UO beta sign-ups open

[Furiously]

I'm pretty sure I could be an elf, human, hobbit or dwarf in Ultima 2. I'm pretty sure I could also fly a spaceship. I really liked U2.

[Falconeer]

Give PvP some love.

[Murgos]

Heck Ultima 3 had steamships, cannon and the UPE was a mainframe computer.  That you had to defeat with PUNCH CARDS.

There is nothing that is not in the spirit of Ultima, I'm pretty sure I recall Ninja as a class also, though that may have been Might and Magic.

[Trippy]

Ultima I had guns you could pew pew with, if I remember correctly.

[Calantus]

Ultima 6 and 7 are the only Ultimas that can be considered canon. So sayeth Calantus.

[WindupAtheist]

I really doubt there is anyone who currently pays EA $x/mo for UO that knows or cares about the original Ultima lore from Ultima 1-7.

There are some.  Not a majority by any means, but what the hell?  To the people who don't give a shit, blackrock and gargoyles are still new content.

That video showing some dipshit demoing the new client - it opens with a powerpoint and one slide had a big picture of a dwarf, then he hit next slide and put a big X over it - "there will be no dwarves in UO".

It wasn't an X, it was a circle and slash.  See, there was some event fluff dialogue a while back which hinted at the existence of dwarves.  I unbanned myself from Stratics and proceeded to make as huge a stink as possible.  I even spent five minutes in Paint making a sig, which a couple other people also adopted.



This was months before the aforementioned demo.  At least now I know someone noticed.

PS:  Azaroth.

"This isn't what they should be doing."
"Uh, ok, what should they be doing then?"
"I have plans of my own that don't include laying out every thought in my head on messageboards or blogs."

Well fuck you then.  Next time don't bother opening your mouth about said ideas in the first place.  As if anyone in the universe, outside of me and my very mild curiosity, could possibly give a fuck about them.  Yeah, you couldn't possibly post your UO revival idea on a messageboard.  It would be so awesome, people would steal it.

[dr_dre]

Are they serious about the application.

no 8800's, no vista seems like an old cut and paste from earlier applications.

EA you can do better then this

:)

[Murgos]

You guys ever see something so incongruous that you really can't seem to make out what the hell is going on with it?

I think I just saw something like that.

[Xuri]

From Stratics:

Welcome to the KR Beta!
Jeremy Dalberg
31 May 2007 00:46:10 EST

Coming tomorrow from our friends at Fileplanet, you can download the beta version of Ultima Online Kingdom Reborn. Once downloaded and installed, you can log into your home shard with your regular account and start playing with your regular characters.

We hope you enjoy the new features and graphics. We aren’t done yet, but with your help, we’ll be able to make the new client everything you want it to be.

Keep in mind a few things:

This is a beta test and we are still adding features, fixing bugs, and making improvements. We recommend playing on TC1 or TC4, to get used to the new UI, before playing on your home shard.

We need to you to find bugs. If you find a bug, just click on “main menu” (a button on the right hand side of the hot bar) and you’ll see the button for the bug report form. Open the form, click on the kind of bug you’re reporting, and add a few words of description. Your report will go directly to our QA team. Bugs can be anything from something minor (like a missing piece of art that shows up as a pink box) to a crash bug.

You can also use the Feedback form to deliver suggestions.

The NDA is officially lifted. That means you can post on message boards about it. Tell your friends about it. Have your family jump in and play. Take it to the neighbors and have them take a look. 

Thanks for taking part in the test, and thanks for all your great input.

See you in Britannia!

The UO Team

Hurrah?

[Cheddar]

Shits hot.

[Falconeer]

The stratics monkey are slightly amused, apparently. There is some drama, including a one-armed guy and a petition against ugly paperdolls, but overall looks like the thing is working (fine).

[Falconeer]

Ok, I just tried it.

One word: weird.

EDIT: I might like it. I don't.

[WindupAtheist]

I'm on a UO hiatus.  I'll try it in a month or two when I'm feeling like it and they've had time to iron it out a bit.

[Falconeer]

It's really beta-ish. It sucks, at the moment. Really. Darn!

[WindupAtheist]

I've never been in any sort of beta.  For anything.  Never even tried to get into one.  I like my software as complete as possible before I try to use it, thank you very much.  I'll wait past product release for a patch or two to come out if I think it's merited.

So what's the scoop?  I know sitting animations aren't in, scroll bars are broken, people are having technical problems, and a bunch of other beta horseshit, but it's impossible to get any sort of detailed read from the screeching of the Stratics monkeys.

