8/13/98-10/2/98 | 5/4/99-5/7/99 | 5/10/99-5/12/99 | 5/13/99-5/14/99 | 5/21/99-6/9/99 | 6/11/99-6/28/99 | 6/29/99-7/2/99 | NOW

Rant Archive One, 8/13/98 to 10/2/98

10/2/98 - Yet another award?  The Medal of Unified Force was given to me after I stayed up way too late watching Deathwish Dragon fail to time out in a dangerous area, and to Dawnstar when he came on and took over second shift.  I would rather have received the Bronze Flour Sack, for the circle of these objects I places all around DD and his silly horse to prevent some wandering ogres from attacking him... for some reason you can't walk over a flour sack in this game.

In other news, the recent AoD raid on the LOA Festival of Unity , although I fully expected it, was yet another step towards my decision to leave UO to the misanthropic children and go spend my time doing more reasonable things, like working on more small ensemble composition and getting sex, neither of which is familiar to the vast majority of UO players.

9/14/98 - After about 3 weeks of relative inactivity in UO, for some reason the Lost Order of Akalabeth has decorated me with the prestigious Ribbon of Roleplaying.  It is considered quite an honor, but I can't help but feel somewhat undeserving of it, since I haven't done much of anything (except a few walking tours) for 3 weeks, and I consider myself too jaded and disillusioned by the Ultima Online system to be able to really get into my role; Musashi talks more like someone who is commenting on a roleplaying game, rather than a real person, sometimes.  (Of course, I talk like this in real life, so perhaps it comes across as being in character.)  Nevertheless, I'm grateful for the award... my approach to UO as a non-numbercrunching non-combat freak who lives for absurdity and entertainment and the drudgery of the most boring day job ever imaginable must be working to some extent.  (On the other hand, maybe I'm getting an award for my LACK of involvement... 8P)

9/8/98 - I have gotten a comment that this last bit may seem a bit negative and sarcastic.  All I can say is... no kidding!  It IS negative and sarcastic!

In other news, many people I know who have been playing for a long time (some since the beta, some who got me interested in it) are also leaving UO... not right away, they may find something useful in UO yet, and it IS a pain to drop those characters you worked so hard to create.  There's the insidiousness of UO... when you quit, you lose everything.  At least The Realm saves your information for 6 months while you think about it.  What happens if I quit UO, then read that all the PK's have gone to Everquest and it's a good game now?  I've lost all of my characters, all of my gold, my irreplacable black dye tub, a few houses which might someday be secure (yeah right), etc.  There are many disillusioned players like myself out there, who will pay $10 a month for a while for the hope of a good, enjoyable, playable game, while they log in once in a while to make sure their houses don't decay and then log out again.

There are a lot of comparisons that can be drawn between UO and Battlecruiser 3000 AD.  For those of you who might be unfamiliar with BC3K, it's the flagship of vaporware and buggy software in the gaming industry.  In development for about 7 years before its release, the brainchild of Derek Smart PhD turned out to be an unplayable, incomplete, undocumented nightmare when Take 2 released it.  As the game was slammed (rightfully) in magazines and websites everywhere and it began to get slowly patched, the real entertainment value of the game seemed to live in the usenet flamewars erupting between Dr. Smart and his followers, and their enemies.  I watched these flamewars go on for a loooong time, and participated in more than a couple of them, before I even laid my hands on the game (it was $10 at the time), and discovered that indeed it had the seeds for greatness, but as it was it was an unplayable unenjoyable mess, and each  bug fix introduced more and more.  See the comparison?   I could have just read B0N3D00D and pLaTeDeWd and gotten most of my UO experience from that without being drawn into it.

The primary difference here is that BC3K eventually became playable and was given away for free.  Ultima Online still costs $50 or more plus monthly fees.

9/4/98 - I have been playing very little UO since I returned from my vacation in August.  My time away from compulsive tailoring and running around doing stupid chores for the benefit of others (mostly the guys who loot my house next) has reinforced in my mind how incredibly stupid it all is.  I have been in a couple of times, mostly to refresh my house, but have taken a couple of solo walkabouts to see what happens, and besides an occasional wimpy ogre or ettin or some PK's who are now afraid to attack because of the reputation patch, almost nothing at all happens.  In addition, I'm not really making the best use of my digital connection when playing UO, as I CL at least once an hour, and lag is still horrendous even on ISDN.

