[HN Gopher] We Burned Down Players' Houses in Ultima Online
___________________________________________________________________
We Burned Down Players' Houses in Ultima Online
Author : yreg
Score : 518 points
Date : 2022-10-03 21:58 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.cotten.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.cotten.io)
| anvic wrote:
| yay, you invented UUIDs (?)
| shiftpgdn wrote:
| Ultima Online invented a significant amount of technology we
| use today. The technical term "sharding" literally comes from
| the intro video in the game where they explain why there are
| multiple copies of the same world.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > Ultima Online invented a significant amount of technology
| we use today.
|
| Yeah, but not UUIDs. Those go back to the 80s.
| cottenio wrote:
| But shards! lol
| __d wrote:
| I _think_ they were invented by Apollo Computer as part of
| their NCS (Network Computing System). From there, they were
| adopted by the OSF (later Open Group) DCE RPC system, and
| from there, by Microsoft (who renamed them GUIDs).
| capableweb wrote:
| In that vein, earliest mention of UUID I could find
| (thanks Apollo Archives):
|
| > 2.4 Unique Identifiers
|
| > An important aspect of NCA is its use of universal
| unique identifiers (UUIDs) as the most primi-
|
| > tive means of identifying NCA entities (e.g. objects,
| interfaces, operations). UUIDs are an exten-
|
| > sion of the unique identifiers (UIDs) already used
| throughout Apollo's system [Leach 82]. Both
|
| > UIDs and UUIDs are fixed length identifiers that are
| guaranteed to refer to just one thing for all
|
| > time. The principal advantages of using any kind of
| unique identifiers over using string names at
|
| > the lowest level of the system include: small size,
| ease of embedding in data structures, location
|
| > transparency, and the ability to layer various naming
| strategies on top of the primitive naming
|
| > mechanism. Also, identifiers can be generated anywhere,
| without first having to contact some
|
| > other agent (e.g. a special server on the network, or a
| human representative of a company that
|
| > hands out identifiers).
|
| https://jim.rees.org/apollo-archive/papers/ncs.pdf
|
| The paper is not dated but probably was around 1986 or
| later?
| pmoriarty wrote:
| This reminds me of the assassination of Lord British: [1]
|
| _" Lord British was a player character created by Richard
| Garriott, the producer of Ultima Online. Using this character,
| Richard acted as Ultima's King and would sometimes interact with
| other players. Lord British had considerable protection from an
| entourage of bodyguards and was even explicitly coded to be
| invulnerable to virtually any attack. During the game's online
| beta test, Lord British gave an address to fellow players at his
| Castle Britannia. But while British was giving his address, a
| player character known as Rainz cast a spell scroll that set the
| Lord on fire, killing him instantly._
|
| _" It turns out that shortly before this event, the server had
| crashed and needed to be restarted. Garriott forgot to
| reimplement his invulnerability flag, leaving him open to being
| killed. If that wasn't shocking enough for the attendees, a
| fellow developer of the game known as Starr Long, with his in-
| game character Lord Blackthorn, summoned a horde of demons to
| kill the assassin. Not only did the assassin manage to escape,
| but the demons had killed nearly every player attending the
| address..."_
|
| [1] - https://www.cbr.com/ultima-online-lord-british-
| assassination...
| JoeOfTexas wrote:
| Wow, talk about a train wreck lol.
| egypturnash wrote:
| Thus continuing the time-honored tradition of the entire
| Ultima series: trying to find a way to kill Lord British.
| Garriot's self-insert is the king of the land of Britannia in
| pretty much every one of the games, and there's _some_ way to
| kill him in just about all of them.
|
| https://ultima.fandom.com/wiki/Killing_Lord_British
| rvba wrote:
| It was incredible marketing for the game. I remember all the
| gaming press wrote about it. It would just inspire you to try
| to play the game.
|
| If someone made an MMO today, it would make sense to stage
| similar events to get some nice viral marketing. The
| 'corrupted blood' incident in World of Warcraft gave the game
| a lot of free marketing even in normal press - who loved to
| write about it. From what I understand (many?) players
| enjoyed the few days of chaos too.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrupted_Blood_incident
| RektBoy wrote:
| jansan wrote:
| Rainz was allegedly was banned from Ultima Online and all other
| OSI games for life.
|
| _Rainz had used a Fire Field scroll on Lord British without
| any real hope that his assassination attempt would be
| successful. When Lord British died Rainz admitted he was in
| complete shock and even burst out in laughter. Rainz faced
| immediate repercussions from Ultima Online programmers and was
| summarily banished from the game. The official reason for his
| banning was said to be because of the sheer number of
| complaints other players had filed against him due to his
| playstyle. He was also banned from all future OSI games,
| however Rainz refused to rule out that he might continue to
| play under another alias._
|
| https://clanet.io/wiki/Ultima_Online/Beta_Pacific/Rainz
| pixl97 wrote:
| Rule #1: Do not embarrass the dictator.
| stavros wrote:
| Yeah, that was shit, when someone beats you with the rules
| you yourself wrote, don't be angry.
| andrepd wrote:
| Ultima Online was an absolutely amazing game and it's pretty
| telling that despite all the technological advances since, _no
| game whatsoever_ came as close as Ultima Online to fulfilling
| the promise of the Computer MMO: a virtual, shared, persistent
| world.
|
| Maybe Star Wars Galaxies was the one who came closer.
| bovermyer wrote:
| Playable Worlds is working on an MMORPG that should come
| pretty close to the original idea. Raph Koster - one of the
| designers of SWG - is heavily involved.
| andrepd wrote:
| Wow, I didn't know that! Gonna check it out.
|
| Making an MMO true to the name is probably my dream
| lifetime project. If I had f-u money it's absolutely what I
| would be doing.
| samstave wrote:
| I was there that day.
|
| >>" _It turns out that shortly before this event, the server
| had crashed and needed to be restarted. Garriott forgot to
| reimplement his invulnerability flag_ "
|
| I never believed this...
|
| it was a fn PK game.
|
| I doubt he had such a flag.
| gfosco wrote:
| Of course GMs and staff had invuln flags... the Lord British
| character didn't play the game normally, he appeared for
| events.
| samstave wrote:
| Thats fine, im just saying as one of the most prolifics (we
| were the 24/7 testers at intel) etc... and being there that
| day - no way this wasnt lit on by default, if exist...
| lozenge wrote:
| Yeah, they could have caught this with even the most
| basic Github Actions workflow.
| superrad wrote:
| I don't know if you're joking but Ultima online was
| obviously released 20 years before GitHub actions existed
| xani_ wrote:
| So spend man-hours on developing a feature for one player
| in the game.
|
| or just tell them to type that command once in 2 weeks
| when he logs on
|
| Yeah good fucking idea, let's waste dev time on that!
| tommica wrote:
| Easy to imagine that it existed, probably very useful during
| development
| Nexxius wrote:
| I worked for Origin at the time as a UO Admin using the
| handle GM Snarf, we had a control console on our standard
| installs which allowed us to toggle "god mode", "smite", cast
| spell, create item, create gold, summon monster, etc. If you
| forgot to toggle god mode after logging into your avatar
| stupid things would happen and the players would screen shot
| it to spread the fun. I remember forgetting to toggle it
| before responding to a customer call and getting insta-killed
| by a dragon.
| synicalx wrote:
| I remember when MMO's were fun like this :(
| b0afc375b5 wrote:
| Maybe we just grew old. I recently paid real money just to
| support a private server of my favorite childhood mmorpg.
| After playing a couple of days I got bored and never played
| again.
| bodge5000 wrote:
| To be fair it does feel like something changed, online
| games used to feel a lot more social. As a kid you could
| just jump into an MMO and make new friends, that seems to
| have gone away now.
|
| I guess they served as a proxy for what we now have with
| Discord, and now that we have "the real thing", its kind of
| naturally gone away. Which is a shame, because meeting
| people over Discord is much more difficult imo, or at very
| least not as beginner friendly.
| jghn wrote:
| > As a kid you could just jump into an MMO and make new
| friends
|
| Some of us were past "kid" when UO came out :)
|
| But I do think the key phrase here is "as a kid". I was
| in university when UO came out, and it became my life. I
| had some strong social interactions with a bunch of
| people, although they tended to skew my age or older.
| However there was an obvious pattern. These were mostly
| people who did not have to take care children, either
| they hadn't had them yet for one reason or another, or
| their kids were already older.
|
| There was a bunch of us who stayed in touch and played
| other games, but as the main pack of late 20-something &
| early 30-somethings started to have kids, they faded off.
| This wasn't the only reason, other types of
| responsibilities pulled people away, but it was the big
| one.
|
| It's easy to sink time into things when you don't have
| huge time sink responsibilities in your life. And when
| you sink lots of time into social things, you tend to
| make strong connections.
| lethologica wrote:
| Same thing happened with me and WoW Classic. I was hoping
| that classic would recapture the magic I felt playing the
| game a decade ago but after a few days I was just bored and
| cancelled my subscription. I guess that feeling is just a
| moment frozen in time now.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Playing "solved" games is not as exiting. The effect is
| most clear with boardgames I think. Also if you were a
| kid at the time way more things are exciting in gemeral.
| Alex3917 wrote:
| > Playing "solved" games is not as exiting. The effect is
| most clear with boardgames I think.
|
| While this is probably usually true, a good counter
| example is Go, which actually become more fun after
| computers surpassed the abilities of humans. (Because, as
| it turns out, the boring parts of the game don't actually
| matter that much in terms of points.)
| JeddHampton wrote:
| The game could return to what it was but the community
| couldn't. You can't recapture the past like that.
| Everything has moved on. The game is known, not new
| again.
| andrepd wrote:
| To be fair WoW is a completely different beast from
| Ultima. They might as well be different genres.
