I wonder how many of the people that want a remade UO have taken a serious look at Mortal Online?

FPV and FPS aside.
Yeah.
UO.

Good article.

I disagree with a lot on your list because it is based on nostalgia, rather than practicality or even fun gameplay.

City of Heroes just got the remake you asked for, and even mentioned, in the article. It's called Champions Online. That is the closest thing you'll ever see to a City of Heroes remake. The secret identity idea sounds cool, if you're making a movie. But practically, in a game, secret identities would be very boring for players. "Hey look, I'm a regular Joe who has no powers right now!" Does that really require a game? Wouldn't it be easier to just turn off your computer and go to work? Ah, the game we fondly call Reality!

Asheron's Call and Anarchy Online MMOs could work with huge overhauls. So these first two on your list were the most practical targets for remakes. But these remakes couldn't compete in today's market if they were too true to form of the originals. It's not 2002 anymore. You have to make a game that can compete with WoW if you want a blockbuster, and even that's not a guarantee that your title will be popular or sustainable.

I know it's been years, but Dark Age of Camelot really doesn't need a remake yet. They need to let WAR burn off some more steam and crank through some more expansions before being truly capable of pushing out a worthy Dark Age of Camelot remake.

As for Ultima Online, a remake would simply require so many changes that it would fail to be an Ultima Online remake. You wouldn't be able to call it that. You would have to call it, "A game based on ideas from Ultima Online." If you really re-made Ultima Online like you're saying, it would fail faster than Tabula Rasa. This pick on your list was a pure nostalgia pick. There's a reason nobody has copied UO.

Well, to this day I still am a fan of UO (that is I still play MMORPG's looking for the next UO), it is the MMORPG that started it for me and many of my friends as well as our almost 12 year old Guild now, and we played it the longest from any other, too (5 years)...since then, only SWG was able to keep us playing form more than 6 months or a year, and that is of course Pre-NGE, which many of us called UO2.

I agree with UO being #1 on this list.

Not sure about City of heroes, really In the list thought, the rest has merit.

With today's technology thought, a true UO2 could really be a blast, with a trully huge Britannia, vast wilderness, forests, plains, deserts, Silver Spine Mountain Ranges and Beautifully Crafted Thematic Cities, and Virtue Shrines, not to mention the Oceans and Islands.

With the ability to construct Houses and Towers and Castles, so player run organizations can create their own Cities, full of adventure seekers, warriors, and many and various artisans, from shepperds to carpenters cookers to alchemists, tailors and blacksmiths, bards and town cryers!

A Gate system connecting all Britannian cities just like the original would be great, that way people always have the option of quick or slow travel through the dangerous wilderness.

Player owned Vendors and Shops are a must just like the original.

Ships like the original, would be great only that this time it would be in 3D and the Oceans can really be vast with many various types of Ships that can be armed for some interesting Naval battles.

Chat bubbles all the way, no general chat or even a chat box (guilds could have guild voice) for a trully regional feeling of immersion, plenty of emotes, and public ereas where people can stage plays or form dancing or music bands, set up shop for player run Bazzars (just like we used to do in the original).

Great, dark mysterious and dangerous dungeons.

Added to that Dimensional Portals that can transport the player to different landscapes through the aetherial void could be a nice Addon Bonus.

I would just love to see places like Britain, and Vesper and Yew and Serpent's Hold, and many others.

Just a few ideas that are still fresh after 12 years :)

Oh yeah one more thing...Full Loot Death PvP has to be part of it (with the appropriate economy as the original..no 8 hour grinds to make a sword like some games today out there), however...NO Twitch First person Implementation (Darkfall proved to me it will just not work it is also why I am not looking forward to Mortal Online)...Twitch is good for Space games and Flight Simulators...for an MMORPG 3rd Person with Dice rolls is the only way in my opinion (actually I would go as far as say implement the core combat mechanics of WoW, it was the only good thing of that game for me).

Originally posted by EricDanie

 An UO remake... I completely agree on your #1.

How the hell no one has copied it, and how the hell EA hasn't decently remade it (sure, there were several attempts, all canceled before release) baffles me. It's like they don't want the MMO genre to stray away from the Themepark and to go back to Sandbox, because that's what a decent UO remake would cause to the MMO genre.

Sometimes I wonder if developers are just afraid to remake UO and risk sullying its divine status.  Have the courage to try it :)

Yes there should not be any fear there!

Actually they can use some of the best elements of the most successful Themepark game out there (WoW) and make the best Sandbox game there can be :)

My list:

1.) UO - no doubt. 

