(UO expansion) You'll all scoff, but I'm still going to jizz.

[WindupAtheist]

Screenshot:  Ultima Online - A Kingdom Reborn

No details yet.

[Murgos]

Kal Ort Por?

edited because I can't spell...  :-D (pun intentional)

[hal]

Uh Murg, could you translate that into stinking newb please?

[Murgos]

Uh Murg, could you translate that into stinking newb please?

Lol, Vas Flam dude.

[Jayce]

Amazing... a UO 3d client that doesn't look like warmed-over ass.

[WindupAtheist]

Details.

Congratulations!

You are one of the very first to get a glimpse of a reborn Ultima Online. We won't be releasing more details for a bit, but we do want to let you know a few things:

   1. We are completely re-building the Ultima Online client with new graphics and a new easier-to-use interface.
   2. It is an in-place upgrade. That means you will be able to keep your characters, items, houses and everything else you've earned over the past nine years.
   3. We are committed to maintaining extremely low system specs. They will be higher than what UO launched with in 1997, but will still be far lower than almost any other MMORPG on the market.
   4. The launch will happen in 2007.
   5. There are many, many more surprises in store.

The Ultima Online development team has been working hard for the past eight months to make real the vision of a thriving, vibrant Ultima Online. We are proud to finally let you in on our secret. Look for a full announcement soon.

I know you probably have lots of questions. Before this year ends, we will answer just about all of them, so keep watching www.uo.com.

Darkscribe
Producer - Ultima Online

[Merusk]

Wow, looks nice.   I might actually try UO if it looked like that.  Not that I'm a graphics whore, but I find that low-res stuff hurts my eyes lately.  Even my beloved MoM gives me the squint headaches.

[Kenrick]

Crop por
lol gaurds help

but seriously that looks fucking awesome.

[Righ]

Uh Murg, could you translate that into stinking newb please?

Lol, Vas Flam dude.

I think you mean Quas An Wis. And it looks like Lineage now. Keke la.

[geldonyetich]

That does look good.

My remaining vestige of skeptisicm is simply this: Are they updating the gameplay too?

Don't get me wrong, I know Ultima Online was conceived as incredibly ahead of its time.  However, my experience with a fairly recent version has been that it's generally awkward and klugdy.  The game update rate is apparently set to be 14.4k baud modem compatible.  Also, it was a very newbie unfriendly experience with a lot of vital functionality hidden behind unbound macros.  There's a lot more to be done with the Client/Server interaction than upgraded graphics.  There's a lot more to the gameplay itself they could do to enhance it.

[Nija]

More shots -

Longish url - stratics board link

[Engels]

That is not a 3d client. Those are isometric, and in this day and age its an embarassment. UO probably originally did isometric because they couldn't do real 3d for an MMO. Nowadays, there's just no excuse. Sorry, Isometric outside of a diablo clone is just blech to me. It has the immersive value of Cubis.

[Trippy]

That is not a 3d client. Those are isometric, and in this day and age its an embarassment. UO probably originally did isometric because they couldn't do real 3d for an MMO. Nowadays, there's just no excuse. Sorry, Isometric outside of a diablo clone is just blech to me. It has the immersive value of Cubis.

The shadows (and their varying length/size) would suggest it is a true 3D client just like NWN, Dungeon Siege, or Titan's Quest is 3D even though the view is top down isometric-style.

[WindupAtheist]

That does look good.

My remaining vestige of skeptisicm is simply this: Are they updating the gameplay too?

Don't get me wrong, I know Ultima Online was conceived as incredibly ahead of its time.  However, my experience with a fairly recent version has been that it's generally awkward and klugdy.  The game update rate is apparently set to be 14.4k baud modem compatible.  Also, it was a very newbie unfriendly experience with a lot of vital functionality hidden behind unbound macros.  There's a lot more to be done with the Client/Server interaction than upgraded graphics.  There's a lot more to the gameplay itself they could do to enhance it.

Given item #1 on the list I posted, we can certainly hope they're addressing these things.  From the way they make it sound, they're building an entirely new client and interface from the ground up.  And I've seen the devs bitching about the update rate in the past, so it's certainly something they're aware of as they get down to whatever it is they're doing.

Other things I've seen them gripe about are the uberness of items currently, and how it's nearly impossible to lose them thanks to the insurance system.  And sure enough, the bosses in the ongoing invasion scenario are dropping artifacts with the "cursed" tag, meaning they drop to your corpse no matter what.  I smell an experiment on their part.  I'll just bet they use this new shiny as the spoonful of sugar to force down some much-needed item nerfs.  I think they want to take it back to the old model of items being less powerful, more commonly available, and possible to lose.

They've more or less openly admitted that some of the decisions made by past dev teams have been fucked up, and I can't help but get the impression that they're going to try to undo some of them here.

[sinij]

Screenshot:  Ultima Online - A Kingdom Reborn

No details yet.

This is all nice, given that it is not doctored and given that it would actually work on hardware produced before 2010.

They've more or less openly admitted that some of the decisions made by past dev teams have been fucked up, and I can't help but get the impression that they're going to try to undo some of them here.

Some?! What part of Turbo-Robot-Jesus-Elf-Clown-Dressed-In-Neon looked to you like a good idea the morning after? Trammel aside, moving from viable economy of supply and demand based on crafting toward mudflation on steroids item-centric Jack's complete lack of economy is nothing short of a mmorpg tragedy. It is nice to see developers realizing this, but isn’t it A LOT too late?

[sinij]

Uh Murg, could you translate that into stinking newb please?

Kal Ort Por - pearl, drake, moss - UO's magic words for Recall, instant travel spell and means to escape danger. OP meant - get me out of here.

[Engels]

That is not a 3d client. Those are isometric, and in this day and age its an embarassment. UO probably originally did isometric because they couldn't do real 3d for an MMO. Nowadays, there's just no excuse. Sorry, Isometric outside of a diablo clone is just blech to me. It has the immersive value of Cubis.

The shadows (and their varying length/size) would suggest it is a true 3D client just like NWN, Dungeon Siege, or Titan's Quest is 3D even though the view is top down isometric-style.

If its a true 3d client, who in their right mind would play it from an isometric angle unless, and I stress unless it was a click-a-thon like Titan Quest, where to be honest, they could have spared me their zoom-in close graphics, since it added jack all to the gameplay. In an MMORPG, I guess I just expect more than an arcade game's graphics.

[sinij]

We like it that way, now go play with your toys while adults talk.

[Tale]

UO probably originally did isometric because they couldn't do real 3d for an MMO.

There were no proper MMOGs beyond text MUDs. There was no such thing as a mass market 3D graphics card. The few true 3D games like Quake 1 were groundbreaking titles. Two years later when EverQuest was released, it was very controversial that they required a 3D card.

I have never played UO, because I got into MMOGs for the very fact that EverQuest was 3D. I was a Gibson/Stephenson sci-fi reader looking for the metaverse/matrix.

[WindupAtheist]

You know it's well-received when Sinij makes multiple consecutive posts in a UO thread without once bitching about Trammel.

I just had an odd thought though.

Let's say it's 2011, and UO is still plugging away.  Someone somewhere will find themselves saying "This game is 14 years old, and it's been ruined for 11 of them!  I'm 40 years old and I used to pwn noob azzes back when I was in my 20's!"

[Engels]

That was my impression, Tale. I remember Mech Warrior blowing my mind when it came out, sometime around the same time that UO came out? Noone expected an MMO that did true 3d. You're right, many of us were jonesing for a Gibson metaverse/matrix, and EQ delivered. That said, 'true 3d' existed already back in 1985 with the original Flight Simulator from Microsoft.

I don't mean to be a wet blanket to UO fans' excitement about a new UO. I just would have expected something, well, a wee bit different after, what, 10 years? Not just graphical improvements on a theme, but an actual different approach, since I thought the original approach was constrained by necessity, not choice. Maybe its like dominos. You just can't really improve on them, they are alwas going to be little rectangular black and white pieces, no matter how fancy they are.

[Trippy]

UO probably originally did isometric because they couldn't do real 3d for an MMO.

There were no proper MMOGs beyond text MUDs.

Archetype Interactive, the developers of Meridian 59 a 3D MMORPG which came out a year before UO, would disagree with you.

There was no such thing as a mass market 3D graphics card.

The first Voodoo Graphics card came out in 1996, again a year before UO.

The few true 3D games like Quake 1 were groundbreaking titles. Two years later when EverQuest was released, it was very controversial that they required a 3D card.

Quake didn't originally support hardware 3D cards (it was software only) when it was released in 1996 and the hardware version, GLQuake, came out in January 1997. Also Ultima Underworld was a much earlier true 3D game engine (you could fly under bridges and stuff) released in 1992.

[WindupAtheist]

I suspect that converting it into an over-the-shoulder game would be A) ill-received by a lot of existing players, B) tantamount to just deleting the game and re-developing it from scratch in terms of expense, and C) unwise from a business perspective.  You don't want to make your 3D expansion box a mandatory "buy this or cancel your account" item, and you certainly can't have people running around the same gameworld on two such wildly different clients.