| synicalx wrote:
| I was hyped for Classic for YEARS and when the release
| date got announced I booked a full week off work (and
| with the missus lol) so I could no-life it just like old
| times.
|
| If the community could have had their memory wiped of
| Vanilla on launch day it would have been a different
| experience. But instead we just ended up with a bunch of
| seasoned veterans min/maxing everything to the extreme
| and burning through content they'd already solved more
| than a decade ago.
|
| I still re-visit Classic every now and then, maybe just
| to level another character up to level 15 or so and re-
| experience the starting zones I like so much. But it
| doesn't have the same allure as when it was brand new and
| that's kind of sad.
| synicalx wrote:
| The problem with re-playing an old game I think is that
| it's already "solved". There's no sense of adventure or
| mystery any more, and it just becomes a race to accomplish
| whatever objectives the player base comes up with. WoW
| Classic is a great example of this - people had Ragnaros
| down in like 48 days after launch or something ridiculous.
|
| Even though it's not an MMO, I caught a brief glimpse of
| that same feeling earlier this year playing through Elden
| Ring. No one really knew anything and the world was huge
| and inscrutable at first, it was a lot of fun to explore
| and sort-of interact with people doing the same thing
| through messages, ghosts etc.
| jandrese wrote:
| IMHO the fun drained away when MMO publishers decided to
| refocus on making money. Ironically this caused most of
| them to go to a Free 2 Play model (F2P), which requires the
| developers to implement ever increasing amounts of grind to
| create a market that can be monetized. To spend creative
| energy on building elaborate gambling systems to lock away
| as much of the content as they can get away with from the
| majority of the playerbase.
| Eumenes wrote:
| Asheron's Call?
| nicolas_t wrote:
| Which server and game was that?
| trissylegs wrote:
| I think Garriot said originally he stepped out of the fire
| instinctively. Then remembered "Wait I'm invincible I can stand
| in fire." Then proceeded to stand in the fire and die.
|
| Which is kinda funny as it's become a meme about WoW players
| standing in fire and dying when they couldn't just moved. (To
| much frustration to healers)
|
| https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Stay_out_of_the_fire
| xani_ wrote:
| Don't think it's related in any way to wow thing aside from a
| fact you can stand in fire in both games...
|
| But I remember telling our DPS "THE GREEN FIRE DOES NOT HEAL
| YOU" in some boss fight...
| Retric wrote:
| That's mostly just poor game design as players don't worry
| about standing in fire when leveling up. MMO's tend to add
| such arbitrary new gameplay mechanics in raids and nowhere
| else. Then everyone gets annoyed because players can only
| really practice in raids.
| jghn wrote:
| In UO standing in fire walls was a method people used to
| skill up. UO was skill based, not level based. And you
| gained skill points by doing those actions. A good way to
| have a group build up spell resistance was to cast fire
| field, everyone stands in the fire, and have someone cast
| heals. Casting the field and the heals also improved
| casting abilities
| bevacqua wrote:
| As someone who got involved in an open-source version of the
| Ultima Online server, this is a fun read
|
| Instead of `areaserv` like the article talks about, RunUO had the
| concept of sectors within a region[1]. Sidenote: To this day
| RunUO is one of the easiest codebases to understand i've ever
| come across
|
| We too had a pretty bad item duping bug, around how banks allowed
| you to create checks with money, and an overflow bug leading to
| people being trivially able to print money -- this led to runway
| inflation in some servers.
|
| UO economies themselves being matter of study, for a _Really_
| interesting article, see [2]
|
| [1]: https://github.com/runuo/runuo/blob/master/Server/Region.cs
|
| [2]:
| https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5bf1bc95506fbe3baadb7...
| retrac wrote:
| That's an amazing paper. Non-PDF version is available too [1].
| It's quite a laugh and really makes you think. A lot seems
| obvious to me as a sometime-MMO player, but this was written
| almost 10 years before I started playing MMOs! I think my
| favourite bit is this:
|
| > Indulgences. Services such as 'red hair dye' which players
| are willing to pay for but which don't cost server resources.
| Extreme examples might be titles; for example, 10,000 gold buys
| a character the title "lord".
|
| I think I'm going to call such features "indulgences" in the
| future.
|
| > At first, the designers attempted to solve the deflation
| problem by pumping more resources into the world - they simply
| increased the total quantity of resources in the bank. But, no
| matter how much they added, the resources always flowed into
| inventory and just sat there. The problem, they concluded, was
| the lack of drains - not enough stuff was flowing out. However,
| players are (understandably) extremely resistant to rule
| changes which take things away from them. Thus, significantly
| increasing the decay or degradation rates is politically
| unfeasible. New drains were proposed: taxes, maintenance fees
| on housing, etc. Unfortunately, many of these drains feel too
| much like real world "work" and are therefore politically
| unacceptable. [...]
|
| > Many may argue that this economy is not real; that it is
| merely a simulation. However, this misses the point. UO players
| are engaging in this commerce voluntarily; in fact, they are
| paying real money for the privilege! Proof of the reality of
| the economy can be obtained by observing the real-world prices
| fetched by players who auction off existing UO characters and
| property on the electronic auction house ebay.com. As of this
| writing, one character sold for $2000! It is this economic
| reality which makes UO a potentially very interesting research
| platform.
|
| [1]
| https://web.archive.org/web/20150709101636/http://www.mine-c...
| stepanhruda wrote:
| Hey I learned to code thanks to RunUO!
| bevacqua wrote:
| I learned C# and landed my first coding job thanks to it too
| aasasd wrote:
| > _UO economies themselves being matter of study_
|
| More than that, in regard to MMOs in general: both Cory
| Doctorow and Neil Stephenson wrote books involving exchange of
| money in MMOs, remarking that bringing a bag of gold to another
| dude in the game is an actual method of transferring money
| cross-border without oversight, used by mobs. I vaguely heard
| (and again mentioned by Doctorow) that the size of economy of
| larger games like WoW can dwarf not-so-small countries.
| aasasd wrote:
| Though the latter bit about the 'size of economy' is doubtful
| to me: the populations of top MMOs are in millions each, but
| surely the players don't spend the sums of their monthly rent
| and food bills in the games. This report from January 2021
| puts the daily volume of transactions in WoW at about two
| million USD: https://massivelyop.com/2021/01/21/world-of-
| warcraft-players...
|
| I eyeballed the rate for late-ish 2021 from this hastily
| found site, at 20 bucks per 200k gold--seemed to change
| little in the past year, so hopefully holds true for January
| 2021 as well: https://www.playerauctions.com/market-price-
| tracker/wow/
| benlwalker wrote:
| There's also now an open source recreation of the original
| client, all written in C# that actually uses a GPU so it
| renders 4k at 250fps instead of 800x600 at 12.5fps. It's a very
| mature and stable reproduction at this point.
|
| https://github.com/classicuo/ClassicUO
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Now if they could just eliminate the grind, and get a
| thriving player base again!
| tcoop25 wrote:
| https://uooutlands.com/
|
| Over 2k active players daily (edit: by active I mean there
| are over 2k players logged in and playing at any given
| time). The devs are incredibly active, and there is a lot
| more to do here than original UO.
| canadiantim wrote:
| I tried playing uo outlands, but what really struck me
| was the lack of bugs. Tbh my favourite part of playing uo
| back in the day was exploiting bugs so uo outlands isn't
| really for me
| benlwalker wrote:
| As an alternative, may I offer you a wasm port?
| https://play.classicuo.org/
|
| (I've never used this but I heard it runs well)
| w-ll wrote:
| f. on a monday.. come one i gotta get work done. now i
| gotta go afk for the week a nd blame it on pg&e
| Huh1337 wrote:
| It's Tuesday man
| kethinov wrote:
| UOForever is quite active.
| erichurkman wrote:
| > As someone who got involved in an open-source version of the
| Ultima Online server, this is a fun read
|
| Ultima Online emulators were what took small interest for me
| and blew it up into a career. But for me, it was pre-RunUO:
| SphereServer (aka GrayServer, I think) and UOX3. C++, with its
| own scripting engine built in. It wasn't exactly closed or open
| source. It also got me into Linux: while some emulation servers
| were run on home PCs, others were run on hosted machines.
| Debugging often meant the server administrators would give you
| root access to debug their running server. New Ultima Online
| releases meant being late for school to try and debug the
| client code changes to be able to quickly update the server,
| otherwise no one could log in.
|
| It was incredibly buggy and never, to my knowledge, reached
| feature parity with the full game. The workarounds individual
| servers made through the rudimentary scripting language was
| impressive (many of these hacks were then copied into the core
| emulation scripts).
|
| For trips down memory lane, these sites are still live -- and
| being updated? Wow.
|
| https://www.sphereserver.com/
|
| https://www.uox3.org/
| philliphaydon wrote:
| There was another server software prior to SphereServer,
| which I just cannot remember the name of. Despite running a
| server off it for 2 years.
|
| Probe is one of the developers of Sphere who was admin to NOS
| (Novus Opiate Seclorum)
|
| I believe he rebuilt NOS on POL which ultimately died :(
|
| After NOS died I was admin for a shard which I think was
| called UOX, and built a server called Alphanine which we had
| ~250-450 players on. That's what got me into programming, at
| the time I believe I built the first in-game capture the flag
| (unaware of any other shard doing it, but got the idea from
| Team Fortress)
|
| I really miss UO and the feeling I got playing as a kid.
| Nothing to date gives me that same feeling.
|
| https://www.polserver.com/
| v8xi wrote:
| I was like 10 years old when I started playing on free
| shards - was even GM on one that had about 100 players and
| I remember putting an event together with giants invading a
| town and I had made a whole mini town out of little model
| houses in the mountains...
