Pioneering MMO designer details the hard lessons learned about griefing, skinning pets, and 'time to penis'

pcgamer.com:

At this year's GDC Richard Vogel gave a talk about, essentially, how hard it is to develop systems driven multiplayer games. And if anyone should know, it's this guy. Vogel worked on the groundbreaking Meridian 59, the first 3D MMO, before being headhunted to join Origin Systems as a senior producer on Ultima Online (UO), one of the most important and interesting MMOs ever made. 26 years on from release UO is still going strong(opens in new tab), still producing great stories(opens in new tab), and still has lessons for those looking to build the virtual worlds of tomorrow.

But it didn't launch like that. UO was rushed out by EA, when the developers felt it needed more time in the oven, and so its launch period turned into a battleground. The developers were both trying to get the game to a more stable place, and dealing with the consequences of how people behaved in the world they'd built. «The biggest problem we realized after we launched was it was an open world PvP sandbox,» said Vogel. «What could go wrong? Right? The assassination of Lord British was a telling moment, a really important shadowing of what this game is going to be.»

Vogel is referencing an infamous incident where Richard Garriott, Ultima's creator who had a presence in all the games as Lord British, was killed by a player who tossed a fireball at him. Garriott's avatar had a god mode that would prevent him being killed, but he'd forgotten to turn it on, and so Lord British burned to death that day. Admirably, Garriott decided that was that: He'd been killed fair-and-square, and would not be resurrecting himself.

«We learned about player behavior like no one else learned before us,» said Vogel. «We learned how toxic players can be when you have no