"We are investigating the problem. We’ve got a fix on the test server right now. Knock wood."

Test server? Experience suggests for several mmos, that's the one we're playing on....

Originally posted by Nephaerius

Man, why is everyone so bitter about this game? 

 

For me, because it could, and should, have been SO much better than the emasculated product thet got released. Quite why they are only now realising there were lessons to be learned from DAOC really baffles me......

Interesting situation.

I'd hope MMORPG are pushing very hard for an interview with EA/Bioware/Mythic to get an explanation of what is going on here, since it's of interest and concern to a lot of mmo players, particularly current and prospective UO players. But on past history, EA will mainly want to cover up any mistakes and will try ignore this until it gets forgotten about.....

This may just be the worst organised PR activity and press release ever by EA...

Neither the link given in the press release, or the one given by the writer of the article, lead to a page with ANY information about 'Call To Arms' for UO.

Of the features listed as coming in 'Call To Arms'

- Event Moderators have been active on all shards for almost 2 years - it's not new.

- The PvP 'arena' structures appeared in-game a few days ago - they are hopelessly bugged at the moment, large areas of the floor 'trap' people, the walls of the arena block movement for players but all the game mobs can target you, and they walk through the walls to hit you, without finding them any impediment at all.

- The PvP system for the arenas, so people can actually fight in them, is not yet active.

- Quite what currently retired players will see as an 'incentive' of new tokens for advanced characters is escapes me, since if you are not a current player you need to pay to reactivate your account, then buy a token from the GameCodes store to scrap an existing skillset on a character and get the new template... so you pay quite a bit in order to have a partially complete new character. If you are wanting to come back for the PvP changes, that means a lot of time training up those essential top-end skill points or you will die, a lot, to the characters who already have the skills and equipment at top level.

And this is 'active' from 5 August? As a current player, let me state clearly - NO IT IS NOT. Anyone signing up now expecting to see this stuff in game is going to be mightily ticked off when so much of it simply is not there....

But always remember Justin, one reason there is no Terris page as such on Wikipedia is because fans like you didn't write one....

There are 'incidental' links referring to it, such as the mentions in this page -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Barnett_%28video_game_designer%29

which actually links to the 'official' Legends of Terris page

But for all it's weaknesses - and there are plenty - something NOT being on Wikipedia is more likely to be because us people didn't put it there than any other reasons..... but just to be clear, I reckon anyone using Wikipedia as a sole source for anything is very, very silly..

'Community Manager'. Interesting title. However, I don't particularly feel like being 'managed' by a company I pay for their products, so it's not off to a good start.

It's not really the job of the company to 'manage' their customers - and that's what these people are.  Managing expectations, managing the proper flow of information, fair enough. But implicit in the term 'Community Manager' is that the company wants that bunch of customers to be something - but what, exactly, are they being 'managed' into?

IIf an organisation wants to 'manage' me, they can give me a contract and put me on the payroll. Otherwise, what they really need are good customer relations, but you can only have that if you regard those customers as a partner in making the product a success. That has the awkward problem built in that us darn people just seem not to be happy with the too often sub-standard service, lousy information flow and PR spin they are being sold. Every mmo company is happy to pay lip-service to that 'partnership', though - shame so few, if any, are prepared to spend the money and invest the time needed to make it genuine.

Originally posted by Demz2

When in Galactus's earth did Mythic start running UO?  Think you must be mistaken.

Months, if not years, back...

 http://www.mythicentertainment.com/

They run those three - try the one on the right.... there was quite a long saga about how EA wanted to drop UO, but Mark Jacobs persuaded them to let Mythic run it when they were absorbed into EA -  who wanted DAOC a bit and WAR a lot.

Originally posted by ste2000

Let's see how it goes, but let's remember that the current CEO of EA was the founder of Bioware which only makes quality games........

CEO of EA is John S. Riccitiello - never had much to do with setting up BioWare that I know of!

Of the BioWare founders, Ray Muzyka is "Group General Manager" for RPGs and MMOs, Greg Zeschuk is "Group Creative Officer" for the RPG/MMO 'studio group'.

