Tag Archives: Ultima Online

The Avatar Returns to the World of Britannia (An Early Review of Shroud of the Avatar after its official release)

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It’s amazing how this game looks so much like a visual from my every day life.

For the longest time, I was holding out on playing Shroud of the Avatar. Which is kind of strange, considering the fact that I’m exactly the type of player the game has been looking for. You see, I grew up as a programmer and gamer while playing every Ultima game ever made. If you follow the natural evolution of that series of computer games, it eventually leads directly to Shroud of the Avatar. The chances of me not playing this game were slightly lower than zero percent. Yet, it took me a number of years of the game being in development for me to finally decide to sign on. I guess that probably needs a bit of unpacking. So, let’s unpack.

As I mentioned, in the early days of computer games, Richard Garriott developed a series of games that ran under the IP of “Ultima”. It was a series of roleplaying games where you played a warrior, a mage or some semblance of fantasy classes and unlocked the secrets of the world before facing down against some huge big bad guy (or girl) and then saved all of the land. A review:

Ultima 1: You fought against an evil wizard named Mondain. But Mondain had a secret student and lover. This takes place on Sosaria.

Ultima 2: His lover’s name was Minax. You then have to defeat her. But she and Mondain secretly had a kid. Of course they did. This takes place on Earth through all sorts of time periods.

Ultima 3: The kid was kind of weird, in that Cylon kind of way. You, as expected, had to defeat him. This takes place on Sosaria.

Ultima 4: Gets weird and colorized. You spend the entire game becoming the ultimate character, an avatar. This introduces the virtues and eventually becomes the foundation for all of the Ultimas. This introduces Britannia.

Ultima 5: A bad lord under British gets corrupted by the shadowlords and basically takes over Britannia. You gotta stop him and them. Takes place in Britannia.

Ultima 6: A bunch of gargoyles get involved, creating a plot about immigration and enforcement. Or something like that. You act as an example and make everyone happy again. Much merriment is involved. Takes place in Britannia.

Ultima 7: Probably the best of the single player games. Takes place in Britannia and introduces the Guardian, who is a kind of twisted version of enlightenment. He sticks around for two more games. Takes place in Britannia.

Ultima 8: You get taken to some other place and do some stuff. To be honest, never really got into this game as I got stuck on the dock in the early part of the game, couldn’t figure out how to get out, and then just decided to play another game instead.

Ultima 9: Game becomes first person. Much more interesting world (still Britannia) but seems kind of lonely as the new perspective seems to eliminate a lot of npcs you’d normally meet. It’s the final encounter with the Guardian. Involves a Captain Kirk mind meld sort of conclusion, but should have been expected.

Ultima Online: Garriott brings the series to an online environment by making the argument that when Mondain was around, he split a shard into multiple pieces, each of which was another copy of Britannia (meaning you were on a different server). Game has lasted over twenty years now, even though Garriott has been divorced from it for most of that time.

Shroud of the Avatar: This is the eventual successor to the franchise, even though the understanding is that Electronic Arts still owns the rights to the Ultima name. It’s been pretty much understood that EA has no idea how to actually allow a franchise to breathe, so fortunately Garriott has given new life into what was once a very original idea.

So, what is Shroud supposed to be like? Well, it released officially on March 27th of this year, although it’s been in extended beta for a number of years now. Several times during the beta, the world was reset, so people had to start over, but the current beta that was playing through was allowed to survive and on March 27th, the game went from idea to actual release. Much rejoicing was had. Not much change, however, occurred. Okay, some change happened, but it was mostly patched kinds of changes without much of an impact on what was happening with the world itself.

But the story itself argues that the avatar has returned to Britannia (or Novia, or whatever land this is supposed to be now). A bunch of comets have caused problems, and there appears to be some kind of “evil” that may be under the surface. But for the most part, other than a couple of dragons wandering around and a ton of bad guys, pirates and thieves, not much seems to be going on in the lands. There are extensive player owned towns and an appearance here and there of Lord British (Richard Garriott’s character), but like Ultima Online before, the one thing sort of missing appears to be a general purpose behind what’s going on in the adventure. It might be there under the surface, but it’s not obvious enough to someone just starting the game. For the most part, when starting the game, you’re told that the Oracle (kind of like a benevolent-sounding Guardian from before) wants you to somehow unite the concepts of love, truth and courage (which were the foundations of the original eight virtues). As for why, I’m still trying to figure that out. And what happens after that, still kind of confused. I’m going to be really disappointed if we discover after all of this preparing and adventuring that we were really trying to figure out where Lord British left his car keys.

