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[Hugehead]

The Ultima Online freeshard An Corp, formerly known as In Por Ylem 3, is opening January 22nd. I'm going to be in day one, is anyone else going to be playing?

Website
Teaser Trailer

Spoiler: Key features (click to show/hide)

Arenas

Fight your friends or strangers in the Arena! This unique feature allows you to duel other players in an ordered fashion, strcutured specifically for the dueling experience.

1v1, 2v2, 3v3 Order/Chaos duels. Ranked or Unranked matches.
Seasonal ladders.
Always wanted to try out a new PvP template, but don't want to grind the character up? No problem! Choose your template, select your gear, and fight for your life in the unranked matches!


PvE Improvements

An Corp offers a plethora of fun and engaging options when it comes to defeating monstrous adversaries. We have added unique monsters to stay fresh and creative while ensuring the old school experience remains.

Gather your friends and guildmates to tackle fierce "Mini Champions" that reside within dungeons! Each spawn will offer a new challenge!
Rare named monster spawns, tougher than your average monster. What treasures await?
Earn a special currency by defeating named monsters, used for exclusive rewards!
Compete with the entire shard for rares and top tier loot by defeating the evil monsters featured in the Rush Challenges!
 

Order/Chaos/Balance
 
Will you fight for Order? Will Chaos reign? Or will there be Balance in the world? Which town will you call your home?

Fight in the three way faction system made popular by IPY2! Defend your hometown from attack, or assault the enemy with your fellow Militiamen for dominance of Britannia! Earn unique rewards by climbing the ranks of your faction. Become KING and purchase defences for your city!

O/C/B offers a unique set of features only available here.

Ability to set the guard strength of your city. Hate those pesky thieves? Set the guards to high alert!
Use the city's treasury to pay militia-soldiers or build protective walls. Politics can play a very powerful role.
Build up the treasury by using the city's facilities. The more active and populated your city is, the greater the treasury!


Kingships
 
Kings are voted in by the citizens of their town and have to power to set guard status, tax rates, and much more.

Now you can truly command your city from the ground up! Kingships are a very exciting addition to the game allowing players to delve straight into politics. Remember future Kings, the power always belongs to the people!

Monthly elections and the chance to win your crown!
Rule your town and decide which side you will support in OCB!
Maintain your rule by encouraging the citizens to vote for you during the campaign.
Purchase defenses for your city, with direct access to the treasury!


Rare Crafting

Daily, Weekly, and Monthly rares spawn throughout the world of Brittania. But it doesn't stop there.

High end crafters are able to take various rares, while using costly transformation dust from the master crafter in any townsquare, and combine them into an even more prestigious item!
Whether you are an alchemist, tailor, cook, tinker, blacksmith, carpenter, bowcrafter, or inscriber, this exciting system will give you various opportunities to continue your tradeskill throughout the end-game.
With close to 30 possible ultra-rare craftables already, this game with-in the game will only continue to grow as we look towards future additions!


Portals

The ability to create your own custom dungeon adventure!

A place to let out your creative side. Build cathedrals, dungeons, mazes, forests. The possibilities are limited only to what you can imagine.

Venture through the Portals found in dungeons to travel to a new, player created dungeon of their own! This is your chance to create something truly unique that all players can experience. Will you dungeon be filled with difficult monsters? Traps? Perhaps... murderers...?

The portal system is truly unique to An Corp!

[moghopper]

If we got decent numbers, then I would join.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

What is good about it? From the website I'm reading they tweaked skill gain, nerfed a couple PVP tactics, a couple new craftables, and they have an arena script. On the other hand, they have only the basic houses (and no customized houses, which was an awesome part of UO). I've seen some amazing stuff done with freeshard scripting and this just looks kinda tame and basic.

So ... what do you think makes this one stand out?

[Sonlirain]

What is good about it? From the website I'm reading they tweaked skill gain, nerfed a couple PVP tactics, a couple new craftables, and they have an arena script. On the other hand, they have only the basic houses (and no customized houses, which was an awesome part of UO). I've seen some amazing stuff done with freeshard scripting and this just looks kinda tame and basic.

So ... what do you think makes this one stand out?

Nerfing mages/archers and no ninjas/samurai or mounts.

[Hugehead]

Nerfing mages/archers and no ninjas/samurai or mounts.

In addition to that there's three way world faction PvP with player kings that have a large amount of power over their city, enhanced PvE with some harder rare monsters and shardwide races to defeat monsters in "Rush Challenges", and portals that let you create your own dungeons.

[The Dystopian]

I'm strangely excited about this. I used to play a lot from 2001 to 2005 on a bunch of freeshard. I'll definitely give this a try. I even made a character on another shard just to get the hang of UO back.

[Glowcat]

Having never been caught up in its heyday and having been totally lost with the one freeshard I did try, why should one play Ultima Online? I'd genuinely like to know the draw of it.

Ultima Online was one of the first MMOs and free of much of the conventions which now stifle the genre, being parallel to Everquest rather than dominated by its design. This allowed it to focus on a type of gameplay where players would take actual roles in the world with the possibility to be animal tamers, bards, thieves, various types of crafters, or of course warriors and mages. Players would create entire towns and interact on a level that's hardly seen today with its instances and other barriers. The Roleplaying in particular was a strong point, and some groups managed to create an experience that I have never seen repeated.

