Ultima Online: Third Dawn

The Good
UO3D adds a lot of nice new features to the previous edition (UO:Renaissance). One is the 3D graphics. All PC's, NPC's and monsters now use 3D graphics (items and buildings are still 2D). Also, terrain such as mountains and grass now use sharper-looking graphics. Second, the zoom function. By pressing a certain key or using a mouse with a scroll button, players can zoom in or out to see more detailed graphics and such. Another feature is the new emote system. In previous editions of UO, waving goodbye would look something like this: waves goodbye In UO3D, a player can press a certain combination of hotkeys and their character will physically wave goodbye or display other actions, such as shrugging, yawning, dancing, fainting, or even waving his/her arms in the air in celebration. The most significant addition is a new land to explore called "Ilshenar." Ilshenar is a rather difficult area to survive. There are only one or two towns- none of which have guards- and where powerful monsters require some finding in other areas, a player in Ilshenar will scarcely have to venture outside of town to be fighting drakes and wyverns.

The Bad
Well, it sounds good at first, but UO3D is far from perfect. There are the bugs. This game will require a very fast modem and a very good graphics card. Otherwise, you will get lagged down quite a bit when venturing into populated areas. Some other bugs include: -PC's and NPC's skin always being the same shade of grey -A very strange bug in which the entire map goes black and you can't do anything except walk around. The worst thing is for this to happen during a fight. When it happens, you will have to restart your computer for UO to work at all. -Several dozen others that seem to happen randomly

The Bottom Line
UO3D is mainly an upgrade for die-hard Ultima Online players with a good computer and powerful characters. It offers several advantages over UO: Renaissance, but the disadvantages about equal those out. I would suggest that new players buy Renaissance first; it is a bit less confusing.

The Good
On the plus side, it was more Ultima. It added features and expanded the scope of the game. Most importantly though, the 3D client introduced with the 3rd Dawn expansion was optional. Players could still use the original client, though some of the features implemented with the new client were inacessible. And to this reviewer, irrelevant anyway.

The Bad
The original 3D client was atrocious. Character model scale was grossly exaggerated: whereas it used to be that the characters were of a comparable scale to buildings, the new 3D models were too big. I can imagine that was done simply because if they'd drawn the already poorly drawn 3D models the right size they would have just been a muddle of colors bleeding into themselves.

The Bottom Line
It's Ultima. The first and best truly MASSIVE massively multiplayer game. Hundreds of thousands of players were a part of this world at one point. But now, in 2009, not so much. This expansion technically did add to the growing world, but was mostly a marketing scheme to try to lure back those that had left for Everquest. Even the name was a morbid attempt at deception: "Ultima 3D!!!!! cough cough that is, 3rd Dawn... cough"