by Azaroth | May 17th, 2010
I think that, no matter how hard you argue that Ultima Online stands on its own merits… a part of its attraction to us is the pure, unrelenting stream of beautiful nostalgia it mercilessly injects into our minds when we log in.
I had given quite a bit of thought to developing a new map for IPY. However, I think as good as a new map could be.. it could never achieve that for us in just the same way. In fact, a new map could be vastly superior in every way possible… and yet never really seem like it to many of us.
For instance, I love the dungeon Shame. In fact, I love level two of that dungeon – the dumbest, most boring location in the entire place. Maybe in the entire game. It’s one of my absolute favourite spots in the game to play. I’ve farmed countless gold coins for countless hours in that dungeon… as far back as 1997/1998 when I’d repeatedly spend all of my profits buying viking swords of power to kill earth/air elementals with, only to get PKed and lose them every time. This area is a great example, because while I really love it… it’s horribly designed, clunky, and about as exciting as an old rubber boot to anyone but me.
What spots on UO’s map bring you an illogical amount of joy and nostalgia?
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Also, I think this counts as the very first public screenshot of IPY alpha?
It might.
Fire island holds that for me.
My newbie guild of 10-15 had a small house near the daemon alatar or whatever… there was a big warring guild/pk guild beside us that pked us nonstop with daemons – being 12 at the time I thought it was amazing and tried to befriend them… eventually helping them and turning red myself. I have tried since to replace houses on fire isil to re-create that feeling but nobody ever does anything on fire island.
az regarding limiting recall – maybe make it so that it costs 60-80 mana to cast? recall I always felt limited the game quite a bit.. people never walked anywhere, and generally walking places when everyone else also has to walk is how i made a lot of the friends I had in game… also people couldn’t then log in, recall to 10 hotspots then log out for hours which is a huge problem for a population count of a server/the health of the playerbase in general.
Hedge Maze. Small volcano between Hythloth and the shrine. The one dead end where a Blood spawns in Shame lvl 3. Skull Island. Wind. The tiny island that can fit a small house in the lake with the waterfall near Wrong. Wrong Ogre Lords in the 2nd floor torture room. Lich Lord room in Deceit. Ice Daemons in Ice, that one weird room. One of my favorites is Terathan Keep – just has a crazy feel and is remote. Brit GY. There’s this one Daemon spawn in Hythloth O feel very safe at… a small room sorta. Fire Temple. South part of Destard lvl 2. Titans in T2A. Covetous main room with lich lords in like, lvl 3? All of these places, and many more, have such strong nostalgic tones to me. The map is just classic, face it. Look, nobody says that hockey rinks are X or Y and change it to a trapezoid shape randomly. Some things are just the way they are and the more other things change, the more others stay the same. Orc fort. Moonglow Zoo tamer pking I MEAN WHAT ELSE IS THERE TO SAY. THE MAPS BURNED INTO MY MEMORY LIKE THE POLITICAL MAP OF THE EARTH!!! It’s a top flight world, that Sosaria… even stuff like Nujelm only adds to it’s charm and helps to emphasize space and distance (even in a game with a circumvented mode of locomotion like Recall). How about the first time you went in Brit sewers? I mean, just random stuff around the game that can’t be replaced. It’s a virtual world full of virtual cultural artifacts idioms and special places. It cannot be replaced nor compromised in our hearts and minds no matter what people mod, add, remove, or limit to this game map or any other. No other game map comes CLOSE to creating a sense of ephimeral connection, even with its limited graphical display and corny, poorly designed settings. Gosh, it’s one of the last beacons, maybe the final true bastion of what UO really is. No matter how messed up player housing gets, or how neon ur hair is, or how messed up PvP is, or how borked the entire server is… those runebooks are always gonna be filled up with your favorite runes. Specialized down to the exact tile you want to Recall in on. I bet most of you mark runes in the exact same tile on different servers, and have for years. Think about that for a sec…
Trinsic was my hometown back on OSI, so it awesome for me when you decided to make it a red town on IPY. The city reminds me of the days when I was first discovering Ultima Online as well as the days when I participated in some of the best PvP UO has ever seen. The 10v10v10 fights with people teleporting and stonewalling on the narrow catwalks were just amazing.
I’m not sure what my favorite dungeon is. More on that later, I guess.
