Lord of Ultima

Last week I asked for something to fill the gap that Neptunes Pride left behind. None of you answered with anything decent, you useless…people. By coincidence though I heard about Lord of Ultima and as some of you know all too well, I’m somewhat captivated by it.

This is my town. I have gone wrong in my life.

It’s a free to play MMO smashed with a simplistic Settlers. When you start you are given what is basically a big patch of land with some walls, resources, and a friendly tutorial lady. From there you start building up a town and figuring out how things work. The tutorials long, but really good. It would be easy to be completely lost amidst menus and build queues when starting, but the lovely lady holds your hand enough to guide you through without feeling like it’s getting in the way. It is a good tutorial.

After a while you recruit some units and you have a basic town that’s accumulating resources which will look vastly different from the one pictured above. And then it pulls you out of your town and shows you the world. Your one town that you have have been building is just one square on a big continent. And that continent is one of many on a server – other people are building other towns, and with them you can trade, war, ally with, etc. It’s also worth noting that when you get the resources together you can start a new town, so I’m hoping to have a few next to each other with some sort of synergy – one for military units, one for resources, etc etc.

My town is in the middle of no-where. Most people are surrounded.

I’m only a few days in at the time of writing this, so I can’t say what it’s like to go to war yet, and the community is somewhat still finding it’s feet if not growing rapidly. Trade prices are all over the place, and there is still an air of uncertainty about some of the mechanics, but the people are pleasant, friendly and helpful. It is possible to be griefed into none existence though, I think, but continents are populated in waves so everyone on your continent will be starting at about the same time, which will at least stop you being steamrolled by some veteran.

Lord of Ultima is going to be in my life for a while I think. It’s slow burning, it has a constant sense of progression, it has scope, I can interact with other people, and it has a charming interface – exactly what I was after. There is a GD alliance set up, too, should you wish to come and join us – which you totally should, it’s not like it costs you anything. World 8 is where we live.