Hell (and Heaven) is Other People - part 2

                       By Dave Booth

For the second part of this UO retrospective, here's an article I
found on the 'net that summarises the UO experience, it seems, for
many players.  Next issue, the upbeat version....

The article was published some time ago, during which Origin (the
publishers of UO) have issued a lot of patches to the game, some
of which deal with things Jeff mentions.  But overall, his
impression is still shared by many who hate, and so love, this
darned game.

-  Dave



Ultima Online Looked Good Off

by Jeff Freeman

@~This article first appeared on RPGNet - http://www.rpg.net and
@~is used with permission

Ultima Online is a great idea. It is an idea worth $59.95, plus
$9.95 per month.  No surprise there. The original Ultima was good.
Ultima II was better, Ultima III was even better than that. And so
on, through Ultima VII or X or XXXII or whatever they got up to.
Ultima Online is essentially the next one in the series and, just
as before, it is bigger and better than its predecessors.

In theory, anyway.

Which is to say that as a stand-alone, play-by-yourself, off-line
sort of game, it would be. In practice, Ultima Online plays like a
weird combination of Quake, SimAnt and Barbie Fashion Designer.

Before I go on, let me define a term that I'm going to use in an
abnormal way: Realism. Anytime one talks about realism in a
fantasy RPG they are instantly refuted with "Well, it isn't
supposed to be realistic, it's fantasy." So I'll counter that
before I even get started by defining the context in which I'm to
use the term.

I'm not talking about 'realism' relative to the laws of nature in
the real world, I'm talking about being true to the genre. I'm
speaking of what is 'realistic' within the imaginary reality of
fantasy adventure games. Magic and monsters and absurdly powerful
warriors are 'realistic' within that 'reality', nuclear warheads
(or even bb-guns or plastic straws) are probably not.

For a handy example, look at AD&D. A lot of people complain that
the ban on wizards wielding swords is 'not realistic'. If a wizard
can pick up a sword and be fairly inept with it, do as little
damage with it as they could do with a dagger or a staff, but
still manage to wield it, then that might be more 'realistic'. But
when the answer to the question of "Why can't I use a sword?" is a
flat "Because you can't. Because it says so in the rules" then the
player is justified in invoking the "Well, that's not realistic"
complaint.  Even though he's talking about someone that casts
magic spells for a living.

Casting magic spells is realistic within the imaginary 'reality'
of AD&D. "You can't use swords because it says so in the rules" is
not at all realistic.

Sometimes what is realistic in a fantasy game just comes down to
rationalizations. If you can come up with a decent rationale for
why wizards cannot wield swords at all then maybe it'll be
realistic. You can define 'reality' so that things in the game are
'realistic', pretty much no matter what they are, but if you don't
then they aren't and that is that.

I've played Ultima Online for a while. The game has gotten more
enjoyable since the initial, frustrating first few days. There is
still a whole mighty ton of room for improvement.

My first impression:

You pay $59.95 for the game and one 'free month' of access to the
game's servers. You cannot play the game off-line, so that's a
flat $59.95 for one month. You'll need an internet provider, which
you most certainly already have. Otherwise chock-up another
$19.95 for that, of course (a bargain-buy internet provider, or
America Online, isn't going to cut it, either).

You'll begin the game with a very weak character, 100 gold coins
and maybe a sewing kit or a hatchet or some smithing tools (like a
hammer and tongs, etc.). The 100 gold isn't enough to buy
anything, so basically you're beginning the game weak and poor.

And when I say 'weak', I mean weak. As in, "Don't attack a
chicken, it might kill you"-weak. Pathetically, ridiculously weak.
Unrealistically weak.

The first thing you'll want to do is to get your character
powerful enough to defeat the bunnies and birds that roam the
countryside. You do this by 'practicing' with your weapons. You'll
spend many hours online double-clicking a practice dummy. You
hear a thumping noise and sometimes your skill in whatever weapon
you're using increases one-tenth of a point. After a very long
boring while, you'll be proficient enough with your weapons to
defeat not only the bunnies and chickens, but dogs and cats, too.
It's as if 'character creation' takes not minutes, but hours.
Hours and hours and hours. Long, boring hours. Weeks and months of
them, even.

Now you'll want to get some money so that you can buy armor and
weapons. You'll spend the next several days or weeks practicing
your trade - be it making bows, furniture, shields, clothes or
whatever. It doesn't matter that you wanted to be a warrior, in
order to afford the equipment you're going to have to be something
else. A cook, maybe.

Like the previous step, this one consists of doing the same thing,
over and over and over.