Nu’jelm was my bank when I was blue on OSI. No oranges and the tailor which was a great source of cash at the time was a couple screens away from the bank.
Moonglow mage guild that was a teleporter away from the bank to buy regs.
And my absolute favorite place on the entire map – Destard level 3. I farmed there on OSI. On IPY and any other server that I played to the endgame, a list thats a bit too distant to me now to name. Oh I can’t wait to get back down there!
Bucs Den – those PvP fights always turned into laps around the town’s two bridges.
Deceit pit room/LL room is probably the most nostalgic PvP spot for me from OSI and even from IPY.
Although IPY became a lot of recalling to the guild hangouts – the little collection of houses. I could hardly tell you where they all were since we just took runes there. Was fun cause it would turn into a big fight almost always since travel was so easy in UO.
In Darkfall you could hear that there’s a dozen guys raiding your home/hangout and not be able to do shit cause you’re farming or on the other side of the map of some other lame excuse.
lol yeah i know what you mean oxandrolone. its why i dont like darkfall i want to spend time earning stuff and fighting not walking 2 hours just to do something to die and restart the walk and etc.
As for my favorite place it was vesper strip and the compassion desert.
Trinsic always holds an old school feel for me because It was the first city I used in UO. Ocllo however, was and always is the bank I use when I play the game.
As far as outside town goes, I am a deceit boy. I remember on Cats in the early days that was the hardest dungeon to PK in. When I played Napa I was always in and around deceit on all levels of the dungeon. We use to have the Napa Valley Duel later and a lot of the matches were done in deceit level 1.
best spot early in the game? britain mountain pass just before the xroad. i remember so well hours and hours of being in the pass at the limit of the guards zone. we knew pks were at the other end. one brave guy would always go “OK GUYZ BUFF ME” and youd see a bunch of people casting Ra, str, int and dex buffs then the dude in full plate running towards the pk with his halberd out…just to reappear 5 seconds later with a bunch of fireball spells on his ass and falling dead in front of us. (fireball spell used to do dmg when it “hit” the player so you could outrun it)
ahh memories:(
Speaking of mountain passes… what about the one from the Britain forest to Despise?
As a newbie, that was always interesting.
Funny thing is that a lot of these stories wouldn’t have happened if we had all just had some runes and 50 magery at the time. As much as people keep going on in this thread about how great it is to recall around to hotspots really quickly, I’d love to limit recall somehow. ;)
Though note I did say limit – not eliminate. ;)
That was a pretty good spot on IPY as well. Someone had a large smithy right there that they used as a base of operations. Between the first pass and the second pass towards despise. Can’t remember who.. maybe one of the c2w guys?
Recall limits are nice on paper cause people think it’ll make the world larger and make positioning and macro management of troop movements more important – but in reality it just makes for lots of boring travel time. That’s my take, at least.
Yeah, but skill gain instead of skill gates makes for lots of boring macroing time.
I think there needs to be a balance between immediate, game-skipping convenience and tedious mind numbing grinds somewhere.
For instance – restricting recall/gate inside of dungeons. That’s a limitation.
Wrong entrance.
Shame hallway between 3 and 4.
Deceit LL area.
I really hate Buc’s Den for PvP but the balrons that you had there on IPY (underground caves) was a very memorable spawn.
Trinsic and Vesper (the “Strip”).
Been trying to think of a recall restriction variation but there is always an inevitable issue that is pretty apparent.
Also, I hope the horse in that SS has been euthanized ;p
I think Cove is an awesome area that needs to become a hot spot. The town and the orc encampment need some love but i love that part of the map. Also very close to open area for housing
To build on the discussion taking place in PhatChat, I think it’d be a great idea to open land areas in stages (similar to pre-wipe IPY).
If we launch new cities and dungeons in stages, it should concentrate most of the playerbase in select locations and sustain interest over a longer period of time. It would also create a bit of a land rush for people to place houses in new areas as they open 3, 6, or 12 months down the road. Consider them free “expansion” packs :)
Well, who knows. It’s not something I’m planning, though. I like the rush to get a boat and sail your ass to Deceit to mark the first runes, etc. That’s fun. In fact, I think it’d be fun to either make boats more expensive… rarer… run out on NPCs faster… a high end carpenter recipe… or a loot drop… or something (at least early on) just to make this more fun.
