So, of course, today is the day before the official launch of Mass Effect 3. Those of you who preinstalled the game should find it unlocked for play…er…well, at some point today, probably quite close to midnight. Or it may be already enabled; I haven’t tried it out yet, myself. The email from Origin just said it would be playable on “the 5th”, which is today. Still, in the interests of completeness, here’s the usual round-up of BioWare-related news…which, yes, is rather Mass Effect-heavy. But you knew that was going to happen.

Mass Effect 3 exceeded its pre-order sales targets.

Is anyone surprised? I’m not.

Are Mass Effect and Dragon Age in the same universe?

One hopes not, and one hopes that Greg Zeschuk and Ray Muzyka were just joking about with Kotaku:

Me: I’ve seen armor from one BioWare game appear in the other. Do any of these games take place in the same universe? Are Dragon Age and Mass Effect in the same universe? Would that break a rule?

Ray Muzyka: I did wear my Dragon Age blood dragon armor for a good period of Mass Effect 2.

Greg Zeschuk: I don’t…Is Mass Effect the past or the future?

Muzyka: Maybe [Mass Effect hero Commander] Shepard enjoys the look. He just enjoys the aesthetic. He has a TV in his cabin. So he gets to play great games and decorates his armor with…

Me: So you’re telling me Dragon Age is a video game series within the Mass Effect universe. I like that idea. Shepard is playing Dragon Age.

Zeschuk: In the future, it’s the greatest franchise ever.

That said, it would be fun if Thedas (or, rather, the world on which Thedas is situated) were a planet that one could land on in Mass Effect 3. I’d love nothing more than to introduce some darkspawn to my M-96.

Of course, by the logic employed above (which seems to have something to do with cross-over armour styles between games), there should also be a planet Amalur in Mass Effect 3.

PC Gamer previews Mass Effect 3.
So does IGN, calling it a “Review in Progress”.

IGN praises the way the game wraps up plot threads from both of its predecessors, and also notes that vehicle control seems to be entirely gone from the game. No Mako, no hover-tank…no vehicle of any kind during normal gameplay. I know a couple people were wondering about that, so to those folks…there is your answer.

PC Gamer, on the other hand, highlights an area of concern:

Enter stage left Mass Effect’s controversial Galaxy at War system, a sort of social metagame hub where your success in ME3′s horde-based co-op multiplayer (and the Facebook games and apps) serves as a multiplier to your proficiency against the Reapers on the approach to the endgame. You’re presented with the forces you’ve amassed, including characters such as Samara and contingents of Asari Commandos and Mindbenders, and encouraged to shuttle them between Reaper troublespots. It’s a needless addition, but a forgivable one if it turns out to be fun. Shepard’s adventures tend to consume body and soul, so being able to aid the war effort while on the bus has a certain allure.

I will probably pick up the Infiltrator iPhone game, just because. I’m less sold on the accompanying Datapad app.

Mass Effect 3′s lead writer talks about character interactions.

Mac Walters offers up some commentary on the means by which characters in the game can interact, and the different conversation types that can crop up. It certainly sounds like the companion interactions have been expanded upon from what I thought was the very excellent direction they were taken in by Mass Effect 2. If so…well, I look forward to chatting with folks on the decks of the Normandy.

AusGamers interviews Robyn Théberge.

Ms. Théberge is an associate producer at BioWare. I can’t embed the video, but AusGamers helpfully provided a transcript. There’s not really anything worth highlighting in an excerpt; the discussion ranges over topics like Galaxy at War, DLC, and character imports (if you’re importing from Mass Effect 2, you keep your experience and possibly a bunch of equipment).

But have a read, Dragons and Dragonettes; you may see something I’ve missed.

Meanwhile, in Star Wars: The Old Republic…economy changes!

Georg Zoeller, the game’s lead combat designer, shares a few details about what’s in store for the in-game economy:

Massively Multiplayer Online games are built around living, breathing worlds that are always evolving, and Star Wars: The Old Republic is no different. In our upcoming Game Update 1.2, we’ll be introducing a wide assortment of new features and content, while also introducing a number of improvements and changes to the in-game economy.

As we work to create a more player-driven economy, you can expect significant improvements to Crew Skills, and an extension of Crew Skill gameplay, such as item creation and research, into the Elder-Game content. You’ll also see new items brought into the game, including new schematics, Legacy items, a new tier of Player vs Player and Player vs Environment weapons and armor, and the ability to extract base-mods from purple items, as well as many other changes and improvements.

Weekly patch 1.1.5 (which is now on the Public Test Server) implements a number of changes in preparation of the upcoming Game Update, including the much requested removal of light side / dark side requirements on color crystals.

As it is expected when large scale changes are made to an economic system, enterprising players often find interesting opportunities to benefit from their knowledge about the changes beforehand (for example by studying test server patch notes).

Player-driven anything is almost always a welcome thing in an online game, no?

Dragon Age 2 patch 1.04!

Well, if you’re on a Mac, that is. I think other systems already received the patch. This one includes lots of companion-related fixes, and a few DLC-related corrections as well.

Does Mass Effect challenge sci-fi’s greatest achievements?

IGN asserts that it does:

[The game's] stringent scientific outlook, which gives the Mass Effect universe its Hard SF backbone, was there from the very beginning. A lot of research was done during the development of the original Mass Effect. “The entire writing team was constantly reading and researching and reviewing anything we could,” remembers Walters. “Everyone was thoroughly immersing themselves in science at the time, and where these things could really go.” After all, they had an entire universe to create.

It’s even got to the point where a procedure has evolved at Bioware to deal with those niggling situations when the science is at odds with story. “Say we want to introduce something new – be it a new type of ship or a new ability – and it doesn’t quite fit into the IP: we have someone who is our IP science guy. We’ll often pass off the idea to him and say, ‘How would you explain this in ‘our science’?’ He goes away and comes back usually a day later, scratching his head, with a few ideas, and we make sure it’s in there.”

While this exacting scientific aspect appeals to some, from personal experience Walters knows that the series also connects with those who have no interested in the special relativity whatsoever. “I have friends and what they love about it is the characters that they meet. They might be blue and have tendrils, some of them might be reptiles – and that’s definitely in keeping with the Sci-Fi genre – but what’s more interesting to them is the characters and what they’re experiencing. For them Sci-Fi is context, a background; they’re really in it for the characters and their relationships.

“Essentially, Mass Effect is a Hard Sci-Fi experience at the boundaries, and what’s in between is more of a lite Sci-Fi experience for people who want it to be that as well. And that’s the kind of fun of the Mass Effect Universe – it can be what you want it to be.”

If you actually poke around the in-game codex, there is indeed an immense amount of lore and “in-game” science to be found in its…er…pages. The writers at BioWare, from day one, worked very hard to establish a huge amount of backstory for the game, the better to make it seem like they were dropping you into a universe that had been around for a while. And for the most part, they succeeded at doing so, I think.

Did Mass Effect challenge YOUR definition of what makes an RPG?

Because it certainly challenged Rowan Kaiser’s:

The first thing I noticed when I started playing Mass Effect was its aesthetic. It’s not the graphics, though, at least not in the traditional sense. It’s the lens. It’s all grainy and spotty. A quick trip to the options menu reveals something interesting: it’s intentional. There is a checkbox called “Film Grain,” and it begins the game turned on.

One of the last things I noticed when played the Mass Effect games was that it broke my definition of “role-playing game.” This is a definition that has worked for me for well over a decade. I can, using it, effectively separate controversial games from one another. Mass Effect was the first challenge my RPG definition (see below) has had to face.

The biggest thing most people seem to have noticed when playing Mass Effect 1 or 2 is the moral decision-making process. This mechanic, so common to role-playing games since Fallout and early BioWare and Obsidian games, was suddenly injected into a much different style of game, a cover-based science fiction shooter. It helps that Mass Effect is arguably the best example of the form: the Renegade/Paragon division flows naturally from the game’s setting, and the writers and voice actors are both in fine form throughout both games.

Although different at the surface level, all three of these aspects of Mass Effect point toward that same genre tension BioWare’s new options indicate. So just what kind of game is Mass Effect? I do not mean this in a philosophical, artsy-fartsy sense. I mean it in a straightforward, and traditional one: what genre is this game? And if you were really looking forward to the artsy-fartsy stuff, also this question: what does Mass Effect say about genre, and what does genre say about the game industry?

Do read the whole thing, Dragons and Dragonettes.

Oh, that player feedback…

You know, Gamasutra picked the perfect picture of Casey Hudson to accompany this article…he looks positively trashed. Which I suppose any franchise’s executive producer would look like, if he spent too much time giving too much weight to the opinions of fans who mistakenly assume they are not unlike co-owners of their favourite game.

“Anytime you introduce something new it’s controversial. Because fans will say, ‘Well, we never asked for that’, you know, ‘We want you to keep doing exactly the other things that we’ve liked before.’”

The problem, he says, is that if you don’t innovate, you’ll also be accused of “doing the same thing all the time.”

And sometimes fans seem to contradict themselves, he says.

“A great example was the new characters that we added for Mass Effect 2. When we started publicly introducing these new characters that would join your team in that game, it was tremendously controversial because people didn’t want these new characters that they didn’t know; they wanted us to recreate the experience of Mass Effect 1 with those characters.”

“Now we’re having a similar challenge with Mass Effect 3, where characters that we’re introducing are seen as controversial because people only want their Mass Effect 2 characters, characters which, previously, were kind of met with resentment because we were adding them in the first place.”

