I'm sorry, I thought this was an Ultima Online forum.
Stratics doesn't seem to have an Ultima Forever forum yet, at least one that I was able to find. And last August, Jeff Skalski posted this letter where he talks about both games:
http://www.uo.com/article/Letter-Franchise-Producer .
One of the last lines in Jeff's letter was: "Lastly, for those interested in seeing a UO2. No surprise announcements on that today, but what I will say by everyone continuing to support UO and Ultima Forever this is the kind of ammunition I need to convince the high level execs that the market is ready for more Ultima."
So where else do you want people to post if they want to do as Jeff suggested and
support UO and Ultima Forever?
I would think Jeff (the Ultima Franchise Producer), Carrie Gouskos (the Ultima Forever Producer), and Kate Flack (Lead Developer) would be very interested in reading feedback about Ultima Forever from people who are known to be dedicated UO fans and, more than likely, were dedicated fans of the old Ultima games. If nothing else, it may tell them what could be tweaked to make UFE even more appealing to ex-UO players. And if they can be successful getting some of those people to try UFE and get hooked into it, they might just decide to give UO another try.
It might be also be interesting to them to know whether the people who play UO are even interested in playing a UO-themed game on a mobile device. Are most of us "gadget freaks" who'd at least give it a try or are we mostly old farts who are too attached to our PCs to even think about it?
Last year, EA spun off a play-for-free multiplayer arena game for Warhammer Online (it was cancelled earlier this year though), so who's to say whether they might be considering doing something similar for UO, i.e., taking some part of UO and setting it up so you can play just that part of the game on your phone? If they can't do that, maybe they might at least be considering putting character and guild search in a format you can access through a mobile device. That would at least be a start towards "making it more modern."
If UO is going to survive another 15 years, I think it very likely has to morph into something that has more appeal for people who are younger than the average current or ex-UO player. A lot of people complain about the graphics being outdated and the KR and EC clients being a flop. So, if you were scratching your head trying to figure out how to make UO both more visually appealing (fix the graphics) and make it something that gadget-freaks (which includes most of our kids and grandkids) can easily get their hands on, I think you would be seriously considering how to stick it on mobile devices that keep getting ever more powerful. So, yeah, that might be why it's worthwhile at this point for us to pay attention to Ultima Forever and consider giving it a try. It's a free-to-play game, so in theory, it shouldn't cost you a cent to give it a try once it rolls out on a platform you can access. (I can't wait for it to come out for Android devices and hopefully playable on a Kindle Fire. However, I hear the download size is humongous. Will have to delete some of the apps my grandkids use on my Kindle!)
Last year, EA spun off a play-for-free multiplayer arena game for Warhammer Online (it was cancelled earlier this year though), so who's to say whether they might be considering doing something similar for UO, i.e., taking some part of UO and setting it up so you can play just that part of the game on your phone or tablet? Maybe something that is quest-related. If they can't do that, maybe they might at least be considering putting character and guild search in a format you can access through a mobile device. That would at least be a start towards "making it more modern."
Anyway, I hope people do start at least checking into Ultima Forever and providing some educated feedback about it. If you don't want to do it here, UFE has a Facebook page and they're on Twitter. There is also an official forum for it, but I'm not sure if you actually have to have a UFE account to sign up and post there. It's one thing to say, "I don't even want to try it because I hate EA" or "I don't want to even try it because it's not UO." But it would be so much more helpful to people like Jeff (who is also in charge of UO!) to say, "Hey, I tried it and I don't like ....." or "I looked into and read up about it and I'm turned off by ....." or "I read about it and would try it if ...." This is a good fan-built place to find out more about UFE:
http://forever.ultimacodex.com/ . The Twitter feed for UFE is here:
https://twitter.com/UltimaForever . You don't need to have a Twitter account to read what's there. Released UFE music:
https://soundcloud.com/ultima-forever .
Don't just dismiss it out of hand, folks. I strongly suspect that if Ultima Forever's launch is a failure, there WILL be consequences for UO and they won't be good ones. So, be open-minded, pay attention to Ultima Forever, read up about it, try it if and when it becomes available, and start talking about it in an educated fashion so the people that want the feedback pay attention to what you say and just don't dismiss it because you have no clue what you're talking about and/or you're just an old UO curmudgeon.
