18 Years Later, Why Are People Still Playing Ultima Online?

Whenever I look back at UO I get the feeling of what MMOs could and should have become. This was a a virtual world, and while it may not have done everything a modern sandbox game could these were primarily tech limitations rather than design decisions. Everquest made a real mess of the genre; it’s actual design made sense, especially at the time, but every damn game that followed cloned it. Somehow the real originator of the modern MMO got ignored in favour of a much more restricted design that worked for Everquest, and no one has ever tried to go beyond it in anything but a niche way (looking at you Wurm – nice ideas, but my god the grind, even by MMO standards).

It’s fairly simple I reckon…

Ultima promised and (largely) delivered a “sandbox” experience, a world to live in and one in which you could change through your actions.

It’s the same reason that EVE Online endures after so many years.

Meanwhile, along came World of Warcraft. It offered a theme park where you could take lots of different rides, but essentially it remained/s a static place. Countless other MMOs have essentially delivered the same experience, all with lesser degrees of success.

Which is a shame, because the MMO genre held a lot of promise of offering a tactile, living world in which players could actively influence the course of “history”. Unfortunately many sunk a lot of money into trying to emulate WoW’s success, when they should have been creating the successor to UO.

But, having been burnt by the whole MMO gold rush, there’s probably little chance we’ll see the successors of UO and EVE. Hence why people keep playing UO and EVE….

Ultima Online (Renaissance) was my very first MMO that came as an extra with Ultima Ascencion. I played over 3 years, being a Gamemaster for another year. UO is the only game that defines Roleplay. You don’t need to grind or leveling up. It was the stories the players created on their own, sometimes with the help of the gamemasters having a global adventure event on certain Saturdays. Everybody played the role he wanted to play. Want to be a magician? Sure.. it took several weeks on our Server to become one..and once you was one of them..you was literally a damn f* Gandalf. You was able to stand in front of 10 enemy players and they can’t kill you..because it was not possible “roleplay” wise. The 10 players respected this, and you had to respect other things.

It’s something very rare and for me its a bite to the heart that World of Warcraft more or less killed this interaction between players..made them marionettes who gave their wisdom to the current generation of players, roleplaying less than a cow on the field.

Shroud of the Avatar is an attempt to bring back these old goods, but like movies like Dune..or 2001, i think its too slow and hardcore for the actual generation of gamers.

Example? We had a raid on an enemy bastion, and sat a whole night in front of a fireplace – waiting for the right moment. We talked about distant lands..how one of us hunted a Dragon last week, sang songs. You just can’t do this in modern MMO’s. It’s possible..but it needs the right people for it, understanding the base principles of roleplay. I did not had these knowings when i started with UO..and found people who took me aside. I learned a lot about roleplay, about other people and about myself – acting with other people.

Today, i am game developer aside people who worked on UO, and they’re good people. It’s all about imagination, UO just gave the Pen and the Paper an alternate more colorful form.

ooc: sorry for bad english, non native

OooOOoOOOOoOOoooOOO

I feel like the only true inheritor to the UO school of design in the popular space might be minecraft.
Everyone else is chasing the everquest model because it’s easier and seems to work ok for blizzard, i think that’s a real shame.

Amazing that this is still around for such a high price, but I suppose it must be what people are willing to pay for the experience otherwise it would have become defunct a long time ago.

And yes, in one or another form UO was some kind of Minecraft. You need arrows, so you made an appointment with an Hunter. The other player was going into the woods, carving wood, killing birds. Made shafts out of the wood, getting feathers from the birds, then made the arrows. Name me one modern MMO doing this.

