Ultima Online from it’s launch until the release of Trammel in 2000.
Alright for those of you who never played UO or are too young to remember or ya know not being born yet? UO was for the most part the granddaddy of MMO’s. Some of it’s systems and ideas have been taken into other games, things like player housing, crafting being a ‘big’ thing.
Anyhow Ultima Online ran with an free for all pvp ruleset. In the normal Towns and Cities you where under protection of the guards. Note you could have player thieves work in those areas and that was about it. Outside those areas? You could pretty much attack whomever you wanted.
So with how the game was set up? You had the following. Player thieves who would get into your pack and try and steal anything that was worth a crap ton. Player killers who would just run up and gank you, most of whom worked in packs. You’d see them coming if you saw a solid red name pop up on your screen. The “Notoriety Killer” namely someone who used the notoriety system to kill others, namely if they saw you use an AoE spell like firefield? They would run into it flagging you as a “criminal” and would kill you. Finally there was the Looter, namely someone who would lead monsters to other players with the idea of letting that person kill the things and they would grab the loot, or grab everything off the persons body when they died. And note you did have folks using exploits, hacks and the like.
And it did pay off big time. I did player thieving and believe me I could get more loot and then like from just stealing it off other players. PK’s made a crap ton, and the more clever ones when they put in a bounty system would once they got a bounty to some insane level? Have a friend kill the character, claim the bounty and would have a new PK already to go. Looters? Two of the most well known looters on UO the Galads of Sonoma became pretty well known. Galad the good did an interview where he even talked about how he got a crap ton of more of everything via playing ‘evil’ then he ever did being a nice helpful player.
Anyhow that’s how UO was until Trammel rolled around, Trammel being a mirror world of the main map and the Lost Lands. See Trammel’s rule set was that you couldn’t attack, steal, so on, from other players unless you where in a guild war or part of the order/chaos faction system. Looting still happened at first however the Dev’s changed some of the rules with that, monsters only being lootable by the players who kill them no real way for players to ‘block’ other players.
Anyhow needless to say Trammel pretty much became the main map everyone played on. Felucca the ‘old’ map pretty much started looking like a ghost town. To be fair for a moment, the Dev’s did try and bring life back to Felucca. They doubled the amount of resources and loot one could get there. Put in a Felucca only Dungeon that had some pretty nice ideas that went into it. Still needless to say there was a good chunk of the player base who hated this change and claimed it killed the game.
Ultima Online from it’s launch until the release of Trammel in 2000.
Alright for those of you who never played UO or are too young to remember or ya know not being born yet? UO was for the most part the granddaddy of MMO’s. Some of it’s systems and ideas have been taken into other games, things like player housing, crafting being a ‘big’ thing.
Anyhow Ultima Online ran with an free for all pvp ruleset. In the normal Towns and Cities you where under protection of the guards. Note you could have player thieves work in those areas and that was about it. Outside those areas? You could pretty much attack whomever you wanted.
So with how the game was set up? You had the following. Player thieves who would get into your pack and try and steal anything that was worth a crap ton. Player killers who would just run up and gank you, most of whom worked in packs. You’d see them coming if you saw a solid red name pop up on your screen. The “Notoriety Killer” namely someone who used the notoriety system to kill others, namely if they saw you use an AoE spell like firefield? They would run into it flagging you as a “criminal” and would kill you. Finally there was the Looter, namely someone who would lead monsters to other players with the idea of letting that person kill the things and they would grab the loot, or grab everything off the persons body when they died. And note you did have folks using exploits, hacks and the like.
And it did pay off big time. I did player thieving and believe me I could get more loot and then like from just stealing it off other players. PK’s made a crap ton, and the more clever ones when they put in a bounty system would once they got a bounty to some insane level? Have a friend kill the character, claim the bounty and would have a new PK already to go. Looters? Two of the most well known looters on UO the Galads of Sonoma became pretty well known. Galad the good did an interview where he even talked about how he got a crap ton of more of everything via playing ‘evil’ then he ever did being a nice helpful player.
Anyhow that’s how UO was until Trammel rolled around, Trammel being a mirror world of the main map and the Lost Lands. See Trammel’s rule set was that you couldn’t attack, steal, so on, from other players unless you where in a guild war or part of the order/chaos faction system. Looting still happened at first however the Dev’s changed some of the rules with that, monsters only being lootable by the players who kill them no real way for players to ‘block’ other players.
Anyhow needless to say Trammel pretty much became the main map everyone played on. Felucca the ‘old’ map pretty much started looking like a ghost town. To be fair for a moment, the Dev’s did try and bring life back to Felucca. They doubled the amount of resources and loot one could get there. Put in a Felucca only Dungeon that had some pretty nice ideas that went into it. Still needless to say there was a good chunk of the player base who hated this change and claimed it killed the game.