Kickin’ it old school…by Julie Whitefeather

There are lot definitions that come to mind when someone says “old school.” One of the more unusual ones I have ever heard or read was the following:

“Cannibal, n. A gastronome of the old school who preserves the simple tastes and adheres to the natural diet of the pre-pork period.” – Ambrose Bierce

This week New Attitude talks about an aspect of “old school” gaming that new games are just starting to catch up with…

If you talk to a gamer about the term “old school” the meaning and reaction will depend largely upon the age, and interests, of the gamer. Some gamers, myself included, can remember the days of a game called “pong” once proudly displayed by a friend as he endlessly watched a small white dot go back and forth endlessly between to sliding paddles.  Not only did this game never interest me in the slightest, I am certain that it is probably used as an effective form of torture in hell. Some gamers can remember the commodore 64 and M.U.D. (Multi-user dungeons). While I never played a MUD before, I used to borrow a friend’s password and go in late at night to play a game called “Empire” on the University of Illinois mainframes back when the only computer screens came in living color, but just one – amber.

But some “old school games” like Ultima Online (UO) are not “old school” to everyone. That game, after all, is still very much around and being played by dedicated and die-hard gamers. While I no longer play UO, I did for a long time, and made some friends there I still have. In fact one of those friends claimed she would be the last person online when the servers went down for the last time, and I believe she will. 

Even though UO is considered dated by many, with it’s over the head isometric view of the little figure running across the plains, it had a lot going for it that many recent games like Age of Conan Online, Lord of the Rings Online (Lotro), World of Warcraft and Everquest (both 1 and 2) cannot match. This is why, perhaps, I have spent what free time I had for gaming, on an old school game – well sort of. That particular game is Sims 1.

If you had suggested to me, just two weeks ago, that I would be playing Sims on my laptop I would have told you to go and lay down until the feeling went away.  Up until level 45 or so, I was playing Age of Conan fast and furious to get to the much touted “endgame” and guild vs guild/pvp that Funcom promised (and have yet to deliver). All of the games just mentioned, like Age of Conan with its monster 30 gigabytes of hard drive space it take space, may look fantastic,  but they are “persistent’ worlds in name only. While in most MMOs the game goes on apace, with players leveling in the virtual world, whether I am online or not, those same players have no lasting effect on the game. At best, as in Everquest 2, and Lord of the Rings Online, the players are allowed to shuffle around artwork that was already produced by the developers. Even then, the players can only shuffle around the artwork that represents furniture within an instance.

But Ultima Online was (and is for that matter) different. With UO the players have a very real and lasting effect upon the landscape of the virtual world. They change the way it looks and as long as that player maintains their subscription, those changes stay in the game. This, my friends, is a rare thing indeed in the world of gaming. You may kill a boss in your favorite instance. You may even shuffle around furniture or other artwork created by developers - but in UO you have a chance to go out, find a level piece of ground somewhere, and lay down a plot.  In the process you have the ability to create any sort of structure, from organic to inorganic; and what you create is permanent. Even in Eve Online the best one can do to have a lasting effect on the game is to change the demographics by controlling a system. 

Playing the Sims brought me back to all that.

Now this is not to say that having a permanent affect on the virtual landscape is always a good thing. In fact, as anyone who has ever played UO can tell you, in the long run it was a very bad thing.  Why? You are I might have fun for hours on end just creating and building on our  particular plots of land, and leaving it up for all to see, ever day. The thing is, so does everyone else.  In the end what it created was large areas of Brittania, where UO is set, through which it is impossible to move without dodging back and forth between narrow alleyways formed by player housing.  In fact, if it weren’t for the trees, the players in UO would have long ago turned it in to a megalopolis - a giant seat to shining sea city with no room for the poor monsters that used to roam the landscape.

Will the day ever come that players can have any real and lasting effect on the landscape. Age of Conan and Warhammer Online both promise end game that will give us just that. Only time will tell if Funcom and EA/Mythic are able to bring it off successfully. Until then…

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather