Ok folks, sit back.
First off, I'm TIRED, I got only 2 hours of sleep last night. Second, I'm hungover. Third, I'm Tired.
But Forth, I am totally floored by what I saw today.
I am going write a REAL FAQ, however that will be tomorow on the plane trip home and posted Sunday I think, but I know nobody wants to wait that long. I took a pad and peen and took tons of notes. So, here you go folks.
Crazy Joe's Notes, totally disorganized.
First, let me explain something, I'm an old Ultima Fan - for those newcomers that don't know Ultima, it was a long time single player game starting in the late 1980's. Its OLD. I'm old. I started Ultima 3 on a PcJr. I loved Ultima. Ultima Online wasn't really Ultima.
With that said.
Ultima X Odyssey is Ultima 10, the 10th game in the series, but made ONLINE.
OSI is deteremined to return to the Old School Ultima theme, but they want to make it ONLINE. Now, keeping this in mind, UXO will NOT Compete with UO - because they will be two totally seperate themed games.
Now, for my notes in NO PARTICULAR ORDER.
THERE IS NO CHARACTER TRANSFER - as this game is nowhere connected to the Ultima Online Universe.
Story : At the end of Ultima 9 the Avatar ascended with the Guardian to a higher plane called "Aluncinor". In this land, the Avatar is thrusted in a new land full of people (You and me) and wishes to bring the Virtues to the lands. We players go on the path of the Virtue to build and create our character.
The Unreal Engine is picked because it made the Dev Team's job of creating a fluid beautifull 3d world so daggum easy, they could not justify building an engine form the gorund up.
This game is Quest based. However, it is nothing like "Start at Point A, go to point B, kill this, Go to point C maybe, return to point A". No! The quest will be TEST of how you, the player, choses a path of Virtue. You will go to point A. You will be forced to make a choice that are you going to excericse JUSTICE and kill the thief, or be COMPASSIONTE and know he's starving and needed the gold to survice and let him go. BUt maybe, if you kill him, you must then take his belongings to Point C, where you get yet ANOTHER virtue decision. This branching out of quest can honestly make ONE quest turn out with many mulitple outcomes. WHen the quest is over, you gain points in that Virtue.
Now, you can travel with others on these quest. The computer will take log of your abilities, and your number of characters in the party and will BEEF UP THE QUEST TO MATCH YOU.
You do not go to point A to start a quest. You will be traveling the land, or just walking around and NPCs will come find you to give quest. If this isn't good enough, you can go to fixed points. You may reject or accept quest.
Combat is fast paced - there is no more "Sandwhich Combat" (You start fighitng, go make a sandwhich and come back)l. yes, that means this is hack and slash. HOWEVER they have plans on making options that let the comptuer do some of the work for you. Its VERY VERY IFFY right now, they took alot of our comments on how to prevent carpel tunnel.
The entire game is built on the VIRTUE SYSTEM. It will be like Ultima 4 - what you decide to do will create you.
You can shift your focus on many virtues, or you can excel in just one.
There are private areas. On quest, to make sure greif players dont come in and ruin your fun, as you and your party go to the quest zone, the engine creaetes a PRIVATE zone just for you and your party to complete the quest. This ensures nobody ruins the fun AND you have Lines of people waiting their turn to finish their quest.
PVP is 100% consensual. There are no player killers. I have yet to get a great explanatino why there even is PVP if this is a Virtue game, best thing is to prove who is the mightiest warrior. There is fighting zones for 1vs1, there is a Gamble ssytem, where the fighters put their money where their mouth is, winner takes all. AThere is Guild War Zones. There are battle zones.
Items - There are NO CRAFTERS. You find items by buying simple ones from NPCs or looting off monsters. As you gain points in Virtues, you distribute them among your charater to increase your stat points (Strenght, Intellgence, Dexterty, and constitution). YOU CAN ALSO INCREASE YOUR WEAPONS AND ARMOR! So even there is no crafters, you actualy can enhance your armor as you see fit with the virtues.
There are 4 "Paths" a character can follow. Path of the Blade, Path of the Arcane, Path of the Nature, and Path of Balance.
there are 3 classes to each path. . IE BLade is Fighter, Barbarian, Knight.
Three skill specilizations to each Path.
Arcane : tinkers, sorcerers, mages (tinkers are NOT tinkers form UO, they are tinkers like from Ultima 5)
Balance : Bards, Necromancers, Paladans
Nature : Ranger...and he forget the other two.
