If the name of this site wasn’t enough of a give away, know ye that I am a big-time Ultima fan. Whenever someone asks me to list my favorite games of all time, Ultima 7 ( including Ultima 7 part 2 ) are easily number 1. Not only was Ultima 7 the pinnacle of the series for me, but Serpent Isle was the game that inspired me to elevate my love of computers from being a hobby and turn it into my chosen career path. While I had grown up surrounded by computers and video games, my other passion was music. For as long as I could really remember, I had decided to do something with music once I graduated and went off to college. However, in high school my family bought our first IBM compatible PC, and I obtained both a copy of the complete ultima 7, and Shay Addams The Official Book of Ultima. The combination is important because when I first played Ultima 7 it was like being hit in the face with a sack of gaming awesome. However, simultaneously I was reading all about the history of the series and more importantly, the life and inspirations that drove Richard Garriot to create these games.

I wanted to be Richard Garriot. I wanted to create games with the computer. Ultima 7 was the future of gaming, and it came at just the right time where I was having to make decisions that would affect what I would do with the rest of my life. I can clearly remember a night while I was playing Serpent Isle in the section of the game where you finally rescue Gwenno. That region of the game is filled with ice and snow and at the time it happened to be snowing outside. I wrapped up my game and was about to get ready for bed when I took a look outiside and allowed myself to imagine that I was actually in the snowy northern regions of the Serpent Isle. Yes I was, and still am, THAT dorky. Jokes aside, it was that moment that I really realized how influential this game was on me. I knew right then and there that my real dream would be to be involved with creating video games.

Now … I never have actually worked for a game company. However, this is not about that. I bring up this story in order to set the stage for exactly what Ultima means to me. The other day a friend of mine and I were talking about what makes for good blog reading and the conclusion we came to was that it was the personal stories about peoples experiences are what make for good reads. Reporting on gaming news and writing up reviews is fine, however, I want something more on this site. Since my MMO playing has been all but completely sidelined by my real life needs, and the summer game glut is in full swing, I decided to whip out the oldies.

What I am going to be doing is playing through all the Ultima games in order, and blogging the experience. I have recently discovered that this is something that has been done before, but this is going to be as much a personal experience as it will be something I want to share with the world. I want to write not only about the games themselves, (how they have aged, how am I running them, etc ) but I also want to write about my memories with the games and tell lots of interesting personal anecdotes that playing the games again reminds me of.

So keep a look out for entries written under this “Ultima” category. I have already started playing the games and posts will be going up shortly. Who knows, if this “retrospective” works out I may go on to do other series of games. I would LOVE to do one for The Bards Tale games. I also had a thought to do one on the Baldur’s Gate series of games, but those games are still relatively modern. Anyhow, I hope you all enjoy!

Probably one of the biggest hurdles for people to get over before entering the world of MMOs is the fact that you will pay for the game every month for as long as you play it. Especially if you are a younger gamer who has to not only ask your parents for the $50 for the game itself, but after your 30 day trial, you need their credit card so that you can pay the monthly fee and not be cut of from the game you paid for. However, the upside is that this monthly fee keeps the game you are playing up and running and keeps new content coming in. Thats fair enough. Most MMOs are living, breathing virtual worlds and someone has to keep the gnomes behind the curtain well fed enough to keep turning the knobs and pulling the right levers.

However, in all my years of playing MMOs, I don’t think I have ever seen a company lower the monthly fee required to play an MMO, no matter how old it is. Case in point: Everquest. Not Everquest 2, but the original, nine year old MMO. I have been playing it again, having a blast running around with Nostalgia the guild. Now, I know that with the whole Living Legacy event going on, I shouldn’t have paid a dime for this game time, however, I started up my EQ account again, literally, 5 days before living legacy started. So I am very much paying for it, however, somehow I DID also get the living legacy /claim items. The reason I bring this up is because last week I finally decided to use them. I decided I would make a new cleric character and twink her out with the living legacy bundles of defiant armor and free weapon from the scabbard of fortune. However, when I tried to use the defiant armor bundles, they basically went *poof* and I was left empty handed. I thought this was surely a bug so I tried to petition for a GM. It was then that I discovered that EQ1 no longer as ANY in game support staff on hand. Yes, there are people still working on the game but SOE doesn’t pay ANYONE to sit around and respond to players needs in game.

When you /petition in EQ1 it now pops up an in game web browser, which just loads up the SOE tech support web site. You can then fire off a question and they will get back to you via email … NOT in game. This meant that if there was a resolution for my problem, I wouldn’t be playing my twinked out cleric that night. This was on a Friday. Saturday afternoon I noticed that they had responded and had reimbursed me for my lost armor bundles. It turns out that you have to be level 5 before using the bundles to get the free armor, however, unlike the scabbard, the bundles are bugged and disappear on you if you use them before level 5.

