The ending will be something like in Men in Black I assume. The camera zooms out and shows an alien who is creating and guiding the player the whole time...

Look here for screenshots:

http://uk.media.pc.ign.com/media/682/682217/imgs_1.html

The gaming business is a business. We may not like it, but it is so. They have to make money and they come up with new methods to do so. If people are buying better weapons in games for real money then the business model is working. It is legitimate. Actually I believe that this may in fact be the future of PC gaming, getting games for free but you have to pay for super-weapons, mounts etc.
It seems to work and this is ok with me.

You mean: brave the princess, save the dungeon

You won't be able to transfer your characters from UO.
You have to start a new one.

I think most still didn't get it. Ultima X: Odyssey is NOT the sequel to Ultima Online, it does have nothing in common with it except that it is played online.
Ultima X is a sequel to the single-player Ultimas, it is Ultima 10, the sequel to Ultima 9!
There will be a story which is the continuation of Ultima 9 and there will be a lot of quests (which you can do alone) and NPCs etc.

About "Hardcore MMORPGs": It seems that people want new things. The RPG genre seemed to be dead untel Baldur's gate revived it. The Adventure genre is nearly dead, turn-based strategy games are nearly dead. That's how the gaming industry works. Some games work and sell very well and suddenly no one wants to play them anymore. Then the gaming companies have to think about something new.

Thsi isn't UO at all. This not even related to UO.
This is a sequel to the single-player Ultimas which is played online.

And what's wrong with multiplayer NWN?
If done right NWN in multiplayer comes as close to pen&paper RPG as no other RPG, be it single-player or MMORPG.
And that's what RPGs originally are, pen&paper RPGs.

I am really excited.
The game is described as a MMORPG with single-player experiences, as you have your private areas with private quests you can do with a few friends.
This is great!
I really hope that the final product will be great, too.

Interplay/Black Isle are already working on Fallout 3. It is the "mysterious" Van Buren project...
It will feature a new isometric 3D-engine and realtime, as well as turn-based combat.

No offense taken.
I am not deceived because I know that it will be a MMORPG.

I know that MMORPGs are a certain source of cashflow, but I also think that MMORPGs have to evolve, too to stay competitive. Tabula Rasa shows that there is a way to evolve this genre and I fear that UX:O may stay behind if it will just be UO in 3D.
EA has to interest single-player fans in this game, too. Otherwise it might loose against Tabula Rasa, Mythica, World of Warcraft and Middle Earth Online.

Another thing, other companies show that single-player games can be very successful. Bioware for example, their new single-player RPG "Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic" sold 250,000 copies in the first four days after release. Gothic 2 ist very successful, too (in the countries it has been released as of yet).
Of course I also think that a single-player game has to be released on console as well to be successful. But with the XBox a port is not that difficult anymore.
So I think EA might miss a market by abandoning single-player RPGs.

This comment was edited on Jul 31, 08:43.

@El_Cristor:
We misunderstood a lot of the history of EA?
Electronic Arts forced Garriott to release Ultima 8 early, so that an unfinished product was put on the shelves (ever wondered why the starting file was called demo.bat?).
Ultima 9 promised to become the greatest RPG ever, when Warren Spector was still Lead Designer (the world was huge, the story was complex, there was a party planned, an interactivity that surpassed that of Ultima 7, the NPCs would all have had schedules like in Ultima 7...). But when EA put the game on hold and Warren Spector left Origin, everything was lost.
Yes Garriott bugged EA that he could finish Ultima 9, but he didn't get enough time to make it right.
Electronic Arts also destoryed the Wing Commander series, they are sitting on the rights of this franchise and are doing nothing with it - Chris Roberts is trying to buy the rights for years and EA doesn't want to sell them.
EA also destroyed Crusader, Bioforge, Lands of Lore, Bard's Tale...
Sorry, but I lost all respect for EA.
They just want to make profit with the least effort, they know that their games need no quality for them to be successful. They don't even seem to know the term "innovation".

And if Ultima X: Odyssey is just an enhanced UO and nothing more then EA is deceiving and mocking the long-time single-player fans for which I despise them.

This comment was edited on Jul 31, 08:44.

I wish it would be a single-player game like Ultima 7. The market is oversaturated by MMORPGs. Every company is shitting out a MMORPG... and they are all the same. This genre is stagnating and it got boring, it needs a refreshing.
But as this Ultima X: Odyssey will be a MMORPG I hope it will be truly innovative.
Nearly every next-generation MMORPG in developement will have private areas and private quests for single-player fans to enjoy. You take on a quest either alone or with a few friends. You get this quest in the open free area where thousands of players are and then you enter a private area and have some kind of a single-player experience.
Tabula Rasa will have this really great and innovative feature, Mythica will have this, too. Middle Earth Online and World of Warcraft will have a similar concept.
I really hope that Ultima X: Odyssey will offer something like this.
This could be the way to interest single-player fans in MMORPGs, too. Offer them special, scripted missions in private areas that they can experience alone or with a few friends.
Without such a feature Ultima X cannot be competitive against the MMORPGs mentioned above.
As Richard Garriott developed his idea for Tabula Rasa while he was still working at Origin (there his project was called Project X) there is a good chance that EA/Origin might use this idea. After all Garriott had to sign a contract when he left Origin that didn't allow him to create games for a year so that he didn't compete with Origin. If they use his concept they could release a game like this before Garriott does.

So I really hope that Ultima X will offer private areas and private quests with great stories so that single-player fans can also enjoy the game.
This would give the game more players which would mean more money for EA.

Otherwise this will just be a standard "no-one cares" MMORPG like any other out there.
This comment was edited on Jul 30, 18:04.

@ Bingo: Then you have to get your hyper-plasma-rocket rifle, go into first person view and shoot at each and everyone (including children and invalid people), drooling and laughing over the gore animations: "Look, blood, hrhr, now have going to door inside more monsters, hrhrhr..."

Idiot.

This comment was edited on Jul 29, 06:43.

I hope that this will be a great single-player RPG!

The way I see it, the market seems to be oversaturated by MMORPGs.
Face it, they are all the same! This time it's in the Star Wars Universe, so what? The rest is the same. The same missions as in every other MMORPG, the same hunting as in every other MMORPG, the same level-up-frenzy...
It's the same over and over again...
So why should I buy a game I already own? Just because it is called Star Wars?
And there are so many MMORPGs in development and I can already see that they are again all the same...

This comment was edited on Jun 28, 07:29.

Give us a hint, please

Hasn't EA said that they won't develop for XBox Live?
Either they changed their mind or this will be for PC.

German gaming magazine Gamestar said that the working title for the game is "Ultima Online 3D". So I guess it will be the sequel to Ultima Online.

But calling it Ultima X is really bad, it's deceiving old Ultima fans into believing that it will be a sequel to Ultima IX, a single player game...

But what is it?
MMORPG?
Single player?
Small group multiplayer?

Another MMORPG, oh boy...
Just what we need, as there are next to none MMORPGs out there. We only waited for this one... NOT.