Interesting...

Reminded me of  those mmos that were good games, designed by people with understanding of the 'mmo' mindset needed to keep hold of players, which subsequently plummeted in subscribers when taken over by a games company used to the model of  'sell them the shiny new game we have, don't worry about too much bug fixing, development or support,  just do enough to keep them quiet until the next shiny new game we can sell them comes out and we're fine'....

Originally posted by SgtFrog

Most servers are in Japan if I remember correctly, about 60% of them are.
Anyway it’s always good to see an old mmorpg doing so well.

 

Your memory is misleading you slightly... 13 server clusters in the US, 8 Japan, 2 Korea,  2 Europe,  1 Taiwan, 1 Australia.

Originally posted by Dana

Mythic's Tim Cotton took......

Ahem. Think you'll find it's Cotten, not Cotton...

Originally posted by Draco91

The only reason I haven't tried this game yet is because I'm afraid I'd be mostly alone. If it had a bigger population, I would so be a part of it.

Have a look round some of the server-specific forums out there (I'd suggest Stratics as a good start), and post in one of the forums that's fairly active and likely to have a reasonable connection speed to your physical location and fits your timezone. I can pretty much guarantee you'll be welcomed, a bunch of people will be more than happy to meet you in-game, help you get started and get you involved in their activities.

The only warnings I'd give - it's a hard game to learn from scratch, although it's well worth the effort it can be intimidating at first - but a bunch of other players will help get past those problems. Customer support from EA is woefully poor, so if you run into issues your best bet, again, is to ask other players.

Since currently there's 14 days free play, allowing you to try out most aspects of the game and see if it's for you, give it a try!

Originally posted by Jairoe03

Wouldn't this appear to be narrowminded thinking in itself on a concept based on an open mindset? I'm coming to think more and more "sandboxes" released are going to carry elements from the theme park mindset that do seem appealing and why not? There are good things that can carry over and as Eric has indirectly pointed out, MMORPG's regardless of theme-park or sandbox carry universal similarities within the MMORPG realm. Why can't a game without levels and open-ended skillset have an "end game" (perhaps you need to have so much combat skills and mining skills to mine incredibly hard to acquire ore in dangerous territory) or quest lines to follow that may not reward EXP but there's plenty of other things that can be used as reward (money is great last time I checked). These are just things I'm throwing out there, but would love to see the reactions to some of these questions.

I'd argue a 'sandbox' is more defined by what it does not limit than what it does, and some of those limits are more implicit in the 'game culture' than explicit in the skills sets and 'Terms and Conditions'.

The concept of 'end game' is a tricky one though - for some players, an mmorpg is (admittedly in a pretty limited way)  an alternate 'life',  and opinions vary greatly if either the 'artificial' or 'real' life should have a neatly defined 'end game'.

Problems come in with, to use your example, areas where you need high skills to go somewhere, or high mining skills for a particular ore. In the real world, people go to extremely dangerous places out of a sense of adventure and exploration, or to be known as the explorer/discoverer of something, or for profit from what they think is there - the latter is especially true for the 'rare mineral extraction'. But those are not ends in themselves, they translate into the joy of the experience, fame for the achievement, fortune from the profits - but they are not the end of the 'game'.

By advertising certain areas as the 'most difficult, greatest reward sources'  there is an automatic implied challenge in there - and given much of the audience is competetive-minded gamers, it's bound to  appeal - that this is where the 'best' players are to be found, and thus qualifying to be there and thrive becomes an aim in and of itself. But life really isn't like that.... or rather, it is for a small minority, most of us are not slogging out our lives desperately trying to get a particular house, car and lifestyle in the hope of looking impressive to the rest of the world. Many do it happily, in some cases almost obsessively, in a game setting, but simply because the objective is there and presented as a nice shiny medal to wear, and conveys a sense of importance or achievement, it skews the structure of the game world. The 'game objective' takes control more and more insidiously until to many it becomes the entire point - but in that, you lose the sandbox elements of freedom of approach, style and action that you can get by just setting up the core, very minimal, rules and leaving people to get on with 'living' in that world.