It seems to me like (at LEAST early on, again) the furthest reaches of the world should seem like the furthest reaches of the world. You could really make the loot in Deceit and Hythloth sweet-ass if you had to sail there.
Plus, we’re starting to talk about population with this issue – and how to “make it seem like more”. Well, here’s my thoughts on that:
If we have the same population we did on IPY, closing things down will crowd the world.
… and if we don’t… ahem, I don’t really care.
This isn’t an e-peen contest for me. In fact, last time I just had other server admins constantly claiming we faked our counts. You don’t think Rixus, Nighthawk, Ravatar or Krrios (who had access for a long period) or SOMEONE else would have actually said something about that?
So really, what’s the point of the e-peen contest. Haters gonna hate, and if you play the shard… you know whether it’s active or not. If my shard says 2000 and there’s nobody actually playing, then that’s just a number (and maybe faked). If my shard doesn’t display a number and it’s bustling to the point where you couldn’t possibly ask for more activity… what’s the point of the number being displayed?
I don’t see one, in either case. I’m not interested in faking the number, and I’m not interested in the jealousy wars over the number. So what’s the point of the number?
Bah, you had to to fit this reply in before I managed to get the below in. What I wrote below is in reference to your previous post on sailing, not your comment on client counts.
Easy there Tasos. I know a company that tried that philosophy for most of their game, and it leads to mass rioting and financial ruin, and no number of gyros or euros will quiet the rabble. You don’t want to be responsible for turning Toronto in Athens, while the Jays are doing so well?
But I guess you could do that as a sort of event. Have a gate/recall/mark free island with some huge incentive to go there – but only periodically, and announce those times or have them at set times during the week so a bunch of guilds will all sail there separately and mass war will ensue. That would be fun.
I know next to nothing about Darkfall. Are you suggesting they have magical travel free areas?
If so, are you suggesting THAT’S what made Darkfall suck. Areas where you couldn’t recall to?
I mean, I don’t know. It’s just an idea off the top of my head that sounded kind of fun. I think recall sucks – for some things. It’s an unlimited instant travel spell available to everyone. It sucks for many reasons… and it’s great for a couple. I can recall around to my enemy’s guild houses real quick. That’s about it. For crying out loud, the UO world is pretty small.
Ever run from Minoc to Vesper? Seems like a long way, looking at the map. Actually takes about two minutes on a horse.
Either way, I *like* recall and gate for an oldschool map and a shard that’s highly PvP-centric (whether it’s my goal or not). I just think that the dark, dangerous, far away places on the map should be… well… dark, dangerous and far away. Is that so wrong? ;)
Now you can drop all kinds of neat shit in Deceit, make the loot really great and… laugh your head off when you kill someone there.
But either way, I’m just spitballing here. You’re not privvy to my master plan for the recall spell. I have no plan for it, even though it’s been discussed several times… nothing has been decided, and I’m generally against any sort of change.
Oh, and don’t ever call me Tasos. ;)
It’s one of the things that made Darkfall suck. It also made for some epic sieges, however. But general day to day play sucks because I would have to run for twenty minutes to do anything fun. And since launch they have progressively been introducing ways to make the world much smaller.
It seemed that everyone pre-launch on the forums would rant on and on about how they wanted an enormous world with no quick travel options. It makes the game more immersive, sure, but it also makes the game less fun. Turned out the only people with the tenacity to stick it would in the extremely player unfriendly world of Darkfall were the PvPers, the ones who got annoyed by the enormous world and lengthy travel times.
At times, though, used in the right places, it did make the game more fun. For instance the rare sieges where enormous armies would march across the world and engage in large scale PvP in the field or at castles. Thats it, though.
So yeah I think you’re right in that strategic use of world enlarging features can make the game more enjoyable, but you need to be careful with em.
Also I’ll try to refrain from Tasos/Azaroth comparisons from now on.
Appreciate it. ;)
Without instant travel, group coordination requires more planning, and reduces flexibility. Could be interesting?
Also, I agree about the foot travel. Now that we all know the map so well, it’s surprising how small the world is. I played on UOSA briefly, and decided not to use recall. Even on a smaller-pop server like that, with 400ish people, many of whom I’m sure were unattended, I ran into a lot of people running from town to town to dungeon.