Anyway, when this comes out next year I will obviously buy it.  Once the release-pains are over I'll let folks know, and then some of you should seriously consider giving it a shot.  It's got no classes, no levels, it's sandboxy, you can custom build your own house down to the last bit of floor tile, and it'll have graphics that aren't total ass.  You know you've wasted money on less interesting premises in the past.

EDIT to reply to a Sinij edit:

Some?! What part of Turbo-Robot-Jesus-Elf-Clown-Dressed-In-Neon looked to you like a good idea the morning after? Trammel aside, moving from viable economy of supply and demand based on crafting toward mudflation on steroids item-centric Jack's complete lack of economy is nothing short of a mmorpg tragedy. It is nice to see developers realizing this, but isn’t it A LOT too late?

If anyone over there were thinking in terms of "too late" would this project even exist?  I mean despite the horrible graphics, fucked up decisions, and general age of the game, it's managed to hang onto 130,000 subscribers while other newer games have either been reduced to cellar-dwellers or died off entirely.  So why not at least give it a shot?

Given the state of affairs at SOE and the fact that EA is still putting eggs into the UO basket, it's entirely feasible that Ultima Online will still be chugging along when the last Everquest and Star Wars Galaxies servers finally go offline.  Now who would have given that even an outside chance of being the case back in the day?

[Tale]

UO probably originally did isometric because they couldn't do real 3d for an MMO.

There were no proper MMOGs beyond text MUDs.

Archetype Interactive, the developers of Meridian 59 a 3D MMORPG which came out a year before UO, would disagree with you.

I thought of Meridian 59 when I was typing, but as far as I'm concerned, it doesn't count. Like The Realm doesn't count. Sorry, I know that's cruel. It wasn't on a grand enough scale to be compared with MUDs and subsequent MMOGs. I also thought of SubSpace, which I tested from alpha 0.79 and played for two years, but it wasn't on a grand enough scale either. I'd count those games as generation 0.5, so I decided to say there were no proper MMOGs :)

There was no such thing as a mass market 3D graphics card.

The first Voodoo Graphics card came out in 1996, again a year before UO.

Yes, but it was an expensive add-on, like today's PhysX cards. I don't know anyone who has one of those, and I could say the same in 1996 about Voodoo cards. Maybe they both count as mass market in strict terms, but it's not practical or affordable for your average user to have one and we can't say today what the trend will be. When UO was in development, I don't think anybody would have thought of doing anything for Voodoos with an Ultima game. Then again, I spent half of 1996-97 without computer technology, living in a tent and travelling on a bicycle (and the other half as an IT journalist).

The few true 3D games like Quake 1 were groundbreaking titles. Two years later when EverQuest was released, it was very controversial that they required a 3D card.

Quake didn't originally support hardware 3D cards (it was software only) when it was released in 1996 and the hardware version, GLQuake, came out in January 1997. Also Ultima Underworld was a much earlier true 3D game engine (you could fly under bridges and stuff) released in 1992.

Hmm, I didn't say Quake supported 3D acceleration, I only said it was true 3D (as opposed to Doom). When Romero released shareware Quake I was on efnet #quake (between server splits) chatting to CliffyB who was hyping something called "Unreal" :) I also thought of Ultima Underworld, which I played through obsessively on a 486DX in a student newspaper office at night (I was the editor), from start to almost-finish (I screwed something up and couldn't finish it without cheating). I thought of saying Descent too, which seemed fully 3D to me well before Quake, but I decided to just say Quake.

Topic? I think I'll try UO when this comes out.

[schild]

The few true 3D games like Quake 1 were groundbreaking titles. Two years later when EverQuest was released, it was very controversial that they required a 3D card.

Quake didn't originally support hardware 3D cards (it was software only) when it was released in 1996 and the hardware version, GLQuake, came out in January 1997. Also Ultima Underworld was a much earlier true 3D game engine (you could fly under bridges and stuff) released in 1992.

Not to split hairs, but if we want to talk about groundbreaking early 3D titles, wouldn't it be a mistake to not mention Descent? Which I'm pretty sure came out in 1995. In fact, I vividly remember buying it.

For my mac.

I've been wrong before though.

[schild]

Let's say it's 2011, and UO is still plugging away. Someone somewhere will find themselves saying "This game is 14 years old, and it's been ruined for 11 of them! I'm 40 years old and I used to pwn noob azzes back when I was in my 20's!"

People say that about Joust and such already. Hell, Street Fighter 2 came out nearly 12 or 13 years ago and people reminisce like that (and about when arcades were still popular0 every day. How many fighting titles have come along that have crashed and burned? You could probably name 10 for the dreamcast alone.

UO may be getting a shiny layer of paint and it's held up so long because sprites do that. Too bad everything under the hood is still wrecked and the game will still be fugly. Just not AS fugly. I hate to say it, but 130,000 people (or whatever) can be wrong and often are.