UO was pretty magical, and there was nothing like it at the time. Sure, Meridian 59 came first, but UO featured fancy isometric graphics and a robust, truly open world where you could be anything as minor as a baker, fisherman, or lumberjack, to a feared murderer who stole people’s houses or a city pickpocket who left trapped boxes on the street that would cause the unwary to explode into little bits. The detail for everything was nuts — minecraft-like crafting system to forge tools, weapons, armor, food, potions (loved those exploding purple potions), to magic (each spell required a number of different ingredients to function). You could write books and leave them anywhere for people to read, or play chess, checkers, backgammon, or dice with other players. You could buy a boat to sail anywhere. You could own your own shop and have it run by an NPC while you supply the goods. You could build a house or castle ANYWHERE that there was space (this eventually led to overcrowding in some spots), and you could lose your house instantly to some A-hole who ambushes you at just the right time to steal your key or sneak in the door behind you if you don’t lock it fast enough.

There was originally no class system — you got good at whatever you did through practice. Want to be a warrior? You need to get your ass kicked by a sheep or eagle for a while before you take on any orcs. Or you could use practice dummies to work up from the very low levels (many players would place their avatars in front of a practice dummy and run a macro overnight to build strength or skills. I used a roll of ball bearings to hold my use key down).

The PvP system was pretty grand, too. There were no instanced battlegrounds; you could kill anyone, anywhere, any time. This rarely happened in cities though, as victims could call for the guards to help (you actually had to yell “Guards!” to get help). As you killed people your reputation eventually decreased to the point where city guards would kill you on sight, so you had to have an alt or friends with a good reputation to go into cities for you for banking or other business.

I could go on for a long time. UO was one of those games that could be included in a “gaming made me” article. My international gaming group of friends banded together in UO, and we’re still playing together after all this time.

…Everquest sucked.

Same reason why I started playing EverQuest again, on the progression server Lockjaw.

Good old game design that we just don’t see much off any longer.

I remember UO very fondly. It definitely was a sandbox experience and I very much liked the approach that you could be anything in a living and breathing world not just your random RPG adventurer guy. You never had to battle monsters or even vist a dungeon if you didn’t want to.

Haven / New Haven aside there was also initially no real starting point for players. You would just pick the city you liked and bam there you were. For me it was Trinsic. Later on I went on to give myself the title “Lord of Barrier Isle” because I actually owned a little house on a nice spot on this little island just outside Trinsic.

I got to know a lot of nice people in UO. It’s not just your typical “LFG”-affair. You just happen to stumble upon someone at your local bank and you start to chat around etc. Also joining a guild was a very social thing that required you knowing the right people and often doing some custom initiation rituals. On the other side you now had a lot of friends online and people would stick their heads together to come up with adventures to experience. Treasure hunts, dungeon raids, parties… you name it. Nothing like dressing up in some sort of self-dyed cloth uniform that you wore above your normal armor to show of as a group. It just felt much more involved then say Blizzard giving you some “guild tunic” to drop into some character slot just so…

What made the difference is how “connected” people were back then. If you know somebody and you saw them passing by on the road you would feel obliged to say hello and have a little small talk. Of course UO didn’t have any sort of “chat menu” built in. If your character talked it just appeared over your head and depending on how load you talked it could be “heard” some screens away. (Of course you could form an ad-hoc party and have instant off-screen chat too. Also we knew about ICQ back then ;))

One anecdote I will always remember is that I initially saved up gold to form a little guild for me and my friends. Our goal was to go to Britain and pledge to the code of honor so that we get free Serpent Shields from the British Castle guards. We would run around with those shields and pretend to be tough guys until someone from a Chaos guild showed up in Trammel (the non pvp facette). He made fun of me not being “real order” and invited me to follow him to his moongate to Felucca. As my ego was hurt I followed him. Just one guy what can go wrong, right? Turns out not only would it lead to Felucca he also lead me straigt into Buccaneers Den. Immediately a lot of red player names approached and made short work out of my character. They proofed to honorable PKs (player killers) though because afterwards they guided my ghost to a healer and also let me pick up my stuff before handing me a moon stone that would take me back to Trammel. Have to say I learned my lesson in humility there. Never touched that stupid shield afterwards…

My only ever experience of Ultima Online must have been over about ten years ago now. I remember getting set up, wandering about a town with no clue what to do, and then trying to rob a bank by shouting at the NPCs, whilst people outside laughed at me. Happy times.

