Ultima Online: Updates and Shakeups
Deckard at UO Journal is reporting that some new artwork may have been added to both Ultima Online clients (the Classic and Enhanced Clients, for those who aren’t familiar with UO) with the release of Publish 72. He has posted a handful of comparison screenshots demonstrating some of the apparent changes, at least some of which look to have been taken from the repository of unused Kingdom Reborn assets.
Deckard is also reporting that UO producer Calvin Crowner has left the UO team. I can’t find confirmation as to whether Crowner has simply moved to a new project within BioWare Mythic or whether he has left the company entirely.
That’s quite a shame, because I’m led to believe that Crowner was one of the people behind what I see as one of the more interesting elements added to UO with Publish 72: a series of “lost item” quests that were directly tied to the Virtue of Honesty, and which either awarded or penalized you depending on what you did with any lost items you found.
Ultima Aiera doesn’t really track that much related to Ultima Online, so this news probably won’t be of great import to many of you Dragons and Dragonettes. I know that some of you do play UO, however, and it’s good to keep at least some idea of what is going on in that part of the Ultima fandom.
Unfortunately some of the really new artwork has not yet shown up in-game and I really hesitate to mention some of it or post images, because to use the virtue tapestries that just showed up in-game as an example, they first made their way into the client artwork back in March. They were only activated in-game this week. Not quite 5 months from the time they were added until they were actually present.
I will say this, there are some pretty interesting things relating to UO’s past that have not shown up in-game yet, but are present in the game files, and I believe they are related to the veteran rewards. The UO team appears to really be doing something special for long-time players, to commemorate the various UO expansions. The vet rewards system is still wonky and down because account age, etc. is still having issues with the account management system migration that UO just went through.
As for Cal’s impact on UO, he was producer for around 20 out of the 72 major publishes that UO has went through, he started early in 2008 and was producer by I believe April of 2008. He was very enthusiastic about UO in interviews I’ve read and in personal correspondence with me.
Under his watch, the Event Moderator program was brought back into being, which surprised many people, and the Stygian Abyss expansion and High Seas booster pack were released. The Stygian Abyss expansion is the largest expansion UO has seen, with the largest dungeon ever added to UO. They worked hard to incorporate gargoyles and a lot of Ultima lore into UO with this release High Seas was unique – it was a change in direction for UO away from large expansions. It revamped some parts of UO that desperately needed it. Stygian Abyss and High Seas suffered from problems due mainly to a lack of resources (Mythic was hit by a major round of layoffs not too long after Stygian Abyss was released) but the team has done a lot of work this year to try and correct those problems.
Had Cal been able to keep the full team that worked on Stygian Abyss (and a very talented team it was), UO would be so much further along than it has come since 2009.
Earlier this year, Cal announced that a high resolution artwork upgrade was being worked on, along with a revamped new player experience and questing system. All three of these were very important if UO was to attract new players. We haven’t quite seen the signs of the high resolution artwork upgrade just yet (fingers crossed, next few weeks), but we’ve seen a few indications that they are experimenting with it. We are starting to see what I think is the revamped quest system in Publish 72, using the Honesty Virtue as the first part of it.
Unfortunately Cal had to deal with the fact that a lot of people both on and off his team were let go in the months following Stygian Abyss, along with some being pulled in to help with Star Wars off and on, and then this past month’s account management system migration. With Publish 72, an emphasis shifting back to the virtues starting to show up, and with the first phase of the high resolution artwork update hopefully showing up in the near future, it was not a bad note to go out on, but the manner of his leaving so abruptly and without EA saying much leaves a bad taste in many players’ mouths.
Deckard:
This is a point that has been discussed — and, largely, praised — on Aiera several times before.
@Deckard:
I was just trying to reactivate my old UO-Account but couldn’t find a way to do so. The old login-site seems to be gone an neither the EA-Login nor the Mythic-Login knows my old account name. Did they delete *very* old accounts? Mine is or was from 1998. 🙂
Just wanted to throw the question here, as i’ve red the first time of an account management system migration.
Your account should still be in the system, they haven’t deleted accounts.
On the lower right of the accounts.eamythic.com website, there is an area that has a login for a “Mythic Master Account”.
Put your UO account name in there, but make sure and add “_uo” to the end of it. If your UO account name was “Marco”, then login with “Marco_uo” as your Mythic Master Account Name and your UO password as your password.
If you don’t add _uo to the end of the account name, it will not accept it, as there could be a Marco account for WAR and a Marco account for DAoC.
Look at UOJournal.com on the right side, under “Important Posts and Information”. Look for a post called “Still Having Account Management Problems?” and there are tutorials there for the new system.
Don’t ask why those tutorials aren’t on the accounts.eamythic.com website, it’s a mystery to everybody.
Thank you, that worked. Looking forward to see the new/old UO again. 🙂
What I’ve heard is that we’ll see the first of the actual high resolution artwork before or around the anniversary which is this month. I don’t know if that means in-game or just a formal announcement. It should be terrain/building based.