I am in total agreement with you on that one and wait/hope for the day it happens.  It's a UO thing.  If I have to explain it, you wouldn't understand.  What more needs to be said.

2.) AC - another one I agree with. 

AC and UO were/are my two most favorite MMO's of all time.  For those saying AC already had a re-do.  You obviously have played neither game to make such a statement.  The only thing similar about AC1and AC2 was the name, and the setting/lore.  Other than that, they were nothing alike, and I mean nothing.  No two games could be at such opposite ends of the spectrum like AC1 and AC2 were.

3.) AO - would love to see this one as well.

The game was an absolute mess at release without a doubt, but eventually turned into a great game once Funcom got the issues worked out.  Just a sidenote to the OP, Keepers and Shades were added with the Shadowlands expansion, much after the original came out.  I'm sure you know that, but the article struck me as suggesting they've been there all along...yeah, slow night for me if that's all I can nit pick about, lol!

On a sidenote while I'm talking about Funcom.  I am really looking forward to The Secret World.  Funcom seems to have the vibe on the Post Apoc, CyberPunk, Sci-Fi genre.

Those are the 3 I'd like most to see redone modern style.

Honorable mention for me:

SWG - bring it back to where it was shortly after release, pre-holo-grind.....it all started going down hill after the whole holocron crap IMO.  Before that was some of the best next gen sandbox gaming I have been a part of.  The crafting to this day was the best I have ever seen in an MMO.

Realms of Torment - no really!  Had that game been able to deliver what it had promised from the beginning it would have been an awesome game.  I think it could be pulled off today by a decent developer.  Leave anyone even remotely related to the development of the original far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far away from here and the new development though, lol.

As for the OP's other picks.

DAOC- For whatever reason I was never able to get into this game.  I tried multiple times.  The PvE character progression seemed boring to me after UO and AC1, and the PvP paled in comparison to AC's Darktide.  Personal opinion of course.

CoH- never got into this game or even tried.  It just didn't interest me.  That being said, the game seems fairly young to be on this list IMO.

 Anarchy Online has been getting facelift in the works since before AoC came out, but haven't seen much status of it in awhile.  So no telling with those guys what's going on.  they showed some video footage on their main website before, which looked really nice.  But i think it would be much better if they just re-designed the game with a good physics engine, UI and overall graphics engine it would be awesome.  

Ultima did have a new MMO coming out a long time ago, but the game got canned for whatever reason... It was being made with the latest Unreal engine etc...  supposedly a little bit real time.  Guess Tabula Rasa was more important lol.  

All i know is i'm still waiting for the REAL Asheron's Call sequel.  

Oh and don't forget that Asheron's Call is awesome also because it uses a Tinkering system on items in the game rather than a crafting system.  So you can modified random items found in the game to make them better.  I really think that system is way more fun than any modern crafting system.

Great list, especially agree about Asheron's Call. It has an amazing world which actually feels alive unlike the theme parks churned out these days. You could write several novels on everything that has happened in the AC world in the last decade, most MMORPGs feel so static and flat by comparison. It also has the most addictive loot system I've come across. To be honest if it wasn't for the fact that A) it looks so old now and B) it's empty of, you know, people - I'd still want to play it.

Yes AC2 failed but AC2 strayed alot from what made the original so unique so in the end not only couldn't compete with it's competitors but couldn't even compete with it's predecessor.

A true sequel/re-make/whatever would be brilliant and even my gamer friends who hate mmorpgs these days would likely sign up for it.

I’m actually somewhat shocked so see so many DAOC2 supporters. Mainly because it was such a niche game and it existed before the big MMO rush. Most people I talk to in WoW and WAR have only heard of it or tried it once. I think the big thing that also made it appealing was that it was 1.Indie at the time and 2. Didn’t cater to laziness. You remember the long waits for teleporting when you’d be forced to talk to strangers or lost in the housing district? Sure some people would think that is a waste of time...but in the scheme of things it made of kind of…appealing. I think the ability to set your own time tables as an indie company also helped Mythic.They didn't have to cater to laziness! They didn’t have to cater to all age groupss and market their game to “get rich quick” mentality. On the big business side you do. The more wide its appeal the more dumbed down it will get. Everything is instant gratifications which = more profit. I bounce between WoW, Age of Conan, WAR, and Lotro just trying to recapture a little bit of that nostalgia that made Dark Age so alternative. My list:
1. UO
2. Daoc
3. SWG
4. AC
 

Originally posted by risenbones

Shadowbane isn't on the list because it's already been remade.  The remake is called Darkfall.

