How Players Disrupted Ultima Online's Virtual Ecology

Ars Technica · Interview · YouTube title: How Gamers Killed Ultima Online's Virtual Ecology | War Stories | Ars Technica

Why it's here

HN uses it as a canonical anecdote that designers badly predicted player behavior, and in threads about UO and sharding.

What it covers

An Ars Technica War Stories episode in which Richard Garriott and Starr Long describe Ultima Online's planned virtual ecology and how players wrecked it. Players slaughtered the animals and also broke the in-game economy.