[Simond]

fethers

[Murgos]

I suspect that converting it into an over-the-shoulder game would be A) ill-received by a lot of existing players, B) tantamount to just deleting the game and re-developing it from scratch in terms of expense, and C) unwise from a business perspective.  You don't want to make your 3D expansion box a mandatory "buy this or cancel your account" item, and you certainly can't have people running around the same gameworld on two such wildly different clients.

If it truly is 3-D then isometric or over the shoulder or first person is an academic question.  It's just a question of moving the camera and all of the previously mentioned viewpoints are available with little to no effort.

[Surlyboi]

Where the dark-elf ninja vampire white women at?

[Tale]

Not to split hairs, but if we want to talk about groundbreaking early 3D titles, wouldn't it be a mistake to not mention Descent? Which I'm pretty sure came out in 1995. In fact, I vividly remember buying it.

For my mac.

I've been wrong before though.

I think you're right. I mentioned it, just above you. We used to have huge Descent deathmatches and team play across a LAN after work. Good times, mostly involving people who had never played a computer game before, with a 50-50 gender balance, pizza and alcohol.

On-topic edit: one of them later became a UO addict and was found sleeping under his desk one morning.

[Merusk]

I suspect that converting it into an over-the-shoulder game would be A) ill-received by a lot of existing players, B) tantamount to just deleting the game and re-developing it from scratch in terms of expense, and C) unwise from a business perspective.  You don't want to make your 3D expansion box a mandatory "buy this or cancel your account" item, and you certainly can't have people running around the same gameworld on two such wildly different clients.

If it truly is 3-D then isometric or over the shoulder or first person is an academic question.  It's just a question of moving the camera and all of the previously mentioned viewpoints are available with little to no effort.

Yeah, I wouldn't guess it's a question of 'would it work' but more of "it would look like shit."   UO's a pretty flat world, given it's top-down nature, yes?  No hills, rolling plains mountain ranges or dips in terrain or twists in the various dungeons.  Doing something like a true 3d w/ movable camera would require a complete redesign of the world for it not to look like ass.

  Not only that, but stuff I've heard about over the years, like "running enough screens away" or "hiding behind a tree/ rock/ house" all of the sudden aren't possible anymore.  That changes the entire nature of the game, and I don't think that'd make current players happy, unlike a simple graphics polish.

[Venkman]

There were no proper MMOGs beyond text MUDs.

Maybe no proper 3D MMOGs, but there were a number of games that would labeled years later as "MMOGs" once the term was invented. But as usual, innovations happen before they get categorized by folks who need to think of things that way.

I suspect that converting it into an over-the-shoulder game would be A) ill-received by a lot of existing players, B) tantamount to just deleting the game and re-developing it from scratch in terms of expense, and C) unwise from a business perspective.

I think that list needs to include: 0) Changing the fundamentals of play. Going to a 3D world for UO would change how the game is played, things like line of sight, how combat works, how decorating works, all of that. This wholesale change would basically require B, and that spawns C. At this point, any change is mostly for the current UO players, and nobody needs to look any further than SWG:NGE to see what happens when wholesale changes are delivered poorly and with the wrong message. Everyone cites that example. Even folks who've never played an MMOG and only talk now because Wired did talk about SWG. It's really the most rabidly pure form of negative PR possible.

Personally, the changes to the graphics in UO alone look good. It's still ISO, but there's obviously room in this world for ISO based games or the entire RTS genre would go away. The screenshot you linked shows a pretty good depth and quality. If they're willing to go that far to vamp engine and graphics, I wonder how deeply they'll go into game play. For the first time since I left in 1999, I feel like there'd be something here worth checking out again.

[WindupAtheist]

UO may be getting a shiny layer of paint completely re-built client and interface as well as new graphics, and it's held up so long because sprites do that it's the only fantasy-based sandbox on the market. Too bad everything under the hood is still wrecked being tossed out and done over minus the decade-old legacy code, and the game will still be fugly look kinda good. Just not AS fugly good as I do in my new party dress. I hate love to say it, but 130,000 people (or whatever) can be wrong and often are.

[raydeen]

Here's my lame-o post for the day.

I don't mind isometric games but the one stupid thing that keeps me from playing UO is this: The angle. Something about UO's 45 degree iso angle gives me a headache. I couldn't tell ya why. I prefer the angles used in Diablo and other games (33 degrees maybe?) UO's angle is harsh on my eyes and brain. It wrecks my perspective or something.

[/lame-o]

[WindupAtheist]

Confirmed on Stratics:  All the horrible neon colors are going away under the new client.  Yay.