I was a UO player. In fact, I was one of the first volunteers for the Counselor program and later was one of the original Seers. (Seer Adamantyr of Pacific.)
I remember the beta of UO very well, I still have the disks too. Every reboot started a mass rush to the towns to pick up supplies before every NPC was depleted. Every animal and monster in the world was slaughtered and skinned within two hours. It was very much like "Harsh Realm". The economy's insanity was the first real sign of cool-sounding ideas in MMO design not turning out well in actual implementation.
Ultima Online was, in some ways, the game that did everything wrong so everyone else knew what to do right. PvP looting and ganking, player housing urban sprawls, spells that hold/paralyze with no limitations... They eventually fixed a lot of this, but they laid the groundwork for the success that you can attribute to World of Warcraft now. Having a real living example of how it can go wrong works wonders in design.
The Seer program is especially an interesting chapter of UO history, and I'm in a unique place to talk about it.
The Counselor program had always been a planned part of the game. The "Counselor Halls" exist in every town map, and were a planned game element. Of course, instead of being a program to allow veteran players to aid and assist starting players, it instead became the first level of customer service and support, with mostly helpless Counselors being forced to deal with difficult angry players while a GM was backlogged to the nines.
Most of the Counselors had heard that the next step in the volunteer program was the "Seer" program, where you would actually help generate interest content in the game. We all dreamed of being a part of it, but it took them several months to get it organized. They initially had us submit applications describing the kinds of activities we'd do, and from that they picked 15 of us... I was one of them.
I was in the Seer program from early '98 to mid '99, when I quit UO. Unfortunately, the early program had a lot of rough going. The first problem was the lack of resources; there was only 1-3 GM's (called Interest GM's, or IGM's) assigned to it, and they were usually kept pretty busy. One of them, GM Twilight, was very savvy with the engine and could do a lot of stuff none of the others could. This meant, unfortunately, he was in the highest demand for setting up events. They tried at one point to have regular GM's involved in it, but this ended up causing a lot of problems.
An example: One of the seers, who knew better, asked for his character to get 2,000 in each ability score. The GM gave him this, not realizing the values were far out of scope. He then proceeded to innocently "walk" towards the West Trinsic gates. As any old UO veteran would tell you, the region around West Trinsic was a ganker's paradise. They would usually camp out near the gates and mass fireball/death bolt any hapless player who came out of the guard zone. Well, they had a surprise that night. The attacks barely singed his uber-character, and when they ran forward to loot the body as usual, he auto-defended and slaughtered the lot of them. The screaming and whining on the forums was quite loud... and after that, much greater care was taken when designing seer characters.
It wasn't all funny, though. One of my friends in the program, who'd always seemed like a nice guy, went completely nuts with his RPC (role-playing character). He started hunting down players and with his superior ability scores and skills easily dispatched them. After awhile there were numerous justified complaints of harassment, and it became clear that the person behind the seer was actually mentally unbalanced and paranoid. The IGM's were forced to remove him from the program.
For myself, I decided early on that one of the missing elements of the online experience was the lack of intelligent conversation from NPC's. Ultima Online NPC's were very cookie-cutter in nature, and one of my chief complaints was the lack of social centers for players to meet and chat. Because of the nature of the game, the bank's were actually the popular hang-out, something that persists to this day even in WoW. Another factor was that many of the seers made strong heroic RPC's, who would lead other players on adventures. I disagreed with this approach; I felt that the Seers should take a back-seat and let the players be the heroes.
So my RPC, Ben Kahns, was not a powerful warrior or mage, but a bartender and chef. I also decided I wanted to bring some life to a little used place in the game, so I chose to make him the bartender of the tavern in Magincia, a little-visited town on an island. My plan was that I could coordinate with other seers on the server who would create rumors and stories for my bartender to pass on to players in the tavern, thus giving RP-minded and quest-minded PC's a place to hang out. I also established a regular schedule for him so that players would always know when and where to find him.
