This was my first MMO too.  I can remember years back staying up all night playing this game then being dead at work the next day.  UGH!  The new graphics look pretty good compared to what they're using now.  Well, what I assume they're still using I haven't played in years.  UO was one of the best MMO's of all time.  I loved the housing options especially being able to place itmes where I want them in the house to decorate.  The only other game I've found that I loved so much was pre-cu SWG.  They had awesome housing options too.  And UO didn't really need content overhaul, there is plenty to do.  The reason I left is exactly like they said, the graphics were outdated and I was ready for a more visually appealing game.  After SWG I've been bouncing around tho and am still looking for one that I like.  Only UO and pre-cu SWG were games where you could actually just stand around and talk to people and actually not be bored.  I've found no other games with that type of community.  I hate to step backwards but I might, just might, give this a try.  Wonder if there's even any empty housing plots left 

There is easy to find a large house spot on Siege and I believe on some of the other shards too.

A new client will hopeful draw alot old players back to UO and add alot new players. I hope they also will use a little time to fix the balance of Siege, we had far to long been in the shadow of the Trammel shards. All we need is help to our crafters so there again will be demand for their items.

On other shards, items don't get lost, so they made them more expensive and harder to get. That just don't work on Siege where you may lose it in the first fight. Items need to be easy to replace on Siege. EA know that I think but the question is when they will do something to help us with this problem. It have to be soon.

But still, for players who like old UO (1997-1998), Siege is only place worth playing.

I hope some of you will give it a try.

Well Im glad that UO is getting a makeover. I have some great nostalgia from those days in my first MMO. I even went back on several occasions, but it just wasnt the same. I still have friends from my UO days, although we all play different games now, or none at all in one case!! Sad guy!

I am interested in what they will do to revamp its graphics, and the screenies look pretty good. But, I have to say I doubt very much if I'll go back and try it because I just dont like that top down 3rd person view. I have got too used to choosing 1st, 3rd person views and camera angles etc. Just too inflexible for my taste. Although, you never can tell, you might just see me there

I loved crafting and housing back then. Just never managed to get that tower!!!

I also remember lots of late nights camping IDOCS or fighting demons til the server saved..'did we get the xp from that last kill?' lol

Still, I wish them well, and it is only my 1cp worth

Okay this post is from a long time (7 Year Vet, Played Alpha thru friends account, got into Beta officially) turned stone cold hater of Ultima Online.

First let me say the Graphics Overhaul is cool. Good idea, props to whoever thought of it. It looks good, I'm sure it will draw in a couple suckers. Heck I might even be seduced to try it if they offer a free trial for a bit.

But here's what crucifies Ultima Online:

1. Rampant Hackers! EA has proven for 9 years that they cannot or will not stop hacking. The two most common (meaning performed every day) cheats are Duping and Speed Hacking. EA apparently can do NOTHING about duping as they have said it was fixed multiple times but it happens EVERY DAY, EVERY SINGLE DAY! With Speed Hacking they have put a system in place that does not work and just bans blocks of people who may or may not be guilty. (Like the time they banned a ton of IM users who they thought were hacking...)

2. Lack of Support for Game Bugs and Playability Issues! Back in the day when you paged for a GM, he/she would pop up in front of you and ask you what the problem was, take a look for themselves, and sort things out. Ever since EA Officially took over (EA has always owned UO, but officially took over when the original creator was bought out) the GM Support went right down the tubes! They don't come anymore when you page them, they send you a generic response that directs you to their totally out of date website that doesnt answer anything clearly. Most of the things you would page a GM about (hacking, duping, cheating, banning, game bugs) and answered wishy-washy on the Support Website... i.e. It might be illegal to do a certain action, but not illegal to reap the proffits from that action.

3. The economy is 100% shot to hell for several reasons:
a) To many character slots and allowable skills per character. Basically this allows everyone to have a blacksmith, everyone to have an alchemist, everyone to have a mage. No character professions or skills are in demand at all.
b) Duping... many characters have millions and millions of gold from duping bugs.
c) Scripting... UO is easily the most scriptable MMO on the market. And Scripters take full advantage of this... so they are gone all day but when they get home their script has mined 10,000 ingots or 10,000 wood, or whatever the case may be.
d) No-Breakage and Insurance, the two worst ideas every put into UO. Yes this works with some games but UO was never meant for this type of ruleset. Further adds to the disselusion of professions and interactivety as you dont ever need a blacksmith or any type of crafter because nothing you have ever breaks, gets stolen, or becomes unuseable.
e) ... I could go on but for breavity sake I will stop here.

