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Let's talk about and maybe play Ultima Online, the best (IMO) MMO ever made. For reference, this post mainly concerns with a free shard based around 2000 "era" UO, Ultima Online Renaissance (http://www.uorenaissance.com/). Look at the bottom for good links/resources. This shard is based around UOR before Trammel with a few neat additions (Ancient Message In Bottles, Champion spawns, etc), so special hit (stun, paralyzing blow, etc) are in.
UOR aside, a more hardcore shard will be launching this month called "An Corp" a bit more of an earlier era than UOR (IE: Around T2A) and no mounts (no horses, llamas, etc to ride for more PVP balance) which I'll also be playing - the website is http://www.uoancorp.com (Teaser Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iv-yjiuDSXc, old IPY 3 trailer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDuc-9EcQlE ) This shard will be really fantastic, I've played beta. There is a feature called "portals" where you can build your own custom mini dungeons with fantastic user friendly tools, then they appear randomly in other dungeons and can be rated and ranked by users playing them. Plus achievements have been added, further the arena system is the best I've ever seen - custom duels with choice of era for ruleset. Amazing. This is mostly based around UO of '99 with a lot less UOR stuff. For reference, this is spiritual sequel to In Por Ylem 3 that wasn't completed due to Az (of Wtfman.com) stepping down. Same code.
Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with UOR or UOAC. I just play a game I've loved since 1998. So, let's talk about Ultima Online! If you're playing, discuss here! If you're just chatting, chat here! Have you played UO?
[*]What is UO?
Ultima Online is an MMORPG released in the 1990s. It features a top down perspective similar to that of Diablo.
UO is skill based character development with a freedom of interaction most MMOs don't come near, at least as far as my experience is concerned. There are no PVP arenas (well, there are, but that isn't where PVP is exclusive to), there are very few safety nets (carry it if you want to risk losing it - in UO you drop what's on you when you die), but the experience is engaging and rewarding. Most of all, I think it's a ton of fun.
The experience takes place primarily in the world of Britannia which features various cities and few terrain types as well as about 8 dungeons of differing sorts.
[*]How does it play/work?
The player is controlled with the mouse. Right click being held down in a given direction causes your character to move, either at walking or running pace. The left mouse button interacts with objects in the world, such as your backpack, items on the ground, enemies, or what have you.
Here you can see the paperdoll (alt+p or double clicking on your character). This is your "equipment" screen. If I use the mouse to drag the wand that is visible in my backpack to the left (main pack, accessed by bringing up paperdoll and clicking the backpack icon at your feet, or alt+i) to the paperdoll, my character would equip the item and it'd be visually represented. You can also see a secondary pouch in my pack is also open, inventory in UO is a bit unlike other MMOs. You can place items anywhere in the pack and they sit - there are no boxes to allocate a location of an item. There are limits to how much containers can hold and each individual item has its own weight to be considered, so you can only carry so much. The small icons scattered about are spell hotbuttons, more on that later. The greyed out named boxes are skill hotbuttons, more on that later. You can also see the mini map pulled up (alt+r, press again to increase size). I will detail more mechanics as we proceed.
[*]Are there classes? What can I be?
Ultima Online features a level-less system, therefore there is no grind in that sense, but it is skill based in that usage of skills offers chances to increase those skills.
Here for sake of example I've equipped a dagger and engaged a pig at the Moonglow (an island city) stables. I don't have any fencing skill so it's raising quickly as I fight the pig. You can see my dagger equipped and I've switched to combat mode (alt+c or hold tab) and attacked (double clicking aggros a player/monster/creature). You can use a variety of skills (swords, fencing, macing, archery) and an even larger variety of weapons (halberd, katana, kryss, long spear, quarter staves, war hammers, heavy crossbows, and much more) to engage against players or monsters/creatures.
