I was informed today that Electronic Arts’ official website for the Ultima series these days, UltimaForever.com, has seen an update in the form of a new page devoted to the history of the series:

Ultima History, with Ultima 6 brought out in front.

The setup of the page is quite elegant. A rotator-style listing of all the main series Ultima titles, from Ultima 1 through to Ultima 9 (and including the two Underworld games), serves as the main navigation element, and clicking on each game box brings up a short description of the selected game’s plot, along with the year of its release. The header rotates with the selected game as well, featuring each game’s map as part of the artwork.

Click on over and give it a look for yourselves, Dragons and Dragonettes! It’s a nice little feature, and a welcome nod to the history of the series!

Update: Dungy, in the comments, notes that the Ultima 4 download which had previously been hosted on the main page of the site has now been replaced with a link to the free download available at Good Old Games.

The name is Dungy, and some of you might know me as an editor over at the Codex of Ultima Wisdom.  I also sometimes help out Withstand The Fury by sending him news and updates from the Codex as well as other sites.  I also occasionally wrangle up content for him to post here.  In  my spare time, I’m also a medical student and a fiance, so life is busy.

For the first 20 or so years of the computer industry, one of the main ways software gaming companies advertised their projects was through full page advertisements in software magazines.  Some of the more famous of these were Softline and Computer Gaming World (CGW), and fortunately thanks to the Computer Gaming World Museum, a nearly complete catalog of these publications can be found.  Origin Systems purchased rights to the back page of CGW for over a decade, and a number of beautiful full page Ultima advertisements were released.  As well, magazines like Nintendo Power and foreign language publications also ran advertisements by Origin Systems.

Here for your viewing pleasure is a number of these full page advertisements.

Personally, I love the quirkiness of the NES Power advertisements, especially Ultima III for the NES, where it claims to be the first real roleplaying game for the system.  The Ultima I/II 2-page advertisement shows just how big some of these old ads were.  The Ultima V advertisement is notable for its use of unique artwork, and Ultima VII really stresses the technical merits of the new entry into the Ultima series.  The Ultima IX ads I think are the lowest in quality, telling little about the game, and they stress the importance of combat, while completely ignoring any technical or plot elements about the game.

Anyway, enjoy these ads, and I hope you get as much entertainment out of looking at them that I did collecting them.

So I was looking through the profile customization settings for Electronic Arts’ Origin game download client today, when I noticed that a new section had been added to the avatar selection screen:

Ultima, you say?

There’s a number of familiar images now available for Ultima fans to choose as their Origin avatar. Ultima 6‘s box art, for example…or the Black Sword!

The first blond Avatar!

KILL ALL THE THINGS!

There was also, however, this image mixed in with everything else:

Wait...what?

A U…and an infinity symbol? I wonder what that could mean?

At the very least, it would appear that EA is preparing Origin for something Ultima-related. That, or they’ve decided to add avatars from their back catalogue to the Origin client. But given all the various rumours swirling about, methinks there’s more to this than simple nostalgia!

Note: This isn’t the only image that was unfamiliar to me; there were a couple of portraits I didn’t recognize from any earlier Ultima title. If you’ve got the Origin client installed, have a look, and chime in with your thoughts!

Update: Apparently, the portraits are from an Ultima Online release. Good to know!

Also: Notice anything significant about the symbol U-Infinity symbol?

Andy Panthro has updated his package of Ultima textures for Minecraft to support the latest version of the smash hit indie game. This latest texture pack is version 2.1, and supports the current release of Minecraft as of today.

He also included a couple new screenshots, demonstrating some of the new bricks in the game that he has re-skinned, and also showing off the moon phases that he has gotten around to implementing.

The CRPG Addict, taking a break from what is shaping up to be a frustrating slog through Wizardry V, has decided to dabble in a bit of digital archaeology and look at the history of the earliest CRPGs.

He may even have zeroed in on what might be the oldest surviving CRPG:

In Dungeons and Desktops (2008), Matt Barton calls the 1970s the “Dark Age” of CRPGs, but he does his best to sort through some of the gloom. His account generally matches, but in a few notable cases conflicts, with the recollections of Dirk Pellett, an early CRPG contributor who wrote a history of early CRPGs in an introduction to dnd on Cyber1′s PLATO mainframe. Pellett’s history, unfortunately not accessible from the Internet, appeared in 2010.

Both trace the first CRPGs to 1974, almost immediately after the publication of Dungeons & Dragons. Pellett gives the “first” CRPG as a file called “m119h,” which was deleted soon after its creation by someone on the PLATO mainframe at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Since the mainframe was intended for “serious academic study and coursework,” administrators were quick to delete game programs, and one suspects that there were any number of CRPGs created and deleted while in various stages of development during this era.