The combat mechanics are pretty decent and quite extensive, if one takes the time and effort to learn them. The game can be played on a simplistic level, but there are decks involved in the combat skills, so you can start to develop some really complicated types of maneuvers. There is also quite a bit of involvement with the crafting system as well.

The player housing is pretty awesome as well. As this was a huge part of Ultima Online, I would have been shocked if this was not the case. It’s a bit expensive, but judging from the conversations on the official boards, there may be some effort to make the land choices a bit more achievable for the common player. I’ll admit I’ve probably spent way more money than I should have playing this game, but I’m not the typical player; I do stupid things like that. Most people are generally a lot smarter than I am when it comes to that sort of stuff.

Where the game really needs to grow is in attracting players to run around in that world. They’ve done the one right thing by offering a free access sort of pass to players exploring the game, but a lot more needs to be done to get those same players to want to stay. Right now, the initial price to play the game after visiting is $40. That’s the price of a general AAA game that’s just been released. Although that price can sometimes go up to about $50, the $40 price tag is still pretty close to what people generally remember paying for a newly released PC game. And yes, the game was just released, but it is still showing a lot of early growing pains that may take many months to fix. Those are the kinds of problems people are going to see when visiting the game for free, so this might make it really difficult to translate into full members of the game itself. As long as housing is costing people over $100 in real money, people are probably going to avoid this game like the plague. Add to that the majority of the negative feedback for the game has been about the price of transactions in the game, and you have a recipe for why this might be a difficult sell.

One other problem that hasn’t been addressed all that well is another positive feature of the game: The single player game built within the game itself. You don’t have to play the game online. You can actually start the game as a single player and enjoy pretty much the same world. Without other people. The obvious negative to that is no one else is playing with you, but the positives are numerous, including three npcs that become your partners and experience the world with you, so you’re not always under powered by being alone. But like I said, they haven’t given this avenue enough attention because there are some blatantly missing things, such as player owned towns. On the surface that makes sense, but in reality, those player owned towns are often used for reasons other than housing. A lot of the connections to other zones come from linkage people have made tying numerous towns together (like carriages, balloons and boats). If no player owned towns exist, those connections just don’t exist. Which means there are islands throughout the game that have no ability to be reached because no player connection was made beforehand. So, it’s just eye candy real estate in the game where you can never visit.

As I said before, it’s easy to come up with things to complain about in pretty much any game. It’s no different in this one. Which bothers me a lot because there’s so much strong potential with the game. There are times when it can be a lot of fun. We just need to find better ways to get more people to experience that fun without the costly aftertaste.

Overall, it has a lot of potential but can easily defeat itself by letting these types of problems fester longer than they need to. Unfortunately, online devs are historically really slow at addressing these kinds of things, or in addressing them at all. And once the game starts to go in the down direction, the spiral doesn’t end until the game is gone or a shadow of its original self.

Origin Offers A Free Copy of Ultima VIII

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Ultima_VIII_box_cover

Most people who know me know that I am probably one of the greatest fans of the Ultima franchise ever. There probably isn’t a title in the series that I don’t remember with great fondness, including some of the more obscure entries in the series. I was probably one of those rare individuals who was devastated when Richard Garriott decided to part ways with Origin (the company that was bought by Electronic Arts and then gutted by that same company). As long as he was part of the franchise, there was always the hope that he would create yet another installment in such a great universe.

Well, he left and he is supposedly working on Shroud of the Avatar, which is kind of a follow up to the series, but time passed on, and people aren’t that into the whole franchise any more, mainly because it spawned Ultima Online, and that game was allowed to whither and die (well, it’s still around, but it’s still spiraling out of control and trying to die).

This week, EA, through its Origin online service, has decided to give away Ultima VIII to anyone who wants it, for free. Unfortunately, for anyone who wants to explore the Ultima universe for the first time, this is somewhat of a strange way to do so as Ultima VIII was never about the Ultima universe but about some alternative location that the avatar ended up going during the adventure. None of the companions are in the game, and to be honest, I’m not even sure the virtues have anything to do with it. Sadly enough, after Ultima VIII, we had Ultima Online as the only entry in the universe and then one last attempt to recapture the magic, a more first person perspective in Ultima IX, which was plagued with so many problems.

It’s probably important to point out that there is still a huge audience that desires anything Ultima that might ever rear its head again. Unfortunately, because of corporate crap and creative licenses, we’re probably going to see very little brilliance in this universe again. So at least with Ultima VIII, there’s the opportunity to live in that mindset again, as it was as close to Ultima as we were probably ever going to get after the wonderful world that was Ultima VII, which I argue is probably the greatest Ultima world that we will ever come to know.