I’ve never played an Ultima game, much less one that’s nearly my age.

In fairness, most of the others are older.

As an Ultima fan, I jumped at the chance to play Ultima Online. Knowing the setting helped me stick with it, but it was the freeform, sandbox nature which got me to enjoy it so much. I began not really knowing what to do, and just tinkered around the edges. In many MMOs you’d have to pick a class and stick with it, whereas in UO I could start as a miner and become a warrior, and then change again later.

It’s a shame that there haven’t been more similar experiences, instead everyone is chasing the same thing.

Best MMO ever made, period. Really.

Parts of Britannia feel abandoned? The subscription price is steep? You people know you can play on free private servers with higher population, right?

There seem to have been a few games trying to recapture that UO feel – not least of which is Shroud of the Avatar, the closest thing to UO2 – but nothing’s really caught it for me. Some of that comes down to changes in myself and the ways I order my free time, I’m sure. Guess you really can’t go home again…

The thing that killed UO for me unfortunately was the housing system. When I started playing (must be 15 years ago or so), every server I could play on was completely flooded with houses…hell, there was no wilderness left. Having a new char, you couldn’t even see where a city ended and would walk into deadly traps, either from mobs or even player killers laying in wait for easy prey.

While I have a certain nostalgic fondness for Ultima Online, I’m surprised at how idyllic many of these opinions are. I was a day one player and and most of my memories distill down to how frustrating the game was—frustrating because of how much potential it had, but how quickly things became unplayable.

For this I’m ignoring the lag, the bugs, and other growing pains of a new MMO – I was more than willing to give the game time to find its stride, technically – it was the experience of massive player griefing that killed the game for me, combined with the apparent unwillingness of the devs to prevent it.

I can’t be the only one who remembers the platemail-wearing, halberd-wielding mages who did nothing but camp the spawn-point and killed every newbie who spawned; or the funnel of chairs that helped facilitate this.

I kept my subscription going for at least 6 months (three months longer than the most patient of my four friends who’d started on day one with me), periodically logging back on in the hopes that things had changed. While it had abated somewhat in later months, the regularity with which I was killed by some random griefer in town, just as I’d begun to make progress, made me give it up and wonder how it was that anyone new started and kept playing the game, paying for such an experience. And mystified that it remained running beyond its first year.

There’s a reason that when Trammel happened, roughly 70% of the players moved.

There were a ton of conceptual and design problems and flaws with UO. Part of the reason that later development of MMOs has become more locked down.

My second ever RPG was Ultima IV back on the Sega Master System in 1989, I caught up with the entire series over the intervening years, and I played UO for the first time from 2001 to 2003 and then 2010 to 2014; I also had the honor of both playing with Petra Fyde on Europa, and EMed for the game briefly; but you couldn’t have picked a better representative of the game to interview, and indeed show why the game has endured, than Petra.

Because there were no quests as such. No goals you were set or challenges you had to meet. What kept the game alive was it’s community, who put their heart and soul into the game, rather than had it narrated to them by a fixed plot. I sound like an old man saying “We made our own entertainment back then”, but in this case it really was true; you had a lot of dedicated and creative players right at the birth of a brand new industry, in lands that let you pretty much do what you will with those talents and dreams.

I can remember for instance my own character being born and leaving the newbie lands to arrive in Moonglow, with a chicken in tow from practicing taming, and 3 people sitting outside the bank started mocking me for it; Years later I’d train up a 4x Grandmaster, player killing chicken just to see who was laughing now as it pecked them to death.

