Posts with tag ultima-online

Seven years is a long time to be alive in the video game world. When you talk about games you played for seven years, you usually talk about WoW, Mario Kart, Goldeneye 64, and EverQuest. One thing that I have always felt was missing from Blizzard that synced up with one of my fondest memories of the MMO genre was a yearly loyalty program with rewards for all players to partake in. We get this somewhat during the Winterveil holiday with each year's exclusive gift, but I'm talking about a totally different type of loyalty reward scheme.

One of my fondest memories of any MMO ever was receiving my Ultima Online veteran rewards after a few years of play. While I can't remember the specifics of the transactions, either I was gifted my loyalty rewards or I got to choose based on seniority (it's been a long time, holy moly), but I went home with some cool items. The coolest of the bunch was a black dye tub, an item that had unlimited uses and could change any dyeable clothing item the darkest shade of black in the game. These black dye tubs were very rare and made for great items to sell at high prices down the line when they slowly became more and more rare. Maybe if you're good, I'll tell you about the time that I stole a black dye tub in the middle of Vesper bank -- I hope the four of you who thought that was impressive are smiling to yourselves.

MMOs have been my game of choice since Ultima Online. I've played so many massively multiplayers that I've probably logged more time in virtual worlds than I care to even discuss. Suffice to say, there are a lot of games that have come and gone that I have been privy to. When World of Warcraft was announced, we were all very excited to see Blizzard take on a genre that was still, admittedly, in its conceptual infancy and add some of its famous polish to the concept.

What we got in World of Warcraft was the smoothest MMO ever. Bits and pieces of the entire genre were fine-tuned and polished to an extraordinary degree, with some of Blizzard's trademark innovations taking center stage. Instancing, for one, was huge.

Now, a new post-WoW generation of MMOs has begun, and with them comes innovation building off Blizzard's immense success. Some of these MMOs have ideas and concepts that WoW hasn't even touched (but maybe should consider). Warhammer Online, RIFT, EverQuest 2, and other games all had some cool new ideas that Blizzard might want to think about using and polishing up even better. Here's what I think Blizzard should crib.

Pop law abounds in The Lawbringer, your weekly dose of WoW, the law, video games and the MMO genre. Running parallel to the games we love and enjoy is a world full of rules, regulations, pitfalls and traps. How about you hang out with us as we discuss some of the more esoteric aspects of the games we love to play?

eBay and massively multiplayer online role playing games have a deep, rich and occasionally sordid past. As social beings, we've been bartering, trading and selling our time and goods for the entirety of human history. The internet just made things even easier. Hell, buying some gold or an item off of eBay isn't the first time you've probably spent money for a work-around in a game. Ever heard of Game Genie? We paid money for that at one point in our lives.

This week, The Lawbringer delves into the past, remembering the good ol' days when the internet came in three varieties: 28.8k, 33.6k and 56k v.90. Also, 14.4k, but only losers had such weak baud. Please don't make me go back further in time. You're probably making modem sounds right now, pretending to go ksshhhh ksshhhh bee doo be dooo wha wha wha wha wha wha wha beeboobeeboobeebeeboobeep, so we should probably start this up.

Sometimes you'd like to know that there are other MMOs out there, right? Our sister site Massively can provide you with everything you need to know about all MMOs, including WoW! Check out this roundup of the latest news from the wider MMO world.

	Games Day '09 coverage This last Saturday was Games Workshop's Games Day celebration, and Massively.com was on site to get you the latest Warhammer Online coverage straight from Mythic Entertainment. Want to know more about Ultima Online's Stygian Abyss expansion? Curious about Land of the Dead? Interested as to the future direction of Warhammer Online? Do your favorite devs play on order or destruction? Find all of these answers and more in our full coverage of the event starting tomorrow, including our hands-on impressions of the new mega-dungeon, Land of the Dead!
	An overview of Warhammer Online's Land of the Dead You've heard us talk about it, you've heard us discuss it, and it's now time for us to tell you exactly what it's all about. Land of the Dead is not your father's MMO dungeon -- it's a dungeon that is something more than just a dungeon. It's an entire zone filled with activities and sub-dungeons, all culminating in an epic instanced dungeon that features a face off with the first leader of the Tomb Kings himself, King Amenemhetum.
	Massively Speaking Podcast Episode 52: Answering your Champions Online questions Massively Speaking Episode 52 returns this week with Shawn and Contributing Editor Kyle Horner to answer your questions about Champions Online's recent NDA lift for press. Kyle gathered questions from a recent The Daily Grind post and answers a handful on the podcast.

Rich Garriott, aka Lord British, aka one of the grandfathers of MMO gaming and even gaming in general through the Ultima series, has fallen on some tough times lately. His latest attempt to re-enter the MMO market, Tabula Rasa, was recently cancelled, and with that, so was his job at NCSoft. Still, according to computerandvideogames.com, he says he's ready to bounce back and get right into the gaming market.

But on a more topical note, he says something in the article about World of Warcraft, praising them for their phenomonal growth and saying that they have "shown us all what good game development is about." Certainly, most of us here, I would think, would strongly agree with that statement. But it is fun to compare and contrast this statement to somewhere around a year ago. Back then, he said that he didn't believe WoW would hurt Tabula Rasa's sales, because MMORPGers generally play a game or two at a time and move on after a year or so.

Or so wrote Robert Heinlein in Beyond the Horizon. The general idea was that, in a country where there were serious (and officially sanctioned) consequences to misbehavior from quarters other than the police, you'd wind up with a place where people really thought hard about whether it was worth pissing someone off just for the fun of it.

Whenever I'm reading about PvP, that quote always springs to mind. People who have played MMORPG's with more "hardcore" PvP systems have mentioned that the amount of random ganking you see in WoW just doesn't seem to occur on the same scale elsewhere. WoW's PvP is pretty consequence-free. Corpse runs are annoying, sure, and being camped is nobody's idea of fun. But you don't take durability or experience loss after a PvP death, and you don't lose money or items to the attacker. Nor does the attacker gain anything from killing you (unless it's honor if you weren't a gray target).