It sounds as if even 23-year-old Ultima Online is benefiting from the continuing stay-at-home state of many players, as the game’s latest newsletter declares the game is “bustling these past weeks” as the studio “continue[s] to welcome returning and new players alike.”
Back in February, Broadsword began teasing a “big announcement” for the game to follow publish 109, something that would bring the game to the “largest audience ever,” but what exactly that was – Steam, finally? an expansion? – was unclear. This new letter from the team doesn’t really shed much more light on what’s coming, though it does promise it’s next.
“Earlier this year we talked about our plans for the future of Ultima Online and how we wanted to expand to the largest audience yet,” Broadsword writes. “In order to accomplish that vision we’ve spent the entirety of Publish 109 preparing updates for our popular seasonal content as well as rethinking how events are implemented within the game world.”
Publish 109, as we’ve previously covered, will include the 23rd anniversary rewards and new goodies for various events, including Halloween and the Artisan Festival. Maybe more importantly, the game is retooling the Event Moderator tools – essentially, what the live-event gamemasters can use to make genuinely dynamic, unique content in the game.
“Some of you have already hopped on TC1 to check out these new tools which include: Completely refactored mob generation to allow greater customization of monsters for more exciting PvM fights; Custom Champ Spawns to allow on the fly spawns with more dynamic monster combinations and custom bosses; [and] Dynamic Quest System with new support tools like revamped quest NPCs and new narrative items like Lore Books & Quest Items to immerse yourself deeper into the story! With the introduction of these tools we will be playing with them on TC1 in the near future to iron out any issues and determine the best way to use them for events.”
