GameSpot: Tell us what the team hopes to accomplish with Samurai Empire. We know the expansion has several new features, but are the new character classes, housing options, and other content intended to just give players more to do, or is there a specific direction in which Samurai Empire is intended to bring Ultima Online?

Jessica Lewis: With each expansion, we want to build on the concept of Ultima Online being a virtual world, a place as vast, complex, and mysterious as the real world. Samurai Empire gives us the chance to add an entirely new culture complete with new clothes, weapons, monsters, mythology, and even food. We hope that players who visit Tokuno Islands for the first time have the same feeling one gets when visiting a new country for the first time--a feeling of everything being foreign and exotic, a sense that surprises and new experiences are around every corner.