UX:O cancelled to make...

[Soukyan]

Ultima Online: Samurai Empire

So that's why they need all those extra developers working on UO.

I really don't have much to say about it. Caught the story on /.

Screenshots and concept art on UO Stratics

[SirBruce]

Morons.

Bruce

[AOFanboi]

Proof that if you send an electric current through a dead horse, it will twitch and give off the appearance of being alive. Or at least that it will convince some directors of Electronic Arts it's alive.

[El Gallo]

Isn't UO still in the "3 way tie for second" clump of NA-based MMOGs along with DAoC and SWG?  There are zero major games on the horizon looking to make a UO-style game to poach customers (SWG was the only threat there).  I think I would keep milking that cash cow too.

[lampshade]

The idea of being a ninja is fun, but at this point I think pretty much everyone is still freefalling from necromancy and chivalry. I guess there thinking is if they keep adding carrots the horse will never stop running...

[Arcadian Del Sol]

This is exactly what UO needed fixed to put it back on top of the industry - new clothing.

Can I still be ahead-of-the-news by predicting that any new classes/skills in this update will be broken, and never actually implemented?


PS: If you buy this, you are retarded. I mean it.

[kaid]

I still find it funny that when I first heard about UX:O my reaction was its never going to get finished they will kill it to keep gimping along with UO.

So sad and yet so very true.

Kaid

[Arcadian Del Sol]

What I was told (rumors) is that EA wanted an entirely different kind of game than what UXO wanted to be - something that competed more directly with EQ and DAOC, and that to do this, you would basically have to restart the entire project. In that kind of a situation, its just easier to start all over from scratch.

Funny that EA's comeuppance for its constant tinkering, fiddling, and fathanding of all its online development, NCSoft has crept quietly to the forefront of 'Most Anticipated Stuff.' They are set to give SOE a pretty huge run for its money.

[kaid]

Heheh the funny thing is they have started 2 high profile attempts at an ultima online 2 game and neither has gotten anywhere. I think if they ever tried to do a third attempt at it people would just laugh and ignore them.

Kaid

[Sky]

Yeah, direct competition with the EQ-style game is exactly where they need to be developing towards. Ye Gods, how much mismanagement can that company crap out?

I would have checked out TGFKAUO2. I would have checked out UXO. There is no way in hell I'll check out UO, a game I was tired of after playing it for, oh, three years....four years ago.

But hey, bandaging has worked so well for M59!

[Venkman]

This is exactly what UO needed fixed to put it back on top of the industry - new clothing.

In lacking an emoticon, I'm forced to only hope you were being sarcastic there.

EA is clueless beyond fiscal responsibility. It's almost beyond the ken of Office Space and Dilbert to explain the decisions these folks make. They will not compete at all with EQ and DAoC. Those days are done. Heck, we've all here taken turns saying how on the rise NC Soft is. I'm pretty sure we've even all front-paged something about it somewhere in this circuit of sites. But they aren't even competition to EA.

No, EA's biggest competition is themselves. They push out stuff almost inspite of themselves, and a rampant cluelessness that'd only be called "Ivory Tower thinking" if someone wanted to insult Ivory Towers. Or "thinking".

Make a new expansion. Fine. If you've got the playerbase who wants it, it's all good. But don't expect an expansion to take on much newer competition free from the bounds of only-as-fast-as-the-slowest-thinker corporations disinterested in anything that doesn't require downloading new stats and outsourcing a new graphics engine.

I think we've come around to my turn again: EA, get the hell out of an industry you both know nothing about and have an obvious disinterest in learning!.

But license out the "Ultima" name first. To, say, Destination Games...

[HaemishM]

"Ultima Online players, who have strong emotional ties to the franchise and who have hundreds -- if not thousands -- of hours invested in the game have been clear about what they want from an Ultima Online expansion pack," said Anthony Castoro, producer of Ultima Online at EA. "In addition to delivering what the fans have asked for, namely new professions, lands and skills, Ultima Online: Samurai Empire combines the European high fantasy of Ultima Online with the exotic Japanese culture of the Samurai and the Ninja."

Yep, they've been vocal. Ninja, Samurai and Japanese-inspired lands WASN'T IT, YOU MONKEY NUTS PIGFUCKER.

Holy God, I cannot fathom the amount of stupid that had to be packed into one room in order to come up with this shit.