Which Era Is UO Really On?

[Gladius]

If ever we are to establish a timeline for this game does anybody really feel or in the know which era we are in?

Well, with the castles and keeps still around I would suppose we are in some kind of medieval era. But then we also have the customized houses which suggest we are also in the modern age.

For other's they would prefer to be in the Ice Age with the advent of crystal houses.

Now up and coming are the Japanese inspired houses at Zento. Now if we look closely at the armor and weapons we use it really suggest an age when gallant knights and fair maidens to be rescued roamed the land.

And also with the inclusion of pet dyes we can have a Disneyland environment, who knows perhaps the Mulan age could be just around the corner too.The gargoyle scenario doesn't give me a clue what time frame that belongs too either.

All I can see is that this game which started out on the right foot is now in a very complicated Chop Suey really messed up state.
We think something has to be established with finality here. Otherwise we might as well have Jedi swords and laser guns around as well.

May we know now what's coming up next?

-G-

 

[Stupid Miner]

UO =/= Earth. Earth is a legitimate place, LB and the Avatar came from there.

Not to mention i think UO kinda transcends time a bit as well.


UO's era is whichever the heck era it wants to be in. UO goes beyond namby-pamby highly anachonized "medieval" eras. I prefer UO over trite, stereotypical fantasy fiction anyway

 

[Dermott of LS]

...

Finishing the events of Ultima V and going into the events of Ultima VI.

 

[Gellor]

My guess is the Zombie era... dead but hanging on

 

[sablestorm]

My guild has worked on some fiction which ties all the elements of the old Ultima series in with the things that the UO team has introduced. So I'm not sure what to make of your post other than to say you might be limiting yourself. UO offers more possibilities than any MMO I know of and that is one of it's strengths. I find it funny people try to knock it.

 

[GalenKnighthawke]

There was an awful film a few years back, based on some video game, called Bloodrayne. This garbage movie had one a couple of redeeming things, however.

One of those redeeming things was the opening shot, which was a shot of a street of indeterminate era. It had lamps and covered wagons, circa 1800s but different decades. It had clothing styles that were, if not "real" Middle Ages style, were at least "modern people's idea of Middle Ages" style. A few people also had clothing that was from later eras.

This was a good shot because it finally admitted what's been true about fantasy RP settings forever: They are not real; they are not Earth even when they pretend they are. There is no reason why fantasy RP settings have to follow Earth's eras. No reason whatsoever.

Like most fantasy settings, UO is its own era. It is not reality, it is not Earth, it is a fictional place that plays by its own rules.

If you think that UO should follow RL eras and RL laws of nature, go fight a dragon, ogre, or minotaur, and reconsider. Cast a fire field spell, and reconsider.

At least we have no space shuttles, unlike the reissue of Ultima I.

As to colored pets being a "Disney" era? I'm no expert on RL pirates, but the little reading I've done tells me that they would often dress outlandishly, in all kinds of bright and contrasting colors, to contrast their drab, lower class pre-pirate lives wherein they were basically denied the privilege of being outlandish, due to social class and lack of money.

And if you reply by telling me that pirates weren't from the Middle Ages either, you're missing the point badly.

-Galen's player

 

[Gladius]

UO =/= Earth. Earth is a legitimate place, LB and the Avatar came from there.
UO's era is whichever the heck era it wants to be in.

Oh I was thinking the Avatar came from the Pagan's (Whoever he is) hands somewhere and fell into earth if my Ultima 6 memory serves me correctly?

I can see that the game transcends beyond time in order to accommodate the moods and different preferences of it's players. It is also easy to see that both young and old are sort of being merged into the gist of game play.

I am certain or I could also be mistaken that there are much younger players perhaps even in their teens who are now into PvP. Well we are not to judge the correctness of this since this type of game play encourages what shall we call it "normal" violence?

Just wondering though how this would affect the general posture of character of kids when they mature. Of course there are always monsters to kill,resurrections to perform when you die and always live again to fight another day.

But quite frankly I find it odd to be fighting as a Paladin or Warrior with my plate armor and sword against a errr Ninja? Oh well I guess it's just another one of my hang ups on UO eh?

Again we can surmise sure everything is possible in UO, even pets can be colored like candy. If so why can't they improve the quality of graphics and give the more essential things players are asking for?

Just asking?

-G-

 

[Lord GOD(GOD)]

If ever we are to establish a timeline for this game does anybody really feel or in the know which era we are in?-G-

Sometime between raptors and samurai.