The earliest surviving CRPG seems to be a 1974 or 1975 game called The Dungeon by Reginald “Rusty” Rutherford, who was studying in Urbana. He titled the file “pedit5″ (which some sources give as the name of the game) to keep it from being deleted as an obvious game. This didn’t save it, but somehow the source code got preserved, and it’s available on Cyber1 now.

…

The game uses an iconographic perspective with surprisingly good icons.

The Addict looks at a few other titles which followed in the wake of dnd and The Dungeon, and includes a few screenshots of some of these. His conclusions are worth highlighting:

My quick review of these games seems to support a couple of conclusions. First of all, the earliest CRPGs were quickly divided into the top-down/iconographic branch and the first-person branch. The former started with The Dungeon and/or dnd and gave rise to the family of difficult dungeon-crawls filled with random encounters that we saw in Telengard, Caverns of Zoarre, CaveQuest, and DND. Roguelikes also seem to have developed from this branch.

The second branch, starting with Oubliette, spawned (through adaptation or plagiarism) Wizardry and, from there, Might & Magic. Richard Garriott, in the meantime, synthesized the two branches in the Ultima series (starting with Akalabeth) by mixing iconographic outdoor exploration with first-person dungeon exploration.

And unless I am grossly mistaken, it was the Ultima series which served as a key inspiration (though not the sole inspiration) for JRPGs in the Final Fantasy mold.

Anyhow, it looks like the Addict took advantage of his access to the Cyber1 archives to actually give The Dungeon a playthrough, so be sure to check out his write-up about it!

Shortly after posting yesterday’s lengthy round-up of news related to Scythifuge’s Exult-based remake of Savage Empire, I noticed that Scythifuge had posted another request on his personal Facebook wall.

This time, it’s an urgent — needful, even — request for assistance:

Are any of you who are on my friend list an artist who has ever drawn graphics on a pixel-by-pixel level? I NEED your help. I do not admit to NEEDING things very often. Please contact me if you have pixel skills & are willing to HELP!

So, if any of you out there have any talent doing pixel artwork, why not hit up the project’s Facebook page and drop a comment to make yourself known? Alternatively, leave a comment here; Scythifuge swings the site by fairly often.

Portalarium, the social gaming company co-founded by Richard Garriott, recently revamped their website, giving it a slightly cleaner look. They also added a couple of new sections to the site, one for the recently-announced Ultimate Collector, and one for Richard Garriott’s Ultimate RPG.

At present, there isn’t much to actually see on the Ultimate RPG’s page, apart from a brief description of the idea and link to Richard Garriott’s lengthy missive about it. There is, however, this snazzy new logo, which is evidently associated with the game:

Something old, something new.

There are two elements in play on the shield: a Templar Cross, and our old friend the Silver Serpent. I’m not sure if the Templar symbol is significant in any way, although it is certainly true that a sizeable body of myth and legend has been built up around that once-proud knightly order.

That said, I am assuming that the Silver Serpent is significant in some way, and is a very obvious bone thrown in the direction of long-time Ultima fans. And that, Dragons and Dragonettes, is rather exciting, no?

Side note: To be fair, Bernard de Clairvaux’s description of a Templar could easily apply as a description of the Knights and Paladins of Britannia, or the Order of the Silver Serpent:

A Templar Knight is truly a fearless knight, and secure on every side, for his soul is protected by the armour of faith, just as his body is protected by the armour of steel. He is thus doubly armed, and need fear neither demons nor men.

Just replace “faith”, above, with a reference to the Virtues!

Update: Kindbud Dragon, being a patient Dragon, also noticed that in the image rotator for the Ultimate RPG on the Portalarium main page, another familiar image pops up:

Truth, Love, and Courage!

Okay, the image itself isn’t familiar, but some of the elements in it are. There is, after all, a book…and a candle…and is that a bell?

(hat tip: Sergorn Dragon)

The Codex of Ultima Wisdom has posted a news update just today, in which they announce that the site blew well past the million pageviews mark, and has added loads of new content for a variety of Ultima titles…including a few of the more obscure ones:

January 2nd, 2012
Happy New Year! We’ve been busy at the wiki!
4,000+ articles 1,200,000+ page views
Martian Dreams, Savage Empire, and Ultima VII (SNES) transcripts have been created.
Martian Dreams and Savage Empire NPCs have been referenced and updated.
Runes of Virtue has seen work on items and NPCs.
Blu3vib3 has played through Ultima VII for the SNES, creating articles for all unique NPCs, dungeons, and items.
Blu3vib3 has also rewritten all NPCs of Ultima IV.
Tribun has been working on reagents, better illustrations, and Ultima Online locations.
Countless minor edits

The Codex team put in hours upon hours of hard work, Dragons and Dragonettes, and deserve to be richly rewarded for all the efforts and pains they willingly make to add to this fine archive of Ultima history and information.