For example, if you play a bower then you'll walk through the
woods chopping trees to get wood, then carving the wood into bows
or arrow shafts. Every time you see a chicken or a bunny, you'll
want to attack it, so that your Swordsmanship skill is also
gradually increasing (and also because you're bored out of your
skull). Then you sell the bows and arrows to the shop in town and
spend the gold on armor.  That's just double-clicking an ax, then
clicking a tree.  Chop, chop, chop. Then double-clicking an ax and
clicking the wood that you got from the tree. Carve, carve, carve.
Then walking into town, which judging by the lag is up a very
steep hill, typing 'Vendor Sell' and hoping that he'll buy the
whole lot. If he won't, and probably he won't because he's up to
his ears in bows that other players are making, you'll have to
stand around for a while and keep bothering him until he finally
does.  Then, remarkably, you discover that the walk between the
forest and the town is uphill both ways.  You repeat this again
and again. Hour after hour after painfully boring, excruciatingly
repetitive hour.  With only the occasional battle with a bunny or
a bird to break up the monotony.

Finally, modestly equipped and still pathetically weak (if no
longer unrealistically so), you have a character that is powerful
enough not only to defeat the chickens and bunnies, but also cows
and pigs. Wolves and bears are still a bit out of your league. So
you spend a good long while wandering just outside of town
attacking animals.  You can even attack the wolves, if you stick
close enough to town to run back to safety before the critter can
kill you. You do this again and again and again.

With countless mind-numbing hours or weeks invested in the game
(although I recommend trying to count those countless hours, it
might help pass the time), you're ready for real adventure. So you
find some other suckers and head for the nearest dungeon. The
journey there is fairly uneventful (if you ignore the wolves and
bears then they usually won't attack you), because there isn't a
living monster anywhere in the wilderness. You step inside the
dungeon... and are instantly amazed...

...all the lag is gone.

Origin Systems, Inc. claims that there is no server-side lag. They
claim the lag experienced when playing the game is caused by
internet traffic and they cannot do anything about it. During
off-peak times, your character will take three steps and stop,
three steps and stop, in a most irritating fashion. It's even
worse during peak times (more commonly known as 'the time you want
to play').  Your character will take one step and freeze for quite
a long while, then maybe take a half-step before freezing again.

Origin says there is nothing they can do about this because it's
caused by internet traffic, not overloaded servers. But inside the
dungeons, where there are relatively fewer players, there's almost
no lag at all.

I'm no network guru, but the dungeons are accessed via the same
internet as the rest of the game, right?

To correct this problem, which they claim is not server-side, but
rather is caused by internet traffic, they're limiting the number
of items that can be placed into a single container to 100.

Hopefully all online games will do this since, they seem to be
saying, it has an impact on the speed of the internet itself and
not just their server load.

Truly, technology can be baffling.

Anyway, you also might see a monster in the dungeon. If you're
alone, it'll kill you. Otherwise, your team of intrepid adventures
will smash it into dust and collect the gold from the corpse. Pay
day! Finally, after weeks and weeks of boring repetition and
frustrating lag, you're doing something fun!

Then you and your companions will be mobbed by a large group of
other players that hang around near the entrance of dungeons with
no purpose in mind beyond killing you.

They are known within the game as Player Killers or PKers. And
there's no escaping them, unless you can find a group of PKers to
hang around with yourself, and ruin the game for other people.

If you still want to play the game, you can go to a healer to be
resurrected, repeat the long and boring exercise of making bows or
armor or cabinets or whatever in order to fund the purchase of
replacement equipment, then head back up the steep hill to the
dungeon to be killed by the PKers again.

And you can repeat that process over and over and over for as long
as you want to pay $9.95 per month to not play Ultima Online.

Now, it would be 'unrealistic' to simply ban player-killing and
Origin refuses to even admit there is much of a problem. The
Player Killers likewise claim there is no problem, that this is
just part of the game (circular logic:  it's part of the game
because, thanks to them, it's the only thing in the game you can
do).

So first, let me point out that it is a problem, and why. If I
fail to convince you, then stop reading after the next couple
paragraphs, and go play Duke Nukem.

Ask yourself a couple of questions: Why aren't all the most
powerful creatures in the dungeon right near the entrance? When
GMing an off-line RPG, why not have the PCs attacked by another
party of humans that is much larger and stronger than they are,
continuously, again and again? The answer is pretty obvious, isn't
it? The weaker creatures are near the entrance and the tougher
beasties are deeper in the dungeon and you almost never hit the
party with more than they can handle - and even when you do, give
them a way to escape. And we all know why.

Because otherwise the game would suck.

