This week’s Massive Update is actually two because … sniff … I missed a week. :(

I was too sick to do it last Wed/Thurs, and as a result this week’s is two ginormous weeks of MMOG news wrapped up in one package. It was so much I had to skimp on the big story, which was … UO’s decade. (duh)

The Big Story.
There were numerous important and interesting stories in the Massive genre in the past two weeks, but how often does a Massively Multiplayer game reach its decade anniversary? Ultima Online has reached its ten year mark, and while there haven’t been a lot of parties, there is a lot to celebrate. Until October 9, if you once subscribed to UO, you can download the new graphics client and revisit the world.

“In what EA is referring to as the ‘Return to Brittania’ campaign, past Ultima Online subscribers can download the game files on the Kingdom Reborn website through October 9. Kingdom Reborn offered a major graphics upgrade for the ancient game along with some gameplay tweaks and new areas to explore. Returning and current players alike will be able to hunt the realms of Brittania for some cool, unique prizes during the celebration weeks. New armor sets, commemorative items such as an Ankh Necklace and map of Brittania, and weapons from the game’s past will all be available within the game. Check out UO’s special tenth anniversary website for more info on all the festivities.”

Lots of players have fond rememberences of the game, with especially nice words from Ryan Shwayder and Stephen Emond. Aleks Krotoski notes that, of course, UO isn’t the longest running online game.

MMORPG.com has up a look at UO’s resurrection.

The details are sharper, the lighting is prettier, even the props set around the world look brighter and clearer. It all looked, in a word, better. Looking at the side-by-side, you can tell that everything is the same, but different. The buildings are still in the same places, with the same architecture, but the walls are smoother and more vibrant. The monsters, which didn’t appear to be fierce by today’s demanding standards, seemed somehow more threatening in their new treatment. Even the drab cobwebs (which had been applied liberally to the dungeon that we looked at) were in the same place, but looked somehow stickier.

It looks a lot better in action than it does as screenshots. GameTrailers can accomodate you here, here, and here.

As of just a little while ago, the last 2006 chapter in the MMOG Nation Citizen Spotlight series should have gone up on GameSetWatch.  Today we’ve got a look at The Cesspit, a hive of MMOG design scum and villainy if ever there was one. Abalieno has an extremely enthusiastic muse, and thus when you ask him a ’simple’ question like ‘What games are you looking forward to?’, he has a tendency to respond in detail. In the interests of readability, the GameSetWatch post has an edited version of our interview; here, I have no such restrictions. For the complete and unedited word from the man, please feel free to read on.
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Brent, buddy, you know I love what you do. But jeezus … your top ten list suuucked.
The Virgin Worlds podcast is a happy part of my week, every week, and at first I was enthused when a ‘Top 10 MMOGs’ list began back on the 12th. Instead of listening to the first back at the start of the month, I waited until the second half was released to start listening.

My biggest beef was the assertion that the higher numbered MMOGs were somehow ‘better’ than the lower numbered ones. I realize it’s less interesing when a top ten list doesn’t imply ranking, but in this case I think that’s the way I would have gone. Otherwise, it seems somewhat offset to compare almost decade-old work to brand new stuff. Likewise, games built on a shoestring compared to juggernauts like WoW? Blah.

I don’t care that WoW was #7. It’s iteratively better, not evolutionarily. Totally agree. You guys are obviously approaching the games from the POV of MMOG snobs, and I respect that at least. No problem.

But Jeezus. The fucking Warden? You’re complaining about the Warden? You’re complaining about their bad Customer Service? “Hi, this is 2003, I want my complaints back.” You then go on to discuss how Asherons Call is better than WoW, because some of its shitty content was hidden from most of the players. That is the most ass backwards thing I’ve ever heard. It’s a game, guys, not a scavenger hunt or geocaching. The point is to have fun, not spend time searching for content. (Subtle glares at Star Wars Galaxies and Everquest.)

On top of that, you then ranked Everquest 2 above WoW on your list. The hell? I’d love to know what alternate reality you folks are living in where EQ2 is a ‘better’ game than World of Warcraft. EQ2 is just like the majority of SOE’s games: lots of promise, plenty of potential, flawed execution. The traditional SOE recipe for failure has kept the greatness of EverQuest 2 from dominating the MMOG conciousness, and positioning it higher than WoW on the list is not going to change that.

Other crankiness elicited by your list:

• Guild Wars is Multiplayer, and it’s Online, but it ain’t Massive by most definitions.
• You should be ashamed of yourselves, making us Westerners remember that Lineage II exists. You gave children nightmares and made our crops blight!
• Ryzom’s big ticket to fame is it Frenchness. Okay, the Ring is really good. I’d like it more if the game the Ring was built on wasn’t so damn boring.

Since it’s my blog and I’ll second guess if I want to, my list would have looked more like this:

1. Everquest - teh Winner!
2. World of Warcraft - your new lord and master
3. FFXI - the much overlooked asskicker
4. City of Heroes/Villains - tights make everyone happy
5. Dark Age of Camelot - PvP’s home turf
6. Everquest 2 - so much potential
7. Ultima Online - Grandpa
8. Eve Online - funnest screensaver ever
9. Puzzle Pirates - puzzles are the future
10. Star Wars Galaxies - what not to do

All whining aside, I liked the obvious effort you put into the feature. Nice work, gents. Just, less ganja next time you working on the Science.

It seems that one of the MMO’s that popularized the genre will continue to receive some life support, this time in the form of a totally new client. Yep, massively multiplayer online role playing game Ultima Online will see a considerable graphics overhaul and a reworked UI.

Ultima Online Gets Upgrade In Its 10th Year - Kotaku

Yee gods! I guess in light of the fact that UO will apparently be living forever, my callous comments about EQ are even more improper. My apologies to any title I’ve besmirched before their time.

Rather than any immolation analogies, I’d prefer to think of things more phoenix-like than anything else.

Fundamentally, SWG was launched too early from a game design point of view. It may not have been from a financial point of view - there’s considerations like how much had been spent, how soon it would earn back the investment, that sort of thing - but most systems in there were first-pass at best. The place where that was most obvious was in the relative lack of content at launch. The tools simply came on too late to make the volume of content needed, and even though a heroic final push tried to populate the game with distinctive content, it just wasn’t anywhere near enough. 

I loves me some Raph Koster. He has a discussion of Ultima Online’s resource system that spans three articles, and is completley worth a read. He references the ‘Playing to Bake Bread‘ article he wrote a while back in the article, and I should point out that’s well worth a look too.

We ended up saying that a given object (which was still defined in a template) could have as part of it, a set of resources. A resource was just a label — nothing more and nothing less. (Much later, in SWG, that team would introduce the concept of resources with stats, but that’s a post for another day.) The server had a list of the resources that existed in the world, and designers could create new ones fairly readily. Resources were things like METAL, WOOD, and CLOTH. But they were also things like MAGIC and PLAYER and other such abstract qualities.