UO’s 14th Birthday or Anniversary

Today is UO’s 14th Birthday, or Anniversary if you prefer. Either way, it’s been 14 years. By the way, yesterday was UO Forums 9th Anniversary

Last week I started a series celebrating that, and tomorrow I’m picking up where I left off, and by the way, this series will continue into October:
*
UO: The Charter Edition
* UO Between 1997 and 1998
* UO: The Second Age
* Remember Enchantress Emily?

Jeff Skalski, Producer of the Ultima Franchise, had this to say:

Just over 14 yrs ago the world was introduced 2 the term MMORPG. Much respect 2 Origin 4 opening up this space & happy 14th anniversary

Now I could write a bunch of lofty sentences about the impact of UO on the gaming world, or refer you to the discussions going on at UO Forums and UO.Stratics.com, but I think instead we should all join in on the huge celebration happening on the two official UO websites:

* UO Herald
* Ultima Online official Facebook page

Prepare to spend a lot of time on those two pages reading statements from EA and BioWare celebrating UO’s history as well as hearing from the BioWare Mythic community team. From the statements and posts on those two websites, you’ll get a good sense of the respect that UO earned over the years.

People with More Than 9 UO Accounts

If you have more than 9 Ultima Online accounts, you know by now you can’t really link them to your Main account through Accounts.EAMythic.com. 9 is a hard limit.

Jeff Skalski, the producer of the Ultima Franchise, has posted an update on Twitter, saying that EA is investigating a way to link more than 9 accounts to your main EA account.

I’m one of those affected. Even though most of my accounts aren’t active, it was annoying to have a limit. And I believe the limit includes WAR and DAoC accounts.

UO’s 14th Anniversary: A Look at 2011 (So Far)

Yeah, I’m behind on looking back at UO’s history with the expansions – I’m getting in the attic tomorrow to retrieve some missing things from my Renaissance and LBR boxes, since they weren’t were I thought they were.

But I wanted to take a brief moment and highlight some key areas covering the last 10 months or so UO. It’s been a while since I made one of these posts. My overall feeling: cautiously optimistic.

The Publishes
In general, the publishes this past year have been pretty solid in my view. A good mixture of bug fixes and adjustments with a mix of new content. A lot of thought has been put into revamping areas that needed it or had been neglected for far too long. Impressive if you stop to consider that a lot was going on that we haven’t seen yet – the high resolution artwork update, among other things.

The Rustic and Gothic Booster Packs
I have a feeling they were an experiment. If they wouldn’t have happened without being paid content, well I’m glad they happened. We haven’t had any mention of booster packs since then. I still think some things should have been broken out and sold on their own, but what’s done is done.

High Seas and Stygian Abyss
Publish 69 saw the Stage One of the “Abyss Flesh Out” where some of the unfinished Stygian Abyss areas started to be fleshed out. High Seas got a lot of work done to it this year since it came out with Publish 68, but Stygian Abyss really needed to be worked on, since it had been unfishined in many areas. Publish 71 saw a lot of work being done on High Seas.

New Magincia Reconstruction, Virtuebane
The New Magincia reconstruction was strongly reminiscent of something first talked about during the Second Age release – player-built towns. No, I’m not ignoring Luna either. While I saw some would-be Lunas in the making, I also saw some serious attempts at larger guilds making a go at having a player town. It was a unique experiment, one that probably won’t be repeated, but it was long overdue. The planting system for New Magincia was also an interesting experiment, as was the New Magincia Bazaar system. Whether you like them or hate them, they make UO unique. Player populations need to be bumped up on some shards to really make them live up to their potential. As for the events, I enjoyed the Virtuebane events, both the EM and non-EM events. The EMs of the events I participated in were top notch. My only complaint is that they weren’t publicized on UOHerald.com.

Honesty Virtue and Mini-Quests
The Honesty Virtue/quest (aka the “Lost and Found” quest) that arrived with Publish 72 are getting a lot of people out and about and walking around Britannia, in areas that they might not normally otherwise go. I have a feeling this was what Mesanna was talking about in February as far as getting away from the mob-killing quests that have no point to them. This was also a part of the Virtue system that everybody has talked about for years. I like it a lot and look forward to the other virtues having virtue-specific quests built around them.

Account Migration
This is the last UO-specific issue I’m going to mention. This was a major lowpoint of UO’s storied history. It’s painful, it’s caused problems for a lot of people, some of whom are still having issues. I’m even having a few issues. I don’t know what else to say, other than BioWare Mythic really dropped the ball on communicating with us before, during, and after it happeend. I don’t know who first said this, but the fact that they included UO in the migration is a good sign that somebody wanted UO around, but UO players were treated poorly with the lack of instructions and help early on, instead forcing players to rely on one another, even when EA’s customer service representatives didn’t know what to do themselves. And before any DAoC or WAR players jump on me, yes their games were affected by the migration as well. UO’s problems seemed worse though.

Dark Age of Camelot / Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning
If you haven’t visitied the Dark Age of Camelot website, do so. It’s been improved. If you read through the stories, you’ll see articles from the developers talking about work they are doing to improve the new player experience. Something is happening with DAoC. Warhammer, I’m not really following the Wrath of Heroes game, which could be seen as an attempt to bring players into WAR. It reminds me of Ultima X in some ways. Still, attention is being paid to the Warhammer franchise.

