LebGeeks

teodorgeorgiev

Member

Ultima Online? Any fans of that MMORPG ?

Hi,

I saw at the weekend some old friends of mine and we started a discussion on the massive (big world) RPGs.
Of course, mentioned were WoW and Diablo II.
But, but, but... What they showed me was Ultima Online. Maybe some of you still remember the old "Lord British produced" Ultima games. I used to play one on my Apple II PC.

The game is really great. A very, very big real world where one can live 24x7. On first sight the game-world and game-play are better than WoW. I will try to find a game (the nationwide PC-games reseller here does not offer any Ultima games) and play.

Has someone ever tried it?

recon1025

Member

Re: Ultima Online? Any fans of that MMORPG ?

Absolutely, Ultima VIII: PAGAN was my favorite (surrounding NPCs with flask of oils and setting em off muhaha or killing those little kids that ran around then being cut to shreds by the grimreaper, good ole days), then it was Ultima 9: Ascension I it was the last one in the series that are playable offline. I did play the ultima online one but unforunately I played on some american dudes server. He was importing home-made artwork into the server and slaying dragons in 1 blow haha, it was funny but not very entertaining since the server had about 20-30 people. It was fun to have my own house that i could decorate with trophies and all though. Hopefully we'll see lord british come back but last I heard ascension was his last.

Cheers!

teodorgeorgiev

Member

Re: Ultima Online? Any fans of that MMORPG ?

Prepare for our WoW server (to be released in a week, in the very worst case - 2 weeks).

But I have the dark feeling that WoW will loose the war and surrender to LineAge 2. The game (the multiplayer engine) is better than WoW.

Ultima Online (all the Lord British products are damn good) is a cool game, but... no idea why it lacks the attention of lot of gamers.
Probably due to bad marketing... ...

Padre

Member

Re: Ultima Online? Any fans of that MMORPG ?

For Ultima ...yeah brings up memories :)
still got a working copie of Ultima VII i guess
i tried once or twice ultima online.
As for the wow server , it's a really nice initiative, but i dont think it's gonna work. A lot of ppl will be reluctant to leave their well established guilds/characters.
would like to ask couple of questions about the server you are using. The last server ever released was for 1.8 before Blizzard payed the guys off in 2005. and from what i know, it still needed a lot of work, specially on BG's and AH's. some merchants were missing etc ....
Did you guys pick up that project ? or just worked on ur own (doubt that tho) or got one from Blizzard (even more doubts )

teodorgeorgiev

Member

Re: Ultima Online? Any fans of that MMORPG ?

Padre,

I can not disclose too much on the details. But here are some details:

* With the help of lot of repacks, testing and "fixing" (I would call it better - messing) the database, we managed to fix a lot of issues.
One of the most important I remember - it was not possible to give the "heartstone" (or whatever it was) to the inn-keeper and save the location. And the mail box was not working on some places.

* We managed to go up to 1.9.2 with the help of all those repacks, fixes and etc. I still keep a track of my changes and when I look back at them I am really afraid to run such a server in production :)

* What stopped us to go further is that we tried to implement a client-loader that would prevent the client from using cheats and hacks (a very known and popular problem to nearly all non-original WoW servers).

* But to be honest, the most stable version it should work with is 1.8.0 , 1.8.3 , 1.8.4

* As for the merchants - it is pretty OK to place them. I was very keen to place a gold-mining trainer in the start-up location of every race ;)

It will work. The original WoW servers of Blizzard are paid (and boy, they are expensive) and have high latency. So, what is the outcome?
Only rich guys, who can afford to pay for the "online cards" of Blizzard and for high-speed connection over terrestrial lines (I would not call it "fiber", because low-latency leased lines are not always fiber. I see how a lot of lebanese ISP play with that word, though noone of them has ever installed a patch of 5m fiber-cable or knows how to splice a fiber cable or knows the difference between 50nm and 62.5nm).

Can all of the Lebanese gamers afford that? $200 per month for good hyper-low-latency connection + paying to Blizzard for every hour spent on their servers? Half of them?

Khalas, even if WoW is not gonna bring a lot of gamers, we are ready to release also Line Age 2. Or maybe Guild Wars. And btw, Line Age 2 is better than WoW. Try it.

When we started I got a lot of negative complains that it is "causa perdutta", but look now - there is a lot of interest. Especially the CS servers are full to their top (22 people). Call of Duty gains speed also. Why should WoW fail?

Check this out --> http://games.visp.net.lb/ranks/cs-stats/  :)

Padre

Member

Re: Ultima Online? Any fans of that MMORPG ?

Hehe ok :)
if you need some WoW testers, i can give ya a hand once its done :)
i would have loved to see the changed you made to the emu but i guess you can't disclose such information
i would have suggested that you release your newly modded server to the community, but i dont know if you can/will.
In all cases, it's really nice to see some work on game servers. Good Luck bro !!

teodorgeorgiev

Member

Re: Ultima Online? Any fans of that MMORPG ?

http://games.visp.net.lb/forum/viewforu … 39803b2bce