4. Making UO item based was like serving someone microwaved ice cream. It just wasnt mean to ever be served up that way, period. And putting the rocket-science statisics on every item made the game a hassle rather then a joy to play. Before AoS you could get into the game fast... just put on the armor best for your class... usually plate for Warrior, Leather for Mage, Leather/Mail combo for other classes... it all depended on strength, dexterity, intelligence, wether or not you needed to meditate, etc... it was fun!! Now it's all based around the particular stat average on every single piece you wear. It's gay to the extreme! NOT TO MENTION IT COMPLETELY UNBALANCED THE GAME FOR ABOUT 3 YEARS, and still has a huge impact of existing and new players. -- It is the single biggest obstacle for new players, if Aaron is serious about wanting new players they really need to go back to the old system.

5. Trammel/Felucca was a huge mistake. -- The two rulesets cannot co-exist... and it is proved by the fact that Felucca is dead, dead, dead. The only exception is around specific moongates (portals) where PvP occurs. Other then that nobody uses Felucca except for extra storage space.

I know this list wasnt exactly in order but at least you get the picture of what you will deal with if you join UO right now.

I hate to be so negative but those are some of the major problems in UO. Not to mention the complete unbalanced nature of PvP due to the item-based gameplay.

Here are a few things they need to do in order fix UO:

1. No Insurance.
2. Bring back breakage in a big way... not only to armor but to craftables, make houses start to crumble after time, make kegs start to leak, make weapons break after a time of use (including artifacts which will discourage there wide spread use and make a more even playing field and a "funner" experience for everyone).
3. DO MORE TO PREVENT HACKING, CHEATING, SCIRPTING, DUPING, ETC!
4. Bring back GM Support so that they actually show up when you page them and dont send you canned responses.
5. Bring back Counselors! Why? Because EA SUCKS at content and roleplaying and events and helping new players! The counselors were one of the best things UO had going for it.
6. Get rid of Trammel. Bring back the forced interactivity and bring back the community. Stop fragmenting society and localize it on each server so that people need to interact, so that they need each other. That was the original magic of UO. You could play within a circle of friends, or be a big time merchant. MMO's were NOT mean to be played solo, stop cattering to solo players.
7. Please for gods sake get rid of moongates and just upgrade the server equipment. Jeeesus. Talk about hybrid-instancing taken to the extreme. Theres no need for it, it just serves to fragment society even more.
8. Get rid of the Powerup Program.... that is the lamest crap ever! It only takes 2 days of serious playing to GM your character anyway, stop letting people cheat!
9. Only allow people to buy items that do not unbalance the game.. like house decorations.
10. Police Ebay and other trading sites, get your lawyers on it or something!
11. Bring back corpse looting and stealing... the sense of loss/risk made the game playable on so many more levels.
Some changes were good like more secure housing, massive house customization, dark fathers, quests, etc.

I'd love to see UO brought back to glory, but I just dont think new graphics (which arent even up to par by todays standards and are only about as good as Lineage I) are going to bring back players or rekindle interest. Especially since I can play WoW or GW or EVE or EQ2 etc etc for the same or very near the same price per month.

Thats my big question now: What are the people who got turned away, for all these reasons, playing today? Is there a single game that can hold a candle to 98-00 UO? I heard EVE is ok, and i heard WoW is a joke compared to the complexity of UO. What is the most complex MMO out today (besides UO)?

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Originally posted by konradg
Thats my big question now: What are the people who got turned away, for all these reasons, playing today? Is there a single game that can hold a candle to 98-00 UO? I heard EVE is ok, and i heard WoW is a joke compared to the complexity of UO. What is the most complex MMO out today (besides UO)?

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There really isnt anything close to the complexity of UO in the market atm...well, Eve might come close but outside the item stats and ship tweaking it's complexity is about the same as of pea shooters.

kids these days wants instant gratification with developers leading them by their hands to content.

i just joined zulu hotel. a free UO shard. it has 400 people on average online. Im sure thats about the size of atlantic now anyway haha. worth a shot. i think everyone should join a server like this until ea finally realizes its losing everyone to an older version of its own game. 

