Comment by idiotsecant
3 years ago
I would argue minmaxing was a thing from day one in uo, the thing that made it magical was that all types of players were forced to play together because it was pretty much the only game in town. Players who wanted pvp, pve, rp, craft grinding, exploring, hoarding, trading, mentoring, scamming, etc all lived in the same vibrant world. MMOs now are hyper specialized for individual tastes, and are all the more bland for it.
grinding out a 7x was like a 1-3 day task, and while yea, it was technically maximizing the skill advancement system, it bears little resemblance to where MMOs find themselves today, running daily tasks for months to eek out a 0.5% advantage.
Minmaxing is not synonymous with grinding. Minmaxing is theorycrafting a game to find the best combinations to make you win the game. People developed combat styles and skills to maximumize pvp effectiveness very quickly in the history of UO, to the point that there were whole forum groups about the best pvp builds.