perlitist.com

Last night a friend of mine linked to an article on Rand's In Repose, and naturally I opened up a few tabs to browse his past literary masterpieces. I eventually came across 'The Cave'.

And this got me thinking.

Not about my cave, but about The Place. His Place is World Of Warcraft. (My place certainly isn't a slow running train into London Paddington, but at least I have my precious intorwebnet thanks to my Nokia N95.) I've never got on with WoW. Its never quite felt right to me. Why I (don't) hear you ask? Because I'm still pinning after Ultima Online.

First some backstory of my experience of Vegemites. (A numer of years ago there was an article on Penny Arcade that decided MMOPRG is such an awkward term to use, and advocated using the term Vegemite instead. I agreed with it.Edit: web.archive.org++) I suppose the first MMO that I played was Isengard - a text based MUD - some time around 1997. 1997, when we still had dial-up-modems and had to pay per minute for the telephone calls... luckily my dad also got hooked, so when the quarterly telephone bill came in at around £300, he was equally to blame - thank god.

Around this time Ultime Online was released. And my god did I want. I'd been hooked on the Ultima series since Ultime VI (so much so that I memorized the answers to all the questions that Lord British could ask you.) And Holy of Holies! NTL also had a dial-up service where you didn't have to pay per minute to use it. I was hooked. Origin did indeed Create Worlds.

Back in 1998/9 Ultima Online was a wildly different beast to what it is today - back before EA got thier gubby mits on it. There was just the one facet (Felluca. Each server basically had two copies of the world) - non of this namby-pamby weaker monsters and no PVP that later got introduced when Trammel was introduced.

So what in particular did I like about UO? The crafting. I do think I spent too much time in that game mining near Minoc, or wondering around the forests between Yew and Skara Brae with nothing but a battle axe, some carpentry tools and barely a loin cloth for protection, hoping that I would make it back to my house alive. Yes - player owned housing!

Having a house that you could keep your stuff in, decorate how you want and keep all your possessions in (yes there was a bank like there is in WoW, but it had limited space/weight) was nice, but it wasn't the reason why I would still prefer to play UO than WoW or any of the dozen odd MMOs that I have beta-tested since (me and a housemate at uni went thru a phase of trying to get on every single closed-beta, open-beta, pre-alpha or play test we could).

Its was the leveling system. Or rather the lack of it. WoW you have skills directly related to your level - give or take variations on what skills the player chooses. Ultime Online had no concept of level. No clicking on a person and seeing they are 5 levels lower than you. Each player had a maximum of 700 skill points to distribute as they saw fit among more than around 40 different skills. Want to be proficient with both a sword and with magic? Fine, you can try it. You'd obviously not be as good as a pure mage or a pure fighter due to not having the complementary skills, but you could still kick ass if you did it right.

The other thing I miss about UO that i've not found anywhere else was its Fame and Notoriety system. In UO you'd open the person's paper (or was it papal) doll and see "The Glorious Lady Aliah, Grandmaster Stoic". (She was my guild mistress.) Or "The Dread Lord Azekial, Grandmaster Fighter".

So much more character then "Level 70 Night Elf".

Origin, you truly did create worlds. Then the Destroyer came and pandered to the wimps who complained that they got ganked and had thier silver kryss of power stolen. Didums. You ruined it for all of us.