Other Ultima News – Page 6

Ultima Online as an RPG

April 14, 2011 by Deckard

Ultima Online really does get mentioned a lot more than people think. There is an article up on Gamasutra, “RPGs and Suckage” and it looks at things that define RPGs.

Some of the defining characteristics that are mentioned include Loot, XP, Classes, Story, Acting, Turn-based Battles, Party, Lone Hero, and Exploration, the writer assigning loot, story, party, and exploration to UO. I would toss in “lone hero” though as plenty of people do a lot of soloing within UO and always have from the day UO went live, but within the context of the article, it probably wouldn’t fit.

UO’s level-less system, which has always been one of the strongest things going for UO, is mentioned:

First, there’s experience points and levels. This can’t be the defining characteristic, as plenty of RPG’s do without them – Shadowrun and Ultima Online being great examples. As for story, Dungons & Dragons can be run as a mechanics-only hack n’ slash campaign, and procedural games like Nethack have little to no author-imposed narrative whatsoever.

Read: Gamasutra

UO History in Maps and Trinkets

April 13, 2011 by Deckard

I spend a lot of time talking about the future of UO, but it’s always fascinating to look at how far UO has come and where it started. WTF Dragon at Ultima Aiera has posted a couple of articles showing Ultima Online’s past.

The first covers an image of the original Ultima Online map, much of which didn’t make it into UO, which he notes probably due to server or other technical issues, or at least it didn’t make it into UO as shown. If you follow some of the links in the comments, they’ll take you to Raz’s Ultima Online History page which talks about some of the maps of UO as well.

The second article covers over 100 photos of rare items that the Origin Museum has collected, and several of these are related to UO. Some of these, you all may even own:

Click on the images for much larger versions.

One of these days I will get around to posting my UO collection.

BioWare Adds Ultima Online T-Shirt to Online Store

August 6, 2011April 4, 2011 by Deckard

BioWare has added an Ultima Online t-shirt to its online store. It has a newer UO logo on the front and a small BioWare logo on the back.

Not much to say about this one, other than it can be taken as a positive sign.

Link: BioWare Store – UO T-Shirt

Yes Virginia, There will be a New Ultima Online, and a New Sims Online

January 6, 2017April 2, 2011 by Deckard

I really wasn’t planning on wading into a lot of commentary on UOJournal.com – we are still understaffed for what we want to do, but I’m finding myself drawn into some drama.

I’m posting this now because it’s no longer April Fools day and it’s just after midnight Friday night. I really want to get this out of the way. I have contacted some sites that are running a very misleading story that implies that EA is putting together a new Ultima Online, when the links they are pointing to very clearly show that EA is recruiting for jobs related to The Sims in Redwood, and specifically Sims on the web. I wrote about this a few days ago in my Ultima IV, EA, and a New Ultima Online article. It says it right there in the job description – you can read it for yourself. The fact that it’s in Redwood City should have been the first sign that it had nothing to do with BioWare or UO. The fact that it explicitly states that it is a job related to a web version of the Sims should have been even more obvious that it has nothing to do with BioWare or UO. There are other signs as well, but those two are sufficient.

So why did some websites ignore the fact that it was related to a new version of Sims Online and try to play up an Ultima Online angle instead? There are a lot of reasons that gaming websites do what they do. Sometimes it’s deliberate, sometimes it’s laziness and just copying other websites, sometimes it’s ignorance. It’s definitely not a factor of time spent researching the story – it takes you less than 30 seconds to end up at the actual job link.

What’s interesting to me is that a new Sims Online is a huge story and these gaming sites are completely missing that! They are running with a rumor that has no basis in reality and ignoring the story that is right there in front of them. The Sims Medieval is #1 and #5 on Amazon’s top PC games list and The Sims 3 Deluxe is #10. The Sims Medieval is even beating out Rift. Most of us know somebody who loves the Sims – it’s the best selling game in PC history.

How can you miss one of the biggest MMO stories to come around in a while – EA making another attempt at a Sims Online game, and one that may even have serious Facebook integration? I have to go with them being ignorant and lazy, because deliberately ignoring such a huge story in favor of trying to generate some traffic with some kind of Ultima Online 2 story is very foolish from a business point of view. This site is a small site that is ignored by most, and yet we have received a lot of traffic related to people searching on Sims Online, and here you have these gaming websites totally missing this story.

On to Ultima Online stuff. I’ve gotten a lot of emails about my Ultima IV, EA, and a New Ultima Online commentary. Let me get this out of the way, as simply as I can. If you were to walk away from UO today, and come back after EA finishes the graphics, quest, and new player updates, UO will look like a new Ultima Online. Now EA maybe still supporting the Classic Client for some reason, but if you come back to UO and select the Enhanced Client with the graphics update, it will look and feel like a new UO, maybe even more so than with Kingdom Reborn.

Ultima IV, EA, and a New Ultima Online

July 9, 2016March 30, 2011 by Deckard

I have seen the new Ultima Online, and it’s the Ultima Online that many readers of this website are currently playing, just with high resolution graphics and better player experiences, for both old and new players alike.

You read that right. Below are ~~eight~~ ten reasons why I think there will not be a new Ultima Online, but also why I think the current UO will feel like a new MMO if EA follows through on their plans. Some of these I’ve spoken at length about in the past, but given the high interest generated in Ultima IV that is currently present on the web, I think it’s important to point some things out.

I’d also like to point out that the jobs postings that have come to light (link) are tied to a possible second attempt at The Sims Online, only through a web browser this time around. Some have confused them and not actually read the job description, which explicitly states that it’s tied to a new Sims “experience” on the web. Even Massively failed to read through the links and see that the job posting was for somebody to work on The Sims.

Speaking of the Ultima IV story, that’s why I’m writing this – I’ve had several people ask me for my thoughts on it. If you are not familiar with it, read the original Ultima Aiera story about Ultima IV and some of the actions EA is taking as well as the article WTF Dragon posted earlier today trying to clear up a lot of the misinformation that is floating around the various game sites.

For the record, I think there is something happening with the Ultima franchise, obviously with UO as my long-winded post below illustrates, but also in other areas. Whether these are simply the original Ultimas distributed in some kind of DOSBox format or packaging, or some kind of online play, or some kind of update similar to the Secret of Monkey Island special editions, remains to be seen.

On with the list.

1. There are some still left in EA that remember the fiasco with Ultima Online 2.
However you may look upon Ultima Online 2 and how it was handled, EA did not have the ability to handle an MMO that was going head-to-head with an already existing EA MMO, and some of those in the upper ranks of EA’s current management were around to witness it. You can attribute it to not knowing what they wanted to do with Ultima and Origin, not knowing the target audience, or any number of other things. That’s not to say that other companies haven’t done so successfully – Sony has done so with Everquest and Everquest II, and CCP hopes to have two different MMOs successfully integrate, with EVE Online and Dust 514. Dust 514 is an FPS (First Person Shooter) MMO that will be set within the EVE Online universe and the players from each will be able to interact with one another.

If a new Ultima Online were created, while the old one was in place, it would create of hostility and resentment from current UO players if the new Ultima Online were treated better than the current UO, which wouldn’t be hard to do. Everquest II came fairly quickly after Everquest I, within 5 years I believe, whereas current UO players have been around for over a decade. Admittedly, UO’s numbers today versus the era when Ultima Online 2 was in development are much lower, but as I point out below in reasons #5, #6, #7, and #8, the actions that EA is supposed to be taking with the current UO do not reflect those of a company who would be considering another Ultima MMO, because they are indicative of a company who is trying to bolster the long-term survivability of the existing UO.