Origin's online RPG seeks new shores to conquer

Origin will introduce The Second Age, the expansion pack for their online role-playing game Ultima Online, to Europe on June 25. It's already been released in America and Japan.

"Ultima Online is the first online-only game to be set up in Europe with local servers and local player support," said Michel Cassius, who is in charge of Origin's European Internet efforts. "Establishing a local infrastructure to support this revolutionary product enables European users to truly experience all the wonders that exist in the persistent world of UO."

Origin already have about 15,000 subscribers in Europe, and hope that The Second Age might add more. To service this customer base, Origin are adding their own European-based servers and customer support teams, making the virtual world a truly international effort.

"Latency is still the main issue with playing an Internet game while being geographically distant from the servers controlling that game," said Cassius. "With this launch, we're providing a solution for our European players. Also, with the advent of European-based customer support, users won't have to make expensive phone calls to North America for help and will be supported during European hours."

Origin have also tackled the thorny issue of Europe's language barriers. Ultima Online includes a software component called Systran, which translates text chatter between English, Japanese and German on the fly. This way, a player who types something in German to another player online can have his words automatically translated to English by the game itself.

Courtesy of IGN.com