Ultima Online Interview

MMORPG.com has cranked out an article-style interview they conducted with Ultima Online’s Tim Cotten during the recent Austin Game Developers Conference.

Tim mentioned that it is very important for Ultima developers to listen to what their community wants. After all some of the players have been in the game longer than the developers working on it now and those players deserve to be heard. The Ultima team works to enhance some of the game play elements players have created themselves. Pet fighting is a big one, and players have been hosting Battle Chicken fights for a long time. The UO team is looking at ways to enhance these tournaments. That are looking at tools to help players formalize their own events across the game.

Because UO is a sandbox style game the team is also looking at ways to expand dungeon exploration. Tim likes the idea of making dungeons more in depth with puzzles and traps. He referenced the old Dungeons & Dragons module (Tomb of Horrors.) If you are a gamer and have not heard of Tomb of Horrors go look it up. It is brutal. I think they teach it in game design classes in colleges now as a lesson on how to make players lives miserable. Still, the idea of more puzzles and traps in a sand box dungeon is very cool, hopefully we will see more on that in the future.