NEWS [UO.Com] Ultima Online Classic Client Upgrade

[UO News]

9/25/2024 The feedback we have received since Ultima Online: New Legacy entered into beta testing has been incredible! Players current, former, and new are excited about a fresh start in this new world. It has been important to us throughout beta testing to listen to what the community is saying and acting on that feedback to bring the best version of New Legacy to full release. There is no mistaking the iconic aesthetics of the Ultima Online Classic Client are irreplaceable. Since its release in 1997, players have come to appreciate the performance and quality of life upgrades that are […]

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[Dan(Tasanar)]

ClassicUO is A OK.

 

[Prawn]

About time..

 

[ShriNayne]

I never thought I'd see the day, I never thought they'd actually listen, this is a great day for UO!!

 

[Omnicron]

Well that's a great start! I like some of the functions of the EC but realllllllyyyyyyyyyy prefer the art style of the Classic client.

 

[belal]

It is good that you will finally no longer need to visit a third party website and download third party software to play in 2d.

 

[Izzy MBC]

Never used ClassicUO so this worries me, I only ever use official CC (unless I'm trying to shop a vendor stocked using EC).

"... support higher frame rates and a larger play window" ... I guess this sounds reasonable...

Ever since they trashed several of the classic Britannia dungeons long ago (e.g. the garbage heap that is now dungeon Despise) a lot of my enjoyment playing UO has evaporated. So whatever this actually entails, please don't let it butcher the feel of the classic experience any further...

 

[Omnicron]

Never used ClassicUO so this worries me, I only ever use official CC (unless I'm trying to shop a vendor stocked using EC).

"... support higher frame rates and a larger play window" ... I guess this sounds reasonable...

Ever since they trashed several of the classic Britannia dungeons long ago (e.g. the garbage heap that is now dungeon Despise) a lot of my enjoyment playing UO has evaporated. So whatever this actually entails, please don't let it butcher the feel of the classic experience any further...

This will be the3 same client that you know and love, but with an adjustable game window like the EC.

 

[Izzy MBC]

This will be the3 same client that you know and love, but with an adjustable game window like the EC.

Okay. I know this will sound ridiculous but even hearing "higher frame rates" makes me wary. I know some people prefer smooth movement (as per EC) but I'm a great enjoyer of the choppier CC feel. For me, it's been 24 years of pleasing choppy rendering, I hope I can reach 25 years uninterrupted...

 

[Dol'Gorath]

9/25/2024 The feedback we have received since Ultima Online: New Legacy entered into beta testing has been incredible! Players current, former, and new are excited about a fresh start in this new world. It has been important to us throughout beta testing to listen to what the community is saying and acting on that feedback to bring the best version of New Legacy to full release. There is no mistaking the iconic aesthetics of the Ultima Online Classic Client are irreplaceable. Since its release in 1997, players have come to appreciate the performance and quality of life upgrades that are […]

Continue reading...

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Bigger Play window will be nice. Hopefully they add some quality of life changes to the official client like being able to lock icons in place so you don't accidentally move them.

 

[Dol'Gorath]

Never used ClassicUO so this worries me, I only ever use official CC (unless I'm trying to shop a vendor stocked using EC).

"... support higher frame rates and a larger play window" ... I guess this sounds reasonable...

Ever since they trashed several of the classic Britannia dungeons long ago (e.g. the garbage heap that is now dungeon Despise) a lot of my enjoyment playing UO has evaporated. So whatever this actually entails, please don't let it butcher the feel of the classic experience any further...

I feel you there. I wish they would undo the "revamps" as well. Despise and Shame got ruined by them. They were largely unpopular that they stopped revamping the classic dungeons despite originally promising to redo all of them.

Shame and Despise were great newbie friendly dungeons, now...not so much.

 

[LiquidSolidity]

But, Mesanna has said for years that upgrading the classic client was impossible?? I think they also need to upgrade her right out of the building

 

[Halister Marner]

Finally! ClassicUO is a great client. Once it's approved my eyes will be incredibly thankful.

 

[Stinky Pete]

Well... it's about time.

 

[Captn Norrington]

I’m incredibly shocked by this, hopefully it actually works out.

Just please, I beg you, don’t try to “upgrade” the art styles. We like the Classic Client exactly the way it looks now. The water doesn’t need to be shiny like Enhanced Client, nothing needs to change visually.

 

[Sunghun]

I appreciate them for their work.

 

[Dol'Gorath]

Finally! ClassicUO is a great client. Once it's approved my eyes will be incredibly thankful.

Honestly it is unexpected for them to collaborate with a 3rd party like this. This is a good precedent. To be honest, they should consider bringing back the UO Pro 3rd Party Utility program so that 3rd parties can make mods and applications for the game like ClassicUO and UOA and have them officially approved for use by the dev team.

 

[elster]

whoa. insane that this is actually happening. i'm coming back.

 

[mihali]

This is really good news. Classic UO is far more than just screen resizing, and much more than just optimized graphics!
Lots of ease of life benefits, and also actually functional macros, and lots more! If the Classic UO implementation is close to what the public servers use, chances are pretty decent many old players will return.
Congrats to the Devs and Mesana! Good plan!

