Talk:Ultima Online

Community
Why does "server emulators" lead to a "shard website" (https://uoquest.world/en) instead of an article about "UO server emulators"/"private shards/servers"? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.91.48.123 (talk) 14:14, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

PunkBuster
The following text was originally in the PunkBuster article; however, since it really has little information about PunkBuster itself, and more to do with the decisions about how to implement anti-cheating in UO, I figured this might belong here instead. If the article maintainers find it interesting, please incorporate it as you see fit. Ham Pastrami (talk) 02:31, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

On June 18–19, 2006, the MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game) Ultima Online announced that it was testing PunkBuster for use in that game. EA had claimed that there were numerous complaints about players cheating in Ultima Online, especially with player vs. player (PvP) combat and resource gathering. In regards to how bannings would be handled, Tony Ray, founder of PunkBuster, stated in an interview "we plan to leave all banning decisions to the UO team. For Ultima Online, PunkBuster is currently designed to report what it finds to the GMs and it is up to the UO team to enforce their own policies. At least in the beginning, players who are Hardware banned for hacking PunkBuster in some other game will not be Hardware banned in UO".

As of September 1, 2006, developers from Ultima Online's publisher, Electronic Arts, estimate that public testing of PunkBuster would begin in late September 2006.

In November 2006, it was announced that PunkBuster integration into UO is put on hold indefinitely for the moment since the team would rather concentrate on "internal fixes and security improvements" in the client code.

Corp Por
What is "corp por" and what is its significance? It seems to have become something of an internet meme/catchphrase. 2fort5r (talk) 07:40, 4 July 2009 (UTC)
 * They are the power words (ultima online language) for the spell Energy Bolt. It is a very common damage spell that mages cast. - BondGamer (talk) 17:19, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

A "Corp Por" energy bolt spell was often referred to as a squiggly noodle due to it's spaghetti like appearance as it streaked across the screen ("unverified, I've never heard this: - 'a sporadic UO player for 15 years' (additionally, there were multiple contextual details as well as a limited number of style deficiencies) that were fixed upon this edit). It cost 20 mana to cast which means 5 could be cast in a row before a caster would be "out of mana" or OOM as was typed in game (as a typical mage had ~100 mana - though rarely would close to five energy bolts cast in a single series). The spell caused approximately 30-45 damage points to an opponent which was excellent because opponents only had 100-110 hit points at most and would need to quickly begin healing or run away. Often times a Corp Por bolt would chase an opponent across a long distance as they ran away because a players speed on a horse was identical to the speed of a bolt. This led to many humorous scenes of characters running for their lives. The bolts never missed.

Never heard mana referred to as power, and if you did cast 5 in a row you were pretty bad. It's a meme about griefing (sic), as Corp Por was a favorite tool of player killers. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.145.76.243 (talk) 23:50, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

(I have confirmed and addressed the important issues above)

Development history
Key points:


 * UO was a skunkworks project. Neither Garriott nor most of Origin was aware of what was going on in the early days. (not accurate, see update below)
 * Garriott was not involved with UO until much later. Garriott reworked the UI at one point and sat in on some design meetings, but he was never involved in a day-to-day fashion.
 * UO was originally called Multima.
 * The Multima logo was created by Micael Priest.
 * The original UO logo was the product of a practical joke war between Garriott and his ex-girlfriend.
 * The original UO prototype was created by Rick Delashmit using the Ultima VI engine.
 * UO was in development for at least two years prior to release.

Source: http://www.raphkoster.com/2006/06/24/random-uo-anecdote-1/

Adraeus (talk) 21:42, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Just to clarify, it wasn't originally called Multima. That was just one of the working titles during development, before beta began. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 214.13.82.22 (talk) 00:30, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

UO was not a skunkworks project, Garriott worked closely with the design team for the preceding 9 home computer (offline) versions of the game and with his brothers help worked closely with the team who brought UO online as well. He PLAYED the game online during "Player Run" events and was quite popular.