I managed, during a recent plugin update, to capture an image of the elusive Aiera “site down for maintenance” page in the wild:

Come back here with that!

This is much better than the default maintenance screen, I think. And better still, in case you ever do encounter this page when visiting Aiera, it’s basically fully functional; the menus all work and outbound links are clickable.

The text used on the page, incidentally, is an almost-verbatim quote from what is still my favourite FPS of all time, Bungie’s Marathon. It appears on a level later in the game, shortly before the player is abducted by the rogue AI Durandal.

Interesting factoid: After Googling about looking for information about how to create a custom maintenance page for WordPress, I found an answer at the WordPress website proper. The author of the instructions I followed, by some sort of epic-level coincidence, turned out to be the man who was my wife’s high-school English teacher.

Also: The critters up to mischief with the servers there are the Tumbeasts that web cartoonist The Oatmeal originally drew for Tumblr to use on their error pages, as an analog to Twitter’s Fail Whale.

As of Summer 2011, however, Tumblr had discontinued use of the Tumbeasts, prompting The Oatmeal to release them to the public for general use. Hence their appearance here.

To ring in the new year, Fearyourself posted a short update (with video, of course) of his latest progress in Back to Roots: handling dungeon rooms and transitions into dungeons.

I’ve moved forward in the last couple of days on the handling of a dungeon room. After a lot of tweaking, I can show a first video that pulls this off, you see the player go in the dungeon and go towards the first room that is on the third floor.

For the moment however, monsters and objects are not handled, and we can’t climb back out, but that’s for a next episode

As noted above, video:

As always, JC continues to impress with the seemingly casual ease with which he is able to make progress reconstructing features like this essentially from scratch.

Since last we looked at Scythifuge’s Exult-based remake of Savage Empire, the project has seen several news updates posted to its Facebook page, and it would appear that the communications and partnership that have sprung up between this project and The Ultima 6 Remake (also Exult-based) have been very fruitful. Indeed, that was the main topic of the November 19th update posted on the project’s page:

Communication between Crowley & Agentorangeguy have been fruitful! Agentorangeguy is helping with some scripting for objects & I have offered to assist with some sprites for his Exult Ultima VI mod. The carnivorous orchid from Savage Empire & the Tangle Vine from Ultima VI are very similar, so I have started some preliminary work on that as well as the plant-like hydra from Ultima VI.

Crowley has provided a full set of animated frames for the Nauhuatla noble that I showed off in an earlier screenshot. He did an AMAZING job! These are the situations that help these projects along & make things come together. Of course, I am here to help these two & anyone else working with Exult in anyway that I can.

My work on Savage Empire as of late has been reviewing current sprites & organization of canvases. Things can get a little chaotic with sprites, concept sprites, failed sprites, & potential sprites on multiple canvases all over the place! After some tidying up, I will go back to finishing up the mountain walls which still need grass frames & then tested, & then it is back to trees.

A few days later, on November 24th, Scythifuge corrected himself, slightly:

…disregard my previous post on spriting priority. I am going to focus on the sprites for the S.E. Carnivorous Orchid/ U.VI Hydra/U.VI Tangle Vine due to multi project needs & sprite similarities along with general fan-created Ultima consistency.

This involves examining how Ultima VII slime sprites work as well as looking to existing Ultima VII stuff such as the corpser & similar situations in non-Ultima games such as the Broodmother from Dragon Age: Origins, & the movie “The Ruins” (don’t ask just yet, I have crazy ideas & take inspiration from many sources).

(The Ruins, by the way, isn’t the best film in the world, but it is noteworthy for its keen and skillful use of tension-building, rather than blood-spattered violence, as its primary means of inducing terror.)

The November 28th update to the project page demonstrated yet another shift in focus:

The hydra (it is so confusing that they called a plant creature that) is a challenging sprite. Of course it gives me a lot of spriting practice & is giving me ideas for Savage Empire’s carnivorous orchid.

Not only is design & detail a challenge, but also determining how animations should work given the limitations of Ultima VII’s 32 frame max for npc’s & creatures.

Of course, being that the hydra is a plant that is rooted in place (like the reaper), I have a couple of ideas…

Just two days later, he uploaded pictures of…something else entirely!