As to the article well yes thats a pretty good list and some decent reasons for doing it.  Job well done really.

Wrong.  DF is nothing like SB --lightyears apart. Only simularity is open looting and even that is different in both.  Try again.

Originally posted by demongoat

 

as for SB, i have to really ask why people liked it?

i didn't find it the least bit interesting and the concept of player-run cites seemed only good on paper and never worked in practice

i've heard the horror stories from when the game started and how basically it basically turned into one guild controlling the server.

thats besides the hacking that went on, it was almost as bad as darkfall.

What game did you play?  Or should I say, did you play it  or not since you contradict yourself here.  Sb is nothing like Darkfall.  That comparison shows me you have no clue.  I have heard the loch ness monster exists so it must be true (insert eye-roll here).

Shadowbane was by far the best adrenaline rush I've ever had playing an MMO.  And yes the player run cities worked well in the game.  You built your nation from the ground up, made alliances and had to be vigilant for threats from your enemies, allies who could turn on you, and spies from within. The game had the best political intrigue of any MMO...it was never static.  Something wild was always going on. 

Yes it had bad problems from the dreaded SB.exe error to duping and other exploits were rampant, but the game is now runnning  under new management and most of the old problems (finally) are history.   The game is well past it's prime, but needs a sequel and should be represented.

good list. However, I'd rather play a DAoC 2 than a UO 2.  I know it sounds blasphemistic (is that even a word lol?), but I could only ever get that "Keep Burning", "Tree-huggin hibbie slaughtering", "CC is OP!" rush from one game, DAoC.  No other game has even come close.  I'm more suprised that someone hasn't come out with another 3 realm pvp game.  Everyone always seems to only do two...and as the list says, it just doesn't work out well.

Don't get my wrong, I loved UO.  Perhaps a UO - DAoC mix, with the sandboxiness (another made up word lol) of UO with the 3 realm mass combat of DAoC...uh oh, I think I just wet my self!

That was a pretty decent list and I've tried most of those games.  While I've never played UO, the amount of posts I hear from ex-UOers longing for a game to be a decent inheritor of their game makes me wonder why there hasn't been a UO2 yet.

However, with all of the MMORPGs out there now and out of all of them that I've tried, I don't think any remake will be any great success unless it offers something NEW!  All of the games out there contain the exact same mechanics. Combat consists of pulling a mob, burning its health down, healing your group's health. Basically...that's it! And combat is 80% of what players do! How about walking down a dungeon with your group knowing that mobs maybe be waiting in the shadows ahead UNSEEN ready to ambush you?

Tradeskilling? It's usually crafting which consists of getting some ingredients, putting them in their slots, pushing a button and repeat ad nauseam. It's not actually "crafting" but merely just "producing" (Horizons may be different, idk).

Character customization = making your eyebrows longer?? lol Gimme a break! How about character customization like "Obesity: +5 str, +20 charge, -10 speed" and balloons your avatar's middle? Or "Claustrophobia: -5 to all skills in dungeons" that gives you extra customization points to spend on gaining other skills. How about a Read skill that lets you read signs in cities or read that scroll that your group found in the dungeon telling you about the poison pit in front of the next door?

I'm ranting now so I'll stop. My point is that no MMORPG will be a breakout game or WoW killer or anything more than a mediocre success until it BREAKS FREE of previous games instead of just REMAKING them.

 after reading your cry fest about not understanding the crat lass in ao im left with nothing but confusion.

as an editor on this site, im just dumbfounded about your bits on anarchy online.  you went normal wow laden mmo fanboy on us.  

boo hoo.  i dont like that they called one of the pet classes (and a damn good one at that) the same name as a politician.

wow dude, after reading your articles for years.  you lost all credibility with me on that one.

mental note, take everything dana writes from now on with a grain of salt.

seriously..... 

Couple of things:

“Bad launches are no longer tolerated?” Replace that with every launch is now a Beta but that’s what players have got used to.

To the last poster Bureaucrat’s are not politicians they are administrators. You could describe a politician as bureacratic but then you could describe a receptionst as bureacratic too.

