This is a post that I’ve been wanting to write for a while, and if you look at it’s number, you’ll see that it has been a while since I got the idea and even with that said, I’ve been wanting to write so much about it that I’ve forgotten the original ideas, but I want to get the basics out now, so there it is – abbreviated.
Back when I was a kid, I remember the Ultima games as being releases that many people looked forward to (and back then, even upgraded their systems for). These games started in the era just after MUDs and before MMORPGs. People left the MUDs because there were ever fewer people willing to deal with the headaches of the BBS world and there were only a few people who knew about the Internet and could get on at home. Of course, for geeks working in academia, the MUDs lasted much longer. But even for that group, the graphics of the single player games were very tempting.
As time went along, Richard Garriott started working on Ultima Online, being something that crossed the RPGs and the MUDs of old and I remember thinking that this was something that was never going to take off – it’s going to need much more horsepower from the machine and a really really fast connection. Many of my friends were thinking the same thing as were the editors of CGW (Computer Gaming World) before it died as a Windows gaming magazine. What little did we know and what a ball did Lord Garriott start rolling.
The Escapist had an interview with Garriott about his new game, Tabula Rasa. There are some interesting points to consider there about the nature of online gaming. **This is the part that I’ve forgotten** So while this is still very geek for many people, times are certainly changing. People know about online gaming and even though the majority of the players are still the “hard core” type, you know that there is change afoot as South Park had an episode that was almost completely done inside WoW (hopefully the video remains there for a while – I haven’t been able to see it start to finish yet). To top it off, it has even been nominated for an Emmy.
Now that’s out, I can try to remember what I was going to write originally.
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