Now if you still think that PKing is not a problem then you just
need to go play Quake and leave the rest of us alone. Due to
PKing, all you can do in Ultima Online, apart from Player Killing,
is to wander in the woods, close to town, repeating the same
boring exercise of making cabinets, bows or shields while fighting
the occasional bunny, and sometimes a cow.

The really sad part is that the PKers do this because it is fun.
Kill the monster, get the gold, kill the next monster, and so on
again and again and again just doesn't appeal to them anymore.
What else is there to do in the game?  Where are the miniquests
(or for that matter, the major quests?).

I can't go without mentioning all the times that NPCs in the game
have said things like, "I need a . All I can trade you for it is a
." That's right, blanks. One NPC even said, "I can offer you
entrails of test in exchange."

"Entrails of test"? Who is testing crap in a production
environment and why wasn't he fired ages ago? This isn't a
beta-test, we're all paying real money for this absurdity!

Shall we talk about the vendors in town that are selling 'null'
for zero gold coins (you can't buy them and couldn't do anything
with them anyway), or all the packs I've discovered with a "No
Draw" in them (that you cannot even select to get out of the
pack)?

Buggy. Lagged. Ridiculously weak starting characters so that you
run macros for hours on end in order to get your stats up to a
decent score (which contributes to the lag problem, I might add -
at least give people the ability to train off-line, or use a
method of advancement that doesn't involve running macros for
hours on end, or start them out properly so that it isn't
necessary). Hoards of PKers roaming the countryside and lurking in
the dungeon so that you dare not ever venture far from town to
actually play the game.

That was my first impression of it, at any rate, after playing for
'only' a few days.

I wonder how many people give up at that point? I certainly would
have, if I hadn't spent $59.95 on the thing. I seemed stuck with
it, and gave my best effort to make it fun.

So I combed the web for help. For that $59.95, you get zilch.
There is no rulebook. There's an online manual at Origin's web
site, but it isn't at all helpful. The game comes with a cloth
map, which is useless. It also comes with a pendant that you can
throw into a drawer, or you can try to commit suicide by jabbing
it into your forehead, when the frustrating lag-fest pushes you to
your breaking point (just a quick word of advice: Don't try it.
It hurts, but unless you are extremely lucky, it almost certainly
won't kill you).

On the fan-created web sites, you can get info. Lots of it.  Maps,
directions, instructions, hints, tips, tricks of the trade
(whichever trade you prefer), guilds that you can join to find
other players with which to actually roleplay (who might also help
you get started, reasonably well-equipped, etc.)... in short,
everything that should have come with the game, and great help to
overcome the things that should not be part of the game. It is all
out there in one form or another (usually in more than one form)
somewhere on the net.

Now things are a bit more fun. I can interact with the other
characters I meet and ignore the ones that aren't roleplaying as
best I can. They run by shouting "PK!  PK!", which is meant as a
helpful warning but can really kill the mood. Or they ask
questions like "How many hit points you got?"

There are quite a few other people trying to roleplay and if they
see you doing it then you'll likely become fast friends, because
it's hard to roleplay with yourself.

Still...

There are invulnerable NPCs called vendors standing all over the
place, out in the wilderness, generally next to tents and houses
that are likewise unprotected and every bit as indestructible.

The invulnerable houses, by the way, are too often sitting on a
spot where monsters spawn (making for a house full of monsters and
darn few roaming the countryside) or else it's been plopped right
in the middle of a road.  Not just unrealistic, but also silly. If
the vendors are invulnerable, then why are they standing there
hawking someone else's loot? Why don't they haul all the gold out
of the nearest dungeon (or for that matter the nearest town)
themselves?

Also, having all those vendors (hundreds of them!) hold all those
objects (hundreds of them!) means there are less system resources
available to make wandering beasties. Eliminating all those extra
'objects' might also help with the lag problem and more critters
might give the PKers something to attack besides the other
players.

Speaking of which, If...

1. There aren't enough monsters...
and
2.  Hoards of players want nothing more out of the game
3.  than the opportunity to kill other players...

Then why wouldn't you allow players to be monsters to begin with?
Guild Wars are fine (and are coming), but the game would benefit
by allowing the monstrous PKers to just be monsters.

The game would have benefited tremendously by having a 'human'
culture in a constant war with a 'humanoid' culture (Orc,
Lizardman, or whatever) and allowing players to pick which sort of
character they wanted to be this along with all of the side-quests
(that don't work) and dungeon-stomping (that can't be done due to
the Pkers) and guild-wars (that haven't been implemented yet) and
so on.

