UO: The good, the bad and the ugly.

[WishStone Dragon]

(I wrote this for another thread to start with, but compleatly lost myself, so, into a new thread it goes.)

*cough* even if I might make myself rather unpopular here:

I am an active UO player, nearing my 5th year. I run a very small english guild on Drachenfels (which is hard as hell, as DF is mostly german-invaded. Damn them Krauts! uh, wait.. I'm one myself... nm ;] )

Does UO run by the Ultima Lore?
Hm, tough one. I'm the only UDIC in my guild, I'm currently it's lore keeper so to say, for UO, U and B*, my guild. I actually had this discussion just now with my stand-in guildmaster (I needed a break from GM'ing) whom I'm trying to get to play Ultima games or at least learn of the core-lore of Ultima.

UO was supposed to be set in U1 when the Gem shattered. Well, fine, if they say so... however, if that's the case, why does Britannia look so ... post-U4-like? Virtues? Lord British?? Lord BLACKTHORNE for that matter???

Going ahead: UO never had the Avatar visit, fine, okay, he's a piece of history, but not all of it. We ONLY have winged Gargies and they are dumb killers. (So defentaly set before U6?) No trace of civilization there.

When T2A came, I was THRILLED! They would put in Serpent Isle?! WOHO! ... no, they wouldn't. Yes, we have the Serpent Pillars... and that's all there is. T2A, if you look at the map to start with, has nothing to do with U7'S. Sadly, sadly so.

In the latest (one year old now) extension, we have Necromants... only place they would have dug out these us U8, right? I'm not talking about Liches here, which we had before, but people doing Necromancy.
Also, we have Paladins. Nothing wrong there except for TWO things. ONE: The Paladin on the AoS boy has a CHRISTIAN CROSS on his helmet!!! NOT an Ankh! Also, their specific spells aren't Words of Power, they are some semi-latain mumbo-jumbo. So sad, EA, another chance missed.

Seeing how I totally got off-topic now, I think I'll better put this in a new thread ;]

[Candyman]

At the begining UO was meant to be a sort of "mirror" of historical Britannia somehwere between U4 and U5. Well, that was the idea. In the end, what we got was a game that had lots of places and objects with famillar names, but otherwise very little "Ultima."

Which is somewhat dissapointing, since it was the Ultima name that made me get UO many years ago. I quickly learned that all my knowledge of historical Ultimas mattered nothing in UO. Very few players knew what I meant when I said things like "Minax", "Exodus", "Codex of Ultimate Wisdom," "Avatar" or such things.

And the things they've done with UO history since... oh boy. I just have to laugh.

Truthfully, the only "Ultima" is Ultima Online is in name only.

That's not to say that UO is a bad game... in many ways it's still the best MMORPG out there. It's just has a name that doesn't mean anything.

[WishStone Dragon]

Agreed, Candyman. In my guild, I try my best to educate and at least keep Ultima Lore upheld on our role playing board.

A friend of mine argues, that because UO is on a shard of the gem (and indeed, as are all servers (shards), that is the reason history developped so totally different. (Sliders, anyone?)

But seriously, if everything constructed SO differently, why have any parales at all? And home come SOME figures are on all shards? LB? (both of them ) Minax? Exodus? (And where did THAT come from? And don't give me "Because EA had to put all the stuff they bought for UO2, I know that already )

[Gradilla Dragon]

Necromancers have existed since Ultima 1. Read the manuals, buddy.

From U1 manual:
------------------
Necromancer -- The Necromancer is a mage whose specialty is the practice of the arcane arts that pertain to the dead. Practitioners of such a morbid specialty were naturally drawn to the foul Mondain as jackals are to the carrion of the plains.
------------------

Also, if memory serves, Horance is a great necromancer. In the black tower you can read his book. He also possesses a book written by Mondain, Minax and even Exodus, which leads us to speculate that Horance may have been one of the necromancers from Ultima 1 and kept contact with Minax and Exodus as well. It is just speculation

[Soul Harvester]

Just a small correction... UO was to take play between U1 and U2, not U4 and U5.

[WishStone]

*Buddy is a buddess, just to make that clear *

Well, we also had space travel in Ultima before, guns cannons etc; also not in UO.

Soul: Like you said: WAS TO take place then, but I listed all the other stuff to point out that apparently EA dosn't take too much of a care what goes where or why. OR they have a real good explantion that I simply am too female to understand ;]

[Soul Harvester]

I agree on EA's bad policies and direction for UO.

