List of things my puppy has done

• Eaten his own shit
• Eaten two silica gel packages
• Destroyed my uncle's fancy dance shoe in one minute
• Repeatly shitted and peed on the floor after being outside a second ago
• Ripped dirty paper towels into tiny pieces on the floor
• Eaten stuff found from a carbage bin
• Bitten numerous toes, fingers and noses
• Waken me up several times 5 am
• Prevented me of having my naps
• Peed and shitted on carpets AND my bed cover!
• Eaten pieces of bricks
• Barfed

All this in two months. Who wants a puppy?

Correction

Fatboy started to scream about UO not being the first MMORPG. He mentioned that at least Meridian 59 is older than UO.

So yeah. He was right. I checked wikipedia and found out that Meridian is one year older than UO, and the first graphical MMORPG was Neverwinter Nights released 1991. UO would be maybe fourth graphical MMORPG. MUDs trace even futher back.

Funny Finnish fact!

Did you know the finnish verb "hukkua" means both "drown" AND "lost"?

When you know about our habit to get drunk every weekend and holiday, usually near the approximately 190000 lakes and about 180000 islands we have, it actually makes sense.

- "Man, have you seen Jake around here? I woke up with a hangover near the lake and I haven't seen him since."
- "No, he's probably drown in the lake."

UO Reborn

Fatboy has forced me to make another update, so here it is. Ultima Online. Why do I blog about UO? Because fatboy hates it. That's what you get for forcing me to update this thing!

I still hold the game in golden pedestal, just because it was the first MMORPG. It's the veteran of online gaming and all it's children (WoW and such) are just copy cats. Make cool graphics and copy everything else from UO. That's how you make MMORPGs these days.

Right now the veteran is receiving a makeover. Ultima Online: Kingdom Reborn (working title) will be released on 2007.

Here's a quote:

According to EA, this is more than an expansion; it is a make-over of the Ultima Online world with a new graphics engine which will maintain the game's original third-person perspective while updating it with 3D special effects. EA Mythic and the Ultima Online team are currently working together, redrawing more than 9,000 pieces of art and rebuilding 14 million map tiles to give the game a brand-new look.

And here's a screenshot.



Note the word 'drawn', not 'modeled'. From the first glance, the graphics are actually 3D modeled and then 2D retouched. The characters are outlined you see. This means the camera is static, you can't rotate it around. See those white dot sparkles? Those are the "3D special effects". Particles. Giant particles. Just sad.

One would say that the shadows also count as "3D special effects" but those are actually drawn. They're dithered, and if you have sharp eyes you can see the shadow of the silver armored guy slightly off from his feet.

But why? Can't they let an old game die already?

Mr. Mark Jacobs from EA Mythic gives us an answer:

Mark Jacobs: Like Dark Age of Camelot, I think there is still plenty of life left in UO. But let's face it, the current graphics of UO are extremely dated and every year that goes by they look even worse by comparison. However, UO is not ready for the scrap heap. I believe that with a full graphical revamp, as well as the addition of lots of other cool new stuff, we have the chance to attract new players to the game, as well as bring back former subscribers. This decision by EA to put a lot of additional resources (and money) into the title shows, in a big way, its renewed commitment to online games. With the acquisition of Mythic and the revamp of UO, EA has shown that it is determined to regain the leadership position in a space that they helped define many years ago. It's a new day, a new EA, and this is only the beginning...

So, while this is a huge leap from the old UO graphics, it's still kind of a weak show. Why to hang on old 2D graphics so stubbornly? It's because EA wants to keep UO as a poor man's MMORPG:

We are committed to maintaining extremely low system specs. They will be higher
than what UO launched with in 1997, but will still be far lower than almost
any other MMORPG on the market.

I wonder if EA would pay me for this kind of advetisement... Hm...

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