Re: I don't understand pre-orders. Do you preorder?

On Sat, 22 Feb 2025 10:32:34 -0600, Zaghadka <zaghadka@hotmail.com>
wrote:

On Fri, 21 Feb 2025 12:33:01 -0500, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action,
Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
>

It wasn't a game without merit.

>
I got to the avatar saying "What's a paladin?" to Dupre and almost rage
quit.
>
For some reason, it was written for people brand spanking new to the
series.
>
That said, the tech (when used with Glide) was red hot. Sure, it doesn't
hold up to modern standards. But dyanmically loading a traversible 3D
world? In 1999?! Amazing.

I don't know about red-hot. Certainly Glide was _the_ target for
high-end video games when Ultima 9 /started/ development, but by the
time the game was actually released in late 1999, Glide was just one
of many APIs, and its shortcomings were becoming increasingly obvious.
The fact that 3DFX went belly-up less than a year later is indicative
of that. A major problem faced by Origin was that, by the time Ultima
9 actually released, the majority of gamers weren't using Voodoo
chipsets anymore, and Origin's Direct3D code was decidedly subpar.
Which was really more of an issue with Origin than Direct3D.

I mean, it didn't bother me none. I had a Voodoo 3 card. ;-)

I finished Ultima IX. It was meh. But the lack of immersion for veteran
Ultima fans, because of the directive to write it for newbies, was my
biggest gripe.

As a long-term fan, that annoyed me too but I think it was more the
subpar game structure that really killed the game. I could live with a
brain-dead Avatar, and it's not like the earlier games didn't allow
the players to ask questions whose answers should have been evident to
the protagonist. This lack of respect for the franchise's history was
just one of the many, many problems the game had... but it wasn't the
worst. At least not in my eyes. Had the rest of the game been better,
I could have forgiven "what is a paladin" and Dupre's resurrection and
all the rest. I would have hated it, but I'd have let it go because
the rest of the game was worth playing.

But that we got such a subpar experience AND a disrespect for the
legacy? That was one step too far.

As for pre-orders, I would totally Kickstart an Ultima IX do-over, hoping
it would be made with love. Wishing that my heart could not be broken
twice.

At this point, I'm fine with Ultima laying fallow. It's unfortunate
that the series had to end on such a low point, but I'd rather new
material than constantly returning to the well.

Like, a full rewrite that the fans deserved and no "all the horses are
dead," including Smith.

I dunno. Some of us players were quite happy to see the end of Smith,
even if it did require equine-genocide. ;-)