There’s really never been another world quite like it, and I know I speak for a lot of people when I say how much I wish we could somehow go back to that world with the computer technology we have today. So, at least until then, if ever, we can at least pretend we’ve found something close by revisiting those worlds that brought us closer, even if they didn’t bring us exactly there.

When a Gaming Company Jumps the Shark

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Years ago, I used to be a seriously addicted Ultima Online fan. I played it every day. I became a counselor in the game, which meant I officially worked for EA as one of the in-game special operators who helped other people who were having problems in the game. I ran community events that were quite popular. I mean, I lived and breathed the game.

Then EA decided to do something really stupid. The game population was having problems at the time due to a segment of the population that was preying on other players. The forum community was in an uproad, demanding something be done about it. There were all sorts of alternatives EA could have taken, including to continue to ignore the problem. But they decided to take the easiest route, which was to create a completely “safe” environment in the game by completely duplicating the entire world and then making that “new” area safe. Oh, sure, you could stay in the dangerous area, or you could go to the completely safe area and eat candy canes with the rest of the safe population. And that’s what everyone did. And the old lands died out because no one went there.

But something else happened, too. People stopped playing the game because it became too easy. You couldn’t be killed, and suddenly the game seemed like a joke of its previous existence. So people left in droves. And then new games appeared, like Everquest, so that became the new stomping ground. UO died out. Oh, sure, it’s still around, but it’s a shadow of its once great self.

To me, the reason was that the owners of the game listened to the players, and then when it came time for really listening to the feedback, they decided to take the easier path and then stopped listening. The players, pissed, and practically screaming at the developers, kept begging them to listen to what was happening to the game. The developers not only didn’t listen, but they closed down the forums, figuring that as long as they didn’t have to listen to the complaints, then the problems didn’t exist.

So a LOT of people just dumped the game. I did as well. I realized they weren’t paying attention to the players any more, so I went and found another game.

Fast forward some years to Star Wars Galaxies, and wow, it’s like they didn’t learn a thing. What’s even funnier is that some of the same names were there making the same mistakes. When the game started going down hill, instead of listen to the player base, they went ahead and completely changed the game to one they thought players would want to play. Boy, were they wrong. The player base disappeared overnight. Realizing they made a mistake, but refusing to admit it, they made another abrupt change, causing the few remaining players to say “screw you” and leave. The game is less than a shadow of its former self. To this day, they refuse to admit they did anything wrong, but in all areas where they discuss how to screw up a game, Star Wars Galaxies is ALWAYS mentioned as the showcase of an example of what NOT TO DO EVER.

Well, fast forward to today, and we have the most popular game on the planet for MMORPGs: World of Warcraft. Yesterday, they made an announcement to do something that has me shaking my head because it’s like I’m reliving those two previous examples over again.

You see, some weeks ago, WoW decided that it was going to implement this new feature called REALID, which meant that in order to group with your friends, you had to present your real identification and play as yourself, not as a character name. If someone wanted to know who you were, they would know. This pissed people off, but Blizzard, the maker of WOW, said that you don’t have to use REALID if you don’t want to. Then they announced yesterday that in order to use the forums for WOW or their new game coming out called Starcraft 2, you have to use REALID. What they didn’t really mention is that as their parent company Activision is now partnered with Facebook, this is more about giving identification information to Facebook than it is in presenting a new way to socialize in the game. People are pissed. People don’t like having their ID out there when playing a game.

To prove how dangerous this is, one of the trash-talking employees for Blizzard stated it was no big deal and put his own information out there. In no time, all of his private information was out there, and suddenly his phone was ringing off the hook from angry players, and his Facebook account had to be shut down because of the onslaught of attacks. The problems he’s experiencing are still going on. Blizzard’s response wasn’t to realize they made a mistake but to unofficially announce that its employees wouldn’t have to comply with REALID, just the players would.

This has started a nightmare of bad publicity for Blizzard, which is treating it like the old ad business, thinking that as long as people are talking about Blizzard, it must mean good business.

I’m starting to hear A LOT of people talking about dumping WOW because of this. And that’s interesting because up until now I’ve always believed that the only thing that could ever destroy WOW would be WOW itself. I just didn’t think it would happen by allying itself with the scuz bucket that is Facebook.

This should play out to be a very interesting situation. I’ll be watching this closely.