In Ink: UO in the Gaming Media – April – June 2012
Okay, it’s been a few months since I last covered the gaming media’s coverage of Ultima Online.
Some Clarifications
1) When I say “gaming media” I do not mean some guy with a blog, I mean the mainstream video, PC, and MMORPG gaming websites.
2) I’m covering April through June 18th of 2012.
3) While UO references occur many times in the non-English gaming media, I’m only covering English-language references here. If you have any translations you’d like to contribute, please contact me.
4) I’m not covering the numerous references to UO in regards to key personnel working on the upcoming The Elder Scrolls Online. I’ve already covered the Elder Scrolls Online – Ultima Online connections. The references to UO are quite numerous and are available on many of the top gaming websites, and they are very positive references, in that the personnel are very experienced thanks to their work on UO. It’s good that UO gets that much recognition, but just hit up Google.com and search for Elder Scrolls and Ultima Online and you’ll find dozens of such references.
5) While the list heavily leans towards Massively, do note that these stories are also linked from the parent gaming site, Joystiq.com, as well as the sister World of Warcraft site, WOW Insider. Plus Massively is one of the top MMORPG websites around, if not the top (in my view).
It should also be noted that I’m not covering UO-related posts in the forums of those gaming sites, as it would take a day to track all of those. The hundreds of thousands of people who have passed through the virtual gates of UO did not stop playing MMOs when they left UO, and in any MMO forum discussion, UO does come up quite often.
In fact, I’d like to propose UO’s Law (reference): As an online discussion about one or more MMORPGs grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Ultima Online approaches 1.
Moving on, the reason for this column, and I will make it a monthly column, is to show you, the reader, that Ultima Online gets quite a bit of coverage from the gaming media in general. Much of the coverage may not be specifically about UO, and is instead using UO as a baseline for some mechanism, or to illustrate something good or bad, but the point is that UO is not forgotten, and gaming sites and writers do like to talk about UO.
Like last time, I’m starting from the earliest to the latest, except for this very first story, which was from last week. I’m covering it first, because not only did G4 mention Ultima Online in a Top 100 Video Game lists (which included console and arcade games), but Ultima Online was actually shown on TV, that thing that sits in your living room, and that potentially millions, well maybe hundreds of thousands might have seen. I don’t know what kind of ratings G4 pulls in, but anyways here is the clip:
On with the rest of the list, starting with April.
April 2 – Massively
Massively started the month off right, with its Leaderboard competition, pitting Ultima Online vs EverQuest vs Asheron’s Call. Of course, Ultima Online won with 42.1% of the vote 🙂
April 5 – Massively
Massively’s Perfect Ten column covered in-game tributes to real life people, and coming it at number one, UO is mentioned with their tribute to Gary Gygax after his death in 2009: Ultima Online honored Gygax in Publish 51 with a special room in the Doom dungeon. UOForums has preserved the UO Herald’s tribute and mention of Gary.
April 18 – Massively
Massively asks in their Daily Grind column, Would you ever pay to beta test? and the article is complete with a photo of the Ultima Online Public Beta Test CD, and a follow-up comment: Historically, people have paid for beta access; back in the late ’90s, players shelled out a few bucks to get a copy of the Ultima Online beta CD.
April 19 – Massively
The Perfect Ten: Free-to-play holdouts covers 10 games that Massively thinks are the biggest “Free-to-Play” Holdouts. I don’t agree with the F2P movement when it comes to UO, because #1, anybody currently enjoying all that UO has to offer (housing, etc.) is not going to pay any less, and #2, pricing is not what’s keeping many people from trying UO. Anyways, UO gets a mention at #7:
7. Ultima Online ($10.00 to $12.99/mo.)
I’m going to be kinder to the final member of the Mythic trio in regards to F2P. Unlike Mythic’s other titles, UO isn’t as PvP-centric and does not rely as heavily on a large population to be fun. Plus, we’re talking about one of the oldest operating graphical MMOs in existence here, so chances are if you haven’t subscribed already to check it out, free-to-play probably wouldn’t suck you in. Converting the housing system (players are currently limited to one house per account) could be tricky too.
Would be kinda cool, though.
April 21 – Massively
Another Daily Grind column from Brianna Royce, and starting off with another screenshot from UO (Luna no less), asking the question: Is customizable housing worth the inevitable eyesores?. In a touch of irony, that’s not even close to being the worst of the eyesores one can find. Brianna mentions that few MMOs launch with player housing, and very few have customizable housing: Few MMOs nowadays launch with housing, and a vanishingly small number of those have fully customizable housing, the kind that lets you construct your house from foundation to tower, filling in floors, walls, and decor as you go. Ultima Online is one such MMO; it changed over its pre-fab buildings to customizable housing in the early aughts.
April 24 – Massively
The Game Archaeologist: Are graphical updates worth the hassle? covers a topic near and dear to my heart – artwork upgrades to older games. Low and behold, the very first screenshot is of UO. They bring up a good point about UO, but they miss out on something very important:
If a graphic overhaul must be done, then it should fall in line as closely to the original designs as possible — just slightly better. Anything that deviates more than that risks alienating loyal players who make up the paying core of the game.
When Ultima Online underwent its Third Dawn and Kingdom Reborn graphical overhauls, players had to contend with comprehensive updates to the game’s style. Some liked it, but many did not and instead continued playing using the classic client. Because Kingdom Reborn was later discontinued in favor of still another alternative client (the Enhanced Client, which retains some but not all of Kingdom Reborn’s upgrades), I’m guessing this experiment was more fizzle than sparkle-and-pop.
The thing they miss out on is the problems with UO’s artwork/client upgrades over the years. Among them, turnover among the people who created them, the lack of full support at times, and the issue of whether they were rolled out too early (they were).