Rafts! Rafts are good too.

The above has a connection to the site here:

Due to a discussion on Ultima Aiere concerning the GOG release of Ultima VII & specifically barges, Dominus reminded me about the Serpent Isle ice raft, which in turn reminded me of the early, very basic bamboo raft that I drew a while back.

So I redrew it over the last 24 hours or so, & here it is, along with two oars (I haven’t settled on the design) & a fishing pole. I put some blue color under the raft to show how it will look during use.

Two days later, it was back to business:

I am working on the hydra sporadically while looking over canvases & organizing them, such as copying a creature sprite from an environment canvas to the fauna canvas, because a thought popped into my head while drawing ground tiles. Many canvases have random things on them because of random thoughts.

I have different alpha versions of the hydra as well as vines for the carnivorous orchid/U-VI tangle vine. Also, even though Agentorangeguy (of the Ultima VI remake for Exult) didn’t specifically ask me to, I am drawing giant silver serpents for fun & because snakes appear in Savage Empire & frankly, drawing sprites is fun. I have plans for revisiting other Ultimas at some point, so drawing lore related sprites is a good thing.

On December 4th, Scythifuge noted that Crowley had sent him an animated version of the Nahuatla male commoner from Savage Empire, prompting Scythifuge to suggest everyone check out this thread at the Exult Forums to see other examples of Crowley’s work and to offer him some praise.

A day later, the hydra was ready for the next stage of its development:

Preliminary hydra has been sent off to Agentorangeguy for his opinion & I am working on a Silver Serpent not only for his Ultima VI conversion, but also for drawing serpents in general for various things involving Savage Empire.

That same day, Scythifuge also posted some sample artwork of a Silver Serpent:

Who blew the horn this time?

Now, here’s the important update. I actually missed reporting on this when Scythifuge posted it initially, but I’d like to draw attention to it now:

I need some opinions from the community. While this project is a remake of The Savage Empire, the idea is to give it the “Ultima VII Treatment” through Exult. Certain aspects of the original game aren’t meant to be taken seriously, such as the three stooges tribe & so on.

My plan was to redesign the Disquiqui to remove the humorous aspects & make them more culturally Polynesian. There are also other aspects that may not be possible due to engine limitations, such as the feeding of the giant turtles & then each party member ridding on one scenario.

I am seeking community feedback on these issues since they affect overall drawing & game design through Exult Studio.

My own opinion is that the comedy elements should be kept in, because Savage Empire was always intended as a kind of tongue-in-cheek RPG with various funny elements peppering its outwardly serious main storyline. The stuff about engine limitations is something that can’t be helped, and any workaround that preserves as much of the feel of the game as possible is acceptable. If that means everyone rides on one turtle rather than each person on his own turtle, so be it; Ultima 6 had horses and Ultima 7 had horse-drawn carts.

On December 15th, news was posted of work being done, but not necessarily on Savage Empire:

I have been working on various sprites, though some not necessarily for S.E. (i.e. wooden barrels & steel drums), yet some that can be used for multiple projects such as water & rock sprites. I am practicing different techniques. I have tried a new mountain texture but may keep the enhanced version of what I have already shown in order to save time.

I know that it sounds like not much is getting done S.E.-wise, but what I have shown on here is just a small portion of what I have drawn object-wise. Basically, I am finalizing the style that the world tiles & objects will look like so that the game is unique yet familiar & cohesive. I have a way for the character to wade in water, but I want the style of water tiles a certain way & to work with the rest of the environment. Creating brushes, drawing different leaves, experimenting… these are helping me to come up with the final look of the world & will affect the creation of the next round of sprites.

This experimentation proved fruitful a few days later:

Drawing various sprites is paying off. I am learning new ways to approach things. With that said, I have gone back to my undulating water tiles & am trying some things in order to wrap those up. What I showed back in may was the alpha version. Details are being added as well as creating versions to show directional flows. Like many things with this project it is tedious with a lot of testing in Exult to find the right combination of colors & pixels.

The cool thing about it is that water is a major part of the environment in Eodon & these water tiles will be able to be used in future projects.

Most recently, the news from Scythifuge is of a minor slowdown in the project’s progress:

I have been called to work this week so work on the water tiles & a couple of things for Agentorangeguy for his Ultima VI project have not progressed as I would have like. Though while at work I often imagine sprites so work does continue in a manner-of-speaking.

However, he did manage to come up with this quite festive Santa sprite before the reality of the working life re-asserted itself.

Ho! Ho! Ho! By the Virtues!