As you build your character with virtues, you reach a cap. You reah this and you ascend to a new point with the help of the AVatar, who shows up in game sometimes they say. You then create a new character, with a new "Discpline", which I can't expain well, but you retain the virtues to an extent of the character you ascended. THere is a lock on names in this game - as if I make a "CrazyJoe", NOBODY ELSE will be Crazy Joe. New abilites come with the new Disciplines. Its unknown if you need a new name with your new dicipline.
The main Objective of UXO is simply to make a game that treats the Ultima Name as it should have been, with being Online.
"Zones" that are fixed in the game server total 55. Private zones created is totaly unknown, as they have no clue how much their server can hold. That is going to be figured out in Beta.
There are Races. THe only difference in races is how they look, not one is stronger, quicker, or whatever. They are Orc, Human, Gargoyle, Elf, Pixie and Phoda.
PHoda's are "Fuzzies" from Ultima 3. the rest are self explanatory.
The interface of UXO is so userfriendly, its pathetic that other games didn't make it this easy folks. you drop and drag your speical attacks to the side of the screen then the button holders appear. Whatever button holders are not used you do NOT see. (SWG people, you have that quick bar up top. If that spot is empty in SWG, tough, you still see it)
You want to form a party, easy, you drop and drag their face from their character ingame to the side on the 'hidde' button bar there, and they confirm, wham, your a party. You want to trade items or explain them, you TALK to someone and then drop the item in the chat bar, they can see it. The items in game are listed like they are in Ultima online AOS, but with 10 lines of information, you can just SHOW them the item instead of talk about it.
The drop drag working interfaceis so easy is not funny.
chats do not appear overhead as there is just overlaping. SWG players know what Im talking about.Chat is at the botttom of the screen. Quest dialoge is at the bottom.
The animation people is so daggum fluid its not funny. each monster or npc can have as few as 1000 polygons, or as many as 5000. When I say Fluid, I'm talking...wow, its FLUID.
When mages run of regs they are out of luck in UO. Not in UXO. every class has a minimal way to defend themselves, mages have pueny fireballs, otherwise gather power from Mana. NO REAGENTS FOLKS.
You do not passthrough monsters. You walk into them, yo ustop.
As of now, ther eis no way to be "EVIL". Anti Virtue is in the idea works.
Night and Day do not pass righ tnow, they are working on it.
Tinkers are not exactly craftsmen.
Houses do not exist. They are planned for a future relase though.
MOunts do not exist. also planned.
If you die, you do not lose anything, and there is temporary skill loss. Nothing else.
There are no Seers or Event MOderators. But Game Masters will be hosting their own impromptu events
The guild sytem is very simple right now, they got the basic code in. They want to code in virtue guilds, that work to join in the progress of one virtue. If they excel in it, they get recognition for it.
Everyone loved the music so much, they may work on getting a CD music score availabl.e
the avatar will make an aperance. the guardian may. ACompanions (Dupre, Shamino, etc) may show up, its totally unknown.
Updates are so easy to the unreal engine, they dont even have to take a server down folks. They can put it in while you play and turn it on when they feel like it.
If the party leader in a quest loses connection, its unknown righ tnow how the other players are affected. If he logs back on, the quest is still active for him as of now.
Rick Hall was very clear why there is no crafting or housing or whatever. The UXO primary focus is "FOCUS". they rather have 100 things in the game that work very well, rather than 1000 things that work sometimes. When this ships, if it all works and its all smooth, then they talk about adding new stuff.
Crafting and Housing again is not in now, but expected - but not at shipping, as a future add on or expansion.
THere is a tutorial planned.
There is no way for guilds to store stuff now, as the code is very basic.
You enhance weapons and armor you find. This is the only way other players can get good armor with the gold they earn - buy trade this stuff.
Banks Exist
Wearable stuff since isn't being made, is found. They do plan to give us "fun" stuff
Capes exist
Moongates are for travel, you ust find them to 'turn' them on yourself. THis way you have to see the entire world before you use them all. Your guild is on the other side of the world, and you want to be with them, no biggie. they plan to have a way for buddies to teleport with their friends to save lots of game time.
YOu can JUMP
WIngs on gargoyles dont mean you can fly.
This is not Britannia, but some britannia towns may exist.
Player customization is not as good as star wars galaxies(which is just mind boggling) but its quite good - you can pick your hair, your head, your build., skinn color.
They plan to release the US and Japan UXO at the same time. They flew two people from Tokyo for this release party.
at shipping there will be 300 quest. there is untold amount of branching off of each quest, but even if the quest only had TWO choices and thats it, that 600 unique endings to quest. all quest last 20 min to an hour. they plan to add 2 or so A WEEK till its just silly how many ther are.
Ok folks, thats all my notes.
Now, I will hook up the digi cam and post some pictures of the event.
23/08/2003, 00h31
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