Ultima Worlds Online: Origin Interview

Some delicious morsels of info today about the MMORPG set in Britannia and due out later this year, Ultima Worlds Online: Origin. Windfeather, a team designer, answers many specific questions about the game in an excellent interview over at Origin World. There seems to be more hard info in this than the average interview, covering death, pvp and grouping, so here’s a delectable easily digestible bite:

WGNet: What sorts of situations will determine where a monster can spawn?

Windfeather: Oh, we have a few. In no particular order, they are:

Fiction: The monster should spawn in a place that is logical and which supports the game fiction. For example, if a town were mentioned in the fiction as being ruined during the cataclysm, you might find that town inside the game, overrun with undead.

Terrain: The monster will spawn on the continent, and in terrain, in which it could live. You will find prehistoric creatures in the land of the Meer, for example, and more traditional creatures in Britannia. Forest creatures will spawn in forests, and desert creatures in deserts.

Balance: The monster should be of an appropriate difficulty for the area. Places where newbies can start will have low-level, ‘Newbie’ monsters. As you move away from those towns, the creatures will get more difficult. The hardest hunting of all will be in confined areas, such as dungeons.

Fun: The creature mix in an area should be fun to fight against, so you will want to seek them out and fight them.

Excitement: An occasional high-level creature that meets the other four criteria should spawn in any given area.

There’s much more, so I advise reading the whole of it.