EA held the first "phase" of their public beta for Ultima Online during June 1997, sending out only a few thousand CDs. The Ultima Online Beta Test Kit consisted of a cardboard disk envelope that contained one (1) CD in a plain white paper sleeve. The CD is marked "Ultima Online Public Beta Test". A few weeks later, in July, the second phase was held, and new CDs were sent out to all beta testers, including those from the first phase. There is no distinguishable difference between the two different beta CDs, apart from the postmark date on the cardboard envelope and the timestamp of the files on the CD.
More than 25,000 people from around the world paid to participate in the 1997 beta test. The beta CD cost $2 U.S. On August 21, 1997, Electronic Arts announced that UO established the worldwide record for the largest number of people concurrently playing in the same virtual world over the Internet by hosting 2,850 gamers. At the time, the total game geography covered more than 189 million square feet of terrain. Showing the entire game surface area at once would have required 38,000 17-inch monitors, nearly enough to occupy a football field.
Graphically, the beta was vastly improved over the alpha version. However, there were also a lot of bugs, exploits, and server downtime. The Beta Test ended on September 23, 1997. Once again, thousands of daemons were summoned to run amok in the last few hours that the Beta servers were up.
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