[MUD-Dev] Legends of Kesmai, RIP

[Raph Koster]

>From the Legends of Kesmai website
(http://www.gamestorm.com/adventure/legends/):

start quote--->
To all Legends of Kesmai community members:

It is with great sorrow that we announce the departure of Legends of Kesmai
from the GameStorm service. On May 29, 2000, Legends of Kesmai will be
retired.

If you are a regular Legends of Kesmai player, you will be receiving a
special offer from Ultima Online. To ensure that you are able to take
advantage of this opportunity, please check to make sure your account
information is updated and valid </account/>.

We regret that we must discontinue Legends of Kesmai - we understand this is
a real loss to many of you. We are confident, however, that the new and
exciting developments happening with the GameStorm and EA.com union will
more than compensate, and we hope you'll give us the benefit of your
thoughts and suggestions as we try to make the summer launch of EA.com
everything you want it to be. If you have something you'd like to
contribute, please send an email to loktalk at gamestorm.com <mailto:>.

We hope that you will accept the Ultima Online offer and help us preserve
the passionately united community of Legends. You, the players, have
sustained Legends of Kesmai for 15 years, and it is our hope that this
devotion and perseverance will continue to thrive in the Ultima Online:
Renaissance community. The community found in Legends is unlike any on the
Internet - it is a legacy in and of itself, and it should endure.

To the Legends community, thank you for your continued support of Legends of
Kesmai.

Sincerely,
Your Legends of Kesmai Staff

<---end quote

The rant at Lum the Mad's is also good (http://lum.xrgaming.net/):

start quote--->
I HATE ELECTRONIC ARTS SO FUCKING MUCH
Monday, May 8, 2000 - 5:12 PM [Filed by myschyf
<mailto:myschyf at xrgaming.net>]

Islands/Legends of Kesmai. The granddaddy of online games. Fifteen years ago
two guys named Kelton and John made an online game and sold it through
Delphi and Genie. Before they made Air Warrior, before they made BattleTech,
before NWN, Gemstone, Realms, UO, AC, EQ and all the other little games that
have come and gone there was I/LOK. On May 29, 2000 this game and its
fifteen year legacy dies <http://www.gamestorm.com/adventure/legends/>.
Electronic Arts, may it rot in hell and die a slow lingering painful death,
is pulling the plug on this wonderful, delightful little game. The players
of this game, some of whom have been around for the majority of those
fifteen years, are being offered special deals for Ultima Online:
Renaissance. Oh and its hoped that the players will "...give us the benefit
of your thoughts and suggestions as we try to make the summer launch of
EA.com everything you want it to be." The players probably wanted you to
continue the goddam game -- just an idle thought, no idea where it came
from.

These people in for a surprise when they come to UO. I know I was when I
came to UO from LOK. Gone was the nice community I had been used to. What
can you expect from UO? Instead of waiting for you to finish what you are
doing or politely ask if you need help you can expect people to barge in and
help themselves -- to both your experience (although you don't really gain
experience in UO) and your loot. Instead of going to a conference room to
find help when you die... oh right... there are no conference rooms in UO.
You need to download ICQ <http://www.mirabilis.com> and IRC
<http://www.mirc.com> in order to communicate with your guild, your friends
and your community. Well once you have all that downloaded and you figure
out how to use it in conjunction with UO, if your friends have it too and
have also figured out how to use it they can help you. Don't expect help
from a stranger in the game though. This isn't one of those pansy-assed
games where the players are nice and polite to each other and actually give
a shit -- oh nonono. If a player offers to help you its probably either to
a) loot your corpse; or b) PK you out of malice. Welcome to UO.

By the way don't expect someone that kills you either purposefully or by
accident to ask for your forgiveness. In UO people don't worry about killing
each other because if it happens you just turn red and can't go to town. But
that's ok! All you have to do is play for 40 hours and if you don't kill
anyone else you'll turn blue again. Oh did I mention that there is NO
penalty whatsoever unless you kill five or more people in a specified period
of time. This is confusing I know. You really should go read up on penalties
for pking on OSI's web site <http://www.uo.com>. Be prepared to spend a lot
of time looking for the exact information you need. Be prepared to spend
even more time figuring out the convoluted system that is PK penalities.
Better yet why don't I just be nice and give you the URLs to some good fan
<http://uo.stratics.com/> sites <http://cob.xrgaming.net> which have managed
to organize game information better than the company that created the goddam
game and managed to put up message boards because until very recently the
game company itself didn't see a need to put up its own message boards,
despite the fact that the message board sites put up by the fans get
approximately 60-70 thousand hits a day. You'd have thought someone would
have purchased a clue before now.

Somehow, right now, it just seems so appropos that OSI is owned by EA. A
cut-throat, inept corporation that owns a cut-throat, inept game company
that produces a cut-throat, inept game. How fucking poetic is that? Will UO
gain that many more subscribers from killing LOK? Probably not. To be very
honest LOK never did have that large a player base. On the other hand it
didn't cost that much to maintain this player base either. I doubt LOK cost
nearly what one UO shard costs to maintain. But hey we all know how it is,
save a few pennies, kill a little history -- all in a day's work. Its
biznezz. Who cares if you whack a legend in the name of the almighty dollar.
<---end quote

The follow-up posts in the forums are, depressingly, largely "who cares, it
was 14 years old."

*sigh*

-Raph




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