LUM PLAYS FAIRE: DAY 1 [Author: lum]
ULTIMA DAWN: THIRD ONLINE As we arrived, Gordon “Don’t Throw Balls At My Head” Walton was eagerly describing what you all have already read about, UO’s next expansion and client. A video was shown which could probably have been put together by the WWF. It had flashing large letters and a screaming announcer and very loud guitar power chords. I only pray this was some sort of parody.
The game itself was in an alpha state and crashed pretty consistently, but it was playable enough to get a clue of what we would be in for. UO3D looks quite a bit like “UO Does Diablo”, with lots of animation (30 frames per second), including idle animations. Your paperdoll is also animated now, and seems pretty bored at just sitting around on your paperdoll. The client doesn’t really look too terribly different from UO2D other than the obvious eye candy; you still ride around on a horse and gank things. The expanded lands (with the Trammel ruleset, because all you people only play in Trammel like the total stupid cheese gimps that you are) seemed much easier to navigate then T2A. How much land is there? Couldn’t tell you. It had cities and rivers and swamps and mountains and whatnot. Alpha testing is unfair to some. Anyway I’m sure you will hear entirely too much about this until the open beta begins in January.
UO WORLD FAIRE ATE MY BALLS My personal highlights usually involved throwing Happy Fun Balls at people. Carly “Running UO is HARD!” Staehlin has been traumatized for life from an XRGaming contingent carpet bombing her with 50 Happy Fun Balls. A rumor spread throughout the faire that the WHITE Happy Fun Balls were RARE. A brisk trade in rare Happy Fun Balls immediately developed. Jinx was too sophisticated to participate in my evil guerilla marketing schemes. Must be that New York sensibility (enjoy Hillary!).
THEY ACTUALLY HAD SEMINARS AND TALKS AND STUFF The Dev Team dispersed to conference rooms to listen to the UO playerbase bitch. One of the most active seminars was one run by Adrick on murderers. It seems some folks don’t like murderers. I know, it’s a shock to me as well. Runesabre helmed a hardcore powergamer discussion on weaponry with lots of suggestions on making magic weaponry not totally suck. Each seminar had dev team staffers taking copious notes: we weren’t learning from them, they were learning from us. After a couple of days of this the dev team should have plenty of things to occupy their time.
Tomorrow: All the snarly ranters in one discussion panel, phat U:WOO lewt, and MORE HAPPY FUN BALLS.