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

[Beastro]

Also Garriot's rat tail and stuff.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Saw this a while ago. Never played UO myself, but plenty of people in the comments pointing out he's full of shit on many points re: why the system fell apart. Namely that killing 'helpless' wildlife was dangerous and outright necessary for new players, and that rabbits and bears dropped the same loot, which was incredibly valuable for crafting.

 

[Talby]

Garryrot really needs to shut the fuck up and disappear back into deep space.

 

[Norfleet]

I find it amusing that he didn't anticipate that players were murderous and would indiscriminately slaughter everything in sight rather than selectively pick out kills. I mean, we're dealing with people who will methodically and systematically destroy every pot, crate, and barrel in a town, just because they can.

 

[Deathsquid]

I find it amusing that he didn't anticipate that players were murderous and would indiscriminately slaughter everything in sight rather than selectively pick out kills. I mean, we're dealing with people who will methodically and systematically destroy every pot, crate, and barrel in a town, just because they can.

The guy was shocked when someone killed his avatar, and was legit surprised people wanted to kill Lord British in the earlier Ultima series games. I don't know why, but he was. I guess we could excuse him with things like "This was new at the time" and "They didn't have metrics" but seriously, what kind of sheep do you expect people to be to not expect them to break the system?

 

[Norfleet]

Yeah, it's like he didn't learn from every previous lesson he had regarding player murderousness. If a thing exists in a game, someone is going to try to kill it. NO EXCEPTIONS.