If you played during the beta in '97 you would recall that there was an actual ongoing story that involved the entire shard. I miss those days.

[WishStone]

Ah, my friend, I miss many a thing in UO. Like my fellow Volunteers.

However, UO is what you make of it, so either we wail, moan or leave... Or pick up what we get from this Ultima-Shipwreck and make our own game. I know I have with my UO guild.

[WishStone Dragon]

(Just to make sure, yes, even though the ISP changed and the country, it's still Wishy here)

[Dupre]

To Soul Harvester: Yes, I remember it well. Just at the end of the Beta, they began a Guardian plot, which was suppossed to be carried over to the final in October '97, unfortunately it ended there. No real plot developments since.

[WishStone Dragon]

Well, you boys want some plot in UO?

How about some PLOTTING against our Liege?

Head over to UO stratics...

http://boards.stratics.com/php-bin/uo/s ... PHPSESSID=


Lets see, NO British in Britannia... No Blackthorne, who somehow was a cyborg, then was a human, then got killed and somewho I lost the track of it all; we have no truelw inteleigent Gargies, the Virtues are twisted and foul (and what the hell is CHAOS for a Britannish virture?), the Avatar never came to us and so on, and so forth....

So, what is left as ULTIMA fro, UO? Or is UO these days not the abbrivation for Ultima Online?

[Warder]

To plug it a bit....

Ultima Legacy at http://legacy.ultimainfo.net

There's -Ultima- UO for you.

[dunk]

"The Paladin on the AoS boy has a CHRISTIAN CROSS on his helmet!!! "

Well, every cleric's paperdoll in Baldur's Gate has a cross on there shirt. Heck, even druids have crosses on thier shirts. Well, Jaheira does.

[Soul Harvester]

It is different in the Ultima series, dunk. Historically, there have been no crosses in Ultima, there has been the Druidic symbol of the Ankh. Similair to the cross but vastly differently in meaning.

Baldurs Gate is part of the D&D world which has nothing to do with Ultima.

[WishStone Dragon]

Warder: eeep! Illegal Shards!!! ;]
Sorry, playing on a EA-Shard means I shan't dabble with these.

[dunk]

My point is that another game with no christianity in it, (D&D), has clerics with crosses on their shirts.

I know Baldur's Gate isn't Ultima, but a cleric of Helm or Shar shouldn't have a cross on their shirt either.

More than anything I was just stating that game designers do miss details like that every once in a while. And it's kind of funny. I wasn't saying your post was silly or anything, I was actually agreeing with you.

[dunk]

Oh wait, you didn't post the original soul Harvester. Oops.

[artaxerxes]

Soul Harvester wrote:

>Historically,
> there have been no crosses in Ultima, there has been the
> Druidic symbol of the Ankh. Similair to the cross but vastly
> differently in meaning.

Actually, the Ankh was an egyptian symbol before being a druidic symbol.
It was called a cross of life or something like that.

And while we're at it, today's t-shaped cross come from pre-Christ times. Here is a quote:

"The shape of the [two-beamed cross] had its origin in ancient Chaldea, and was used as the symbol of the god Tammuz (being in the shape of the mystic Tau, the initial of his name) in that country and in adjacent lands, including Egypt. By the middle of the 3rd cent. A.D. the churches had either departed from, or had travestied, certain doctrines of the Christian faith. In order to increase the prestige of the apostate ecclesiastical system pagans were received into the churches apart from regeneration by faith, and were permitted largely to retain their pagan signs and symbols. Hence the Tau or T, in its most frequent form, with the cross-piece lowered, was adopted to stand for the cross of Christ."-An Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words (London, 1962), W. E. Vine, p. 256.

We all learn something everyday, don't we?

Artaxerxes

[WishStone Dragon]

*smirks*
And why not? The christian churches robbed left right and center from the heathen to become popular ;] "Oh here is a nice symbol!" "Oh there is a nice holliday!" Mind you, whatever works, other chruches did the same.

Headed back to UO:
Several things in the "times of Ultima" changed grossly after all. U9 felt like being raped at some points, and Hackis' Nitpicking site should make EA and the Origin designers of U9 fade into a nice crimson red and wish to sink beneath the earth, but then again: People buy it, people support it. UO is my only secire way to play an Ultima Online with the friends I made. So I have to swallow stuff like cyborgs, Yew being turned into a bog, and a Lord British with amnesia who feels he should leave his country to "unite" with his other selves.
*shrug*

And when I feel it gets too much, I play U7 these days, and then come back to my UO guild to fill their heads with Principels and Virtues and the likes ;]