I'll give it a little more time, but will not directly tell anyone in-game about my disappointment, or else I'll be inviting some sort of "let's cheer up Mu" event or chat which is designed to make me believe that somehow the sense of community is the real reason to play UO, it's the players that matter, etc. etc.  (Of course now someone will read this and it will happen anyway.)  This is a valid tactic, and has worked on me before, but after you go through a lot of interesting experiences and belong to several communities throughout your life, it is amazing how easy it is to flow in and out of groups of people, as it should be; you leave a group, maybe keep in touch with one or two people, and move on.  Barring this argument, the only reason to stay in UO is that there is no other game like it and it's revolutionary, which is also true, but this cannot hide the fact that it is buggy, full of idiots, and most importantly, mind-numbingly BORING.

Of course, not everyone in the game is an idiot, and it does have its moments... damn what am I doing, trying to talk myself back into it?  We'll see.

8/13/98 - Although buggy beyond belief, overrun by murderous idiotic k3w1d0oDz and running on servers which have the processing power of a cheap wristwatch (they claim they are Suns, must be circa 1983 Suns), for some reason UO is extremely addictive and immersive.  It's inexplicable; I've been looted about 3 times, have to deal with morons every time I leave my one remaining secure house, have my friends constantly beg (or demand) money from me so they can waste it, and yet I still come back.  There really is no other game currently on the market like UO, and the absurdist in me loves the interaction, even when it becomes utterly stupid (which is most of the time).

The biggest problem with UO is not the bugs, the bad servers, the lag, or the unbalanced combat system, it's the players.  UO is designed to make money for Origin Systems Inc., and that money comes from players, many of whom simly wish to run around, act k3w1 and kill other players, loot their houses, and ruin their gaming experiences while enriching themselves.  However, k3w1d0oDz have the same sort of money that serious gamers do (or at least their parents do), and so OSI looks the other way as the UO role-playing environment is systematically cut to pieces by their customer base.

Following the maxim of "the customer is always right" (or at least the biggest group of customers), this sort of idiocy was allowed and even tacitly (or actively, in the case of corrupt Gamemasters) encouraged until massive numbers of customers started quitting UO, as in the recent house break-in wave.  Players had found a way to break into houses and loot them clean by using a bug, and this went on for an extremely long time, some looted homeowners even being told that "it's part of the game" and this bug abuse was "a creative use of magic".  When accounts started getting cancelled left and right, Origin suddenly decided that house looting was a big problem and finally got off their asses to fix the bug.  This had been going on for a long time; in contrast, a very minor bug which allowed the creation of pure black dye for clothing that didn't really affect anyone was fixed  within several days.  Priorities, priorities.

As more online rpg's come out, attempts are made at automating controls against such antisocial behavior, including PvP (player vs. player) switches that can be turned off if one does not wish to fight other players, statistic penalties for murderers (already in place in UO), superguards who protect the towns with their instant kill weapons and somewhat skewed sense of automated justice (also in UO), reduced weapon and spell damage against players, etc.  These are not solutions.  PvP combat, while disliked by some players, is a necessary part of a realistic contiguous game world.  Walking around in unguarded woods SHOULD be slightly dangerous, and a well-played highwayman can be a delight.  The problem is the PLAYERS, and no automated assinine behavior control system can deal with this.  In a pen and paper RPG, if someone is an idiot and ruining the game for others, he is simply not invited back.  In in online CRPG, there is no real enforcable rule about how to act in the software license agreement, and there is no real gamemaster as such to remove the offender.

Online automated morality is also somewhat tenuous, and leads to bad situations.  Good and Evil are essentially meaningless; just don't murder innocent people (or cows, the buggy karma-losing animal of the week), give away some cloth to the NPC tailors once in a while, and maybe kill some orcs and you are on the "good" side of the notoriety tree.  You can still be a complete asshole in your personal interaction, loot houses, and generally be as annoying as all hell  and you are still a "good guy".  Many good-aligned guilds are usually comprised of the same sort of people that comprise evil guilds, but since they go after evil people and don't steal, they are still good even as they show up in forces numbering in the dozens to overrun a poor little thief who's trying to roleplay in the woods.  Sadly enough, having perused the various web pages of good and evil guilds, I have more respect for a greater number of evil-aligned roleplaying guilds who take it on the chin, don't cheat, and support each other than the vast majority of "good-aligned" guilds who simply pick on the evils,  worry about their notoriety, and will use a bug exploit in a heartbeat as long as it doesn't ruin their reputation and they don't get caught.

Many UO players have already quit UO, or are waiting for Everquest to come out so they can jump ship and still get their online RPG fix.  The bad news is that the same morons will be in Everquest who plagued UO, and unless someone wants to write an onling CRPG engine and license it out for individuals to run their own campaigns (where k3w1d0oDz and their ilk can be excluded), they will always be there.