Gamer.no: Odyssey will obviously be more action-oriented than Ultima Online. Does this imply that there will be no house building or trade skills involved? How then will the social element be kept intact?

JH: I don’t think an action oriented game and a social game are mutually exclusive. While it’s true we don’t plan on having housing or crafting (at least not traditional crafting) at launch, that decision had nothing to do with the action-oriented game-play in UXO. We want to create systems that introduce a new level of fun and have a lot of depth, rather than creating a bunch of shallow systems. The goal is to focus on core elements such as combat and adventuring, making sure those systems are designed far and above what is currently being offered by other games. There is nothing stopping us from adding housing and crafting to UXO at a later date, though - and when we do, those systems will be implemented with just as much depth as our combat and adventuring.