JohnKnighthawke said:
it questioned focusing on it instead of the shards that represent what MMOs are supposed to be.
I'm long past opposing the existence of NL. I lost that debate before it began. I'm just pointing out when something from it should most-definitely be on the main shards.
What are MMOs supposed to be? And what is an MMO based on the world of Ultima supposed to be?
The UO I played in early 1998 is not the UO I played in the summer of 2000, and for that I'm grateful, as my friends and acquaintances stopped quitting and I finally had my own house thanks to the land rush, and it was such a wonderful house I got to place it again because Lag Superior couldn't stay up (or at least the individual server(s) that hosted my portion of Tram). But the creation of that same area where I achieved home ownership was a sign by some that UO as an MMO was dying, it just didn't know it.
When Age of Shadows and Mondain's Legacy began the 20+ years of turning UO into an item collection game for some people, some of whom, sadly, turned away from exploring and adventuring, did that define what an MMO should be? Is an MMO a game where we spend hour upon hour online reading up on UOGuide or Stratics about stats and mobs and that leads us to hoard hundreds of weapons and pieces of armor and odd trinkets and jewelry, stashed away for dungeons that we rarely visit?
When you walk the streets of Malas on pretty much any shard, do you feel like "this is what an MMO based in the world of Ultima is supposed to be"?
When Samurai Empire was released with what felt like little connection to Lord British's earlier games, it was still technically an MMO based on Ultima, and we even swung back the other way with Stygian Abyss really bringing us back to an MMO based on Ultima. Those are two sides of the same coin, but plenty will heap scorn on SE (or at least did when it launched).
And we can move beyond that and look at all of the other MMOs out there that vary wildly in how they play and what players can do. WOW was the most popular MMO for many years, but the lack of player housing and in-game communities that spontaneously grew like they did in the first 3-4 years of UO, and the way WOW was really made WOW feel (to me) more like an elaborate, persistent, game that happened to be online, and could host large groups of people, but still came across as feeling sterile/isolated most of the time unless you were raiding. Ironically, WOW is adding player housing here in 2025, but it'll be instanced with just a few dozen players per instance, so you'll be lucky to plop down a house next to somebody you want to play with. And Star Wars Galaxies, for a while, felt like what MMOs should be (which is because it was driven by people who helped define mainstream MMOs with UO), but it died well over a decade ago.
I'm not trying to be a jerk or criticize you, mind you, I'm just pointing out that what defines an MMO varies wildly between people.
The person who sits in their Atlantic castle in UO and organizes their hundreds or thousands of rare items and gets on to an online forum to argue or discuss the availability of dozens of hues for what should be a throw-away item in the game probably enjoys UO as much as some blacksmith or tailor on Napa Valley who has chosen to live in a small- or medium-sized house in the woods with nothing but trees and mobs for many screens around them (even as there are 18x18 houses available in New Magincia, near Luna, near Zento, etc.), and who creates weapons and armor for vendors who might see a visitor once every week or two (and only because vendor search steered them there). And both of them may enjoy it as much as I'm now enjoying it with my kids, even though the UO I play in 2025 is vastly different than the UO I played in 1998. And I enjoyed it as much in 1998 as I do now, just...differently.
With NL, they seem to be really creating something interesting (even if I can't currently play most of it due to my guild mates being my kids who are new to UO), and they need to be doing something different if they want to set something up for the 30th anniversary (or even reach the 30th) in case we get an influx of returning players who will be horrified by vendors full of 175 million gp items. It's still really, really weird to me to see those vendors, but that's the nature of a persistent MMO that's been around since 1997 (and I have items that are from my characters way back in 1998).