While it’s arguably not a good idea to piss off your entire fanbase, it’s also not a good idea to invest too much energy in serving their every whim and demand. Doing either will only yield diminishing (if not outright negative) returns. Just ask Origin Systems!

Reputations in Mass Effect 3.

Contra what the name might imply, this isn’t really about how your companions view you, and instead concerns how the Paragon/Renegade system that has characterized Mass Effect games thus far has been revamped for the third installment.

“In Mass Effect 2, if you wanted to get the hardest Charm options, you had to play an almost completely Paragon character,” Patrik Weekes explains. “We intended many of those Charms to be fun Easter eggs, but many players felt like they had to play pure Paragon to avoid being penalized by the loss of a dialog option. In Mass Effect 3, your Reputation score determines both Charm and Intimidate options, and that score is determined by adding your Paragon and Renegade scores together.”

That should let us choose to act as a Paragon one moment, and go Renegade the next, making decisions based on the situation rather than a need to grind for maximum morality points. Many important acts in Mass Effect 3 will increase Shepard’s overall reputation score without changing the Paragon/Renegade balance. In these cases “the bar on your screen will grow, but the Paragon/Renegade ratio will remain unchanged.”

Mass Effect 3 will have one overall reputation measurement instead of two separate bars. New conversation options will unlock as your actions push the bar past four progression points on the bar. “If you see that you’re a bit short of hitting a new line, and someone has just said something like, “Let’s head down to [that person's homeworld] and finish this once and for all,” it may be worth your time to go do a couple of side-quests first,” says Meekes.

I’m actually not sure I like this development. I mean, it’s a less restrictive way of giving players access to dialogue options that are reputation-dependent, but I actually quite liked how Mass Effect 2 didn’t allow you to access e.g. certain Paragon conversation options if you had played a mostly (or entirely) Renegade game to that point.

Why? Consistency. If I’ve been playing through the game as a Shepard who has been curt and flippant with everyone he meets, who has demonstrated no concern for sparing the lives of civilians in heated combat situations, and who has willingly defenstrated a disarmed Eclipse trooper…is my Shepard really going to be the sort who suddenly shifts gears and tells a prison guard that it’s beneath him to oversee the possibly frivolous beating of an imprisoned mass murderer? Or would my Shepard be…er…rather more forceful and blunt in resolving the matter?

On the other hand, this revision to the system sounds like it might let me play Shepard as kind of bipolar, which could be amusing.

Of course, BioWare will be at PAX East.

So if you have tickets to the annual gaming conference in Boston, which this year will be held on the Easter weekend (April 6th to 8th), you’ll be able to find them there. Though again, that really shouldn’t come as surprising news.

GameInformer previews Mass Effect 3 with Casey Hudson.

It’s a quite beastly-long article, actually, running to three pages. But it does contain a few interesting snippets, including this one…which hearkens back to Origin’s way of making games:

The [Martian] ruins provide a great example of the new focus on more varied level design in Mass Effect 3. Shepard can climb up small barriers and ladders, jump across gaps, and generally explore the environment more thoroughly, and these tools allow BioWare to mix up the gameplay in interesting ways.

“Once we added all those tools to the toolbox, we challenged the designers to figure out ways to make the missions and the story unpredictable,” Hudson says. “In Mass Effect 2, often you would see where you’re going down at the end of the hallway and know, ‘That’s settled, that’s where I’m going.’ In Mass Effect 3, we constantly try to change your perception of what you need to do.”

Origin had this habit as well, that of building the game’s engine and functionality up as much as they felt they could before turning around and asking what sort of interesting story they might be able to tell with the well-oiled machine they had just put the finishing touches on. BioWare likely haven’t done so to the same scale, but it’s still nice to see hints of that same spirit where one can find them.

And hey…more variety in level design is always a good thing.

Twenty-one things you “must know” about the Mass Effect universe.

GamesRader publishes a list that, I guess, serves as a basic primer to the world of Mass Effect. It’s kind of a groaner of a list, though, including some very…er…basic facts like: “[the Council] really are twits, the lot of them.”

Yeah.

What’s been your favourite part of Mass Effect thus far?

Rock, Paper, Shotgun are asking questions again.

Personally, if I had to pick a favourite portion of the series to date, I’d probably pick Ilos, the ruined Prothean world visited near the end of Mass Effect, and then for several reasons.

From a level design perspective, it’s one of the larger areas in the game, and is layed out rather differently from anywhere else that you journey to in your quest to defeat Saren and figure out what the hell these Reaper things are anyway. At the same time, the design style used on Ilos takes cues from previous areas (especially Feros) where Prothean lore and architecture were strong background elements. Ilos, though, goes one step further, showing a Prothean world in a much more complete, intact state…if rather overgrown by vegetation. And you get glimpses of Prothean culture as you progress through the area, especially the odd Cthulu-like statues that I guess must have been depictions of the Prothean gods or…well, something.

And from a narrative perspective, Ilos exists as the bridge between the emotional high-point of the game (the escape from Virmire and, potentially, the culmination of the romantic subplot — if you were pursuing it) and the final, Citadel-spanning action sequence. But rather than just simply ferrying you from point A to point B in a very perfunctory way, it pulls back the curtain on some of the game’s bigger mysteries. It’s on Ilos that you learn that the Citadel is a trap, and how the Reapers strike at the civilizations of the galaxy. It’s on Ilos that you learn about the last of the Prothean people and how they attempted to save themselves…and then, when that failed, how they made one last-ditch effort to save the next races of the galaxy by breaking the connection between the Reapers and the Citadel. It’s on Ilos that you’re treated to the sorrowing image of thousands upon thousands of once-inhabited cryogenic pods, the last hope for the survival of the Protehan race…all of which are now tombs, sequentially deactivated to preserve the “best and brightest” Protheans to the last, until there were not enough Protheans left to keep the species going.

Oh, and as far as RPS’ follow-up question: my favourite character is Garrus. Garrus is awesome. I’d play as Garrus if I could.

The Old Republic Community Q&A…Part the Fourth!

Another question-and-answer session between fans and developers. Some of the rewards that will be introduced to supplement the Legacy system in the game are discussed, as are maintenance issues…among other things, of course.

VentureBeat chats with Casey Hudson.

Here’s one notable excerpt:

GB: Were there any things you view as having…”fixed,” so to speak, when you moved from Mass Effect 2 to Mass Effect 3? Improvements that really make a big difference?

CH: Yeah. The overall gameplay has really come full circle. Commander Shepard is now really fluid in how you move around, get over cover, you can grab enemies, it’s very physical and visceral. Jumping and falling, you just have so many things you can do. But in addition to the action side, we also took a lot of feedback about how Mass Effect 2. It was a very valid point, that there was progression, but not a lot of intelligent decision-making about how you were progressing. And so we’ve added a lot of depth and decision-making into every step of progression, whether it’s your powers, deciding which kind of flavor you want at every stage. Every piece of your armor has stats on it, so that you can decide how you look, obviously, but each piece is also helping you optimize your gameplay towards a certain style. The same thing with your weapon. Now you literally see your weapon on a bench, you’re plugging in and out different mods that really help you play the way you want to play. You might choose entirely different things on one playthrough versus another because you’re actually making intelligent choices about how you combine all of these things.

If there was one criticism of Mass Effect 2 that I agreed with fully and without reservation, it was the subtraction of various roleplaying-type elements as compared to the first game. Though Mass Effect was, perhaps rightly, criticized for not having a particularly great inventory system, I for one missed having to compare armours, weapons, and mods for both on a regular basis. I missed reasoning through the implications of picking one ammunition mod over another, missed debating with myself whether the extra damage absorption of one armour set was worth the reduced resistance to biotics.

This doesn’t sound like a complete restoration of…well…all that. But it’s something, and it sounds like a welcome thing.

The future of gaming.

The Doctors BioWare and various other studio heads and developers chat about that very topic in this three-minute video from G4:

The new features of Mass Effect 3!

Mac Walters, Preston Watamaniuk, and Casey Hudson discuss their goals for the game…and how the Reapers combine victims from different species into terrifying new creatures:

George Lucas II: Greg Zeschuk

Lone Star Gamer managed to catch up with BioWare’s Greg Zeschuk in Austin recently, and posted a short video of the interview online:

Raph Koster links to a pair of articles published at MMORPG.com — the first one is here, and the second here — and offers some comments and corrections based on his recollections of Ultima Online’s development process.

For example:

Technically, we didn’t have the engine at the point the article states; the client was basically rewritten in 1995-96. Rick Delashmit had been there for a few months when my wife and I joined the project on Sept 1st 1995; other key early folks such as Scott “Grimli” Phillips and Edmond Meinfelder also joined in August to September of 95. That’s also around when Ken Demarest left, and Jim Greer — best known today for founding Kongregate.

I think I have told this story before, but the whole “dragons eating deer” example came from the design samples that my wife and I sent in as part of our job applications. We showed up on the first day and were taken aback when we were told that was how the game was going to work… So at least that much of the notion of “what the game was going to be” was set in 1995…

That crazy resource system stuff, particularly some of the AI, did in fact work in the alpha test. It led to rabbits that had levelled up and were capable of taking out wolves — or advanced players. We found this intensely amusing, and quoted Monty Python at each other whenever it came up.

It’s an interesting concept. I mean, if players can level up by defeating monsters, animals and/or other players in battle, why can’t monsters and animals do the same thing by defeating each other and/or players?

