Today, Ultima Online's early days, seem exotic, driven by the magic of the internet, a burgeoning economy - and danger. In Ultima Online, death was permanent. It meant that every play session was unpredictable and meaningful.
Keith Burgun of Dinofarm Games, maker of the excellent iOSRogue-like 100 Rogues, argues that this is exactly what's missing from modern MMOGs, claiming that social interaction in them is stunted, their static nature preventing players from imprinting themselves on their worlds. "In the modern MMO, there is very little unpredictability, and further, very few things matter," he says.
The answer lies in the early days of the modern MMOG, he suggests - in Ultima Online: "There has to be death; real death. Things have to be able to be created and destroyed, including characters. There is simply no other way that a world can be sustainable."
Death means danger, and danger makes things meaningful and unpredictable. "I could mine for ingots, sell them to a blacksmith. He could produce a sword and sell it to a vendor. The vendor could sell it to another person, who perhaps would get killed by a player-killer or a monster. It could come back around to me someday." Eve Online engages with a lot of what Burgun argues was right about Ultima Online, of course, though you can't permanently die. You can permanently lose vast amounts of carefully hoarded materials, while its economy has generated a startlingly complex structure of social interaction that mirrors those of the real world.
But here's the question: do you want to play Eve Online? Or do you really just want to read about it, glad that it exists, because the level of investment and risk that it demands is simply too high? Death is scary.
Originally Posted by wraggster
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