Original engine was the U7 engine, and the game was in development for ~1yr before the Alpha test(April 1996). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.145.76.243 (talk) 23:47, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Possible Source
Described in Matt Barton's Dungeons and Desktops: the History of Computer Role-playing Games (viewable at Amazon). Extensive coverage on pages 400-402 (at least), with a screenshot. Jodi.a.schneider (talk) 07:16, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Revamping this article
I am sick of seeing the banners indicating the Ultima Online article needs fixing. I am going to be going over the entire article section by section to fix what the banners mention. Also to try and enhance it for eventual featured article status. If you have issue with any of my additions/changes, please discuss them here. - BondGamer (talk) 16:56, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I've removed the (article) tag - it looks to me like the only section with problems in this regard is Timeline, and that section is already tagged. I realise that this is also true for the  tag, but I've not looked at that yet. TFOWR 13:33, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I've removed the tone tag from the Timeline section, as the article is already tagged for tone. I'd suggest that a copy-edit for neutral point-of-view would be in order, but that there's nothing substantially wrong with the article. Not my usual field, however, so treat what I say with healthy scepticism ;-) TFOWR 13:37, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I would like to add that the Timeline section used to be its own article, which I nominated for deletion but it yielded in no concensus. It may be worth checking out that archive on how to improve that section.
 * From what I can tell, the section still suffered from the same issues it had when it was still an article. IAmSasori (talk) 23:20, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

UO release date
the discussion in this thread puts the possible source for UO's release date located here  in question.

here is the quote from the forum (note: I am not the author of the quote)

''Wikipedia used to say it was the 27 or 28 until I changed it to 25. I was going by an article from 1997 which said it was released on the 25. It appears that former community manager Wilki got the release date from Wikipedia and used that to announce the 10th Anniversary, which is now cited as the source.''

therefore the information is WP:CIRCULAR and not WP:RS. I quickly found the source 1up.com. obviously, I am open to other sources, but not the specific one I noted above. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.248.251.103 (talk) 14:32, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
 * The source you linked mentions nothing about the release date being September 24. I also don't think a source which came out 10 years after the event could be called reliable, 1UP.com didn't even launch until 2003. - BondGamer (talk) 19:15, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
 * There are a lot of reliable sources that talk about things that are before their time, like Pac Man for instance. The stuff you need to look at is whether the source has a reputation as a reliable source / for fact-checking. 1UP specifically is listed as a reliable source. As for WP:CIRCULAR, nice catch there. Eik Corell (talk) 11:50, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
 * That does not negate the fact that the page currently cited does not say UO was released on September 24, 1997 or anyone in that article. It only mentions the launch being in late September 1997. How does that translate in changing the date from 25 to 24?


 * I was the editor who changed the date to 25 when it said 30. I got that date from a gaming website but did not cite the source and don't remember where it was from. Unless someone comes up with a reliable source that says 24, I will change it back. - BondGamer (talk) 13:17, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
 * The source we have now says September 24, 1997. I think it's just fine. Eik Corell (talk) 14:04, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
 * What source are you talking about? I looked at the article linked and it does not say September anywhere on that page. - BondGamer (talk) 22:23, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
 * the 1up source says "Launched September 24, 1997" on page 2. you overlooked it. 67.248.251.103 (talk) 23:22, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I didn't overlook it, the page was not displaying correctly in Firefox. I was wondering why people were just accepting that article even though I reviewed it several times and could not locate the date. I still don't accept it as a source but won't change the date until I find another reliable one to dispute it. The 1UP article has different launch dates for The Second Age, Rennisance and Third Dawn than what appears on Wikipedia. It also says the Kingdom Reborn client was released on June 28, 2007 while Wikipedia says it was released on August 27, 2007. That is a huge discrepancy. - BondGamer (talk) 23:39, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia is using a gamespot source, and gamespot uses a press release from electronic arts, so I agree the August 27, 2007 release date for kingdom reborn is fine. the 1up page displays perfectly fine for me and says "Launched September 24, 1997" It is the only source we have unless someone finds another one. as described above the original source was WP:CIRCULAR and therefore cannot be used as a source 67.248.251.103 (talk) 23:53, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
 * The game was shipped on the 24th which was the same day the servers officially went live, I went and bought a copy at the local EB the same day... although in truth the servers were technically up since ~the 20th. This was tested repeatedly using a utility known as UOMON by obsessive fans. --Cabazap (talk) 00:29, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Similarities to Mabinogi (video game)
While Mabinogi (video game) is anime styled, has instances and some form of leveling I don't think there is no doubt is heavily inspired by Ultima Online. Maybe this should be mentioned in the articles. At least in the See also section.--Athaba (talk) 14:11, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Reviewing the statements at the introduction

 * The line: "Several expansions have been released, but its aging game engine and graphics may make it outdated compared to competitive, new massively multiplayer games." fails WP:YESPOV without any reliable source. This is pretty much like an entrance for the following sentence about Kingdom Reborn, which itself is released in 2007 and not supported anymore. I suggest it to be deleted and the following sentence to be re-written.