And here’s a historical clarification:

The alpha was not an MMO in the “really massive” sense of the word. It supported the same sort of concurrency as Meridian 59 did — 250 or so. In between the alpha and the beta, the server was rewritten to allow for 2500-3000 concurrent players per shard. In order to do this, a whole bunch of new technology had to be invented for creating seamless borders between adjacent maps. These borders would prove to be a source of bugs for years (most dupe bugs made use of race conditions when moving across server lines).

Anyhow, Dragons and Dragonettes, do read both MMORPG.com article as well as Koster’s summary of and corrections thereto. If you played UO at all, it should be an informative stroll down memory lane.

Former Ultima Online lead designer Raph Koster has been publishing a number of interesting articles lately (I didn’t link to his post about making games more cheaply, but it was a good read that I would recommend to all of you), and his latest article about narrative is no exception to that trend.

In it, he makes the assertion that narrative isn’t a game mechanic, but rather a form of feedback to the player. Though it sounds controversial, he’s actually correct in saying as much.

Let’s start thinking about this by looking at what a game is. Games can and do exist without narrative. The core of a game is a problem to solve. As game grammar tells us, it’s actually typically a series of nested problems: I need to reach this location, which means I need to defeat enemies, which means I need to traverse space, which means I need to mash a button. Some of these, like “defeat enemies,” are complex problems in their own right. Some of them are trivial problems, such as “mash button.”

If you string these together, you’ll typically find that the problems will alternate between abstract problems and simpler interface problems. For example, most turn-based board games alternate between the complex strategy problem of “what move to make next” and the simple interface problem of “pick up piece and move it here.” Board games, of course, tend to be very forgiving regarding interface problems; if you drop the piece, nobody minds if you pick it up and put it where you meant.

…but the feedback for even a trivial action is very important. It matters that we hear the sound when we click the mouse. And should the designer choose, they can make the feedback be hugely disportionate to the problem solved. Feedback serves the purpose of cuing the user whether or not they are being successful in figuring out the black box. So we provide feedback each time an input is made, and the feedback is intended to help guide the user as to whether they are doing the right thing.

It is easy to see that if you remove any one of these things, you end up without a functioning game.

• Cut the input, and you have a screensaver.
• Cut the problem inside the black box, and you have a slideshow.
• Cut the feedback, and you have something ridiculously confusing that no one will tolerate.

If we haul out the example of my current mobile gaming addiction, Jetpack Joyride, we can easily see Koster’s point illustrated.

This is a game with no narrative to speak of. Your protagonist, Barry Steakfries, just bursts through a wall, grabs a jetpack, and starts flying down the endless corridors of a top-secret research facility until he gets shot down by a missile or zapped by a security laser or force field. You tap the screen to fire the jetpack (moving Barry upward); you let go to stop firing the jetpack (moving Barry toward the ground). Barry keeps moving forward, either flying or running, at a pretty constant pace…until something kills him. He always dies, and the only uncertainty in the game is how far he’ll get before that happens.

Why is Barry stealing the jetpack? Who is he? What is this facility he’s in? Who built the jetpack, and why? None of this matters in the least, and I don’t know of Halfbrick (the game’s developers) even bothered to explain any of these details. Barry has the jetpack; he uses it. That’s the game…and it is addictive like catnip. But then, the game doesn’t need narrative as its feedback mechanic, because it offers other rewards…not the least of which is the hilarity of Barry’s every scorching or exploding demise.

Now, in an Ultima game, things change a bit. Indeed, in an RPG in general, things change a little bit. Narrative isn’t needed in Jetpack Joyride, but it is vital in an Ultima game, and for players like me at least it’s equally vital in games like The Old Republic. We expect games like this to tell us a story. The story advances through various means…but the actual mechanics of its advancement are the things the player and NPCs do, rather than what they say in conversation. There might be some gray area when it comes to things like quest-giving conversations…but even so, the quest doesn’t progress simply because the words describing it were said. The quest advances when the player actually runs off to fight the Foozle or pick up the MacGuffin.

Anyhow…sound off, Dragons and Dragonettes. For my money, Koster is right on the money. What say you all?

MMORPG.com published an interview with Ultima Online’s associate producer, Bonnie Armstrong, last week, in which she discussed the game’s historical success, the current raft of updates for the game, and where her team hopes to take the game in the future.

For those of you who follow UO, it contains several details that will no doubt be of interest. I daresay, however, that if you’re reading this site, you’re probably a bit more interested in hearing more about another Ultima project that BioWare Mythic (who are the developers in charge of Ultima Online now) is working on.

(hat tip: GameBanshee)

Ultima creator, private (and second-generation) astronaut, and interview-giving-machine Richard Garriott was interviewed again by Eurogamer. This time, discussion focused on Garriott’s “Ultimate RPG” concept, and the comparison to Ultima Online was very quickly made. Garriott’s response is already all over the Internet, but just in case any of you hadn’t heard it yet, here it is:

The Ultimate RPG that Richard Garriott is making could, literally, become Ultima Online 2.

The estranged Ultima Online creator told Eurogamer he was talking to Electronic Arts “even now” about working together again.

“Sure,” answered Garriott, when asked whether Ultimate RPG could become UO2. “Yeah – theoretically that would be possible.

“We’ve actually talked to Electronic Arts about [Garriott leading Ultima Online again]. I would love to have access to the Ultima property. We’ve had discussions at very high levels with Electronic Arts about access to the property.

“We’re in discussions with Electronic Arts even now about a possible marketing and distribution relationships and things of this nature.

“I have a great fondness for Electronic Arts – I still think they’re one of the best, most powerful and competent sales and marketing and distribution companies in the business.”

But…there’s a snag:

“Electronic Arts is a big company,” he said. “There are some parts of the organisation that would love and embrace and clearly understand the logic of ‘wouldn’t it be great to work together on an Ultima’.

“And then there are other parts of the organisation who – I’m actually not sure where the resistance comes from, but it must be people who either have their own ideas about where the product should go, or have their own ideas about whether or nor I should be involved in it. And I don’t know where the counter-forces come from.

“So far we’ve not put a deal together, but of course, yeah, I would be very open to it.”

Regardless of whether an EA deal is struck, Garriott said Ultimate RPG will “clearly” be a spiritual successor to Ultima Online.

You can probably all guess that I can speak to these circumstances somewhat, and that inasmuch as I can, I also cannot. That’s the way of these sorts of things. That said, even I can’t be sure of where the “resistance” (as described) is coming from, not entirely. I can speculate a bit, and I think it boils down to two things, one of which we’ve discussed before on the site here. That facet of it, of course, is the fact that while there is tons of love for the Ultima series and IP within EA (and within the BioWare label), the IP itself hasn’t seen much action since the release of Ultima 9 and/or the cancellation of Ultima X: Odyssey. Ultima Online, while still respected as one of the pioneers in the MMORPG space, has a relatively small subscriber base compared to other modern MMOs, and at least until Jeff Skalski took over as the franchise manager it was basically just being maintained, rather than developed.

In other words, the franchise needs to be re-established in the eyes of various mucky-mucks as one that is viable as something other than a much-loved legacy product. And unfortunately, that means starting small and building up; funds aren’t going to magically free up for one of the BioWare studios to churn out a AAA Ultima piece. And, of course, there’s been all sorts of rumours and hints that BioWare Mythic have a project already active in that space. And maybe that’s where the aforementioned “resistance” ultimately stems from.

But at the same time, the rumoured Mythic project really hasn’t been described in a manner that would make one think: “Ultima Online 2!!!”

Which brings us to what might be the other facet, which was kind of spoiled above: things may be picking up on the Ultima Online side of things. There have been some interesting development rumours flying about lately pertaining to the property, some of which are downright intriguing. Client overhauls, 3D upgrades, high-resolution artwork…I’ve heard several things. And if that’s where EA is focusing their efforts, I could see them being hesitant to jump on board Garriott’s bandwagon.

There’s also the fact, I suppose, that Portalarium is still very much an untested technology. It might make sense, in another year or two, for EA to look at partnering with the company and making use of the platform. But right now, it’s only been used for poker games by its parent company (although at least one other developer has done something rather more interesting with it).

Regardless, Garriott has made clear that whether he partners with Electronic Arts or not at any point in the future, his upcoming “Ultimate RPG” will, in as many senses as possible, be a spiritual successor to Ultima Online, if not an actual successor. Even the look (and presumably the feel) will be familiar, if Garriott gets his way:

The evolution of setting from Ultima Online to Ultmate RPG doesn’t necessarily mean 3D. Ultima Online’s isometric presentation will likely be preserved, Garriott revealed.

“We’re going to be building it in tools that would give us the option to go either way [3D or isometric]. But our current assumption is it would be isometric,” he said.

“All the tools we’ve been building to date, all the world building – they assume that it’s isometric. But feasibly that decision could evolve, but pretty quickly that will be set in stone in a way that you can’t change and presumably isometric.”

Richard Garriott’s Ultimate RPG will be free to play, quick to access and straddle today’s biggest platforms.

That said, and as much a fan of the isometric perspective as I am, I do hope they improve the graphics and change the perspective a bit.

(hat tip: Infinitron Dragon and RPS)

Richard Garriott just can’t seem to stop giving interviews these days! This time, he sat down with Eurogamer to discuss Portalarium’s upcoming game, Ultimate Collector, and where the garage sale-focused casual game fits into his wider plan:

“Ultimate Collector really is the backbone of the next game,” Richard Garriott told Eurogamer.

“None of the art is the same, of course, and there are absolutely no roles in Ultimate Collector, like there will be in the next game, but the tool-suite is continuing to evolve.”

