WoW's crafting system is pretty strongly inspired by UO's. Actually, everyone's crafting system is pretty strongly inspired by UO's.

That said, the big difference is that crafting in WoW at launch, and for many years thereafter, was very much an adjunct to the primary game of combat. You cannot level up in WoW without combat.

In UO, combat was not a requirement. You could play the entire time, and become rich and powerful, just as a tailor, or whatever.

> WoW's crafting system is pretty strongly inspired by UO's.

Early on in WoW development, I was one of 2 people in the company that played Ultima Online. And I was going to interview in depth about the way I played it. I guess my play style wasn't what they were looking for and they went in the direction of being combat focused like WarCraft.

But that discerning nature is what made the game (UO) what is was. It was very much an organic world. I had 4 different characters in UO across 2 shards and sometimes 3 or 4 shards. And each play experience was different.

I found one play style surprisingly effective. That being my thief character. Because noone leveled up their thieves. They mainly just stole scraps in mainland towns. Players were very cautions in these large places and called out "guards!" too often. And there was a lot of competition with low level thieves looking for quick wins. So I decided to level up my thief character with simple mage abilities & teleport to Occlo to see whats there. There I found a group of thieves and they welcomed me into their guild. And together we devised a plan to see if we could start stealing from all the mages that would congregate. Occlo was a mage hot spot because they would feel safe from thieves because it was an Island. We became a notorious thieving guild of 5 on the island. And called ourselves 5FD. We would literally surround one mage, basically lasso them into one corner of the super packed mage shop and steal their on-hand weapons as they packed their regents. And some mages would make deals with us, so they could shop safely without interference. etc.

Imagine having the ability to craft this kind of play style in any game today.

As an aside, I was reading one of your comments on one of my threads and realized you were the lead designer of UO. Really amazing to meet you here!

I just wanted to say thank you for making that game. I find that even decades later, the gameplay shaped a lot of my intuitive feel for how business works in terms of supply-and-demand, finding arbitrage opportunities that others have overlooked, etc.

You're welcome! We knew we were making something that could be impactful, but we really didn't have any idea how much impact it would have, and it's always amazing to hear stories of how it affected players. :)

I'm pretty sure UO is (or was) unique among MMOs for having non-instanced player-built housing with full customization and decoration [1]. I fondly remember player-owned houses set up in high traffic locations such as near NPC cities, around moongates, along roads, and outside dungeons. It was so cool how you could go into a dungeon and fight monsters for treasure and then come out and visit another player's house which was set up as a shop, allowing you to restock on resources before heading back into the dungeon.

All of these houses and shops were customized and decorated to an incredible degree, giving the world a very cozy and lived-in feel. I know Star Wars Galaxies had player-owned housing but from what I remember the interiors of the houses were instanced away from the main world. This totally destroyed immersion. I can't tell you how many times I was playing UO, crafting in my house, when I'd see people outside wander by and step out to chat with them. Incredible stuff!

[1] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=uo+house+decorations&t=osx&iax=ima...

This. Also, the fact that inventory wasn't slotted (like Diablo and pretty much every other game) made the game feel vastly more real and immersive, for me at least.