Ultima Online: Third Dawn

 

 

I’m sure many of you have heard the horrors of this add-on… yes the stories are horrible. So I’ve come to give some info from my perspective.

 

Graphics

 

I wouldn’t say “Wow!!” but they are pretty good. I’d rate them about even with Diablo 2. The shadows are crisp, the models are crisp, the only problem I can see is in the texturing. While some animations need a little work, others are perfect, for example, spell casting. No more of that pushing animation, you now wave your arms about, and particles fly every which way. Even the 2d aspects of the game (house walls, all the items, and trees) have had updates as well and blend in well with the new 3d look.

My house

 

Keep in mind you are seeing a jpg, which is know to cause some problems during compression. As you can see, many of the objects have different shading, and on some things, like statues, the details really become apparent. Things like torches will flicker and light the room with an orange glow, its very cool.

After effect of a successful recall

 

Ilshenar

 

If I were asked which is better T2A or Ilshenar, I’d defiantly say Ilshenar. It has a more planed out look than T2A. I’m very impressed with the general lay out, and lore of this new land. Upon entering Ilshenar I was greeted with the sight of a ruined shrine, this one happened to be Spirituality.

 

I was promptly attacked by one of them freakin pixies, damn them.

Little bastards heal themselves as soon as they get low on health. I was only able to kill this one with help. The cast some pretty nasty spells, but the ones they cast seem to vary, this one did nothing more than ebolts, while another was casting deadly poison and flamestrike! If you want to kill these guys, use magic. After killing the pixies I decided to go to the Justice shrine. I was greeted by tons and tons of mongbats, imps, reapers, and headless. I didn’t bother to kill many and left.

An Imp, they have red eyes, screenshots don’t do it justice.

 

Traveling south, I ran into a band of Gypsies just outside of Mistas, which is now taken over by Ogre Lords, Ogres and different types of ratman.

Gypsies travel around a lot; you won’t find them in the same place often (I came back two hours later to find them gone). You can buy regs, bandages, weapons, armor, and all sorts of stuff. They even have a bank! I’m not too sure if they resurrect people though, I haven’t had a chance to try that out. Getting into the city was relatively easy; I ran into one ratman, who died quickly, turning a corner I ran into Bubbu.

An ogre lord. I didn’t stick around to mess with this guy. I felt a crash coming on so I left and went home.

 

This land is filled with small settlements of humans that have the normal comforts of home, except no guards. I ran to one walled outpost thinking the guards would kill a wyvern and lich lord that had followed me from the Ancient Citadel… no dice, I got killed. I can’t say much about the dungeons, because I’ve only been to one, and that’s the Wisp Dungeon, it’s called that because the first level is filled with wisps, which look very cool in 3D. Going lower I ran into a room of Evil Mages, didn’t stick around long seeing as they were all Lords. The wilderness is covered in monsters, I was very glad to see that, in one area near the Honesty shrine, there is a little valley filled with imps, and gazers, I didn’t look around all that much, but I assume if you go by the Wisp Dungeon you can hop up on the entrance to it (It’s a stone entry way) and gain some pretty decent lower level resist without much trouble at all. To the northwest is a swamp, that appears to be empty, I’ve heard of lizard men in the area, but seeing as they are so boring to kill, I didn’t bother messing with their little town. Going back towards Mistas and on towards Lakeshire. I found Lakeshire is filled with Elder Gazers and Gazers, needless to say, I didn’t stick around. Directly to the west of Lakeshire is a Ratman cave, I haven’t gotten a chance to explore that yet. Going south and following the road around the lake, I wound up at an inn called Twin Oaks. It’s run down and beat up, but nonetheless, it’s a place to log out safely. Directly south of this inn, is the pixie forest, where you can also find Unicorns, go further south and you end up at the shrine of Spirituality. In the middle of the lake is the Isle of Wing Spirits or some such thing; these are giant men with wings, almost like angels… except with full body armor. The only way to reach this so far is to find the teleporter in the spider cave, which is north west of Twin Oaks (short little walk). To the south east is Blood Dungeon, which is filled with daemons, undead things, elementals, and god knows what else, there are a few levels to it. I haven’t gone any further; the northern areas are more dangerous than the southern half, which I visited. In the northern areas, daemons, dragons, wyverns, and various other nasty beasties roam the forest! So travelers beware…

 

 

Stability

 

Stability isn’t so great. I’ve only played about 3 hours but I’ve crashed 5 times, and every hour I have to reboot or my hard drive will freeze up because of the memory leak (swap file gets to well over 900megs). I’ve heard of problems with some Voodoo cards but mine has no trouble, I run a voodoo 5 and it seems to like this game. I don’t notice any more lag than normal, unless I’m at a crowded bank, which happened with the 2d client as well. So anyone complaining about that should be shot. Hopefully patch 62 will fix most of this.

 

Patching

No matter which version you have, be it the beta CD, or retail… it’s the same damn disk. So if you have a 56k modem, expect to spend at least 3 hours patching, it took me 4 hours and 30 minutes. Which is insane.

 

Features

 

 

·  Explore a vast and dangerous new land,

·  Battle new beasts and monsters,

·  Enjoy enhanced and improved music and sound effects,

·  Show off dazzling light displays with a new particle system for spell and magic effects,

·  Travel the entire world of Britannia, enjoying the depth of an enhanced lighting and shading system, and

·  Experience 3D-enhanced characters and monsters throughout all of Britannia.

They also have new weapons, new clothes and a bunch of other things… unfortunately, they haven’t been implemented yet!!! Which is rather upsetting. I’d guess one of the new features would be female clothing, where before it was respectable, now I can only it kinky. Thongs and bras that barely hold things in… Hmm, I like the old stuff better. Males are now more buff than ever before, I liked them when they were a little more lean than beefy. But that’s just me. Some of the 3d “enhanced” creatures look disgusting, for example, the Earth Elemental. It’s looks like a stalagmite that rolls around, and then turns into a rock outcropping, very dorky (Should be fixed in the next patch) Dragons need a little more work, but that’s about all.

 

Summary

Buy it while you can for $9.95 it only lasts 60 days and I think there’s only about 30 left on that offer, so get it while you can!!. Otherwise you will have to pay $44 for it considering it’s basically a whole new game. As I said, I’m impressed so far, disappointed on some aspects, but great game, sure OSI sucks most of the time but they did ok.

 

Wolf

Atlantic