I just wonder how rough the answers are here.

i've been playing ultima online for years and started playing it some time ago again. But well, the graphics are so old, it's impossible to really enjoy the atmosphere again.. compared to the time were  I was used to rendered sprites which have exactly 1 picturechange if you change direction by 90 degrees and have like 3 pictures if you shoot a crossbow.
have a look
http://images.mmorpg.com/images/screenshots/022003/421.jpg

Ultima Online has its entry in wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima_online

Did someone here play Ultima Online?

It's always the same with the question of open pvp... the huge majority of people become afraid, start to shake their heads, saying that they only want to play their rpg style and are afraid of getting killed with full pockets.
Well, I guess the majority of people never played UO.  I'd say, PVP with item drops is one of the biggest fun of the MMORPG, it's a never ending fun.

"However I don't think it should happen any time soon. There's just no way I could see it being correctly enforced at this point in development, and the last thing we want is for someone to be able to stab another character in the throat in the middle of a crowd, and have nothing happen to them (>_>)."

well I don't know how far the development of the game is, but when would you ever say something like: "now we want someone be able to stab another without smth happening to him"?

in which language is the game written?

""Everything else is for girls"..? Not the best intro you can make here."


well  of course, a duell isn't thought to make you lose all your equipment, thats for sure.

"PlaneShift isn't about going nuts and freaking out over everyone - it's about roleplay."
Roleplay means to me it is a little bit realistic too - to me at least -, I can imagine very well that if I die my soul goes to a place where it can get revived. But getting revived with all items I was carrying? Okay, if a monster kills me and some idiot steals my stuff i'm sad, alright, so this must not happen. But I played Ultima Online with exactly this at the beginning. It was simply a different feeling if you realize that you could lose against this wolf you are fighting and somebody is watching. If this guy stole my stuff he got flagged (free for everybody to kill, guards autokilled him) and lost honor. If he stole often enough he became flagged for ever. Killing innocent people brought you faster to that point. But well I understand, this must not happen, just keep it to a controllable field -> guild wars without item drops? If I want to play a game where I can fight, die and get revived after 20 seconds I play quake... oh well, even there you lose your weapons.

let's imagine you're a miner just mining your ore and selling them so you earn money, when you don't mine, you go hunting some monsters with friends. Well, the monsters aren't too clever, and after let's say two years of gaming you have so much money, you begin asking what to do with it what could be fun. Well, buying a castle sounds not funny enough to me, after hanging some months there and having parties, what will you do? What challenge is there? Fighting some stupid monster for which you need rare equipment? thats wow, that's boring, that's like working.
Running against guild enemies, die - ressurect - die - resurrect.... I just don't understand, why is everybody afraid of losing his equipment and his backpack after dieing if you can chose to be in battle?
No item drops is no real battle, I was present in WoW with thousands of kills, it's just no fun compared to an organized attack on your guild enemies in the main town