Ultima Online

"Why? It used to be good!"

Ultima Online, easily the most long-lived MMORPG of all time. You'll see above I gave it a 3. Why? While the system isn't the main problem, it's the way UO society has evolved over time, in addition with the incredibly poor choices that were made to ''improve'' the game.
Well, time is wasting, so now we must move onto the popular ''category review''!

Gameplay: (5/10)

UO prides itself on being incredibly free, so you can play a smith, a miner, an alchemist, mage, warrior, what have you. If it exists, you can play it (except for undeniably powerful demigod, yet that still can be debated). You can buy the most menial items to make the game seem more realistic. You can even sit down in a bar with a friend, bust out a chess board, and play that all day. The options are limitless, and while this sounds promising, it's tedious beyond all reason.

Every building process requires nothing but rapid clicking. To mine, you double-click your pickaxe, then click some rocks. If it doesn't work, you try again. When you get ore, you double click it, and click on a forge. Repeat similar options for eternity for every skill.

Now onto skills: There are a multitude of skills, ranging from archery, to blacksmithing, to fishing, to swordsmanship, and many in between. They all have a percentile range from 0 to 100. When you begin, you are given 100 points to distribute among 2-3 skills.

Combat is held just like skills, except you need only click once, then your character will attack indefinitely until it dies, or you die, or it runs.

All in all, a very well-thought system, but very poorly executed.

Graphics: 2D: (7/10) 3D: (1/10)

2D: Graphics are outdated, but well designed, and beautiful. They look similar to Diablo's graphic style, as the view is at a slanted angle, and has well constructed models. Monsters even look menacing, people look pretty well-done. There's rarely any slowdown unless too many players are in a spot at one point. (Britain Bank)

3D: Oh dear God...big mistake on Origin's part. 3D is terrible looking. Ogres look like teddy bears, and people have the most unrealistic posture I've ever seen. It's impossible to tell why they designed it this way, and even greater question of why they even bothered to do it in the first place. With 3D, you'll experience intense lag at all times, even on the most advanced of computers, and you'll freeze up completely if more than 10 players are around.

Online World: (5/10)

They hardly changed the topography of UO over the years, and that was a good thing. The towns are still beautiful, caves are still dangerous but intense. Pre-set event locations like that are great in virtually every way.

Now, you noticed the 5? Good perception skills, as that's what I mean. Every inch of free land is taken up by houses. It's utterly annoying to zig-zag through them. If you hope you'll get your own house in the game, good luck, you'll have to play for several years, save up all your gold and pay it to an owner, and even then you'll probably just have a wonderful 1-room flat.

UO world has recently been split up into four worlds. Trammel, Feluca, Illshenar and Malas.

Trammel: No player-killing allowed, player-killers not allowed, peaceful and content place.

Felluca: Player-killing allowed. This place used to be rampant with player-killers. The original UO world. It's now deserted because of the heavy penalties imposed on PKing. Everyone here is either a rampant PK looking for a break, or someone visiting their house to refresh it and stock up on items.

Illshenar: The understudy of the worlds. It's actually a very exciting and dangerous place. There's much to do, much to see, and much to explore. The most interesting locations and monsters reside here. It's unfortunate that no player ever comes here unless it's to get away from it all, because it's easily the most well-done world.

Malas: The newest world with the release of Age of Shadows, it only has two cities and is fairly small, but has a huge wildlife and a new dungeon. A lot of players moved here to get away from the unchanging Trammel, and find it's still none-too interesting itself. If stick to the paths, you'll meet no monsters or anything at all for that matter but houses. I've met some incredible role-players here though.

All in all, the biggest mistake was the splitting of Trammel and Felluca in two. Felluca, the original world, became PK rampant, and so many players had to leave for fear of their player-run towns. Everyone else crowded Trammel, so no more player-run towns could return, destroying a good part of the UO community.

Online Community: (3/10)

Wow, everyone who plays is incredibly callous, they only care about money, exploiting bugs for rare, insanely useless items (Golden Coconuts, serve no purpose, cost several million). It's all an antique roadshow. While UO didn't promote this at first, they later added Veteran Awards, introducing statues into the game, which made it far worse.

Later, things seemed to get better, but they only got worse. Age of Shadows introduced a further intricate ''artifact'' system. This made things far worse than ever.

All in all, players have retreated into small groups of buyers and sellers, hunters and gatherers. The only true groups are guilds, which are now getting more and more sparse. I recently belonged to a guild known as the Guardians of Vesper, later renamed to House Leonhart, and their attempts to promote roleplaying and fellowship in an ONLINE game has kept me from losing all faith in it's players.

Should I buy this game?

I should answer with a resounding: NO! UO has recently stepped up it's online fee from $9.95 to $12.95. This is considerably more for newer, more advanced and well-done MMORPGs.

If you enjoy paying too much for a poor game that's become poorer by poor choices and anti-social players, then by all means, it's for you.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 07/29/03, Updated 07/29/03