|
| There really was something about it...I used to play with
| my brothers and we were just the absolute worst griefers
| but man did we have fun. For us, it was the lawlessness of
| it all. That you could actually steal from other players
| and it was a valid part of the game with skills like hiding
| and stealth to make it easier... My favorite was filling a
| pack llama with greater explosion potions, "all drop" and
| then magic missile-ing it in the middle of a crowded bank
| to kill everyone nearby.
| RektBoy wrote:
| Can you imagine that there are servers which is running on
| sphere to this day? It will be like 23years of runtime for
| this one server in CZ. Czechs had a lot of servers, I
| remember time when there was like 15 different server
| running, each with own lore and everything. Great times.
| Quick2822 wrote:
| ModernUO is the most advanced implementation of RunUO/ServUO,
| worth checking out if you're starting a new project that isn't
| based on the newest UO content.
|
| https://github.com/modernuo/ModernUO
| Eumenes wrote:
| I attribute alot of my success in the professional/tech industry
| to MMOs. I started playing games like Asheron's Call, Everquest,
| and UO as young as 3rd grade. I helped organize pvp events,
| traded constantly, communicated on forums, participated in
| guild/clan events, recruited new members. Sounds silly and I
| can't really explain it but made me more resourceful, social, and
| generally comfortable in ambiguous situations.
| RektBoy wrote:
| > CEO "Mmm, I don't think deleting them all [the duped items] is
| a good idea, you'll hurt too many players."
|
| > I wanted to chafe and say something, maybe assert that he just
| didn't understand, but reined myself in and after the meeting I
| went back to the team and told them that we were forbidden from
| auto-deleting all the dupes.
|
| No wonder many players rather switched to private shards.
| C-levels were out of touch pretty soon. Also this shows how
| different your work cultures in US is in comparison to ours in
| some EU country (no problem here to call CEO out on his BS)
| barrucadu wrote:
| How is it out of touch? Dealing with the cheaters who are
| duplicating items is one thing, but what about the victims who
| have bought items they thought to be perfectly legitimate? And
| before you say "delete the items and refund them", how are you
| going to get the purchase prices? Pore through game chat logs?
| What if the items have been sold on again? Manually find and
| reverse all the transactions?
| djitz wrote:
| This is giving me Leeeeroyyyy Jenkinssssss vibes
|
| https://youtu.be/mLyOj_QD4a4
| furyofantares wrote:
| > Not that I'm saying MMOs need blockchains;
|
| I would hope not! Lots of MMOs exist, for example.
|
| > but it turns out Proof-of-Work ledger technology had a use case
| here!
|
| Right, blockchain and more narrowly Proof-of-Work have loads of
| use cases. They're just the worst solution available for almost
| all of them.
| ezoe wrote:
| Yeah, If it has a single authority to consult, there is no need
| of inefficient proof-of-work bullshit. Just like explained in
| the article, UUID and simple KVS can detect the dupes.
| hnbad wrote:
| I think that pitch was inevitable given the author's tagline:
|
| > Building interactive digital assets for the Metaverse.
|
| Of course the joke is that the use case is as easily solved by
| _a database_ , which he even explicitly says UO didn't have.
| The "double spend problem" has been solved by any database that
| supports cluster-wide transactions and there are a number of
| pieces of software that implement only this aspect of a
| database as a part of "turning the database inside-out"
| (usually with only a promise of eventual consistency, e.g.
| implementing only a write-ahead log).
|
| Sure, a "proof of work ledger technology" could have been used
| but it would also have been the wrong tool for the job given
| that proof of work (or proof of stake for that matter) adds
| nothing to the solution but makes everything slower and more
| expensive. The only valid use cases I've heard of are
| interfaces between different companies and even in those cases
| I'm not convinced blockchain is a good solution, let alone the
| best one, rather than a buzzword someone used to get a raise by
| wooing upper management.
| palata wrote:
| They are actually pretty damn good for some criminal use-
| cases...
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Not even. Everything except Monero makes money-laundering
| analysis _trivially_ easy.
| cottenio wrote:
| Ironically I gave an interview to VICE News about exactly
| this during the Mueller investigation and they had to cut
| my Monero comments out for time.
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| If the funds are sent to mixers?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I would bet the FBI operates and controls a non-zero
| amount of mixing services.
| fatneckbeardz wrote:
| ok so to restate.
|
| proof of work blockchain use case:
|
| you want to invent a money transfer system that will
| attract criminals to use it, and they will think it is
| anonymous, but its not really anonymous.
| palata wrote:
| Money laundering is one. What about ransomware? What about
| malware mining cryptocurrencies? Also I think North Korea
| is using cryptocurrencies to get money out of cyberattacks.
|
| It does not feel like all this is prevented by trivial
| analysis, is it?
| not2b wrote:
| Couldn't they just use a Merkle tree, like git does, to keep
| track of the history? I think that's what he's referring to
| here. They don't need proof of work if the code that can modify
| the history is trusted.
| cottenio wrote:
| As a huge fan and experienced implementer of merkle trees in
| my modern work I really wish I had known what they were at
| the time :)
|
| Merkle trees don't solve the forgeability issue, just the
| unbroken chain of what you currently have. So, if you have
| control over the server you can just create a set of events
| with your "+5 billion gold" event injected in it, recalculate
| the tree and root and voila: forgery.
|
| PoW doesn't prevent this, it just adds computational time
| provably spent between the events so that if you DID try to
| inject a false record a year ago you'd have to spend that
| same amount of time calculating the resulting merkle tree.
|
| Merkle trees all the way down!
| arduinomancer wrote:
| Yeah this seems like another "how is that better than a
| centralized database" situation
| welshwelsh wrote:
| Pretty much every MMO has implemented some type of
| censorship/shitty rules, so no company can be trusted to run
| a game
| bearmode wrote:
| Communities on MMOs these days aren't like they were 20
| years ago. They're FULL of racists, bigots, and morons
| spewing their shitty political opinions in the different
| world chats. Way more than there used to be.
|
| I'd be happy for some moderation to silence all of those
| people.
| sidlls wrote:
| Um, 20 years ago MMOs were also full of racists,
| misogynists, and others engaging in harassment and
| "spewing their shitty political opinions" both in-game
| and out (e.g. guild sites).
| bearmode wrote:
| >Way more than there used to be
|
| If you played 20 years and today, you can surely notice
| the difference in the community?
| [deleted]
| markhesketh wrote:
| There's just more players which means more bad apples.
| sidlls wrote:
| Not really, proportionally it seems about the same to me.
| Or did as of last year when I stopped playing MMOs again.
| xani_ wrote:
| And how the fuck would blockchain help here ?
| EamonnMR wrote:
| Few people actually enjoy being in a community without
| moderation though.
| registeredcorn wrote:
| To welshwelsh's point, he wasn't advocating for _no_
| moderation, but rather _good and limited_ moderation. For
| example, I doubt most would have an issue with something
| like moderation over cheating.
| altairprime wrote:
| Most cheaters do -- but they'll represent their viewpoint
| in terms that claim a "greater cause", such as individual
| liberties or rights or whatever, so that they can try to
| rabble-rouse the crowd against enforcement in order to
| continue cheating. (This occurs with kernel anti-cheat
| drivers, for example, but there's no way to measure what
| percentage of folks that is.)
| viridian wrote:
| Christ, if a game needs access to my operating system
| runtime to function, I think I'll just play a different
| game. Might as well just give them every file on your
| computer and a list of every connected device at that
| point.
| Huh1337 wrote:
| _Kernel anti-cheat drivers_??? You mean the game is
| hooking into the OS kernel, with privileged access? That
| 's _not okay in any case whatsoever_.
| wheybags wrote:
| Welcome to 2022, this is the new normal
| altairprime wrote:
| No need to act surprised, and a rabble-rousing post isn't
| necessary here. This is HN. We go around the same
| circular warpath about kernel anti-cheat drivers every
| few months for the past five years, and your argument is
| a poorly-presented rehash of a common viewpoint from
| those many, many discussions.
| Huh1337 wrote:
| Eh, we are talking about _games hooking into OS kernels_
| , "rabble rousing", if that's what you want to call it,
| absolutely is necessary. Do the games even notify the
| users that this is happening and what exactly it means to
| the security of their computer - the tool they (or their
| parents) probably use to manage their entire life on? I
| really don't think so.
|
| Regardless of what you might think, since I'm not a gamer
| (the isometric Ultima Online was about the last game I
| was interested in, more than a decade or two ago) this is
| the first time I heard about it - and it's completely
| insane. How can we - the industry, the software engineers
| - allow it? Why do we even turn on the protected mode?
| altairprime wrote:
| https://hn.algolia.com/?q=anticheat
|
| The first post shown, and the first couple pages of
| results, will help you catch up on the discussions around
| these methods. I don't have anything new to offer you
| that isn't already hashed out extensively therein. Good
| luck with the reading, and welcome to HN.
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| I think there's a bright line between "content
| moderation" where speech and behavior is being moderated,
| and spam and/or bug abuse which has nothing to do with
| content of speech whatsoever. Rate limiting inputs is not
| the same as picking and choosing who is allowed to say
| what based on arbitrary standards of speech content.
| noman-land wrote:
| Not to speak for a whole community but I think the
| decentralization idealist would say that people can do
| their own moderation, instead of relying on a central
| entity which makes the same broad rules for everyone
| abraae wrote:
| Isn't everyone doing their own moderation exactly the
| same as no moderation?