 

[mihali]

I’m incredibly shocked by this, hopefully it actually works out.

Just please, I beg you, don’t try to “upgrade” the art styles. We like the Classic Client exactly the way it looks now. The water doesn’t need to be shiny like Enhanced Client, nothing needs to change visually.

Agree mostly, except the water in EC : It is a matter of taste. I started playing EC just because the EC sea/ocean water looks so much nicer for me.

 

[mihali]

I never thought I'd see the day, I never thought they'd actually listen, this is a great day for UO!!

Agree. Looking forward to this very much. Now the question is how soon will this happen.

 

[Andrasta]

This is fantastic news! Can we try this now?

 

[Arcus]

Great decision.

 

[Omnicron]

I’m incredibly shocked by this, hopefully it actually works out.

Just please, I beg you, don’t try to “upgrade” the art styles. We like the Classic Client exactly the way it looks now. The water doesn’t need to be shiny like Enhanced Client, nothing needs to change visually.

This. For the love of God, this.

 

[Petra Fyde]

If you read the whole thing it does say:
There is no mistaking the iconic aesthetics of the Ultima Online Classic Client are irreplaceable

I don't think there's any plan to change CC graphics.

 

[Izzy MBC]

Shame and Despise were great newbie friendly dungeons, now...not so much.

Agree, 100 percent. I really miss those dungeons. The deeper levels of Shame retain similarly themed mobs just with 50 times more stats; now it's just slow, boring, uninspiring. Which is strange because it's a very deadly area, but all the mobs feel quite samey since they are all just "50x'd variants" of the originals with massive resists/health bars, with a dragon breathe ability thrown here and there.

As for Despise, yup, I'd love to have the lizardmen, ratmen, earth ele's and ettins again. Oh god, and the area on level 3 where there were Titans and Cyclopeans, that area was SO cool, I loved that spawn, and there was an acid ele round the corner in his acid pond. Of course, the Ogres and Ogre Lords, that wide area is arguably an even bigger loss. Speaking of which, my oldest screenshots are of that area, November 2001.



Ramble over~ I know this is all off topic but I love talking about the dungeons

 

[Stinky Pete]

This is fantastic news! Can we try this now?

Some of us never stopped!

 

[Arcus]

Some of us never stopped!

Do you mean you are using the ClassicUO client to connect to EA official servers?

 

[Merlin]

Mentioned in Massively OP:

Ultima Online devs are working with ClassicUO modders to rehab the ancient client and renderer | Massively Overpowered (massivelyop.com)

 

[Stinky Pete]

Do you mean you are using the ClassicUO client to connect to EA official servers?

Uhhhh... yeah... aren't you?

 

[Sargon]

Doesn't ClassicUO have a web client too? Being able to run UO multi-platform through any web browser would be amazing, but I would be surprised if Broadsword opens it up that much.

 

[Ivory Norwind]

I’m incredibly shocked by this, hopefully it actually works out.
Just please, I beg you, don’t try to “upgrade” the art styles. We like the Classic Client exactly the way it looks now. The water doesn’t need to be shiny like Enhanced Client, nothing needs to change visually.

Totally agree with you. I love CC too much and hope it doesn't change too much. Otherwise UO has closed its doors for me

 

[Anon McDougle]

Doesn't ClassicUO have a web client too? Being able to run UO multi-platform through any web browser would be amazing, but I would be surprised if Broadsword opens it up that much.

I only saw free shards available through web browser

 

[Sargon]

Totally agree with you. I love CC too much and hope it doesn't change too much. Otherwise UO has closed its doors for me

Embrace the change. This is CC on steroids and has the potential, if done right, to finally unify the playerbase and end the madness of maintaining separate clients and art assets.

 

[elster]

Totally agree with you. I love CC too much and hope it doesn't change too much. Otherwise UO has closed its doors for me

It doesn't sound like CC is going away, and that this will be just another supported client. However, when it's allowed, I encourage giving it a try. it's CC with improvements that should have been added in CC a long time ago.

 

[Sargon]

It doesn't sound like CC is going away, and that this will be just another supported client.

That would be a big mistake. ClassicUO is an improvement on the Classic Client and it would be silly to continue to support an outdated/inferior version of the Classic Client as well. UO has been held back for far too long by a fear of moving forward, resulting in having to maintain multiple clients. I hope the team has learned from past mistakes and takes this opportunity to create THE client for UO, not one of many.

 

[Poo]

... I hope the team has learned from past mistakes and takes this opportunity to create THE client for UO, not one of many.

they did, in 1997.

 

[Deimos]

I never thought that would ever happen, I mean wow, what a great step forward.
The classic UO client is light years ahead of the official one in some many ways, not just screen resolution/zoom options (which are amazing), but all the other features that enhance the game.
It's clever really because all the work has essentially been done for free, so they're getting a proper replacement client without having to spend developer/programmer time, which would've taken then years I'd bet.
It does make me wonder if anything will be stripped out of it though.