And that, Dragons and Dragonettes, is all the news from The Savage Empire Remake posted between mid-November and today. I’ll endeavour to keep more on top of Scythifuge’s project in the future, since these round-up-style posts are more properly suited to open threads and coverage of upcoming RPGs like Reckoning.

If you’re on Facebook, be sure to “Like” the remake’s project page, and check it regularly for updates.

Akalaupdate: It looks like the site has been restored to working order. WordPress.com evidently just goofed up.

Original Post:Oh, now that is unfortunate.

Pix may be known to some of you more for his rather excellent patching utility, but his primary claim to fame was — until now, at any rate — his excellent blog at WordPress.com, Pix’s Origin Adventures.

Which, as noticed today by Manuel Masias, appears to be no more.

This is actually quite a significant loss for a number of reasons, above and beyond the loss of Pix’s always insightful and informative commentaries on pretty much every game ever produced by Origin Systems. His blog also played host to scanned copies of numerous documents, manuals, ads, articles, and books pertaining to the Ultima games, the Wing Commander games, and various other Origin titles. You could even find PDF copies of The Official Book of Ultima there, and the occasional game demo as well. For sheer comprehensiveness and historical value, his site easily exceeded my own in value.

Update: And, to be fair, (as Dungy points out in the comments) those are still going to be available through Pix’s other website, at which he hosted all the downloads linked from his WordPress blog. I’m not sure he has download links anywhere on said other website, however.

Now, to be fair, that might have been what got him in trouble; most of the documents were copyrighted, and it may have been the case that some were still jealously guarded by their publisher(s). I’m trying to find out more information.

At any rate, this is a quite upsetting start to 2012.

I was contacted by someone who goes by the handle Luny, who directed my attention to Rebirth Reborn, a RunUO-based Ultima Online freeshard that purportedly follows a mostly pre-The Second Age ruleset, with various changes and additions including slot machines and an alternate questing system.

Unless I greatly misinterpret text on the website, it would seem that Rebirth Reborn doesn’t prohibit griefing; PK is something it allows, and one notes that Luny waxes fondly about such things in his description of what his shard is all about. “Love to grief?” asks the site masthead. “Well…you can’t gate ‘em, but you can kill ‘em!” “Love to hurt pks?” it asks, at another interval. “Or maybe…you love to be hunted?” That said, activities that cross the line into harassment will be disciplined, possibly with banning if offences merit it.

Anyhow, a list of the shard’s features can be found here. Some highlights include the fact that you can still heal yourself if poisoned (which, apparently, was/is not the case in UO), combat spells work in towns, bows and crossbows can be fired while moving, and skills “decay” (presumably meaning that you lose points from skills you don’t periodically make use of).

Anyhow, if that’s something that would be of interest to any of you, do hit up the Rebirth Reborn website and download what you need to get it running!

Zygon Dragon posted a short Christmas update to The Ultima 6 Remake’s website, announcing that AgentOrangeGuy had finished scripting the Shrines of Compassion and Valor (which, it must be told, were always my two favourite shrines). Both shrines can now be freed, and have runes which can be found.

Crowley, meanwhile, has evidently been hard at work on new shapes, and AOG has also made progress with implementing Sutek’s Castle.

So…since the last time I had a chance to play The Old Republic, I actually had the chance to participate in two additional beta weekends. I briefly took the opportunity to play the first hour or two of the Bounty Hunter storyline, taking the slightest look at life on the Imperial side. That failed to appeal, so I decided to continue playing through the original mission of my Trooper character.

The main splash screen for the game.

Unfortunately, she was no longer accessible. She was still on the server, but the game couldn’t actually load her up for me to keep playing as. Pity.

So, I decided to try the one Republic class I hadn’t yet looked at: the Jedi Consular.

My character.

And…wow. In the Consular, totally found the character class I am going to play when the game launches. I had expected to play a Trooper, but the Consular proved to be the ideal character for me, with a combat style that I completely grokked, and a rich storyline that sucked me in just like Mass Effect did.

Like the Jedi Knight, the Consular starts on the Jedi “homeworld”, Tython. The storyline for the Consular quickly begins to build a deep sense of mystery, involving ancient Jedi ruins, the remnants of the first lightsaber, Force apparitions, and even the origins of the Dark Side’s followers.

Even a practice saber can be deadly if you know how to use it.

The origin mission concludes with a sequence showing the assembly of a lightsaber, after which point the Consular Padawan is inducted as a Jedi.

That said, a real lightsaber is better.

From there, the story takes the Consular to the capital world, Coruscant. Actually, I think all of the Republic classes get sent to the capital world once their original missions are complete, because I saw plenty of Jedi, Smugglers, and Troopers wandering around. The Consular storyline becomes about finding a cure for your stricken former Master, whohas contracted some kind of malady that has “Dark Side” written all over it.