My list:

1. AC
2. UO
3. DAOC

Originally posted by brenth

next on my list would be EVE ONLINE   this game has its little nitch   ind is  prety serious at the economy  but its still old and lacking in many reguards   its planets and systems are nice but procedurally generic  there for the most part  just scenery and have no play in the game  no fighting to claim them, no ground battles or orbital bombardment  and no planetary resources (the commodities are abstract creations)   the universe is lager 5000 + 2500 systems now i think  but there is no insintive to explore  if anything  its far too lethal to even try  because  they have HARD CORE FREE FOR ALL PVP  which is a casual players NOMANS LAND 

My suggestion would be to update and improve the solar systems and add semi unique space objects    overhaul their painfully stark misson system,, and  limit PVP so casual players have more freedom   EVE2 would probably exceed 1 million players in a month or so. the biggest reason im not playing EVE right now is that  PVP is not how I want to enjoy eve   and you cant excape it ieven in empire space they will "WARDEC" on non-combat  corps  which effectivly destroys them  in short order.

there has allready been a mass exodus from EVE  into LIMBO   and when STAR TREK ONLINE goes live   if its half as good as players expect  the current EVE population will drop by as much as 1/3 or more leaving the hard core PVP jerks to go play with themselves. 

 

"its planets and systems are nice but procedurally generic" new overhaul in less then 2 months

[the planets are] "for the most part just scenery and have no play in the game no fighting to claim them" "no planetary resources" new planetary system comes in H2 2010 with territorial control and resources

"no ground battles or orbital bombardment" DUST 514 expected late 2010 early 2011

EVE doesn't need a v2, since its evolving faster then new sequel could be developed from scratch. It's getting new graphics every 12 months, new game aspects every 6 months.

What I want is UO2. I want, I Want, I WANT, I WNAT!

Nice list and while i haven't played UO or AC i did try AC2 for a bit but didn't like it much.

Currently i have 3 active accounts in anarchy online and one in everquest, compared to WoW or AoC no quest markers all over the place is very nice for a change, not sure a remake would work though, for me everquest is my first mmo and that makes it very special, AO i started playing back in mid 2001 then took a year long break, i play it on and off and enjoy it as it is.

I know that a lot of people may agree with you on a few of these but just like a bunch of the comments say here - What were you thinking by putting City of Heroes up there.  I thought you made a list of games that were so great they should be remade to today's standards. CoH had some fun decent graphics but doesn't belong in that list at all. Definitely would of put UO as #1, the rest is a little blurry for me but honestly would of put Shadowbane in that list. Their character building system along with the skill tree system allowed you to create characters in a lot of different ways. I see a lot of systems that copied or tried to copy or make similar systems but fell far from it. You didn't mention everquest as one of them. There was everquest 2 but that was their attempt at making something new versus trying to keep the same formula and keep the hardcore epic feel and just updating it better graphics - if the systems were to be updated, i'd update them with very very small changes so that it doesn't lose the feel of the game. I've never played AC after reading what you wrote it made me want to try it atleast. Daoc - played it for a long time - i'd put it at about the end of the list or not at all considering there are others that are much better suited to be there (like I said shadowbane and everquest). Blizzard is working on Diablo 3 but they are changing a lot about the game that made diablo 2 so fun to play. That was more of an action game but came before a lot of others and played like an RPG and still to this day has tons of players still playing it - The character building system in that has always kept it fun and fresh even so many years later, would love to see that remade, revamped, redone graphically but not so much on the actual game system changes. Just my opinion.

Why bother with remakes? I loved AC when it first came out. Played it for years. I don't want to play it again. I played it already. I played M59 already. I played all (well, most of) these games already.

Come up with some new goddamn ideas and make them for fun before profit. That's what made these good in their day and what makes some of them persist where garbage like Warhammer and Conan crash and burn before their year anniversary comes along. Remakes are for uncreative d-bags and people who can't let go of their teddy bears. 

That aside, it's not like bad launches aren't tolerated; hell, every game that comes out anymore has a trash launch and there is a legion of frothing supporters making excuses and justifications - where AC, one of the oldest games on this list right here, had a more or less flawless launch by comparison to damn near anything released in the last couple years.

Originally posted by cerebrix

 after reading your cry fest about not understanding the crat lass in ao im left with nothing but confusion.

 

as an editor on this site, im just dumbfounded about your bits on anarchy online.  you went normal wow laden mmo fanboy on us.  

 

boo hoo.  i dont like that they called one of the pet classes (and a damn good one at that) the same name as a politician.

 

wow dude, after reading your articles for years.  you lost all credibility with me on that one.

 

mental note, take everything dana writes from now on with a grain of salt.

 

seriously..... 

I didn't like Anarchy Online so I have no credibility? Seems a bit extreme.

