Honestly, it was clunky, it froze often, it wasn't perfectly balanced, but it had a huge open world, you could do mods and own shards (own servers) and so there was a lot of community spirit. Also griefing naturally, but not so much for Freeshards.
I will never forget some friends I made, some stories woven, nor some battles that happened (one time the capitol was invaded by reptilian forces as an event and there was a lot of fuckery going on). Also looking fondly back on being able to kill all units in game in the beginning (including NPC kings).
So unstable it was, and so bad my internet connection that most of the time I also daydreamt about it instead of playing. So you def. got some of the UO experience (esp. since it was so buggy that often there were days and sometimes weeks in which one couldn't play).
You bring up a good point, meta and power gamers beat the fun out of games and take away the mystery of social aspect of what made those games special. Part of the magic was figuring out how things worked and forming bonds with people you could trust. Something is lost when you can just pull up a wiki of character builds min/maxed for optimal play. I hate that, a lot. I was in an RP guild for the few months I played everquest and it was one of the most immersive experiences I ever had in a game. It really felt like I was living in that game world. Sadly RP'ing feels like a dead art in mmos today, something that's only done in tabletop I suppose.
It was very much an “explore and see what you can find” sort of experience.
This needs to come back, this is what's lacking in these mmos. It doesn't even need to be a strict sandbox like Ultima, it can be class play and dungeon raiding like everquest or wow, but at least make the world alive and gives players a reason to go out and explore. It's amazing, we have all this game tech and yet developers still want to make games where you follow the quest markers. Shit like this is why I wish games didn't have such huge budgets and developers could get away with smaller more independent teams making games they actually want to play, rather than chasing focus tested market trends.
Was it that good? From what I read it sounds really interesting and a lot of mmo players hold it in high regards.
Honestly, it was clunky, it froze often, it wasn't perfectly balanced, but it had a huge open world, you could do mods and own shards (own servers) and so there was a lot of community spirit. Also griefing naturally, but not so much for Freeshards.
I will never forget some friends I made, some stories woven, nor some battles that happened (one time the capitol was invaded by reptilian forces as an event and there was a lot of fuckery going on). Also looking fondly back on being able to kill all units in game in the beginning (including NPC kings).
ugh sounds so fun. i missed Ultima but used to read and daydream about it. the game was gone before I was finally able to get my own PC. le sigh
So unstable it was, and so bad my internet connection that most of the time I also daydreamt about it instead of playing. So you def. got some of the UO experience (esp. since it was so buggy that often there were days and sometimes weeks in which one couldn't play).
deleted by creator
You bring up a good point, meta and power gamers beat the fun out of games and take away the mystery of social aspect of what made those games special. Part of the magic was figuring out how things worked and forming bonds with people you could trust. Something is lost when you can just pull up a wiki of character builds min/maxed for optimal play. I hate that, a lot. I was in an RP guild for the few months I played everquest and it was one of the most immersive experiences I ever had in a game. It really felt like I was living in that game world. Sadly RP'ing feels like a dead art in mmos today, something that's only done in tabletop I suppose.
deleted by creator
This needs to come back, this is what's lacking in these mmos. It doesn't even need to be a strict sandbox like Ultima, it can be class play and dungeon raiding like everquest or wow, but at least make the world alive and gives players a reason to go out and explore. It's amazing, we have all this game tech and yet developers still want to make games where you follow the quest markers. Shit like this is why I wish games didn't have such huge budgets and developers could get away with smaller more independent teams making games they actually want to play, rather than chasing focus tested market trends.