I just got back from San Francisco, and aside from leaving something in
Heather of the Cove Merchant's Guild car, everything went smoothly. I think
just about everyone who saw and got to play the game (which is everyone who
wanted to) were very pleased even in its Pre-Alpha state.
I think that when the dev team said that this is a Sister Product to UO and
not a competitor they were completely correct, if anything, its the child of
the hot, sweaty love between UO and Ultima 1-9. Hmm, wouldn't that be
incest? Anyway, on one hand it has classes and experience and stats much
like that of the original Ultima Series, in fact the main companion classes
are all there(even if they are there as subdisciplines to the 4 main
classes): Fighter, Paladin, Mage, Druid, Tinker, Bard, Ranger, and Shepherd.
The game takes place after Ultima 9, after the Avatar has presumably merged
and ascended with the Guardian during the Armageddon spell. The Avatar and
Guardian, who I now presume are one in the same person once again for the
first time since Ultima 4, still struggle with each other, sort of like
pouring oil and water into the same bottle, where they were once completely
whole before his rise to Avatarhood, they are now separate but within the
same body I think. The Guardian from the movie looks remarkably like the
Avatar which is why I think that and the whole transition from Avatar to
Guardian in the movie looks like some sort of physical transformation of the
same body. The Avatar, now in some form of godlike state, has created this
new world, Aluncinor, in order to recruit those to aid him in the battle
against, well, himself sort of. Of course, beyond what we know as the
Guardian being the Avatars cast off evil, the whole Avatar and Guardian
merged thing is pure speculation on my part but I seem to remember something
about the Armageddon spell doing that to things. The Avatar created the
world from places he has been in order to send the people through the same
sort of things he had to go through in order to challenge him enough to
become an Avatar (which you can do in game). Supposedly, while it's a new
world, there are at least a few places, such as Buc's Den and Serp's Hold,
which are there.
The game itself is based off the thought of bringing a single player Ultima
experience to the multiplayer arena through Quests and private areas which
allow one to venture by oneself in quests or with groups of friends. The
quests are branching trees where one decision before determines the outcome
of what the next decision was. Supposedly at ship there will be 300 unique
quests, and by unique they mean that there may be dozens of quests that are
go out and kill 10 things but thats considered to be 1 unique quest
regardless of wether its daemons, mongbats, or ogres that you are supposed
to be killing. From what they said, it actually takes them longer to think
up a quest than it does for them to be able to code it and implement it
under the Unreal Engine. They can also add quests while the server is
Online and people are connected, so theres no need to take the server down
to add more quests, which means that quests will be very easy to add later.
They also said something about player suggestions hehe. Take the quest they
demoed and which I later watched done again when the people there were
allowed to play the quests during lunch (before lunch we just got to run
around and kill things in a single map, which was still cool). The quest
started when Cal summoned up a quest npc, which the server will do for you
when it determines that its time for you to get a quest, who was a bandit
with a necklace that he had stolen from his leader which had a soul trapped
inside. The bandit promptly died due to wounds suffered from the brigands
after giving the necklace. Then the necklace spoke and said that it had
been trapped there and if they would release it (sound familiar to anyone
with the Forge of Virtue?). So they got the choice of releasing it, or
going to see the local healer for more information. They went to the healer
and found out that she had heard of the necklace and that a daemon had been
trapped inside. They got the option to go speak to the bandit leader or
destroy the necklace there (I think that was the 2nd option, not sure).
They chose to go speak to the bandit leader, when they arrive at the bandit
leader they spoke to him and it gave them the choice of I think giving the
necklace back or killing the leader. They chose to kill the leader, and
after a big fight the leader was dead, and the daemon was released and angry
at them for not releasing it in the first place, so he wound up dead too.
They all gained Valor virtue points. Later when I saw it, it wound up with
the Daemon being released by the party on good terms and they all gained in
Compassion for releasing the Daemon (which is one of those things that I
would consider making an unbalanced chaotic virtue like Compassion do evil).
The virtue system is heavily tied into the game, and in fact perhaps you
should go to UX:O Stratics for that info as its so long, but neat.
