In here will be tidbits of information on what's featured in the upcoming expansion.

• New graphics engine
• 3D-accelerated special effects
• 9,000 pieces of art being redrawn
• A new playable race

Other features will add to or enhance many of the key features of Ultima Online, namely:

• Epic battles versus powerful monsters
• Deep dangerous dungeons
• Player-versus-player combat
• Creative housing design
• Crafting
• and much more!

Sounds good, cant wait to see some of the press releases.

"Epic battles versus powerful monsters"

Oh my, looks like they've created a plan to have everyone join forces to kill Maddux...

or attempt to.

Any idea what the new race will be?

I would just venture to guess they will add in Orcs as a race????? I just dont want to see another "so and so armor only" debacle...Make stuff wearable by all

I was just wondering if they had announced it yet and I missed it.

I agree with the statement about the armour but I would like to see Dwarfs in game

Hopefully they give us vets something cool, another token or something?

I can almost garauntee that orcs are not the new playable race. With publish 42, EA just gave us some playable races through the back door. Polymorph lost its timer. You can polymorph into an Orc and play an orc to your hearts content for months on end (assuming you don't die). Same goes for daemons, ettins, etc.

I would assume they go with a animal/human mix race (like most new MMORPGs are).

I polymorphed into a chicken and started eq'ing, but after a certain amount of time, I changed back to an Elf. SO you definitely cant role play a chicken for a long time.

I was thinking that the race would be orc, but on second thought, that might not be very feasible, if you consider a few factors:

-I am going to give the developers some credit by assuming they realize it doesn't make much sense to have orcs mingling with their natural enemy, the human (or elf, for that matter) and therefore these orcs would not be capable of going to human/elf towns, which means...
-Orcs obviously must mingle with orcs, which creates a sort of faction system similar to WoW(this doesn't have to involve PvP, but can, which means it can work in both Trammel and Felucca). I honestly can't imagine the developers going in this sort of direction though.

So now my new guess is gargoyle, because not only does it appear to be a highly requested race, but there is already a gargoyle city, and gargoyles (except for the rogue ones in the wild) are friendly with humans/elves.

On another note, there is no way the new race could be dwarves, or anything outside of Ultima Lore (by this I mean, races that don't already exist in game). It has been stated that the devs are going to be putting more "Ultima" in UO, so I highly doubt it will be anything that doesn't already exist.

That makes sense Deraj.

Wonder how they'll do that though, I just can't see a gargoyle riding on the back of anything. Have the option to "fly" (move at mounted speed) when double-clicked?

That's a neat idea. Well, you must also consider that in UO lore, there are winged gargoyles and wingless gargoyles. Suprisingly, there are no wingless gargoyles in the game; perhaps this would be a good opportunity to introduce them. They'd be rather simple on the graphics side I assume, since you could basically color a human model red and be done with it (at minimum). And bear in mind, I am speak from the perspective of accomplishing this in the 2D client; the 3D client would be no problem since it's already been stated that they've redrawn lots of art.