There was no auction house, so you’d have to travel the lands looking for people’s shops, and maybe meeting the people themselves who would educate you about those mysterious objects called “Server Birth Rares” or Holiday rewards which were already 4-5 years old by the time I first came to the game. I spent years seeking a “Singing Ball”, which randomly made all the sounds in the game, so I could sit on my virtual porch and dream of strange lands and unseen creatures…

Or those self same players could become enemies over particular popular spots of land you both might covet when it was your turn to consider setting up a shop. People got into vicious flame wars over under-cutting each other, or stealing each others customers.

I remember once being on pure my crafting character (which we all called “Mules” because they could be 7 different crafting skills in one) harvesting Lizardmen for their leather in a dungeon at 3 in the morning UK time, and a character proposing to me because my character tended to dress a little slutty; Oh yes you could seduce someone even at such low resolution with thigh length boots, and a short skirt and an apron which combined visually into a strapless open backed dress. He started pushing for a real life date until I had to admit I was male in real life and then he cursed me out quite badly, he he.

But what made UO unique was that it allowed you to actually play those roles in game as well; GMs (and now EMs) were able to marry your characters and give both a ceremony and unique wedding rings. And your character then, and still to this day (the article doesn’t quite make this clear) gained skill points in what ever your character did. Hit stuff with swords, your Swordsman skill rises, spend your evenings knitting your character gained in Tailoring; you had a total of 700 points to spend in whatever you felt like; you still can be a sword wielding mage in plate if you feel like it. Or a taming Ninja who rides around on a tiger.

And there was no Global Chat back then, so we all used ICQ instead; I sometimes wonder if UO actually helped popularize the whole concept of Talker Programs, or at the very least, kept that particular piece of software alive. What you can certainly say is that it nurtured friendships that existed outside of UO, and moved to other games as each player drifted away but kept their ICQ up; and is why companies now try and bring in social networks as early as possible. “If you liked Game X, why not try Game Y and tell all your friends about it?!”

Ultima Online was a fantastic game at its time and still is its only downfall is the PRICE! its way to high to warrant it worthy of letting go.

The game needs to to be $5 bucks a month or a one off payment of $40 max

if they did this lowering the price of the game, the world would flow again.
& UO wouldn’t be stuck in hole drowning a slow death propt up by a few consistent members.

The problem for me is, regardless of how nostalgic I get, you can never really go back. Only forwards.

“Creating a character is always one of my favourite parts of picking up a new MMORPG. It’s unfortunate that Ultima Online immediately shows its age by giving you only a smattering of cosmetic options, but I liked the look of every character class.”

Re: classes, I liked that UO didn’t really have them in a strict sense. What it had was a dizzying array of skills you could learn (and a cap of about 700 points I think. So you could have 7 skills grand mastered, or a hodge podge jack of all trades) Though tbh, I’m so foggy, the class you’re talking about might be the starting archetypes (i.e starting clothes and equipment, which initial skills are emphasised) though I’m sure there was a custom option there. But there definitely wasn’t a ‘class’ in the sense that you were always hemmed in to a certain skillset or role. It was utterly flexible, and that was a huge strength.

Again, hazy, but I think the title you had came from your strongest skill? So you were a swordsman if you had the most points in swordsmanship, a mage if it was magery, a warrior if it’s tactics (an assassin if poisoning?) but that was always subject to change.

“I tried to play in standard MMO style by grinding skills and killing monsters, but an eagle ate me and when I logged back in after a break I’d lost my clothes and one of my many swords.”

Yes! Yessss! This is how it should be.

I like that monsters (or other players) can come along and rifle through an unattended corpses pack. Because when you think about it, in what scenario would that NOT be possible? Why WOULD you have your stuff come back? We’re used to it, because it’s a normal thing now, but it’s really counterintuitive. (and god, one of the many compromises, selling of it’s soul, of UO was the insurance system. NOO. NOOOOO. You *should* be able to lose your items, losing your items is good!)

