14 years later, my return to Ultima Online

I played Ultima Online for 4 years back around 1999 to 2003.

The Good - Gameplay is still a lot of of fun. Playing a provoke bard is still, of any MMORPG I have ever played the most interesting gameplay, there is a dance you have to do, especially at low skill levels of getting two creatures close enough together, but not so close that they can reach you... and then use a skill on both of them. The world is open and requires exploring.. there are no ´zones´ that tell you where you should be for your level. Finally, the skill system is the best of any game I have ever played. Open skills and mix-match abilities make you feel unique.

The Bad - As can be expected with an 17 year old game, the graphics are not high end. Also the game has passed me by.. 14 years of new content has put me far away from most of the player base in terms of hunting ability and gold. Re-buying stuff I lost is now very expensive. There are also a ton of new lands to learn, and even revamps of much of the old lands makes them pretty much unknown... this is a blessing and a curse though.

The Ugly - I feel a bit deceived, but not angry. I was amazed through 3 transfers of ownership (EA, Mystic, Broadsword) that my account was able to be recovered using my old login and password. I was able to see my account before paying anything. The Ugly though is that once I resubbed ( $9) and could actually log into the game client, my characters names were all there, but none of their items or skills had been maintained. My main charcter looked the same and have about 5 items which told me it really was him, but his skills had been reset back to almost nothing. The other 4 characters had their names, but no items and no skills at all. The truth is that if I had seen that before paying the the sub, I probably would have not re-subbed. But now that I am in the game, rebuilding my characters and items is not that much of a big deal. The only permanent negative is that my account age is set at 5 months for some reason, which should have been 5 years... which means I don´t get any vet rewards, which is a big bummer.

 

I am actually have a ton of fun. I´ve always said that the gameplay of playing a provoke bard in UO was one of the best experiences ever in a MMORPG. You basically have to get two creatures to chase you, then cast a spell and target both of them, and if your skill check fails, you have about a 5 second delay until you can use it again.

The server I am playing on now is not one of the most played ones. They introuceed server moves a few years ago, so it seems most players went to a single server. My server is definitely lesspeople than 14 years ago, but they added global chat, which makes the community feel better. 14 years ago you had no way of knowing who was online (even your friends) unless you could physically see them in the game.

Housing and house decorations are a huge part of the game. It took me about a year to be able to place a house the first time I played because there were no spots available. This time, i was able to place a small house on day 2 just to secure the spot, and then after 7 more days, was able to upgrade it to the size of the house I had 14 years ago (after playing 4 years).

It is a sandbox game, there are quests, but nothing leading you to the quests, so you basically just log in and do whatever you want in a big world. it is very different than WOW in that regard.

There are some things that annoy me. There is an expansion to buy $20 that I am not going to buy for awhile because I really don´t need the content yet. But about 50% of the loot that drops from monsters I am killing in the old worlds, requires the expansion to equip... so it is basically wasted loot. They also added two new playable races ( elfs and gargoyles), which is fine, but again, there are weapons and armor that are specific to those races.. So not only is 50% of my loot not usable until I buy the expansion, but another big chunk of it cannot be equipped because it is built for a different race. It isn´t interesting when you kill a big monster and have 5 items drop and before you can even check to see if there is an upgrade, you eliminate most of them just because you can´t equip them anyway.

And the other annoyance is the amount of stats on each item (this is the big reason I quit the first time). You can sometimes get items that have 10-12 different stats to look at. So you kill a monster, 5 items drop and each item has 10 stats. You end up spending a ton of time just standing on top of a dead monster reading tool-tips to see if something is an upgrade or has any value, meanwhile, the mob is respawning.

 

Yeah, Ultima Online is a little rediculous. The more I play, the more powerful monsters I can solo and just the sheer amount of time I spend inspecting worthless gear on a dead corpse is staggering. It takes 20 seconds to kill a creature, and then 3 minutes to examine all the loot, and normally leave 9 of 10 items on the corpse.

When i first played, you never got loot, just gold was on the corpse and then maybe crafting reagents

 

I should have said I normally leave 90% of items on the mob. Right now the stuff I am killing drops about 5 items, but I only pick up about 1 item after every other kill.. so I pick up 1 in 10 items ( but that is two kills).

There are probably about 40 different stats that can come on an item, and with killing fairly high end mobs, I am getting mostly items that have 10 or so stats on them. They are listed just in a long list, and some of the names are so similar that you need to look closely. For instance lower mana cost, lower reagent cost, lower defense value and most of the stuff has an actual value of like 5-20

As far as carrying capacity, again it is annoying because you have to pay attention. I have about 300 ´stones´ that I can carry of loot. Many items have a weight of only 1-5 stones, so basically I could carry more than 100 items if I only picked up the light stuff. But some stuff is cursed, and weighs 50 stones... so again, you have to really look closely at yet another stat to make sure you don´t pick up too much heavy stuff. If you pick up too much weight, you can´t move until you drop something.