Long story short, you can be a crafter (Blacksmithy, Tailoring, Carpentry), a warrior, a mage, a fisherman (players may purchase boats and sail the ocean and fish for fun or treasure), lumberjack, or any combination thereof. Be a warrior and face enemies head on, be a mage and do the same or summon creatures to do the dirty work, or even a bard using music to cause creatures to assault each other for your gain! Buy a house (yes, about twenty different varieties of player homes are available to purchase and place in the game world - you'll certainly see other player's homes as you explore) and keep your treasure there or make it public and place some NPC vendors there to sell your dungeon looted (or crafted) goods to the public, for a price. Create a guild, join a guild!
Here I've used my bard skills on my Tamer/Bard to cause some of these enemies to attack one another while I've also summoned blade spirits with Magery to help me make quick work of them to fatten my gold purse.
Here my Tamer/Bard uses tamed Dragons to fight minions of Cupid in the recent Holiday even for Valentine's Day (a special champion spawn). But it doesn't always go so easily...
While trying to tame a White Wyrm I was easily dispatched in a moment of foolishness in the Ice Dungeon.
UO features three different primary stats, Strength, Dexterity, and Intelligence. Any stat can be no lower than 10, but no higher than 100. The total amount of stat points one can ever attain is 225 total (100 STR, 100 INT, 25 DEX, for example, but in any numerical amount you see fit in the end). To a small extent the effect skills.
- Stats
Strength determines how much you can carry as well as a bonus modifier to damage in melee attacks. Finally, Strength determines your HP as well.
Dexterity determines how fast one can do certain actions as well as player stamina. For example, a warrior with 100 Dex will hit an awful lot faster than warrior with 10 Dex. If using the Healing skill (which is applying cloth bandages to yourself or others to restore HP), Dex determines how long the application time is. Further, heavier types of armor, such as plate mail require a certain amount of Dex to equip, as the heavier the armor that one equips, the lower your active Dex is for things such as combat (IE say a plate chest piece "takes" your Dex down from 100 to 90, your Dex is still 100, but for combat purposes it's 90 equivalent for things like swing speed). Dexterity determines stamina 1:1.
Intelligence determines your mana pool in a formula of 1:1. For a skill like Mediation (which reduces s mana regeneration time) in addition to checking your Meditation skill level also functions most optimally at 100 Intelligence (though 100 Int is not required for the use of Meditation skill, simply an added factor in calculation of effectiveness for the skill).
Here we can see our stat screen (alt+s). It displays your primary stats and other relevant information. I have 100 STR, 24 DEX, and 100 INT on this particular character, so I have 224 total stat points, but since I'm maxed in STR and INT, it can only go into Dexterity.
AR refers to "armor". If you look at the earlier screenshot with my paper doll, under my clothes and on my sleeves you can see I'm wearing leather armor. My AR is 21 because of what I've equipped. It's important to note that this character has the Magery skill and to use the very important companion skill, Meditation, you can't wear heavy armor. You CAN, but you can't get the active or passive Meditation bonuses of mana regeneration if you do. Leather armor can be Meditated in passively and actively.
The others are self explanatory, but weight. Weight is determined by what's on your person. All of the items I've equipped or have in my pack have individual weights, and I'm at 193/390. This leaves a lot of room to pick up gold, items I might find, or anything else.
- Skills
There are an awful lot of skills in Ultima Online, so a picture does better service.
A lot to choose from! UO does have a skill cap, however. No matter what skills you choose, you can only acquire 700 total skill points. Skills can rise from 0 to 100, so this can be 7 skills at 100 or any combination otherwise. You can decide to raise other skills any time even if you're at the cap by changing the arrow next to the skill. If the arrow is up, the skill can raise ( assuming you aren't at the skill cap), if it's locked, it stays put, if it's down it can only go down (for example, if another skill were to gain that is pointed up while you're skill capped).
[*]PVM
A variety of PvM conditions exist in UO from the standard slaying of a pig in the stables illustrated earlier to graveyards, dungeons, holiday events, and even champion spawns. Attackable creatures/enemies range from cows, bulls, deer, bears, to liches, demons, dragons, gazers, reapers, and much more. Sometimes certain monsters can be carved (their corpses) for their hides/leather (used for tailoring, or to sell to players who do tailor) or meat (to feed to your pets or for cooking).