 

[Stinky Pete]

I never thought that would ever happen, I mean wow, what a great step forward.
The classic UO client is light years ahead of the official one in some many ways, not just screen resolution/zoom options (which are amazing), but all the other features that enhance the game.
It's clever really because all the work has essentially been done for free, so they're getting a proper replacement client without having to spend developer/programmer time, which would've taken then years I'd bet.
It does make me wonder if anything will be stripped out of it though.

I imagine they'll remove plug-in support. Maybe trees to stumps. But really, CUO doesn't need a lot of stripping down. Without plug-in support, one might say that players running CC with UOA have an advantage and EC would be the cheater client.

 

[hirikawa]

Wow this is huge. People have been wanting CC client updates for AGES.

 

[Ivory Norwind]

they did, in 1997.

Yeah!!!

 

[Deimos]

I imagine they'll remove plug-in support. Maybe trees to stumps. But really, CUO doesn't need a lot of stripping down. Without plug-in support, one might say that players running CC with UOA have an advantage and EC would be the cheater client.

Indeed, but it does make me wonder what will happen to the CUO client after it's been adopted
Can you or anyone honestly see CUO being available as it is for free shards when it's now been adopted by the official service?
It's a good thing for official UO, but for free shards? I'm not so sure.

 

[Stinky Pete]

Indeed, but it does make me wonder what will happen to the CUO client after it's been adopted
Can you or anyone honestly see CUO being available as it is for free shards when it's now been adopted by the official service?
It's a good thing for official UO, but for free shards? I'm not so sure.

I don't know. I've been using CUO on both official and free shards for years.

It's more of an issue with the assistant programs and server emulators. Right now, assistant programs kind of work, with some issues. I just don't think the teams working on them have the desire to make them compatible with the new client version. I know for a fact that at least one popular server emulator took the stance that they will likely never be compatible with the new client version. So, freeshards probably aren't going to support newer clients for quite a while, but I really don’t think that will slow their development down. I'm certain that CUO will maintain backwards compatibility to support the popular server emulators.

 

[Thrakkar]

So then there will be 3 clients? CC, EC & ClassicUO?

Since ClassicUO isn't sanctioned right now, they obviously have to remove certain features, which means, that there will be two versions of ClassicUO, one officially sanctioned one with a reduced feature set (SCUO) and a non-sanctioned with the full feature set. What if SCUO needs to be updated (i.e. for a certain Publish), who is going to work on that? The ClientUO-devs? Can they ensure, they meet the deadlines? Then if those guys change something, then BS has to re-evaluate its feature set, to ensure, nothing has been added, which would disqualify it from staying sanctioned? Or will BS just fork the current repo and maintain that internally?

I don't know... I already thought two clients is one too much. IMHO they should just implement all ClientUO features into CC and call it a day.
I'm really curious, how this is going to work out in the long run...

 

[Spartan]

So then there will be 3 clients? CC, EC & ClassicUO?

Since ClassicUO isn't sanctioned right now, they obviously have to remove certain features, which means, that there will be two versions of ClassicUO, one officially sanctioned one with a reduced feature set (SCUO) and a non-sanctioned with the full feature set. What if SCUO needs to be updated (i.e. for a certain Publish), who is going to work on that? The ClientUO-devs? Can they ensure, they meet the deadlines? Then if those guys change something, then BS has to re-evaluate its feature set, to ensure, nothing has been added, which would disqualify it from staying sanctioned? Or will BS just fork the current repo and maintain that internally?

I don't know... I already thought two clients is one too much. IMHO they should just implement all ClientUO features into CC and call it a day.
I'm really curious, how this is going to work out in the long run...

Just spitballing here. What if it stays 2 clients - EC and CC (Classic UO with mods)? The mods should be minor in nature as CUO has much of the stuff we players have wanted for years. Bring it in as a CC replacement (call it CCUO) and be done with it.

After that any CUO updates/changes would need to be incorporated into CCUO. <shrug> Like I said ... just spitballing.

 

[Thrakkar]

What if it stays 2 clients

You don't have to convince me. The less clients, the better and the more they can focus on actual content.
You need to convince BS, because their article clearly says, that no client will go away and a third one will be invited to the party...

 

[ShriNayne]

ClassicUO still has the old CC graphics but it runs a lot smoother, no jerking like you have in the CC and to some extent also the EC. It's sort of like what people have asked for, a more up-to-date UI but with the original graphics. One of the reasons I started using the EC was that my mage had so many spells out and the little boxes kept getting jostled around, which drove me crazy! Having them all glued together, modern hotbar style is a huge improvement! I always did prefer the CC graphics on most things, not all, but most. There would be no need to keep the CC after they have ClassicUO.

 

[Thrakkar]

There would be no need to keep the CC after they have ClassicUO.

What about UOA? Is it compatible with ClassicUO?
Or does ClassicUO also have all the functionality to replace UOA?

 

[Sargon]

What about UOA? Is it compatible with ClassicUO?
Or does ClassicUO also have all the functionality to replace UOA?

Hey, I paid $15 for my UOA license 26 years ago. I better still be able to use it so I can get my money's worth!

 

[R00]

Too little, too late