This article is complete garbage.  No objectiveness what so ever.

UO was the first commercially successful MMO.  When they made the game they didn't have any guide lines.  They had an idea and they went with it and did a great job of it.  Sure UO had it's fair share of problems, but so does every other MMO.  The difference is that every other MMO since UO has had commercially successful games to learn from.  UO made it and then someone liked the idea but not certain things and came up with EQ.  EQ made it big so most of the other game companies seem to have followed their lead as to what a MMO is.

While OSI got some things wrong with UO, and has continued to over the years, they also got A LOT right.  So few games have been able to recreate what was (and possibly still is) great about UO.  I've played a lot of MMO's and all of them combined don't have the content that UO has.  There is just more to do in UO than all the other MMOs I've played combined. (Everquest, Asheron's Call, Shadowbane, Horizons, City of Heroes, World of Warcraft, Eve Online, Lord of the Ring Online)  And it achieves that feat without a single quest in place.

So many games out there and no game promotes a community like UO did.  Only one game (Shadowbane) has matched UO in character development.  Most other game the characters are so cookie cutter it's rediculous.  WoW for example, each class has a set of different trait trees.  If you mix from different trees you're gimping yourself.  There are only two or three trees to choose from and your character will be exactly the same as every other character that is the class and tree.  All you have to differentiate yourself is the gear you grind for, and even then everyone is grinding for the same gear.

Now UO has problems, it's always been one thing or another.  But so does every other game.  There are games I may have liked better (well one) but no game I've played really creates a submersive world like UO.  And as to the casual player comment no game is more casual player friendly than UO.  Sure there is A LOT to learn about the game, but that's half of what the game is learning and exploring.

I've heard Star Wars Galaxies worked off a similar model as UO but with a smaller scope and more problems.  Other than that I've only seen a few games really try to emulate parts of what makes UO still such a unique game in a genre flooded with single direction EQ clones.

Pirates of the Burning Sea on the other hand sounds like the developers have taken notice to what UO (and many other games) did right and did wrong.  Where so many other developers seem to try and just improve on previous designs Flying Labs seems to have realized what the magic behind the UO experience was/is and seems to be trying to recreate that magic while creating a uniquely design game.  A few other games look to be straying from the pack of clones, most notably Age of Conan and Warhammer Online, but Pirates of the Burning Sea is where my hopes lay for keeping the MMO genre from falling stagnant.

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Originally posted by Ake_Gamer

No insult intended GP, but your respnse to my post is off topic. I specifically aknowledged that AC was not perfect and let's not derail this thread. What it is about is the development of a community and how factions(most currently are in PvP environments, with the exception of WoW and the community race to open Ahn Quiraj gates) interact given that the players have the power to develop or influence the actual factions.

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No insult taken.  Though I don't think my posts are off topis.  The article and thread aren't just about factions creating a community, it's about how all systems within a game should interact to help a community develop and flourish.  I wasn't trying to insult a game you mentioned.  I'm just discussing what some games got right and what they did wrong.

I'm just of the opinion that UO made great strides on the full persistant world I think a game needs to be to have a really solid community.  Also it seems to me that few companies have learned from what UO did right and wrong.  Though I've hear SWG is of a similar design, I haven't played that one.

I'm just hoping that PotBS works out like I'm starting to think it will.

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Originally posted by Ake_Gamer

As I read this article I thought back to the Darktide server of Asheron's Call 1. This open PvP sandbox resulted in 3 factions: the random player killers RPK, Anti-RPKers or "Anti" and those neutral to either camp. The RPKs killed because the game mechanics allowed them to, the Anti's killed the RPKs as they didn't believe in random kills but the need for order and rationale in the killing. The neutrals straddled the fence and chose sides as they saw fit as opportunists.

So the point I'm making here is that the community development has been given to the players in the past. Whether or not that was successful is up to interpretation. AC is still around, but the player base has diminished over the years for a variety of reasons I'll not bring up here.

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The think with AC is that it was really just a PvE game with PvP thrown in on one server.  As much as it seems logical for game companies to make a PvP server of their PvE game, it just doesn't work.  PvP created as an after thought just offsets the way the game was designed.  If a game is going to include PvP it needs to be a part of the game from the very beginning; every system in the game needs to be designed with it in mind.  Every system in a game needs to effect and balance one another.  AC had some very solid concepts.  The monarchy system was a great idea and suited the rest of the game well.  Character development decent and the spell econemy system would have been great if it worked out like planned.  But the game was too limited.  Crafting made as an after thought didn't really effect the rest of the game much and imo the game wouldn't have been all that different without it.  The housing system I think actually hurt the community of the game.  It didn't have much reason for monarchies to interact with each other and giving monarchies a place to go seperated from everyone else lessened that.

I put a good amount of time into AC and enjoyed, but AC didn't have the forethought as to what an MMO should be, that UO did.  A persistant world where you can take on as many roles as possible in that world that someone would be able to take if that were the real world.  Granted that though you could be just about anything in UO, there were a lot of things you could do that nobody did do, cause it wasn't as fun as it sounded.  The chance of  PvP anywhere any time definitely improved the community of the game, perhaps even was the main cause for there even being a community when the game first launched.  Most people I know that played UO feel that the game because a lot less of a community and a lot less fun when they created the mirror world where you were safe from PvP.

My thoughts exactly.  I think the game to do it best is still Ultima Online.  Just like every other MMO already released it has it's fair share of major problems, but it's by far the most versatle game as far as your options of what to do.  The graphics are dated but the rest of the game's technology has come so far since '97.  There is so much that EA could do with that game if they put the money and effort into some major redesign on a few things.  But the game is still slowly growing so they're happy with just standard updates.

Shadowbane excels in certain areas.  There are a few aspects of the game that I say beats all others.  Just that other aspects of the game are just completely lacking.  The game has come a long long way from what it was at launch though.  The dev team has been moving the game in the right direction for some time now.  Hopefully with the recent company changes they'll have the resources available to do what they need to bring back the lasting fun this game can provide.

For all of those who agreed with this article like I do, I suggest you takea  good look at Pirates of the Burning Sea.  At first this was just another game on the list of MMOs I was minorly interested in.  I didn't look into it all that much because it was a pirate game and I couldn't think of there being all that much to do in such.  Then I read the very in depth dev log on the system they have for the economy.  After that spiked my interests I read more on the other systems with in the game and how they all effected each other.  Everything that was/is great about UO I see those concepts in PotBS.  A very community centric game that at the same time doesn't force you to be a part of the community.  Though it does force you to participate in it.  So if you're the loner type you can still do your own thing.  Just it won't be like other games where the game becomes more like a single player game that other people happen to be in also.   If you're a loner type you're still in the world of the game, you're just a loner in that world.  I don't seem to be able to articulate my point very well right now, but take a good look at the info available in the dev logs and I think you'll see what I mean; and hopefully get as excited about the game as I am.