Tag Archives: Ultima Online

Bad news for Ultima Online players today, as Mythic Entertainment has rolled back the Atlantic server. All progress and acquisitions since Dec 5, 2012 7:00 am EST have been lost in the process, but no explanation has been offered beyond due to a mention of corruption in the announcement post. Affected players have been offered 30 days of free game time in compensation, but this doesn’t help those who lost years worth of items by transferring from another server during the last two weeks.

Thanks, Massively.

Richard Garriott, creator of the popular RPG series Ultima, claims that his new social gaming project can be viewed as a spritual successor to his previous works.

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Richard Garriott’s upcoming project could eventually release under the Ultima moniker.

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Halloween weekend is here, and so are more shorts. We won’t get to dress up or draw down the moon until Monday, but we’re going to try and carve a pumpkin this weekend. It is NOT going to look anything like this though. Promise.

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You didn’t think we’d let you get out of here for the weekend without another shorts post did you? What do you take us for? Some sort of benign entity with your best interest at heart? We scoff at you.

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Here’s a second batch of shorts for your hump day.

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This was a rather large week in MMOs as far as news went, and not all of it was Halloween related.

Past the break you will hear all about how Ultima Online is still going strong, get familiarized with the new patch for Aion, read up on Cryptic’s Blood Moon event via a dev chat, PvP henchmen and Guild Wars, Alganon’s delay, China’s ban on males playing females in games, and many other bits of stuff that didn’t hit the front page during the week.

Also, we hope everyone who plays MMOs enjoyed the Halloween and Fall festivities that their particular favorites hosted. Loads had celebrations, more than likely every single one of ‘em. If we forgot to mention your particular game, head on over to the list through the link ther and add it in the comments section so that we may give it its proper shout-out.

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• Massively had a chat with Stew Chisam, VP of game operations at Hi-Rez Studios, during DragonCon last week. It’s a video interview, and in it, Chisam chats about how well things are going with Global Agenda since the two closed Betas. If this game has been on your radar, you should check out what Chisam had to say here.

• Ultima Online’s new expansion, Stygian Abyss, has been released and is now available for download on the game’s website. It will run you $29.99.

• The Secret World was all over PAX. Massively was lucky enough to get a preview of the game, Gamespot provided impressions, and Eurogamer talked to Funcom’s Ragnar Tornquist who told the site all about it. Wanna know all about the three different factions, the lore, and see some screens? Then hit all three links for information overload.

• The clown Malatina offers a new solo challenge for plucky adventurers in Runes of Magic. Once per day, she will give players the opportunity to enter a obstacle-packed dungeon, which will be included in the update for the full launch of ‘Chapter II – The Elven Prophecy’, on September 15. Hate clowns, man. US servers will be brought down for 24 hours starting Monday, Sept. 14, at about 3 a.m. PST until Tuesday, Sept. 15, at about 3 a.m. PST. During that time, the forums and Runes of Magic Web site also will be down. All systems will return Tuesday, Sept. 15, at about 3 a.m. PST. The forums and Web site will have a new design to match Chapter II: The Elven Prophecy. More details are through here.

• Before you get surprised and start screaming “Oh Noz! You’ve got zombies in my Star Wars Galaxies!”, read up on it via the official Random House website. Apparently, SOE and LucasArts are adding zombies as part of an October event called Death Troopers, which ties into the horror-themed novel of the same name by Joe Schreiber.

• ROHAN: Blood Feud (Renaissance of Human and Nature) now has one million accounts. Cool. To celebrate, the team are holding Million Member Mania events from now until September 21, where players who win the various games included will be awarded with one million in game currency. Very cool. More through Massively.

• The Aion team is aware of issues with lag, the authentication server, gameguard anti-cheating program, forum authentication script, and beta key release schedule, and are devoting resources to finding out the cause. Rest assured, a patch will be released ASAP. Good to know. More on that here. Thanks, Massively.