Finally, they need to have the characters start out reasonably
well-equipped and somewhat competent so that you don't have to
spend so very many hours repeating the same stupid macro again and
again.  Character creation that takes months and months of real-
time? The only thing comparable in off-line, traditional RPGs
would be character-creation that consisted of rolling
five-thousand dice, one at a time. Or character creation in
Champions, maybe.

After playing initially (if you can call that 'playing'), my
recommendation to you would have been this: The game sucks. Save
your money. Don't buy it. And don't try to play it because you
can't. Play something else instead.  There is no roleplaying. It's
a buggy, lagged and frequently boring, medieval fantasy
hack-and-stomp. I am one unhappy customer.

But now I'll amend that: Make friends in the game and it's a whole
different game. Roleplay - and you can only do this by refusing to
not roleplay, which is harder than it sounds - ignore
out-of-character and game-mechanics chatter, and eventually you'll
meet others will not only roleplay with you (which is fun in
itself), but they'll most likely also help you get your character
started (although it will still take an inordinate amount of time
to get a decent character). It also helps, when you see someone
yell something out-of-character, to just translate it in your head
to something more appropriate. "PK! PK!"  should read, "Be warned!
There is a murderous band of scoundrels afoot!"

Get the maps from uoss.stomped.com - you'll need them.  They
should have been built-into the 500 megabyte Ultima-client. While
you're at uoss.stomped.com read every web page they have to
offer. It's all valuable information that should have been
included with the $60 Ultima Online CD.

Find an active player-guild. Join it. This is a bit of a
challenge, too. A search for guilds on Yahoo recovers scores of
defunct web-pages (the remnants of players that have quit the
game, already) and OSI's 'Guild Hall' doesn't tell you on which
server any particular guild is active (and a number of those
guilds are defunct as well).

Above all else, have patience.

But not too much patience. Otherwise you'll be willing to wait for
something playable.

More recently, I've played during 'peak times' when lag on one
server was unbearable but the lag on another server was not too
terribly bad. Then too, I've received "Connection Lost" three
times in the span of an hour, once during combat with an Ettin
(this is a bad thing to happen) and have even lagged through an
entire fight (take a swing, freeze for several minutes... then
finally, 'Oh look, we won.').

As said, Origin is addressing that issue by limiting the number of
objects that can be placed into a container, and they're also
modifying the server-list to let you know both the lag-time
between you and each server as well as the number of people
currently online. A lot of the problems seem to be design issues,
though. Not just the volume of people and objects on the server,
in other words, but the very structure of the database and design
of the program itself. Not easy to solve, that.

They are also addressing the PK issue, which is not simply
'player-versus-player combat', but refers to the idiot-children
(or perhaps they are bored adults) that have no interest in the
game at all beyond running around killing other players. That
whole system is too complicated to go into here, but it might
help. The built-in guild system should also help, since hopefully
the PKers will then limit most of their wanton destruction to
guild-wars (as opposed to random acts of murder).

The game is constantly being updated, so my gripes and the bugs
detailed here may be entirely different by the time you read this.
Each new patch seems to resolve some problems and introduce
others. For example, one patch 'fixed' a problem that was causing
stats to drop a few points, but introduced a bug that allowed
players to cheat their way to having god-like abilities.

The "What's New" and "Coming Soon" sections of Origin's web site
look very promising. The creature-spawning rate has increased so
you can actually encounter a wandering baddie out in the
wilderness now (which you won't be able to handle on your own,
because the characters still begin the game so ridiculously weak),
and the situation in dungeons is much better.

Since I joined a guild, I can actually go to dungeons and not get
slaughtered by a pack of other players.

Finally, I'm having fun sometimes and enjoying a bit of the game
now, though I didn't at all at first, and still quite often am
utterly frustrated with it. I'm eagerly anticipating the next wave
of modifications to the game system. All those promises...

And yes, I am still playing.  In spite of all the above. Me and
thousands of other people just like me. We hate the game and play
the heck out of it. We deal with all the things we hate in hopes
of salvaging some fun out of an evening's frustration.  I mean,
come on... this is Ultima we're talking about here.

Fans of Ultima Online (and they do have fans - people willing to
overlook anything short of all the servers crashing
simultaneously) wonder why the anti-fans bother to post derogatory
messages in rec.games.computer.ultima.online - instead of just not
playing. One Fan in that newsgroup signs every post, "Don't Pay,
Don't Play, Go Away" because he's sick of hearing people gripe
about it.  But I can sympathize with those people. I love the game
and I play it for hours on end, and I hate it so very much.

Comments? Feel free to email them to ack@rpg.net
                              - o -