UXO Compendium

Headlines:

UXO Discontinued! -- Jun 30, 2004 (Orion)
Screenshots of UXO -- Jun 21, 2004 (Orion)
Happy Memorial Day -- May 31, 2004 (Orion)
Anyone working on UXO? -- May 31, 2004 (Orion)
What race do you want to play? -- Mar 29, 2004 (Orion)
UXO #40 Most Wanted in 2004 -- Feb 6, 2004 (Orion)
New Movie of UXO -- Jan 30, 2004 (Orion)

The News:

UXO Discontinued! {By: Orion - Jun 30, 2004 07:54:55}

For crying out loud! What is it with EA and canceling UO sequels!!!

Today, the decision was made to discontinue the production of Ultima X: Odyssey. This was done in order focus resources and talent on Ultima Online, the upcoming expansion, and an unannounced Ultima Online project.

“With Ultima Online thriving, and with plans for its future taking shape, we made the decision to focus all our resources on that game world,” said Anthony Castoro, producer of Ultima Online. “We look forward to making more exciting announcements about Ultima Online very soon.”

Binky - Online Community Manager - All Things Ultima

More later when I'm not so angry. You can rant at EA here where Binky posted this.

Screenshots of UXO {By: Orion - Jun 21, 2004 10:29:07}

Well it seems Liquid Development is either a major art source or the art source for UXO. They've posted a bunch of screen shots you can look through.

Click here to see them.

And thanks to Stratics for pointing this out. I think we can all agree that there is a complete lack of news about UXO right now.

Happy Memorial Day {By: Orion - May 31, 2004 12:26:52}

Here in the US it's a time of celebration to honor those who have served our countries military. This is a somewhat interesting time for me, having grown up with my dad in the US Navy, and one grandfather serving in the Europe front of WW2 and another grandfather serving in the Pacific front of WW2. I think about how my grandfathers served my country to help others and I think how my own Dad while never seeing combat spent 21 years in the Navy. Myself, I have never served in any of the armed forces, but none the less I feel an extreme pride for my countries soldiers.

This gets me to my point. Regardless of your thoughts on today’s current military actions please remember those who served and serve your country, they've put themselves in harms way and they disserve your respect.

Anyone working on UXO? {By: Orion - May 31, 2004 12:26:43}

Holy molly, I knew getting moved to San Fransico would slow things down, but I haven't seen an update to the UXO website in ages. Anyone home over there? =(

What race do you want to play? {By: Orion - Mar 29, 2004 08:19:57}

So I put up a new poll, I'm curious what race are you most looking forward to? Yes, I know, the poll is not super original. And while races play no major roll in the game besides taste, I find that the race a person plays portrays much about their play style (least in my personal experience). Personally, I'm wanting to play a Dwarf in UXO, normally I choose a human race, but something about the UXO models make me want to play a Dwarf.

And you?

UXO #40 Most Wanted in 2004 {By: Orion - Feb 6, 2004 05:09:55}

Gamespy has UXO as number 40 on their list of most wanted/anticpated games for 2004.

Ultima X: Odyssey has been designed from the ground up to be a game, rather than a digital playground or an "online social experiment." Instead of an overhead three-quarter perspective, reminiscent of the original Ultima games, we instead get the Unreal engine which, while no longer state of the art, is still leagues ahead of most MMO graphic engines. Instead of one-click-and-wait-combat, we get fast action and complex levels. Instead of a wide-open world where the player is merely a face in the crowd, we get a dynamic quest system where players can really be heroes and make a difference in the world.

Ultima X will pick up right where Ultima IX left off and brings back something that many old-school Ultima fans were missing in UO, the eight virtues and the sense of development as a character. The eight virtues of Britannian society are humility, honesty, compassion, valor, justice, sacrifice, honor, and spirituality, and everything the player does will be judged according to those criteria.

Number forty isn't too bad considering this list covers PC, XBox, PS2, GameCube, and GameBoy Advanced titles.

New Movie of UXO {By: Orion - Jan 30, 2004 12:53:27}

A new movie can be found on the official UXO site. The movie is a fly through and really shows off a lot of different areas. Here's my favorite things about this movie:

1. Again, UXO really seems to show off wonderful usage of verticle space.

2. The music in UXO is TOP NOTCH. When I was at the EAX Event I was very impressed with the musical score for this game. I have not been disappointed with any of their selections yet, and I doubt I will be in the future. If you didn't know this already, the music for the game is done by an actualy symphoney, it's not synthesized.

3. UXO seems to have a very diverse set of areas, each one has it's own look and flair. I can't wait to get in there.

The movie is in a 320x240 resolution, I wish they had a higher resolution for this bad boy, but I know bandwidth is an issue. The file is 13.2MB and is 3 minutes and 16 seconds long.

Greetings Everyone {By: Tristan - Jan 27, 2004 01:29:12}

Hiya!!

