on Stratics UO U.Hall


Well I installed the UO:KR Beta after a great deal of trouble, finally got it to work very well on an older machine but the problem is, I don't like it, in fact I'd go to say I hate it, I'm not trying to take anything from the Dev's in anyway, cos they have with out a doubt worked hard on this.

It's not that everything has changed, I could live with that and would give it a go, it's the look of the thing, I just hate it, I like all the crisp sharpness of 2D and even 3D had it, but this, this UO:KR is to soft with to many rounded edges, and I have trouble making anything out as everything looks so alien to the UO I'm used to.

It's like a very quickly sketched mock-up that is far from the finished product, if this is the future of UO then it will be a sad future, instead of the hoped for bright new Kingdom Reborn, I find myself looking at a Kingdom Unborn, which look as if I'm looking at it through a dirty smeared warped window.

I feel gutted, I feel as if I have been ripped apart with the knowledge that the UO I love may soon be gone forever, it feels for me that UO has been butchered and lost it's soul.
My house's that once looked so cool, that I spend weeks and great amounts of gold decorating, now look a mess, the gardens look as if they have been untouched for years and are over grown and a mess.

UO:KR is such a disappointment for me, all the friends and fellow Guild members that left for WoW, that I hoped and clung to a dream that with this new expansion they would come back to UO, are dashed as if thrown against the rocks, by a harsh and cruel cruel sea, for they shall never return, and soon the Guardians of Destiny will make the final voyage from the Europian shores of Ultima Online for ever.
There are no words to describe the sense of loss and sadness that I feel as I'm writing this, for me UO 2D is on death row, and the slow count down has begun.
I feel that I've lost an old and dear friend, who's face I will forget but who's memory will live on.

If UO had been born it would have been the right way to go, that is the future that UO should have had, perhaps not UO it's self, but the graphics engine, that should have been the UO:KR, I'm sorry Dev Team but this is my view and what I think, it doesn't take away the work that you have done, because it must have been a nightmare to meld the old and the new together, I just don't like it, it's not my cup of tea.

I will play UO:2D till it dies then move on, but will always look back with fond memories of the great times we had, the friends that I've met through the years, the tears of frustration when the world of sosaria seemed to be against me, the joy at over coming the hardships and the hard won satisfaction at GMing then getting a legendary skill, the blissful joy at 7x7 GMing my first character then the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th, with luck I shall be able to finish my 6th before the end of 2D, my other accounts I will probably not achieve the hopped for 6 x 7GMed characters.

I will miss you my beloved 2D, may your demise be a long one

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First stage Anger
Second stage Guilt
Third stage Reconciliation
Fourth stage Its not so bad.


Why not wait till the Beta is done?

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Did you try zooming in all the way? It looks alot different if you do that. Just press the + key on the number pad on your keyboard. Press the - key to zoom out.


I agree that it lacks the beauty of 2D, but hope that that can be corrected. I wish for green grass and crisp clear colors also, like 2D has. Plus the female paperdoll is very unfeminine and the leather sleeves and gorget look awful when equipped together.


Don't give up hope just yet. Just add your concerns in with ours and help us change it for the better.


If only I could get gates, doors and runebooks to open in KR I'd be a little happier with it.

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Oh good. We needed another one of these posts.
KR is a fantastic client and folks just aren't giving it a chance. They see some things they don't like and say "Oh god I hate this!" and close it out. Not exactly beta testing.

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The strange thing is... human beings are amazing at adapting to new things. Most people just put a mental block up and decide they don't "want" to adapt, no matter how much it might benefit them or make their lives easier in the long run.

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The "Log in and try" part comes with the final release. Not the beta test. This is where you're confused. Open beta is just that.Beta. Log in... see how you like it... but report each thing you find wrong so that it can be fixed so you WILL like the final release.
Beta's not "spend a day looking around, decide you don't like it and log out forever then post on Stratics about how much it sucks".
Sorry, but it's just not.

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I'm really sorry for this, but do you really honestly mean that? Is there something seriously wrong with your eye sight? KR looks with glasses on like I had taken my glasses off for crying out loud.

There's no definition or contrast to anything, everything just blurs together completely.
Take a screenshot of KR, take the same screenshot in 2D, zoom both in by the same ammount, and tell me KR isn't blurry. Please.