The Jedi temple. Not on Coruscant.

Three Jedi artifacts, called Noetikons, need to be retrieved in the hope that they might help find a cure, and this quest occupied pretty much the rest of both beta weekends. Along the way, I picked a huge number of side quests, many of which had multiple stages and excellent storylines of their own. And I got to explore several huge, and very detailed, areas of Coruscant.

Consulting a Noetikon.

Overall, I greatly enjoyed the story, for both the main plot and many of the side quests. One of the things that really stood out, I think, was that the game made it very easy to forget that I was playing an MMORPG. I could just as easily have been playing Knights of the Old Republic 3 (and in a somewhat spiritual sense, I suppose it could be argued that SWTOR is KOTOR3).

Like Sergorn said earlier, the game looks great. BioWare didn’t try to go for hyper-realism; they adopted a visual style that borrows ever so slightly from The Clone Wars (the animated series that chronicles the events that transpired between the second and third movies), and adds in BioWare’s typically excellent area design. Like other BioWare games, the world of SWTOR is not a truly open world. Each planet could be described as semi-open, constructed from numerous areas that blend seamlessly into each other.

Coruscant.

Coruscant, in particular, is a marvel; BioWare Austin really captured the scale of the planet. The visual style changes quite sharply, but believably, between areas of the planet. The Senate Plaza is regal and clean; the deep Works area located much closer to the planet’s surface is dirty, dank, and just a bit savage. And taking a taxi between locales, far from being burdensome, is often a rich visual treat.

Also Coruscant.

Though I do have to admit: I was very tempted to fling my character from the city’s heights just to see if she’d fall all the way to the ground so far below. I had to content myself with occasionally flinging enemies over the ledges instead, mostly with the (entirely too handy) Force Wave attack.

I didn't actually jump off a ledge. I took a lot of taxis, however!

A note on combat: as I said above, the Consular proved to be an almost ideal fit for me in terms of combat style.

Consular, engaged. Yes, she IS deflecting blaster shots!

Consular attack powers seem to split between attacks involving flinging things (enemies included) and attacks against an opponent’s mind. My usual attack method, which rarely failed, was to charge in to a group of enemies, flinging a large object at the nearest foe before flooring (and dispersing) the entire group with a Force Wave.

This would be the Force Wave of which I speak.

And then, naturally, I’d pick off the survivors one by one with my dual-bladed lightsaber, the class weapon for the Jedi Shadow specialization that Consulars can select at Level 10.

See? Dual-bladed.

In all honesty, I toyed with the idea of canceling my pre-order of The Old Republic. Not because it’s not worth getting; it most certainly is. Instead, I’ve contemplated stepping away from it because of the very real possibility that it might become a bit too all-consuming. I can honestly see myself getting pulled into the game (or at least the single-player narrative portion) at the expense of all other activities. Including Aiera.

But I think I can manage my time. I’m hoping I can, at any rate. Thus far, I’ve reached Level 20 with a Consular character who is nearly a perfect re-creation of this one (sadly, beta characters were wiped from the servers prior to launch), and I’ve managed my time pretty effectively between playing the game and managing other commitments. That said, the Christmas break certainly did help me find as much time as I did to put into the game.

Now, to be fair, my one gripe with the game still exists: quest narratives (main and side quests) get broken up periodically by spikes in enemy difficulty, requiring you to level up somehow before progressing.

Also, sometimes the graphics took a while to load.

However, I found that by doing a bit of in-game recon, and by observing which foes in which area were at particular experience levels, I could do different tasks along both the main and side storyline in a way that kept the difficulty at a level my Consular could handle. I had to grind a little bit, but in SWTOR that isn’t always the best way to get experience and level up. Polishing off items (even the “defeat X enemies” tasks) on the question list worked way better than hard grinding…and usually resulted in better loot.

Not that grinding isn't sometimes fun.

The loot system in the game deserves a comment, because loot comes in two flavours. The first is useless loot, items that actually have no use (the item tooltips tell you as much), apart from being something to sell for a few credits. The second is useful loot like new weapons and armour. Generally, killing enemies and hard grinding net you only (or mostly) the first kind of loot; defeating significant enemies and finishing quests gets you the second kind.

The game, in other words, doesn’t just want you to run around killing everything you see; it wants you to play out all the stories it has to tell, and rewards you (often quite richly) for doing so.

And I, for one, am keen to take that bait.

And to capture screenshots of graphics glitches.