You can always run away if things get too tough though :p (followed for several screens by a ‘Vas Flam’) Or tame the eagle! I once had a Mongbat named Monty. it once got stuck in someone’s house, so I called a GM to get it out for me.

“And that’s how I became an embedded reporter in Ultima Online. Jumping through the Stargate Moongate to Britain, I found wide expanses of open land. From here, I threw off any concept of trying to better my character and instead focused on touring what the world could throw at me.”

Hehe :) I had a character like that. He was called Gate Jumper, and would just through any random gate left open by a player, to parts unknown. He wore a pink shirt, a tricorn hat and carried a lantern. His skills were mostly in ghost speak. He was not protected though, so as you may imagine, he died a lot.

(and not that this is especially amazing, but the amazing thing is that UO gives you the room and the space to do silly things like this, while most MMOs expect you to colour in the lines)

“But what keeps players coming back time after time when there are so many different MMOs floating around?”

I know this was answered by the player you were talking to, but I would hazard a guess that it still, after all this time, offers a different experience. It’s a cliché (and often an unfair one) to call games WoW clones but…WoW’s influence should not be underestimated. It was a behemoth, and it makes sense to copy a successful formula. There’s so much jargon now synonymous with MMOs (e.g levels, raids, epics) that (some) people seem literally bemused when encountering something different (I’ve seen people come up against that wall in Eve – your skills train in the background? But what do you *do*?).

The whole sandbox journey-is-the-reward choose-your-own-adventure ethos in MMOs is certainly in the vast minority now. But back in UOs day, it was pretty much 50/50 with the more linear model of EQ, and at least as much of a given. Kind of a shame, really.

Played it for maybe 6 months, after a run with the original Asherons Call, but the heyday was over even then.

Play Money by Julian Dibbell is an interesting read about his attempt to make a real world living as an Ultima Online trader.

DragonRealms, a commercial MUD from Simutronics, will turn 20 next year and still costs $15 per month to play, though you really want the Premium account for $30 per month. Or there’s a Platinum package for $50 per month. It’s expensive, really really expensive is what I’m saying. Good game, if you want role-playing.

UO remains my most memorable MMORPG, half because of the sheer amount crazy roleplaying, and half because you could do whatever you wanted.

My Felucca avatar was a PK. A Grandmaster mage, but also a Grandmaster Chef. It took me forever and RSI to make Grandmaster Chef, but it made it all worth while that after I killed a PC and looted their body that I could leave a nice baked caked with my name attached to it for their return.

Name me another MMO that allows that level of comic lunacy.

I’m sorry, but this piece feels like half of an article. From detailing the feel of the very first minutes it suddenly cuts to “and it’s interesting and unique”. Huh?

Where’s the exploration? Is everything special in this game about owning property? If not, what? If yes, how does it manifest when playing?
What do people in the game DO?

Sheesh, I learned more about UO from the comments than from the article.

I have so many fond memories in this game… I remember stumbling upon the ‘Inn of Lost Travelers’ once (I was really lost) and it was filled with maybe 6 or 7 people who all shared stories and had ale. Or the time I led a mob of angry PC-peasants towards my nephew, convincing the crowd he was a witch and should be burned etc.

Like a lot of people said in the comments already, what ever happened to sandbox MMO’s? I’d jump on a chance to play an updated UO right away. MMO’s are very interesting to me by concept, but the ‘themepark’ bullshit really turns me off every darn time.

I remember playing the beta of UO and it was near unplayable. I think technology and internet speeds hadn’t quite gotten to where they needed to be.

That said I agree with the many others here that it is a real loss that Sandbox games are a distant second to theme park MMOs. But I think sandbox games need to do a LOT more to help new players, and they need to have much more severe penalties for antisocial behavior. Part of the problem with sandbox games is they are essentially libertarian paradises. Now I’m not a fan of that world view, but even if you are, the penalties in real life for anti social behavior (murder, theft, and abuse) are far worse than they are on a video game, meaning that it can often release the absolute worst in people.