I am the newest addition to the UXO Compendium team here at uxo.gamesentry.com. My experiences with online gaming go way back to the old MUDs and I've spent (too) much time playing the latest releases. I've always been an Ultima fan and UO was a blast!! I'll do my best to give you fresh news and keep you posted on the developments in this latest title of the Ultima Series. If there is something you would like to see or know, feel free to give me a shout at: tristan3056@hotmail.com.

Happy gaming!!
Tristan

Exclusive Screenshot of UXO {By: Orion - Jan 19, 2004 01:03:23}

I can't believe I didn't post this months ago! Anyhow, OSI was kind enough to provide an exclusive screenshot back in November of their upcoming game UXO. I really like this shot and feel it shows off what I loved about UXO.

The ingame areas really feel nice, in that they are vertically filled. Instead of just lots of open areas, they really go all out to fill the 'vertical void' and this screenshot really shows that off. I think the waterfall in the background looks pretty sharp too.

Links Section Updated {By: Orion - Jan 19, 2004 12:44:00}

I updated the links section today, if you know of a link that you feel should be added let me know.

Want to be a reporter? {By: Orion - Dec 29, 2003 01:01:53}

So, want to be a reporter? Want to help build a community? I'm currently looking for people who want to be involved on this very site. Sure it's not much to look at now, but think about what it can be.

What you get:

- A place to rant, rave, and share your insight.
- To help build a thriving and popular community.
- A team that's dedicated to make this site the best out there. I'm personally commited to write whatever scripts that you feel are needed.
- There's more, but it all comes with time.

What the it entails:

- As much as you want it to.
- As little as you want it to.
- Report news, write essays, post in the forums. Be involved in the site, once a month, once a week, once a day, once an hour.

So anyhow, if you're interested, or even slightly interested, drop me a line at orion@gamesentry.com or via ICQ at 7309102, or via MSN Messenger at orion_domeric@hotmail.com.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Official UXO Site Updated {By: Orion - Sep 17, 2003 11:26:51}

The Official UXO Site has been updated, on it you'll find a new intro screen, new wallpapers, more screenshots, and new information on the Odyssey Adventure System. Oh, and there is more too, those are just the highlights.

Enjoy

Calandryll on Levels {By: Orion - Sep 3, 2003 11:26:41}

Today on the UXO News Group Calandryll (UXO Lead Designer) had the following to say:

OK, let me try to clarify. :-)

When you kill a monster, complete a quest, or perform any other action that gives you XP, that XP is distributed to two "pools". Your Stat XP and your Ability XP. When you earn enough XP in a pool, you get a point. This means that you can gain a stat point while still being halfway to your next ability point. Basically it allows us to give you more rewards rather than making you wait until you level. When you earn an ability
point, you can spend it on an ability that you have access to. This means you don't have to use your fireball spell over and over and over again just to gain in it. You can use any ability you want. This allows you to use whatever ability is the best choice for your situation (meaning you don't have to cat fireballs at the fire elemental just
because you want to raise your fireball ability...instead you can cast glaciel sphere...which is a much better tactical decision).

Your level is nothing more than a formula calculated based on your total ability points gained. It is used as a general way of telling you how powerful a character is. In essence, this is pretty much the same as telling someone how many total skill points you have with your UO character. The only difference is that the level is a clearer indicator.

The only restriction levels have right now is on items (so newbies can't use uber weapons) and on quests (although quests will scale to a degree). We're working on a system so that characters of vastly different levels can still party up and gain XP together. There might be some limitations (as you said, a newbie in UO won't gain anything from
fighting an ancient wyrm) but the idea is to make the level range for grouping as large as possible.

The use of a level system does not in any way preclude you from letting players with different stages of character development group together any more or less than a skill based game does...it just comes down to how you make the system work.

-Jonathan "Calandryll" Hanna
Lead Designer
"a wizard did it"

Well that makes my job easier, I couldn't have explained it any better.

UXOC Site Updated {By: Orion - Sep 3, 2003 10:23:48}

Hello all, just added two pages, not a lot of info on them as of yet, but as we all know more, they pages will tell more. The first page is one races and the second page is on paths and disciplines.

Forgive the interuption. {By: Orion - Aug 31, 2003 11:03:50}

Please forgive the lack of updates this past week. A family emergency took place this week. We are all home safely now. But if you have time, please look at www.jdf.org (Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation International and see how you can help others.

We now return to our regularly scheduled updates.

New Poll {By: Orion - Aug 24, 2003 10:28:46}

Our poll system is in place, and our first question is ... drum roll please ... "What do you want to know more about?". Currently precious little is known about UXO, if you had your choice, what would you want to know next?