I just wish it had been even remotely possible that my Consular character from this attempt at the beta would have been preserved on the SWTOR servers until launch, so I could just pick up and run with the storyline where I left it last. Alas, as noted, this wasn’t the case.

So I was having a conversation with Bandit LOAF (from the Wing Commander CIC) and Sergorn Dragon on Twitter, concerning the PlayStation port of Ultima Underworld. Yes, such a thing exists. Sadly, it was only ever released in Japan, and only ever in the Japanese language.

Anyhow, LOAF mused thusly:

I wonder how hard it would be to put together an English language version of Ultima Underworld for the PSOne…

I offered to put up this article, an idea which LOAF welcomed, which brings us to…here.

Like LOAF, I’m essentially operating from a position of ignorance here. The PlayStation is (by choice) largely a foreign object to me, a “black box” in engineering terms. I’ve no idea what would be involved in cracking into a game for the system and editing its data files, nor do I have any idea how different those files might be (in terms of format) from the original game data files. Nor do I know if the game files can even be modified in the way LOAF is wondering about.

However, many Ultima fans are incredibly technically savvy, and it’s my hope that some of you have experience modding PSX games. If so…is what LOAF is proposing feasible? And if so, would you be interested in taking a stab at it, assuming that a copy of the game could be obtained or provided?

That’s the word, according to Massively, from Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk, whom I occasionally refer to as “The Doctors”. The founders and chief officers of BioWare were recently talking to Joystiq about their views on the subscription model versus the free-to-play model in the online gaming realm.

But the interesting pull-quote came at the end of the interview:

Before moving off the subject, Muzyka managed to sneak in a bit of a tease regarding BioWare’s future work in the free-to-play space. “You can re-imagine things and kinda envision them in different ways,” he said of the business model’s advantages. “We have some other stuff we haven’t announced yet coming from our play-for-free team that I’m really excited about. It’s gonna bring back some IP that people have a lot of fond memories around.”

Joystiq’s editors are evidently hoping for something — anything — to do with Jade Empire. Others, I have noticed, have rather different suspicions.

Some tragic news from Dino the Dark Dragon, this Boxing Day:

I’ve evidently been busy lately. I’ve reached the point where the effort needed to maintain Dino’s Ultima Page on a regular basis is more than I can afford. And since nobody has answered the three recent calls for assistance in posting news, I have no option but to let it go.

Although this is a sad decision for me, it is one that I take without regret. The two main aspects of this site – news and information – are covered by Ultima: Aiera and The Codex of Ultima Wisdom (respectively) in ways better than I ever could.

It is in these good hands that I leave you as I move on. It was a pleasure to serve the Ultima community for almost ten years, and I also feel that the Ultima community has been an important part of my life.

Dino’s Ultima Page will remain online for as long as I draw strength, and although I will not update it regularly any more, I am not ruling out the possibility of returning to it occasionally.

Ultima Dragons: Thank you, happy holidays, and good luck!

It’s an understandable turn of events, Dragons and Dragonettes. Dino, in his real life, has been moving ahead in schooling and career over the last few years, and I think we’ve all taken note of the fact that he hasn’t been able to update his site as frequently as was once the case. Running a large, heavily-trafficked website is challenging at the best of times, especially if it is a site in service of a wider community. It takes a sometimes herculean effort to consistently manage and update sites that the community has come to rely on for news.

And I can understand the frustration he has with not being able to find help. A couple of people have stepped up and occasionally posted content of their own here, which is nice, and there are a couple of other people who periodically send me emails full of links to bits and pieces of Ultima news that I’ve missed reporting on. But even I’ve asked for people to help out writing regular content for the site, to little avail.

Dino’s Ultima Page was one of my major inspirations when I began Aiera, and Dino himself was hugely instrumental in getting Aiera off the ground in its first days. And it’s hard to recall the last time a month went by where Dino didn’t spot an update to one remake site or another before I did; he had his fingers on the pulse of the Ultima community more so than anyone else I can think of, and his site will be sorely missed. There will be a gap in Ultima news reportage with his site’s closure. I, for one, am sorry to see him go.

Fare thee well, Dino, in whatever your next venture is! You shall be missed.

It is my wont, at this time of year, to post something about Christmas. Generally, I try and post something reflective, and something which attempts to walk the fine line between not downplaying my Christian faith and not force-feeding same to those of you who do not share it. Oh, and I try and shoehorn something vaguely Ultima-related in, as well. Because let’s face it…this is that kind of website.

This, as you can imagine, is not usually an easy task, although as an intellectual exercise it can be quite fun. But, I digress.