Ultima Franchise Producer
I’m ending with this one, since it’s the most important one. UltimaForever.com was launched, GOG.com released a bunch of Ultima and other Origin games for players to buy and download at cheap prices. If you’re not familiar with GOG, basically they are wrapping those old DOS games up in a software wrapper to easily allow you to download and play them on modern operating systems. This is generating interest in Ultima. Something is afoot with the Ultima franchise. Last week, Jeff Skalski confirmed he was the Ultima Franchise Producer and that UO was one of the projects under him. What this means for us exactly, I don’t know. I get a sense that things are in good hands.

Yesterday he gave us a brief peek into UO’s future, when asked about EA’s plans for UO:

Continue to grow the game by revitalizing old areas forgotten, add new things to keep players happy & crush as many bugs as we can.”

Now I hope when I revisit this topic at the end of the year, I’ll have even more to talk about, including the art update, but putting aside the migration problems, it’s been a solid year for UO. Last year had a lot of us worried about the future of UO.

A Peek at the Future of UO from the Ultima Franchise Producer

Updated: Read the full sequence below.

In response to the following question from rlakies on Twitter:
“Whats your plans for Ultima online? Will EA invest and make the game a hit again? or is the 2D where its at forever?”

The new Ultima Franchise Producer, Jeff Skalski, responded:
“Continue to grow the game by revitalizing old areas forgotten, add new things to keep players happy & crush as many bugs as we can.”

I then asked:
“Does that include the high resolution artwork update?”

And Jeff responded:
“I think high resolution artwork would make players happy, right?”

A fitting statement given that the 14th Anniversary is days away. Looking forward to the artwork update.

UO’s 14th Anniversary: Remember Enchantress Emily?

Ultima Online: Renaissance: Enchantress Emily

UO.com actually still has her around, with the following advertisement:

Hail Former Citizen of Britannia!

I bring you greetings from Lord British. Return to Britannia and see for yourself the brave new world emerging there.

You’ll be surprised at how much as changed!

I hope to see you there…

Enchantress Emily

New Safe World equal to the size of the original Britannia where player vs. player combat is consensual

A Safe “Haven”, a city restricted to new players where over 2000 volunteers are available to answer questions and provide guidance.

Expanded Housing Areas with double the amount of land mass available for housing, where the dream of being the master of your own castle can become a reality.

Live Events – thousands of special events where players determine outcomes; shaping the destiny of the world.

My UO – your own personal web page offering your character graphics and information, event updates, and exclusive membership benefits.

And a German version
and Japanese!
and Korean!

Why am I talking about her? She was kind of an iconic image. She wasn’t on all boxes, in fact, not very many at all – I know there was an insert for the US/Canada releases that puts her in the “O” of the UO Logo:

Ultima Online: Renaissance - US Release

But in many places it was a plain box, such as the French release:

Ultima Online: Renaissance - French Release

When I post my review of UO: Renaissance, I’ll explain the insert thing – the cover folds out and has pictures of real people and their UO avatars/alter-egos.

There was a lot going on, and the whole “enchantress” motif was carried over into some of the in-game fiction, with this article from the Britannia News Network:

It was a peaceful day at Yew Abbey, with not a breath of wind. Brother Ambrose and a small band of monks prayed and meditated in the Ankh chapel in Yew Abbey, preparing for their pilgrimage to the Shrine of Justice. Suddenly the door of the chapel was flung open and a group of adventurers entered. “Brother Ambrose, beware!” they warned. “We just found out that Vilendra, the Emerald Enchantress, plans to ambush your whole party of monks.”

Vilendra was obviously a very vile Enchantress, unlike our Emily.

This was a very exciting time for UO – the player population had grown to over 150,000. In an effort to communicate with, and encourage the UO community, in May of 2000 the UO.com forums were launched and you had a lot of very passionate people all of the sudden talking to one another on UO.com and interacting with developers and UO’s community staff. I’m watching the Star Wars: The Old Republic official forums and seeing some very passionate people as well.

Now if you want to know why this has its own topic, well this was the smaller of the four articles I wrote about UO:R, and I just thought it was kind of interesting because of the symbolism involved. Let us not forget that UO still carried the Mature rating at that time, but that the Enchantress Emily image was not present on all boxes. What was very noticeable about all boxes is that they had a “lighter” or white design, in most cases white with a globe of Sosaria behind the UO logo, emphasizing the virtual world aspects of UO. When you look at the previous expansion of UO, The Second Age: you see a darker design:

Ultima Online: The Second Age (Box Front)

Talk about your symbolism. We move on from evil being inflicted upon the world and a dark box, to a light or white box, with a globe/map of sorts as the background, and along with that we received Trammel, where the non-PvPers were able to do their thing in peace. Inside the front cover, you can read brief biographiess of real-life players and their in-game characters, stressing the communal aspects of UO. It was an attempt to really drive home the fact that you’re not playing with mere computer characters, but that behind those characters there were people from around the world. Incredibly symbolic when you start to look at it in that light. Whoever designed the box art for Renaissance deserved an award for that. They got it right.

As for my other articles, I’m working on them now, but they are big and I’m trimming them down. One is a review of UO:R and what it came with, the other is a look at the agonies and joys of the Trammel land rush.