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| Not at all. Doing your own moderation depends on having
| the tools available to mute/censor/block people you don't
| want to hear from.
|
| For example, I used to play Rocket League. I played
| either solo or teamed exclusively with a few friends and
| mutual acquaintances. They have various settings to mute
| the chat and comments from other people. I'm not
| interested in all in hearing flames or nonsense chatting
| from random people I'm playing against, so I have all
| chat muted except for team chat (people I know and choose
| to team with). This is doing your "own moderation", and
| is the ideal circumstance is far as I'm concerned.
|
| Unfortunately, however, Rocket League doesn't allow you
| do your own moderation, despite the proper tools being
| available. One time, someone I was teamed with (who
| similarly had all non-team chat muted), typed something
| in team chat that ran afoul of Rocket Leagues
| sensibilities, and they subsequently received a week-long
| ban. Nobody could see this chat except our team (myself
| and this other person). We had already engaged in our
| "own moderation" by muting everyone else. This was an
| overreach as far as I'm concerned, and would far prefer
| to have the power to see and hear what I choose, and not
| what the platform chooses.
| Kiro wrote:
| Rocket League is a bad comparison. You only have at max,
| what 5 other players, that you need to block if
| necessary. In an MMO without moderation you wouldn't be
| able to keep up with blocking every troll spamming even
| if that was all you did.
| fastball wrote:
| Not really. Take Minecraft for example - before the
| acquisition by Microsoft, servers were entirely run by
| individuals/groups who set their own moderation policies.
| Some servers were entirely PG-rated, some allowed
| cursing/sex stuff/etc. Mojang technically still had some
| level of control over things like skins (which were
| centrally managed), but otherwise it was choose-your-own-
| moderation for each individual server.
|
| However recently (and widely discussed on HN[1])
| Microsoft has started censoring the entire ecosystem, to
| the point where you can get banned from _all_ servers for
| chat behavior in one server, because your MC account is
| now your MSFT account. So they can just ban the latter to
| block you from all of MC (except for cracked servers).
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32772810
| [deleted]
| meheleventyone wrote:
| But the point of an MMO is to share a space with
| thousands of people so individual servers with differing
| rules don't really work in that context. And individual
| servers doing moderation is the same as individual server
| based games doing moderation, it's just a difference in
| scale. I'm sure there are loads of other games people can
| play. For example Rust is infamous for a lack of
| moderation and has all the racist and otherwise edgey
| content in it your heart desires.
| 5560675260 wrote:
| Ultima had plenty independent (pirate) servers with
| vastly different cultures and even game mechanics. Even
| WoW, I think, has servers with different moderation -
| those that require roleplay and those that don't. Unified
| experience IMO would be a detriment for most games.
| [deleted]
| Kiro wrote:
| Those servers still had moderation. Very different from
| "no moderation".
| madeofpalk wrote:
| You still have centralised moderation there - moderation
| is centralised on the server admins.
| Kiro wrote:
| There's no difference between a Minecraft server
| implementing moderation policies and an MMO implementing
| them. The self-moderation we're talking about would be on
| an individual level.
| xani_ wrote:
| _a_ minecraft server yes, but this is forcing same set of
| rules to every server
| Kiro wrote:
| That's not what we're talking about though.
| Animats wrote:
| That's how Second Life works. Landowners can eject or ban
| people from their land. This is entirely at the
| discretion of the landowner. People are always
| complaining about having been banned from clubs, but
| there are hundreds of clubs, run by hundreds of people.
|
| This is far, far better than having "moderators". In
| practice, social media moderators come from the same pool
| of people that staff low-end call centers. Arming them
| with ban hammers while giving them anonymity and lack of
| accountability creates major headaches of its own.
|
| Second Life does have a few paid moderators. A user has
| to file an abuse report to make anything happen, and in a
| few days, someone will process the trouble ticket. Policy
| is not to attempt to intervene in resident to resident
| disputes at all.
|
| What makes this work is that it's a big, sparsely
| populated world. A user's radius of annoyance is about
| 100 meters, and the whole world is about the size of Los
| Angeles. So, jerks are local, even with over 50,000
| people logged in.
|
| The metaverse crowd, if and when they actually create big
| virtual worlds with large numbers of users, needs to
| understand this.
| Kiro wrote:
| An MMO without central moderation would mean a chat with
| 99% trolls spamming and even if you spent all time
| blocking people instead of playing you wouldn't be able
| to keep up.
| aasasd wrote:
| I continue to be burdened and mystified by a memory from an
| article circa early-mid 2000s, about UO or a similar game, if
| there was one: that in the game, when one was being robbed or
| beaten, they could summon some wunderpolice, whose representative
| immediately teleported to the scene and instantly killed the
| culprit. However, if the alarm was false, then the supernatural
| officer killed the player instead. The implication, as I
| understood it, was that the divine entity was operated
| automatically by the game.
|
| It's possible that the story went through a bad case of 'broken
| telephone'--and my few feeble attempts of finding the truth in
| more recent years were unsuccessful. Still I wonder: was there
| such a thing as described above? Did it work? Was the 'police'
| really an NPC?
| Justsignedup wrote:
| In ultima online players were split into 3 categories:
|
| Blue Gray Red
|
| and later Orange
|
| Blue = "good". If you are in a "guard protected zone" and you
| attack someone "blue" guards will come and murder you
| instantly. As long as someone says "guards"
|
| Gray = "criminal". You commit a criminal action, you are gray.
| If you attack someone gray, no consequences will be made
| against you. Only thing is if I am gray, and you are blue, and
| you attack me, you turn gray _only to me_. Gray expires in 5
| minutes.
|
| Actions that cause this: stealing, healing someone gray / red,
| attacking someone blue but not yet killing them.
|
| Red = "permanent criminal". You are red as long as you have any
| player kills registered to you (they decay 1 kill per 8 hours I
| believe. A PK is only counted if you kill a blue player or
| participated in killing a blue player.
|
| There were a few fun exploits:
|
| You can transform into a creature. This meant you turned gray
| without any crime. Well if someone attacks you, you can attack
| back. So it was a scam we used to pull where there would be
| occasional attacks against the town, I'd run around screaming
| that I'm a noob and need someone to get a monster off me, and
| the monster would be a friend.
|
| Well the friend had a nearby tamed dragon that can now freely
| attack the guy who flagged himself against my friend without
| consequences. And anyone who assists now has a dragon to fight
| (killable, but lots of resources spent, and usually would take
| a few people to do, AND my friend was a competent mage, so now
| you also have a mage gunning for you). We didn't always succeed
| but it was fun. I think we got suspended a few times for it.
| lol.
|
| There were some tricks to getting people to attack the wrong
| target and thus flag themselves in town and get the guards to
| kill them. But it wasn't commonplace. Maybe during beta there
| were problems.
|
| Oh yeah, orange. Orange were players participating in guild
| wars. Orange players can attack other orange players. It is
| basically permitted criminal activity among those participating
| in a guild war. And in Order vs Chaos you also got the best
| shield in the game for free for being on either side.
| Misdicorl wrote:
| Yeah it worked like that. Saying "guards" would instantly
| summon the guards if any criminal was present and subsequently
| murder the criminal(s). Nothing about incorrect summoning
| though.
|
| Most people had a macro invoking "guards" "bank" abd "vendor
| buy" all at the same time. The interface was mud like and the
| first (?) command in a statement that was valid would execute.
| aasasd wrote:
| Thanks, I now found a wiki describing these mechanics, and it
| turns out that UO had an entire system of markings for
| players who committed illegal activities. This clears things
| up a bit.
|
| Idk where the 'killing the player' part came from--though
| local game journalism at that time was quite, uh,
| idiosyncratic. But, as the workings of these guards were
| somewhat hazy in my mind, they gained an ominous air.
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| I think I know why you have this hazy memory! Oftentimes
| these robber groups patrolled around the edges of the "safe
| zones" where it's possible to call guards. When there were
| battles, it was often chaotic with multiple characters
| moving and mauling each other. Sometimes an innocent player
| would be attacked near the border, they would defend
| themselves and accidentally do some action which marks them
| as a criminal (for example, moving inside the border of the
| safe zone and defend against an attacker who is outside the
| safe zone and not marked as criminal). The innocent player
| defending themselves might call "guards", but because
| they've accidentally made some particular action, the
| guards would treat them as the criminal and kill them.
| naz wrote:
| As an avid player I can confirm that all commands would
| execute. So if you were next to a vendor, you'd see the buy
| menu, but also if a criminal was nearby they'd have the
| guards summoned on them at the same time.
| v8xi wrote:
| Though at the beginning the guards didn't teleport and
| instakill you, instead they would have to chase you - I don't
| remember if their hit was an instakill but I do remember a
| before/after of when suddenly you could not escape the
| guards.
| jghn wrote:
| Originally they were just standard NPCs. They did not
| instakill. And while quite tough, they could be defeated.
| So a strong enough group could go in and clear out the
| guards until they respawned. At which point the town became
| lawless. I think the shift towards effectively being
| deities smiting criminals was complete by the end of Beta
| test though.
| 1ark wrote:
| It sounds like it could be the guards, inside the cities, of
| UO.
| RektBoy wrote:
| Great that you can still play very good UO servers like UO
| Outlands.
|
| Because OSI UO turned into care-bear themepark, which is
| unplayable.
| cosgrove wrote:
| >And it wasn't just players: autonomous mobile objects (mobs)
| like monsters, animals, and NPCs could cross them as well.
|
| Started playing MMOs in 2001 and it wasn't until this day that I
| learned why they were called _mobs_. Wow.
| Geenirvana wrote:
| I miss UO.
|
| I only played on unofficial servers but I had many hours of
| entertainment.
|
| My greatest achivement is that I wrote a Macro program called UO-
| Mcro in VB6. It was a stepped based Macro program that didn't
| require coding to use. It had popular actions such has
|
| LeftClick x Wait x seconds Set Variable If / Loop
|
| Each action was designed using VBScript, so it was possible to
| extend to more advanced actions.
|
| It has long since gone but the website is available on the
| wayback machine
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20040802021732/http://uo-mcro.tk...
| psyclobe wrote:
| Gosh I remember beta testing this game, was a coming of age time,
| the first MMORPG. Glorious times of guilds and true PvP (e.g. you
| leave the town you basically were on your own) these were the
| true days of high online adventure!
