Review: Lord of Ultima – a Browser based Massive Multiplayer Online Game

This event has a huge significance in my gaming life. This is not overkill. Trust me.

You may ask why. MMO (Massive Multiplayer Online) games have been around quite some time. A big chunk of the gaming economy belongs to the MMO segment. Obviously we all know of World of Warcraft, how it “changed” lives, how it gave birth to an entire new generation of gamers called “WOW dwellers’ (kids who eat, sleep, and drink WOW 24/7), and how WOW has embedded itself as the stereotype image of 24/7 junk food Red Bull gamers. Blizzard has gone from super rich to Fortune 500 minting money out of sales of WOW.

Well, frankly, I have never played WOW (and that secretly makes me proud), nor have I played any other MMO game, until now. And being the gamer that I am, this fact has surprised many. So yes, I’ve started playing Lord of Ultima, a free-to-play massively multiplayer online strategy game, by Electronic Arts.

What made me start playing this game? I’d never thought of myself as being an MMO player. But certain scenarios existed, and one thing led to another. I have a corporate job, and am mostly on tour. I spend a maximum of 2 days sitting at my desk, and whenever I’m at my desk, I have to do no work as such. Just reply to a few mails, make a few calls, and make a few reports, that’s it. I have a good amount of idle time when I’m at my desk and not touring, and thus, I thought, since these shithole corporate computers can’t run any of the games I actually play, why not explore the overwhelming world of FTPMMO browser games? And thus, I chose Lord of Ultima (LOU). There’s a reason why I chose LOU. The Ultima series has been around for quite some time, so it’s a trusted name, plus it’s designed by Electronic Arts. One of the reasons I never took up MMOs was because of the “beta” nature of these games. Balance issues, people cheating, etc. LOU was free of these maladies. Plus, another HUGE plus of this game is that you don’t need to spend hours and hours a day on it. The core of the game is designed in such a way that you just need to log in 2-3 times a day, set up your building cue, and you’re good to go for a few hours.

The game concept is very much like Settlers. You start with a city, and you belong to a continent, which has other cities controlled by other players. Then there are alliances, and you can join one, or create your own. Its always good to join an established alliance with high-ranking players. Then, you grow your city, collect resources, make gold, trade resources with other players, raid dungeons, take over cities, or just raid them for resources, build an army, etc. etc., just like in any other strategy game.

I’m actually doing pretty well at this game, mainly because the foundation of my gaming genes was laid by a strategy game. That game was Dark Reign, and the CD was the first PC gaming CD I owned along with Cricket 97 and F-16. I was 12. The moment I started with Dark Reign, I chucked the other games, and that’s when my gene pool was embedded with the RTS code. So, back to the point, my learning curve in RTS games is fairly good, and in LOU, I’m rising across ranks at a good speed. I’ve reached a level in 2 weeks where the average person reaches it in 2 months, and in these 2 weeks, I don’t think I’ve given this game more than 2 hours! That’s the beauty of LOU. Now I’m the leader of one of the most powerful alliances on my continent. There are a few good players out there, but the majority is just average, or, in other words, a N00B.

From a third person point of view, you should play is game. Its involves a good deep strategy and requires tactics and planning, and to get ahead of the game, you need to know your mathematics.

If this was a review, I’d give this game a solid 7/10. Deep gameplay mechanics, no balance issues, and a very nice reward-centric system keep you coming back. Again, for working people like me, this game is perfect, since you don’t need to put many hours into it.