[Imofexios]

Aww those times UO gave best rp fun. Makes me laughing all again.
Really fun times but i think it has moved passthose good times or maybe i've grown too much

[Brons]

I really want to get back into UO but it never feels the same when I try it again. My best run, years ago, was when I was running around making my own Rune Book. Breaking the monopoly that was dominating the shard. People were upset with my cheap rune books .

[casserol]

Having never been caught up in its heyday and having been totally lost with the one freeshard I did try, why should one play Ultima Online? I'd genuinely like to know the draw of it.

I can only speak for the 'era' and environment I played in (which this shard appears to be trying to recreate), but many others have posted similar things when I've seen this topic come up, so I'll go ahead.

It's the freedom. Want to be part of an adventuring guild that goes into local dungeons and kills monsters for profit? You can do that. Want to set up a hut at the edge of a forest somewhere where you chop trees down, carve them into furniture and art, and sell that furniture and art to passing travellers? You can do that. What about opening your own tavern far from civilization, and inviting wanderers in for a bite to eat, some drink, and perhaps a chance to use your runebooks? Except the mead is poisoned, and as they frantically reach for a potion to cure it you're already sticking your dagger into their ribs and planning where you'll sell their gear.

As examples, my two favourite experiences have been as a highwayman who stopped travellers on the road near the Britain Moongate and told them to stand and deliver, their money or their life (though sadly, the majority just ran, forcing me to kill them, as opposed to playing along and just giving me a portion of their gold. Such is life).

The other was as a guild leader who started up a church to a 'long forgotten deity' I'd discovered through nebulous circumstances. This church had a mandate to recover a number of rare statues that occasionally dropped from creatures around the world; it was part of a plot to resurrect our (secretly evil) god. That isn't an ingame 'thing', but UO being the game that it is, it wouldn't have been surprising at all if upon asking the GMs, they went along with it and turned it into a quest for the playerbase. Say, players could choose to aid us in completing our ritual at X location or fight to stop us doing so, and if the ritual were successful, the GMs would presumably create a strong custom monster to serve as our 'diety' for the players to fight and defeat.

Lots of games tout themselves as having this kind of freedom though, so I can see why a modern player might skeptical. I guess it's something about the engine, the way the world if physically manipulated by the player, that makes it feel a lot more real in UO. Or perhaps it's the game map; it all feels part of one huge world instead of 'levels' or 'zones'.

That said, the negative is that like any sandbox game, the achievements can feel more hollow because of this. There's no 'I beat the hardest dungeon on legendary mode, now I have the platinum badge and the boss's rare drop' type of thing here. Achievements are entirely set by yourself, and they only matter in so much as they matter to you. So I'd say it's more for the roleplaying types. Not that roleplay is mandatory or even the norm, but the type of people who enjoy roleplaying and such tend to be able to get more out of UO, as they tend to be better at giving their characters goals and ambitions.

There are also those who focus nearly entirely on the PVP side of things, which I can't really comment on. I engaged in PVP occasionally, but never found it especially balanced or anything more than a means to an end. To be fair, mind, I had a lot of lag issues when I used to play UO as this was back in the old 56k days, and that's coloured my experiences.

yeah this pretty much. PTW because <3 UO

[Caz]

I love UO. So many good memories. -_-

[Aklyon]

Never played UO, myself.

I might try it at some point.

Me too.

[The Dystopian]

I think that one of the main appeal of this game (and why it should be of interest for the nice Bay12 people) is that it's brutal and unforgiving. You start with a rusty dagger and 15 cents and as soon as you venture out of town you get killed by a player 200 times stronger than you. And if you manage to save enough for a nice sword someone will come along and steal it from you. And when you die you lose everything that you carry on you.

But if you stick with it, learn the mechanics and work on your skills eventually you can do whatever you want. Start a metal work empire, a guild that control a town, a magic portal library that will take people anywhere in the world (for a fee). But nothing is really ever out of reach and if you work hard enough you can get anything you like.

On one shard I was leader of a mafia type guild that made player vendor pay protection money so we would not steal from or kill their customer. That worked well for a long time but eventually the traders got together and attacked us, we hired a bunch of player killer to our aid that quickly defeated them, then they got bored and killed us. The whole economy crumbled for weeks until a bunch of new players seized the opportunity to take control of the market. The traders made a pact with us to help them cripple the new players supply lines while we were still struggling with the player killers on our back. It went on for months, the plotting, the back stabbing, the scheming, the politics... It was the most awesome time I've ever had with a game.

Then there was the introduction of some mechanics to prevent the rampant stealing and non consensual killing. A new breed of player came in and the old guard left in disgust. A few free shard tried to keep the old rules and survived for years. UO An Corp is a new iteration of such shard that look to be very promising.

Hard Core, Old School, Uncompromising.
Very Dwarfy

[The Dystopian]

So does anyone know about the housing limit yet?

From the Wiki:

Housing
UO An Corp features a 1-house per account rule, but players are allowed up to three accounts per IP address.

Custom houses will not be available at server launch. The addition of customizable houses and/or new house designs is planned for post release.
Citizenship

Being a citizen of a town certainly has it's benefits, and one of them is being able to own property within the town limits.
House skill rate is 50% for normal characters, and 100% for O/C/B militia members.
Note: House deeds (just as anything else bought from NPCs) are significantly cheaper as a citizen of the town you're purchasing it in.

In light of certain exploit at launch they changed the rule for 2 accout per IP

[LeoLeonardoIII]

Did someone say there were ... no mounts?