UXOC Site Updated {By: Orion - Aug 24, 2003 10:27:15}

Added a new Multimedia section: Movies. There are currently two movies, the trailer shown at the EAX Event in San Francisco, featuring CGI and in game footage. The second is the intro trailer to the EAX Event site, that displayed more in game footage, but in a rather low resultion via flash.

Morgaine on Housing and Crafting in UXO {By: Orion - Aug 24, 2003 08:51:41}

In a thread on the UXO forums Morgaine (UXO Designer, formerly Cynthe of the UO team) had this to say:

I saw this post last night, and have been somewhat puzzled at what was said at the event to spark this, since we haven't changed our minds about anything that I know of regarding housing or crafting. We've always believed that - if done well - these things can be a great addition to an online world, which means we've always had our eyes on these for future expansions.

The reason we're not trying to cram a housing and crafting system in now is because we want every system in UXO to be polished and fun. A crafting system that isn't done well can be tedious and boring beyond belief and can cause real havoc with a game's economy if it's not very carefully balanced. Likewise, a housing system that doesn't account for high levels of character interaction and customization, or doesn't work exceptionally well within the 3D universe, can cause more problems than it solves.

A lot of games seem to focus on getting a huge number of systems in by launch time, but then end up shipping with very little actual content. In other words, there may be a huge number of options as to what you *can* do in the game, but there aren't many things to actually keep you busy while you're playing. Instead of spending months in development to put in systems that may or may not work as intended, we intend to see that when UXO ships, it works well and has LOTS of content and gameplay from day one.

We've identified what we think is going to set this game apart from the rest of the MMOG crowd, such as the intuitive interface, detailed graphics, gorgeous engine, engaging combat, over-the-top spell effects, Virtue choices in quests that actually *mean* something for the development of your character, private playing areas, and a unique mix between a level-based system and an open skill system that gives you direction, but doesn't corner you into any specific role for the life of your character. Then throw in the Ascension system, the dueling system (complete with ladder rankings and in-game wagering), and Intelligent items that gain levels right along with you (and other stuff I'm sure I'm forgetting)... and you have the makings of a game that is, simply put, a lot of fun.

For those players who feel that not having housing and crafting right away might make them less likely to leave UO for this game... well... that's not necessarily a bad thing! UO has had years to flesh out its systems, and it's still the best game out there by far when it comes to being able to make a permanent mark on the game world and community, such as player-run towns, unique residences and shops, player events, etc. UXO will be the best game out there for things like story-driven Virtue quests, gorgeous graphics, and real-time strategic combat, among other things. The games are very different.

As for whether or not we'll be competing more closely with UO once housing and crafting are eventually added in through an expansion... sure, we'll probably be in closer competition at that time. But as Sunsword hinted over on the boards earlier this weekend, there's more coming for UO as well - additions that will continue to capitalize on the things UO does best.

UXO and UO are both great games, and we're doing everything we can to make sure they both have plenty of room to grow.

Which does a good job of summing up what Rick Hall (Producer UXO) had to say about these features and others being introduced into UXO. The design idea is to put out quality over quantity. Not bad a bad practice if followed through with properly.

UXO Overview {By: Orion - Aug 24, 2003 12:57:00}

First off, UXO is a continuation from Ultima 9. Just because it’s a continuation with storyline does not mean it will inherit the bugs that plagued U9 because of it’s premature launch. Come on that is just silly. It’s made on an extremely stable 3D engine, you may have heard of it, Unreal Warfare by Epic Games. The game played extremely smooth with my hour at the controls.

So, to state the obvious, the X, is a roman numeral. Yes, this is Ultima 10 people, it continues the story arc, and if you watch the new demo real you’ll understand what happened. If you know Ultima lore, in 9, the avatar and guardian went up in a bang. They went poof and everyone thought that was that, good canceled evil, and evil canceled good. WRONG, you see now, they are both on an ethereal plane, constantly fighting it out, and the avatar is not winning. So to aid the avatar he creates a new world, Aluncenor, that is based on the virtues, to teach the virtues, to create those who will follow in the path of virtues and aid him.

That is why UXO does not take place in Britannia (and it’s not the first Ultima game to take place elsewhere). And to make the demo realer make even more sense, the guy you see in the beginning is the Avatar, and the location of Alucenor is in his mind. Yup, and at the very end you see the guardian change places with the Avatar, anyone notice they look close to the same? Well the Avatar and Guardian, as I understand are either the one and the same, or are merging right now.

