How Gamers Killed Ultima Online's Virtual Ecology | War Stories | Ars Technica

O-oh boy...well I guess he'd achieved his ultimate goal, perhaps there was nothing else after that. That's what I love about these sorts of emergent systems. Although I was discussing it with a friend, there's a great ars war story on ultima: ▶ this video Won't spoil it for you but we did have a great discussion from that around how emergent gameplay can be amazing, but player agency means that you'd still need the "hand of God" to be involved in fixing things and making adjustments so that major plot points and still enabled and the player doesn't kill the entire world (unless that's the point of the game I suppose).

We loved ultima 3 growing up. A bunch of us were playing it in middle school and we'd occasionally swap hints about how to advance. Before the internet thats all we had. Out of our group, at least one of us had a real copy of each game, making the spell books and instructions available... The cloth maps were fun, but I don't think we used them during game play. The games were a bit of grind, but we didn't care. I do like the Ars Video on how they spent all this time on the "ultima online ecosystem" only to have it not work out.. ▶ this video

Yew tube. (I expected trees..) I’ve seen a few in the series. Less technical but The NES comes to America is pretty good link And the Ultima online tried create programmatic eco system is kinda hysterical. 7 minutes (with lord British) ▶ this video Ars (the publisher)has a whole list of them. Non YouTube but seem to have transcripts. link

I recall reading the developers of (the ultimately aborted) 'Fallout Online' remarking that Ultima Online's player mechanics were pretty close to what they'd expect from the reality of a post-apocalyptic wasteland. I can't find the source of this quote right now, unfortunately. I felt really gratified hearing that, as I'd been trying to explain the savagery of UO[2] in the 2000s to people talking about Rust's gameplay in 2020. I think it's really interesting to look back at UO's design from a modern perspective. The designers have stated over, and over again[0][1] how absolutely wrong their predictions of player behaviour ended up being. It was such an ambitious, pure, and innocent idea. Its gameplay style may not have stood the test of time, however it was undoubtedly an important learning experience for game design as a whole. I'm tempted to say its a shame that games like UO are a thing of the past. However when I look back at my time playing it, the thing that sticks out the most is how much time and effort was spent just avoiding abuse. [0] link [1] ▶ this video [2] link

Richard Garriott discusses a similar problem with UO's virtual ecology in the Ars Technica "War Stories" interview. UO had a virtual ecology system that tried to balance carnivores, herbivores, and plants. When the game opened, to the designers' surprise, players slaughtered all animal life across the land. ▶ this video

This was discussed by one of the game's creators in the Ultima Online episode of Ars Techica's War Stories (around the 5:10 mark) ▶ this video

> So if you slay too many Gorgs soon there would be none left. Leave them alone and they'll eat all the Fraggles. Players would form culling expeditions every week. [...] I think the venerable Ultima Online had a few features like that, or was supposed to, not completely sure. Ultima Online tried to have such an ecology, but the players didn't react to it as described despite the game designers giving players minimal rewards for killing herbivores so that they would focus on killing the carnivores. Instead the players indiscriminately killed both the carnivores and the herbivores, because the players were human. The ecology was removed. ▶ this video

Reminds me of Richard Garriott's talk about how players destroyed the economic model in Ultima Online on the very first day of live play. ▶ this video

Heard the creator of UO claim this in a short 4 minute video I just watched [1] and thought it was a sufficiently interesting piece of trivia that it deserved to get posted. I recommend watching the video also btw. [1]: ▶ this video