How I Would Resurrect Ultima Online

This is part of a series of articles on how I would update Ultima Online to be a game new people would want to play in 2010 and bring old players back.

If you go to any UO forum, you will find topic after topic of how someone would improve the game. Some ideas seem to be common sense, others are shot down for being too like another game. Stratics used to have a forum called the Ideas Den in which players would vote on what people came up with. Some of those ideas translated into real additions to UO, the most notable being house customization.

When I am playing a game, I will often think of how the experience could be improved or added to. This is likely why I took up programming. On the websites I manage, I carefully consider each addition and constantly look for ways to improve what already exists. This is why I have a major issue with how the current UO website is constructed. But we can go into that later.

Since I have been playing UO the longest, it is no wonder I have had so many ideas. One of my most cohesive and extensive idea was for a faction overhaul (I will try and find a link later). Just a day ago I had a new idea how to fix the vendor system and make it not a tedious click fest. About 10 years ago I even had an idea which World of Warcraft eventually implemented, the talent system. I don't believe I had ever posted this anywhere. Basically, once you reached 100 skill you could opt to spend skill points in a variety of abilities/spells. For example a Mage could spend 5 skill points to learn a new spell. Maybe I could go into more detail later.

When am I going to get to the fixing UO part? It is coming up. This is meant to be a series of several articles broken up into sections. There is a lot needing to be done and I don't want to write an entire book in one sitting. Here are some of the topics I am thinking of:

• Introduction - You are reading this now
  
• Problematic Game Additions - Changes added to the game which are bringing the game down or drove people away
  
• A New Client - Yes, another brand new client is needed unfortunately
  
• Core Game Changes - What needs to be done on the server side
• Reaching a New Audience - New features which will draw people to the game
• Don't Forget Current Players - Making sure not to cause another wave of people to leave
• Conclusion - Pulling everything together

These are just a rough outline. Articles may be combined, added or removed depending on what I write about. I think it is time to start getting to the fun stuff, fantasizing about UO.

Since I am just tossing ideas out there, I could assume there is an unlimited amount of money available to make this happen. But that would not be fun in my opinion. The idea that this could actually happen is why I want to write this. So this is not going to be an off the walls illusion where there is a 100 million dollar World of Warcraft budget.

In my opinion, I estimate it would cost 10 million dollars of investment to bring UO to look and act like a game put out in 2010. Over UO's lifetime, EA has easily made over 100 million dollars on this game. Lets assume an average of 100,000 subscribers (UO peaked at 250,000 and it is estimated there are currently 50,000) paying $10 per month for 14 years. That comes out to $168,000,000. Of course you need to add in development costs and server upkeep. But then there is other revenue such as character transfer and everything they are selling in their store. It is safe to say EA has made a lot of money which is why UO is still around.

So I think a 10 million dollar investment is a bargain considering the money to be made in a MMO. The next question is where does that money go? Well the bulk is to paying developers. Estimating a $50,000 salary per developer, you could hire 20 for one year at $1,000,000. This means a team of 100 could be added for 5 million. I think 100-150 people would be the team size, so there goes 1/2 to 3/4 of the budget!

Most of the team would consist of artists. The new client will be by far the most labor intensive part of the revitalization process. There are thousands of pieces of art which need to be redone. Lets assume there are 2,000 item graphics that need to be created (I will try to get a more accurate count later when we discuss the new client). Lets assume, on average, 1 artist takes 1 day to recreate one item. How many artists will be needed to to make all those items in one year? WikiAnswers says there are 260 work days in a year. So it will take 8 people making about 250 pieces each to redo all that art.

Isn't math fun? If you are making something brand new, we couldn't have such exact numbers. Since UO already has a set number of systems, items, creatures, etc. it is a lot easier to get numbers on how much it will cost in a certain time period. Of course these are my own estimates, only EA could figure out the exact costs.

I think that is about it for the introduction. Next article will be identifying the additions which drove people from the game and why people leave in general.

If you wish to submit feedback about this or any other blog post, my email is available in the right column of this page.

Bringing Vendor Shopping Back

While replying to a topic on U Hall Stratics, I had a sudden solution how to fix the current issues with vendor shopping.

I think a very "UO" solution would not be to create a global search system as many are asking for. Even the developers said in the recent Town Hall that they did not want to create a World of Warcraft style auction house Instead you could ask (by which I mean setup search options) the vendor if they had the item or better. If the vendor does, a bag would be displayed with all the items that fit your criteria.

For example if you are searching for a Swordmanship item which has at least 40% damage increase and 40% hit lower defense, the vendor will display every sword that fits this criteria. Now you will only be browsing those exact items. If the vendor does not have anything, he will say so saving you dozens of clicks.

A system like this would maintain the uniqueness of UO's system but also make shopping a lot more convenient and much faster. The system could even be expanded so you can specify many different items you are looking for, which would be better than current search sites where you go one by one.

My next few blog posts will be a series on how I would handle revitalizing UO as a whole. It is something I have been thinking about for a while and would like to write out some articles on it.

Darkfall Again

I have been really busy with a lot of stuff, not playing many games except Starcraft II when I have a chance.

I remembered last year when I was keeping up on Darkfall, I would look at Google Trends as a sort of way to measure interest in the game. At the time Darkfall was in a downward trend and I predicted that eventually it would fall below UO.

Surprise, surprise; it has.

