Ultima Online: Third Dawn Preview

Despite a very rocky start and intense competition from more glamorous online RPGs such as EverQuest and Asheron's Call, Origin's Ultima Online continues to attract a sizeable population of online gamers. It's not that surprising, really, when you consider the steady improvements that have been made to the game over the past three years, either through the continuous flow of patches or the two retail updates. By the time the Renaissance expansion hit the streets, Ultima Online had matured to the point where almost every element of the game was ideal.

The one remaining--and glaring--weakness was the graphics, which were barely current when the game originally shipped and now have grown extremely dated. Enter Ultima Online: Third Dawn. This major update completely overhauls the game's original 2D graphical presentation. In its place, Third Dawn inserts fully 3D character and monster art, enhanced terrain imagery, all-new particle effects for spellcasting, improved lighting, and an entirely new interface system. When in place, all of these elements should combine to bring Ultima Online as close to up-to-date as possible, as far as technology is concerned. And combined with the mature game system that has evolved since its original release, Third Dawn could be an ideal update for longtime UO fans.

We recently had the opportunity to try a beta of Third Dawn for a few long days of intense, hands-on adventuring. What we saw generated mixed feelings, as the new features and graphical enhancements are promising; but the overall state of the beta reminded us of the early days of the original Ultima Online and its unpolished retail release. While the game's new 3D artwork has potential, Origin clearly has a number of issues to sort out before this game finds its way into gamers' hands.

It isn't hard to spot the most notable change in UO: Third Dawn. Every scrap of 2D animation has been tossed out the window in favor of fully 3D polygonal character and monster art. This has two distinct benefits, aside from making the game more technically savvy, of course. The first is that it allows for much smoother and more varied animation. The original UO suffered from choppy animation even when the game was not lagging, but the motion-captured movements of the new player models is a major step forward. In the beta, several movements are a bit wacky and unfinished--the bizarre swimming motion that results from casting some spells, for example--but most look remarkably good. The movements of most monsters are also much improved as a result of the 3D changeover.

Britannian Makeover

The second major benefit of the 3D polygonal engine is the new support for particle effects. These really spice up the spellcasting effects and make the magic system look and feel much more magical. While not all of the effects are an improvement upon the original game's spell animations (the lightning bolt being a good example of a graphical step backward), most are quite impressive even in the beta.

One other benefit of the polygonal character and monster art is that the new engine should be much improved in general appearance. At present, players who do not have a full-screen antialiasing graphics card might balk at the new imagery, since it can look very gritty and pixilated even on a speedy machine. Even with FSAA, the game does not always look very impressive at this stage of the beta--overdraw in the terrain, players melding into the background, and other glitches are frequent. But as the artwork continues to evolve and improve, Third Dawn should be a minor feast for the eyes. It won't cause drooling and avarice like EverQuest did when we first saw it, but it will look great nonetheless.

One of the other major elements of the Third Dawn update is the addition of a new land mass called Ilshenar. This new landscape promises to hold new monsters, new weapons, and new types of armor. Early press materials for Third Dawn hint at samurai-theme weapons and armor, which would be a welcome addition and a nice change of pace from the typical ring-chain-plate armor combination you see on just about every character in the gameworld.

Although we did not get a chance to fully explore Ilshenar, it seems to be a fairly sizeable area littered with shrines to each of the basic virtues, along with one shrine of chaos. These shrines serve as destinations for the game's moongate teleporters and tend to be located around the fringes of the map. Relatively powerful creatures lie in waiting just outside some of these shrines, so low-level characters can be in mortal danger if they venture into Ilshenar alone. Gazers were a common find outside one of the shrines, for example, and a bow-wielding ratman smote our test character from offscreen at another.

Together with the lands introduced in UO: The Second Age and the mirrored worlds added in UO: Renaissance, Third Dawn will boast a very spacious environment for players. Best of all, the world seems to be maintaining the respectable monster spawn rate we saw in UO: Renaissance, so there is rarely ever a shortage of things to hunt. Even with Third Dawn, however, UO still suffers from an annoying infestation of player-built houses. In and of themselves, these buildings are not a bad thing, since they let players work toward something and create a custom home for themselves online. However, the manner in which some of these buildings are placed, as well as their annoying ability to block off certain paths, is a significant problem on crowded servers like Atlantic or Lake Superior. With the game's continuing use of pointless terrain obstacles (shrubs and brambles, especially) the addition of haphazardly placed buildings can be a very unwelcome sight to the weary adventurer. Thankfully, there will be no house-building on the new land mass of Ilshenar.

General Observations

One other major change lies in the interface design. Third Dawn incorporates an almost entirely new interface system that promises to be easier to navigate and use. The flat "paper doll" character display is gone, for example--it's been replaced by an animated 3D representation of your in-game alter ego. Some minor enhancements, like easily visible inventory slots for things such as gorgets and jewelry, help make the paper doll more manageable. Running the beta at its current maximum of 800x600 screen resolution, we found the paper doll far too large for the interface--and it was actually enlarged even further while we were preparing this preview. Hopefully, this will be resolved soon.

The backpack window is completely redesigned and is easier to manage, even though it looks a bit sterile now. Skill windows--like the tracking interface--are much improved, and the shopkeeper dialogue menus are also significantly enhanced in Third Dawn. However, some elements of the beta left us concerned and even a little annoyed. For one thing, the game is horribly slow at this stage, especially when lots of players are onscreen at once. This is due to the 3D engine's prerelease status--thus, it can be fixed with some tuning and tweaking. But it is reminiscent of the early beta days of the original Ultima Online--we still remember thinking that the performance problems would go away when the game shipped. They didn't, and the game suffered in gamers' minds and in the press for that very same reason.

Also similar to the original beta is a callous instability that drops players to the desktop with little or no warning at all. While this is bound to happen in a beta of any kind, it is something that you hate to see in a game that is supposed to be on store shelves in less than a month. And there is no getting around the mixed reactions that the beta has met from longtime UO players. On message boards and during in-game chats, the general view seems to be that the 3D player art is a step backward, not forward. It is true that the current player models tend to blend into the background--especially when you stand in grassy or rocky areas--and that they lack a crispness that we've come to expect from 3D-enhanced imagery.

It's hard to be down on a game update that promises to revitalize one of our favorite games of all time. Ultima Online was a great idea that, over time, has evolved into an excellent game. The title still draws thousands of players per shard at just about any given time during the day or night, and it boasts a massive body of stalwart supporters. So we have great hopes for Third Dawn, and we look forward to the promised graphical enhancements. And we're eager to explore Ilshenar with a powerful, well-supplied character that was not cobbled together for the beta.