My wife and I had a discussion about a month ago, as we were pondering what manner of Christmas gift (if any) we should procure for Dragonlet #2. Being all of a 13.5 months old, it’s not like Dragonlet #2 really grasps the concept of Christmas as an exercise in gift-giving, let alone its deeper meaning and ultimate significance. Such things will come in time, of course. But, again, I digress.

So there we were, the Dragoness and I, musing over whether to get Dragonlet #2 a Christmas gift. One possibility that came up was to get her this playset, from the Fisher Price “Little People” series. We have a few other playsets from the series, and one can hardly navigate our house without coming close to stepping on at least one “Little People” figurine. But my wife was hesitant about purchasing this one: would it be all that appropriate, she wondered, for Baby Jesus or the Blessed Virgin to become a chew toy for a teething infant?

Within Ultima lore, Humility is, in an odd sort of way, the most important of the Eight Virtues. Within the philosophy of the Virtues, Humility exists more or less independently of the other Virtues and of the Three Principles, and in turn serves as the foundation for all of them (since Truth, Love, and Courage do not exist in Pride, which is Humility’s antithesis). Humility is the root of all the Virtues, though it would be loathe to admit as much.

As noted at the Codex of Ultima Wisdom, it’s difficult to precisely define Humility, but a reasonable explantion of it is as follows:

Humility is the opposite of Pride, and independent of the principles of Virtue, is about perceiving one’s place in the world, not according to one’s own accomplishments, but according to the intrinsic value of all individuals. It is the recognition of the worthiness of all beings, and the perception of one’s own place among them, regardless of one’s own personal accomplishments or mistakes in the world.

This explanation of Humility actually comports rather nicely with St. Bernard of Clairvaux’s explanation of Humility in a Christian context:

A virtue by which a man knowing himself as he truly is, abases himself.

St. Thomas Aquinas’ expansion upon this line of reasoning is also worth noting:

The virtue of humility…consists in keeping oneself within one’s own bounds, not reaching out to things above one, but submitting to [God].

Central to both the Britannian and Christian conceptions of Humility is the idea of knowing one’s own place and standing relative to others, in being honest with oneself about oneself and one’s place in the world. This, in turn, requires recognizing that all beings are on a similar journey, and hopefully are seeking similar awareness, and so requires realizing that you are simply a fellow-traveler therewith.

It’s arguably the case that the most difficult aspect of the Christmas story to digest is not its assertion that Christ was born of a virgin, but that in Christ, no less a being than Almighty God humbled Himself before mankind, and became not just like a man, but in fact became a man. As steps down in the order of things go, that’s essentially an infinite demotion; John Riccitiello could quit his current job in favour of a janitorial position at The Source in Whitehorse, Yukon and still not have stepped down in position one tenth as far.

This, in my obtuse manner of thinking, brings us back to Dragonlet #2 and the Little People Nativity playset. But bear with me; the connection will become clear in a moment.

Humility – perceiving one’s place in the world, recognizing the worthiness of all beings, and perceiving one’s own place among them. The Christian message asserts that God humbled Himself to become not just like us, but in fact to become one of us. Which is why, when my wife asked whether it would be appropriate for Dragonlet #2 to gnaw on a Baby Jesus figurine, I replied in the affirmative.

Babies chew things for several reasons, not the least of which is curiosity; it’s how they begin to learn about the world and the objects that fill it. Dragonlet #2, however, also chews on things because doing so helps alleviate the pain of teething, a discomfort which she is presently experiencing. A discomfort which, we can reasonably assume, Jesus likewise experienced, and in fact specifically chose and came to Earth to experience.

The Gospels contain several stories in which Jesus gave great importance and respect to young children. Somehow, I don’t imagine He’d be put out at the thought of a little one chewing on a stylized, cartoonish, plastic depiction of Him because it made her sore gums feel just a bit better at the moment. Sure, he’s seated at the right hand of Almighty God, is the Second Person of the Trinity, and is that through which all Creation was effected…but hey, there’s a kid in pain over there, and she’s found a thing to chew on which just happens to be His representation in a playset. Chew away, little one.

There’s a particularly beautiful example of Humility in that image, I think.

From all of us at Casa WtF!

Over at the Wing Commander CIC, LOAF has posted a link to this list of eBay auctions being put on by former Origin employee Rhea Shelley. Shelley owns a fairly large collection of Origin memorabilia, and it looks like he’s trying to offload quite a lot of it…and at reasonable prices, as well!

Item auctions come to a close over a range of time; some items will close bidding in the next few hours, while others will be open for bidding for another 4 or so days. Have a look at the complete list, and place your bids on items of interest!