The overlying theme of UXO is to have your character gain in the virtues, you do this by doing quests. And the neat thing about quests, is they come to you, you don’t go to a board and find that a princess is in the need of rescuing. No while you are out adventuring you come across someone, or they run up to you, in need of aid, etc. Via these quests you gain in the virtues. By launch UXO will have at least 300 quests. And these are not your standard linear quests al-la other games like EA and DAoC. Via cut scenes that everyone in your group can see, you have many choices to do in the quest. Think of the quests kinda like the books you may have read as a kid, you know the ones, where you chose what to do, and depending on your actions you flipped to a different page in the book. So this way if you have a character you want to play as the ultimate justice type character, you know, brash and the law is the law, you can do so. If you want to play a character as compassionate, you can do so, and by your choices at the end of a quest you’ll earn different points in the virtues. On a note, during the Q&A session with the dev team, Cal stated that those 300 quests are quest types. So a quest in one region to go kill 5 frost giants, is the same quest type as in another region where you have to kill 5 beetles. The quests I saw were rather interesting, someone was trapped in an amulet, but turned out to be something you’d rather keep locked up. And another quest where you had to free someone from the frost giant citadel.

Back to the virtues and storyline of the game. Your purpose is to help the Avatar, so you quest a lot and gain lots of virtues, and max out in all eight. What happens then? Why you Ascend of course! And then you start a new character. But wait, it’s not as bad as it sounds!!!! Because your new character is a follower of your first character (in fact there is a special title your followers get). By being a follower that character gets special abilities based on the main virtue of your ascended character, only characters that are followers of previously ascended characters get these abilities. And it goes on, you Ascend your next character, well your third gets to have the abilities of two of the virtues, again picked based on the results of your last two characters. This continues till your ninth character, who has all 8 special abilities based on the 8 virtues, gained by the previous 8 ascended characters, is available to play. At this point, once you max out the virtue abilities for this character you do a full Ascension to aid the avatar, but they didn’t say exactly what would happen, that’s a secret for us to find out eventually.

So there is the overlying storyline, now lets talk about game play. UXO is not turned based. I keep reading this and I don’t understand where people get this idea. Here’s how combat works, by clicking on the left and right mouse buttons you raise your attack value and defensive value. By focusing more on attack you lower your defense, and visa versa. By doing this it lowers your power attribute, which does regenerate. This ads a tactical point to PvM and PvP that I thought was quite interesting. You also no longer engage in combat and just automatically swing. You only swing or cast, or use abilities when you tell the game to. You swing as fast as your weapon swing speed and dexterity allow. But once you swing once, you may want to hold off a second or two and swing, thus making your swing count more, or you may want to keep swinging as fast as you can, making for weaker hits, but interrupting your opponent more. It’s your choice, and it feels quite natural. As in all games, connection will matter some, but now it is much more about how you handle fights and the tactics you use.

Furthermore, UXO moves fast, you always run, and it feels GREAT! It’s kinda arcade’ish in this aspect and I love it for it. You slide on ice, can get blown up to higher elevations in some maps, and more. The game looked great, and the controls and interface felt so damn smooth it was hard to believe it was just pre-alpha.

UXO is a sister game to UO. It’s not for the same player base, it will steal some customers (probably me for one), but not everyone will go over. Think about it, UO has like 240,000 players right now, in a market that has DAoC, EA, AC, (kinda) AC2, and more. Yet UO still thrives, and that with a 2D program, and a 2D/3D program. Why? Because UO is a very different game from the others, and UXO is very different from UO. UXO is about taking a single player feeling and adding your friends to it, but also having thousands of others around too. You get the feeling of single player games, where YOU are the one who matters most, but at the same time you get everything else a MMOG gives you, it’s rather hard to explain, but when you play the game, see how it works you’ll understand. I don’t have a hard time believing that EA/OSI can sustain both games, they are two different beasts.

EA/OSI does have a history, and when I read peoples negative feelings about UXO I contribute these feelings to that. Though I have read just as many positive posts about UXO than I have read negative. Anyhow, I only touched the surface of UXO, but let me tell you, it was a very smooth and crystal like surface. Imagine it’s 6am, you’re out on a lake, about to go knee boarding, think of the best water you could ever want, so damn smooth it’s like a mirror, it’s a wonderful feeling, and that’s the impression I got from UXO.

Only time will tell what UXO gives us, it’s scheduled for a Winter launch, which is only 4-6 months away. It really is a different type of MMOG, it takes the best from single player games and puts them in a PSW so you can share that with your friends. So when they say it’s a sister game, it really is.

I still have only scratched the surface of what I learned about UXO, but I hope this answers some questions for you.

EAX Event pictures and movies. {By: Orion - Aug 23, 2003 04:02:27}

While I was in San Francisco at the EAX Event I was able to take a lot of pictures. Of course, since I have no clue how to adjust shutter control on my digital camera 90% of them came out rather blurry. It would have been fine if the flash was on, but since it was dark and the flash would reflect off the screens, I had to go without. ANYHOW, 9 pictures did come out and 9 mini movies did as well. So here is a glimpse at the EAX Event and UXO.

By the way, most of those movies are taken on the HUGE projector screens they had at the event (there were four). I figure the things were 50 feet wide.

Reporting Horizons News since January 24th, 2003.

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