Sandboxes don't have 'winners' in the usual gaming sense, although they can have 'winners' in the sense that people regard their achievements in life as 'winning' - but that concept is not one that sells easily to sales and marketing people.

Each style of games tries to appeal to a different style of player, but at present, the most money is with the competitive, and thus widely copied, level/quest/item scripted model. The market for a real freestyle game is there, but much smaller - probably still enough to make a pretty reasonable living, but 'reasonable' profit doesn't appeal much to the corporate world.

Originally posted by eric_w66

UO lacked direction. It didn't create "freedom".  You could "do what you wanted" (within the rules of the game, aka, you couldn't drill a hole to the center of the planet, nor cause everyone else to vanish) because that's all there was to do. People grouped in dungeons.... wow, they do that in every game... they PvP'd.. that's extremely common as well. They ground skills (Sounds like leveling to me!).... happens in almost every MMORPG...

 

So how would you define 'freedom' in a game - or are you arguing there's really no such thing?

As an aside, the ethos of so relatively little 'direction how to play' helped build a lot of the 'community' of UO, which in turn led to a lot of it's longevity. It wasn't let loose as a game with a defined 'solution', but more a 'what would happen if we gave people this stuff and left them to play with it' experiment. A mixture of the relative complexity of the game (there wasn't anything like it around to compare it with, really), and the sheer lack of knowledge about the world and how things worked,  meant you HAD to talk to people, watch how things happened, and do all the 'community building' stuff if you wanted to figure out how the game worked. Even PvPers spent time learning the game, and the maps, and the interaction between spells, environment, mobs...

That led to superb discussion forums, which again reinforce 'community', and a genuine sense of exploration and discovery when you played. That faded with knowledge, experience, and changes to the game world, but the openness of the character system and the friends/guilds/teams built up initially kept involvement in the game pretty high.

What's that got to do with 'sandbox'? A real 'sandbox' doesn't have a clear end-game, be it boss dungeons, special 'must have' loot, elite areas and such that form the only visible, pushed by the designers, long-term aim of the game. All should be there in every game, to some extent - but in many current game designs, they are the only longer term aim presented to the player, and people mostly follow the path indicated and stick to the designated route rather than exploring the wilderness - or sheep-like follow the flock, if you want a crueller analogy -. and you can't really fault anyone for it, since  they enjoy it.

By default though, if you have an 'end game' in your design document or underlying philosophy, you can't build a sandbox - but without it, you have a hell of a time getting any of the 'suits' in the business understanding what you are making, and probably won't get the financial backing to make the game. Instead of keeping players (or as they are more usually referred to nowadays, 'subscribers') by giving them an emotional investment in a freeform game, you are bound to try keep them by new expansions, extra classes, bigger dungeons, and more shiny 'stuff', and you make your money because people don't want to feel left behind without the new toys... again, the finance guys love this model because they can see the revenue rolling in.

Nowadays I doubt you can recreate that bigger atmosphere of 'exploration and wonder' because within a day of game release (if not before, from Beta testing), there are pages and pages of info, detailed maps, data, templates, analysis of item/skill/level interactions, and everything else, out there on the web or in expensive guidebooks in your local game store (forming part of the money-making machine for the game company) - but good, complex and interesting as they are, and I think the devotion that goes into building them is admirable, they reinforce the concept of 'end-game' as it is being offered by the developers and designers. Combine that with the basic similarity of interface, class/character role, movement systems, hotbars and so on, and in a very short time the game stops feeling 'new', and for a lot of players becomes more 'habit' than 'adventure'.  Sure there's the 'you don't have to read it approach, but in all honesty how small a minority of us take that choice?

MindTrigger -

Don't get me wrong, I completely agree a 'sandbox' game is needed, and as a long-time UO player I really wish there was anything that innovative out there again now - but my point is there's zero appetite for it in the major companies, they really are not showing any signs of interest in adventurous design or genuine innovation either in mmo or standalone games, and unless they stop seeing the big $ pouring in from what they turn out now they have no incentive to take the risky step. A smaller independent company would be the best hope, but the costs nowadays make it extremely unlikely they could fund something without being taken into partnership with one of the 'giants', and that would end up killing the potential innovation on offer.

