Origin stopped by the office today to show off the latest Ultima Online expansion, Age of Shadows. Actually it was just producer Anthony Castoro who showed up as the rest of the team is busy back in Austin making the game. Anthony was previously lead designer on UO: Renaissance before moving on to work on Star Wars Galaxies. But now that he's back with Origin Anthony was glad to boot up UO and let us take a look at all the changes in store for the upcoming expansion.

This time around the team is really going all out with the features adding plenty of content never before seen in Ultima Online. First off, they've added a brand new landmass that brings with it room for over 40,000 new player houses. A new house design tool ensures that, even with that large number of houses, each will be as unique as the players who build them. Finally, for the first time in the series' history, two new character classes will be added.

The new continent of Malas is a bit of a departure for the world of Ultima. Rather than reflecting the colorful medieval setting of the rest of the world, this land is much darker. Bare trees and cracked ground show that the world has been taken over by necromancers. Moreover, the land is floating in space with hard borders giving way to fields of stars.

The landmass also contains Ultima's largest dungeon, Dungeon Doom. The dungeon contains several multiplayer puzzles. Rather than soloing through these, you'll actually require not only additional characters but additional kinds of characters. Anthony gave us an example of a switch puzzle that required five players to solve, four to activate the switches and one thief to sneak in and steal the loot. As a result, it's a little more involved than most of the other dungeons currently in the game.

Perhaps the most anticipated new feature is ability to build your own houses. Using a simple house placement tool (that looks like a spyglass) you can select a site for your home. Since they can be built within town walls now, you can even benefit from the added protection of towns.

If you don't want a pre-built house, you simply select a footprint size for your house. Opening up the build menu, you'll have the option to select from 1000 tiles to create the walls, doors, floors and other aspects of your house. Arches, gates and other items help to add a bit of personality as well.