Does anyone still play Ultima Online?

[Anomander Rake]

Because I have an itch to start it once again, but honestly I'm doubtful on where to spawn

 

[Shinji]

There's this classic shard that will start tomorrow (November 25th)

http://legacy-uo.com/wp/
http://legacy-uo.com/wp/what-to-expected-on-opening-day/

 

[Anomander Rake]

thanks Shinji.

You know what, I'm under exams and I'm feeling so scared of installing this game, to the point that I won't be able to both play and study as I need.

 

[taxalot]

The original and its servers are getting à free to play version soon, just without housing and bank containers.

 

[Jaesun]

The original and its servers are getting à free to play version soon, just without housing and bank containers.

Interesting it took this long for it to finally get to F2P. If I get some free time, I might actually load that up, just to remember what it was like.

I only played it when it first came out (launched) and only played like for a year.

 

[Aildrik]

UO was so awesome at launch. I remember the first time I was PK'd running around with some friends inside one of the dungeons; I walked away from the group to two guys and said hi.... got Corp Por'd in the face. It was definitely the wild west of MMOs. I also recall killing a PK near his house and snagging his house key. Went in to find a box filled with player hearts...lol. Just, nothing like it since with the housing and crafting system. Origin really captured lightning in a bottle with UO. The only real complaint I had was Raph Koster's idiotic reputation system.

I have tried to get back in over the years but the game has just changed so much and I no longer have the near unlimited discretionary time I had when I was fresh out of college

 

[MI.Tex]

How is it possible that UO is still active ? How many people play it ?

 

[Blaine]

Classic, pre-Trammel private shards are the way to play. I imagine you can find many that are still very active today.

It's been an extremely long time since I've played an MMORPG on a private shard/server (I've played three on private servers: UO, Ragnarok Online, and briefly Lineage II), but if it's anything like it was a decade or so ago, you might be shocked at how populated and reliably functional private servers can be. They tend to have some F2P features, attract a younger crowd (being free), and cut down the vanilla grind by anywhere from 5-100x. After a few years at most, they almost always become moribund and stagnant, to be replaced by newer private servers.

 

[Black]

How is it possible that UO is still active ? How many people play it ?

It's one of very few actually good MMOs.

 

[Aildrik]

Classic, pre-Trammel private shards are the way to play. I imagine you can find many that are still very active today.

Agree; UO, IMHO, was best the first year before they did that Trammel / Felucca split. Crafting was a bear though; I remember having to mine so much damn ore to raise blacksmithing. I tried a private shard a few years back but realized I just don't have the time I used to have to sit there and grind up skills.

 

[Scruffy]

sit there and grind up skills.

dude that's why you macro

 

[Jaesun]

Oh man, I remember mining then getting wiped out by PK squads. Good times...

 

[Aildrik]

sit there and grind up skills.

dude that's why you macro

Actually I did make use of macroing to some degree; IE, for pretty much any character I remember raising hiding to 100 being one of if not the first thing to do

 

[Tehdagah]

I would but the servers are split between shards made by purists who refuse to include insurance, new classes, worlds, monsters, etc and ultra-customized shards with no skill cap, OP weapons and other bizarre things.

 

[Walty Warner]

How is it possible that UO is still active ? How many people play it ?

For some reason with really old mmorpgs there's a small cross section of fans who stick with it long after people have abandoned it. It's usually people who are elderly. There was a news story I remember reading about a 74 year old who was still playing the game Asheron's Call and expected it would be the only game he would ever play for the rest of his life.

 

[Aildrik]

This doesn't surprise me at all with regards to UO. With the vast amount of ...stuff.. you can acquire through crafting, housing, etc I'm sure at some point people look at it as too much investment of their lives to walk away from. Same thing with EQ and people who have characters with like a zillion AA's.. it becomes too much to bear to walk away from for some people I would imagine.

 

[Black]

Found these today, you might find them interesting.

 

[AureliusMMXII]

A friend of mine recently paid for month on the official shards in a moment of acute nostalgia. He reported that he wandered the empty shards encountering no-one.

Brit Bank empty, even on Atlantic. He spotted space for housing too.

So it seems the UO official shards are in reality dead. The remnants are East Asian players now. Only activity you may find would be around Luna/Malas (that expansion landmass I was never fond of).

