Since the release of Origin's Ultima IX: Ascension, many gamers have complained about the game's speed, random crashes, and other technical woes that have halted their enjoyment of their latest purchase. On Monday, GameSpot News spoke to an Origin spokesperson about the problems and what the company is doing to alleviate those problems.

　　Origin admits that the game has some problems and the majority of those problems are focused on the game's engine and its capabilities using newer graphics cards and the latest DirectX 7.0. One major reason for the errors was that the game was "written originally for Glide and we for Direct3D." And with such a massive task of taking the game from one API to another, there were bound to be some difficulties in the transfer.

　　The company first realized the potential for problems in the few weeks between the game going gold and being published, where there were "changes to parts of the code before the game shipped that were out of our control." During that time, the game's development team started building the first patch for the game that released last Wednesday. Since that patch was first released, Origin has been approached by several graphics chip manufacturers and graphics card makers in order to make sure their users will have few or no problems with Ascension running on their products. The first major manufacturer to be singled out was Nvidia and its newest Detonator drivers for TNT and TNT2 graphics chip-based video cards.

　　"We're well aware of the problems that have been brought forth by players," said the company spokesperson. And the developers of the game have been keeping their eyes open to players' complaints and problems with the game and have been focused on taking care of those problems no matter how irate e-mails are about the last Ultima. In part, Origin understands its customers' complaints. "Ultima players are passionate. They demand certain things from their games."

　　Even during the development of the game, Ultima's most hard-core fans questioned the focus of Ultima IX's development and worried that the biggest and greatest Ultima appeared to be deviating from its roots. And while Origin's core development teams are already working on its new online-only focus, the company is firmly devoted in making sure Ultima IX makes for a fulfilling final chapter in the Ultima series.

　　So what about gamers returning games? Origin says that it hasn't heard of many gamers returning their game to retailers and wants to encourage those gamers to "hang tight and hold on to the game" as the programmers at Origin are hard at work making sure Ultima IX will work for all. Those playing the game now who have problems that haven't been fixed by the company's suggestions or the patch can contact Origin.