So the response was very helpful and not too bad considering this was an email exchange. However, I began wondering why I am paying $12.99 a month for EQ still when they are cutting vital services like IN GAME SUPPORT. Why not charge $9.99 a month if you are trimming down the live services like that? I understand that the economics behind it are such that SOE needs to charge enough to make the product viable from the companies standpoint. Fair enough. However, lets face it … I am a special case. I am playing EQ again because I played it ages ago and there is a nostalgia factor there. A new kid faced with an ever growing number of choices in which MMO to play is very unlikely to pick EQ out of the crowd. Especially when the monthly fee is practically the same. Whats even worse is how ripped off they will feel when they realize that they are paying the same for an old game, lacking the support that a more modern game has.

Earlier this year I had a stint in Vanguard. Vanguard is a game legendary not for everything that it does right, or how much better it is getting, but for how lousy the launch was and for how dead the games population seems to be. These assessments may not be 100% correct, but it is how people feel about the game. They think Vanguard, and they think “burning wreckage” not “grand adventure for the hardcore!” I bring up Vanguard because while playing it a few months back I had to petition a GM in game for a problem I was having. Within minutes I had a response telling me a GM would be there in just a minute. Three minutes later my problem had been resolved and I was profusely thanking the GM for such speedy response time. I was floored by the speed and quality of the help in Vanguard that day. That will never happen again for any player who picks up EQ. Vanguard costs $1/month to play. EQ1 costs $13/month to play. Those two extra dollars really do make a difference I guess.

With AoC now out, Warhammer Online looming in the distance, and Wrath of the Lich King towering over everyone, the MMO market is more crowded than ever before. People physically cannot play all the MMOs at once and because all MMOs have a monthly fee, choices have to be made. I personally think it is folly for companies to charge the same, if not more, for a monthly fee. Even the ex-hardcore EQ player who might miss running through Norrath is unlikely to stick with it with all these other, fresh, MMO experiences are out there to be had for just a couple extra dollars a month. Once they figure out that you are still paying the same, yet services are being cut, that seems like it would make the decision to cancel all the easier. But what do I know?

P.S. SOE … I love you. I love all your games, especially the Everquest line. However, that in game web browser sucks and the fact that it is HOW your customers interface with you when they need help is inexcusable. Its obvious that you don’t want to throw money at supporting EQ more than you have to, but you NEED to upgrade this browser if you are going to use it as the means for submitting petition requests. There are no navigation buttons on the damned thing, yet when you screw up one little thing in a petition request the website tells you to click the back button without proving a “back” link. So I had to click to completely start over my petition as opposed to just fixing what was wrong. This ordeal was made worse by the fact that there are combo boxes on the web page that, when you select one it pops up a secondary combo box to select a sub category, however, when this happens it clears out a different combo box on the petition page. I didn’t realize this and it caused me to have to enter my petition in its entirety three times before it went through. Thats low quality and very very annoying. EQ is nine years old and I expect more from a company your size. Amateur mistakes like this are a lot harder to swallow when I am paying the same, but you are providing LESS service.

In case you don’t know, two days ago SOE launched a massive summer program called Living Legacy. This is an incredible promotion and when I heard about it it seemed too good to be true.

• All inactive accounts have been reactivated and them, along with new trial accounts, can play EQ2 for free until July 31st, and EQ1 until July 25th. If you don’t have all the expansions up to date … no worries. You can have access to them for free if you convert to a paying account at the end of the trial.
• Recruiting new players can earn you up to 20 months free game time.
• You get special in game items for joining in on the fun:
  • EQ1 Items include:
    • Bundles of Defiant Armor — Class and level specific armor upgrade
    • The Scabbard of Fortune — Class and level specific weapon upgrade
    • Ten Potions of Adventure — Increased XP to get back in the fight
    • Ten Movement Speed Potions — Jet from battle to battle
    • The Legacy Satchel — A container for your loot
  • and if you convert to an actual account you get:
    • The Temporal Chrysalis* — A mysterious item that pulses as if alive. Who knows what it will hatch into…
  • EQ2 Items Include:
    • Norrath Adventure Pass – Magical transportation to new areas of Norrath
    • Make Over Mirror- Change the look of your avatar
    • Pouch of the Prodigal – 12 slot bag
    • XP Potion Pack – Three-pack of potions to jump-start your advancement
  • Granted Upon Purchase and Release of the Next EQII Expansion Pack
    • Cloak of the Void – A specially-designed cloak created exclusively for the upcoming expansion

On top of all that there are a ton of in game events taking place, including double exp weekends TWICE during the summer for each game. There is a LOT to this promotion so if you want details, go here and read all about it while you are installing/downloading the latest versions of the client software:

http://livinglegacy.station.sony.com/

I can’t believe that after years of not playing EQ1, I resubscribe to the game and DAYS later they give away access for free all summer. Now, they may have taken that into account, because I think I remember seeing some of those promotional items in my /claim list already, but I could be wrong. If I DON’T have those items I will commence begging some poor customer service rep to take pity on me and see about letting me in on the fun.