Sort of a tangent, but thinking about changes and whatnot: what will be the value of gold if people can’t use it to macro skills up? I know once I have a character capable of PvP I have very little interest in getting gold, because the cost of maintaining basic PvP equipment is so low. Does this seem like a potential issue to anyone else?
Currently you can macro. It’s just far less efficient than playing the game.
But people will macro if they can. Most PvPers I would assume will still macro. So for them, it’s just like a super slow skill gain server.
So does this mean that RoT is out?
Maybe I don’t fully understand how RoT works, but I was under the impression that macroing wouldn’t be worthwhile with RoT in place?
In terms of hot spots, I have a soft spot for Covetous entrance. A lot of PKs that I thought were super badass would hang around the entrance on OSI. Also, I used to go there for server wars, and then when my server went down I’d quickly hop on another server with a new character and run to the entrance to go to that server war as well. It’s no coincidence that pretty much every server I start over on, I choose to go to the harpy room to get a feel for the game, and see if I can work my way up off the gold I get there.
Altered version of RoT. Probably shouldn’t call it RoT, since that gives the wrong impression.
name it “GoT” Gain over Time. lol
Well, it seems like it’s going to have to be something that’s not “RoT”, that’s for sure. People get riled up at the mention of it.
I fondly remember my time in Orc Valley north of Britain (serpents spine mountains). Grinding there mining and orc hunting to build up Str in the days when it look a lifetime to be able to get 60 Str needed for plate/halbards. I say a lifetime, I was on a dial-up connection 56K, and here in UK it cost a fortune (2p a minute) so I could only play about 2-4 hours at weekend, all week i couldn’t wait to get a chance to play UO. haha
Also loved Ice Island, had a house there with my mate.
btw this talk about adding lands, removing lands to concentrate population. I just think leave it be, if it aint broke don’t fix it. 99% of the people who will play IPY will be rabid fans from the golden age, and wouldnt be interested in a new/changed world…there’s other MMO’s for that. End of the day, if no one bothers playing and the worlds ends up being too big then it’s probably a sign to call it a day anyway.
The whole point as far as i’m concerned with IPY is to try and get an authentic, decent populated server to re-live UO in without all the bullshit EA additions. So you should plan for a good healthy pop and be optimistic, otherwise it’ll be just another little player run shard and thus a failure anyway.
If we’re talking about a classic IPY ruleset, I completely agree. There isn’t a huge point in it being around if it isn’t real big.
If we’re talking about the new ruleset, I can honestly say I don’t care what the population is as long as I’m happy with the outcome.
Then the question is a guess, will I like the new ruleset?
Unknown!
..and what ruleset is going to be implemented?? New rule set or classic IPY ruleset?? I’m confused to be honest what the heck this project is….
Believe it or not – a King’s Quest IV remake.
And here’s me thinking it was a Leisure Suit Larry add-on, silly me!
I gave that serious thought.
oh and im for making boats uber expensive.
i always liked the idea of exploring places in ultima online when I was new, but everyone with 10k gold could get there and it wasnt much fun there after.
also possibly making it so you can’t mark runes on certain islands would be quite fun… boat wars… having to really sail to your house.
something to think about.
just a thought
you could make deciet the end game raid like WoW to ultima online…
unable to mark runes to the island… you have to sail there by boat which costs ton of gold, to enter the dungeon you would need a key you would have to loot from some other difficult monster with a low drop rate, and monsters inside being super hard with some huge reward at the end.
im stoned so dont mind me
Sounds fun to me. ;)
I don’t know what other people would think, but I’d think it was pretty interesting. ;)
Also, the market for silver weapons would go through the roof. ;)
See? That’s a great idea. And you guys make fun of ME when I post on drugs…
I think quantity is key.
Wrong. It’s always about quality.
The entire damn UO map holds that quality to me. I’d personally say that the forests around Yew, Yew itself, the Abbey, and Shame would be it for me.
Back on live servers (Catskills) I ended up doing a lot of heavy roleplaying. I have a lot of good UO memories that base themselves around Yew. The town was so splayed out that most people simply hung out around the abbey, but it was secluded enough to not have to deal with pretty much anyone but roleplayers.
This also extended way down to the Yew Orc Fort where Shadowclan hung out, then down the mountain pass and into shame.
Does anyone else have a ridiculously good memory of the UO world? Mine is pretty much impeccable… to this day I can still find my way pretty much anywhere.. I think I know Britannia better than I do my own state.