A constantly improving virtual fantasy environment
Written: Feb 19 '00
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Pros: Flexible, updated regularly, awesome social setting
Cons: Anti-social types, customer service
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| magika's Full Review: Ultima Online |
This is by far the best massively online multiplayer game on the market today. Of course, that's only saying that it passes up two others, but it's still worth saying.
It's biggest high point is the flexibility that it allows the player. You pick your skills and build them up with practice. You can change your mind and let them drop in favor of building other skills instead. Whatever you want. You can be a hack and slash warrior type, a generic wizardly type, a combination of the two, or even a pure merchant. In fact, I so rarely see actual combat that my main character has no combat skills at all (but can craft any weapon or armor available).
Almost as important is the fact that the game keeps growing. The development team has done an excellent job of slowly eliminating the numerous bugs that plagued UO in the beginning. There are still quite a few out there, and new ones pop up now and again when new features are added (which is quite often), but it's happening less and less often as time goes by. The last few months have seen major client stability improvements, and several of the most elusive (and annoying) bugs have been eliminated.
The other major advantage to UO over anything else is the sheer flexibility of the social system. Guilds are more than a group of people who go kill monsters together. They're often a mixture of warriors and "support staff" such as scribes, smiths and other craftspeople. There are guild wars and politics everywhere. Personally, I play a merchant type (most of the time) and have gotten to know so many people that I now have more friends online than in Real Life. It's amazing.
Of course, the drawbacks are still there. Player killing is an aspect of the game, consensual or not. A peaceful miner can be jumped by a murderer at any time (well, any time that he's outside of town). Due to some changes a few months ago, this doesn't happen as often as it used to, but it still happens. On the other hand, it adds an element of risk and adventure to the game that just isn't available anywhere else. The monsters just don't provide the level of challenge that a hostile player creates. It's interesting that Everquest players complain about a player jumping you in UO and killing you without having much chance to fight back (if you're outmatched; my miner can fight back and usually win), but they don't seem to mind the fact that an Everquest monster that horribly outmatches you (in a newbie area, mind you) can jump you, kill you with no chance to fight back, you have no way to run away (the EQ monsters move as fast as you, but in UO you can usually get away from a pk with a little practice), and you lose experience for it to boot (the only drawback to UO death is the loss of a little fame, and possibly the equipment you were carrying). (Can you tell where my trouble has been in EQ?)
Player killing aside, there are some anti-social types in UO that still make life annoying. Mostly attitude problems, though, rather than rules mechanics issues. It would be nice to have more even enforcement of the harassment policies, and perhaps more strict harassment policies in general. I don't mind being jumped by four guys and killed (no worse than being jumped by a pair of dragons and killed, and that's happened plenty of times), but it's very frustrating when they laugh over your corpse and gloat that "U sUk!" Not much that a game designer can do about it, though.
Which brings up the last drawback to Ultima Online. The customer service level really leaves a lot to be desired. The GM staff is excellent, but not numerous enough, and too bound by poorly-thought policy. The counselor staff (advice people, without actual game-affecting power) are also great people, but could use a more extensive knowledge base to work with to solve problems (there is no formal searchable knowledge base for them to use at all right now). The interest staff (IGMs, Seers and Elders; people who design quests and such) are being trained en masse for a major rampup, but it should have happened two years ago. Mostly the people who decide the policy need to have the stick pulled out of their backside. For example, when a documented bug causes a verifiable loss of game resources, those game resources still cannot be replaced. They're too worried about abuse, and forget that customers still want to be cared for.
Overall, though, the game is extremely well designed, has excellent mechanics and is horribly addictive. All of its drawbacks are more than made up for by the constant addition of new features along with the knowledge that the drawbacks are being actively worked on. And the social aspect gets you hooked. Really hooked. I'd recommend it to anyone, as long as you're not going to be one of those anti-social types that I mentioned above. ;-)
Recommended:
Yes
Version Played: Retail
Operating System: Windows
CPU: Intel Celeron
CPU Speed (MHz): 201-300
RAM (MB): 128
Graphics Card Family: 3dfx Voodoo 3
Best Played With/Intended For: Multiplayer
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Epinions.com ID:
magika
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Member: Wes Contreras
Location: Portland, OR
Reviews written: 47
Trusted by: 16 members
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