 * The following sentences: "Since Ultima Online's prime in 2003, the overall subscriber base has seen a steady decline. Subscriber numbers peaked at around 250,000 in July 2003, and in 2008 sat around 75,000 subscribers.[3] As of April 2008, Ultima Online held a market share below 0.6% of the massively multiplayer online game subscriptions.[4]" has their source www.mmogchart.com (It is Bruce Woodcock's site that is not updated since 2008) where no secondary sources can be found and he has written on his site :
 * "Firstly, I rely on the companies and employees themselves to provide the bulk of the data. The numbers they give could be completely made up, (..)"


 * It fails both WP:SELFPUBLISH and Reliable_source_examples which states:


 * "Statistical data should be considered a primary source and should be avoided. Misinterpretation of the material is easy and statistics are frequently reported ambiguously in the media, so any secondary reference to statistical data should be treated with considerable care."


 * I suggest these to be deleted if no other secondary reliable sources are found. Nimuaq (talk) 02:15, 3 May 2011 (UTC)


 * This is a misinterpretation of the policy, I think. Woodcock is an established expert in the field whose work is widely published by third parties, so WP:SELFPUBLISH doesn't apply.  And Reliable_source_examples is clearly about using raw data as the basis of a statement in an article. In this case, the analysis has been performed by an expert and published, so we are not using it as a primary source.  We're not talking about general media statistic use, so the second sentence you quoted doesn't really apply.  And we're also not talking about the kind of statistics that section is discussing anyway (which is geared mostly to interpretation of survey results).  Furthermore, Reliable source examples isn't policy anyway.  JulesH (talk) 10:58, 7 July 2012 (UTC)


 * I can see your points. The references and the 75,000 subscriptions as of 2008 do not match, according to http://users.telenet.be/mmodata/Charts/Subs-2.png it is in fact 100,000 in 2008 and while the market share reference is removed, we can still see it here: http://web.archive.org/web/20110605194653/http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart7.html so I will update it accordingly. The sentence "Several expansions have been released, but its aging game engine and graphics may make it outdated compared to competitive, new massively multiplayer games." is just an opinion. I will update the references and the market share and subscription numbers according to Bruce Woodcock's statistics and I will remove the opinions from the paragraph.Nimuaq (talk) 03:29, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

Severely out of date
This article is severely out of date and even includes wrong or outdated information. It needs a serious overhaul, but don't know how to tag it as such. AndersJohan (talk) 14:52, 6 March 2011 (UTC)


 * You are completely right Anders - for instance "The most successful games after Ultima Online have been EverQuest (released in March 1999), Asheron's Call (released in November 1999), Dark Age of Camelot (released in October 2001), Final Fantasy XI (released in May 2002), World of Warcraft (released in November 2004) and Rift (released in March 2011)." That quote from the Article completely ignores Lineage II which is the second most succesful MMO of all time with well over 2 million users in its prime. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 157.203.242.81 (talk) 10:23, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Not to mention... Rift ? WTF is that ? Another reference to Star wars old republic was added too... We would know if anything else than WoW got near 10 million paid users. Well, actually, if any game got to even a few million permanent suscribers, we'd know about it, but it would not make them "the most successful" before at least 3 or 4 years of age, and if their playerbase grew to the tens of million. Which, those game do not. False info from fanboys... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.13.73.109 (talk) 18:03, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Multima
Apparently, Garriott's pet name for the project was "Multima" ("multiplayer" + "ultima"). See here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=pOdDmFSRvZ4#! SharkD  Talk  03:54, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

External links modified
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Bringing Ultima Online up to Wikipedia Standards
I have begun cleaning up some parts of the article. Most notebly the Origin Era section. As I understand Wikipedia wants this to be readable from a wide audience. So I have focused on removing UO specific terms. For instance I am replacing all instances of shard with server. Also facet is being replaced with area of server. Really specific lore is also being removed. I have also standardized the layout of the dates, trying to group by month and year.