Rather than develop and test all of the necessary Ultimate RPG features at once, Garriott had Portalarium make simple casino games to establish (and help fund) “fundamental” back-end tools like friends lists, buying and selling, real-money transactions and Facebook integration.

Ultimate Collector expands Portalarium’s capabilities to avatars, houses, secure trading, object collection “and all these other kind of things that are more role-playing-like”. But still no combat, no magic, “not the diversity of roles to play”.

You’ll recall, Dragons and Dragonettes, that in reporting on Ultimate Collector yesterday, I mused that it was probably a fundraising effort as much as anything else. I wasn’t wrong in that guess, and I kind of mused that the game might also be a means for Portalarium to grow out some of the other technologies that it would need to create a massive RPG with a strong social component. BanditLOAF, from the Wing Commander CIC, actually got a chance to see an early build of the game earlier this year, and he said that it’s actually rather cool:

. It’s basically Animal Crossing on Facebook, which alone should make everone involved very rich (I think; there seems to be an x-factor in casual gaming that no one has exactly cracked yet, having to do with how you get exposure for your game regardless of how good/appealing it is.) What I saw had some surprisingly deeper RPG elements, too. There was a kind of ‘crafting’ system that involved repairing and appraising the items you collect. If anything, it seemed like it was too complex for the audience.

Sergorn is correct about this being the start of the “portal” in Portalarium, too. Richard Garriott explained that you could for instance have a card table in your house that you click to jump to the Portalarium poker game… and when the “ultimate RPG” appears, you’ll travel to it through a moongate in your back yard (uh, the unlicensed equivalent of a moongate, I mean.)

Not just a game, but an app launcher and game catalogue frontend, then. Intriguing!

So, as I’m sure many of you have heard, Richard Garriott’s new initiative, Portalarium, has announced its next upcoming game: Ultimate Collector: Garage Sale. We have been hearing rumours about Ultimate Collector for a while now…and, sadly, it turns out that the game is not about the Origin Museum’s own Joe Garrity.

Indeed, it’s really nothing like any sort of Garriott-developed game that we’ve yet seen:

In Ultimate Collector: Garage Sale, the quest to find and assemble a wide variety of fabulous collections is easy and fun. Create your avatar and your house and begin the quest for the items you want. With plenty of content to appeal to both males and females, these items might be antique radios, purple stuffed toys, home décor, books, artwork, historical weapons or just a set of tools. Items can be collected as you visit your friends’ or other players’ garage sales, estate sales, markets, pawn shops, storage units, auctions or even from national retailers who will have their own stores in the game.

“There are literally thousands of collectible items in the game,” said Executive Producer Dallas Snell. “You may find an item that you really want, but you may need it authenticated by an expert to find out its true value. Some items might need repair to increase their worth. They are all real world items and we’ve scoured the Internet looking at auction and collectors’ sites to determine authenticity. In fact we’ve provided links in the game so players can go back to these websites to learn more about the items they’ve collected and, in some cases, even buy them for real if they still exist and are available for sale.”

Colour me a tad skeptical on this one, Dragons and Dragonettes. The Portalarium concept itself fascinates me, and I think it’s the path forward for social gaming and cross-platform gaming. Garriott still commands much of my respect, and I still think he has a genuine creative spark in him.

But this? I think I can see what he’s trying to do, and I really should have been mulling this over back with the game was first hinted at. But even though I think I can see what his aim is (and I’ll get to that shortly), I’m skeptical.

What I think Garriott is trying to do here is, in essence, fundraise. That’s the best word I can think to use. Obviously, Ultimate Collector is a game that’s going to have a very particular audience; it’s target is the casual Facebook user.

Particular though that audience may be, however, it is also a very large audience. And the potential certainly exists that it could be a very lucrative audience for Portalarium, if the game is launched and executed correctly, and if it takes off. That Zynga may well be worth more than all of EA is testament to the fact that social gaming can, under the right conditions, bring massive returns to developers.

And we all know why Garriott would need to fundraise. Large, open RPGs — especially MMORPGs (or, at least, online RPGs) — don’t come cheap. I’ve little doubt that most of Ultimate Collector’s profits will go toward the development of New Britannia (or whatever it ends up being called).

That said, with the game finally announced, and with its basic design and play mechanics finally given some explanation…I’m just not sure. To be fair, the game is about more than just scrounging for loot; you can hold your own garage sales, and there is a bit of a worldbuilding aspect that flows from that. The game seems intent on really amping up the social interactions between players, which is (if nothing else) a good foundation to have if you end goal is the creation of an online RPG as well.

But is that all enough to make it stand out…or, rather, to make it stand out enough to show the success of the Portalarium idea?

Update: Via the Wing Commander CIC, screenshots of the game!

Oooh...bouncy castle!

So this is a city park, then?

Raph Koster has posted embeds of a three-part video series by All Your History which purports to examine the history of MMOs. However, Koster (an experienced MMO dev in his own right, who has written much of the genre’s history himself) had a vew issues with the videos. Here they are, first, so you can judge for yourselves:

As noted, Koster spotted several inaccuracies (“oddities, errors, and omissions”, as he puts it) in the videos, which he detailed in a handful of brief points:

• Leaving out Kingdom of the Winds, which predated Lineage.
• Leaving out kids’ MMOs entirely, especially Club Penguin.
• Saying that the Ultima Online team had never made anything multiplayer before (Ken Demarest, mentioned in the documentary, left very shortly after UO actually had a team put together — and the original core team that was assembled on the programming and design side was all MUD/MUSH/MOO veterans except for one guy).
• Saying that Meridian 59 going flat fee was what opened up that business model…I’m fuzzy on this, but my recollection is that M59 was not flat fee at launch…it happened later. And for a while they had a weird complicated fee structure…

And it goes on from there. Do pop on over and see the rest of what he had to say.

Oops: Turns out there is a fourth part:

The SWTOR title screen.

I was under the impression that the non-disclosure agreement that beta testers of Star Wars: The Old Republic (abbreviated: SWTOR) — the upcoming MMORPG from BioWare’s Austin studio — was in force until mid-December, but it would seem that the NDA was recently lifted within the last day or two. Which is good, because it means that I get to share my thoughts on it — and several hundred screenshots — with all of you.

The map overlay.

I actually started out, on Friday evening, by playing a Smuggler, whom I named for the town of Kemmerer, Wyoming.

I didn’t get that far along the origin plot for the class, but I did manage to get in a few hours of play and got a look at the strengths and weaknesses of the Smuggler.

I probably won’t be playing as one when SWTOR launches, despite the fact that I love the cover system. It’s just a personal preference thing; the Smuggler is not unlike a rogue-type character, and my play style is just not suited to classes of that sort.

Numerous bodies to loot!

I didn’t get a chance to play the beta at all on Saturday, but I did have the opportunity to play in the beta for much of Sunday. Work trips are good for that sort of thing.

I wanted to check out the Jedi class, and so I created a male Jedi named for Jim Bridger, one of the early Western pioneers. There are numerous places named for him in Wyoming, including Fort Bridger and the Jim Bridger Power Plant.

I didn’t get that far along the origin plot for the class, but I did manage to get in a couple hours of play and got a look at the strengths and weaknesses of the Jedi.

I probably won’t be playing as one when SWTOR launches either, despite the fact that it’s Star Wars and, well, who doesn’t love a Jedi? It’s just a personal preference thing; the Jedi is a bit closer to my play style than the Smuggler was, but there was just something about the lightsaber combat that didn’t work for me. If I could have bound the basic lightsaber “instant” attack to the left mouse button, my opinion would probably be very different.

But, alas, I wasn’t able to do that, and I found it too cumbersome to have to work the number keys to launch attack after attack against enemies. Not that I didn’t have to do it with the Smuggler, of course…but it bothered me much less when the weapon in question was a blaster, and the enemies were a considerable distance away. Up close and personal, it just turned into uncomfortable button-mashing.

Blast them!

So, after grabbing an early dinner on Sunday evening, and feeling somewhat underwhelmed by the classes I had tried thus far, I decided to check out the Trooper class. In keeping with the naming tradition I had established, I created a female Trooper named for the town of Kaycee, Wyoming. Rather than spend an immense amount of time tweaking her face, I just kept hitting the button marked “Random” on the character appearance editor; after about 10 minutes, I found a face that worked for me.

My character.

I managed to play much more of this class’ origin story than I did either of the other two classes, and greatly enjoyed it for the most part. Until, that is, the story progressed to the point where I had to infiltrate the Seperatist base.

But, perhaps some context is required.

Lobbing a grenade.

The Trooper and the Smuggler actually both start on the same world, Ord Mantell, and in fact can embark on some of the same side quests. There are basically two categories of quests that I encountered as I played: side quests, and the main quest path. The main quests followed a reasonably well-written narrative, telling the story of your young, novice soldier’s arrival in a bit of a hot zone, and the various tasks she has to perform to help her squad and, more generally, the Republic gain a strategic advantage in the region.

Indoor battle.

Oh, and something about some terrorists that have stolen a massive bomb (think: orbitally-dispensed ordinance) that you have to get back.

Gaining experience.

Now, at first, things were humming along. I progressed along the story, through each successive mission. I picked up some better gear, bought still more…

Visiting a merchant.

…and generally found that, true to BioWare form, the missions I was being given scaled up in difficulty at pace with my character’s gain in levels and experience. I typically wasn’t being pitted against enemies more than a level above where my character was at, and found the difficulty to be acceptable. It certainly wasn’t a complete cake-walk, and my character did get severely injured in a few battles…but neither was it apocalyptically hard.

