New UO Client And More!

[Midnightdragon]

I was just listening in on the town hall being held right now.

They announced the stygian abyss expansion as a sure thing and started taking questions and answering them.

Stygian abyss will include:

Gargoyles as a playable race and as a gargoyle you can FLY at mount speeds and dismount will knock you out of flight.

A new crafting system that lets you control what goes on the items you make.

New lands that will include housing area and the stygian abyss dungeon will lead to this area. Reds may enter parts of the new lands and parts of the new areas may only be accessed by gargoyles so you will need to fly to these areas.

A new client using the UOKR clients technology. The new client is called the Stygian Abyss Client and is a rebuilt KR client that fixes many of the problems people had with the KR client. No this is not just a polished KR client it is a NEW client and is built using the same technology as the KR client the 2 are very different though. The new client currently has over 1 year of development time invested into it hence the long wait for the SA announcement.

Gargoyles can only wear gargoyle equipment and gargoyle equipment will be made of stone and other stuff hence why granite will be stackable in the near future.

Those are some of the main features of SA there was a lot more though and this expansion is going to be massive. No release date just yet and they did say it would be a ways off so don't look for it by xmas this year they also said boxed versions in stores were being discussed but nothing was set in stone yet.

[Pyro-Tech]

will this all still be compatable with the 2D client is what i would like to know

[Midnightdragon]

Originally Posted by Pyro-Tech

will this all still be compatable with the 2D client is what i would like to know

Yes the 2D client is still going to be supported and you will have full access to SA with it nothing is changing about 2D as we know it. You will also be able to access everything with KR and the new SA client.

That was one of the first major questions asked at the town hall.

One of the biggest things they did was take notes on what people wanted to see. When the town hall kicked off and they said SA was going to happen someone asked about housing and they said housing in the new land was not planned then they asked would you like to see housing? It was pretty unanimous and they said housing it is!

They also said when the SA web page is put up they will be doing polls and asking us a lot of questions and basically letting us decide what we want to keep or change in the expansion. We will have a huge influence as to what we see go into this one which makes me pretty happy.

On one more final note. A big goal they are focusing on in this expansion is bringing in more classic ultima lore and making it feel and fit with UO as best they can. Any old school ultima fan should be pretty excited to hear that.

[HellRazor]

Originally Posted by Midnightdragon

On one more final note. A big goal they are focusing on in this expansion is bringing in more classic ultima lore and making it feel and fit with UO as best they can. Any old school ultima fan should be pretty excited to hear that.

The only problem there is that usually when they bring in Ultima lore to UO they do a pretty bad job of it.

[Midnightdragon]

Right but they aren't the same team and the stygian abyss dungeon is being built to look and feel as close to the original as possible. They talked a lot about how they plan to bring in the old lore and it sounds like they have the right idea.

More communication between the developers and players and a heavy influence by players on what will actually be a part of the expansion makes a huge difference in the end product. In the past we got some crap they thought would be cool and players had no say in what went into the initial release.

Currently they are doing a major clean up of bugs and correcting anything they can as well as adding things to the game. All of this is building up to the SA release.

They talked about how the SA release was not just an expansion but that it was also a collection of fixes to correct old problems in the game. So what we will see is some major repairs to the 2D client as far as functionality goes as well as a major clean up of the KR client also.

Over the last year they have been making a pretty good effort to finally clean the game up and get things working as intended. If you go back over the patch and publish notes you can see for yourself just how much stuff was actually fixed not to mention the stuff they aren't able to tell us about.

All in all things are looking up for once.

[Deol]

interesting, FLY...

- just new animation?
- or can FLY on water?
- or can FLY on any height ( is posible to work correctly in RunUO ) ?
(sorr for my bad lang...)

[Suil Ban]

OSI should give it up already. A piece of me dies every time a new announcement comes out of their mouths.

[MarciXs]

I think they are doing the right thing cos they have to focus on the current player base not try to get the old one back.
I really hope they will fix the New Client so it's more playable though.

[Joeku]

They need to stop making fucking new clients and make a brand-new goddamn game. UO2 please.

[Macil]

Originally Posted by Joeku

They need to stop making fucking new clients and make a brand-new goddamn game. UO2 please.

I strongly second that. They have raped, stabbed and beaten to a horrible, horrible death, what was once upon a time, one of the greatest unique gaming master pieces of all time.

Can't they just let UO RIP?

[SiENcE]

They make another new Client? *g

This is the MMO with the most know Clients. More Clients than Players, if we add the custom Clients ;-) ?

[Midnightdragon]

Originally Posted by Deol

interesting, FLY...

- just new animation?
- or can FLY on water?
- or can FLY on any height ( is posible to work correctly in RunUO ) ?
(sorr for my bad lang...)

New animation.

[arul]

Doesn't it feel like beating a dead horse again, and again?

They've been adding new content guess why? Because people have been asking for it.
In order to attract more players and to keep the current players, they have to add new content, because no one wants to play the same game over and over again. Even the PvP gets boring eventually, fighting the same people, with same items, with same skills GETS boring. And that's why they keep adding new content.
People ask for the new content and when they add it, people complain that it sucks. Chase is better than the catch, that is the nature of Men.

Don't get me wrong, I've been playing UO since late '98 and even if I don't like the new content, I understand why they've been adding it.
It's really sad to see all the hate and bashing towards 'the new UO', considering most of the bashers never expirienced the good ol' times they're so crazy about. How many of you played the game the way it was meant to be played, I mean, without UOAssist, EUO, Razor and similar tools?

[Midnightdragon]

As if doing a new client isn't bad enough it isn't even a "new" client it is a KR rehash that they are building on the KR technology. This client the SA client is going to use artwork from KR for the mobs and mix in some of the 2D artwork also kind of the best of each mixed into a single client with a new UI and all that. I am not a big fan of the idea. This is also going to replace the KR client so we will have 2D and SA clients both will be supported in the new expansion also.

[Suil Ban]

UO should return to how it was in late 2001.

[psz]

Right but they aren't the same team and the stygian abyss dungeon is being built to look and feel as close to the original as possible

So... Ultima V? Ultima VI? Ultima Underworld?


That's a pretty vague statement from OSI/EA/Whomever is taking credit these days.

[Midnightdragon]

I believe they are modeling the dungeon after the underworld version at least I think that is what was mentioned at the town hall.

[MarciXs]

The new client looks awesome. Cos it looks that they are going to use 2d world art with new characters.
Ultima Online - Expansion

[Zippy]

Maybe their new client will just be Iris. :-P

[Suil Ban]

I'm digging the SA client. I just hope they get the UI right this time.

[SiENcE]

Originally Posted by Zippy

Maybe their new client will just be Iris. :-P

.

the sad true is, that i think they will never support us. Esp. the character models of the abaddon 3d client. It's a base component of Iris and ea/osi don't distribute this models anymore in their installers. So we really need alternatives :-/ .

[HellRazor]

Why not allow Iris to use standard 3D models rather than those in the Granny format?

[Midnightdragon]

I don't think it still uses the granny format does it? I thought the change over to ogre changed the format for the models. I could be wrong though.

[HellRazor]

I assumed this because I thought Iris required the 3D client to be installed to operate. I'm pretty sure all the character models are from UO Third Dawn.

[SiENcE]

Iris uses the granny models, because of lack of other models . We support other model formats too, but without content you cannot switch.

how to add custom models:
CharacterModelOverride - Iris