[Falconeer]

I am afraid there's no scoop. First few things that come to my mind:

- Characters moonwalk
- Inventory/backpack is horrible. Like in ugly to look at, hard to organize and basically user-unfriendly.
- The lack of black space (at the moment) makes you blind anytime you open a window, the backpack, or the paperdoll.
- Characters look grainy and incredibly low-resolution when you zoom in.
- The new radar is awfully useless.
EDIT: - The fonts, oh the fonts... it's unreadable. My eyes oh my eyes kind of unreadable.

And most important of all...

- Combat feels stupid and unsatisfying without the excuse of the old graphics anymore.

Most of the above points could be fixed (I guess) during the next few patches, but that's why I said that it feels SO beta that it isn't fun at all. On the contrary, sucks.

[Venkman]

I can't get passed the tutorial. Crash every time, at the Iron Gate you click to get through after finishing the Worn Katana. Created multiple characters, reinstalled, played windowed and fullscreen, nothing. And of course, I have no idea where to go for support. It's so bad I've gotten a 401 error at the EA site. I assume I'm one of the rare this is happening to.

From what I was able to see: looked pretty, they ripped out my memories and replaced it with a modern DIKU UI, and you have to set an item to be seen as a quest item by the game. For some legacy reason I'm sure.

Edit: And ironically they release a patch I download right AFTER this post and all is working. Nice responsiveness ;)

[Falconeer]

The patch righted a few wrongs. The thing is more UO-ish now, but it still needs a lot of work. The chat fonts are still a pain for the eyes and the heart, I can't get past that.

[Alkiera]

The patch righted a few wrongs. The thing is more UO-ish now, but it still needs a lot of work. The chat fonts are still a pain for the eyes and the heart, I can't get past that.

So, this means they used the same unreadable fonts from the original client?  Admittedly, I've only played on mod shards, and not for very long, in part because they expected everyone to know everything already, and I knew nothing.  But the original client had this awful hollow serif font that was just terrible to try and read.

--
Alkiera

[WindupAtheist]

I wouldn't worry.  For a long time now the old client has allowed you to select from a good variety of fonts, and I can only assume the new one will as well once it's finished.

[Venkman]

The only real issue I had with this version of UO is that the major highlights of improvement only make it more like the standard DIKUs that have clocked UO since EQ1. While the UI now is a bit more approachable in its intuitiveness, it's only because they cribbed the standard hotkey bar, inventory management, equipment management and quest systems (and probably others) from everything that has come since. And the goal is what? To attract new players to a game that still looks as old as it did when it first launched because the basis of comparison has moved light years since?

You enter the game doing exactly the same thing you do in any normal DIKU. The only differences are for veterans who know the breadth the world offers.

It is funny to see how trying to contemporize UO's UI runs against the traditional system. For example, having to "set" an item to be a quest item just so you can turn around and hand it in. I have no idea why they couldn't just have some sort of lookup thing at the time of quest turn in to see if what is being offered fills the task.

Anyway, I didn't have much expectation. I loved UO almost like no other. Starry-eyed newb's first real MMO and all. But it's also the only game I ever left so completely I literally had nothing left to return to. Gave away my stuff, deleted my characters, no emotional pull left. Not sure that makes me objective...

[Xuri]

It is funny to see how trying to contemporize UO's UI runs against the traditional system. For example, having to "set" an item to be a quest item just so you can turn around and hand it in. I have no idea why they couldn't just have some sort of lookup thing at the time of quest turn in to see if what is being offered fills the task.

Or why they didn't just spawn the item with the quest-item properties in the first place, allowing you to just pick it up and deliver it with no more fuss.

[Venkman]

But that's adding more unique items to the database. Oh noes!!1/1 Think of the database man, the DATABASE!

[WindupAtheist]

*rezzes thread*

An unsurprising delay of the gargoyle expansion.

I’d like to inform you that, due to our continuing commitment of resources towards Kingdom Reborn, we will be delaying the launch of Stygian Abyss.

We had previously announced a release date for Stygian Abyss of Summer 2007, and, even though we still have some time left in ‘Summer’ – we will not rush Stygian Abyss out the door.

As of today, we will remove all official references to Stygian Abyss’s launch date from our sites. We’ll announce a new launch date in the future.

For now, we will continue to focus on Kingdom Reborn, getting this expansion into the polished state that we all want.

And then some weird shit they're doing on Test Center, with player-controlled cannons that can blow up a city.

From Draconi, Master of Explosives:

"The Britannian military, in order to bolster defenses in the face of dangers unknown, has some of the world's finest mages working as we speak to make the cannon testing ready for this evening.

A portion of Green Acres has been set aside for a 1:1 scale model of Luna, including the outer walls, to be magically built and rebuilt after each wave of destruction.

Because the cannons feature very new powders and alignment mechanisms,they're interested in testing the aptitude of the civilian population at large. They hope to find new recruits capable of wielding them with devastating accuracy.