| samstave wrote:
| Same era - but I had a "cheat mode" ;; We ran the Intel DRG and
| ran this on a bank of Intels highest end machines on a T3 to
| our gaming lab, just when 56K got released... and were able to
| effecitvely MASS PK players with 6 accounts with 100 sneak, two
| rogues, 2 dread lords and two great lords.... we would taunt
| with our dreads, run, hide, and appear with our great lords of
| same name and get attacked ruining the reputation of others,
| allowing them to kill us but specifically die next to our
| hidden sneaks who would loot us... and run our bullshit back to
| our castle.
|
| We had a 7th castle butler account who all he would do was
| manage keys...
|
| our third member of our guild got wasted one night and managed
| to lose our rune stones... but we had a teleport mech where we
| had the courtyard covered in bags of wheat? and in order to
| tele to the courtyard, you had to have the butler acct go pick
| up the bag to the tele spot such that you could zap in...
|
| Then, our guy, Draygor,,, he accidentally got whacked with the
| rune stone before he could make it to the bank, and the
| Japanese Guild spent MONTHS waiting for us to fuckup with an
| account that allowed them to portal into our castle... then
| they fn hid until we showed up...
|
| We used to teleport dragons onto the roof such that we could
| trap them behind chests and practice our spells until we had
| 100 in every skill ...
|
| but we went to vacation, DRAYGOR (largest pot grower in BC
| Canada) who had a T1 to his house
|
| We also had a bugged weapon that was an axe/or/hammer cant
| recall -- but it was one-hit-one kill no matter what.
|
| We were actually followed for a while with that bugged weapon
| as we would trade it back and forth... and chased by invisible
| mods... (they basically have a super account that their sprite
| was invisible and they would follow us around....
|
| That aside from the hitman series - is my golden games.
| nyanpasu64 wrote:
| > Not that I'm saying MMOs need blockchains; but it turns out
| Proof-of-Work ledger technology had a use case here!
|
| Do you need a proof-of-work ledger, or just a central
| sequentially-consistent transactional ledger shared between all
| servers (without burning energy for rare SHA checksums)?
| armchairhacker wrote:
| Is there any efficiency benefit to blockchain vs just storing a
| unique ID for every item, so that even a stack of coins has a
| stack of UIDs?
| cottenio wrote:
| Consider the sheer scale: people sell 200 million UO gold for
| $10. Can you imagine every gold piece having a unique UUID?
| Even if you didn't use 256 bit hashes, even at _64_ bits
| you'd be talking about 1.6gb per $10 worth of UO gold.
|
| UXTO would've been a neat technology to have to experiment
| with at least.
|
| Memory was at enough of a premium that even in the tagging
| system we made in the article it was just for the rarest
| items.
| namrog84 wrote:
| Could you mux the data of the coins?
|
| If you have a stack of gold containing 5 uuid and mix it
| with another stack of 3 uuid but only support 5 uuid per
| stack. Then calculate proportional weightings which 5 you
| store.
|
| You could probably find a way to try and wash the money but
| I think it could be done with right heuristics to catch a
| good majority of use cases but maybe not all.
| cottenio wrote:
| I just want to note that I only started paying attention
| to cryptography _after_ I left UO and got into Bitcoin,
| which sounds like an NFT-grifting MMO supervillain origin
| story - I know - but I sure did learn a lot about merkle
| trees and solving interesting social problems.
| googlryas wrote:
| Are 1 UO gold coins even individually addressable?
| cottenio wrote:
| No, stacks are stacks. They're an object id with a
| quantity counter. Each stack, however, was capable of
| holding its own separate script and objvars; there were
| event triggers to handle special cases like "onStackAdd"
| and such.
| nrb wrote:
| Since only the server is authoring the entries, just a ledger.
| tiagobraw wrote:
| also known as database
| Animats wrote:
| No, a ledger and a database are different. The ledger is a
| transaction log. The database holds the current state.
|
| Basic bookkeeping concept: every once in a while (usually
| daily) you take a snapshot of the current state and mark
| that point in the ledger. Then you take the previous
| snapshot, re-run the day's transactions, and you should get
| the current snapshot. If you don't, something has gone
| wrong. This is called "reconciliation".
| MereInterest wrote:
| So, an append-only database.
| seanhunter wrote:
| A database can hold state but it can also easily hold a
| ledger/transaction log. Or both. Most of the databases I
| have built or worked on end up organically evolving to
| have both "state tables" and "event tables" where event
| tables record state transitions broadly speaking. That's
| just a very natural way to model systems where you need
| to capture information about the state changes (eg when
| they happen etc).
| TrapLord_Rhodo wrote:
| The article strictly points out the need for a shared
| concurrency models required in the functioning of a online
| game thats massively parrelled across both clients and
| various individual 'servers'.
|
| Unique, hash based, 'stacked' items that are non-fungible
| with a decentralized shared state across clients.... yes,
| technically that's 'Just a database' but a highly complex
| one.
|
| I get people hate the hype and 'uselessness' of crypto and
| even the term 'Blockchain' is loaded, but dismissing the
| technology out of hand is uncalled for. Especially when the
| author gave a very clear use case for a very real problem
| in shared state computing.
| twodave wrote:
| If I understand correctly this can be solved with much
| less complexity via something like snowflake to guarantee
| ordering consistency. There are of course dozens of ways
| to achieve consistency across nodes, and a blockchain is
| one such solution. The reality is if blockchain were an
| optimal distributed store it would be used for that
| purpose in more places. Instead what we have is a bunch
| of buzzword shoehorning (which frankly today sounds a bit
| overplayed/stale).
| zeroclip wrote:
| Can you describe how a snowflake ID would help? Imagine
| the data contains two Rare Items, when it should only
| contain one instance. They both have different snowflake
| IDs. How do you determine which is authentic? The
| timestamp on the duplicated item could have been spoofed.
|
| I think the real solution to this problem is just to
| trust a centralized actor and single large database that
| is shared across all servers. Not what the author wants
| to hear, but most games don't need the level of
| decentralization of PoW or PoS for all of their game
| assets. But a fully decentralized MMO would be cool in
| theory.
| palata wrote:
| Yep. I think the one place where blockchain shines is
| cryptocurrencies. If it's not a cryptocurrency, then
| there is a better alternative.
| xani_ wrote:
| >The article strictly points out the need for a shared
| concurrency models required in the functioning of a
| online game thats massively parrelled across both clients
| and various individual 'servers'.
|
| Uh, no. The servers are essentially independent. Each
| server have maybe few thousand clients at once.
|
| The data _most_ clients change is independent of
| eachother. Hell *you don 't need to store most of them*.
|
| All you need to store is basically _some_ world state
| data (nobody GAF that non-boss monster just respawns
| after server restart ,no need to store that data in the
| database) and player possesion
|
| >Unique, hash based, 'stacked' items that are non-
| fungible with a decentralized shared state across
| clients.... yes, technically that's 'Just a database' but
| a highly complex one.
|
| Uh, no.
|
| <server-id>:<item-id>:<account-id> + a server signature
| to signify it was _actually_ generated by that server.
|
| Any change of ownership within a server is server
| changing account ID item belongs to + signing the
| transaction and resulting record. Alert on fraud if
| someone has same <server-id>:<item-id> pair.
|
| You reduce the problem space to "do I trust the other
| server" which is much easier to solve. And even if you
| say allow malicious server with tons of accounts having
| cheated in items transfer to yours.... each item has that
| server's ID so you can trivially fix it by removing them
| from yours.
|
| All that would need to be tracked above that are account
| transfers.
| veleek wrote:
| All of the server nodes are run by the same entity (the
| game developer). Blockchain is a good solution when the
| nodes are not necessarily trusted (thus the need to prove
| that you did the work). If all the nodes are trusted you
| can accomplish the whole decentralized thing much more
| easily.
|
| As a super simplified example, if you want your
| distributed database to generate unique identifiers,
| partition the id space so each node is guaranteed not to
| overlap. You trust to nodes so you don't need blockchain.
| cottenio wrote:
| Yeah, my point was that an internal PoW ledger (not
| decentralized but still technically a blockchain)
| would've been useful because: A) stack tracking per
| stackable type is trivial with UXTO, and B) adding a few
| seconds of PoW makes the resulting chain so hard to forge
| for crime-of-opportunity style attacks (preventing
| internal employees from making untraceable gold) that it
| could've prevented a few firings/calls to the authorities
| during my time. Oh, and C) it might've resolved the
| duping issues with cross-server character transfer
| exploits (a different beast than areaservs), and D) heh,
| maybe conned an engineer into making a block explorer
| dashboard so we could see the global state of
| currency/stackable amounts
|
| Like you said: most of these except B) could've been done
| with traditional techniques and relational databases, but
| I maintain A) might've been easier than the message
| passing code required to synchronize and emulate it.
| DelightOne wrote:
| Are there ready-to-use blockchain libraries to simply
| create such a blockchain or does everything have to be
| custom-written and tested manually -> requiring the
| developer be an expert?
| cottenio wrote:
| Apparently it was a valuable enough idea to Amazon that
| they spun it up as a service in AWS: QLDB.
| palata wrote:
| Note: valuable as in "people are willing to pay for it",
| not as "it is solving a use-case better than
| alternatives"
| agentultra wrote:
| You don't need the proof part if all the server nodes are
| trusted. Just the hashes is enough. I think that's the
| part the author was pointing out in the article and we're
| reading a bit too far into it.
| ohmahjong wrote:
| cottenio is the author in this case.
|
| If there is the potential of internal employees being
| malicious, then maybe trust isn't guaranteed.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| The question then is the additional cost worth it.
| Employee tampering is rare and already dealt with in
| other ways. Also putting things on chain doesn't prevent
| it because there are still employees making the game and
| thus can still add back doors that will be legit
| transactions.
