Developing Ultima Online Samurai Empire has been an interesting experience that has had its share of ups and downs. Launching a new MMO is a tremendous undertaking and a huge technical challenge. Thankfully, doing an expansion for an established product is somewhat less daunting.

One of our biggest advantages is developing on a mature platform. Because UO is stressed around the clock by our players, most of its big kinks have long since been worked out. The flip side of that is one of our biggest technical challenges. UO is composed of a massive body of code that has been worked on by dozens of developers of varying levels of skill over its seven-year lifespan. Some corners of the codebase are dark and inscrutable, and like many IT projects, not documented as well as we would like.