropping. Subscriber numbers peaked at around 250,000 in July of 2003, and have steadily declined to around 160,000-175,000 subscribers (Subscriber counts source Mmogchart.com). The number of subscribers achieved by UO was surpassed by EverQuest in 1999.

Issues Faced

Ultima Online has seen many major revisions throughout its history. This includes game-play revisions, staff changes, technical revamps, and even fundamental design changes. With few earlier MMORPGs to take lesson from, the staff behind UO was breaking new ground and had to solve complex issues that had never been faced in a commercial game on such a wide scale before. The importance of understanding psychology, social interaction, economy, and such became increasingly important as complex social behavior evolved.

Throughout the pre-release development of the game, a well-balanced, realistic economy and social structure was the goal. While not nearly all of the features planned for incorporation made it into the first release, the developers did manage to put almost all of the control into the hands of players in terms of what they could do to each other and the world as a whole. What ensued caused permanent repercussions still faced in the game today.

Griefing

Many players saw the “punch in the nose factor” (as Designer Dragon put it) of being able to harm each other directly as allowing too much “griefing” – or intentionally hampering the entertainment of others. Originally unrestrained in nature (except in the presence of guards), increasing penalties were applied to “anti-social behavior” until it was practically eliminated altogether with the release of Trammel – a world in which mutual-consent was necessary to harm another. While the warrants of eliminating un-consented player versus player combat are debatable, almost all subsequently released MMORPGs started off right away with only mutual-consent combat amongst players, which attracted many players away from UO before Trammel was introduced.

Housing

Another problem was that of player-owned housing. UO has always allowed players to purchase houses, and build them on practically any flat piece of land. For the first few months, the primary issues with housing were that losing the key meant losing the house (often to another player who stole it or killed the owner), and if someone managed to get inside the house (either by exploitation of a bug or by simply waiting until someone opened/unlocked the door), they could steal everything inside. These issues were later addressed by making house keys “blessed” (non-stealable, non-droppable upon death) items, and by giving special commands to “lock down” items, so that even those who got in the house could not pick them up. Ownership of a house was also eventually defined separately from mere key possession.

After a few months, when some players and guilds had enough money to buy many houses, there came the problem of using tents and other cheap houses to wall off huge sections of the world as private areas. It was a common solution to the above problems (before they were fixed), if you owned a large house like a tower, to build three smaller houses around the entrance, walling you in, and then using the “recall” or “gate” spell to get inside that artificial courtyard. Since some players abused that tactic to create gigantic “courtyards”, the developers eventually “opened up” all of the major ones by deleting selected houses and by putting the addition restraint on house placement rules requiring that there be empty space around a building before it may be placed.

By the time Trammel was introduced, there was literally not a single empty space of land anywhere in the game where a house of any size could be built. Vast amounts of wilderness were covered with a thick layer of housing, making places supposedly “wild” seem like cities. When housing was enabled on Trammel, tens of thousands of players simultaneously camped out and tried to compete for prime locations for various types of houses, resulting in massive amounts “telestorming” where players were transferred amongst the sub-servers of a given shard, causing random teleportation and extreme amounts of lag. For many years, housing space was scarce, due in part to rising numbers of subscribers and only slowly increasing limitations on the number of houses each account may own. Several worlds were created without the ability to have houses built within them to protect their atmosphere from becoming another city. Almost all house transactions during this time were of currently-owned houses being sold, or people waiting outside houses that are about to “decay” (disappear from lack of use) – even though housing is limited to one house per player. In recent years, additional housing areas have been made available for all players. Many subsequent MMORPGs use instancing for housing or simply did not provide it at all.

Economy

Another large problem facing UO has been the economy. While remaining balanced, money (or more generally, value) has been added to the game much more quickly than it has been taken out, resulting in extreme devaluation of gold. Value often enters the game through killing monsters, treasure, and crafting, while the primary way it leaves the game is through NPC reagent sales. Throughout the history of UO, various “gold sinks” have been provided to compensate, and prices of items have steadily risen to compensate, but the effects are still felt.

Bugs

UO has seen a large amount of bug exploitation throughout its long history. While this is true of almost all MMOs and computer programs in general, some of the bugs, the reasons why they existed in the first place, and the way they were dealt with, were all relatively new (especially to the staff working on UO) at the time. Many subsequent games have learned by UO’s example.

One key issue is that, after the official release of the game, EA and Origin have always been unwilling to do a complete wipe of any shard, and will only do a relatively minor revert, never more than a few days at a time. This has left the game marred with the aftereffects of many bugs.

Another problem has been that, initially, too much trust was given to the client. Before long, players began circumventing the client in order to send otherwise impossible packets, causing the server to do things it normally would not do (thanks only to client restrictions). A famous example is “true black” dye tubs and the ability to walk through walls. “Speed walking” (the ability to walk or run faster than you would normally be allowed) was also introduced through the third party program "UO Extreme", which also allowed for many other illegal features. In recent years, EA has gone to great lengths never to trust the client about anything, and other games have followed suit.

