<story><title>Database “sharding” came from Ultima Online? (2009)</title><url>https://www.raphkoster.com/2009/01/08/database-sharding-came-from-uo/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Alex3917</author><text>Out of curiosity, has anyone made an MMO better than UO yet? I stopped playing those types of games when I got into high school, so I don&amp;#x27;t really have any concept of if EVE and WoW and the like were actually definitively better, or just different and more successful do to being easier for beginners.&lt;p&gt;I haven&amp;#x27;t played any of the Larian games (e.g. Divinity: Original Sin II), but noticed that only recently with these sorts of graphics do these new 3D isometric games actually have the same kind of feeling that UO had at the time when it came out, if that makes any sense.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>chongli</author><text>&lt;i&gt;has anyone made an MMO better than UO yet?&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Nope. UO was one of a kind. What made it special is the way it brought together people with many different play styles and allowed them to form their own communities which were self-policed.&lt;p&gt;Every multiplayer game since UO has tried to learn lessons from it by policing the players centrally, through the limitation of player interaction. The result is that all of the different play styles have gone their separate ways to games which cater specifically to them.&lt;p&gt;This phenomenon mirrors the filter bubble phenomenon that resulted from search engines and social media recommendation engines giving people more of what they want.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Edit: for examples of the games that cater to the play styles I’m referring to, look at Fortnite, League of Legends, Minecraft, Stardew Valley, Diablo 3... When I look at this list it’s rather shocking to me that one game could house all these diverse play styles. The magic of it was that it worked, for a time, until more specialized games came along and started drawing away the player base. Then EA brought in Trammel and split the player base which was the beginning of the end.&lt;/i&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Database “sharding” came from Ultima Online? (2009)</title><url>https://www.raphkoster.com/2009/01/08/database-sharding-came-from-uo/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Alex3917</author><text>Out of curiosity, has anyone made an MMO better than UO yet? I stopped playing those types of games when I got into high school, so I don&amp;#x27;t really have any concept of if EVE and WoW and the like were actually definitively better, or just different and more successful do to being easier for beginners.&lt;p&gt;I haven&amp;#x27;t played any of the Larian games (e.g. Divinity: Original Sin II), but noticed that only recently with these sorts of graphics do these new 3D isometric games actually have the same kind of feeling that UO had at the time when it came out, if that makes any sense.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>egfx</author><text>&amp;gt;if that makes any sense.&lt;p&gt;Makes perfect sense. I was an Elder in UO (a player character with special powers that advanced the storyline) Or basically; as I realize today, an unpaid intern at Origin. And afterwards QA lead on WOW and I can definitively say UO wasn’t a game. It was an alternate universe. It was transcendent unlike any game and blizzard games included.&lt;p&gt;It wasn’t the first as there was “Meridian59” which came out before and people were basically divided into 2 camps. After “City of Heroes” and “Dark Age of Camelot” came out, then it (mmo) became a genre.</text></comment>