I'll admit flat out that I played it a bit around Beta and launch, never got hooked, and never went back for any significant, non-professional amount of time. 

The fact is, AO is one of the rare games out there where I had an organic experience that is actually vaguely representative of what real people do. I wasn't covering it, I had no professional responsibilities in it. I think I worked at IGN at the time, but not on AO in any way and I was probably 16/17 years old ;)

So I picked it up out of my own interest and with minimal research based likely off banner ads or minimum amount of looking at fansites/official sites. If they don't like a game early or it disappoints them in some way (and yes, the Bureaucrat thing may be harsh, but it was what went through my brain at the time), they don't come back.

It's why there is limited value to improving a game over the years post launch, or even upgrading them entirely. You need a proper launch to get a lot of people to think about you a second time.

Originally posted by Battlepoet

Why bother with remakes? I loved AC when it first came out. Played it for years. I don't want to play it again. I played it already. I played M59 already. I played all (well, most of) these games already.

Come up with some new goddamn ideas and make them for fun before profit. That's what made these good in their day and what makes some of them persist where garbage like Warhammer and Conan crash and burn before their year anniversary comes along. Remakes are for uncreative d-bags and people who can't let go of their teddy bears. 

That aside, it's not like bad launches aren't tolerated; hell, every game that comes out anymore has a trash launch and there is a legion of frothing supporters making excuses and justifications - where AC, one of the oldest games on this list right here, had a more or less flawless launch by comparison to damn near anything released in the last couple years.

 

Please see Anarchy Online's launch.

Any game that did what they did these days wouldn't have survived. They slowly turned it around, and it still hurt them for years, but AO went on to be a successful product despite one of the worst launches on record.

Originally posted by Dana 

I didn't like Anarchy Online so I have no credibility? Seems a bit extreme.

I'll admit flat out that I played it a bit around Beta and launch, never got hooked, and never went back for any significant, non-professional amount of time. 

The fact is, AO is one of the rare games out there where I had an organic experience that is actually vaguely representative of what real people do. I wasn't covering it, I had no professional responsibilities in it. I think I worked at IGN at the time, but not on AO in any way and I was probably 16/17 years old ;)

So I picked it up out of my own interest and with minimal research based likely off banner ads or minimum amount of looking at fansites/official sites. If they don't like a game early or it disappoints them in some way (and yes, the Bureaucrat thing may be harsh, but it was what went through my brain at the time), they don't come back.

It's why there is limited value to improving a game over the years post launch, or even upgrading them entirely. You need a proper launch to get a lot of people to think about you a second time.

no, more like because you write the most biased, one sided, fluffed up articles to meet your own views and ignore all the rest.  You state you worked at IGN?  I sure hope it was in the mail room.  As a professional in the Journalism field I'll say you are much more suited to letters to the editor writing then real articles. :P

Originally posted by Dana

Originally posted by Battlepoet

Why bother with remakes? I loved AC when it first came out. Played it for years. I don't want to play it again. I played it already. I played M59 already. I played all (well, most of) these games already.

Come up with some new goddamn ideas and make them for fun before profit. That's what made these good in their day and what makes some of them persist where garbage like Warhammer and Conan crash and burn before their year anniversary comes along. Remakes are for uncreative d-bags and people who can't let go of their teddy bears. 

That aside, it's not like bad launches aren't tolerated; hell, every game that comes out anymore has a trash launch and there is a legion of frothing supporters making excuses and justifications - where AC, one of the oldest games on this list right here, had a more or less flawless launch by comparison to damn near anything released in the last couple years.

 

Please see Anarchy Online's launch.

Any game that did what they did these days wouldn't have survived. They slowly turned it around, and it still hurt them for years, but AO went on to be a successful product despite one of the worst launches on record.

Yup, its launch earned it its Nick name : Anarchy Offline!

For Those that wonder why an UO2 was never made since it seems from many fans that it would have been a hit.

The answer is that Origin systems did start the devellopment of UO2, but EA shut it down saying that they would rather concentrate on 1 MMORPG..and not split their customer base.

You can find some Preview videos of UO2 on Youtube as testimony of this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWumht6AuZo

There is also a Wikipedia article about it.

So yeah...nothing is impossible, I just hope the stars align for this one.

Like many, I agree with everything but CoH.  I don't feel that it can draw again if it were remade.

I'd gladly play any of the other 4 though it they turned out the way you wrote them up.  I'd probably end up playing a remake of DAOC the most though.