Ten Ton Hammer: On Looting Houses in Ultima Online (Also, Shroud of the Avatar Won’t Have That)
There’s an opinion piece up at Ten Ton Hammer which looks at the relatively short-lived feature (or bug) in Ultima Online that allowed players to steal house keys from other players, thus taking ownership of the house and gaining access to the items inside. The article’s author looks at the history of this practice in UO, and discusses the various changes that were made to the game over time to curb it.
But in general, he seems to be of the opinion that it was, in fact, a feature of the game…not a bug to be fixed at all.
What’s interesting, though, is that the article opens by teasing a detail that Richard Garriott let slip at E3. Which might have been an old detail that I just forgot about having seen on the Shroud of the Avatar forums, now that I think about it. But just in case it isn’t, here’s the word from Lord British (indirectly):
We talked with Richard “Lord British” Garriott de Cayeux at E3 2014 about Shroud of the Avatar and while this article isn’t about SotA it does apply heavly. In the middle of our discourse, I asked if SotA was going to have the ability for people to loot from homes like you could for awhile in Ultima Online. Believe it or not, he was taken aback and declared that SotA would have no such bugs.
Naturally, the article’s author isn’t too keen on this:
Richard Garriott introduced the world to “hardcore mmo” with UO. That game was brutal and it would devour anyone, but that’s part of its charm. While the majority of gaming went the route of Everquest where we were each treated with “character rights” such as you can’t be stolen from, your character is persistent after death, there is no penalty for anything in a game but death (which varies depending on the title), and you own whatever you loot. In UO, you owned nothing but yourself and your house, and both were open targets for thieves.
I really wish more games would focus on this idea that we don’t have to be treated like children in order to have a good time. In a lot of ways we are becoming too safe and too docile and that’s what is making a lot of games boring because there is no fear. Remember in games of olden years where your world view was infinitely small at the start? Just the starting town, the scenery around you, and that was it?
I’m reminded of nothing so much as Lum the Mad’s analysis of the dark days of early Ultima Online, when this sort of player-griefing was a possibility.
That is a shame. So much for the New World being Brave.
One can understand their desire to avoid the more obvious forms of griefing, though. These are the minds behind UO, after all…they likely know better than anyone just what gameplay elements were costing them subscribers.
I totally understand. Nobody likes griefing except griefers, which are usually a small minority. What kills me, and most modern MMOs, is that the developer response to griefing typically is to remove the feature being exploited rather than balance it. The more freedom players have the more the game’s mistakes or imbalances can be abused…better to fix the mistakes than take the easy way out by limiting gameplay options or banning people. I’m hoping that future iterations of SotA will expand on things like this rather than just tacking on new content.
I started playing UO right after the game was released.
I remember looting some items in a house.. this was a year or so after release, before they implemented keys to lock items down.
I can’t say the same about Trammel, I think that fragmented the community, there has to be other ways to go about it.. running away from PKs was exciting but losing your gear and progress was infuriating.. at the time, there were so few alternatives, I played the EQ beta and I didn’t like it much.. at this time I don’t think we can have such a wild west like game.
I was around when they implemented the bounty boards.. I think that’s a solution that should be implemented but that won’t solve the problems that allowing open PVP will create but I think that’s better than splitting your player-base in half ( theoretically )