Rock, Paper, Shotgun’s Jake Tucker spent some time exploring Ultima Online recently:

Later this year, Ultima Online [official site] will turn 18 years old. In the genre of MMOs, that makes the game positively ancient – and it’s even more remarkable when you consider that it’s still funded via a subscription model.

I’ve never played an Ultima game, much less one that’s nearly my age. I wanted to find out what the game is like to play today as a newcomer, and to ask people why they’ve continued visiting Britannia for nearly two decades.

He got off to a good start, at least, making a connection with one of the better-known members of the UO community:

Digging into the game’s forums, I found myself talking to user “Petra Fyde”. Fyde has been playing since October 2000 when she succeeded in bugging one of her sons for a character on his account. Soon after this she got an account with her husband and has been playing ever since.

What does it take to play a 20 year old MMORPG? Petra now spends a lot of time writing guides to help others understand some of the more obtuse systems in the game. She’s one of the biggest advocates for the community, so I asked her what keeps her logging in after all these years…

And he perhaps wasn’t prepared for the game’s unflinching brutality (even in PvE):

I tried to play in standard MMO style by grinding skills and killing monsters, but an eagle ate me and when I logged back in after a break I’d lost my clothes and one of my many swords.

I felt a little put out. I remembered Petra telling me about fighting her first dragon, a pet that broke free of its master and was running loose. She managed to fell the beast using a combination of spamming healing items and running bravely away. I couldn’t even best an eagle. I dusted myself off to try again.

That being said, his overall impression of the game seems to be exceedingly positive:

I wasn’t sure how different UO could actually be, in spite of its status as one of the first MMORPGs. It turns out that while it definitely felt familiar in places, as its DNA has been passed to those games followed, UO is altogether something stranger. I’ve seen incredible things in the last 10 days with Ultima Online, perhaps more exciting things than I’ve encountered in my first few days with any other MMO.

“[Ultima] endures because it is diverse, appealing to many different people with many different play types and makes no demands,” says Petra Fyde. “Basically you do what you want, when you want, if you want. You don’t have to commit to hours online while undertaking a ‘raid’. You can log in for 10 minutes and still feel you’ve achieved something. It endures because players have ‘ownership’ of property, they have houses which they have built and furnished, they ‘live’ in UO. There’s a sense of presence here.”

While initially I couldn’t understand the appeal of Ultima, when I decided to shake off the limitations of an early level character and simply explore for myself, I found a game world with a lot to offer. Player created civilisations, unique monsters, and the sheer mystery of the world combine to keep this ancient MMO compelling.

Click on through and read the whole thing…it’s neat to see the process by which the legacy of Ultima has touched the heart and mind of a newcomer to the series’ setting and lore.