I have played many many MMOs over the years but nothing came close to the game play of UO, not even "modern MMOs". The thing that made UO fun for me was that you could do whatever you want, and face the consequences. There wasn't any of this "you just don't have the option to do that" crap that has just gotten out of hand to the point that I'm confused about when these games stopped even being RPGs. You aren't playing the role of anything in WoW or GW2, it's a fantasy skinned FPS with lower graphics.

I know there are many other old school MMO fans out there that are hoping to see the fun pieces of an MMO make a comeback in ESO. For the youngsters let me list them:

PVP with FULL GEAR DROP
This could be done because the economy ran in such a way that gear was dispensable. Extremely rare gear existed but it was rare to the point that you knew better than to wear it in a pvp situation.

Forming a mob, tracking down evil players and killing them

Player Theft
You could steal from players. Sure it was impractical and you were GOING TO DIE most likely... but it was so fun that tons of people did it just for the hell of it.

Player owned housing (especially player owned vendors)
I don't want an instance of a house. I want an actual physical house that has to be purchased and travelled to.

Being a ghost (this was just hilarious)

Focus on Public Chat
I really don't understand when it became preferable to prevent people from communicating by hiding their chats somewhere off to the side in a UI, or having various channels. When you type text it should just be spoken for the world to hear (unless you whisper to somebody nearby). Sure this will be circumvented with voice chat... but in many situations it won't.

I think that the "drama" aspects that form from these sorts of game mechanics make it extremely fun for the more mature players. If ESO is going to let me play with like minded players i'd like to have some of these options.

Side Rant
Please don't make the same mistake which destroyed UO. Trammel. People complained that when they left town they'd get killed by other players and would lose their equipment, so UO separated the world into PVP and Non-PvP. They listened to an extremely loud minority of players and set up game mechanics that alienated their core user-base in order to accomodate them. No longer were people accountable for their characters actions or words and it was no longer as much of a society of players as it was a free-for-all in the pvp areas and a really boring game in Trammel.

The world should be fun, exciting and scary. You should have the possibility of being killed by players but it should not be overly difficult to recover and those players should be heavily punished. Only then will players actually form something like alignment-based guilds and begin to police eachother as well. The game would actually allow you to play roles...*holds back urge to swear*

Please, Let's see a real RPG here!

Interesting points, haven't played UO. Have you read up on ESO yet?

All i remember from playing UO is running away from people who were trying to kill me all the time.

I hear you brother, but I'll warn you - many here are so used to the FPS/World of Warcraft model that they're blinded to any other posibilities.

Not to mention the fear of having this game "insulted" that they REALLY want to be successful.

Having said that, if you ever played Skyrim - you'd also laugh how damn similar Ultima Online was to Skyrim.

The whole model of "leveling your skills, not your character" meant no classes - just what you wanted. You could become a grand-master Blacksmith/carpenter and never slay a single beast.

Every item could be dropped and placed anywhere in the world (had to eventually be removed due to hardware limitations of the time... but today it MIGHT work, if somebody only dares to try!)

Freedom to explore wherever you wanted to go, regardless of level. (see below about "factions")

I'd say "no race restrictions" but then again, there was only just one in the begining - Humans. No such thing as "factions" then...

I'm tired, and that's all I can think of ATM... but I do want to say that ES:O could've been a MASSIVE refreshing breath of clean air that's desperately needed in the post EQ/WoW MMORPG era... if only they just brought over their Skyrim/UO style gameplay the series has always been known for... such a missed opportunity.

While I'm sure ES:O will be good on its own merits, it's sadly going to probably be up to another company who has the brass to try to bring back Sandbox-style gameplay. I know EQ-Next is going total-sandbox, but we've not heard enough details yet... I'm also believing Titan will be major sandbox, if only to separate itself intrinsically from WoW.

What's UO?


Is it like Wizardry where pkers can kill you at lv two and lv one if it isn't your first character, and they camp the spawn points?

No, you spawn in town and if somebody attacks you in town and somebody says "guards" (even a player or npc) then the guards will kill them.

Ah, I guess that's better than Wizardry. Where the guards most of the time will just watch you die over and over again.