Firefight!

Until, that is, until the story progressed to a point where I had to infiltrate the terrorist base to actually retrieve or disable the stolen bomb.

Wasteland.

Now, it’s possible that I just suck. As evidence against this, though, I will point out that apart from a couple of mis-steps, I managed to pass each successive mission along my character’s origin story on my first attempt. However, for this infiltration mission, the difficulty level skiped upward very sharply; suddenly, I was facing enemies at a substantially higher level than my character (usually, enemies were within about one level of my Trooper). It also didn’t help when the game spawned an additional six or eight rocket-equipped high-level foes in behind me, just like that.

Maybe that’s normal for MMORPGs; I call it “dirty pool”.

Invisible blaster rifle!

Anyhow, after a rather abortive attempt at soloing the infiltration mission, I set about the tedious task of grinding for a bit, and raised my character a couple of levels. The second attempt at the infiltration mission ended just as badly, however.

Return of the invisible blaster rifle!

I will probably be playing as a Trooper when SWTOR launches; the play style suits me, even if it annoys me a bit that I can’t bind the basic “shoot” command to my left mouse button. Hopefully, come launch, the sudden spike in difficulty will have been reduced a bit. I was really, really enjoying the Trooper’s story, and I was really getting into playing as that class.

But the difficulty spike and attendant need to grind just broke up the narrative for me, and was actually quite a substantial letdown as a result. I’m not normally an MMO player, and what attracted me to SWTOR was the fact that it included strong narrative elements. I’m only playing it for those, really. Significant disruptions to the narrative flow of the game are not something I’m really looking forward to.

The graphics, at least, are quite lovely, for the most part!

One of many scenic views in the beta.

Although, while I’m on the subject of graphics, I did notice that I had to scale down most of the settings in order to get the game running at a playable framerate. And even when I did that, I noticed bits of lag here and there, as well as a lot of texture “pop-in” on both scenery and character models.

Overlooking a town.

Now, granted, the viewing distance in the game is significant, and it could just be that my computer’s graphics card isn’t quite up to the task of keeping up with this game. That would be odd, given its ability to handle Mass Effect 2 at full detail at the same resolution setting, but I suppose it is possible. Or The Old Republic‘s textures and 3D models are in need of further optimization, which is also possible. I snagged a beta key for the weekend upcoming, so I guess I’ll see if there’s an improvement in performance over last weekend.

Regardless: SWTOR was an interesting experience. Not being an MMO gamer normally, I can’t comment on whether it’s significantly different from other MMORPGs or not. BioWare’s always-excellent narrative design is certainly present in the game, and I think I will probably enjoy progressing along the story for the Republic Trooper when the game launches and I have a chance to play it through. Provided, that is, that I don’t have to spend days and days grinding in order to progress past key points in the narrative.

Richard Garriott has posted a lengthy missive on his Facebook page which asks exactly that question: what is the “ultimate” Lord British RPG? It begins with a look at the Ultima series, proceeding trilogy by trilogy and examining the innovations and achievements of each. Then, as has been the case with various keynote talks he’s given recently, he shifts focus to multiplayer gaming, MMORPGs. The third section discusses social and mobile gaming (mostly social gaming), and the potential in that space.

All of that, though, is just the build up to his answer to his own question:

I continue to debate how much of the new world designs to discuss in public as we work. Some part of me wants the new direction to be as new as possible to you when it arrives fully realized. Another angle is that this world will ultimately be your world, and player participation could both help me in its crafting as well as clearly communicate its depth long before its ready. So, we will see. Likely a mix of secrecy and sharing will be the right path to tread.

Here is what I feel is safe to say: Lord British’s Ultimate Role Playing Game, which may be called “Akalabeth” or may be called “New Britannia” or may be called “a name I cannot yet say as it describes the setting I am considering and think I should keep secret at least until I know if it’s likely true,” will be an Ultimate RPG. You will have customized Avatar homesteads and real roles to play in a deep, beautifully realized highly interactive virtual world. It will have virtues and the hero’s journey reflected back to the player. It will have the best of synchronous and asynchronous features in use. Fiction will support your arrival from earth into this new world. I even hope to make maps, coins and other trinkets available to players of the game.

But, please be understanding. It took 25 years to craft all the detail in Ultima. The new world will start smaller, thinner and lighter. It will have fewer features than some or most MMOs. Critical elements of the story I have just told may be missing upon launch. But fear not, this is where we are headed. Come play with us in the brave new world. Help us grow it. Teach us about what you have learned in your years of playing. Invite in your new friends who are new to gaming. They will be a new spirit and provide new ideas about what to do. They will likely not tolerate bad instructions, bad interface or huge upfront fees, which is a good thing! We will teach and learn from them as well.

He even has a word for those who despair that he won’t be able to deliver any sort of worthwhile gameplay experience using the browser as his medium:

…when traditional gamers look at all the “Ville” clones out there in the world, take heart! See not what is popular now, but rather what is happening in this new era that also would benefit them! A great game, like a great movie, need not be inaccessible to the masses. Great story and depth need not come at the cost of up front effort, pain and cost. Free to play does not mean the game has to be riddled with advertising and calls to spam your friends. But, for those unwilling or unable to pay fairly for what they now play, asking them to work for the developer and find us players is not unfair. Great games can and will be made in this new era, to the benefit of all, traditional and new players. We intend to be a leading maker of such games.

My own views on the potential in the mobile and social spaces (or, if you prefer, the casual space) is well-known to most of you, unless you’re only just discovering the site today. In turn, some of you have made it clear that you really don’t think there’s anything worthwhile that can be achieved in the casual space. Others are cautiously sceptical, still others cautiously interested. And frankly, I love the discussions that take place on the site when these topics come up.

I, for one, am betting on Garriott’s success in this effort. And I think what he comes up with will serve as a model for future game development…even beyond the purely casual space. Frankly, I’m looking forward to it, especially if they can get Portalarium games working across multiple platforms with cross-device synchronized savegames that are as seamless and as reliable as Amazon’s Whispersync technology. Good gravy, would I love to see that. But then, not unlike Lord British himself, I do the majority of my gaming on my iPhone these days. Of course I’m excited to see what he has in store.

The kicker is: I think you should be too, Dragons and Dragonettes. And so, evidently, does he. Or, at least, he wants you to give it a try.

Risen 2 just keeps looking better and better.

I mean, it already had pirates. And Piranha Bytes (the guys who did the first Gothic games) are developing it. And it’s the sequel to Risen, one of the more promising — if underappreciated — RPGs in recent years. That is a fair bit of awesome right there.

But what if…just…what if those pirates were also wizards?

Another week, another awesome Skyrim media release!

This time showcasing elves, lizard men, cat men, and orcses!

More Mass Effect 3 media, too!

New screenshots (mostly showcasing combat scenarios and enemies), and a visually stunning new trailer.

On passwords…

…I trust by now that everyone has seen this XKCD comic?

I still remember it!

Meet the online password generator it inspired!

Internet Explorer 9 leads the pack for malware blocking?

Apparently, yes.

I know…I was kind of surprised, too.

The Russian government has impounded the world’s first floating nuclear reactor.

I bet you didn’t even know that someone — a Russian corporation, now apparently bankrupt — was building a floating nuclear reactor.

I know I didn’t.

C++0x becomes a standard.

A long-awaited, much-needed update to the C++ programming language.

That’s one way to settle a legal dispute!

Notch, creator of Minecraft, has challenged Bethesda Softworks to a game of Quake 3 to settle their legal differences over Mojang’s upcoming new game, Scrolls:

“I challenge Bethesda to a game of Quake 3. Three of our best warriors against three of your best warriors,” Notch writes. “We select one level, your select the other, we randomize the order. 20 minute matches, highest total frag count per team across both levels wins.”

“If we win, you drop the lawsuit. If you win, we will change the name of Scrolls to something you’re fine with.”

“I am serious, by the way,” he adds.

In case you hadn’t heard, Bethesda is suing Mojang because, in their opinion, the name Scrolls infringes on Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls property.

Finally! World of Warcraft has lost a million subscribers this year.

The first signs that Blizzard’s MMORPG juggernaut is beginning to wane are finally — finally! — showing.

Private space travel firm given approval for ISS mission.

I don’t know whether Richard Garriott has any involvement with the SpaceX project, but I’m sure he’s pretty happy at the news regardless.

CryENGINE3 is now free…at least non-commercially.

The folks at Crytek have released the SDK for CryENGINE3 (the engine that powers Crysis 2), and it is free for non-commercial use (e.g. tinkering at home, use in schools, etc.). There is a licensing fee (which you need to contact them about) that comes into force if you want to release anything you make commercially.

HP exits the hardware game.

Taking a page out of IBM’s book, Hewlett-Packard has decided to spin off its PC-building business unit so as to focus primarily on enterprise services and solutions. Which, I guess, means that they’ll continue cranking out servers and networking gear, but not laptops or consumer desktops. Oh, and they’ll presumably continue to build printers, since they’re mostly known for that.

Oh…yeah. They’re also shuttering all further development of webOS devices, and are currently attempting to decide the fate of Palm’s mobile OS.

Tonight’s post brought to you by not getting it:

n00b!

We’ve heard Ultima creator and private astronaut Richard Garriott’s “three eras of gaming” keynote speech before, so his reworking of it for GDC in Cologne this week certainly won’t shock regular readers with its content or thesis. Garriott looks over the history of gaming and splits it into three broad eras: the single-player era, the MMO era, and the social/mobile era (which we are presently in), and notes his achievements and experiments with each paradigm.

