What you’re looking at above is Ultima Online as you’ve never seen the classic, groundbreaking MMO that's still running after nearly 20 years -- converted from its 2D origins into a full 3D world. It’s a labor of love of veteran game designer and artist Andrea Fryer, who’s worked at Ubisoft and other major companies. Since Easter weekend, she’s been translating UO’s maps into Wurm Unlimited, a sandbox MMO which allows players to own and customize their own private servers.

“For anyone for whom Ultima Online was their ‘first love MMO’, they well know the wistful yearning that is left from experiencing those magical times,” Andrea tells me, explaining why she’s put so much work into this project.

“Each new MMO they try is compared to UO, and so far nothing has fully been able to offer the full array of experiences and feelings that UO provided. So one of the reasons for doing this is to ‘process’ that yearning and channel it into something. Similar to why people will do fan art or musical covers of their favorite star… UO was never made into an official first person 3d game - instead it was always from an isometric god view, so I was extremely curious to see how the world would look if I could actually look around and feel immersed in the environment.”

The other reason is the platform. “[T]he god tools in Wurm Unlimited are just so darned fun to use,” as she puts it. “So it's like you almost look for a reason to use them. Just like when you build a house in The Sims, the process itself is so much fun so you find an excuse to make something, anything!”

When it’s ready for other players to explore, up to 200 can inhabit her Ultima server. At first it’ll just be a “tourist attraction” that players can explore without interacting within. However, since it’ll already come with Wurm Online’s RPG interface baked in, she’s planning to add some light MMORPG mechanics to it: