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Classic Game Postmortem: Ultima Online

GDC Festival of Gaming · talk · Watch on YouTube

Game history & retro gamingGame designDistributed systems

What it is

A 2018 GDC panel where Raph Koster, Starr Long, Richard Garriott and Rich Vogel look back on what went right and wrong building and running Ultima Online. They share candid stories from the early days, including player behavior and server architecture.

Why Hacker News recommends it

HN recommends it as a transparent MMO postmortem and as the source of the story that the term 'shard' originated with Ultima Online.

  • 5 people recommended it
  • 5 different months
  • 1 strong recommendations
  • first 2018, last 2024

What HN commenters said

  1. “This is a much watch if MMOs fascinate you. They're very transparent. Absolutely great video.”

    Transparent, absolutely great postmortem for MMO fans

    swozey, 2018-12 · Strong recommendation · in “Ultima Online spent years developing a system that was destroyed by players”

  2. “If you're interested, I recommend you check it out.”

    Origin of sharding and UO's early server architecture

    chongli, 2020-04 · Recommendation · in “Custom Game Engines: A Small Study”

  3. “The whole thing is worth a watch.”

    Entertaining stories about in-game protests and more

    codetrotter, 2022-10 · Recommendation · in “Ask HN: Have you ever heard of users demonstrating against software?”

  4. “their Ultima post-mortem from GDC is a great watch too.”

    Great postmortem from GDC

    NegatioN, 2023-04 · Recommendation · in “Database “Sharding” came from Ultimate Online?”

  5. “it is an interesting video for those into UO”

    Likely covers the origin of the word shard

    ksec, 2024-08 · Recommendation · in “Database “sharding” came from Ultima Online? (2009)”

Excerpts from Hacker News comments, linked to the originals. Summaries and labels were written by a language model from those comments.

Topics: ultima online, postmortem, gdc, sharding, mmo, game history

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