Okay… Ultima Online did not become Frankenstien, though I guess in a way it kind of did. Why? Because today, EA starts to ship their new version of Ultima Online – Ultima Online: Kingdom Reborn. Why do I think its Frankenstien like? Well, you’re taking a game that’s 10 years old, which is dying, because everyone is turning to the cool 3d looking MMOs and then they’re making it look “cooler”, by building on top of a engine that probably needed to be re-built 9 years ago. But, I’m not complaining, because I love me some Ultima Online. And anything to make it look and play better, then I’m all for.

What’s good about this upgrade is that you don’t even have to BUY IT if you’re already a subscriber. I mean, it’s free. Super free. See, you can check it out here: Ultima Online – Kingdom Reborn files. Oh, and if you aren’t a subscriber, you can still download it for free. You’ll even get a free 14 day trial for all of your efforts. Aren’t you excited?

This trailer says everything about the game:

So, if you’re into playing old school games, but would feel better playing with a community of old school gamers, why don’t you check out this new release of Ultima Online? You might learn somethin’ these new school games will never teach you.

[found via kotaku]

Post from: EveryJoe

Ultima Online becomes FRANKENSTIEN

Okay, they’re nothing like a first person shooter. I’m just trying to make conversation… geeze.

Don’t get bent out of shape.

Anyways.

Ramble ramble.

According to IGN, EA Games is planning on coming out with a brand spanking new version of Ultima Online called Ultima Online: Kingdom Reborn. It’ll have all the great things that Ultima Online has, like skill building, professions and all that good crap, but with a face lift.

It looks a lot better than it currently looks… take a look:

Before:

Ahhh… look at the old schoolness eminating from this screenshot.

After:

I guess it looks a little better… they’d better start making it look even cooler IMHO. The dragon looks okay, though.

With the upgrade also comes a few new things, such as a new race to play and cool 3D effects.

It’s about time is all I can say! It’s be 9 years since the game has been out and it definitely needs an upgrade.

I just don’t know if it’s enough to steal back all the people who left UO for WoW. I know I’m not going to be giving up WoW to start playing on the new and improved UO servers.

Unless of course they give me money… and lots of it.

The game is suppose to come out some time in 2007.

Post from: EveryJoe

New Ultima Online Game coming out…

In my days of misspent youth and heartache, the very first MMORPG my gawky teenage self played was a little game called Ultima Online. Now, I was a gigantic fan of the Ultima series back when I was a young lass, so it seemed only natural to play Ultima Online. I loved the third person feel, the fact that you could have a profession and gain skills, build house, ride horses, chat with your buddies and all that good stuff. It was great.

Plus it helped me communicate with my dad more often after my parents split up. See, my dad doesn’t like talking on the phone very much and me being his daughter… well, I inherited that same trait. So, instead of talking on the phone, I would log into Ultima Online and go around slaughtering masses of monsters with my dad.

Now, my dad’s character was a bit… eccentric. His name was Strata and he was incredibly strong. He also ran around naked and asked everyone if they were his “Mommy”. Now, it was fun to watch these n00b Ultima Players go “Ummm, WTF is this guy on?”. Like I said, the best part is he ran around naked. Who does that?

Fight, fight, fight, fight… gee I hope I look alright. Like totally, for sure. I even had a manicure.

So, the n00bs, thinking they have an easy kill, would start hacking on my dad only to be killed in 2 or 3 hits. And then my dad would steal all of their stuff.

It was awesome!

Now, when I first started, there were millions of players on their servers just running around, lagging every body’s 56k modems, which is what was standard in UO’s hayday. Since servers weren’t what they are today, the UO people had to constantly to maintenance, which they did at about 2 o’clock every day.

Homies all just… chattin’ foo’

What this meant is that they would send out a message telling everyone to get to a safe spot, they would save the servers as they were and then shut them down. Well, once they saved the server, they would give you 5 minutes before they shut down the servers. This meant absolute chaos! People would start killing other players and stealing all their crap. It was absolutely awesome! And then after they shut down the servers and rebooted them, you were back at your save spot, nice and alive and with all of your stuff.

Ahhhh, those were they days.

Player’s will spend weeks making monstrosity houses such as this.

Alright… I’ve rambled enough. In my next entry, I’ll talk a bit about Ultima Online’s free shards and how awesome those are.

It’s sweet to ramble.

Post from: EveryJoe

My First RPG Post! Yay!