As mentioned elsewhere on these boards, it has been apparently discovered that the Nexus rewards from the latest part of the arc can summon Exodus Minions into the waking world of Britannia.
During an EM event on Europa, which just ended tonight, we were warned not to take any more out of Exodus Dungeon, report the locations of all those that had been placed, and keep an eye on those that have been taken. Through careful questioning it became apparent that this was just roleplay, not a recall of broken items! Therefore they are working as intended, and for the advancing plot aren't supposed to be just nice shinies to walk off with. And we should feel guilty in game (if we claim to be virtuous anyway) if we did just grab for the shinies without asking what they actually did. They are supposed to be corrupting and dangerous...
Discussing the nexus with Nimauq and others just now, my thoughts kept returning to something... At first I wondered here on Stratics if this arc was sketching the rise of (no point spoiling this now, it's almost certainly wrong) The Fellowship in Ultima VII. That was where we roughly were in Ultima Online interpretations, having done UIV (Shadowlords) UV (Warriors Of Virtue) and UVI (Gargoyles). But the Nexus don't appear in Ultima Prime at all; and Exodus is Ultima III and had already been done.
But there is a physical parallel in the Prime series... which got me thinking about my time with that game again, and idly reading the wiki and...
HUGE DAMN SPOILERS
I MEAN IT
I think I stumbled upon the actual source of inspiration for this plot;
During an EM event on Europa, which just ended tonight, we were warned not to take any more out of Exodus Dungeon, report the locations of all those that had been placed, and keep an eye on those that have been taken. Through careful questioning it became apparent that this was just roleplay, not a recall of broken items! Therefore they are working as intended, and for the advancing plot aren't supposed to be just nice shinies to walk off with. And we should feel guilty in game (if we claim to be virtuous anyway) if we did just grab for the shinies without asking what they actually did. They are supposed to be corrupting and dangerous...
Discussing the nexus with Nimauq and others just now, my thoughts kept returning to something... At first I wondered here on Stratics if this arc was sketching the rise of (no point spoiling this now, it's almost certainly wrong) The Fellowship in Ultima VII. That was where we roughly were in Ultima Online interpretations, having done UIV (Shadowlords) UV (Warriors Of Virtue) and UVI (Gargoyles). But the Nexus don't appear in Ultima Prime at all; and Exodus is Ultima III and had already been done.
But there is a physical parallel in the Prime series... which got me thinking about my time with that game again, and idly reading the wiki and...
HUGE DAMN SPOILERS
I MEAN IT
I think I stumbled upon the actual source of inspiration for this plot;
It's the discarded "Bob White" plot for Ultima IX
Bob White Plot - The Codex of Editable Wisdom, a Wikia wiki for Ultima and Ultima Online
For those not familiar with the game, Ultima IX had a much more lore-accurate, detailed and meaningful plot originally, known as "Bob White" but EA pressured Origin to release long before the game was likely to be ready. As a result it shipped incomplete, buggy and with a hastily reduced plot to include only the areas that were ready to go (and some dubious replacements for those that weren't; Britain Sewers was changed into Dungeon Hythloth for instance), whilst shoe horning in as many of the expensive to make videos as possible.
The result was a horrible mess. But the original plot begins like this;
But there's more! As the Wikipedia entry explains about the original plot;
Our Queen is of course not just out of government but under the ground. And on Europa at least, the 3 major cities involved in the plot? Britain (Home of Fynn Barrett and to which is he devoted even at the expense of the Realm), Jhelom and Moonglow (who are fighting a war between themselves)... a war many of us suspect is instigated by an individual man we know as Koba.
It won't be an exact parallel, because I believe the current Ultima Online Awakening structure is that the Dev Team code the wider events, but the actual connective plotting is down to each individual shard's EMs. It could be a different antagonist on your shard. Maybe... even Lord Blackthorn? However... food shortage. Incipient civil war. Now we're raising our own corrupting columns across the land, in the shape of the Nexus?
