Ever since playing Dungeons & Dragons with a group of school friends a long time ago, I've enjoyed role-playing games. They come in many, many forms, of course, and there are highlights of this gargantuan genre in both physical and digital media. But of all the many ways you can play roles in games, I've never gotten into the MMORPG.
Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game. It's a mouthful, and it was a term used to describe Ultima Online, the next step for the already pretty damn big Ultima series.
Now, I didn't have the best of times with the previous Ultima entries on this 1001 list, and I'm not expecting anything different here, but I have to say up front that it must be doing something right to still have players twenty years after its initial release, and credit to whoever deserves credit here, but you can play a trial version with your choice of client, including the original.
All I need now is dial-up internet.
Fun Times
Ultima Online begins with a bit of plot that I should have been paying more attention to, but I think involves a bad guy doing something with the world, and then getting killed. Instead of saving the world, it's been split into multiple shards, each identical in their history, but now unique in their future - a future carved out by the players, no doubt.
Character creation is painless, with your choice of race, trade, and starting location for your character. Naturally, I'm a boring white male human Paladin spawning into New Haven, a 'great place to start as a new player'.
Frustrations
Holy Mother of Screen Real-Estate. This, stereotypical or not, is a big reason I avoid MMORPGs. The sheer amount of stuff all over the screen. A lot of it is optional, I'm sure, but in view here is a menu, the game, names of everyone on screen, my 'paperdoll' (a window related to my equipment, quests etc), a book of some sort, the contents of my bag, and under there somewhere is a map too.
It's all a bit too much, isn't it? Let's trawl through some of it and see if we can get a simple quest going.
After being welcomed into town, I was prompted to explore it and learn some things about being a Paladin. I chose to be a Paladin because I recently played on in a game of Pathfinder. I grew to hate him and was glad that he was eventually decapitated by a possessed party member. Anyway, I decided, quite randomly, that my first challenge was going to be increasing my Parrying stat.
Skills in Ultima Online are progressed by simply doing stuff, so I was advised to go outside of town and get hit by monsters because eventually, somehow, I'd learn to parry their attacks. It makes sense.
My first problem was that these undead beings were awfully friendly, on account that I was still in the 'Peace' mode, or stance, or status, whatever you may call it. Diving into the Help menu saw to this, and switching over to the 'War' status meant I could go swinging my sword.
It was as exciting as the screenshots suggest. You click on things and other things happen. It helps if you're close to the thing, but being close to the thing can hurt as well. I upped a few stats, like my strength and dexterity, and importantly my parrying stat too. And then I noticed how badly I had been hit back.
I had barely been at this monster slaying business for five minutes and I was already cursed and clumsy, and going into one more fight proved to be the death of me.
Respawning somewhere in town, I had the option to be resurrected, which, being hassle-free at this point was as good an idea as any. It was a better option than wandering the world as a ghost that could walk through doors but not walls, at least.
Putting all my equipment back on was a little bit of a hassle, but that'll teach me for dying, I suppose. I got my bearings and headed back into the wild to buff my parrying stat some more.
I died again. I guess I'm not up to this combat lark. Maybe there's a 'defend yourself' toggle that I've not yet toggled...
Resurrected once more, I decided to not change out of my robes and instead wander the town, looking for another human player.
I think I found one, I'm not sure. This guy looks a bit out of place, but by the time I got to him, he disappeared, and so did I.
Final Word
While writing this, I've been watching Ultima Online get played on YouTube, and it hasn't snatched my attention at all. Granted, I'm focused on getting this write up written up, but still; getting a new character off the ground is just not interesting to me.
Even the 1001 article mentions how the game is going to start in a grind above anything else. Isn't that a bad thing?
As you can tell, I've no idea what the quests are like, or how the player interaction works, or what you can do outside of the plot, but the stories to come out of Ultima Online at least make it seem unlike anything else. If you've got to come up with a new genre in order to define it, that's probably a given.
I'm not going to be a position to know whether Ultima Online is all its cracked up to be, but as I said, it's still going after twenty years, so it has its fans. If you're big on your fantasy adventures, dungeon crawls, and monster slaying, then it could be right up your alley. But if you are, and its twenty years old, have you missed the boat? Has it's heyday already come and gone?
When it comes to online or even multiplayer modes, I'm rather particular. A game has to be really good in order for me to bother with online. I like my single player modes, what can I say? While I could see myself spending time in a well-crafted world as deep as those found in Ultima (providing I can get to grips with the controls, the view, and the endless containers of loot there are on my screen), I don't think I can ever see myself spending time in one online - that's a different kettle of fish entirely.
There's a free trial, you might as well hop in and see what it offers. I'm not going to need to get the most out of that free trial period, I can say that for sure, but I can't say what I'd be missing out on.
Sunlight, maybe.
Fun Facts
There was an entire ecological system at play, where grass would grow, herbivores would eat it sustainably so that they wouldn't die from lack of food, and carnivores would eat the herbivores, again sustainably so that they'd have food to eat.
Players could interact with this system, which immediately caused that system to fail catastrophically, not being able to keep up with the unprecedented slaughter that was taking place. If it moved, it was killed, and eventually the system had to be cut out entirely.
Ultima Online, developed by Origin Systems, first released in 1997.
Version played: PC, 1997/2014
Version watched: PC, 1997 (Papa Carl)