If sandbox designers can figure out how to balance new player entry, penalties for bad behavior, and the freedom they promote, they may have a chance to grow their bases beyond the niche that they’ve been isolated to.

This article is kinda calling me back. One of the first CRPGs I played was Ultima 6 when I was in 4th grade – I remember killing Lord British with a few glass swords and then moving all of my furniture into the castle. It was so so immersive.

By the time UO was announced I was in 7th grade and it was seriously like my ultimate fantasy coming true.

And it delivered big time and I definitely feel the same sentiment in that more “MMOs” should and should have taken the approach to to further extents, because let’s face it – the combat in UO sucks.

That aside I definitely miss the days of my guild – The League of Pirates battling the Fuckheads (that was the literal guild name) on the open seas and stealing all of their shit.

I suspect that the numbers of UO players actually paying to play is fairly small. There have been hundreds of “free shards” running either sphereserver or runuo for years. Some of these are highly active, customized, etc.

I played the P2P UO for years. I got a guy who I worked with into it, and he and his girlfriend played it so much he was eventually fired (and later was arrested on multiple firearms possession charges, but that’s another story..). For about the first 8 months, I ran around naked getting my ass kicked by rabbits. Then, little by little, my stats and skills began to get to the point where I could actually do stuff.

My two kids loved UO and we eventually bought a little tower house just outside of Trinsic. I was playing when there were some incredible invasion spawns. Anyone remember when the Ratmen and Trolls invaded Britain? Or when the Undead Army took over Trinsic? Crazy fun times! Once I got into a semi-interesting RP conversation with two (scantily clad and exceptionally cute — but that’s sort of the norm for most games) women. One of them invited me into her house to continue the conversation… and promptly teleported me to some unknown location, and killed me. D’Oh!

Of course, there were some annoying things, but you learned to live with them. Trying to gather regs in cemeteries inhabited by skeletons, zombies, liches, etc., was always dangerous, especially when wildly strong PVPers knew that lower level chars were there all the time and they would run through, kill you, take all your stuff, and run away. Eventually I got into the habit of always having several sets of armor/weapons/tools/stuff stashed somewhere. Plus, things like losing connection in the middle of something important sucks in any game.

UO really was (and is) a very special place, regardless of who you are, what you do, or which shard you play on, pay or free. That being said, I’m having quite a bit of fun playing F2P LotRO :)

I loved UO for one simple reason. Role play.
The great thing about the game was there was nothing to do, no raids, no go here get 10 of these quests and so on.
On our shard we role played with almost 1000 other players.
That is why I logged on each night and spent hours being part of a story that was ever changing. It was another life for me and honesty I miss it with my whole heart. I made so many friends IRL. Our RL meets where amazing.
UO gave me a lot in return for my time, it gave me the chance to write, to work out stories to adapt to a change in the plot and so on.
I was and forever will be one of the best things I have done in my life. Heck I moved in with a UO player and her family who gave me a chance to live in the USA ( I’m from England myself.)
It was that friendship that had me move across the world. the n I met my future wife, then I had kids. and it can all be traced back to my time in UO.
I have never felt that level of in game role play or IRL friendship from any other MMORPG that i have played since. and alas I don’t think I ever will.
Thank you UO for everthing.