His GDC keynote, though, is worth remarking on for how much focus it puts on the Ultima games, particularly Ultima Online; Tabula Rasa doesn’t even merit a mention in the quotes that Gamasutra took from Lord British.

On single-player gaming, Garriott had this to say:

“One thing that I really lucked into was creating storylines with what I will call ‘social relevance’,” he said, pointing to the moral choices inherent in the Ultima games.

The “save the kingdom” story of the original games in the series is no longer enough, though it still has traction in the industry, he said. “The first Ultimas were very simple stories… And if you look at most games today they still are. Personally, I don’t know about you, after I told that story a few times I was done with it.”

“That story has no value in the future. It’s the antithesis of what I try to do and what we as a development community need to do,” said Garriott.

“I have found that it’s much more challenging and much more successful for a long period of time, if you can a find a storyline to embed into a game that speaks to current contemporary social issues, but cast in a storyline that is appropriate to the style or fiction of the world that you have created.”

He also cautioned audiences to not miss what he considers “an essential element” of games — “a visual style is easily identifiable and easily memorable, and thus easily able for you to recall.”

And the Ultima games certainly delivered on that last point, especially from Ultima 6 onward.

Moving on to MMORPGs, Garriott revealed a few details about Ultima Online’s history:

When he launched the Ultima Online project, EA’s “faith in the team and faith in the project was so low,” he said, that “projected sales were 30k lifetime.”

“Sales and marketing were not in favor of us working with the game,” he said. “It wasn’t until we put up a prototype and put up a web page… 50,000 people signed up to be beta testers in the first couple of weeks. When it finally did ship it was the fastest selling PC game in origin and EA history at the time. Within about two years had outsold all of the other previous Ultimas combined.”

Even so, he said, “Despite the success, lots of people were not convinced that this was a good future for gaming in general.”

This is because the game had dated graphics and a lack of story — putting it behind the current state of the art of single player games. “When a new era starts with graphics that are five or 10 years behind the state of the art, very quickly that changes.”

MMOs quickly caught up. In fact, new era games — while behind the times at first — “catch up and supersede the era… Which is a very important message when you talk about the third era” of social and mobile games.

Of course, we know that Ultima Online went on to quite a bit more success than that…but it did start from behind. And it’s worth noting that MMOs today still have the tendency to lag behind graphically when compared to single-player games. Then again, that’s not really a surprise; MMOs run for years, and their visual feel stays constant for most of that duration.

Moving on to social gaming, Garriott had this to say:

“I am now much more of a gamer than I ever been been in my whole life, but the vast majority of the gaming I have played has been on this machine,” Garriott said, while holding up an iPhone.

“I’m a devout believer that this is the current and near-term future of games.”

The key points of this era, according to Garriott, are:

- Games are free or very cheap to acquire
- Simple to use without instructions
- The people who you meet at first are the people you know really well in the real world
- The ability to engage your friends asynchronously

“The combination of these features have scaled the market tenfold… Crossing the threshold of hundredss of millions of players in each game,” he said.

“Just like with MMOs, [detractors] are not recognizing the power of the new era, and how they can not only be great contributors to this era, but even as players how much you will enjoy this new era.”

People — both developers and players — used to say about MMOs, “the graphics aren’t very good, there’s no story.” Today, the same groups say that social and mobile games have bad graphics and unappealing gameplay. But watch out, said Garriott: things are rapidly evolving.

As I noted previously: I agree with Garriott’s assessment in general. Regular readers of Aiera will no doubt have noticed that I’ve been quite open in voicing my belief that social and mobile games — despite the relative fluffiness and primitivity of the current crop of social/casual titles — are a field in which there will be explosive growth (both in terms of the number of games available and the quality/engagingness of these games) in coming years.

My first mobile was a primitive little Samsung flip phone, with some version of Solitaire and a primitive little driving game installed on it. And these were, admittedly, terrible games, and very poorly implemented. Now, though? I’ve got Infinity Blade (an Unreal Engine 3-powered game) on my iPhone. And Galaxy on Fire 2.

That’s exactly the sort of revolution that’s about to take place in the social gaming space. And Garriott will likely be at the forefront of it.

Extra Reading: UO Journal links to this interview with Garriott at Soulrift, in which the father of Ultima goes into even more detail about the three eras, and about Ultima Online in paticular.

Elderlands is the latest old-school, very obviously Ultima-inspired online RPG by former Origin Systems software engineer Jason Ely, who previously worked on such titles as Ultima 8, Crusader: No Remorse, and Crusader: No Regret. He also developed Dransik, although Pixel Mine Games has since acquired that property from him.

In his own words, Ely describes Elderlands as “a 2D graphical Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) that has a retro look and feel. The game provides a nostalgic environment that gives players fun and innovative game-play in a large and dynamic world.” It includes three huge continents, hundreds of monster types, three class categories offering a total of 14 playable classes, customizable character appearances, guilds, a barter/trade-based economic system, multiple minigames and casino-type games, and fully scripted in-game NPCs with homes, jobs, and schedules.

Naturally, I’ve added a project entry for it. Enjoy!

[flickr size="small" float="left"]6006851995[/flickr]

Produced by: Jason Ely
Website: Elderlands
Forum: Elderlands Forums
Twitter: @elderlands
Releases:
* Elderlands Alpha v0.7 (829.6 KiB, 117 hits)

Elderlands is the latest old-school, very obviously Ultima-inspired online RPG by former Origin Systems software engineer Jason Ely, who previously worked on such titles as Ultima 8, Crusader: No Remorse, and Crusader: No Regret. He also developed Dransik, although Pixel Mine Games has since acquired that property from him.

In his own words, Ely describes Elderlands as “a 2D graphical Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) that has a retro look and feel. The game provides a nostalgic environment that gives players fun and innovative game-play in a large and dynamic world.” It includes three huge continents, hundreds of monster types, three class categories offering a total of 14 playable classes, customizable character appearances, guilds, a barter/trade-based economic system, multiple minigames and casino-type games, and fully scripted in-game NPCs with homes, jobs, and schedules.

The game can be downloaded from here or via the link above; it is necessary to create an account at the Elderlands website in order to play.

Why mods are ace.

Over at Rock, Paper, Shotgun, there’s a video posted in which it is explained in detail why PC gamers should be given the option to alter their games, and why modding makes everything better.

In addition to being non-moddable, Diablo 3 will feature an in-game, player-to-player auction house where players can trade items for in-game gold…or real money.

Just when I thought I couldn’t despise Activision-Blizzard any more than I already do, they come up with something like this:

Diablo 3 will sport a couple of in-game auction houses to sell items from player to player. One will be run entirely with in-game gold (very similar to the current WoW Auction House), and one will let players sell and buy items with actual money.

…Yes, Diablo 3 players will be able to spend real money on in-game items, but rather than a traditional item store, Blizzard plans to create a system wherein players sell items to each other — the eBay of Sanctuary, if you will. Players will be able to put items up for sale in each of the game’s various regions around the world (with a different real-world currency for each), and other players will be able to spend real money to buy them, with the real-world money going back to the original item owners.

Blizzard will take fixed fees (as yet unrevealed, though they’ll be “nominal”) out of the sale price both when an auction goes up for sale and when it is actually sold. And when an item is sold, players will either be able to keep earned money in a Battle.net account for spending on Blizzard products and services, or cash out entirely, with another, percentage-based fee through a not-yet-announced third-party payment provider.

Sales of items in MMORPGs and other online games have been going on since the days of Ultima Online, so it’s not as though Blizzard is offering anything new and novel here (they never offer anything new and novel anyway). Instead, they are simply moving something which other MMORPGs frown upon and/or forbid in their Terms of Service inside the game.

Why? Blizzard’s “on paper” reasoning is that moving the transactions into Diablo 3 instead of allowing them to happen on third-party sites will increase the security of the process for players. Personally, I think it has more to do with the fact that they charge three “nominal” fees per item sold. Methinks Bobby Kotick has decided that it’s not enough to have pillows stuffed with Benjamins; he wants a money-stuffed duvet as well.

More details: here, here, and here!

Bonus: Diablo 3 features always-online DRM; you can’t play it without an Internet connection.

All that said, it does look like a sweet game.

I mentioned Hard Reset previously…

…and the first gameplay trailer for it has arrived since then.

Just for reference, this is the game being built (in Poland, I think) by newly-formed studio Flying Wild Hog (which, in turn, is comprised of industry veterans who worked on such games as Bulletstorm, Sniper, and The Witcher 2).

Speaking of Bulletstorm…

…Ars Technica presents a handy guide on how to ruin the PC port of your game in five quick steps!

Windows XP finally loses its majority share amongst Internet users!

This is the happiest day on the Internet. I declare it to be so!

Interview with David Gaider: The Writing of Dragon Age 2

Gamasutra examines the writing process that went in to BioWare’s Dragon Age 2 and looks at how its team wanted to focus on telling a darker, edgier story. Which, frankly, is a trend in fantasy writing that I (for one) think needs to be curbed right now.

Did Metal Gear Solid 2 predict Facebook?

Well…sort of.

Tired of hearing me ramble on about Free-to-Play?

Epic Games president Mike Capps doesn’t think it’s all that, and doesn’t expect the F2P model will become an industry standard any time soon.

Win a chance to playtest Battlefield 3 in Sweden!

Sorry I don’t seem able to shut up about this game.

Earth has a “Trojan asteroid”!

