Evil/Enemy quests

Its been stated that if you want you can have a character that is "evil" or at the very least not noble you can very well do that. At the same time I would hope that in the main story or at least on a smaller level (ex. bandit factions) there would be a way to do quests for them.
Please keep in mind that I haven't played UO or any Ultima games so if there was this element in the game I wouldn't know about it. I just know that in most every other mmo/rpg game you are forced into one or the other and was curious if we would have an active choice.

 

This actually reminds me a little of Fable. Ultima never had this kind of thing since you were supposed to be playing a 'virtous' character. Which always made me wonder why U6 and up always had hookers.. *ehem* but that is a question I will leave to the devs to ponder.

I recall Fable allows you to choose one faction or another and some of the quests available were unlocked based on that choice. You couldn't change your mind though.

 

Question: Will Lord Blackthorn be in the game? Inquiring minds want to know.

 

I'm pretty sure he won't be, seeing as EA owns the rights to Ultima and all its characters. There might be an equivalent though.

 

I wonder how much of that is true. They own the rights to the franchise yes.. but not to the name Lord British. In fact I don't think they can use "Lord British" in any new games. Ultima Forever has a "Lady British" which to me as an Ultima fan is just simply wrong.

SoTA already has some striking resemblances to Ultima.. lunar rights? Really? 8 pillars around them? Gosh that sounds familiar. The hexagonal map I hear having notes on it refering to "New Britannia" and dungeons of fire, water and wind? and the striking resemblance of the map itself to Ultima III's Sosaria which had.. yes dungeons of fire, water and wind.

So you never know.. will there be a "Blackthorn"? or any other notable characters. Iolo said he'd be there. You can't get more Ultima than Iolo. (Except Lord British of course).

 

Actually in one of the vids LB said Iolo character is owned by EA, but they don't own the real life friend Iolo was based on.

 

Regarding being 'evil', in Ultima Online, you could definitely go the evil route, or the so-called 'unvirtuous' route. This is where the first "PK's" (Player Killers, also known as 'grief players') came about, as many of them readily admitted that the fun in the game for them was to ruin the adventure for others. Those who took this line of playing killed as many as possible, in ambush usually, and stole everything from them, as well as ambushing folks/guild members in hopes to gain keys from the other player and empty all their buildings. They often took over the buildings and taunted, and so forth.

In the game, this 'bad' activity would turn their name red. 'Virtuous' players were 'blue', questionable players were 'gray, and 'evil' players were 'red'. However, not every 'red' was truly bad, mean, whatever you want to call it. Nor was every 'blue' a good or virtuous player. 'Reds' could be labeled murderers within the game, and rewards were offered for proof of slaying them.

When I say a 'red' may not be bad, I will give you an example. The guild that I was a member of was very virtuous, and we required every member to be a moral person. However, when grief players began to exploit the game, we began to take the 'red', 'blue' and 'gray' less seriously, and even became red ourselves to gain justice.

For instance, their were these spinning blades you could cast, and the blades were 'gray', so there was no penalty for casting them. If you cast them, then got out of their range, and players got murdered, well, it didn't come down on your reputation. 'Blues' from known guilds of PKers would cast these and laugh, and collect from the dead 'innocent' adventurers. Our guild -- even though we would not allow our 'red' aliases to wear our guild name to possibly 'sully' it by rumour, would slay such 'blues' and return the things they had stolen to the victims.

Later in the UO adventure, there were factions set up, and while many players liked the factions, many did not. I did not, but that's just an individual opinion. I hope we have a wonderful world in Shroud of the Avatar, and that there will be a way to stop grief players from ruining the adventure for others without ruining their own game for them.