Rakarn Moon

This article got slashdotted.

link to games.slashdot.org

ohh dat’s me! ello.
@Titler. I’m no longer with Stratics, but I’m still playing daily and I’m still writing guides for players. The link is in my profile. I also have a facebook page under this nick.
@Kala, it’s true you can’t go back – but you can go forward. UO has been going forward, and I’ve been going forward with it.
When UO started online gaming was unsophisticated, and so were we. We would never accept now what delighted and fascinated us then. We expect so much more. UO can give it, but you need to bring something to the pot. You need to bring imagination.
Some people say the game seems empty – well to a degree it is, but with the number of expansions there have been there’s an awful lot of land and dungeons out there. We’re there, but we’re well spread out. Also trial accounts are restricted to the ‘help’ chat channel. The veteran players mostly use the ‘general’ channel – despite the rampant pvp trash talk. On Europa, where I’m mostly found, a group of vets monitor the help chat and actively try to help new and returning players. In addition there is a nightly meeting at west brit bank where help and advice is freely given. (6pm – 7pm UK)

This makes me nostalgic for a game I’ve never played. I have very fond memories of Ultima 7, though, the only Ultima I’ve played seriously (what a game!). I’d try one of those free servers, but honestly I don’t think I have the time required to make it really work. :/

My guess would be because they enjoy playing it?

Actually, one of the first online games was for the C64 through AOL called ClubCaribe or Habitat which in later years got turned to Vzones now defunct. I played UO since beta, then worked for Stratics-UO on the event team running the monthly development chats. Unless things changed, there was a lot of grinding to level up a skill and I had multiple accounts to hold a fortress of castle and two towers. I enjoyed working for stratics and the development team for years but ended up having to give up both when I got Married and children started entering the picture. I still talk once in a while with old staff if on and glad the games still in existence. I’m very surprised EA hasn’t ported the game client over to IPhone and Android, it would have brought in a whole new clientele. I had a mage/tamer, hard, even a treasure hunter. I still have a photo floating around from the days there was server wars. Before tamers had limits I released about 80 white wyrms and dragons then use an invisible ring to hide and watch the chaos. It actually crashed the server I played and was asked not to do it again. Which would of been the case except at the time I did this I wasn’t a GM tamern at the time and back then when it was OSI put in a patch to raise requirements to owning one which surprised me the hard way because it was the first town invasion put into effect and when I claimed 10 dragons from the stable, they all went wild at once. It wasn’t just me, people were trying to kill lich lords and same time dodge everyone’s dragons gone amok. Back then if you didn’t have good armour on, one fireball killed you. Imagine having 10 on the loose. I was lucky to have invie jewelry set on macro because I hit that macro faast seeing the messages “Has decided it was better off without a friend” My main account I gave to a friend and sold rest while it was allowed. Heard years later after the mass duping bannings that many card companies did a lot of charge backs which ended the sales of pixels.

I notice a lot of people here are ignorant about Trammel.

Here are just the facts:

1) Trammel didn’t ruin Ultima Online; Trammel saved it. Before Trammel, subscribers were dwindling and the game was dying. After Trammel, the bleeding stopped and populations soared.

2) Ultima Online hit its peak subscriber base 3 years after Trammel. Not only did subscribers soar, but they soared for 3 years. The peak subscriber base hit 250,000 subscribers in 2003 with the release of “Age of Shadows” which was the fifth expansion, and added in the Paladin & Necromancer classes/skills.

Whether or not it ruined the game FOR YOU is just your opinion.

Despite what you will hear on the internet about how “Trammel ruined UO”, this is only true of a minority of players.

The majority of Ultima Online subscribers loved the introduction of Trammel.

Another interesting fact: Ultima Online was the first MMORPG to reach 100,000 subscribers. After its peak in 2003, it did not see numbers again this low until 2008. (In 2008, Ultima Online still had 100,000 subscribers.)

If anyone is interested in playing Ultima Online for free, go to http://www.uorenaissance.com for the BEST FREE server out there. The server is based on the Renaissance era, yet pre-Trammel ruleset on most things. There is a young player program to give new players or old returning players the freedom to get the feel for the game safely. Much has been done to perfect things such as crafting and others that OSI / EA didn’t fix. The population just hit a new high 3 years into its existence with almost 700 online. So, if you want to try the game out, give us a shot at http://www.uorenaissance.com. I’m an old school player since 99 and have played many free servers throughout the years, and finally have found a UO home there. It’s THE best out there.