Expansions

  • The Second Age (October 1, 1998) Featured a new area of land called the Lost Lands, along with an in-game chat system and new creatures. Also known as T2A.
  • Renaissance (April 3, 2000) The world was doubled in size, as there were literally two copies of it. The worlds were called Felucca and Trammel, after the two moons in Ultima's Britannia world. The Trammel world did not allow player killing, while the Felucca world did. Felucca also adopted a darker, more foreboding look.
  • Third Dawn (March 7, 2001) The major change was that this expansion included a 3D client, no doubt to compete with 3D MMORPGs like EverQuest. Also, a special Third Dawn only land was created, called Ilshenar. It was accessible only to 3D clients until the release of Lord Blackthorn's Revenge.
  • Lord Blackthorn's Revenge (February 24, 2002) Brought "a dark new world based on new characters from Todd McFarlane" to Ultima with improved game AI, in-game help, and improved character creation.
  • Age of Shadows (February 28, 2003) Brought the landmass of Malas with lots of space for new housing, two new character classes (Paladin and Necromancer) and the possibility to customize house designs. It also nerfed the thieves leaving them only crates to steal from
  • Samurai Empire (November 2, 2004) Brought ancient Asian mythology and folklore to the game, two new classes (Ninja and Samurai) and a new area to explore, the Tokuno Islands.
  • Mondain's Legacy (August 30, 2005) Introduced a new race, elves, and a new skill, spellweaving. Several dungeons were also added. This is the only UO expansion to be released as a "download only" product.

Shard emulation

Technically-inclined fans of Ultima Online have reverse-engineered the game to produce emulators of the original game servers. This emulation is legal, and EA is aware of its existence, although in certain countries the authors of these emulators are considered to have violated their software license by reverse-engineering the game, and may be banned from the official UO servers as a result (other countries don't allow restrictions on reverse engineering). To stay legal, emulation servers do not distribute the official EA client files, and the users of the emulation software must not charge their players to be able to play on their individual shards. Even knowing they can't make any money from their work, this hasn't stopped UO enthusiasts spending countless hours producing excellent free-shards that rival the official EA ones, Europe 2 being a most prominent example, being a complete clone of Europa from the EA shards.

With emulators, coders and players alike can enjoy a much larger variety of playstyles and UO time periods. From the Pre-T2A era, to the era of Samurai Empire, to fully customized shards which don't even seem like UO anymore. A few shards encourage or enforce their players to roleplay and remain in-character, while far more encourage PvP combat.

A list of notable UO shard emulators:

Ultima Online emulation has become quite a phenomenon, no other MMORPG had as many different emulators over the years, and none have achieved the quality of emulation provided by the various UO emulation teams.

While many players choose to play on emulated servers to avoid the monthly fee of the official servers, a good part of them migrated away from the official servers because of disagreements in the changes the developers made to the original game play over the years. In recent years, the number of people who have began playing on emulated servers without first playing on official servers, has been increasing. This is partly due to several free releases of the official client for download, as well as advertisement of the game by those who either create or support emulated servers.

Nowadays, some servers rival the official ones in size and quality. It is possible to find complete and well-populated servers emulating the world as it was in the days before the Renaissance expansion pack as well as servers that provide support for all expansion packs to date. Many European and Asian servers boast of very high numbers of players, as well as extremely customized features, while a higher percentage of American servers have been predominantly small and less customized. This may in part be due to the fact that most of the mainstream emulation software is accessible to English-speaking countries, so there is more incentive for potential players to create their own instead of playing on somebody else’s.

Part of the reason why emulation in Ultima Online has been so successful is the relatively open format of the game's software; it is possible to change the server the game client connects to by merely editing an ASCII text document, although many modern emulators require that the client packet encryption be turned off as well. Removing the packet encryption can be accomplished by either removing it from the client’s executable (as UORice does) permanently, or by circumventing it on a per-use basis by either filtering the packets or modifying the client each time it is ran (such as UOGateway does).

Today, it is commonplace for many custom servers to not only feature custom game play, but also custom media, such as graphics and maps, as well. Almost all of the UO client files have been reverse-engineered, and a whole slew of editing software has arisen. With the addition of custom maps, graphics, and even sound, some of the more custom UO servers are barely recognizable as emulations of the original game at all.

Emulation Information

  • ShardWire - MMORPG emulation news, information, resources, and more.
  • UOGateway - Connect to hundreds of Free Shards.
  • LearnUO - Learn about how to make your own Free Shard, or Customize UO.
  • Ryandor - Very active web site regarding making custom maps for UO.

Clients

Official Clients

UO features two distinct clients: the original client, which has 2D characters and lighting, and a very distinct, 3D client, which uses 3D models for characters and lighting. The 3D client was originally released as a part of the Third Dawn expansion, but has received poor reviews from both veteran and new players alike due to a large number of performance issues (especially memory leaks early on) and what many see as sub-par graphics. Both clients, however, have strong followings, and EA continues to develop both simultaneously.

Third-party Clients

Ultima Iris (in development) is an open source client able to work with emulated servers. Using mostly the graphics of the official client, it is able to work with higher resolutions and on multiple platforms. It also allows for the addition of custom art, making it highly desirable to custom shard makers. This client allows for 2D or 3D Ultima Online-like game-play requiring only a copy of the original client. The most notable feature of Ultima Iris is its real 3D engine.

PlayUO, (formerly known as Krrios' Client, or KUOC), is another option of custom Ultima Online client, however it is closed source and only has a 2D version. It can be downloaded at the RunUO.com forums.

Palanthir (in development) is another option of custom Ultima Online client, however it is closed source and only has a 2D version.

Wolfpack UO Client (in development) is an open source client able to work with emulated servers. It can be downloaded at the wpdev.org forums.

External links

The Ultima series
I - II - III - IV - V - VI - VII - VIII - IX
Akalabeth - Ultima Underworld - The Savage Empire
Martian Dreams - Ultima Online - Ultima X: Odyssey
Ultima articles - Ultima characters
Retrieved from "http://en.freepedia.org/Ultima_Online.html"


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