If you haven’t played EQ or EQ2 in a while, you really have no reason to not check them out. For me, revisiting EQ1 has been a blast and I really hope I stick with it long enough to see some of the higher level content. If you haven’t played EQ2 since since the release of Echoes of Faydwer or Ruins of Kunark, man you are in for a shock. Those two expansions added the best starting areas and TONS of content. I created a new human assassin with Timorous Deep as his starting city and playing him has been like a whole new game. The progression is quick, there are introductory tutorials for everything, the story going on I am finding compelling, and the scenery is gorgeous.

Whenever I play EQ2 it strikes me that they have made a game every bit as quick and accessible as WoW, but it is loaded to the gills with content. If you are a PvP junkie, I have heard a lot of good stuff about the PvP in EQ2, but honestly … I think the general consensus is that PvP in WoW is priority one, and it is not priority one for EQ2. There used to be a great little podcast called “The Pwnage Brothers” who primarily focused on PvP in EQ2 and listening to their stuff really made me want to be a part of it, so I am guessing that EQ2 PvP is at least a little compelling. Hell … its free. What do you have to lose?

Ok, I am going to wrap this post up and stop whoring myself out for SOE.

Last week something funny happened.  I reactivated my EQ account.  Yes.  A 9 year old game that I haven’t played for years has pulled me back in and stolen me away from the new shiny that is Age of Conan.  This reactivation was not completely unprovoked though.  Over at West Karana, Tipa started up a new progression guild dedicated to playing through the game as newbies and seeing all the old and new content through non-twinked eyes.

I had resisted the urge to join them for a while, but this week I snapped.  I expected to create a new character and see some of the old haunts and quickly lose interest, because previous attempts to play EQ again have been frustrating because of the older feel of the interface and game itself.  This time though, it stuck.  I played the tutorial quests all the way through and they did a marvelous job of reacquainting me with the UI and how to play.  However, they also filled the tutorial with plenty of goodies to arm my character with.

By the time Maetra, my new Drakkin Shadow Knight, was finished with the tutorial area I was level 11.  People have told me that the tutorial area is somewhat of a waste of time since there are better quests and gear to be had in the real world, however, I disagree.  The tutorial was a fantastic way to get me back into the game and I thoroughly enjoyed myself during that time.

Since AoC was unrunnable for me all weekend thanks to “out of memory” errors, I spent plenty of time exploring new and old areas of Norrath and generally having a bang up time.  I am going to try and keep writing posts about my adventures with Nostalgia the Guild, and I already have a few in mind based on the weekends adventures.

Before I wrap this up though, there are a few things that really struck me about modern day EQ:

1.  A plat is nowhere NEAR worth what it used to be.  I thought I had discovered a bug when I found multiple bows in the tutorial area that sold for almost 3 plat a pop.  I think I am already up to 115 plat.  These days that wouldn’t buy me anything, however, back in the old days that was a fortune.

2.  Over the years EQ has seen a number of face lifts.  Freeport is unrecognizable to me now.  However, there are still old places that have not been touched since before Ruins of Kunark or earlier.  Blackburrow is a great example.  I was sent there for an armor quest and it was a joy to see that all the old blocky models were still being used.  Thats something that only players in my position, who played and loved the old game, can really appreciate.  I imagine that any new player who comes into EQ these days would wonder why the hell that zone looks so bad compared to the rest of the game.

3.  Holy crap you level up fast.  I had a few minutes to kill before work this morning and so I ran out to North Ro to kill a few blues to ding to level 17.  It only took ONE blue to finish off 16 and 3 blues later I have an entire “bubble” of level 17 done.  Literally.  If I had had another 15 or 20 minutes I could have easily dinged to 18 on the spot.  I think this is necessary because the vast majority of the content is aimed at higher levels, but MAN I am flying through the game.  It makes me think that these armor quests aren’t going to be worth it.  At level 20 a whole new series of quests begins for even better armor and I am sure that I will hit 20 well before I manage to get all the drops for the armor quests I am currently on.

So, yeah … I am really enjoying getting to see EQ again.  The fact that it has sucked me back in is a testament to the original vision and the fact that if you make a compelling virtual world, the fact that the graphics aren’t the latest and greatest don’t make much difference at all.

