Rise and Shiny recap: Ultima Online

This might sound silly, but my life is super rough. Well, OK, hardly rough at all, and I'm eternally thankful for that. But once in a while, a feeling of burn-out starts to creep into my everyday gaming life, and I need to take a vacation from the constant search for new titles and trolling through gaming forums to recharge my batteries. It might sound completely dorky, but I can understand how actors can seem so insane: They are. Sometimes you just need to play a good, juicy role to reset your creative self.

There are certain games that we can always go back to, games that will instantly provide a feeling of nostalgia for those of us who have played them before. Ultima Online is one of those games, and it might just be the perfect example of a game that we can use as comfort food for our restless gamer hearts.

So I spent an official week taking a look at the game (again) and found about what I'd expect. Click past the cut!

It's important to note that it's sort of hard to give any sort of "first impression" (we do not do "reviews" on Massively) of a game I have played over the last decade and change — a game that pretty much set most of the standards of the MMO genre. I tried, though, to notice anything that might have changed or anything that now sticks out as different or more modern. There wasn't much, really, and despite what seems like a fantastic team of developers, the game appears to have been maintained at the least. For a 14-year-old relic of MMO gaming, that's not bad at all. The fact that the game still pulls in subscriptions should be mulled over, something I did a while ago.

Normally I start a brand-new character in the games I look at for this column. The basic idea is to log in, start a character, and literally tell you what I experience. With Ultima Online, it's sort of a blurry undertaking. I have years of memories with this game, so how would I describe a newbie experience to you? So then I thought that I might re-sub with my old character, the one from 1999. He was my first MMO character, and I really hoped to use him to show off some of the finer things in Ultima, like boating. Unfortunately, Mythic has undergone some sort of absorption process into EA, and EA has decided to roll out Origin, an all-in-one service to deliver its games. Just signing into my old account (which I had played as recently as earlier this year) was a hassle and didn't work. I had to merge that old account with a new Origin account or something, but Mythic customer service had no way of advising me how to do that.

I emailed support and then called, twice. I literally waited an hour and half on the phone at one point and was met both times with very nice yet very clueless individuals. They had no idea how to even find my old account. I was about to give up until Quint from the Sandbox podcast jumped on Skype and walked me through the process. He had to figure it out for himself and somehow stumbled across typing "_UO" at the end of his username. I tried it and merged my accounts. When I asked him how he knew the trick, he said he just tried it one night. Later in the week, his process was verified as Mythic finally decided to write me back. Customer service that slow and unhelpful is embarrassing.

By that point, I was already rolling with my new character anyway. For some time now, there have been newbie-styled quests in New Haven, an area that is made for new players. Strangely enough, I did not start out in the newbie area when my character was first logged in, and I had to open a menu and ask to be teleported to the newbie place. How would a new player figure this out? Accidentally, I suppose. The NPCs in the area holler at you and hand out basic quests that help players understand how to play, but they're bare-bones for sure. Ultima is still very much a game of unknowns when you first start. This might have been frustrating when we started all those years back, but honestly I can only remember being so engaged in even being on the internet that I'm sure I was fine with trying to figure things out.

Veteran players come by the newbie area and throw down newbie gear, and a horse named Moneybags appeared at one point and seemed to poop out million-gold checks near by me. I grabbed two of them before he disappeared. What was he? Was he player-controlled somehow? Was he a GM in disguise? Either way, I suddenly had two million gold to run around with. I bought a horse, trained as much as I could, bought some equipment, and started murdering local wildlife.

Ultima is still fun in a lot of ways. It will run on any device, so it's great for late night netbook gaming sessions in bed. It was fun even on the touchscreen of my netbook! The "enhanced" client is basically a slightly beefed-up version of the classic client, offering better UI enhancements and a more adjustable gaming experience. I used the enhanced client on my notebook and gaming PC and the classic game on my netbook. I like that the developers did not take away the basic feel of Ultima with the enhanced client, although they did go through a few versions if I remember correctly.

I would wish for larger icons for many of the items. A ring literally feels about a few pixels wide, and even selecting a bird to attack can be frustrating if you do not know the "target nearest" shortcut. Much can still be done to improve the UI of Ultima. The important thing is that the core game is still here, complete with all of the wonderful skills that players can learn. If you want to become better at archery, you use a bow and arrow. If you'd like to become a better mage, go for it and use magic. There are 58 or so skills to learn, from glassblowing to blacksmithing to wrestling. To this day there are maybe a handful of games that offer nearly as many skills to learn. It's sort of a sad thing to admit, that the industry has not offered much more than class-based gameplay since. RuneScape is sort of a free-to-play Ultima Online, but the charm and mechanics of Ultima still seem to be ahead of their time. No other game is like it to this day.

At the end of my week, I can say that it's hard to describe the game unless you have experienced it. It's such a part of my gamer DNA that it would be like explaining a recurring dream or favorite food. It just is. If you have never played Ultima Online, shame on you. Go play it now. Download the 14-day trial and experience what we did all of those years ago. It might look really dated and seem very primitive, but imagine the game appearing over a decade ago. This was before World of Warcraft came along and handed out its plastic experience. Ultima Online was tough and sometimes grindy, but you could also own a house and a boat. You could steal from other players and cause grief. It was tough, and that's the way we liked it, see?

I would like to see some more graphical options for those who want them, but I want to see the classic Ultima Online client maintained forever and ever. Forget the museum! May Ultima Online be playable for all time.

Next week I will be revisiting Evony, especially since everyone seems to forget that there is a game underneath all of the advertising. What will I find? Be back here next week and find out.

Each week, Rise and Shiny asks you to download and try a different free-to-play, indie or unusual game, chosen by me, Beau Hindman. I welcome any suggestions for games — drop me a note in the comments or email! You can also follow me on Twitter and Facebook!