If anyone has any comments on changes I would like to hear them. - JC the Builder (talk) 03:45, 12 January 2016 (UTC) UOGuide.com Administrator - Ultima Online Wiki

External links modified
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Starr Long on artificial life system
This block quote from Starr Long has gone unsourced for way too long - well over seven years. So I ran an online search for the quote to see if it appeared anywhere outside of mirrors of this article. Within a single minute I had confirmed that this quote was not from Starr Long. It was lifted from a GameSpot preview, deceitfully edited to remove a phrase which would have given away that the description was in the GameSpot editor's own words, and falsely attributed to Long. I've corrected the attribution and added a citation for the source.

This is why we need to check up on these things and not just assume editors who add unsourced content are telling the truth.--Martin IIIa (talk) 15:39, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

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World record for longest running MMORPG is incorrect
The Guinness Book of Gaming Records did indeed mistakenly award UO the title of longest running MMORPG in 2008. They corrected this error in 2010 after I contacted them. Ultima Online launched in 1997. The Realm launched in late 1996, and Furcadia launched a couple weeks before The Realm. While The Realm is no longer running, Furcadia still is, and still holds the record for longest running MMORPG. You can confirm that here: https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/longest-running-social-mmorpg

I also recall seeing the initial LAN-based proof of concept demo at Origin running on the Ultima 6 engine, even if they may have moved to Ultima 7 code by the time they developed the full product. I don't think Ultima 7 had even shipped at that point, it was when I was visiting the Origin offices to show them my DragonSpires demo.

If someone would care to edit the section about the world record in some way to more accurately reflect the facts, I would appreciate it. As the author of Furcadia, and as a team member on some of the Ultima games as well, I feel it's not my place to edit articles about these games due to my potential bias. I do think it's likely UO is the second oldest MMORPG at this point, for what it's worth.

Regards, Dr. Cat 99.156.185.75 (talk) 20:31, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

Long distance phone calls
The article currently [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ultima_Online&diff=1047186384&oldid=1042645601] which makes no sense. The source does say "" but provides no explanation why anyone would do that. AFAIK and our article also seems to support this, UO was always an internet-only game. It never supported any sort of dial-up modem connection to servers hosted by Origin/EA. Most people did use dial-up modems for internet access at the time but it was still the internet so it didn't matter much generally. (I used the internet from Malaysia and although much more limited at the time with some weird legacy stuff like UUCP still common, it was still the internet and so I was able to play Asheron's Call beta for example.) It's possible that the servers were geo-blocked and these were the days before you could easily just get a VPN to bypass geo-blocks but I think the early days of UO were before companies really bothered to do that. So there was no real reason to dial in to the US to play the game, most players wherever they were would have just connected to their local ISP and then connected to the game. I guess it's possible dialling in to the US gave better latency but frankly I doubt it or at least not in a significant way. And indeed there's a fair chance it would have limited connection speeds (definitely for speeds beyond 33.6k although IIRC 56k only came after UO). Considering this was written in 1997 I think there's a fair chance whoever wrote that just didn't know how the internet works. I mean it's possible some players also didn't and so did pointless stuff, but definitely we need a source which better explains why this happened IMO. Nil Einne (talk) 14:12, 29 September 2021 (UTC)


 * As mentioned in the summary for my edit here, I think it's unclear that the source is stating that over half of the game's sales were international by this time anyway. If (as the source explicitly states) Europe had 5,000 subscribers and Japan had 8,000 subscribers of a total 70,000 subscribers, that would mean there were over 22,000 subscribers in countries where online gaming had little to no market penetration and (also mentioned in the source) the game hadn't shipped to yet. That's very counterintuitive, so the fact that the source doesn't expound on this at all suggests to me that when it says "Sixty percent of Origin's sales are international.", it means 60% of sales of all Origin releases. Martin IIIa (talk) 21:38, 6 August 2022 (UTC)

Gameplay
This section is mostly just details about the setting and almost nothing about gameplay. Would be much appreciated if someone could add details on the gameplay mechanics. Walkersam (talk) 00:26, 26 April 2023 (UTC)