What's even more interesting is, after the official Ultima IX patch, a fan patch (1.19f) was released which, the rumours went, was programmed by one of the original Dev team for IX, disgusted at the released version and trying to bring it closer to the "Bob White" version of the plot. If you've played the game yourself, you can probably understand why. I know I found myself staring at the screen many times and thinking "No. Really?! Come off it! etc"
Here's a screen shot in fact (which I still have today for some reason) of where the game originally broke on my first attempted play through;
What you are looking at is where a vital key SHOULD have been, but completing one of the frankendungeons in the obvious order, rather than the shoe-horned, illogical tap dance way that didn't fit the plot as it now was, meant that the chests spawned empty of anything at all. And this was with the official patch! I had to restart from scratch at this point, and follow a walkthrough step by exact step... so I never got around to playing a third time through with the fan patch, hence I didn't recognise more than the "Corrupting Column" idea at first.
But wouldn't it be nice to think that history is repeating itself today, and fans at Mythic and amongst the EMs, fans of the long lost Ultima IX ideas, the ones that would have made that game truly shine, are bringing them to Ultima Online instead today? That we are seeing at least an attempt to salvage some of the intended joy that EA largely wrecked for fans of the series?
And I wonder what other parallels are there, if only they'd let us peak behind the veil?
Bob White Plot - The Codex of Editable Wisdom, a Wikia wiki for Ultima and Ultima Online
For those not familiar with the game, Ultima IX had a much more lore-accurate, detailed and meaningful plot originally, known as "Bob White" but EA pressured Origin to release long before the game was likely to be ready. As a result it shipped incomplete, buggy and with a hastily reduced plot to include only the areas that were ready to go (and some dubious replacements for those that weren't; Britain Sewers was changed into Dungeon Hythloth for instance), whilst shoe horning in as many of the expensive to make videos as possible.
The result was a horrible mess. But the original plot begins like this;
Sound familiar?
But there's more! As the Wikipedia entry explains about the original plot;
Ultima IX: Ascension - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Our Queen is of course not just out of government but under the ground. And on Europa at least, the 3 major cities involved in the plot? Britain (Home of Fynn Barrett and to which is he devoted even at the expense of the Realm), Jhelom and Moonglow (who are fighting a war between themselves)... a war many of us suspect is instigated by an individual man we know as Koba.
It won't be an exact parallel, because I believe the current Ultima Online Awakening structure is that the Dev Team code the wider events, but the actual connective plotting is down to each individual shard's EMs. It could be a different antagonist on your shard. Maybe... even Lord Blackthorn? However... food shortage. Incipient civil war. Now we're raising our own corrupting columns across the land, in the shape of the Nexus?
What's even more interesting is, after the official Ultima IX patch, a fan patch (1.19f) was released which, the rumours went, was programmed by one of the original Dev team for IX, disgusted at the released version and trying to bring it closer to the "Bob White" version of the plot. If you've played the game yourself, you can probably understand why. I know I found myself staring at the screen many times and thinking "No. Really?! Come off it! etc"
Here's a screen shot in fact (which I still have today for some reason) of where the game originally broke on my first attempted play through;
What you are looking at is where a vital key SHOULD have been, but completing one of the frankendungeons in the obvious order, rather than the shoe-horned, illogical tap dance way that didn't fit the plot as it now was, meant that the chests spawned empty of anything at all. And this was with the official patch! I had to restart from scratch at this point, and follow a walkthrough step by exact step... so I never got around to playing a third time through with the fan patch, hence I didn't recognise more than the "Corrupting Column" idea at first.
But wouldn't it be nice to think that history is repeating itself today, and fans at Mythic and amongst the EMs, fans of the long lost Ultima IX ideas, the ones that would have made that game truly shine, are bringing them to Ultima Online instead today? That we are seeing at least an attempt to salvage some of the intended joy that EA largely wrecked for fans of the series?
And I wonder what other parallels are there, if only they'd let us peak behind the veil?