[*]PVP
Oh yes, there's PvP, a spot where UO shines.
Players are able to attack one another anywhere, though inside most towns is a guarded region in which one simply needs to call for "guards" to be protected, assuming you are not flagged as a criminal. Doing a negative act, such as looting an innocent (blue hued) corpse, attacking a player, stealing (oh yes, a fully functional stealing skill is featured in UO - most items can be flat out stolen from other players with appropriate skill, a fun template), or various other such things flag you as a criminal, or "grey". Clicking on yourself once will display your name and your flag (depending on what color your name is). Blue is innocent, or default. Grey is criminal (which lasts about two minutes from the last negative action - in this time you are freely attackable by anyone without penalty). Red is murderer and is a more permanent condition. Upon murdering a player they can report your murder or not. After 5 murder counts (though these wear off over game time) you become "red". You can no longer enter guarded towns and are also freely attackable by anyone. Like being grey, you cannot give a murder count if you are attacked while red. Beware of murderers, but don't fret death too much - it's part of the game.
Here are a couple of relevant videos of tank mages doing battle on an IPY3 Beta shard for a taste of some of the more advanced PVP encounters and what you could expect.
Archer Mage - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qt6z7idJ0Wk
Mace Mage - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPyvitki-HE
Fencer Mage - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9519ofH7-4
- Death
Upon death by any means, you'll be in greyscale vision and a ghost. No one will be capable of understanding what you're typing (it will appear as OoooOoOoo) unless the player is skilled and activates Spirit Speak (a skill). You must find a healer, either a wandering one or one in a town, or find a player with sufficient Healing/Anatomy skill or Magery to be resurrected upon death. There is no skill or stat penalty (unless you're red), but you do lose all items on your corpse unless they are items you started with or have somehow been blessed (a higher tier tailoring reward).
[*]Macros
Will try to fill this out later, hands are about to fall off.
[*]I Want To Play!
To play (I'll play with you!) on the server I'm advocating and playing on, here are some crucial links.
The client download: http://www.uorenaissance.com/?page=m_download
Here you can get the client and Razor, a fantastic assistant program for you to have some advanced options and advanced macros (not necessary to learn to use this right away, but a fantastic tool and is required for connection I believe). There are also installation guides and tips. If you do decide to start on UOR and play, but aren't familiar or don't remember things that clearly, I'd recommend starting in Occlo, there's a clever and well done starting area with NPCs that provide fundamental information about some of the interaction and skills.
Connection guide: http://www.uorenaissance.com/?page=m_connecting
How to use Razor, details: http://www.uorenaissance.com/info/?page=info_catlist&ptype=Razor
Getting started guides: http://www.uorenaissance.com/info/?page=info_catlist&ptype=GettingStarted
Forums for UOR: UOforum.com
A fantastic post on new players and introduction to the game: http://uorforum.com/threads/new-to-ultima-online-start-here.3182/
UOR IRC, great for trading or associating with other players out of game: http://www.uorenaissance.com/irc
UOR aside, a more hardcore shard will be launching this month called "An Corp" a bit more of an earlier era than UOR (IE: Around T2A) and no mounts (no horses, llamas, etc to ride for more PVP balance) which I'll also be playing - the website is http://www.uoancorp.com (Teaser Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iv-yjiuDSXc, old IPY 3 trailer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDuc-9EcQlE ) This shard will be really fantastic, I've played beta. There is a feature called "portals" where you can build your own custom mini dungeons with fantastic user friendly tools, then they appear randomly in other dungeons and can be rated and ranked by users playing them. Plus achievements have been added, further the arena system is the best I've ever seen - custom duels with choice of era for ruleset. Amazing. This is mostly based around UO of '99 with a lot less UOR stuff. For reference, this is spiritual sequel to In Por Ylem 3 that wasn't completed due to Az (of Wtfman.com) stepping down. Same code.
Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with UOR or UOAC. I just play a game I've loved since 1998. So, let's talk about Ultima Online! If you're playing, discuss here! If you're just chatting, chat here! Have you played UO?