I can't see a 'sandbox' mainstream mmorpg until such time as profits from the generic version fall far enough that someone in the corporates thinks 'might be worth taking the risk', and I fear that will not happen soon. Sure, people get disillusioned with the existing games eventually, and then are further disappointed that there's so little real variety on offer from the others in the market - but as long as the existing product gives a big payoff to the makers, they really have no reason to change the recipe.

"Why Not Build a Proper Sandbox?"

Because the corporate accountants behind the companies big enough to launch a full-scale mmorpg are scared that it wouldn't give them the almost guaranteed levels of income of a generic clone of existing mmorpgs promises, whilst taking away their security blanket of 'being in control',and they are not even slightly interested in taking the chance - 'freedom for players' is their worst nightmare, they see it needing human moderation, and in-depth support, and all those pesky expensive bits that they are trying so hard to abolish by pre-scripted 'quests', automated and soulless 'levelling areas', and cheap phone 'support' in place of genuine customer service....

Or was it just a rhetorical question?

Mindless or unthinking bigotry in phrases often comes from mindless or unthinking people, and although it's sensible to try explain to them the offense they are causing, you need to be aware you may well be unable to get through to them - but that does not make the effort worthless. If they insult or upset other players then the people running the game are absolutely right to act to prevent it happening - if something offends though, I always prefer first trying to explain what the offense was, before shouting for the cops to lock up the 'offender'. You might be able to get them to realise what they did and change their behaviour, which is surely a far better result than getting them a ban from an online game. Shout for the cops after you know persuasion won't work, not as the first reponse based on your own assumptions that you can't ever argue with 'people like that' - which is also, in the proper sense, prejudice.

Whist I'd be pretty upset at most of the examples of word usage that have been mentioned so far in this thread though, and all appear worth pursuing and arguing against, I'm concerned that there appears to be a growing belief that any of us have a 'right' NOT to be offended by what others say or think, which I'm not convinced is true at all. Also, remember that being offended on behalf of other people can sometimes of itself be patronising.

A better world would in part consist of one where people at least thought before speaking, or typing. Work towards it yourself, encourage it in others, but don't hold your breath waiting for it.

Originally posted by Nero0130

Who the hell goes from Lead Content Designer to QA?

That's going from head chef of a restaurant to operating the fry machine at McDonald's.

Therein lies one of the problems.  QA is too often regarded as the minimum wage training area for people who will grow up to get a 'proper' job in the industry, rather than what it really is - a vital part of making a good product that holds an ever more restless MMO audience.

Despite the hype about "we got 1, or 2, or 200 million the players at release date", it's far more important to keep them, but shoddy product loses players and wastes the potential of the game.

"“We had a great launch,” he said, “and I’ve played through every major MMO launch personally and I can honestly say that our launch was absolutely head and shoulders above every one that I’ve been through.”

Very true - if you were not one of the European customers, where it was, quite bluntly, a total farce when NOBODY could register for days thanks to terrible decisions by GOA, who launched their new "we don't need to test it, we know it will work fine" account system - which totally collapsed, meaning a large chunk of 'open Beta' was only available to those folks who already had Closed Beta accounts, customers couldn't log in to the live game for several days while the mess of  their accounts database was resolved  by GOA manually entering account details for customers who submitted them on their website, since they couldn't get the automation of that into their full accounts database working - and then had a 24-48 hour delay on the mail coming out to tell you your account was activated because their mail system couldn't cope!

Over in Europe, we still don't have the server web pages up, GOA won't have their billing systems running until tomorrow (barring any more screwups,  that is), there have been serious problems with abilities simply not working for players which turned out to be caused by problems with the GOA servers, the ISP link between the GOA server cluster and the rest of the world fell over and took the best part of a day for alternatives to be brought online........

You have a really great game. Why the hell do you ruin your reputation as a company by partnering with incompetents?