Beta impressions: The final nail in the coffin.
The UI is one of the clunkiest UI's I've ever encountered in a MMORPG and it alone makes me not want to play. Some original game features are easier to access and understand with this UI, but that doesn't help save it from UI hell. The paperdolls look a lot better than old UO, although their flaws don't one up the old paperdolls by much. A lot of the menus are completely changed and in some cases, in a poorer way. The skills menu for example, has gone from a list view, to a pictorial button view over multiple pages.
What I was expecting and which isn't anywhere in sight is the ability to zoom in and out, even with increasing screen resolution, you can't get a larger playing view. Increasing the screen resolution really only resizes the UI, so at a lower res, the UI is covering most of the screen. Other than these visceral "enhancements", there really isn't much change to this disgracefully aging game. Also, I know it's a beta test, but damn it is full of bugs, I had a few disconnects and have seen loads of monsters just walking in oceans and junk like that.
The biggest dislike about new UO is the fact that you can't switch back to the old UI style or even back to older components. My suggestion, wait till beta is over and the game is released, download a fileplanet free game download promotion and wait for UOKR to be functional on UOGateway free shards. It's a colossal letdown in my eyes. Under the pretty graphics is a dated game with a new flawwed UI.