Talk:Criticism of Ultima Online

housing
"This indirectly contributes to the housing congestion problems, as houses placed near high traffic areas can make a substantial profit." How is that a problem? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.253.9.65 (talk) 17:49, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Name
The name of this article is terrible.--Peta 05:29, 27 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, let's think of a better one, shall we? --Sydius 14:42, 27 September 2006 (UTC)


 * How about "Ultima Online reception" --Sydius (talk) 15:03, 8 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Gosh, I guess there's a whole category of "Criticisms of" articles. Maybe the name isn't that bad after all. --Sydius (talk) 00:39, 6 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Ya, I don't see any problem with the name.

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Economy
I have reworked most of the sections on the economy. There were many erroneous statements and paragraphs that weren't even criticisms of the game at all. Some examples of errors it previously had were claims that devaluation of the currency occurred as a result of value entering the economy faster than gold was leaving the economy. This does not make any good economic sense. If you're interested in why, consider the quantity theory of money, MV=PY, as well as the notoriously tricky term value. The section also previously claimed that 'Various gold sinks have been provided and the prices of items have steadily risen to compensate,' which also makes absolutely no sense. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.115.189.210 (talk • contribs) Revision as of 14:05, 10 June 2009

Market for Consumable Goods
I changed the name of the section "Effects on Magic" to "Market for Certain Consumable Goods." The name "Effects on Magic" really has nothing to do with what this section is about. I personally think this section should either be deleted, or sources should be cited and it should be merged with the "Player Vendors" section. Many people remember this aspect of the game, but to me it was a symptom of an entrepreneurial spirit in a player-run economy, not a major criticism of the game. It seems to me that this is really something that had just annoyed whoever wrote this enough to add it to a wiki, not something that was a legitimate, verifiable criticism. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mike31785 (talk • contribs) Revision as of 17:00, 12 June 2009


 * When I was playing it, year one, inflation was widely known to be caused by macroing. A tailor could never leave the safety of town, and macro without even having to leave the tailoring shop, enough fancy shirts and whatnot to sell, to make enough money to buy a castle in a matter of days.  I knew one tailor who owned several castles, thus the reason I started the trade.  Even when they lessened it somewhat, you could still make far more money with that, than any other skill, even hunting monsters.  Also, duping regs was extremely common, you dropping them somehow, and turning 2 into 60,000, or whatever the maximum number you could stack something was at that time.   D r e a m Focus  00:58, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Inaccuracies
It says that other games followed Ultima Online's example, of having a pvp switch, but in fact Ultima Online followed Everquest in that. They stubbornly refused to have anything in place to stop the thieves and murderers about altogether, Richard Garriott wanting people to regulate themselves. Then Everquest came out, with a PVP switch, and a lot of people started switching over. So they went ahead and created a mirror world, and then the bulk of people switched over at once. I think a timeline would be appropriate to show how long the game was out, before they finally agreed to do this. Also, explain how the thief skill worked. I believe Richard Garriott had left by the time they put in a pvp switch, he publicly against it.  D r e a m Focus  00:18, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
 * The Everquest article says that it had more than 225,000 on November 1st 1999. It came out in March of 1999.  Ultima came out in September 25, 1997.  It outsold Ultima online greatly right away.  Not sure how many of its customers it stole.  But this was the reason they had to rush and get a pvp switch, that what players had long since been asking for, and something all the reviews for Everquest picked up on.  The fact that once they had a world where you didn't get murdered as soon as you stepped outside town limits, which got almost everyone to rush over right away, shows how important this was.   D r e a m Focus  02:27, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Economy
The profile of economy flaw is incomplete and largely inaccurate: Inflaction was caused by duping yes but also by Trammel which created uncontested farming spots at minimum risk and ultimately.. pve boting. Before Trammel the pve spots were preyed costantly by pks and greifers which didn't just took what belonged to someone else re-alocating the wealth of the server but they decreased it in the process. More fights leaded to equipment and reagens being burn and after the introduction of stat-loss system dieing as "Red" would lead to the delete of such character and eventually the built of a new one which costed a large ammount of resources.

The facilitation of character building system was another cause of economical catastrophes: to raise a new character from scratches to the top required 1/10 or even a 1/20 of the time and the resources necessary before.

I would also point out that various staff members of OSI were caught to be involved in the duping market (they also introduced certain rares in game for cash purposes), OSI never admitted it but it did happen several times.

Ialkarn

Theft Skill
Among the many skills of Ultima Online, there was a thief skill, allowing one to take something from a person or a pack animal, and the snooping skill which allowed one to see inside the inventory of a person or pack animal. One did not have to snoop inside to steal something though, only to aim at a specific target. A player could start a new character with 50 points in each of these skills, and be a rather effective thief right away. When stealing there would be a random chance that someone would get the message "you notice [person's name] stealing from [victim's name]." They could then say "guards" if in town limits, and a guard would appear and instantly kill them. They could original run to the town healers and get resurrected, then rush back and do this again. Since they didn't need any items on them to steal, they could put everything they had safely in their bank account, and then go attacking others, with nothing to loose at all. This system continued for the first year of the game. Then they added in karma and the notoriety system, which only met that once you were caught stealing too many times, you'd have to either die and get resurrected a few times, or stay logged in somewhere, since the longer you were in the game, the bad karma would dissipate.