• Dungeons & Dragons Online went free-to-play in North America this week, and to get you excited for it, Rock, Paper, Shotgun has a couple videos posted, along with some information on it. If that just isn’t quite enough to placate you, Massively has a launch day news round-up for the title. Hooray!

• Karos Online is currently in closed Beta, and other than some interesting bits to PvP, the game takes a different approach to crafting and hobbies than what you may be used to in an MMO, by incorporating both into an alternate character progression tree. Also, instead of running around looking for mats, you may end up fighting over them instead, such as through the mining area which will be rife with PvP. More through the link.

Loads of stuff happened this week with MMOs. Bethesda laughed off an Elder Scrolls MMO, APB started the Beta application process, Aion released pretty trailers, Star Wars will be playable at GamesCom and all other sorts of interesting things happened.

What we didn’t tell you about was that Lord of the Rings Online got some new jewelry and bounty quests in Esteldin, Funcom will announce Conan stuff at PAX, and there were some rumored leaks on the upcoming WoW expansion posted all over God’s green earth.

For all of this and more, read on past the break.

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Loads of Beta news this week in MMO round-up.

IncGamers made good on its promise, and has posted part-two of its Aion Beta preview, Mortal Online’s second stage of Beta testing begins soon, CrimeCraft started its Beta and Alganon is prepping for one.

Loads of MMO are going to be coming out soon, and there will be more than just fantasy offerings on the table. Sci-fi, apocalyptic, modern, and steampunk are all heading our way.

Hit the jump for more on the week in MMOs.

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Electronic Arts has announced a deal with game operator NetDragon Websoft to recreate Ultima Online for the Chinese market.

The Hong Kong-based firm will develop the MMO alongside Mythic and will retain the rights to operate the game in China, Hong Kong, India, and Macau.

Currently, NetDragon operates Conquer Online, Eudemons Online, Heroes of Might and Magic Online, and Zero Online among others, with CJ7 Online, Disney Fantasy Online, Dungeon Keeper Online and Tian Yuan – all expected to launch by early 2010.

Niko Partners has previously estimated that China’s online market will gain $3.8 billion this year alone.

More over on VentureBeat.

Leading up to E3, there is not a megaton of news with anything, let alone MMOs. The week was basically all about screens, delving into crafting systems and character sheets, and general stuff that you can view on any online game’s website. It’s called pre-E3 malaise, and today it’s pretty thick.

However, we have dug through the mire once more to bring you something in the way of MMO news that didn’t hit the front page.

You can catch up on it all after the break.

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Mythic announced today that it’s accepting applications for the Ultima Online: Stygian Abyss closed beta test.

Beta testers will have the chance to experience the playable Gargoyle race before anyone else, and is set to begin later this month.

You must be a current Ultima Online subscriber and your computer system specs, previous testing experience, community involvement and other criteria will be prerequisites for consideration.

To apply for the closed beta, hit the link.

Press release is posted below with more details.

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Mythic has officially announced the eighth expansion to Ultima Online, after teasing fans about it since last fall. It’s due to launch sometime this summer.

Ultima Online: Stygian Abyss promises to introduce a “flood of new content” for the longest running MMORPG on the market, complete with a playable Gargoyle race and the ability to explore their homeland of Ter Mur.

The Stygian Abyss dungeon included not only lends its namesake to the title, but it will be the largest dungeon area ever added to the game.

New boss monsters including the Medusa, Primeval Lich and the Stygian Dragon will be vying for your bloody corpse, and the new PvP zones will give you more chances to knock other players other about.

Available through digital distribution only. You must have the original Ultima Online game to play.

Read on.

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Loads of goings on in the world of MMOs, as usual. Let us make sense of it for you.

This week’s had its fair share of content updates, a closed beta, character testing, teaser screens, and an MMO set near the Grand Canyon, in the future, after a plague. Honestly.

Read on after the jump.

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