Just had to register and comment on this…

I’ve played loads of game, be thye single, multi or MMOs.
I’ve never experienced anything even remotely close to what UO had and still has to offer as game and combat mechanics, crafting, economy or social system.

The simplicity of the characters mechanics is stunning and yet so effective. The whole game re-balanced itself because each player had the freedom to observe, try and change their character in almost any possible way.

In terms of character customization this game gave such freedom that it’s absolutely mind-blowing.
I’m not talking about facial/body/clothing customization .. those are just eye candy(I love those, but it’s not the looks that matter, it’s what is under the clothes and armor).
All games after UO strive to achieve relative ‘balance’ between classes (mostly PvP wise). Tons of patches, skill changes, updates, special arenas and battlegrounds with limitations just so that pvp could ‘feel’ more balanced.
Why? Because they decided to rely on a predefined class system to spare themselves some thinking, or to enforce on the players specific story-line and game-play?
UO gave freedom with a single limitation valid for all.
No races or racial perks, no classes or class specific traits, no different stats, all start on equal ground and each and every player can, whenever he/she decides completely change their character or tweak it so that they can handle specific situations.

Turning from a warrior/paladin into a necromancer/mage just because you found out that you like spells better is priceless(just for information this is like becoming the complete opposite in almost any aspect;alignment, combat style, resource utilization, armor preference, even the way the surrounding NPCs interact with you is different).

Anyway .. I don’t have enough words to describe the technical perfection UO has as a game.
One obvious flaw though. The game client, graphics, UI are ancient. They are actually far beyond ancient considering modern hardware capabilities. When I played UO (and that was more than 10 years ago) I though “What a crappy game” during the first 15 minutes. I liked NOTHING there. I uninstalled it after some 20 minutes.
2 weeks later a friend told me “Try it some more, in 20 minutes you’ve not seen anything. Try to play for around 1 hour at least. Maybe you’ll find something you like”.
I did try it for 1 hour. That hour became a week. That week became a 3+ years. And after that 1 hour there was not a single minute that I felt bored, that I felt like I’m wasting my time, that I felt frustrated because something is not like I want it to be.

Imagine you kill a monster and you find a treasure map.
You got no idea what that is. You ask around, some player tells you you need cartography skill to read the thing. Ok, you spend some time to improve that skill.
Now you can read maps. Awesome! But .. the map points to some island you never knew even existed. Ok, no worries, you gather some money, buy a ship. Small one of course, they are expensive.
So you and a couple of friends get on the ship and start sailing.
Bu the ship must be controlled by 1 person, or you’ll never get to where you want to go. So 1 controls the ship (you had to type directions so the ship moves), the other watches the map and navigates, the third one drinks rum and sings pirate songs (and no, i’m not joking).
You get to the island, perfect. You find the spot. You’re lucky, you brought a shovel.
One starts digging, the rest are waiting impatiently around to see the treasure.
There it is! This BIG chest, full with promises of unlimited riches and … those 3 BIG water elementals that spawned near it and decided to guard it.
Your whole party is dead.
Ok, here is the plan: we find and ankh(you resurrect on those), we come back, kill the elementals, get the treasure.
Good plan, but the ankh is on the OTHER island!
3 ghosts on the ship, navigating to the other island. Then back. Then running in circles until we get our bodies(bodies disappear in time and you lose items).
What an adventure. I am yet to find another game that can give you hours of laughter and fun while you play it and years later. A game where legend are build from the actions of players. A game where friendship, hatred and simple player interactions are more important and more fun than the built-in content.

To those of you that never played UO I have a message:
Play it, at least for an hour. I know it’s ugly, I know it’s old, I know it looks and feels worse than Super Mario. Just try it out, and don’t give up after the first 15 minutes.
And to those of you that have: I got nothing to say to you brothers and sisters. You already know what the best MMORPG of all times (up to now) is.