Basically as you do quests you get virtue points which you can either put
towards your virtue abilities or towards enhancing an item with that virtue,
which isn't in yet, but it sounds nifty to have a Helm of Honor or a Sword
of Humility. The virtue abilities are in for at least 3 or 4 of the virtues
I think, and they look rather nice as well, they are things like healing, or
extra damage, and that sort of thing. Also, the whole ascension thing is
awesome, I can't wait to find out what getting 8 avatars of the individual
virtues will do. Supposedly once you become an avatar of a virtue with one
character, you can create a disciple which gains some of that avatar's
virtue's abilities, who then can also become an avatar of a virtue, which
means that subsequent disciples now have special abilites from both and the
first character you made can now go farther than he could without the 2nd
avatar character. I just hope to see an Anti virtue system in eventually,
which might be interesting. Or Order/Chaos/Balance, which people need to
learn that Order doesn't mean Virtue. Order only comprises half of the
virtues through Truth, while Chaos through Love and Balance through Courage.
Yeah, I know, funny eh, all those big bad tough guys that don't care about
anyone and profess a following of CHAOS are actually following the Ruthless
path of ORDER because they don't have emotion or tolerance for the others,
in fact as it is with the orc tribes, the most chaotic thing about them is
the enthusiasm they have when they are being an ass. Well, anyway,
hopefully griefers won't be much of a problem in UX:O.
Graphically speaking, UX:O is going to give WOW a run for its money. The
cartoon like characters actually look at home in the world that they have
built, which is a rather realistic, if exaggerated reality (IE instead of a
forest with lots of little trees and a few big trees, the forest is all nice
big trees which have nice leaves and stuff it looks like). The characters
look good, even though we only saw a small selection of models, heads, skin
tones, etc. Forests look awesome, ice looks awesome, which you can slide
over infact (Ice skating hehehe), Water is awesome, and yes there is
swimming, everything looks awesome. You can jump too. It has a semi arcade
feel to it, with the jumping and stuff but it seems to work very well with
it whereas Ultima 8 got a lot of flak because of it, which is negated
largely by the rest of the feel of the game. It is undoubtedly an RPG, and
it has a lot of Ultima canon in it. The signs and stuff are all in Runic,
though there were a few runes which they seem to have added in which are not
part of the Britannian alphabet. Moongates are in the world, and was one of
the few ways to crash the client as there were no maps beyond them at the
event, so it would try to load a nonexistant map.
You have 4 stats, Str, Dex, Int, and Con, much like from the original
Ultimas as well as 4 paths (classes) and 3 subclasses (disciplines) within
each. You can pick and choose within the subclasses but not outside your
path. They mentioned that there will be a way to reduce a subclass skill
and take up another within the same path, but its not in yet.
There are 6 races, which are a purely cosmetic character customization
choice. They are Humans, Elves(from Ultima 1-3), Orcs (the 3 standard
fantasy races), and then there are Pixies, Gargoyles, and Phoda, which are
rodent people sort of like Ratmen, who are better known as Fuzzies from
early Ultimas. They should all have a wide range of body types (I think I
heard body types), heads, faces, hair, beards, skin colors, etc.
It has a click style combat system, sort of like Diablo, but it rewards
waiting to click rather than click fests. The longer you wait between
clicks, the more likely you are to hit the target, and after each click the
chance to hit reduces until you wait some more, so at 100% attack you have a
good chance to hit, after you hit it will drop to 75% and then 50% and then
25% and then 0%. You can still hit at 0%, its just that your chances are
low, and the only way to raise it up is through skill or virtue ability or
through waiting. Right click increases defense which reduces your chance to
get hit but lowers attack. Defense also lowers over time, whereas Attack
raises over time. It also has a target locking system which locks you
facing your target so its easier to find them and you can just run forward
and follow them wherever they go.
Overall, I think it will be great, it looks nice, and it seems to combine
the quest and open ended feel of Ultima 1-9 with the fun and adventure of a
multiplayer game. I'll definatly have to beta it, despite my computer being
at like the minimum reqs, but I think it will be great.
Wish I had won that high end comp in the raffle (3 ghz p4 with a super
dooper vid card among other things). Ahh well, at least I got roasted by
unbalanced magery in the PVP tourny.
Now if only we can get these quests and the rest of the virtues in Ultima
Online . . .
Torgak
23/08/2003, 20h33
