Reviews
"But as MMO gamers, we are indebted to UO. If your game uses the word shard for server, thank UO. If you like player-run economies and housing, you owe them to UO. If you crave GM-run events, you have but to look to UO. Heck, UO even pioneered public questing before anyone thought to call it that. It wasn't just the first full MMORPG; it was also a brilliant game in its day that has struggled successfully to redefine itself to stay alive in an ever-changing genre. The "old things suck" snobs can scoff all they want, but feature for feature, UO surpasses far too many modern games to be ignored."
Massively
"It's actually this near-total anarchy that most sets UO apart from what came after. Nobody had done anything quite like this before, and it shows. While today MMOs have become mostly formulaic and carefully manage player progression, interaction, class balancing, and just generally make sure that the entire experience is a known quantity, Ultima Online faced no such constraints. There was no "common sense" when it came to this sort of thing, and while the kitchen-sink approach of providing everything one would expect from a single-player RPG and then letting a few thousand people play with it at once had occasionally disastrous consequences, it also led to the kind of freedom and surprise that one doesn't often encounter in a modern MMO."
1UP
"Ultima Online is one of the most impressive, ambitious, and absorbing gaming experiences ever, and a real step forward for Internet gaming in general – a look at what the future holds, essentially."
Edge