| xani_ wrote:
| Okay? What makes you think this would stop them from just
| running some GPU in the corner and generating a bunch of
| expensive items to peddle ? They'd have all the access to
| make it look legit ?
| agentultra wrote:
| I can't believe I missed that.
|
| I still don't think the proof part is necessary even with
| the potential for internal employee tampering. With
| sufficient system authorization and security auditing
| catching someone tampering would be enough than wasting
| all that compute resource to prevent it for such a rare
| case.
|
| Cool story though. I really like UO back in the day.
| kelnos wrote:
| I think employee trust is not something you solve with a
| blockchain. This is like that section of the "why your
| idea won't work" checklists, where you have "you are
| attempting to solve a social problem with technology,
| which does not work". Access controls and audit logs are
| the way to go. Employees who know that they can't behave
| badly without the system recording all their bad actions
| are much less likely to do bad things. And when they
| inevitably do bad things (which would still be the case
| in a blockchain system), you have the audit trail to
| prove it, and you fire them and/or involve law
| enforcement.
| kelnos wrote:
| You still don't need PoW here, though. All the servers
| are presumably trusted. You perhaps have a trust issue
| with your employees, but that is what access controls
| (limit the number of people who can create items) and
| audit logs (after an item is created, you know exactly
| who did it and when) are for.
|
| And yes sometimes an employee that you've trusted with
| item creation access will turn out to be a bad actor, but
| you have the audit log to prove that, and you fire them.
| That's... just life. Hopefully the fact that there are
| audit trails dissuades most of the borderline-sketchy
| employees that it's not worth the risk.
|
| > _adding a few seconds of PoW makes the resulting chain
| so hard to forge for crime-of-opportunity style attacks
| (preventing internal employees from making untraceable
| gold_
|
| I just don't get why this needs a blockchain. Internal
| access controls! Don't just let random employees make
| arbitrary, untraceable changes to game state! Of _course_
| you 're going to have problems if you allow this,
| blockchain or no.
|
| Obviously you are much more knowledgeable about the
| issues around transferring state across server
| boundaries. But I still have not seen anything (in
| general) that suggests that inherently centralized
| systems (like an MMO run by a single corporation)
| meaningfully benefit from PoW systems. PoW is just there
| to ensure that people can't forge things. But when your
| ledger is centralized, if you implement the proper access
| controls and audit trails -- which you should be doing no
| matter what -- then PoW/blockchain is just not necessary
| or useful.
| cottenio wrote:
| Oh, and a good aside: thanks to player exploits the nodes
| themselves weren't necessarily trustworthy (such as
| duping exploits across shards, not just areaservs).
|
| Like I said, not saying we "needed blockchain", but when
| AWS released QLDB I was like "ohhhh, that would've been
| useful" since, you know, forging log files is a thing.
| josephg wrote:
| > if you want your distributed database to generate
| unique identifiers, partition the id space so each node
| is guaranteed not to overlap. You trust to nodes so you
| don't need blockchain.
|
| You can also generate unique IDs by giving each
| server/node a unique hash and then use (node_id,1),
| (node_id,2), ... etc. Its more complex this way but this
| approach compresses way better if you have a lot of IDs.
| (Thanks Martin Kleppmann for this trick)
| glonq wrote:
| I participated in the public alpha and beta testing for UO.
|
| I recall it being a very laggy experience back in the days of
| 28.8k modems.
| zeroclip wrote:
| I am very pro-NFT and pro-blockchain but disagree with the
| author. Blockchain is not going to replace a MMO item database.
| Blockchains have bottlenecks and are not needed if you and your
| users are OK with a centralized database to meet high performance
| requirements.
|
| Now, imagine your goal was to create a distributed and
| decentralized MMO not owned by any single company, and
| permissionless so that anybody could built on top of it. For this
| it does make sense to use blockchain-like technology like a
| rollup that aggregates state deltas of many transactions,
| batching them into a proof that is posted to a distributed
| ledger.
| arduinomancer wrote:
| This is pretty specific but does anyone remember in one of the
| Runescape open betas back in the day there was a duping bug? I
| think involving a chest?
|
| If I recall it was really easy to do and by the end of the beta
| like everyone had totally jacked up gear
|
| Of course it all got reset eventually since it was just a beta
| but I recall it being pretty hilarious to play during that period
| barsonme wrote:
| The part hat dupe trick!
| asdff wrote:
| GTA Online had a number of methods to quickly rack up unlimited
| money when it came out. Not really external hacks, just regular
| old in game glitches were around. I used it to get a bunch of
| money in game, and rather than breaking anything, it just made
| it a lot more fun being able to drive whatever car or get
| whatever I wanted. Calling up a tank is a blast in a game like
| gta online! I pretty much stopped playing the game when they
| patched everything and reset the in game economy and made my
| character broke and boring.
| namrog84 wrote:
| Not only that but diablo 2 had such a prolific duping problems
| of this 1 ring. The ring itself became a currency.
|
| They eventually added a mechanic in game that consumed the
| rings for something else as a way to remove the rings from game
| without deleting at will.
| ithinkso wrote:
| I think SOJs became currency and the duping problem made them
| worthless and moved the currency to high runes? But what they
| did with the anni quest to get rid of the rest of the SOJs
| was clever
|
| Oh man, thanks for the nostalgia trip!
| cottenio wrote:
| I hope anyone who enjoyed the article will find time to listen to
| the original team discuss UO's early development and the crazy
| design and social problems they were trying to solve.
|
| They succeeded at some, spectacularly failed at others, but
| brought forward things that still impact MMO and (now) Metaverse
| design today.
|
| https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1024930/Classic-Game-Postmorte...
| bastawhiz wrote:
| > Not that I'm saying MMOs need blockchains; but it turns out
| Proof-of-Work ledger technology had a use case here! (No wonder
| Amazon now offers a similar service: QLDB).
|
| For one, QLDB isn't proof of work. It's centralized: if you think
| you need a blockchain within your own data center to establish
| consensus, you don't.
|
| Blockchains are only useful when there is no central authority,
| which isn't the case with (all?) MMOs. Badly written blockchains
| have double spend issues. Video games with race conditions and no
| locking controls have duping problems. Blockchains only manage to
| eliminate the centralization (in theory), not the bugs.
| kdazzle wrote:
| Man, I ran across PK Ghost the other week. So many memories.
| Actually, looking back, it was a pretty innovative webcomic.
|
| https://www.imanewbie.com/
| no_wizard wrote:
| Aside from being an amazing story, my other takes are the
| following:
|
| C / C++ are truly powerful and efficient languages for execution.
| Can you imagine doing this with Java or C# and still keeping the
| memory usage and speed reasonable, even in 2022? This is the late
| 90s (maybe early 2000s). C++ is a workhorse, warts and all.
|
| Game development is just so different from all other types of
| development, but I feel like if you can game dev at _this_ level
| you can develop just about any type of interactive application,
| but maybe I 'm wrong?
|
| The golden age of MMOs has long passed, hasn't it?
| cottenio wrote:
| I just want to mention that the C++ code running UO was
| incredibly fast at what it did, and it even wrapped a custom
| scripting language called Wombat that ran all the gameplay
| logic.
|
| Pretty sure Jason Spangler, genius, made a JIT compiler in LLVM
| for Wombat just to see how much code we could execute in each
| 250ms tick.
|
| During one of my live events I got 500 people on-screen (in
| what, an 800x600 pixel screen?) thanks to how efficient the
| networking, gameplay, and client rendering code had become.
|
| Well. Then the telestorming began because I forgot to disable
| it...
| munk-a wrote:
| I'm a former game dev, I worked in PHP on the server side of
| our game and honestly - C++ is mostly just the dominant
| language because everyone is constantly overworked and
| everything has always been done in C++. Java and C# are some
| counter examples you offered which, if done right, should rival
| the performance you can get in C++ pretty trivially - Java may
| have a larger memory footprint for some things (it's harder to
| sanely get down to the bare metal within some contexts) but
| it's still quite fast. I honestly think that sometime soon
| we'll probably see Rust shoulder C++ out for game development
| once someone (eyes Epic) writes an engine with native language
| hooks in it simply because you get pretty much all of the
| performance characteristics along with one of the most valuable
| things in the world - extensive and resilient static code
| evaluation.
|
| You can make things efficient in a plethora of different
| languages depending on the setting (PHP, similar to how I used
| it, is often chosen because it's extremely readable, flexible
| and all the expensive performance stuff you're doing is usually
| in SQL on the server-side anyways) but there are definitely
| certain languages that are better suited to some tasks. I would
| really suggest not focusing in on language choice that much
| though, since there are much more important decisions to make
| when discussing high performance architecture and having access
| to pointer arithmetic is, at this point, honestly more of a
| curse (since you have to deal with horribly unmaintainable crap
| in some library you need) than a benefit. Over a decade ago I
| had my first C++ job which used the Qt framework and using
| references by default (which Qt strong encourages but doesn't
| force) is simply a much more sane approach to development.
| nrb wrote:
| The main server emulator for UO, RunUO (and ServUO that spun
| out of it), is written in C# and runs worlds that are as large
| as UO had in its heyday.
|
| A few of the very hot code paths in the netcode and elsewhere
| drop to unsafe to do pointer math and faster array walking but
| the vast majority of it is in managed space.
| edmcnulty101 wrote:
| > Can you imagine doing this with Java or C# and still keeping
| the memory usage and speed reasonable, even in 2022?
|
| Lots of samples if you google.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| > Can you imagine doing this with Java or C# and still keeping
| the memory usage and speed reasonable, even in 2022?
|
| It's all about programmer skill. You can write bloated C++ just
| as easily as bloated C# and bloated Java.
| philliphaydon wrote:
| Yes.
|
| RunUO
|
| ModernUO
|
| ServUO
|
| JustUO
|
| Classic UO running in the browser.