I had not intended to jump on the Age of Conan bandwagon on day one.  Nothing I had heard about the game really had me all THAT excited.  However, the stars aligned in just the right way a couple weeks ago.  I had just received my “Economic Stimulus” check and I was in a game stop looking to pick up a used copy of Kingdom Under Fire for the xbox 360.  Despite the servers not coming online until the following Tuesday, game stop had copies of AoC sitting out for sale.  Being a sucker for MMOs I decided to just give it a shot.

Initially, I was super impressed.  The game runs great for me, and it really is damned good looking.  The melee combat is a nice touch to mix things up a bit.  I played through the tiny intro section leading up to Tortage and it did a great job of building up my excitement.  After arriving at Tortage I called up my brother so that we could form a party and really start exploring this world.  We decided to meet up at an NPC outside the city.  I waited and waited and finally asked him if he was actually coming and he informed me that he was, in fact, standing right next to the NPC.

My first thought was that we had discovered an insidious bug where I couldn’t see certain other players.  Thats when it hit me that this game had instances.  Not only that, but EVERY location is an instance.  This just about killed the game for me.  I was expecting a virtual world to explore, and heavy use of instancing robs the game of that for me.

However, I pressed on and kept playing and overall the game is really fun.  For the most part the game plays well.  I now have a level 23 Demonologist and I did every possible thing I could do in Tortage.

Saturday night I had decided to meet my brother and spend all night grouped and questing and really taking a bite out of this game.  I log in and after about 8 minutes the game crashes with an “out of memory” error.  Since this had never happened to me before, I shrugged it off and restarted the game.  8 minutes later I get the same error.  I won’t get into the details of my problems.  If thats your thing, log onto the Aoc forums and check out the 28 ( at the time of this writing ) page post about it.  What I WILL say about this bug is that it kept me from playing AoC all weekend and as far as I know, they bug is not fixed yet.

I feel like I am losing my desire to keep playing AoC.  If this bug gets fixed and friends keep playing, I most likely will continue playing it.  However, overall, AoC is not what I wanted out of an MMO.  I want the world to have lots of things to do, but I also want earning a level to feel like I actually accomplished something.  I want a world that feels alive and real and that compels me to explore over the crest of the next hill just to see whats over there.  Honestly, what I want is the promise that Vanguard failed to deliver.

In fact, update 5 for Vanguard is coming out soon and I can already feel myself wanting to play it again so unless Conan does something to really pull me in, I just don’t see it lasting for the long haul.

When I was in sixth grade I bought a copy of the book Pools of Radiance, my first Forgotten Realms novel. I was hooked. Fast forward 20 years and here I am, still reading Forgotten Realms novels. Though I can now see that they are not always the most well written books, they keep my inner child well fed on stories of magic and high adventure. Plus, Faerun is a land that I am invested in. There are countless novels, computer games, AD&D campaign modules that use the Forgotten Realms setting as the backdrop for their story. When I first got into computer gaming there was one game series to rule them all: Ultima. However, hot on its heels were the gold box series of games. The early gold box series games took place in the Forgotten Realms setting and in most cases, were named after and based on Forgotten Realms novels and as a young fan I was hooked.

My point in that long winded introduction is that to people of my generation, Forgotten Realms is synonymous with fantasy gaming. So why has there never been a Forgotten Realms MMO? Sure, there were Forgotten Realms MUDs floating around out there, and there was the AOL exclusive, pay-by-the-hour ( at first at least ) online game Neverwinter Nights, but there has never been an attempt to create a true Forgotten Realms MMORPG. Perhaps it is a problem with rights. When an author introduces a new character into the Forgotten Realms universe, does TSR … erm, I’m sorry … Wizards of the Coast at least partially own the rights to the character? Who knows. Either way, I think that people are missing out on potential boat loads of cash from a well executed Forgotten Realms MMO.

I suppose that the problem is that the fantasy MMO thing has been done to death. Its hard to look at everquest and not see how it was potentially inspired by Forgotten Realms material. However, I know that I would be interested in a Forgotten Realms MMO from the get go. I have shared in so many adventures in that universe that the promise of getting to explore it in MMO form would be too good to pass up. Hell, my love for Ultima games and the lands of Britannia kept me playing UO long after I had stopped having fun in the game. I just enjoyed existing in that setting and being a part of it.

Imagine small in game events that introduce new characters and/or quests that are tied into the release of a new FR book. That would be an incredible opportunity to market directly to your core audience. You involve me in a quest line that not only lands me some phat lewts, but serves as a prelude to a book that is coming out soon and you not only have my monthly fee in the bank , but you can count on the sale of a paperback as well.

Maybe I am wrong, but a boy can dream, can’t he? There are rumors that the mystery Bioware MMO project is not a KOTOR MMO at all, but perhaps is a Forgotten Realms based MMO. Given Bioware’s involvement with the Baldur’s Gate and Neverwinter Nights games, this seems like it could be a possibility. I guess we will just have to wait and see.