I can't claim it for certainty, but I'm pretty certain my RPC was probably the most successful of the program. I hosted guild dinners and had dart contests, gave out little known trinkets in the game like glass mugs and doughnuts (which were in the game art files and item lists but NOT in game), and generally had a good time playing a cheerful happy-go-lucky bartender, always ready to lend an ear. I had a regular crowd who would always show up; I'm still good friends with several of them today. My only vice was I usually would have him make fun of players with weird or silly names, and humored players roleplaying as elves or orcs (there were no races in UO initially, a state I personally think they should have kept). It helped that I can type 85-95 words per minute, so I could quickly and easily respond to questions, without using internet shorthand or leet speak. (Which I despise.) I even ended up doing the services for in-game weddings, both in my green robe (seer disguise) and as Ben.
Another fact I can't claim for certain but it seems likely was I am probably the one responsible for getting player RP venues "decorated" in-game, prior to the customized housing changes added with a later expansion. (Which are very nice, mind you, no online game has equaled UO for the power it offers in housing.) I had visited at a request a small establishment on the Great Lakes shard known as Kazola's. I was impressed with the work they'd done to establish a role-playing social center on the shard, so I petitioned the IGM's to decorate the tavern. They had been considering something like this for awhile, I think, and decided to go ahead with it, and Kazola's became the first of many RP houses to receive decorations. (Usually referred to as "the GM's blessing") On a side-note, Kazola's was also the establishment that Scott Kurtz (of the web comic "PvP") visited when he was playing UO and he got his idea for Skull the troll from UO.
My penultimate triumph, though, was meeting Lord British. I'm pretty certain it WAS Lord British, GM Twilight told me at times they had someone else play him if Richard wasn't about, but he hinted that this visit it was definitely the real guy. I had an inkling it was coming, and had Ben play the fool, thinking that he was one of his regular patrons in disguise. In the real world, my hands were literally shaking on the keys... it's LORD BRITISH, MAN! (I have a transcript of the log of that night, as well as some screen shots, I can dig them up if you like for your book, Matt.)
Eventually, though, I got burned out. Working volunteer work like this is, in many ways, just another job. While I had my account paid for by participating in the program, and even got a bit of a discount on EA products, it wasn't enough to justify the 8-10 hours I was spending a week at it. The player-killer/ganker attacks on Kazola's Keg and Winery on the Great Lakes server also greatly distressed and angered me. The PK/RP battles of that era are, I think, why they thought doing RP-PVP servers in WoW may work out. The hatred and rage on both sides created a LOT of drama and interest... but not the kind I like.
I left the program and the game around May of '99, about the time that the IGM's were finally starting to create in-game tools for the Seers to do their own interest work independently. A good idea, but I disliked the limitations placed upon the powers... I was starting to realize, deep down, that this was real work. And I would be better off focusing on this kind of work in real life than in game. Many of my Counselor and Seer friends actually moved to Austin, Texas to try and get jobs at the company, but I couldn't do this. (One in fact became a map/level designer on U9; her face was used for the barmaid in Buccaneer's Den.)
When I was back in school getting my CS degree some time later, I restarted my account. The volunteer program had come to an abrupt end when the volunteers sued EA some years back; their response was to cancel all volunteer programs anywhere there was legal reason to do so. (Turns out it's illegal to do volunteer work for a profit organization in most of the states.)
Interestingly, I still had my green robe. The account system had been set up to detect accounts flagged as volunteers, but mine pre-dated that system and escaped it. I also still had my RPC and some other interesting NPC's and unique gear. Most of it I was allowed to keep, although the patronizing arrogance of the GM's I encountered was annoying. The other problem was that too much had happened in the five years or so I had been gone; very few players remembered the RPC's at all. And I faced the sad realization that the reason many of them hung around Ben was the hopes that they were talking to a real employee of Origin; many didn't realize the Seers were just volunteers.
So I eventually shut my account down, for good. The actual game play had never really drawn me; the repetitive macro nature of UO's engine was annoying to deal with. And the increasingly empty streets and houses told me it's time wasn't far off. Still, I met some good people, and I had a good time, so I can't say it was a waste.