|
| https://classicuo.org/
| ianbutler wrote:
| I don't know about that I'd say we're doing pretty good on the
| MMO scene. FF XIV really revitalized the space, but WoW is
| still chugging along, ESO, Star Wars, New World, Guild Wars,
| EVE, MMO Lite Destiny 2, etc. Basically there are a lot of MMOs
| with really stable populations where doing activities isn't
| cumbersome and you can play whatever aesthetic (fantasy, space,
| etc) you'd like.
|
| It's certainly different from the age of MMO's like Ultima
| though and the sense of community is vastly different than it
| was back then by virtue of how mainstream they are now and
| because of all the different tools and such people use to build
| those communities now.
|
| So if not golden, I'd say still pretty strong silver.
|
| To your other points though I completely agree.
| Macha wrote:
| I'm not sure I'd even call Destiny 2 MMO-lite at this point,
| it feels as much of a MMO as retail WoW or Guild Wars 1 at
| this point.
| yreg wrote:
| I've heard good things about Oldschool RuneScape.
| [deleted]
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| If you arena allocate (which would probably be typical in
| games), then GC isn't as much a problem.
|
| Most MMOs aren't a graphics problem (usually not pushing the
| edge) or performance problem (high FPS for twitch isn't as big
| a thing), they are a database problem.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > Can you imagine doing this with Java or C# and still keeping
| the memory usage and speed reasonable, even in 2022?
|
| Yes.
| chii wrote:
| for example, EVE Online is mostly done via python (server
| side at least - not the frontend iirc).
|
| In fact, i reckon the reason a lot of games would have
| crashes is because it's written in an unsafe language like
| C++.
|
| And the reason there's so many successful plugins for
| minecraft is _because_ it's in an "easy" language like java.
| xani_ wrote:
| > And the reason there's so many successful plugins for
| minecraft is _because_ it's in an "easy" language like
| java.
|
| Minecraft got mod support way after there was already a ton
| of mods for it. The way it got initially was basically
| hacking into game jars, not because it was supported in any
| way, it only got support later.
|
| Granted, Java JVM did made that easier, but still the
| reason it got so much stuff is because it was so fucking
| popular first. All of the modding tools were pretty much
| made by community from scratch, way before Mojang moved
| their ass.
| chii wrote:
| > hacking into game jars, not because it was supported in
| any way, it only got support later.
|
| decompiling java is much easier than decompiling C++
| output. Adding code to such a decompiled source is much
| easier and safer, and thus much more accessible.
|
| if minecraft had been in C++, i seriously doubt the
| initial mods from hacking it would've been possible.
| Operyl wrote:
| Client uses a ton of Python too, mind you they have a very
| special interpreter. https://github.com/stackless-
| dev/stackless/wiki/
| chii wrote:
| oh didnt know their client used python! Wow!
| dbrueck wrote:
| Great point!
|
| Side note: you can get a lot of the power of Stackless
| Python without a special interpreter if you use greenlets
| (https://greenlet.readthedocs.io/en/latest/).
| DixieDev wrote:
| I missed UO's hayday, but when I've played the big modern MMOs I
| find myself instead attracted to the idea that individual
| characters shouldn't be able to do everything. I feel like
| forcing players to interact if they want to gather specific
| resources or craft vital items would really help a game feel
| "massively multiplayer".
|
| Are there any modern MMOs with mechanics like this, e.g. life-
| skill limits or some other source of dependence on other players?
| Avicebron wrote:
| I've heard Ashes of Creation is trying to implement something
| like this (but they don't have a release date yet, just some
| interesting conversations with devs on their tooling and
| schedule)
| Globz wrote:
| Yes, Mortal Online 2 is the closest thing to UO to this day.
| tcoop25 wrote:
| https://uooutlands.com/
|
| It is still as fun today as it was back then.
| RektBoy wrote:
| But you still can play UO in UO Outlands server, made by people
| who actually understands original concept, not like OSI-UO devs
| which turned UO, over the years, into care-bear themepark.
| Cloudef wrote:
| Old MMOs mostly were like that. FFXI and UO are probably the
| most famous.
| waynesonfire wrote:
| The reason UO will never be re-created is that it was the first
| game of it's kind and thus every player had only one option. In
| modern times, the gamer population is so bifurcated that I'm
| not sure it'll ever be possible to have such a mix of player
| types in a single unforgiving ecosystem.
| josephd79 wrote:
| Plus newer game generation wouldn't like the idea of being
| pk'd and losing items....
| imtringued wrote:
| MMOs are still stuck with the concept of permanently
| undamagable items that can be worth hundreds of in-game
| hours because of insanely low drop rates.
|
| If items had a finite lifespan and you could replace them
| quickly like in Minecraft, then the downside of losing your
| items would be far more acceptable.
|
| This is also the reason why MMO economies tend toward
| deflation. Players craft thousands of food items that never
| perish and just pile up in some auction house or automated
| market place.
|
| If every player sold their items when they quit there would
| be more items than players.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Or towards hyperinflation when the currency generation
| out paces any sinks thus driving the price levels to
| outright stupid levels, with only limiting factor being
| what players can hold and trade.
| charlieyu1 wrote:
| Then players simply don't trade gold. Eventually a new
| currency appears will facilitate the trades anyway.
| tstrimple wrote:
| This is exactly what happened in Diablo 2. You had a gold
| limit, and the value for gold was so low that players
| began using Stone of Jordan rings as currency for other
| item trades.
|
| https://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/22688/why-did-
| sto...
| Lammy wrote:
| > forcing players to interact if they want to gather specific
| resources or craft vital items
|
| "sup, u gm angler?/"
| https://web.archive.org/web/20030731200633/http://spla.sh/bp...
| namrog84 wrote:
| One of the challenges is finding the right proportional scale.
|
| If the difficulty or fun of say blacksmithing nice items for
| the community. And you have it balanced out that you expect 20%
| of players be blacksmith. But then either 10 or 30% be
| blacksmiths either items skyrocket in price and make it
| unobtainable to most or the floor bottoms out making it not
| viable for most to engage in a market.
|
| I think its solvable but itd require a lot of dynamic based
| systems to scale properly based upon number of players in each
| categories of life skill limits.
|
| With that said, check out a game called Eco. They have life
| skill limits and force cooperation on small scale (30 day per
| server wipe). I think you can reasonably have 2 or 3
| professions of 12 and people buy and sell from each other.
| jghn wrote:
| In early UO, say Beta through the first few months of
| production, I knew a lot of folks who were primarily crafts
| folk. The town blacksmith, that sort of thing. After a while
| most players developed mules who had GM blacksmith skill or
| whatever so it became less of a thing.
|
| But even then there were people out there. One woman I knew
| spent most of her time as an interior decorator for people's
| houses. It was a fun element that I never really saw in other
| games.
|
| I do think to a large extent it came from the genre of game
| being new and every play style getting mushed into one game.
| People looking for the more pure social RP type role will
| congregate in a game catering to that, while the hack & slash
| adventure types will go elsewhere.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| I don't understand why MMOs could never figure out how to
| make resource gathering as fun (or more fun) than hack &
| slashing.
|
| Stardew Valley and other games - Death's Door, A Short Hike,
| Toem, etc - figured this out.
|
| Why haven't any MMOs done it?
| adra wrote:
| I'd argue that New World made gathering and to a lesser
| degree crafting a lot of fun. The rest of the game was
| kinda crap, but I did actually enjoy doing material farms.
| hulahoof wrote:
| FFXIV has a decent gathering approach
| debesyla wrote:
| Dunno, RuneScape seems fun? There's lots of types of
| materials, lots of ways to gather? True, most of the
| mechanics are just click-and-wait, but it's not like most
| MMOs where wood isn't any different from ore...
| asdff wrote:
| Certain minecraft survival servers certainly, if they have the
| player count to make it feel "massive". Sometimes servers
| establish group protected towns or cities (these work like
| linux group permissions on files but over an arbitrary
| dimension of blocks in the server map) and there would be
| shared resources, e.g. a farm or chests full of leftover
| cobblestone from mining for diamonds, or even tools free for
| use to members of the group.
| nordsieck wrote:
| > Are there any modern MMOs with mechanics like this, e.g.
| life-skill limits or some other source of dependence on other
| players?
|
| I think Eve Online is the classic example. It's not technically
| true that players are limited in the sense that you mean.
| Rather, the limits are emergent.
|
| The areas with the most valuable resources also have the least
| game provided security, so players are forced to band together
| into large organizations to protect themselves - essentially
| true virtual countries.
| ericbarrett wrote:
| In addition, in Eve nearly all items (ships, modules, ammo,
| even starbases) are player-manufactured, player-hauled, and
| player-sold.
| cottenio wrote:
| EVE is my favorite example.
|
| There were four games I played at EA Redwood Shores: UO,
| Battlefield 2, EVE Online, and Microsoft Excel (because EVE).
| [deleted]
| the_only_law wrote:
| > Battlefield 2
|
| Really is a shame what happened to that franchise.
| mod wrote:
| I spent a bajillion hours flying helicopters. Really
| loved 3 & 4.
|
| Haven't played since, though. What happened?
| the_only_law wrote:
| It's hardly even battlefield anymore
|
| It's like some unholy amalgamation of every shooter genre
| that's been popular with kids in the past few years. It's
| like hero shooter meets battle royale meets call of duty
| meets the battered corpse of what used to be Battlefield.
| It really feels like some out of touch suits said "see
| what kids like these days and rip it off".
|
| The previous game had its own controversies, and many
| veteran developers apparently left due to the stifling of
| creative control.
|
| If you don't mind a shitpost-ey video, I saw this the
| other day and it probably explains everything better than
| I can in an HN comment: https://youtu.be/d0lXNq2jrG8
|
| It's spends a lot of time on performance issues and bugs,
| but those are usually forgivable to me, at least as long
| as things get patched.