MMORPG.com:	Ultima started as a single-player RPG franchise, any plans to go back to that route with a new Ultima game? What about Ultima Online 2?
Aaron Cohen:	Right now, our focus is on Kingdom Reborn. We plan to keep UO going with new features and content that will thrill fans for the next nine years.

:'(

Can't wait till they change their mind and create a UO2. 

For anyone who has played or though of it , now is the time to join , dont listen to the people who dont play it , because they have no clue how much work the current dev team has done this year , granted its not the UO of old , but its ALOT better than 1-3 years ago..

I know its a shady topic but I am going to come right out and say it, so please read on instead of deleting my post right away. I have been playing a free server of UO that is set on the Pre UO:R build. I play this server because of how the original "graphics revamping" of 3rd Dawn really started to deteriorate the Roleplaying community of UO. For me, and I feel I can also speak for some of the roleplaying cohort, we have stuck with the UO franchise for so long because of the RP possibilities that have been feisable only in UO. I believe the seemingly failure of the first Graphics Revamp was due to the fact that us old timers respected UO for what it was, it was a fresh change from the current MMORPG market.

With that said, I have not played Official UO since maybe six months or so after the release of AoS. And as for Aaron Cohen, I understand that you are were the Marketing guy so its your job to hype us all up.... Well I will say this... It worked. I think I might dabble about in Kingdom Reborn for a month or so and see if I can get rehooked. I think the winning factor for me will be the RP community which I intend on putting the majority of my efforts into rebuilding from what Old UO was like.

I wonder what Richard Garriot thinks of his baby in the hands of EA Mythic. Lepidus, maybe that would be an interview worth getting :) Well with whatever Richard Garriot feels about Ultima's current course, I wish him the best of luck with his future endeavors with PlayNC and Tabula Rasa.

Also Aaron, you kind of tiptoed around the idea of launching another single player Ultima product, would definately be interested in hearing what you would have to say about any future plans for one.

What happened to the comments on this thread... Like 20 of them are missing... And my post count has dropped from twenty something to 18

I had played nox had the game, but my disc got scratched so no longer have it lol. In any case the game was actually really fun and the graphics were definatly a notch above uo's the gameplay was dead on fun tho much like uo pure action and there were lot's of nice combo's and unique aspects. EA should definatly make a sequal to it someday it just had that addictive gameplay akin to games like river city ransom.

After reading some of the responses here, I find myself in agreement with Ultima’s supporters. I do not think a better MMORPG has yet been made. With all its flaws it still far surpasses any other game in terms of game-play.  I also think that during the course of the last few years this same game play has taken a few sharp turns (and some that merely meandered) for the worst. I played in 1997-1998, took a break because it was far too addictive, and then tried playing on and off every few years. There is definitely something missing, the old excitement is gone. I trace UO’s original strengths to a number of different areas:

1. The skill-based system is possibly UO‘s strongest asset. I have not played many online games (WoW, Horizons briefly, a couple others), but it seems that nearly all, if not all, games currently on the market or in development are level based or a combination of levels and skills. In my opinion, a wholly skill based system is far less restrictive, allowing for a more open ended game, and more freedom of choice. It resulted in characters who were not pigeonholed into one stereotype or another, who were not mere cookie-cutter images of every other character out there.  It is my opinion that this system could easily be expanded to include any number of skills, thus adding a near infinite number of combinations.  The upcoming Hero's Journey may recapture some of this, not sure yet.

2. Harsh penalties for death, and a fully open PvP environment. These elements added a certain adrenalin-based element that is missing entirely from newer player-friendly games such as WoW. Without strict penalties and open looting the game loses that sense of adventure and excitement, the thrill of narrowly escaping danger, a real feeling of accomplishment in PvP. Note: I am not a huge PvPer, definitely not a PK, more of a role-player, but I still like the feeling of danger at every turn.

3. The open-ended feeling of the world. As there were no leveled areas, from the first few moments of the game there was nowhere you could not go. The whole world was accessible to you, if you but had the guts to brave the PK’s and creatures. This made for a far more immersive experience. Also, it was not nearly so user friendly as most games are becoming. You were simply plopped into the world without much of an idea as to what you were supposed to do. It is hard to recapture that magical time (days in my case) spent learning the ropes, exploring the world, and not (as is the case with so many games now) being lead around by the nose from one quest to the next identical quest.  Basically you do not follow some scripted story, you make your own. Also, a seamless world is a must, and one to which the rules apply equally throughout. No mystical other “safe” lands that can be teleported to for example (if this is done at all it should be done on different servers and not different aspects of one server). But by all means make the world bigger, and with today’s technology it could be enormous and varied. Houses could defnitely be made more difficult to come by, as they tended to flood the world. And please, please, get rid of the riding beetles and the giant chicken creatures and all the other silly stuff that has been added.