 

[Maplestone]

Perish the thought that a paladin and a ninja could exist on the same planet at the same time ... oh wait

But seriously, there were different continents to the world and different facets that were isolated for long periods that wildly diverged from each other. Now that moongates have reopened, these divergent cultures are being thrown back into contact with each other.

New Haven (pulled through time, give or take it being finished) is a sort of microcosm of what the semi-integrated society might look like in the future.

 

[QueenZen]

I just blame it all on the busted broken shards of the world that is Ultima, ya know.

I mean seriously, it all got busted and broken to where there are multiverse universes of the same thing scattered about the universe and each evolved independantly and islolated, from what was.

Till some miracle occurs to where the world is *glued* back together...again...every time we turn around we seem to have found another shard of the broken mess of us, and they may have castles keeps, silver steeds or nightmares, titans or alien folks riding critters that we never ran into..*till some expansion pack* of discovery. Then we all flow & eb, into some new migrational world of combined customs.

Thus we are often in the Era of discovery, expansion and cross cultural blending of everything, which we have come to know, all of which, becomes changed yet again.

Blame it on the chap that broke the shard into fragemented prisims of broken disconnected Ultima ..discovering another new fragmented part of our world one more time that went on living evolving, like some lost land isle unto itself, creating new morphed species, races, critters and home decor, which in the ends all blurs and blends in, with the rest of us as they become found and blended in with our world.

We become a *melting pot* of cross history, crossed cultures with every new discovery of...another remennent of ourselves. Kinda mimacing the rl world as immigrants and discoverers find new lands new peoples, new foods new customs and bring it all home to their home lands, forever changing the face of both places...per discovery of one another. For the same reasons one can find a Mc Donald's in China, or a Chinese resturant in USA, or munch on fried rice, belgian chocolates while eating burritos atop our dyed India blue table cloths, while watching bobsledders from the Virgin Isles, compete in Winter Olympics on our tv sets ...in our rl nowadays. So tis not really peculiar to find some elf, riding a savage ridgeback, sporting a sami sword, building a crystal ice tile home next to some keep in Brit, in UO.

Dorky explanation but it works for me ! lol

 

[Trebr Drab]

The shards of UO are different from the shard, or primary world if that be the case, of the avatar. We start with the same back history from the event of Mondain's defeat to the Avatar, but from that point forwards things can be different. How different is a question. I don't know if there is a Minax in each shard, or if she is one being that was separate at the shattering because of possibly being in the void at the time, or what the case may be.

 

[Amren]

My guild has worked on some fiction which ties all the elements of the old Ultima series in with the things that the UO team has introduced. So I'm not sure what to make of your post other than to say you might be limiting yourself. UO offers more possibilities than any MMO I know of and that is one of it's strengths. I find it funny people try to knock it.

So what your saying is in UO we have to make our own fun and LORE?

Sounds like EA should win the award for the most lazy game development ever. And don't give me that whole "sandbox" argument. It's one thing to have people over to your virtual house for a virtual party, and it's another thing to make your own "fiction" for this game.

 

[sablestorm]

But quite frankly I find it odd to be fighting as a Paladin or Warrior with my plate armor and sword against a errr Ninja? Oh well I guess it's just another one of my hang ups on UO eh?

I'm pretty sure ninja were around in the middle ages of Europe. Alas, they were in Japan. Now suppose there was such a thing as a moongate back then and a bunch of knights poured through on a crusade to convert the Japanese to the Christian faith. Then you could very well have had samurai and ninjas fighting holy warriors.

 

[Stupid Miner]

So what your saying is in UO we have to make our own fun and LORE?

Sounds like EA should win the award for the most lazy game development ever. And don't give me that whole "sandbox" argument. It's one thing to have people over to your virtual house for a virtual party, and it's another thing to make your own "fiction" for this game.

http://town.uo.com/bnn/article_595.html

Yea seriously, we only have 595 BNN articles, what lazy bums. rolleyes:

 

[Gladius]

I just blame it all on the busted broken shards of the world that is Ultima, ya know.

I mean seriously, it all got busted and broken to where there are multiverse universes of the same thing scattered about the universe and each evolved independantly and islolated, from what was.

Till some miracle occurs to where the world is *glued* back together...again...every time we turn around we seem to have found another shard of the broken mess of us, and they may have castles keeps, silver steeds or nightmares, titans or alien folks riding critters that we never ran into..*till some expansion pack* of discovery. Then we all flow & eb, into some new migrational world of combined customs.

