Curious what your thoughts are, just to have a discussion. 🙂
They mentioned 'largest audience,' so could UO be coming to mobile? Do you think we will have a new expansion to launch with it?
Excited, just came back from a long break.
My personal opinion is that this not as complicated as "the community" seems to be making it.
I think that we are looking at:
1. The release of the game on Steam
2. Some shiny new *something* to get players excited and coincide with the Steam release.
Breaking those down a bit:
In the tease from a couple months ago they did mention largest audience, they also mentioned generational shifts, and they said biggest and boldest endeavor in a decade.
To me, "audience" would indicate Steam or Mobile. Generational changes would indicate mobile, but might also be a reference to consumer tastes changing from game stores to digital platforms. Biggest and Boldest in a decade would indicate larger than ToL or HS, but not as big as SA. However, "endeavor" isn't necessarily "expansion", so maybe not as much new content focused as an expansion, but still with enough "new" to excite and draw in customers?
Specifically with regards to Steam:
Broadsword is not a huge company and they only have two products, so whatever one product is doing, the other is probably getting as well. DAoC got a swag store, UO got a swag store. DAoC got Endless Conquest, UO got Endless Journey. DAoC got Mithril, UO got Sovereigns, etc. The DAoC team spoke in December about releasing DAoC on Steam in 2020. I'd peg UO to release on Steam at about the same time as DAoC. (I'd guess Q2 or Q3 of 2021 is more realistic at this point.)
Yes, Mesanna was asked if Steam was the "big announcement" and she said "no". However, I think that's been misconstrued as her saying "no" to Steam, when I think what she was saying was that Steam wasn't the big announcement. So there seems to be *something* else they are working on in addition to or in conjunction with a Steam release.
As for whatever that shiny "something" is who knows. I'd like to think they are bug fixing, unifying systems, and really preparing the game for a larger audience, but with UO's well established 23 year history, that seems unlikely. Also, that's boring and wouldn't excite new players. They
are working on that new quest engine/journal though.....
Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised to see Orcs as a playable race. Give the human paperdoll a different face, add in some Orc mounts, armor, and weapons. Maybe rework the Orc forts or Orc dungeon. No new land masses or anything. More like the ML expansion with Elves, and less like SA and Gargoyles. That'd be bigger than ToL or HS, but not as big as SA.....
So, I'm going with:
Orcs as a playable race in 2021 coinciding with a Steam release and mobile interface (with maybe some cleaned up underlying systems).
Team of 5, but with all of Broadsword on deck for the Steam/mobile, yeah, they can knock that out in a year.
Q3 2021, just prior to the 24th Anniversary (3*8 = 24 and all!)