4. The notoriety system.  Slightly flawed perhaps, but loads of fun as well.

I do think the new graphics are quite excellent and a welcome improvement. Of course it was never really about the graphics so much as the game play, and I feel that this should only serve as a starting place. UO could be amazing again with a simple return to the elements that made it so wonderful and addictive in the first place (and more of them). One thing that always rather bothered me, as a player of the original Ultima series, was that more was not done with the virtues system, there was a lot of potential there as well.

 I might give UO another chance, but I have the same trepidation others have expressed. It is much the same feeling I get when I consider playing Vanguard (though I will likely try it anyway), I really want it to live up to its potential, but the actual experience is so often less than inspiring.  I will need much more to encourage me than nice graphics.

I can see the need for a graphics update if they want to bring in new players as opposed to bringing old UO players back.

I checked mmogchart.com and he's correct that UO is in the top ten western MMORPGs as at Jun 06. So thats pretty good. Or pretty bad for all the other recent MMORPG's that dont make it into the top ten.

So I got interested in UO again based on this interview, and decided to go check out the UOStratics forums. It seems based on these forums that the UO servers are an even bigger cesspool then they ever have been. Rampant cheating and duping have been problems for years. So much duping has been going on that you have to be careful about who you buy stuff from, because you might be banned for buying duped items. There is aparently going to be Punkbuster (used to prevent cheating in counterstrike) installed to help curb hacking problems.

On top of this, I swung by the UO auction site, and it looks like gold is being freely traded for real life cash (1 million gold = $1 USD) and some of the sets of armor are going for 100 million UO gold...

There is no friggin way I would subject myself to this crap again. The only forseeable way i'd even consider rejoining this crap is if they installed an effective cheating solution and they opened a new server with an economy that isn't completely bungled.

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Originally posted by konradg
Thats my big question now: What are the people who got turned away, for all these reasons, playing today? Is there a single game that can hold a candle to 98-00 UO? I heard EVE is ok, and i heard WoW is a joke compared to the complexity of UO. What is the most complex MMO out today (besides UO)?

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Ehrm, I dont know about EQII, but I do know about EvE and EvE is def. not a complex game, heck I'll even go as far as saying that non player content wise it's pretty shallow. DAOC has far more depth to it then EvE imo.

For the record: I'm playing EvE atm simply because I didnt want to play another fantasy mmorpg, I allready played the best one (DAOC).

Edit: on the article great read and actually makes me want to try it. About time EA was going to do something good for it's mmorpg community.

i've been playing UO on and off ever since 98 till now (recently cancelled my subscription nov. 23, 06) due to the lack of people that plays....im sure the newly expansion will impact some people to come back, but its still not going to get enough people back to get it back to the way it once was...i mean sure you have total freedom, u can become whoever you want to be, but without having friends to play with you is boring...i pretty much do things by myself and can kill pretty much anything in the game by myself, but it gets so boring just because u dont have anyone to talk to....the only place you will see people is brit and luna the marketplace, but they just sit there and sell their stuff and not want to actually go out and have fun...my point is like most of other people is that this game is dying..but somehow it always gets me coming back just because of being able to choose who u want to be and not be stuck to one certain class/skill.

How many servers do they have now? Maybe they should combine down to a couple so that there are players everywhere again....maybe just move everyone to Atlantic =)

I might give it a shot when the xpac comes out. I still have my 2 main accounts from 7 years ago.

They will never be able to combine servers because people have all of the landmass covered in houses. How would they merge something like that?

Yeah that's true...havent' played in almost 7 years...didn't they combine servers once arleady tho?

Edit: Reactivated one of my accounts to see some stuff but I forgot my toon is an outcast with 85 short term and long term kills...140 days of being online to get back to blue...I forgot that even in felucca where the ruleset it made for pvp...you STILL get penalized for killing. Stat loss when you res with more than 5 kills...so no way in hell I'm playing again with that horrible rule set. I totally forgot about that.

If they want to make fellucca pvp, then make it unpenalized. It's like in WoW losing a tier 3 peice everytime you die and rez after 5 kills. Just stupid IMO.