Through the grapevine it seems there was some hope of a revival with the whole Free to Play thing when it was potentially to be launched on Steam. I imagine this would have lead to a small surge in player numbers and a smaller revival lingering on afterward which would have been a nice thing to see. However EA canned the Steam idea in favour of their crappy Origin platform.

So it will likely continue adrift. It's not even EA/Mythic managing the servers anymore, it's some small contractor studio of some sort.

 

[Aildrik]

I succumbed to this recently as well I had been looking for a while off and on but finally tracked down my UO account name and password I had scribbled down somewhere. I had to link it to an EA account; when I finally logged in, it took me about 5 minutes to realize there is no return to the glory days of UO. I had characters on Chesapeake, Atlantic and Baja. Nothing going on anywhere. I know many people hung out at Brit bank but for whatever reason, Vesper bank was my hangout of choice.. I think I liked the music a lot for that city. I always rolled up new characters in Minoc and sort of stuck to the Vesper/Covetous area.

I thought about trying to track down my old tower although I am sure it has long since rotted away. I remember having to build a courtyard with tents around the door and just recall inside as it was the only defense at the time from all the numerous hacks and tricks to break into houses.

Maybe if you could connect up with a community of players that are active it might be some fun.

 

[Mustawd]

This is sad. I loved UO. It was my first MMO.

I remember staring at the Ultima Online Reinnasance box as my dad drove us back home from Walmart (back when Walmart sold actual PC games). It was a Friday night when I finally logged in and I think I played almost nonstop the entire weekend.

I've played other MMOs like DaOC, EQ, WOW, but none of them ever captured that feeling of ICQing strangers who wanted to buy your metal ingots that you spent all afternoon mining and forging. Or that time when I finally got the guts to attack another player, only for him to take out a poisoned sword, corroding my armor, and slowly poisoning me to death. Then he looted my body of all my stuff. Or the time I ran through a swamp, aggroing every single lizard man in the area, and training them to some poor sap's house with a few if his buddies, and watched them get slaughtered while I watched in the distance while they cursed my existence.

RIP UO. I love you bro.

No homo.

 

[PorkBarrellGuy]

I used to play on a few freeshards but they're probably dead and gone by now. Shazzy's Shard was my favorite, I think.

 

[LESS T_T]

Video of recent GDC talk: http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1024930/Classic-Game-Postmortem-Ultima-Online

Classic Game Postmortem: 'Ultima Online'

Speaker(s) Raph Koster, Starr Long, Richard Garriott de Cayeux, Rich Vogel

Company Name(s) Independent, Portalarium, Portalarium, Certain Affinity

Overview Kal Ort Por! The death of Lord British. Simulated ecologies. Playerkillers. The Bank of Britain. City sieges. Weddings. Sports events. Players who were orcs. Living the Virtues. September 2018 marks the 20th anniversary of the launch on Origin's 'Ultima Online', the pioneering massively multiplayer RPG that changed online gaming forever. Join three key members of the team as they talk about the things that went wrong and right: Richard Garriott de Cayeux, the legendary Lord British and producer on the game; Starr Long, the original director; and Raph Koster, the creative lead.

 

[AureliusMMXII]

I received this yesterday:

Broadsword Online Games
Ultima Online Account Change Notification
Greetings,

This mail contains important information on changes to your Ultima Online account.

All Ultima Online accounts that have been closed for more than 120 days can be used to access Endless Journey. The Endless Journey account allows play (with some restrictions) for free without an end date. In addition, all accounts now have access to the Stygian Abyss expansion. More information on the new Endless Journey account type and on the Stygian Abyss expansion can be found here.

UO Team

This is an automated email from the Account Management site for Broadsword Online Games.

© 2018 Electronic Arts Inc. All Rights Reserved.

The link for info on Endless journey is https://uo.com/endless-journey/

 

[taxalot]

I can understand they fear the entire UO populations flees to Shroud of the Avatar.

 

[Ravness]

How is it possible that UO is still active ? How many people play it ?

I recently started to play it probably 2 weeks ago, I'm enjoying it once I get on but I joined as a F2P player. Took me a while and someone I ran into to get my foot in that sandbox, there's so much about that game in the beginning that is very overwhelming. I did come from games like WoW, GW2 and other various horrible mmos (korean) but they did give that oldschool feeling back.

There's still a sub mode... oh yes, 12 USD a month... F2P if you don't mind some restrictions, similar to the Trial mode they've had a long time ago.

Game's alright to play every now and again but I might not be subbing anytime soon.