Ultima Online
Ultima Online (UO) is an MMORPG that is currently published by Electronic Arts. It launched on September 25, 1997. The game is subscribed to by hundreds of thousands of players across dozens of Shards.
Contents
History
UO Alpha Testing
Alpha testings began in April of 1996 with a few thousand players participating. The event closed on May 20, 1996 with a true apocalypse scenario when a supposed speech by Lord British and Lord Blackthorn turns out to be a "setup" with the two Lords summoning hoards of monsters to slay the unsuspecting crowd.
UO Beta Testing
EA held the first "phase" of their public beta for Ultima Online during June 1997, sending out only a few thousand CDs. The Ultima Online Beta Test Kit consisted of a cardboard disk envelope that contained one (1) CD in a plain white paper sleeve. The CD is marked "Ultima Online Public Beta Test". A few weeks later, in July, the second phase was held, and new CDs were sent out to all beta testers, including those from the first phase. There is no distinguishable difference between the two different beta CDs, apart from the postmark date on the cardboard envelope and the physical filestamps of the files on the CD.
More than 25,000 people from around the world paid to participate in the 1997 beta test. The beta CD cost $2 U.S. On August 21, 1997, Electronic Arts announced that UO established the worldwide record for the largest number of people concurrently playing in the same virtual world over the Internet by hosting 2,850 gamers. At the time, the total game geography covered more than 189 million square feet of terrain. Showing the entire game surface area at once would have required 38,000 17-inch monitors, nearly enough to occupy a football field.
Graphically, the beta was vastly improved over the alpha version. However, there were also a lot of bugs, exploits, and server downtime. The Beta Test ended on September 23, 1997. Once again, thousands of daemons were summoned to run amok in the last few hours that the Beta servers were up.
Expansions
UO has seen many expansions, averaging 1 per year since its release. Some have simply added to the game (The Second Age) while others have changed it drastically (Age of Shadows). The graphics have remained largely the same since release (aside from the Third Dawn client), with most items never being modified. This is however due for another drastic change with the upcoming Kingdom Reborn game expansion, featuring a brand new client.
Current Direction
After the last expansion, Mondain's Legacy, the game had taken a new course. Instead of simply planning for another expansion the developers focused more on bug fixes and in-game content. This has continued for over a year and has given birth to the epic Inu storyline. It has lead to the announcement of the Kingdom Reborn expansion and is still continuing to drive in-game fiction. This has been led by UO's latest producer, Darkscribe.