As part of “Find Your Next Game”, MeinMMO and GameStar spoke with MMORPG legend Raph Koster. He explained in a livestream what made Ultima Online special in its time and why sandbox MMOs are popular.
Who is speaking? Raph Koster was the lead designer of Ultima Online, one of the most well-known MMORPGs from the early days of the genre. It was released in 1997 and can still be played today.
In the “Find Your Next Game” livestream, he reported that the developers at the time were inspired not only by other games in the genre but also by Harvest Moon.
What was so special about it? Harvest Moon is a farming simulation with RPG elements. The goal of the game was to revive and maintain a farm that had fallen into disrepair.
Some “casual aspects” of this game were adopted, for which Ultima Online was laughed at in the beginning. But as Koster notes, it is precisely these contents that have always been particularly popular.
Fighting is not as important as you think
Why was UO so popular? In Ultima Online, you could obtain resources without killing creatures. That was not standard at the time. Harvest Moon was one of the inspirations for the MMORPG, as Koster reports:
When I think about which games influenced sandbox and also UO, at the time when Ultima Online became well-known, there was the original Harvest Moon.
People reacted like this: “A game centered around farming? That’s crazy!” And in UO, you could then pick apples from trees and shear sheep to get wool.
Raph Koster in the livestream from MeinMMO and GameStar
However, the crazier fact was that other gaming companies reacted completely differently and focused on combat in games:
Other game companies ran ads saying, “Would you rather bake bread or kill things?” They thought everyone who plays just wants to kill things.
Raph Koster in the livestream from MeinMMO and GameStar
What does reality look like? Over the years, it has become clear that many players enjoy building rather than destroying. The sandbox game Minecraft and the Farming Simulator are among the most successful games on the market.
Koster thinks so too:
Today, we can proudly say that they [the game companies] were really, really wrong. Like really, really, really wrong.
The fact is: Baking bread or planting flowers is much more popular than killing things.
The developer legend also reports that Ultima Online was one of the first MMORPGs where players could change the appearance of their equipment or sit in chairs. Still, the game initially had a hard time at EA.
In Star Wars Galaxies, which Koster also worked on, people made fun of the fact that “dancing” was introduced. Today, dances and other social activities are standard.
Raph Koster himself brings up the example of Fortnite in the livestream, where dances even made it into the real world and led to lawsuits.
Mobile games show the popularity of casual content
Koster also ties the popularity of farming and casual content to mobile gaming. Many successful games are based on the idea of sandbox MMOs:
What we see today is that the things that were in sandbox MMOs are now cornerstones for mobile games […].
Looking at the games that are most accessible for people with little time, children, or those who are waiting in line at the grocery store, we see “Love Nikki”, which revolves around clothing, or games like Farmville, which focus on farming.
For him, sandbox MMORPGs are particularly successful when they combine content like raiding and dungeons with elements like farming or housing.
Here you can find more: You can find the complete talk as a podcast at GameStar:
But Koster shared even more in the livestream. He noted that MMO is actually too broad a term and a poor abbreviation.
Alongside him was Gordon Walton, the executive producer of Crowfall. He also has a long MMO history and spoke about what has happened in recent years. Walton argued that WoW-killers almost killed the MMO business.
