Ultima+Online

Ultima Online

Group Members: Joe Shields Michael Larrabee John Rampersaud Ryan O'Donnell Wendy Lohr

Ultima Online (UO) is known has one of the first MMO’s to really garner a large player base and the community needed to have an MMO thrive. While there were others games such as Neverwinter Nights before UO, it serves as a great example for where thousands of people were brought together and created a large community that hadn’t been seen before. UO is also known for being the first game of its kind to have over 100,000 subscribers. The MMO is still being played today by many people and UO become an example that many other companies based their games off of. The heavy emphasis on player versus player (PvP) battles made the game stand out from the crowd by allowing everyone to not only fight against the games monsters, but also with the other players.

http://www.wired.com/news/images/full/uo_f.jpg

One thing that added to the focus of the PvP was the fact there were moral codes put in place throughout the world that people could go against, for example by stealing from another player, but at that point a player could retaliate and retrieve their equipment. The introduction of Game Masters (GM)’s helped to enforce the rules of the game and that people adhered to the “terms of service” for the game. GM’s could also participate in PvP and would enforce the rules by attacking players who committed crime. Any time someone committed a crime, everyone could rush in to help enforce the law.

Ultima Online is seen as a social and economic experiment at times as it also establishes a form of currency within the game that players can use to buy and sell items. Certain items can gain value attributed to them that made no sense within the world of the game, but to the players it did matter. Through the social elements of the game, the players created many events that the developers had never accounted for and for this reason the game had to be changed many times.

The developers broke ground for many MMOs because they had to spend time working to solve complex issues that no other game had been faced with before on this wide scale. The psychology of the players and their interactions with other players made it increasingly important to change the game through patches to fit the needs of the subscribers. While there may have been other MMOs before UO, everything the developers did to work on this game served as an innovation because no other game had to deal with the same problems they did.

Player-Killing and Griefing:  In Ultima Online player killing is often more rewarding than enemy killing because all the items a player has before death remain behind when they are killed, allowing the enemy to recover all the items. A monster may yield a few hundred dollars worth of gold while a player will have on him all of his possessions from his playing career. Early in the game’s release players were able to harm other players with little or no penalties. This allowed for an excessive amount of griefing. As a result, the developers added a system in which players are categorized by color as criminals, murderers, or innocents. But this backfired because many criminal acts could be accidentally committed while trying to do something legal. This almost always resulted in the player turning gray and being killed by other players.

Ultima Online Griefing Incidents and Videos:
 * [|First UO Grief]- This actually turned out to be a flaw in the character of Lord British during the beta testing phase.
 * [|Slaughter the Innocent]
 * [|Ultima Online Homewreckers]
 * [|Exploding Bears]

 Epic, much like this MMORPG focuses a lot on Morality and a set of rules of a legal system. Ultima Online uses a system of Notoriety to act as conflict management in the game, Notoriety punishes bad deeds and rewards good deeds. While Epic uses the game Epic as a means of conflict resolution to avoid the need for violence in the society. Like the society in Epic the bad players (or people) are separated from the good, any players in UO with a red notoriety can't enter towns and can only enter town created by other red players (other than "Dastardly" which can enter towns with no protection or help). However, unlike Epic, which hasn't changed in generations, UO has changed it's method of conflict management. Currently the Social enforcement of Notoriety has been replaced by strict game mechanics. Also, while death plays a part in UO, it has lost it's significance due to insurance which protects players from losing items on death (unlike Epic which death meant the loss of all items and experience, plus the loss of gold which affects the person in society). Neither Epic or UO has a real ending, however the collection of gold, items, and fame, are important goal's in both games, are maintained through PvP combat.

In 1997, Ultima Online was created Richard Garriott’s, using the base of games like Neverwinter Nights and The Realm Online. Being the most modern MMO of the time, Ultima Online took off and within the first six months of the game begin released it had an amazing 100,000 paying users. At the peak of Ultima Online success, it was able to reach 250,000 paying customers. As Ultima Online gained its success many other companies started to cash in on the money making business of MMO’s. Games like Everquest and World of War Craft built their franchise after Ultima Online success. In Korea, the biggest MMO country in the world based Lineage, their best selling MMO, off of Ultima Online. As the years passed and many more companies started to create their MMO’s, Ultima Online start to go down in popularity but still has a heavy following of people playing after ten years of existence. Even thought it has lost some of its players, Ultima Online is still enticing fans to play and live through their avatars.