|
| Also there's a complete lack of content. Twenty something
| guns if I recall correctly, and lack of content can kill
| games, even otherwise good ones.
| the_only_law wrote:
| Just an addendum for anyone who clicks the video: the
| actual content starts around 2:40.
| xwdv wrote:
| Ultima Online is the only MMO that felt like a true virtual world
| and not just a grindy RPG game played with a lot of people. It
| occurred at a unique time in history that is unlikely to be
| replicated again. You could build the same game but players have
| largely moved on from this style of MMO. A shame.
| Alex3917 wrote:
| > It occurred at a unique time in history that is unlikely to
| be replicated again. You could build the same game but players
| have largely moved on from this style of MMO.
|
| I don't necessarily personally disagree with this, but this
| counter argument is worth watching:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1H4j-5YFKK4
| zinckiwi wrote:
| I largely agree with the perspective of that video.
|
| Specifically thinking of the difference between EQ and WoW, I
| do think there's one objective difference though: downtime.
| It wasn't uncommon to spend minutes recovering from a fight,
| or wait 20+ minutes between spawns if you were camping a
| particular spot. At the time we moaned about it, so WoW came
| along, and "solved" the complaint.
|
| In hindsight, the downtime was the best part of the game.
| Chatting with strangers in a pickup group. Gambling. Friendly
| duels. Dumb feats of strength. Mutual grumbling about waiting
| for the boat. My fondest memories were all the things around
| the gameplay, but that doesn't make the game irrelevant. It
| was an excuse and a reason, but also a setting. The
| _combination_ was intoxicating.
| toast0 wrote:
| > In hindsight, the downtime was the best part of the game.
|
| There's a lot of this in baseball spectation as well, maybe
| american football too. The game is there to bring you
| together and hang out.
| munk-a wrote:
| I would strongly _strongly_ suggest investigating MUDs if that
| 's your bag. They're non-graphical so they can be built and
| maintained by small numbers of people with low programming
| skills and they tend to be almost entirely about community
| experiences. I'll just leave http://www.middle-earth.us/ here
| because it's where I met my now SO and it's an absolutely
| wonderful community - but there are hundreds of them out there.
| They do take a serious time commitment though, since they're
| all about building up that interesting social world.
| nhinck2 wrote:
| Yeah UO only worked because it was basically the only game in
| town.
|
| The sheep were playing alongside the wolves. Once there was
| more choice in the market the more casually and cooperatively
| minded players self-selected into games catered to them.
|
| Everyone who wants 'the next UO' has got to realise it's never
| going to happen.
| nrb wrote:
| > Yeah UO only worked because it was basically the only game
| in town.
|
| As someone who was deeply involved with UO for a number of
| years, this explains a lot of it I think.
|
| Once there was a choice of optional PvP in UO itself the
| players OVERWHELMINGLY voted against non-consent PvP by
| fleeing to Trammel.
|
| That said, even after Renaissance the game and community
| itself was still in good shape before they caught the WoW bug
| and destroyed what they built trying to capture that
| audience.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| I get the feeling that any good, truly "massive" MMO eventually
| has to deal with stuff like this beyond a technical level, beyond
| a gameplay balance level, and straight into social ramifications.
|
| As a younger guy than these players, this story reminded me of
| the Disk of returning and Thordur's black hole from RuneScape.
| nominusllc wrote:
| The solution is to make the pipeline for reporting bugs easy
| and lucrative enough to encourage bug reports.
| washywashy wrote:
| I remember my days playing on a likely not-so-legal role playing
| shard that also had a connected blog where players posted stories
| about their characters.
| eigenschwarz wrote:
| Darknet Diaries does a two part episode that covers, among others
| exploits, this infamous (and famously entertaining) UO zero-day
| exploit:
|
| https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/7/
| https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/8/
| palata wrote:
| I wonder if Darknet Diaries will someday become the XKCD of
| security stories: "there is a Darknet Diaries for that" :)
| victorclf wrote:
| Still hopeful that someone will make a new exciting sandbox MMO
| that fills the gap left by UO.
| hoten wrote:
| I've been working on this sort of game for awhile now. Never
| too seriously, though that will change in 2023. Hardly worth
| sharing at this point, but I will anyway.
|
| https://hoten.cc/gridia/play/
|
| I need to seriously think about what I want out of this game
| (more of a mmo game engine), but "UO-like" is definitely top of
| mind.
| alexose wrote:
| I was excited to play but I couldn't make it past the
| character creation screen. There's a bug preventing me from
| spending all of my attribute points.
| hoten wrote:
| Huh, that's odd. I can't figure out how to get that problem
| to happen. Not even selected a preset works?
|
| By the way, if you manage to get it to work, make an
| account starting with '@' to get admin privileges. You
| could also explore the local play-it's the same server
| code, but running in a web worker instead of on my server.
| victorclf wrote:
| I got the same bug when I clicked create button without
| filling the "character name" field.
|
| Great demo btw!
| hoten wrote:
| ooooh yup that'll do it, thanks!
| v8xi wrote:
| there with you - UO was the greatest game I ever played
| axus wrote:
| A game development pair working on a kind of similar MMO for
| the last 10 years. "Haven and Hearth" has all the house
| building, player killing, crafting, and trading. No pre-made
| safe zones, though, and it resets every year or two.
|
| I think all of these small, independent efforts fall under
| the radar without the advertising of more expensive games. I
| don't know if UO was well-advertised at the time, but it was
| certainly the only option at launch!
| nerdix wrote:
| UO was well advertised before launch. One of my most prized
| possessions as a kid was a summer of 1996 (want to say
| June) issue of PC Games magazine that had an in depth
| preview of UO. It came out about a year before the game
| actually launched. I probably read that article about 100
| times. I was never going to get my parents to pay the
| monthly subscription fee so that magazine and my
| imagination was the closest I got to UO until I was in
| college and could afford it myself (that was during Age of
| Shadows and EverQuest had already supplanted it as the most
| popular MMORPG)
|
| In the late 90s, Ultima was still one of the biggest (if
| not the biggest) PC/Western RPG franchises. UO launched
| before Ultima 9 kind of killed the franchise. I'd be
| surprised to find anyone who was really into PC gaming
| during that era that hadn't heard of Ultima Online.
| chongli wrote:
| Sadly I don't think it can be done. I mean sure, the game could
| be written, that's not a problem. The trick is to get people to
| show up and in particular get players to play who aren't "UO
| fans."
|
| UO was amazing because a ton of people played it who weren't UO
| fans or even MMO fans because such things didn't exist. The
| players were simply RPG fans wanting to try something new and
| what happened was magical and serendipitous.
|
| Now any game that tries to do the same will only attract UO
| fans or classic MMO fans. That original audience of people who
| were essentially naive but open to a new experience are gone.
| jghn wrote:
| It doesn't help that the majority of people who bemoan the
| loss of games like UO quickly reveal themselves to be the
| sort of psychotic players who are the exact reason games like
| that no longer exist. You'll hear things like "I miss being
| able to slaughter dozens of people and take all their stuff".
| Ok great, but your average player _hates_ that sort of game.
| And you need a high prey /predator ratio to satiate such
| desires.
|
| I say this as someone who thinks of early UO as the best game
| they've ever played. I didn't mind that type of player, even
| spent most of my time fighting with/against them. But I also
| recognize that this segment is why we can't have nice things.
| asdff wrote:
| The skill gap issue is huge in games. When a game is
| popular you have plenty of people worse than you at the
| game to stomp. When it becomes niche its just you against
| the pros who play nothing but this one game for thousands
| of hours, and it becomes a lot more frustrating to get into
| a game.
| chongli wrote:
| I am one of those rare people who actually really enjoyed
| the thrill of playing a miner (or some other crafter) and
| having murderers show up and try to kill me for my valorite
| ingots. It felt like high stakes (in game terms, low stakes
| in real life terms) hide-and-seek!
|
| Over the years I ended up wearing many different hats, of
| course. I had red characters and thieves and mage-thief
| hybrids (by far the most annoying character for people to
| play against). I participated in guild vs guild combat, I
| had a tamer, a bard, a smith, a fisherman. I loved
| everything there was to do in UO. On a free shard I even
| dabbled in programming, writing a bot to automate shearing
| sheep and storing the wool in the bank. That shard had a
| really high spawning rate for sheep so I was able to earn
| enough gold to purchase a keep to share with my friends in
| about a week of real time!
| jghn wrote:
| Likewise, it's just that we were a severe minority.
|
| I spent most of my time either PvPing in some form and/or
| heavy RP activity including tradesperson type stuff. My
| main character was notoriously red-but-actually-good as
| he would fight against wrongdoing even if it earned
| criminal flagging. So I wound up with a pretty diverse
| set of friends no my server.
|
| On my shard there was a cluster of PKs who were actually
| pretty mature/sane, many of them got into the RP side as
| well with one group featured in Wired. We became OOC
| friends and often would concoct RP reasons why my guild
| and those groups would band forces against the K1ll3rd00d
| type PKs that would roll around. And that's how I got
| most of my PvP enjoyment.
| no_wizard wrote:
| It appears to be still around?
|
| https://uo.com/
|
| EDIT: looks like it changed hands a number of times, very
| unlikely its as good as it once was, I imagine
| cottenio wrote:
| Not really "changed hands."
|
| Stages:
|
| 1. EA with original Origin devs 2. EA post-Origin 3. EA,
| integrated into Online group (with Westwood) 4. EA Mythic (UO
| & DAOC) 5. Broadsword (owned by the former GM of EA Mythic
| under a licensing deal)
|
| I think that's fairly accurate. Older devs correct me if I'm
| wrong.
| unicornmama wrote:
| UO was an awesome experience. No one has ever made a similar
| game, and UO doesn't exist in its prior form. But let's not
| forget that we all stopped playing UO for a reason.
| quelltext wrote:
| What's the reason?
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