Thus we are often in the Era of discovery, expansion and cross cultural blending of everything, which we have come to know, all of which, becomes changed yet again.

Blame it on the chap that broke the shard into fragemented prisims of broken disconnected Ultima ..discovering another new fragmented part of our world one more time that went on living evolving, like some lost land isle unto itself, creating new morphed species, races, critters and home decor, which in the ends all blurs and blends in, with the rest of us as they become found and blended in with our world.

We become a *melting pot* of cross history, crossed cultures with every new discovery of...another remennent of ourselves. Kinda mimacing the rl world as immigrants and discoverers find new lands new peoples, new foods new customs and bring it all home to their home lands, forever changing the face of both places...per discovery of one another. For the same reasons one can find a Mc Donald's in China, or a Chinese resturant in USA, or munch on fried rice, belgian chocolates while eating burritos atop our dyed India blue table cloths, while watching bobsledders from the Virgin Isles, compete in Winter Olympics on our tv sets ...in our rl nowadays. So tis not really peculiar to find some elf, riding a savage ridgeback, sporting a sami sword, building a crystal ice tile home next to some keep in Brit, in UO.

Dorky explanation but it works for me ! lol

No not at all I feel I am beginning to understand..thank you for this.

Still can't reconcile King Arthur with Shintaro tho he he sorry me.

-G-

 

[sablestorm]

So what your saying is in UO we have to make our own fun and LORE?

Sounds like EA should win the award for the most lazy game development ever. And don't give me that whole "sandbox" argument. It's one thing to have people over to your virtual house for a virtual party, and it's another thing to make your own "fiction" for this game.

You make your own fun in any game you play. A game is basically a tool and those tools can help capture the imagination of a player or not. Take my guild for instance. We had played pen and paper games set in the Ultimas which went back to the 80s. When UO came out, we had a whole new source to build on. Initially, I was looking for more lore out of UO, much like it seems people here are doing. What I found, however, was the fact that the lack of UO lore was actually a boon to our creativity and our overall story.

For instance, we looked at the fact there were so many undead haunts throughout all the land. We started wondering why this would be and came up with this ancient empire called the Evain who we based on an Egyptian type culture. Dungeons like Deceit were burial chambers for high ranking nobles in this empire and of course the pyramid in Malas helped further cement this idea. This culture initially revered their gods (Mu, Ra, Cah, etc.) and the ankh, being the symbol of life, was very important to them. Their pharohs were revered as a gods walking the earth who would rejoin the other gods on their death.

Then came the pharoh Aritoth El'Bashir, who wished to become immortal and rule over the Ultimas for all eternity. He was a powerful mage, but even magery didn't allow him the means to life eternal. He sent his legions out to conquer the world and bring back whatever magical knowledge they could pillage. In Malas, the Evain conquered an orc tribe using a primitive yet potent form of magic they called Voo Doo (Bad Magic). Their leader, a shaman named Zog, was captured and brought before Aritoth so he could learn the secrets of this magic. Using his own stellar understand of magery, he refined this new magic into the science of necromancy. Here now was he means to life everlasting and it was his research into necromancy, his efforts to revive the long dead nobles in their tombs which is why the Ultimas are plagued by so many undead today.

There is much more for this idea has grown and grown the more we work on it. Aritoth and the Evain are really a driving villainous force in our stories and it all came about because we were looking for lore for UO. We've taken liberties with both UO lore and Ultima prime lore to make our story more cohesive, but it's been extremely fun and there are many many details which surprisingly just seem to fall into place. It has really enhanced our gameplay and we'll often go stealthing throughout the realm just to look for new details in-game that we can brainstorm about.

So again, I urge, look at the lack of lore as an opportunity and get creative and if you are the sort who needs to be fed the lore, you can borrow from the creative players who are writing their own.

 

[CatLord]

The Age of Draconi and Family.

 

[Coppelia]

At the beginning of UO, it was a mix of Medieval and Renaissance. With magic of course.

With the expansions, some exceptions were added. Like raptors. They're anachronic. We all know they've all been exterminated by Lara Croft years ago.

 

[Experimental]

Sometime between raptors and samurai.

More closely, somewhere between raptors and star wars.

 

[Viper09]

We're about to come into the Era of the Almighty Kitten