Ultima Online remains the first successful (and continuous) massively multiplayer online game, and in the last ten years it's gained a great deal of content and features. However , it never received a graphical update, leaving the majority of the PC game's visuals trapped in the late 1990s. Mythic and the Electronic Arts' Ultima Online team are redesigning nearly every part of Ultima Online, giving a new skin to the original vision, and it will appropriately be titled Ultima Online: Kingdom Reborn.
Kingdom Reborn includes a complete remake of the original client, but this won't mean players have to convert to the expansion, at least not immediately. The original game and expansion will play side-by-side, until the developers feel the majority of the players have moved over to the expansion side, and then they will discontinue support of the original game in exchange for this newer, shinier version.
New players and those choosing to start the journey anew will find fresh material to work with, as the entire introduction to the game will take place on a revamped island. A much more welcoming tutorial and an improved character development option will be in place with this expansion. The character development will take place through a system called Bright Paths, which will work to keep players from feeling overwhelmed.
These new visuals will be the largest graphical update to any online game in history, with the UO team redrawing every object and every location in the entire game. The new game will be entirely 3-D, but rendered like it is 2-D, essentially taking very nice visuals and squishing them to retain the perspective and feel of the original. From the screens released so far, this style looks like the classic Ultima Online, but it looks like a competitor to most modern online games. EA doesn't mind this, however, because UO currently has plenty of fans.
Ultima Online: Kingdom Reborn recently entered closed beta and should release in the next few months. With fanciful new graphics and a new introduction to the same old UO, the game could survive a few more years. However, it must go through some major changes, and not just graphical ones, before it can hope to return to its former glory.
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