In order to adjust to the newer coordinate system, each participant will be given a new tool that gives direct coordinate locations for any given section of land, rather than rely on sextants. Whether this will prove better or worse than old methods remains to be seen."

The event will begin at 8PM PDT (3AM GMT) and repeat on the hour on TC4. A gate to the event area will be available at Castle British.

[Merusk]

But that's adding more unique items to the database. Oh noes!!1/1 Think of the database man, the DATABASE!

UO has a database? Not likely, it's probably just flat files loaded the same way Muds do, considering it's age and background.

[WindupAtheist]

This is the sort of shit Raph or Calandryll would know about.

[Lantyssa]

How many simultaneous players can a shard have?  With being able to put so many things on the ground I would think there is at least a minimal database.

On my MUD, we had to get creative in implementint trash clearing procedures for excess mobs and items or else the server started choking with everything being active in memory.  It's amazing how thousands of pure trash items doing absolutely nothing can grind a server to a halt.  A very simple, but decently implemented, database would have raised our tolerances for garbage quite a bit.

[sinij]

Necro!


This just in, UO still 'alive' in its undeath.

I think UO is way past the point where any new development, regardless of what it is, could make any difference. People that follow and still play it will do so regardless.

[Driakos]

But that's adding more unique items to the database. Oh noes!!1/1 Think of the database man, the DATABASE!

UO has a database? Not likely, it's probably just flat files loaded the same way Muds do, considering it's age and background.

It's a flat file.  .txt style.

[AngryGumball]

Necro!


This just in, UO still 'alive' in its undeath.

I think UO is way past the point where any new development, regardless of what it is, could make any difference. People that follow and still play it will do so regardless.

Thats prolly because they haven't tried anything new to deal with the old problems.

They never dealt with unattended macroing.

They never tried to bring back that old feeling that it was like to go to a Blacksmith and have your armour repaired.

So many servers, bite the bullet collapase a few servers into one, and re-open that freely opened resources with rulesets. I do not care nor want to hear about the problems of multiple developer time on muliple ruleset servers. Otherwise your simply shoving the same old same old down my throat and I quit because it sucked.


Back in 2005 I shut down my grandfathered account 6 houses across 6 different servers, re-openedt he account once at 3month mark to preserve all the houses from decaying for about 3 months only played one of those months was careless let it dawdle on, shut it down again and never re-opened nor tried to sell it, let it all decay, even opened a free trial account once to go see if my houses were there many months after they were decayed, they weren't my ties to UO = gone. Only chars and bankboxes exist.    I admit I bought a couple of those houses from ebay before the grandfathered thingie went into affect.

[Tmon]

On my MUD, we had to get creative in implementint trash clearing procedures for excess mobs and items or else the server started choking with everything being active in memory.  It's amazing how thousands of pure trash items doing absolutely nothing can grind a server to a halt....

That more or less happened in the early days of UO.  I vaguely recall someone posting on VN about depositing trash in monster corpses to help combat up the server.  After several minor flame wars, one of the devs posted that this actually did help server performance.  Don't remember when they actually fixed decay but when I first started I made a fairly decent amount of gold by picking up everything I found (empty potions, discarded weapons and the like) and selling it to various NPCs.

[WindupAtheist]

From this week's "Five on Friday".

"I have an older Athlon and since the patch on May 31st, KR just won't start - after it finished patching the patcher window closes and nothing happens. What do I do?"

We're getting a bunch of reports with this specific problem and we're having a heck of a time reproducing it. If you're experiencing this EXACT set of symptoms (AMD Athlon processor, no windows or UO error message, the game window never loads, and preferably that you know it worked before 5/31) AND you live in the SF Bay area, shoot me an email - jdalberg AT ea DOT com. We'd like to chat with you about possibly getting a very special visit from a very perplexed programmer.

I just find the idea of a dev going to a player's house to investigate a bug really amusing.

[AngryGumball]

From this week's "Five on Friday".

"I have an older Athlon and since the patch on May 31st, KR just won't start - after it finished patching the patcher window closes and nothing happens. What do I do?"

We're getting a bunch of reports with this specific problem and we're having a heck of a time reproducing it. If you're experiencing this EXACT set of symptoms (AMD Athlon processor, no windows or UO error message, the game window never loads, and preferably that you know it worked before 5/31) AND you live in the SF Bay area, shoot me an email - jdalberg AT ea DOT com. We'd like to chat with you about possibly getting a very special visit from a very perplexed programmer.

I just find the idea of a dev going to a player's house to investigate a bug really amusing.

Heh, imagine sending them a list of people you don't want coming to your house, sorry this Developer cannot come this one can't but if you send this one fine, I'll give that one a 30minute window. :P

[cmlancas]

This thread needs more Corp por. Thanks.

[Slayerik]

This thread needs more Corp por. Thanks.

Griefer.