New Gallery: Ultima Online Original Screenshots

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Teratha

Courtesy of Joe Garrity of the Origin Museum, and thanks to the hard work of both him and the team at the Wing Commander CIC, Ultima Aiera is pleased to present six screenshots from an early version of Ultima Online.

These were probably taken by Origin staff proper, and were used in various promotional materials for the game back when it first came out. They feature such places as Teratha, Macincia, and Serpent’s Hold.

There’s not much else one can say about these images, except to remark that UO fans might find it interesting to marvel at just how much the game has changed (and how much it has stayed the same) since its inception.

15 Responses

  1. Dungy says:
    October 21, 2010 at 8:20 pm

    I still have my original beta CD. It’s amazing how the game progressed from there. I’ve been told their was an alpha as well that had less developed graphics at the time. Would love to see something from that too.

  2. wtf_dragon says:
    October 21, 2010 at 8:26 pm

    We shall see what Joe and the others can dig up, then!

  3. Dungy says:
    October 21, 2010 at 9:19 pm

    You know, looking at those screenshots, I don’t think they are from the original commercial release of Ultima Online. Look at the paperdoll in this image:

    http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/screenshots/gs/rpg/ultimaonlinerenaissance/ultimaonlinerenaissance_screen004.jpg

    That is what the paperdoll art looked like in the original release of Ultima Online.

    You are actually hosting pre-alpha screenshots from the original non-commercially released client.

  4. Dungy says:
    October 21, 2010 at 9:22 pm

    I guess this sums it up well:
    http://www.uogamers.com/forum/general-discussion/217513-brief-history-ultima-online.html

  5. Natreg says:
    October 21, 2010 at 10:45 pm

    er… I got the alpha somewhere, it’s not a difficult thing to get…

    It’s the one that has just Britain as a map right?

  6. Fenyx4 says:
    October 22, 2010 at 2:16 am

    I’m sure these are pre-Beta promotional pictures.

    I think they are post-alpha but I’m not sure…

  7. Handshakes says:
    October 22, 2010 at 12:00 pm

    Raph Coster occasionally writes (on his blog) about some of the earliest original design for UO and it is absolutely fascinating stuff from a game design perspective. UO really had some cool and grand plans (most of which were cut because of technical limitations at the time), I’d love to see some of them revisited by modern developers.

  8. wtf_dragon says:
    October 22, 2010 at 2:34 pm

    Thanks for the name; I’ve added him to my Google Reader feeds. I’ll have to look for his comments on UO specifically (unless you’d care to provide links to specific articles – 2 per comment will usually not get you flagged as spamming).

  9. Handshakes says:
    October 22, 2010 at 7:35 pm

    http://www.raphkoster.com/2006/06/03/uos-resource-system/

    This is the beginning of a three part article on the planned UO resource system. I’m not sure how to work his blog to find the other parts of the article, but if the first part interests you then a little googling* should be able to find the others. I forgot how big of a read it is, but IMO it is highly worthwhile. It really set off my imagination.

    The first part focuses on crafting, but he later gets into AI stuff/ecology modeling and it is downright fascinating.

    *: Specifically, I googled Raph Koster UO AI to find all three parts of the blog fairly near the top of the search.

  10. wtf_dragon says:
    October 22, 2010 at 7:55 pm

    Thanks. Interesting first article; I look forward to reading the rest.

    But for now, I have to set up an XP x64 VM, so…it’ll have to wait for later.

  11. JC says:
    October 22, 2010 at 10:41 pm

    Those are definitely Alpha screenshots. The models were updated for the beta to what we know now. I haven’t seen any of those screenshots except the infamous running from ship skeleton one.

  12. Fenyx4 says:
    October 23, 2010 at 6:28 pm

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/doctorow/6821391/in/photostream/

    I don’t recall where I first found this. But Raph Koster on Doctorow’s flickr stream showing off original Ultima Online maps, real-life runes and other Origin paraphernalia.

  13. Fenyx4 says:
    October 23, 2010 at 6:50 pm

    http://www.markeedragon.com/screenshots/g524-ultima-online-pre-release-promo-shots.html

    Here we go! It has the promo shots here and a few more too. I especially love the one where a character is saying “This sure isn’t Ultima VIII’s engine!”

    There’s a bunch more on the site too…
    Alpha: http://www.markeedragon.com/screenshots/g507-pre-alpha-3a-original-version-of-ultima-online.html
    Beta: http://www.markeedragon.com/screenshots/g512-beta-2c-ultima-online.html