2007-03 Newsletter

MyUO Newsletter: March 2007

In this edition of the Ultima Online (UO) Newsletter we discuss the following:

• Town Hall Meeting: Rockville, Maryland
• Kingdom Reborn Beta Status
• From the Pen of Darkscribe
• Flickers of the Candle of Love

Town Hall Meeting: Rockville, Maryland

Come on out to see the latest version of Kingdom Reborn AND get a shot at winning a beta invite at the next Ultima Online Town Hall meeting, set for Mar. 24, 3 p.m. at the Dave & Buster’s in Rockville, MD. Visit www.mythicentertainment.com/uo/ to RSVP.

If you're in the greater D.C area, don't miss this chance to ask some questions, see some new stuff, hang out with your fellow players, and maybe get into the next phase of beta! We've got some cool new toys to show you, including the Flex Desktop - a tool that will allow you to configure your game window to whatever size works best for your playstyle. Come check it out!

See you there!

Kingdom Reborn Beta Status Update

Kingdom Reborn moved into the first phase of Beta - we've invited a few long-time players and testers to begin giving us feedback, and we'll be ramping up to a larger group of testers over the coming weeks.

We have a lot of work left to do, but the intial reactions look great, and we're confident that when we're finally ready to offer the new client to all of our players, it will be a hit. We've got a new desktop to offer you, featuring that perennial favorite critter - the mongbat!

800x600 1024x768 1280x1024 1600x1200

From the Pen of Darkscribe

With great anticipation, I was pacing in front of the Britain Inn and then poof, there he was, the very first non-Mythic employee to pop into the world of Kingdom Reborn.

It took him a minute to get acclimated to the new UI and to learn to press return to chat. We talked for a few minutes, him asking perfectly reasonable questions and me struggling not to pester him with the one question that I wanted to ask: "What do you think?"

Finally, I had to ask. And his response was exactly what I wanted to hear after more than a year of us working so hard to get ready for our first real player: "It’s all so beautiful."

I wish I had taken screenshot of that. I’d print it out, frame it and put it where everyone on the team could see it at least once a day. That kind of reaction is what we do this for. Getting an immediate response from a player inside the world you’ve built is what makes working on an online game so satisfying.

However, this first week of limited public testing hasn’t been all pancakes and syrup. We’re getting exactly what need from our testers, lots of bug reports, lots of feedback, and lots of suggestions. We’re taking it all in, documenting and dissecting everything, planning out what to incorporate before we launch. We have a lot of work to do.

In between the deep discussions of what’s great and what’s not about this first draft of UOKR, we often see comments as gratifying as that first one, but that first one was special. I have a feeling 20 years from now when I’m swapping tales at the Home for Retired Game Producers, that first comment, with its mixture of surprise and awe, is going to be one I talk about a lot, probably in between sessions of Kingdom Reborn 5, which by then will be in some kind of hologram suite I’m sure.

See you in Britannia!

Aaron "Darkscribe" Cohen

Flickers of the Candle of Love

The forces of evil are gaining strength, and their next targets are the Shrines - Justice, Compassion, and Sacrifice are under attack. Will the Britannian citizens rally to push back the invasion? Will they be able to find the source of evil and defeat it? Only time will tell.