May 21 – Massively
Ultima Online rolling out a new installment of the Awakening is another solo UO article from Massively, discussing the ongoing story in The Awakening (UO Guide) as well as the Covetous Dungeon revamp and Publish 76.
May 23 – MMORPG.com
Ultima Online Interviews: Wayback Wednesday with UO Devs was the hours-long livestreaming (videos available the link above) of Ultima Online with members of the MMORPG.com staff and the UO Team. In wrapping it up, they had good things to say about UO Fifteen years old and sporting war wounds but still alive and kicking Ultima Online is one of the must play games. You can really see how MMORPGs transitioned from MUDs to the 3D MMORPGs that are released today.
May 25 – MMORPG.com
I said I wasn’t going to cover UO in regards to The Elder Scrolls Online, but I have to make an exception for the MMORPG.com article, The Elder Scrolls Online Column: Targeting the MMO Market since it’s not about the TESO developers, but about UO itself, and the impact it had: Along the same lines as entering the new decade’s MMO market, we are looking at a whole new player base of gamers joining MMOs for the first time. There is no doubt that the success of Elder Scrolls will bring some hardcore RPG players into the MMO world (there have to be some rabid TES fans who don’t MMO, right?). It is something I found at the core of MMOs when I first started playing them with Ultima Online. I can adventure around in a game with my friends? Are you kidding me? Seriously, that was the kicker.
May 26 – Massively
Massively’s Daily Grind asks: Do you stay loyal to your MMO guild? It should be noted that the screenshot accompanying the article is from UO, of either a guild ceremony or an in-game wedding (most likely a guild ceremony), complete with three Counselors. Brianna Royce, the Massively staffer who wrote the article mentions UO in the first sentence: When I joined a guild in Ultima Online in 1997, I had no idea I was going to still be in a version of that guild almost 15 years later. Heck, I doubt I even realized that MMOs would still be a thing 15 years later!
May 28 – Massively
In Massively’s Daily Grind column, the question is asked: Does instant travel trivialize MMO worlds?, and the mention of UO is something that parallels my experiences in MMOs: I’ve done far more exploring in (and have a much deeper nostalgia for the landmasses of) titles like Ultima Online and Guild Wars, which boast Recall spells and map travel, respectively, than I have in less-travel-friendly titles, and I’m guessing it’s because the ability to get to strange and out-of-the-way places quickly means you’ll actually go there by choice — because you can.
May 30 – Massively
Ultima Online publishes comprehensive player guide covers exactly what it sounds like – the release of the new UO play guide.
June 5 – Massively
In the column, The Game Archaeologist: The Anarchy Online bloggers, Justin Olivetti brings up something I find ironic given that I’m blogging about UO, and wish more people would: It’s a simple fact of life: Newer MMOs get all the blog love. World of Warcraft and EVE Online, in particular, are lavished with so many dedicated blogs that it’s almost embarrassing, while most of the games that we look at in this column are practically ignored. It could just be that blogging didn’t really come into vogue when these games came out, but whatever the reason, it’s kind of a shame that few if any folks are out there blogging about their in-game experiences in Ultima Online or Asheron’s Call.
Justin mentions that Anarchy Online held a community-wide effort to encourage new bloggers/writers and two came out of the effort.
June 11 – Massively
In Massively’s Daily Grind series, they asked the question: The Daily Grind: Should games bother innovating guild systems?, and UO was mentioned: In-game support for MMO guilds has come a long way in the last 15 years. Ultima Online launched without guilds at all, let alone chat, so we tacked our guild abbreviations onto our character names. I’m not actually sure how accurate that is – I didn’t get involved with guilds in UO until a few years into UO, but I know by mid-1999 there was a formal system in place. By February of 2000, there were over 15,000 guilds in UO. By August of 2000, there were over 28,000 guilds. April of 2002 saw 42,000+ guilds.
June 11 – Massively
I was tempted to skip this article, Richard Garriott says his new social game is the ‘spiritual successor’ of his previous work, because it’s just a mention of how Garriott’s new Ultimate Collector game might appeal to UO fans, and it repeats an oft-mentioned view of Garriott’s that Ultimate Collector is a spiritual successor to his previous Ultima work.
June 13 – Massively
The article, Ultima Online taps Armstrong for producer position, covers Bonnie “Mesanna” Armstrong being promoted to the Ultima Online Producer. Unfortunately it’s very short on details, failing to mention her longevity on the UO team, going back to UO:Third Dawn. Still, it’s notable for being posted within just a few hours of the announcement.
June 15 – GameIndustry International
I covered it last week: GameIndustry International had an interview with Frank Gibeau, Head of EA Labels (including BioWare), where Gibeau mentioned UO a few times: We’re still publishing Ultima Online for seventeen years. So we’re definitely going to be in the Star Wars business for a long time……
We asked Gibeau if he’s absolutely confident that a decade from now EA would still have people playing Star Wars: The Old Republic. He answered, “I am, actually. We’re still playing Dark Age of Camelot, we’re still playing Warhammer, we’re still playing Ultima Online, we’re still playing Runescape, we’re still playing Lineage. What’s beautiful about an MMO is that when you get to a certain scale it stays with the program for a long time.”
June 17 – Massively
Massively’s Rise and Shiny, while it’s covering Illarion, does get a mention of UO from the writer, Beau Hindman, who has covered UO in the past: My time with Illarion was much too short. The game is still quite intriguing. It offers forced roleplay, a tiny but dedicated community, and graphics that bring on those old familiar feelings I got during my Ultima Online days, the first MMO I ever played back in ’99.
I don’t pretend to have covered all of the stories the mainstream gaming media has published that mentions UO in some fashion, but if you come across any that I missed, feel free to contact me.
