[ very tech heavy ]

source UO U.Hall


Amazing what you can find on the internet
Congratulations!

You are one of the very first to get a glimpse of a reborn Ultima Online. We won't be releasing more details for a bit, but we do want to let you know a few things:
1. We are completely re-building the Ultima Online client with new graphics and a new easier-to-use interface.
2. It is an in-place upgrade. That means you will be able to keep your characters, items, houses and everything else you've earned over the past nine years.
3. We are committed to maintaining extremely low system specs. They will be higher than what UO launched with in 1997, but will still be far lower than almost any other MMORPG on the market.
4. The launch will happen in 2007.
5. There are many, many more surprises in store.
The Ultima Online development team has been working hard for the past eight months to make real the vision of a thriving, vibrant Ultima Online. We are proud to finally let you in on our secret. Look for a full announcement soon.

I know you probably have lots of questions. Before this year ends, we will answer just about all of them, so keep watching www.uo.com.

Aaron "Darkscribe" Cohen
Producer - Ultima Online


Ultima Online 1997 System requirements
Intel Pentium CPU
32 MB RAM
DirectX 5
Internet access
Keyboard, Mouse

Ultima online 9th Age system requirements.
OS: Windows XP or 98SE
Internet: 56.6 Kbps or faster Internet connection is required
CPU: 400 MHz or faster for 2D version (500 MHz for 3D version)
RAM: 128 MB or more
Disc Drive: 4x or faster CD/DVD drive (DVD-ROM drive required for the Dark Age of Camelot demo)
Hard Drive: 1.4 GB or more free space
Video: DirectX 9.0 compatible 8 MB video card for 2D version (32 MB Direct3D capable for 3D version)
Sound: DirectX 9.0 compatible

What will the System Requirements be for Kingdom Reborn?
Well, that is not set in stone, as KR is not finalized yet. However, a translation from the Japanese UO Website detailed this projection at what the specs may be:

CPU 1 GHz
Memory 512MB
Graphics GeForce 3
Empty capacity of hard disk 2 GB
(As for these there is a possibility of being modified, but low the specifications you have aimed toward play environment.)


Minimum system requirements for World of Warcraft

Minimum System Requirements
Windows® System 2000/XP OS:
Intel Pentium® III 800 MHz or AMD Athlon 800 MHz
512 MB or more of RAM
32 MB 3D graphics card with Hardware Transform and Lighting, such as NVIDIA® GeForce™ 2 class card or above
DirectX® 9.0c (included) and latest video drivers
6.0 GB available HD space
4x CD-ROM drive
A 56k or better Internet connection

Recommended Specifications
Windows® System 2000/XP OS:
Intel Pentium® IV 1.5 GHz or AMD XP 1500+ MHz
1024 MB RAM
64 MB 3D graphics card with Hardware Transform and Lighting, such as NVIDIA® GeForce™ FX 5700 class card or above
Broadband Internet connection
Two-button scroll-wheel mouse


Found this kind of interesting. This is probably more pro KR, but it is not intended to be either pro or anti anything. Well yes it is PRO getting as many people on KR so they can at least know whether they like it or not.

Is this a prime example of what we can expect from the promises you made us about KR?
So this is what you mean by being committed to maintaining extremely low system specs. They will be higher than what UO launched with in 1997, but will still be far lower than almost any other MMORPG on the market.

WOW is probably the largest (players based) game going right now and in no way are they far lower.

There are far to many people who CAN NOT even play KR yet, so how can EA or anybody else think about SA. Get these people online in KR first.

If you want to flame anybody, then flame EA.


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Problem is we still don't know if the listed specs for KR, which have stayed the same for 6 months, are minimum or recommended. KR runs ok on my PC, but only ok, I wouldn't go anywhere dangerous with it as it is. EQ2 has the same minimum spec as KR, and I can play EQ2 with no problems. EQ2 has Win 2000/ME support, KR has only XP and Vista listed and quite a few players have said they still have Win 98. Also many people have more than the spec listed and they can't even log in. Something else to consider is that if KR is using the same engine as Oblivion, which has extremely high minimum requirements, to see KR anything close to how it should look a huge number of people would need to buy new PC's, new monitors and new OS. WoW has lower requirements because it looks like a child drew it with crayons...

