Ultima Online: Blackthorn’s Revenge Dev Diary #4

The fourth edition of GameSpy’s UO: Blackthorn’s Revenge dev diaries is now online, talking with Tom Ivey about the process they use when adding new creatures to the MMORPG. Here’s a snippet:

…if the experience of fighting monsters begins to feel redundant and boring, it will cause your players to begin to feel the same way about your combat system. Even if I have fifty different amazingly cool ways to attack a creature, with stunning sound effects and sparkling particle systems galore, if all those encounters feel blasé to me because the creatures all react to those attacks in the same way — well, then it begins to seem pretty useless to have worked up my character to attain all those special moves in the first place.

Now that Ultima Online has a solid base from which to work, our goal is to avoid the pitfalls listed above by adhering to a few core principles whenever we have a chance to add a new creature to the game.