I was a UO player. In fact, I was one of the first volunteers for the Counselor program and later was one of the original Seers. (Seer Adamantyr of Pacific.)
I remember the beta of UO very well, I still have the disks too. Every reboot started a mass rush to the towns to pick up supplies before every NPC was depleted. Every animal and monster in the world was slaughtered and skinned within two hours. It was very much like "Harsh Realm". The economy's insanity was the first real sign of cool-sounding ideas in MMO design not turning out well in actual implementation.
Ultima Online was, in some ways, the game that did everything wrong so everyone else knew what to do right. PvP looting and ganking, player housing urban sprawls, spells that hold/paralyze with no limitations... They eventually fixed a lot of this, but they laid the groundwork for the success that you can attribute to World of Warcraft now. Having a real living example of how it can go wrong works wonders in design.
The Seer program is especially an interesting chapter of UO history, and I'm in a unique place to talk about it.
The Counselor program had always been a planned part of the game. The "Counselor Halls" exist in every town map, and were a planned game element. Of course, instead of being a program to allow veteran players to aid and assist starting players, it instead became the first level of customer service and support, with mostly helpless Counselors being forced to deal with difficult angry players while a GM was backlogged to the nines.
Most of the Counselors had heard that the next step in the volunteer program was the "Seer" program, where you would actually help generate interest content in the game. We all dreamed of being a part of it, but it took them several months to get it organized. They initially had us submit applications describing the kinds of activities we'd do, and from that they picked 15 of us... I was one of them.
I was in the Seer program from early '98 to mid '99, when I quit UO. Unfortunately, the early program had a lot of rough going. The first problem was the lack of resources; there was only 1-3 GM's (called Interest GM's, or IGM's) assigned to it, and they were usually kept pretty busy. One of them, GM Twilight, was very savvy with the engine and could do a lot of stuff none of the others could. This meant, unfortunately, he was in the highest demand for setting up events. They tried at one point to have regular GM's involved in it, but this ended up causing a lot of problems.
An example: One of the seers, who knew better, asked for his character to get 2,000 in each ability score. The GM gave him this, not realizing the values were far out of scope. He then proceeded to innocently "walk" towards the West Trinsic gates. As any old UO veteran would tell you, the region around West Trinsic was a ganker's paradise. They would usually camp out near the gates and mass fireball/death bolt any hapless player who came out of the guard zone. Well, they had a surprise that night. The attacks barely singed his uber-character, and when they ran forward to loot the body as usual, he auto-defended and slaughtered the lot of them. The screaming and whining on the forums was quite loud... and after that, much greater care was taken when designing seer characters.
It wasn't all funny, though. One of my friends in the program, who'd always seemed like a nice guy, went completely nuts with his RPC (role-playing character). He started hunting down players and with his superior ability scores and skills easily dispatched them. After awhile there were numerous justified complaints of harassment, and it became clear that the person behind the seer was actually mentally unbalanced and paranoid. The IGM's were forced to remove him from the program.
For myself, I decided early on that one of the missing elements of the online experience was the lack of intelligent conversation from NPC's. Ultima Online NPC's were very cookie-cutter in nature, and one of my chief complaints was the lack of social centers for players to meet and chat. Because of the nature of the game, the bank's were actually the popular hang-out, something that persists to this day even in WoW. Another factor was that many of the seers made strong heroic RPC's, who would lead other players on adventures. I disagreed with this approach; I felt that the Seers should take a back-seat and let the players be the heroes.
So my RPC, Ben Kahns, was not a powerful warrior or mage, but a bartender and chef. I also decided I wanted to bring some life to a little used place in the game, so I chose to make him the bartender of the tavern in Magincia, a little-visited town on an island. My plan was that I could coordinate with other seers on the server who would create rumors and stories for my bartender to pass on to players in the tavern, thus giving RP-minded and quest-minded PC's a place to hang out. I also established a regular schedule for him so that players would always know when and where to find him.
