Ultima Online

Ultima Online opened the gates to a persistent online world back in 1997, at a time when most players were still connecting through a modem. Thousands of people simultaneously inhabited the continent of Britannia, where there were no classic character levels, only a skill system that grew through whatever the player actually did. It was possible to live as a blacksmith, fisherman, tailor, miner, or healer, build your own house on free land, and trade with other players. It was precisely this effort to simulate a functioning society, complete with an economy and the risk of another player stripping you of all your belongings, that made the game more than just a combat adventure against monsters.

Technically it was a two-dimensional isometric client that deliberately kept its requirements modest so that anyone with an ordinary Pentium and a slow connection could play. The world was, at the same time, remarkably interactive: items could be placed on the ground, combined, crafted into other things, and left lying wherever the player forgot them. Visually it has a warm, hand-drawn style that has aged better than the early three-dimensional attempts at the same thing. The sound is restrained, but this only makes the melodies borrowed and expanded from the Ultima series tradition stand out more, giving the world a sense of home and tying it to the older entries.

At the time it was a breakthrough, since the game showed that a subscription for access to a shared world could work as a business model. It also became a textbook of the problems online worlds bring, from player-killing through economic inflation to the necessity of administrator intervention. Later titles drew from it directly and indirectly, and many of their solutions arose as a reaction to what had gone wrong in Britannia. Today Ultima Online is interesting mainly as a historical document and as a game for those who want freedom without quest arrows. What's more, the official servers still run today, and the community remains surprisingly alive.