It does fit.

What I miss about Ultima Online really is the camaraderie. It’s hard to explain, really. The one instance that keeps coming back to my mind is resource gathering. It has never been the same since Ultima Online. Final Fantasy XI broke everything in that regard.

In Ultima Online, you’d head into a cave with a pick in your hand and if there was someone else there, or even a group of people, you wouldn’t all be stumbling around trying to grab the nearest nodes quickest–thus engendering a sense of morbid misanthropy–you’d be able to just play the game alongside the person. My fondest memories of UO were resource gathering.

See, you always met interesting people when you went mining. Going mining in UO is kind of like going to the pub. It gives you a lot of time to muse, and talk, and get to know other people – their philosophies, drama, dreams, and hopes. I learned a lot about a lot of people when I was playing UO, and I enjoyed listening. When was the last time you got the chance to actually listen in an MMORPG, when was the last time you actually valued the input of another person in an MMORPG?

Before I segue out of this and to my conclusion, I did say that Final Fantasy XI broke everything. It did. See, it was the first to do the node thing. You had a mine, and in that mine were nodes, and everyone would be scrambling for them. It would create an unhealthy sense of competition, and the vast majority of humankind aren’t good sports, not good winners or losers. (This accounts for people involved in sports as much as those not. It just goes against our inherent nature.)

Humans don’t go out of their way to prove that they are the alpha of a situation (unless they have a problem), but if you put them in a situation where there must BE an alpha, then they’ll do absolutely anything to ensure their dominance over the competition. If you look at big business in the real world, you’ll realise just how much of a truth this is. It’s because ultimately we’re still ruled by the more primal parts of our brains, the more recently evolved parts that are responsible for self awareness that sit on top of the primal brain like an evolutionary ‘patch’ aren’t in control.

TEMPORARY SEGUE. Funny thing about that is that recently it was discovered that when a person is put to sleep via anaesthetics, when they wake up it isn’t the higher functions that wake up or ‘come online’ first. They merrily rest for a little while longer, no, it’s that most primal side of the brain that comes online first, that’s why when we wake up from anaesthetics, it triggers our flight or fight response, we struggle, we want to get away. Then the rest of the brain comes online and we realise our surroundings, the understanding of being safe is fed back to the primal side of the brain, and you calm down.

It’s an interesting topic, really, and neurology is an interest of mine because of reasons I’ve mentioned elsewhere. But for all our bluster, we’re animals, we’re clever problem solvers, and when resources are limited then we compete for those resources, just as any other animal does. So if you put a human in a situation where they feel they need to compete for a resource, then most instinctively fall back on that primal side of the brain. Even in entertainment it becomes far too serious of a thing, and people can take it too far.

Not everyone enjoys this.

If you look at WoW, which is considered by many to be the height of the MMO, it creates a lot of this feeling. You have to compete for so many things – nodes, gear, mobs, rankings, and so on. And in my younger years I might have been okay with that, but I’m getting on and perhaps with age that primal side does settle down, and to be honest, constant adrenaline stopped being my idea of fun a good decade ago. I’m not young any more, so… I don’t like competing with people.

(I even dislike games which do that ranking thing vs. other people where you’re graded from F to A, S, SS, SSS or whatever nonsense they involve. It’s not so bad in singleplayer, but in multiplayer it creates a level of elitism. The person who’s managed to secure the most resources and thus won the competition lets everyone know it. They establish their position as alpha by attempting to destroy the confidence of everyone else. Human nature.)

Anyway, the thing is is that many MMOs have tried to ape the style of WoW. Not UO. That’s interesting, and it’s lead to a lot of MMOs which I feel are aimed purely at the 8-15 age bracket, which is where I think WoW sits. Because the older you get, the more the desire for competition leaves you. And you just want to have fun without all that hoo-ha. You just want to enjoy the company of other people, chat, and pass the time. Doing something with other people is also nice.

That’s what Ultima Online was, at the time, when a lot of people played it. It was being with people, not for the sake of competing against them, but rather just to enjoy their company and presence. In such an environment, which was more like face to face, where you couldn’t really have elongated debates (without looking silly and annoying everyone), it was very easy to be friendly. It engendered friendliness through this, so if the worst happened to you and an unexpected high level mob killed you, you could go up to this high-level guy and ask him to retrieve your stuff.

And he would. No strings attached. That was UO.

And sometimes I wonder what’s become of the Internet since UO, there’s a lot of misanthropy and sociopathy going around. Not everyone wants that, and not everyone wants to be involved in constant competition. I don’t want to be competing for loot, or gear, or mobs, or nodes, or any kind of resource. I just want to have fun. So maybe Guild Wars 2 is finally an MMO that’s suited to the older gamer. The thing is is that in general the gaming audience is getting older all the time anyway, and we’re the largest demographic.

It’s about time the MMO industry realised who the largest demographic to tap is – it isn’t 8 to 15 year olds who have to rely on their parents for subscriptions, but rather us adults, some of whom have far too many years under their belts. And like I said, we’re grown ups now, so not all of us want that endless competition. Maybe decades ago, but now? Fun is a more important commodity. It’s like grinding – I don’t want that, either. I mean, RL responsibilities are work enough, leisure time is leisure. Thus time investments shouldn’t be a thing games do unless you’re aiming at teenagers.

And, once again, UO. UO didn’t make you grind, you could cap out the skills you wanted fairly quickly, and it was mostly about roleplaying and exploring the world. It was about tasks you could do with friends – like getting two or three people together and hitting Destard. That’s the kind of place it was. It was a game where people actually just gave you stuff just because they were nice, it was a place where people were friendly and said hello. It’s something I think we’ve all been sorely missing.

But the competition element that WoW championed kind of ruined that completely.

But now we’ve come full circle. We have someone with the ability to make the right sort of game asking the right sort of questions. Questions like: “Does everything need to be an endless competition?”, “Do we all need to be at each others throats?”, “Would you prefer that person on the horizon be an unknown quantity who’s likely going to be hostile or a friend?”, “Do you value interpersonal competition and shit-flinging, or game mechanics that are designed to engender cooperation and camaraderie?”

Important questions.

Questions that were relevant to Ultima Online.

Questions that I can only hope are relevant to GW2.

And believe me, I do so hope. It’s funny. What am I looking forward to about Guild Wars 2? Getting out there and killing shit? Taking on dragons? Nah. I’m just looking forward to exploring and gathering. I enjoy gathering as a way to pass the time, and with resource nodes instanced to the person rather than globally, then the sort of gathering parties that happened in UO can happen again.

If GW2 is going to be the sort of game that I think it is, then I can honestly guarantee there’ll be walk-and-talk gathering parties. A notion completely unimaginable in a game like WoW.

That makes me so happy.