Nothing to do with Spartans or sex, though; a trojan (in this context) is an asteroid that shares an orbit with a planet, at a stable point either in front or behind said planet. A few planets in the Solar System are known to have trojans, and now it appears that Earth does as well.

Yes, your smartphone can take incredible photos…if you know how to use it.

It’s true (to a large degree, at any rate) that a professional with a crappy camera can usually take a better picture than a n00b with the most awesome camera and lens on the market. A lot of that comes down to just knowing the finer points of composition and how to control the shot and the subject(s).

Equally, though: the pro who is handed a crappy camera can spend a few minutes messing around with said camera and probably figure out what settings to enable (or disable) in order to get the best image possible. The n00b with the awesome camera, by comparison, probably has no clue what half the damn buttons and dials do in the first place, and wouldn’t know the first thing about e.g. why changing the aperture setting can make the difference between a moderately-sharp image and a razor-sharp image.

Don’t be the n00b; learn how to use your camera! Learn what its strengths and weaknesses are, learn what you can do to eke a bit of extra performance out of it. Even your smartphone can take a striking image if you know a thing or two about its tiny little camera.

Tonight’s post brought to you by stabbing yourself“planking”:

You would think this sort of thing would be obvious! Spiky fence...pointy ends...no? No? Anyone?

Bonus:

I guess this is an improvement?

Gamasutra has posted a lengthy interview with Ultima creator Richard Garriott, in which he discusses his plans to bring an “Ultima Online-like experience” to the social gaming scene, and how he wants that experience to be accessible to just about everyone.

“Even the kinds of games that you might think I would make, I don’t generally play, because they’re often just too much of a hassle to get into them,” says Garriott, of the current crop of MMOs.

Instead, he says, he spends his gaming time with the iPhone, and believes that the true evolution of games will be one that allows mainstream gamers to touch the depth of design that he and his compatriots are capable of.

So we can take this as confirmation of at least one thing; New Britannia, whatever it finally ends up looking like, will indeed be a multiplayer game, in the MMORPG mold, but easier to get into and (presumably) taking full advantage of the social features of its target platforms: Facebook, hi5, Twitter, and suchlike.

He also talks up the Portalarium concept a bit, in a way that I had not previously heard:

Now if you’re playing one Ville-like game and I’m playing a different Ville-like game, we don’t know about each other’s activities during those games until after I log out and look at my posts on my wall and I go, “Oh, at the same that I was playing, my friend was playing this other game; kind of wish I knew that.”

And so we’ve created an infrastructure — a standardized messaging system between all games — so that while you’re playing a game, I can get notifications of what you’ve done that I can either ignore, tell you congratulations or whatever else, or click on a link that lets me change games and jump right in and play right alongside you. So we believe that we’re trying to deepen the connections between you and your friends across all the games that you play.

This almost sounds like the way Valve’s Steam does things; I might fire up Torchlight or Mass Effect, and in behind these games the Steam framework fires up and hums quietly along. Periodically, in the lower right corner of the screen, I’ll see a notification pop up, informing me that one of my Steam contacts has begun playing Trine (or whatever; this is just an example).

It also goes way beyond what Steam offers; I can’t just click on the notification and suddenly play Trine alongside my contact. But things are a bit different with browser games, which don’t require large installs to get started in.

Garriott elaborates:

[O]ne of my personal goals is to create a more what I call an Ultima Online-like experience with the game that I’m hoping to do — the big game coming up. And that will again go back to making linear narrative somewhat of a challenge, just like it was a challenge in Ultima Online.

…[I]magine two games, one of which is Ultima Online the way it was shipped. You go to the store and pay 50 bucks for it — well first of all you have to drive to the store, pay 50 dollars, bring it home, install it, then you have to sign up to pay 10 dollars a month, and then you can play it.

Or here’s version 2: same exact game, but your friend sent you an email, click on this link and you can play. You click on it, you begin playing immediately, it’s streaming download — you don’t have to do the huge install to begin with, and only if you play past level 5 do I then find a way to charge you for it — for hopefully about the same amount of money.

Which of those games are you going to enjoy the most? Presumably, you’re going to enjoy them the same — because it’s the same game — but which one do you think is going to spread more easily? Well, clearly the one that you can just click on an email and play is going to spread more easily.

So that’s what I’m saying — don’t worry about the content of what you see so far. Think of it as a distribution method and a platform of access. The reason why I play so many games on this platform is because it’s so easy, and two to five bucks is an impulse purchase. I don’t even think of a price that I’m paying to play these games, even though in total, in a month, I pay a lot more for iPhone games than I ever did in PC games because I just buy a lot more of them. And so that’s fine.

I’ve talked up the potential that even a rube like me can see in the social gaming space before, and a lot of people have come back with the reply that, in effect, the current crop of social games (Zynga’s various offerings, Lord of Ultima, etc.) has more or less left them convinced that the scene is just a passing fad full of trite, unappealingly simple distractions. And I have in the past tried to express the potential of social gaming by using the metaphor of mobile phone games, which have become amazingly complex and graphically stunning despite their humble and overly simplstic beginnings.

Garriott comes right out and says it directly: “don’t worry about the content of what you see so far”, because that’s a distraction. Look at the power and ubiquity of the platform being used to deliver that content, instead. It’s just waiting — maybe begging — for a developer to come along and use it to its full potential, and to bring a hell of a great game to the social space which does just that.

More importantly, he goes on to discuss the advantage for developers, who — in coding these games and administering them as they run — will have access to all kinds of player information and metrics.

[N]o MMO developer should be excused from not knowing the answers to these questions because we had metrics then, too.

…[I]n Ultima Online we constantly used those metrics to redesign the game. For example, one of my favorite stories is, in Ultima Online, when the game shipped, you could use a fishing pole on the water and there was a 50/50 chance you’d get a fish. Beginning and end of simulation — literately use a pole, on water, 50/50, fish. Lots of people did it, tons of people did it.

And people began to believe apocryphal information about fishing; they began to believe that if you fished in a river versus in the ocean they were better chances of getting fish, which of course was not true. I told you the simulation use fishing pole, on water, 50/50, fish. That’s it!

But so many people were doing it, and so many people had these fictitious beliefs that we thought, “Wow, we should spend some time to make fishing better!” And we did. Over time we actually made the fishing simulation more improved, gave you different kinds of fish, and there really was a point to using different places, and then it became even more popular.

And there were things that we thought were really cool that we put in the game, that nobody noticed or cared about — very sad and tragic. But we either fixed and adressed those, or often, we just removed them from the game.

This level of information could be gathered back in the 1990s. Today, even developers of single-player titles run all kinds of analytics utilities in the background as players play, and will tweak game balance mechanics, enemy and power-up placements, and other details of the game in patches and updates based on the information they collect. All of this goes toward making the games incrementally better for players as they play through them.

Just imagine how possible that would be in a social game, especially given the amount of information people will reveal about themselves and their tastes on some social networks (e.g. Facebook). For a developer who wants to make games which promote emergent gameplay and respond to the unique tastes of players, that’s a gold mine!

So…what’s next for Garriott and Portalarium? If you’ve been following the news, or even just following Aiera, you already know:

We’re just about to release our first truly original game, which is still a very light game in a sense of social media type game, but not a farming game, not a cafÈ operation game, not a pet management game, but a truly original game; it’s still quite light by what people might expect from Lord British standards.

That game is called Ultimate Collector. And then we’re going to roll into what I call the next, you know, big Lord British virtual world game (Lord Britishís New Britannia).

Ultimate Collector, set in a contemporary world/theme, will be out sometime this summer and is a unique social media style game which will have some of the same conventions (asynchronous play, sharing accomplishments and information with your friends, etc.) that are part of successful social media games today.

I will soon begin development of my new Lord British-style RPG for social media and mobile platforms in the very near future. Lord British’s New Britannia, which was mentioned in our SXSW Accelerator presentation in March, is a working title for that product.

As I said, you all should have known this already. From the sound of it, we’ll all be able to play New Britannia on our iPads and iPhones, too; Garriott remarks that they are working on versions of the Portalarium player for both devices, and one can only assume that the list of target platforms extends beyond iOS devices as well.

Akalaupdate: EA has posted official news of Origin:

With Origin you will get access to the best content EA has to offer, across multiple platforms, anytime you want. Origin will also help you stay connected with your friends in our growing online community. And later this year, Origin will be the destination where you can purchase and download highly-anticipated EA games, including Battlefield 3 and FIFA 12.

www.origin.com is your new destination for browsing, buying, downloading and playing your favorite games. You’ll get the best content from EA – on a PC or a mobile device – directly from Origin. At launch, you’ll be able to set up an Origin account and immediately connect with your friends.

Also launching today is the Origin beta application. Available for download at www.origin.com, the Origin beta is a desktop application that will be your direct connection to the best content from EA and offer the ability to create and manage your own personal community of gamers. Through the Origin application, users will be able to find and connect with friends, see what they are playing, and digitally download and play PC games straight from EA.

And indeed, the service has gone live! I notice that a Mass Effect 3 pre-order page is up, which is certainly tempting. I think I might hold off for a bit, though, to see if Origin or Impulse offer a pre-order of a special edition of some sort.

The Wing Commander CIC is reporting that news of EA’s new download service, “Origin”, has leaked out in the Wall Street Journal.

Electronic Arts Inc. is starting an online service to sell downloadable games directly to consumers, as one of the world’s biggest makers of videogames steps up a push to offer more of its wares over the Internet, rather than through discs at stores.
The Redwood City, Calif., software maker plans to unveil the service, called Origin, on Friday.

It will include an application, akin to Apple Inc.’s iTunes, that is designed to let consumers purchase, download and keep track of games for PCs, such as the company’s “Battlefield” combat and “Need for Speed” racing games.

EA’s service, which will open with more than 150 titles for sale, will also try to attract users with a range of Facebook-like social-networking features that let gamers on a variety of devices broadcast messages to online friends when they defeat online opponents or accomplish other gaming goals.

Origin initially won’t sell games designed for consoles like Sony Corp.’s PlayStation 3 and Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox 360, which have online-game stores controlled by their respective makers.

Screenshot courtesy of WCNews

Twitter user ceearrbee sent me a link to this article at Massively, which reports that:

…the highly anticipated MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic will be sold as a direct download only through Electronic Arts itself. In an interview with CEO John Riccitiello, the Wall Street Journal uncovered news of EA’s new service, one it’s calling Origin. This service will provide customers with a download service for all EA games, including the Battlefield games, the Need For Speed games, and the aforementioned Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Origin is to act as a social network hub as well as a place to track all your EA game purchases, explained Riccitiello to the Wall Street Journal. This functionality will be available to all users even if they did not purchase the game directly from Origin. However, Riccitiello clarified that Star Wars: The Old Republic will still be purchasable in box form via retailers; only the digital download itself will be exclusive to Origin. Presumably, other all-digital services such as Direct2Drive and Steam will not carry the game.

Ultima fans will recognize the name, and I can only imagine that there’s going to be all sorts of debate about whether it’s appropriate or merely tasteless for Electronic Arts to have taken the name of our favourite developer for their new digital download service. For the record, I’m actually a bit at peace with the move: Origin was always moving to embrace and use the latest and greatest technology; it’s not unlikely that they would have been among the first developers to move their products into the digital download space had they been around for its advent.

And you know what? There could be something else at work here, a kind of “show of confidence” on EA’s part. Confidence in what? Well…there is a certain rumoured Ultima project that is purportedly being worked on. It wouldn’t be a bad thing at all to invoke the mantle of the originators of the Ultima series as a show of support for something like that, would it?

In the comments to a recent article about Richard Garriott and social gaming, the general tone of the replies was…not paricularly favourable to the idea of browser-based social/casual gaming. Some compared it to a bubble; some admitted to using FarmVille as the standard by which they defined social gaming.

And to be fair, FarmVille has dominated the social/browser-based scene for quite some time. Even EA Phenomic’s take on social gaming, Lord of Ultima, didn’t stray too far from the Zynga formula.

But this isn’t FarmVille:

A Mystical Land, screenshot courtesy of Sergorn Dragon

Inside Social Games describes A Mystical Land thusly:

The game is a full-fledged MMO that features combat, crafting professions and quests, feats, achievements, badges and collections. The gameplay is targeted toward a casual player, as if often the case with browser-based MMOs due to the limitations of the platform. A Mystical Land, however, is one of very few full 3D games on Facebook and it has more in common with classic MMOs than it does with the modern casual browser-based MMOs.

…

The feel of the game is reminiscent of an earlier time in MMOs, mainly due to the simple but pretty graphics, non-player character dialogue and combat. Like those older MMOs, players spend most of the game in a single area where monsters respawn so that players can kill them over and over again for XP. If a particular creature is required for a bounty or completion of a quest, players wait their turn to kill it, which is a contrast to modern MMOs that create instances for each player so there isnít competition for the monster.

They also note an important difference between A Mystical Land and other similar games that have gone before:

Other classic-style MMOs on Facebook have struggled in the past to connect with players on a massive scale. Most of these have been isometric top-down games similar to Garriottís 1997 MMO, Ultima Online, where 2D avatars move about in a 3D landscape for what we think of as a ì2.5Dî experience. Sacred Seasons 2 and City of Eternals are examples of this kind of Facebook MMO. MilMo, on the other hand, is a cross between traditional social game and traditional MMO with full 3D artwork; however, it also suffers from limited appeal as its targeted at children.

As I said previously, regular readers of Aiera will no doubt have noticed that Iíve been quite open in voicing my belief that social games are a field in which there will be explosive growth (both in terms of the number of games available and the quality/engagingness of these games) in coming years. Here’s your first great example.

As Iíve said before, itís like playing games on a mobile phone. My first mobile was a primitive little Samsung flip phone, with some version of Solitaire and a primitive little driving game installed on it. And these were, admittedly, terrible games, and very poorly implemented. Now, though? Iíve got Infinity Blade (an Unreal Engine 3-powered game) on my iPhone.

Thatís exactly the sort of revolution thatís about to take place in the social gaming space. You can see it right here, in a game like this.

Also: It’s worth noting that A Mystical Land uses the Portalarium player as its online play technology (the game itself was built with the Unity engine). 

Think about that for a moment. This, right here, is a keen demonstration of just what the Portalarium player is capable of bringing to gamers. That certainly makes the idea of Richard Garriott’s New Britannia seem more promising, doesn’t it? Especially since Portalarium just secured $3.6 million in total funding to bring its first “premium” game to the social gaming space within the next few months.

Sergorn Dragon has been playing through the game (he sent me the above screenshot, in fact), and speaks very highly of it, describing it as nothing short of “revolutionary”. His only complaint is the lack of a true full-screen option; he’s spoken highly of the gameplay and features.

But just as importantly…he’s tried it. It’s free to play, and I would encourage everyone to stick their noses into the game — even for just fifteen minutes — before offering an opinion on it. If you come away still convinced that social games are a passing fad, hey…that’s cool. But at least you’ll be doing so from an informed standpoint.

Dark energy is real!

And it’s speeding up the expansion of spacetime.

Speaking of space…let’s talk about orphan planets!

Japanese and Kiwi astronomers have discovered the first orphan planets in the Milky Way, and apparently they’re massive (as in: Jupiter-sized).

And numerous, too:

That’s just the tip of the iceberg, explains David Bennett, a NASA-funded co-author of the study. “Our survey is like a population census,” he said. “We sampled a portion of the galaxy and, based on [this] data, can estimate overall numbers in the galaxy.” Bennett and his colleagues believe there may be twice as many lonely planets as stars, adding up to hundreds of billions of lone planets in our Milky Way galaxy alone. Aww.

Hey, what’s that “aww” for? Maybe the planets like being out on their own, roaming the stars with no clingy stars dragging them back into orbit all the time.

Help my friend Ian raise funds for MS research!

My friend Ian Crowe rides in the RONA MS Bike Tour every year to help raise funds “for all the people with multiple sclerosis who need help financially to get through life and to help increase funding for research so that one day they will find a cure.”

MMO games and their avatars.

Photographer Robbie Cooper lines up real-life photos of MMO gamers with screenshots of their virtual selves.

Cuter in real life.

Actually, it’s an interesting list — some of the comparisons are touching, others cringe-inducing, and others stereotypical — and I’m sure there’s the potential for a psychology paper examining the implications of how people see and present themselves in the virtual world.

Not that I intend to embark on such an analysis.

Verifying passwords by how you type ‘em.

It makes sense, actually. Most of us, when we sit down at our usual computer and log in to our usual services, type our passwords almost by rote; “muscle memory” does more of the work than actual memory, and we “recall” the password less by consciously calling it to mind and more by simply executing a series of hand movements that ensure the appropriate keys get pressed in the right sequence.

And usually, things like the time it takes to enter the password, the force applied to each key, and the minute delays between each key-press remain relatively constant.

Whereas someone else typing in our password would type it with a very different timing.

For once, I agree with the cops.

Okay, they actually removed this lady from the Amtrak train she was on because of disorderly conduct. But there’s a bit more to the story:

For sixteen solid hours after she boarded an Amtrak train in Oakland, KATU.com reports, she yapped loudly into her goddamned phone. SIXTEEN HOURS. And she was sitting in a designated “quiet car.”

After several passengers asked her, pleaded with her — begged her just out a sense of basic human decency — to stop yelling at the top of her lungs into the greasy little piece of plastic wedged inside her clammy paw, she completely ignored them. Then, a passenger who had reached the breaking point finally mustered the courage to stand up to her. So Beard “got aggressive.”

But wait! There’s a happy ending! These things never have happy endings, but this one does! Conductors stopped the train in Oregon, where hero members of the Salem Police Department were waiting to escort Beard off the train.

Just hazarding a guess here, but based on the image of the woman that accompanies the article, I’m thinking that the excruciatingly long/loud converstaion was probably also fairly banal and overly personal in nature. The sort that isn’t just annoying, but also very awkward to have to overhear.

Sometimes, I’m glad that airplanes (unlike trains) don’t get cell reception.

Tonight’s post brought to you by Jimi:

Trippy!

Bonus Jimi:

Trippier.

Over at Life on Aggramar, a World of Warcraft blog, author Delin Quent sings the praises of Ultima Online in a short blog post, praising the game for its originality and unique sandbox gameplay experience.

Pull quote:

Ultima Online was the first MMO that I played way back in 99. The world of Sosaria was a complete sandbox, you could tailor your character to what you wanted and change at anytime. You were not locked into any one ëtemplateí, mage, warrior or healer, you could do any or all at once, only being limited by skill points. The world allowed for player housing, pre-constructed at first and player customizable with later expansions, all one needed to do was find an open spot in the world and lay claim to it.

Do read the whole thing. At the end of the post, he includes what I think is a list of other games — MMORPGs, specifically — that inherited different elements of Ultima Online‘s design and gameplay experience. 

It’s not a particularly short list, either. But that should come as no surprise.