I can't claim it for certainty, but I'm pretty certain my RPC was probably the most successful of the program. I hosted guild dinners and had dart contests, gave out little known trinkets in the game like glass mugs and doughnuts (which were in the game art files and item lists but NOT in game), and generally had a good time playing a cheerful happy-go-lucky bartender, always ready to lend an ear. I had a regular crowd who would always show up; I'm still good friends with several of them today. My only vice was I usually would have him make fun of players with weird or silly names, and humored players roleplaying as elves or orcs (there were no races in UO initially, a state I personally think they should have kept). It helped that I can type 85-95 words per minute, so I could quickly and easily respond to questions, without using internet shorthand or leet speak. (Which I despise.) I even ended up doing the services for in-game weddings, both in my green robe (seer disguise) and as Ben.
Another fact I can't claim for certain but it seems likely was I am probably the one responsible for getting player RP venues "decorated" in-game, prior to the customized housing changes added with a later expansion. (Which are very nice, mind you, no online game has equaled UO for the power it offers in housing.) I had visited at a request a small establishment on the Great Lakes shard known as Kazola's. I was impressed with the work they'd done to establish a role-playing social center on the shard, so I petitioned the IGM's to decorate the tavern. They had been considering something like this for awhile, I think, and decided to go ahead with it, and Kazola's became the first of many RP houses to receive decorations. (Usually referred to as "the GM's blessing") On a side-note, Kazola's was also the establishment that Scott Kurtz (of the web comic "PvP") visited when he was playing UO and he got his idea for Skull the troll from UO.
My penultimate triumph, though, was meeting Lord British. I'm pretty certain it WAS Lord British, GM Twilight told me at times they had someone else play him if Richard wasn't about, but he hinted that this visit it was definitely the real guy. I had an inkling it was coming, and had Ben play the fool, thinking that he was one of his regular patrons in disguise. In the real world, my hands were literally shaking on the keys... it's LORD BRITISH, MAN! (I have a transcript of the log of that night, as well as some screen shots, I can dig them up if you like for your book, Matt.)
Eventually, though, I got burned out. Working volunteer work like this is, in many ways, just another job. While I had my account paid for by participating in the program, and even got a bit of a discount on EA products, it wasn't enough to justify the 8-10 hours I was spending a week at it. The player-killer/ganker attacks on Kazola's Keg and Winery on the Great Lakes server also greatly distressed and angered me. The PK/RP battles of that era are, I think, why they thought doing RP-PVP servers in WoW may work out. The hatred and rage on both sides created a LOT of drama and interest... but not the kind I like.
I left the program and the game around May of '99, about the time that the IGM's were finally starting to create in-game tools for the Seers to do their own interest work independently. A good idea, but I disliked the limitations placed upon the powers... I was starting to realize, deep down, that this was real work. And I would be better off focusing on this kind of work in real life than in game. Many of my Counselor and Seer friends actually moved to Austin, Texas to try and get jobs at the company, but I couldn't do this. (One in fact became a map/level designer on U9; her face was used for the barmaid in Buccaneer's Den.)
When I was back in school getting my CS degree some time later, I restarted my account. The volunteer program had come to an abrupt end when the volunteers sued EA some years back; their response was to cancel all volunteer programs anywhere there was legal reason to do so. (Turns out it's illegal to do volunteer work for a profit organization in most of the states.)
Interestingly, I still had my green robe. The account system had been set up to detect accounts flagged as volunteers, but mine pre-dated that system and escaped it. I also still had my RPC and some other interesting NPC's and unique gear. Most of it I was allowed to keep, although the patronizing arrogance of the GM's I encountered was annoying. The other problem was that too much had happened in the five years or so I had been gone; very few players remembered the RPC's at all. And I faced the sad realization that the reason many of them hung around Ben was the hopes that they were talking to a real employee of Origin; many didn't realize the Seers were just volunteers.
So I eventually shut my account down, for good. The actual game play had never really drawn me; the repetitive macro nature of UO's engine was annoying to deal with. And the increasingly empty streets and houses told me it's time wasn't far off. Still, I met some good people, and I had a good time, so I can't say it was a waste.