It also appears to have leveled off quite a bit and is in the same slow downward trend UO is in. Actually, UO has been going up recently. That is encouraging.

But a quick trip over to the Darkfall forum revealed another piece of ominous news. Or rather a lack thereof. There has been no game news posted since July 14, over a month ago. Maybe they all took a summer vacation? But this was definitely not the right time as an "expansion" (really a large publish) was supposed to launch about 2 months ago.

While the game is lasting longer than I thought, it is quite clear that it is walking dead at this point.

Blizzard Subsides

Blizzard has backed off of their plan to display your real name in their forums. We are still left to wonder how they ever thought it would be a good idea in the first place.

With the Starcraft II beta back up we get an interesting look into how many people are playing World of Warcraft at any given time. There is an information box which displays the current active players, numbers of Starcraft games going, etc. The graphic shows all players for WOW and SC combined. The number has been as high as the 800,000's and as low as 200,000. It would be interesting if someone were to try and chart the WOW activity levels.

I Don't Accept Your Terms

I got an email today informing that the Terms of Service for the Playstation network have changed. What has changed? I have no idea as the email just informs me that there was a change, possibly many changes, or maybe they fixed a spelling error. Perhaps it is my fault entirely for not memorizing the terms when I signed up for an account.

So I won't be accepting their terms if they can't put in the effort to inform me what has changed in their massive legal document. I will keep using my account though. This is a funny line:

Please don’t use our Sites if you don’t agree to these Terms of Service because once you are on our Sites, you have to follow the rules.

You linked me to your website so I could read your terms of service. So basically you are tricking me into agreeing by linking to your site for the document you directed me to review?

I know this is nitpicking, but if a company wants their Terms of Service to be respected they should put in the effort to make it easier for the end user to understand them. Many people don't read these things as it is and it is frustrating for the people who do when you just toss out something and expect us to understand it.

Customer Irritation Level

We are now a day and a half into the fiasco that is announcement of what RealID is really for, taking away your privacy. You know it isn't going well when you make the national television news in Canada.

There are now nearly 30,000 posts on the US forum, nearly 10,000 on the EU forum, thousands on every other WOW forum and even videos on Youtube getting ten of thousands of views. The overwhelming response is negative. Some of the defenders are likely trolling, which is ironic.

Now people are starting seeking information other Blizzard employees, they don't have to look very far. Just pull out their Burning Crusade manual and flip to the back. Developers always want people to look at the credits, right? I don't think they intended to be for this reason. This is exactly why you don't publish your information unless you have a good reason. If you piss someone off, it just makes it easy for them to find you.

Markee Dragon made a 30 minute video response to this. I listened to it in the background as I did some work. He brought up a lot of good points like people who are in situations where they handle sensitive information, they can't post. I saw a post saying a teacher would be risking their job because it is against their rules of conduct. He also brought up another good point about the mass discrimination there will be against people with Chinese names. You know, the whole gold farming stereotype.

Towards the end of the video, Markee revealed that he came across an interesting tidbit of information when working with EA. They have a "customer irritation level" metric. It is used to measure the player response to game additions. The goal is get the bar as high as it will go while staying just below the level where players press the cancel subscription button.

Blizzard Is About to Ruin the Internet

It looks like companies just don't understand the internet anymore. First Facebook wants to make everything about you open to the public. Now Blizzard is going to force you to display your first and last name if you want to post on their game forums. There are many reasons why this is a terrible, terrible idea.

The first being is stalking. There have been so many cases of people getting harassed through the internet. People have commit suicide over it. Has anyone every pissed you off so much in a game you wish you could beat them up? I haven't, but I've seen this reaction countless times on forums and talked about on Xbox Live. Now Blizzard is going to give them the first piece of information to really do some damage to you.

What can someone do with a name? Well if you have a Facebook account or Myspace than you are going to be easy to find. From there they will be able to locate a lot of forums you post on, possibly your phone number, your email, etc. Now they can harass you in many ways.

But what if they want to take it beyond playful phone calls at 2AM in the morning? You managed to get them so mad that they want to steal your WOW account. Blizzard asks for your first name, last name and email to retrieve your Battle.net password. If you post on the forum, your attacker knows your first and last name. That can be used to find your facebook and email address. Once the attacker has that, they go to your email and activate the forgot password recovery. If you selected the question what school did you go to and have it listed on your Facebook, you are in deep trouble now. They have full access to your email account and possibly many other places such as your bank, personal message and any number of forums you post on. All that is left is to reset the Battle.net password and delete you WOW characters!

Security on the internet is designed around private information. What is the name of your first pet. Who is your favorite teacher. What is your birthday. Many of this is now available for all the world to see. The final piece of the puzzle is connecting your online persona to your Facebook profile. When that happens you are one huge target for whoever does not like you.

I think Blizzard is going to back track on this idea fast. There are already tens of thousands of posts all over the internet about this change. From what I gather the response is overwhelmingly negative.

One final note, what is Blizzard going to do if someone has a legitimate name that has something obscene in it? If Blizzard attempts to censor it they will likely be liable for a discrimination lawsuit. They would also have to disable the world censor on their forum if that person wants to include their name in their posting.

RealID is a real disaster.

*Added*

A Blizzard employee decided to test out this new policy by posting his name. We now know he lives with his mother and will likely go home to a full answering machine. Funny enough, later on in the topic he warns people that just because you know someone's name does not give you the right to find out more information of said person. Then the topic was locked.