Many murders would just stay logged in somewhere. I believe they could resurrect at the chaos shrine early on, or have their red friends do it for them, without penalty originally. And even if they lost stats, it didn't matter, there so many bugs to max things out with some overnight macroing.  D r e a m Focus  00:18, 24 August 2009 (UTC)


 * You never played a thief in the pre-Trammel days, did you? That's not even remotely how stealing or karma worked. 82.32.160.97 (talk) 04:33, 2 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Things changed over time. When I played people would steal from others at the bank, having their own bank account open, and move the stolen goods into their bank so if the guards killed them, they'd still have something.  They could also steal something, and toss it into an open trade menu with a friend to hold it.  Once karma was initiated, you could just avoid being gray by deleting your thief character and creating a new one, the starting skills enough to have a good chance of success.  Karma was apparently used years later for something else.  I played in 1998 and January of 1999.    D r e a m Focus  09:09, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

Yeeeaaah, I don't think you ever played a thief. There are multiple things wrong with what you just said, with regards to UO mechanics in '98 and '99. You clearly don't fully understand how the 'grey' flags worked and flagging grey forced your bank box to shut. That's just for starters. 82.32.160.97 (talk) 20:21, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

Lawsuits over lag and server down time
The game advertised is being something people could play whenever they wanted to. At peak times though, there were too many people online, serious lag happening, no one able to move. The server also reset itself for maintenance each day, originally done around 9 or 10am. During the day the server could crash, have a time warp where everyone was sent back an hour, and other problems that kept on happening. Some lawsuits were actually filed. That probably needs to be added, if some old news stories can be found.  D r e a m Focus  00:35, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Additional bugs that could be added
Since there is a bug system, perhaps some additional things could be put there. Which ones sound the most severe and important to mention? All can be confirmed in version patch lists of the game perhaps.  List of bugs to consider adding to the article  D r e a m Focus  00:50, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Originally you could click your deed, and the phantom image of the house would be there for you to move around and place. A thief could steal the deed from you, it still in your backpack, and then you could place your house.  Thus, you used the deed, without loosing it.
 * Equipmenting more than one thing in your hands at a time, was a bug. You had people with a sword and shield in their hands, plus a fishing pole, a spellbook, and everything else imaginable.  Most did it secretly though, equipment a lot of bows of the same type, so the artwork overlapped one another, no one to notice.  They could then fire all at once, and kill in one shot.  Thus what we referred to as instant kill bows.
 * Monsters could not cross furniture or even flour bags. Some trapped monsters in their homes, and surrounded the with flour bags, and practiced attacking or stealing from them.  It was possible to even heal monsters early on.  Or you could just wait until they healed on their own before attacking them again.  You could practice archery or magery on them, or just get close and use melee weapons.  Some kept monsters trapped because the older they were, the more loot would be on them when they were finally killed.
 * You could have someone else stand there, or their pack animal, filled with useless junk, and practice your thievery stealing from them. Two thieves could macro stealing from each other, to get their skills up.
 * You could have 5 characters on each server. People could log out at a prime spot for housing with one character, and when a house was eventually placed there, log in, inside the home, and loot away.
 * It was originally possible to attack a monster, and have it follow you through a gate(teleportation portal spell). This allowed you to bring monsters to where someone else was at, and get them killed by them.
 * You could originally click on a carpenter tool, then on the boards, and get your skill to increase from that, before you choose anything from the list. Cancel the menu, and you'd get your materials back, but still have the skill increase.  By macroing this all night long, as I personally did, you could become a master carpenter in no time at all, without any materials being used.
 * People could access their bank accounts without being near a town even, could cast spells without regs, teleport to areas they never marked, blacksmith goods without ingots, and a horde of other things as well.
 * One bug allowed someone to put a blank scroll found in some dungeons, into a spellbook, and crash the server.
 * People could set various types of traps on any chests, and leave them about for someone to pick up, and be killed by. Anyone opening a small chest they picked up, inside their backpack, would be killed instantly by an explosion spell.  You could also set traps on the game generated chests found inside dungeons.  After they started the karma system, people just had one character as their evil tinkerer trapping things, which others would set up and use to kill people with.  Only the evil tinkerer took the negative hit then.
 * You could place flour bags or crates across the entrance to a dungeon or a mining cave, and no one could cross over the server line.
 * It took stamina to push someone out of the way. Some deliberately stood in doorways, spamming nonsense, often offensive, to block people's paths, or in one documented case, had pack animals they left parked in key areas, to block everyone.

Merge
Just merge this with the UO article under a critism section. This article has wrong information (bugs relating to emulated servers), very verbose, mostly incited and probably a soap box. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.246.40.138 (talk) 17:36, 6 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Too much valid information to fit over there. Best to have it as its own article as a valid content fork.  Plus the media did cover a lot of the problems so it has references.  If you see something that you believe has wrong information, please add a citation needed tag to it, or discuss it on the talk page.   D r e a m Focus  19:50, 6 September 2012 (UTC)
 * There's a lot of information, sure, but very little of it is notable by Wikipedia standards. It would probably suffice just to mention the early griefing issues and Koster's postmortem in the main UO article. Rhoark (talk) 05:12, 25 November 2014 (UTC)