Kimsch has posted a speed run of the original Ultima IV on YouTube, with the initial play-through clocking in at 2 hours 31 seconds and 11,051 moves. That establishes the baseline on which he hopes to improve with a follow-up video.
I’m still not sure if Ultima IV as ran under CUO can be completed solo, but it is my hope that someone attempts it soon. CUO does not currently track your move count, but this speed run has me wanting to add that in.
Now that the server is down, I’ll be looking into providing the server and client as a single package so that players can still play the game as a standalone product. Since CUO was meant to be a multiplayer extension of Ultima I through Ultima IV, I don’t yet know if it’s possible to complete any of it without other players. The Ultima I dungeons were populated with many more monsters, and Ultima III and IV are inherently designed to have companions. Perhaps I’ll add a switch for standalone mode that would allow classic companions to join, or possibly add hireling tech? I’ll also be publishing the source and game assets to either GitHub or Bitbucket soon, so that interested parties can fork the project if desired.
UPDATE: The stand-alone server and client downloads are now available!
After slightly over a year of up-time, I have decided to retire CUO because of lack of interest. It has been months since anyone has logged in, and even when the game was relatively new the average player connected for only 10 minutes and never returned. Perhaps releasing the game in its Alpha phase was a mistake…I understand that the game was considered unplayable by some because it suffered from a number of glitches, but almost no one reported bugs, suggestions, or feedback and I was often unaware of major problems. I haven’t decided whether I’ll attempt to polish the game and release it in a better shape, or just upload the entire project to a public repository and be done with it. Either way, the server will go dark on December 1st for the foreseeable future. Thanks to those of you who gave the game a try and offered encouragement along the way.