If EA remade UO with the Atari 2600 ET engine, you'd still think it was the greatest thing since toilet paper. This ultra diehard fanboi-ism needs to go even more than the ultra diehard KR haters. Then real players can judge the final product by it's actual value.


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The blurriness is partly a function of your screen resolution (actually, mostly of your aspect ratio) so its entirely possible that stuff appears blurrier to some people than others. (The 4:3 ratio should be the least blurry - 800x600, etc - and higher resolutions at that ratio should look sharper.)

E. Jeremy Dalberg
UO Community Coordinator
EA Mythic

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So that means all hope is lost *sigh* My monitor is a 4:3 CRT, and I've ran it as well as I can in windowed mode in both 800x600 and 1024x768, and it's still as blurry.
I'm actually going to grab some screenshots, but chances are if KR isn't blurry for you then neither will the screnshots.

Altho the client doesn't support a reasonable 4:3 resolution, there's only 1280x1024 which is a TFT resolution and not 4:3. There's no 1280x960 which is the real 4:3 resoltution. I have reported this too.

And Flutter, it's not my monitor, I've had it for years, I'm in front of it for hours a day and never have this problem with anything else. It's also not my graphics card, it's brand new, and as above, there is no problem with anything else. It's not us, it's the client. Fanboi-ism, sorry.


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I am going to end my paste over with a screenie posted to show how 'unblurry' KR is for one player.Do go over and read more content/flaming etc,tho if you can. I wont post it here as its not relevant to News

It's simply not blurry to me. It doesnt have anything to do with your "fanboi-isn" there are things I don't like and I have reported them but it's just not blurry on my system. Heres a picture of what I see... If this is blurry to you then you need a new monitor or a better graphics card I guess.




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I have mine at 800x600. Does this mean I have to zoom in for the blurry to go away? I like being able to see around me some like in 2d.

What are those things btw? I like the colors lol.

Hydras, I believe.
*Is proud of her post in that thread*

I wonder if also those of you finding KR blurry are still using outdated monitors on a D-sub connection instead of having a monitor with DVI support. DVI makes colour contrast more vibrant and imagines crisp. Also having an LCD monitor in its none native resolution with the max support refresh can also make things appear blurry. Are some of you still using computers that outdated that you can’t play KR any higher than 800x600? I find KR to be pretty clear. It's only blurry if you zoom right in.

think everyone is well aware of my view of KR already but being me Ill mess with ya all and go in a different direction and let you scratch yer heads and wonder if I ever stick with the same opinion for more than a day...

On the surface KR is a good concept.. the new look does attempt to make it more in line with the era that our characters reside...and yes era is purely subjective to the user..

It seems that EA has forgotten that KR is not really 3D.. its no more 3D than the third dawn client was. Its more in line with the old 3D movies in which you had to put on the glasses with the red and green lens ...

You have the still completely 2D background... and then the avatars, mounts and other objects of the game floating over that 2D background.. and as has been said by a few brave enough those appear to be pasted to the background..the movement of the forefront objects (avatars and such) do not move in rythem with the background.. we are still gliding across the landscape instead of walking or running on it.

But back to my thought... as it is in a 2D enviorment and again KR is still 2D there has to be a forced contrast as one can not do as we do in the real world.. you cant look around something to see its shape, you cant pick it up and hold it out in front of you to see its form... there are many things that are blurry to me yet btw... in a view such as UO is there needs to be contrast in objects.. objects can not be just a shade different than the background as there is no way to see the object like we do in real life or in true 3D which has its view just as we do in real life and interaction is close to as we interact in the real world..

KR is good in concept and at this point in time the execution of that concept is lagging behind..

In the current client there is no need to force shadows so one can tell there is something on screen, there is no need for lighting effects to show there is soemthing there... you can easily see a small pouch on any ground tile within the current 2D client...

There should be no need to be forced to zoom in to see a object clearly or so one can tell what the heck it even is... there should be no need to use a specific resolution either.. it should look clear and crisp no matter what the resolution setting is..period end of story with that....... it should look the same contrast wise and such in any resolution... can one say that enough?? resolution should have nothing to do with crisp and clear.. or on being able to tell what things are...as not everyone has widescreen monitors, not everyone has plasma this or that or the top of the line anything and everything.....

This part of the games development should have been dealt with in alpha.. the hardware that the game was going to be run on should have been dealt with and be behind the developers in needing to work on..

And I shall say my one opinion that shall not change... Jeremy stated the core of UO has not been touched yet... that is the code that deals with all the issues that have been a torn in most players sides for some time... that code is still the one EA claims is old and that no one currently in the developer team has a clue about in how it works and is the same code where more often than not anytime something is added bugs appear out of no were...

I so dont understand why folks cant grasp that.. Until EA replaces the server code.. the code that is the game play code.. the code that makes UO.. UO nothing is going to improve.. its going to be just as it has been thru out the years with glitches, bugs, cheating, broken systems... its going to continue to be a pain in the arse for the developers to do anything with...

A new dress (KR and its graphics and UI) are not moving UO forward.. its just putting a new color paint on the game...

Anyways... for a paint job KR is nice.. it needs to be repainted here and there.. but UO is still going to burn oil like a banshee until the server code is replaced....

Peace and yes 2D will be around for years to come... EA isnt going to dump a client that gives multible users a option via their taste.. folks that like artsy graphics will use KR and those that want to see things clearly and instantly will continue to use the current 2D...

Game play.. aka the personality is the important thing.. as you can put the fanciest dress on a snotty personality and that personality will still be a snot...

UO is a global game... and EA knowns that and will not cut off revenue and the current 2D is far more universal friendly than KR is at this point..

Peace and lets hope KR lives up to the blurbs EA has put out about it....

I think the problem exists (blurriness) due to the zoom-in and zoom-out feature.

I may be wrong, due to my severe lack of graphical knowledge, but I'd imagine the zoomability (is that a word?) works kind of like focusing a pair of binoculars where if you don't have it juuuuuuust right, it's going to be blurry.

Or it could be that stroking thing that's in another thread.

I went and played around with the resolution in the game. I tried a few different types. My monitor is a good one, almost brand new too. I'm still seeing the fuzziness.

I did notice tho, that when I zoomed in and out, that some things would become clearer, while other things would blur more. It was kind of like a real camera I guess. If you zoom in on one thing, the background would be fuzzy, or if you tried to clear the background other things in the foreground would be fuzzy.

that screenshot is again almost good. hate that ugly character face and background is a bit too messy but its okay. and wondering why that white thing which i guess is swamp steam is so blurry...

also think thats good size for those monsters but there are many monsters which should be bigger than that. example dragons

Everyone can be Harry Potter with lenses lol

The aspect ratio makes perfect sense. I have a widescreen monitor so I don't have a 4:3 aspect ratio by default - and it looks like my video card doesn't support the max resolution that my monitor wants. It's close, and I figured it was no big deal, but I can see how in gaming it may make a bit of difference in the clarity of what I see. I have a several year old 256MB GeForce 6600 video card... works fine, but I do like the crispness of that screenshot above, and what I see in KR isn't quite as crisp (on a brand new 24" widescreen LCD with a 5ms response rate).

I'm browsing around Best Buy's web site, and I just about fell out of my chair when I saw that the current low-end video cards are TWICE as good in terms of GPU speed and resolution as my current card! Wow, I thought my current card was better than it is! Well, it IS 3 years old, and that's a lifetime in computer years.

I might have to take a trip to Best Buy or Tiger Direct! $150 isn't bad to make all my KR dreams come true, and honestly when I upgraded my PC last year, I replaced all the major components except my video card.

The only downside is the mainboard I went with was AGP, as there still weren't enough PCI-Express devices out there at the time to convince me to switch. Now I wish I had switched, as the selection of video cards is a lot better for PCI-E, but there are some Nvidia GeForce based cards around $150 running on AGP. This'll probably be the last upgrade this computer sees before I have to retire it and replace the mobo/cpu again. *plays taps* (It's an AMD Athlon 64, 3500+ with 2 gig of dual channel DDR400 ram).

It has served me well!!! And will serve me well for some KR goodness

OK I'm done yammering about PC hardware. Sorry, i get excited It's like the kid-in-a-candy-store effect for me.