Either way, we need to rescue aquatic vessels from MMO obscurity!

1. Travel was challenging. Monsters, PvPers, distance… going from one place to another was a huge task. Moongates had to be timed and when the game first released, the recall spell meant that you had to drop your object first to recall from it… thus leaving it behind to decay away. (as a side note, if you ran across an object laying in the woods, many times casting recall on it would bring you to some interesting places. People marked a LOT of items in the world).

2. The chat system was non-existent, as mentioned above. You talk, everyone hears you. If you whisper, then only those next to you hear you. This limitation made for GREAT roleplaying and general stranger-stranger interaction. I met so many people because I was walking by and caught a bit of a conversation and joined in. Standing in any city in WoW and listen… only the NPCs are talking! Conversely, in UO hanging by the forge while you wait for a smith to get to your repairs was a social hub. UO’s world seemed full when you were around other players. All modern MMOs can feel so empty.

3. The simulated world was a loose structure to hang things on. You could be almost anything you wanted to be. I played a smith who never fought. GM Smith, GM miner, GM mage (for travel), and a few supporting skills was all I used. Yet, because ingots were horded, ore became almost impossible to find and thus raising your smith skill because almost impossible too. The result, for months and months there were only a handful of GM smiths on the servers and everyone knew your smith name. Even PKers would halt an attack to get repairs by a passing smith.

4. Community! UO had it in piles. More than any MMO I have seen. Now, I have run across large guilds in WoW - but nothing like the general public community that UO had. I think the chat had a lot to do with it. You met people because people talked to one another. These days in an MMO, I will talk to someone and half the time they don’t even notice, acknowledge, etc… They only pay attention to their guild chat text.

There are a few things I wish the next generation MMOs would implement:

First, no levels. UO used skills. WoW’s level 70 content uses factions. There are a bunch more ways to give players advancement without a global leveling system. Levels also have the sad side effect of rendering content pointless, and fast. Again, WoW’s world, the majority of it, is something that the average level 70 character would rather just avoid because it is just travel time crossing it. So much great artwork gone to waste. Again, in UO the whole world could be dangerous at any time. Levels also separate friends. I love achievement, just not the global level system used today. Maybe micro-levels over a global level is a better way of saying it.

Second, RP servers - all chat gets broadcast on “local”. So, if you say something on guild chat, we still see it local just like today if someone talks on a cell phone. This helps the RP server become more RP and naturally encourages interaction. Or, if you want privacy, you actually go find it!

Third, all spells and attacks should have a non-combat effect too. Quite frankly, you should be able to fireball your guildmate but instead of doing damage it creates a temporary graphic effect. This is more for RP again. That, or you open the world for RP and like UO, you can fireball anyone if you are willing to live with the results. But, on non-PVP games, this can encourage RP and immersion. UO was a simulated world where as WoW feels more like a game. I would love to see the richness of the WoW world in a simulated world like UO was. Makes me wish I had the time to hack one of the server emulators for WoW out there and do it!

And last for now, teamwork. By that, I don’t mean you have a healer and have a tank, but rather I would like to see MMO explore the idea of true teamwork more. LOtR has those combinations. That is on track. In UO, I always imagined a bunch of mages getting together and casting a super powerful spell that a single mage could not do alone. That would be cool. In combat, combination moves done by various party members to create more powerful attacks than anyone could do alone. Things like that.

Personally I’ve never been a PvP player, but I do appreciate some aspects that it CAN (not always does) bring to an MMO.

For me, the future games I’m looking forward to are Hero’s Journey because it will be the first foray into graphical MMOs that Simultronics has done, and because they are givin game masters a lot of power to create quests, characters, monsters, and events on the fly which should make for a much more dynamic game. I am also looking forward to the MMO that Bioware is doing, which is rumored to be Knights of the Old Republic Online. Largely because Bioware is a solid group, I know they have at least one of the major AC devs working there, and they are also using the HeroEngine. Lastly, looking forward to Marvel Universe because the CoH devs are working on it and I am hoping they learned from their mistakes in CoH and I hope they bring in a more refined play environment that brings more than a couple months of enjoyment. (CoH was great for a short while, just not for long which is unfortunate).

We patiently await Darkfall, and if that fails, too, then I suppose we all will never see a truly great MMO again. The Sims players will have finally and completely succeeded in changing PVP oriented MMOs into giant chatrooms and auction houses with instancing and solo grinding. What fun! (Ugh.)