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I sure hope then that by launch of KR more people with just those minimum requirements will actually be able to log in and play, because there are some people who already exceed them that can't even log in.

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Actually, a 1Ghz processor is an extremely low system spec for a game today. Certainly for an entirely optional game-client choice, with a lower-requirement alternative to play (mostly) the same game.

I think that any of the mentioned 3D games will be in reality much more demanding to run than the release KR client.

I think the biggest difference is found in the actual video card that it would take to run KR vs. a fully 3D game (smoothly). I'm quite confident that an officially released 'mostly 2D' client will have a lower requirement. At this low cost performance level, a decent video card is usually more expensive than the cpu.

Anandtech (a well-respected hardware authority site), in their World of Warcraft performance guide, suggests an AMD Athlon 64 3500+ or Intel Pentium 4 650/550 (3.4Ghz) cpu, along with an Nvidia 6600GT and 1GB system ram for smooth performance in the game.

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I've always felt that they should list system ram minimums as minimum FREE ram. Typically the recommended is twice the amount of the minimum.

Anywho...

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RTLFC

I see that all of you have gotten the idea of this post. My son first started playing UO pre-Tram, he enjoys hack and slash type of games and this was the best. He is now playing against people, not a computer. I tried it and it was not really my cup of tea. Now we have Tram. And I am hooked. I load UO and get a start-up screen, answer questions and BOOOOM I am online playing UO. I buy all expansions, load them in and play. Now I go out and buy a new CPU. Take out my most current UO disk load it up but I get no set-up screen. NP, it loads and BOOOOOM I am online playing.

Now we get to UOKR. Download, unzip, load and guess what NO BOOOOOM and NO GO. I get on Ultima Online Stratics and with the help of others I get UOKR up and WALKING. Had to manually change some (a lot) of my system settings. NOT GOOD. UOKR NOT “LOAD & GO”

My son brings home this new game, loads it up and BOOOOOM he is playing both off line and online. WTF Min. specs greater then UOKR and it works.
Command & Conquer 3

Minimum system requirements:

OS: Windows XP, Windows Vista (32-bit; 64-bit versions of Vista are not supported)

CPU: 2.0GHz or high, or AMD equivalent, Vista - 2.2 GHZ

RAM: 512 MB or more, Vista - 1GB RAM or more

Disk Drive: 8x or faster DVD drive for retail SKUs, not required for digitally downloaded version

Hard Drive: 8.0GB or more of free hard disk space

Video: GeForce4, ATI Radeon 8500 or greater (ATI Radeon 9200 and 9250 PCI, NVIDIA Geforce 4 MX cards not supported.). Windows Vista - NVIDIA GeForce 6100 or ATI Radeon 9500 or greater. Labtop versions of these chipsets may work but are not supported.

Sound: DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card

Network, Internet Multiplayer: 2 players (no voice support) – 56 Kbps Internet connection; 2-8 players (with voice transmission) – Broadband-class connection

This information is based on specifications supplied by manufacturers and should be used for guidance only.

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I still wouldn't try to run the beta of KR with less than 1gig of memory. They haven't gotten around to optimizing the memory utilization yet. I would expect they will get it down to 512mb by production. Not that this is what you wanted to hear. Just a friendly fyi.

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Next build will help with some of the memory issues plus has some tweaks for lower end graphics cards, so don't despair! We're still working on optimization.

E. Jeremy Dalberg
UO Community Coordinator


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EA Mythic

Dosent The Internet Rock

I reported an issue when I was first in beta because my lag for awful and I run a dual 2GHtz processor with 1G of ram with a GeForce 6200 (or something like it's a 128 mb graphics card). I logged onto KR again early in the week and with these specs I can still barly move IG

KR minimum specs from the japanese site sound reasonable to me.

But UOKR not running on certain systems that should theoretically run it looks more like a bug than anything to do with specs. Because WoW, since they chose WoW to compare UOKR with, runs flawlessly on some really old systems: like my old 1.6 GHz Notebook with ATI 32mb video card. It even runs on my G4 mac mini and that machine is even slower. And yet I get playable results when I turn down all the settings.