You are here: Players in Ultima Online advanced by actually using the skills they wanted to become proficient in. Players that wanted to become swordsmen would have to physically equip a sword and start killing monsters with a sword weapon equipped. Players wouldn’t advance based on how many monsters they killed, but rather how many times used their sword in combat. The game had over 30 different skills, all of which could be used by anyone in the eve isk game. The game did have a skill cap of “700” which meant that players could only have a total of 700 skill points and Each skill could be improved up to a maximum of 100. This system allowed players to be 100% in control of their characters development. If you wanted to have 50 of skill X and 70 of skill y and 25 of skill z you had the freedom to do so. There were almost infinite different ways to grow your character. Another positive aspect about Ultima Online’s skill system was that players could at any time decide to forget a particular skill and work on another one, which allowed players to reshape their characters from a warrior to a blacksmith at anytime. This sort of character development led to the birth of hybrid classes like “Tank Mage” where players would advance a mixture of both warrior skills and magician skills.
Unfortunately, developers today have all almost abandoned the idea of non level based progression. Since the wild success of World of Warcraft, developers will most likely try and copy the success that World of Warcraft. Developers simply don’t want to risk trying to reinvent a system that has been working for years.
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