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Lord British Gives UO2 the Axe
Ashram writes "Well, I didn't want it to be true, but apparently the folks over at Electronic Arts have announced on the Origin website that they are halting production of the game until further notice in order to improve the currently existing Ultima Online game. All I can say is that I've been waiting for this game for a while, and now to see it gone leaves me feeling empty." Origin was going to be 3-D, correct?
maybe lum?
Nowadays EA would have swallowed Interplay whole and thrown Brian Fargo out on the streets.
Someone SHOULD have thrown Fargo out on the streets a long time ago. Much of Interplay's current financial difficulties stem from him snorting a good chunk of their past profits up his nose and mismanaging the rest in a paranoid delusional state. This will probably get modded down as flamebait, but that doesn't make it not true. If I valued my cushy high-profile game industry job a little less I'd post non-anonymously so it could have credibility.
How is this GOOD news? Electronic Arts has succeeded in ruining just about everything it touches...er..swallows. They destroyed Origin, they destroyed Bullfrog...what do they do for an encore?
EA is no better than EIDOS...large corporate monoliths that exploit the smaller software shops. What EA has done to seminal companies like Origin and Bullfrog is criminal.
I for one don't rejoice that they've got the rights to Lord of the Rings. Heck, the "ring" has passed from one clueless company (Sierra) to an even more clueless one (EA). Does anyone remember Middle Earth Online? THIS would have been a killer MMORPG...but the suits at Sierra ruined it, and eventually killed it.
..rather, EA "The Guardian" did.
Face it...Origin, as we knew and loved it, died the moment Electronic Arts swallowed them. Ever since, with the exception of the Crusader games, they have released nothing but garbage.
Richard Garriott had nothing to do with UO2..he was long gone before this fiasco came down. The name "Lord British" doesn't even belong to EA, so please do not confuse Lord British with EA or the current perverters of the Ultima name. Origin died in 1994, along with Ultima. :(
Sigh...does anyone around here still remember the days when Electronic Arts was a home for electronic artists? Back when Trip Hawkins had a dream for making computer games that approached art. This era gave us gems like Archon, The Bard's Tale (which helped launch Interplay as an independant company) and many others.
Nowadays EA would have swallowed Interplay whole and thrown Brian Fargo out on the streets.
"Under my guidance Britannia will flourish and all the people shall rejoice and pay homage to their new...GUARDIAN. Know that you too shall kneel before me Avatar...for I shall be your provider...your companion...and your MASTER." -- The Guardian, a character directly inspired by the attempted takeover of Origin Systems in the early '90s. Why else do you think the three generators were a cube, a sphere and a pyramid?
I was never an Ultima fan, but I loved UO. I played night and day for six months straight. I only gave it up when I realized that they were never going to make it the game it should have been.
/. ID is lower than the real Bruce Perens'.
I was expecting them to loosen up and let the players take some control over the world. Instead, they put a piece of software in charge of the criminal justice system (karma / reputation) and completely ignored any sense of realism. I can't seem to find the right words to properly frame my criticism, but it gives me the same sense of "that's just WRONG" that "security-through-obscurity" does.
So, I say forget Asheron's call, UO, UO2, EverQuest, and all that rot. They're closed source. The players are at the mercy of the developers. Why set yourself up for a fall, especially given the amount of time and energy that go into the characters?
Have a peek at www.worldforge.org
(Moderators: I have a +1 and did not use it. Consider this post already modded down.)
The real Threed's
--Threed
Slashdot editors not reading even slashdot headlines? That can't be right, can it?
"don't fall into the fallacy of believing that Perl can solve social problems. Maybe Perl 6 can, but that's a ways off"
Actually, they've introduced a 3D add-on to their original Ultima Online called Third Dawn. This basically offers a 3D game engine (albeit still third-person) to those players willing to purchase and install it.
I guess this is a sort of compromise--give the existing customers something new to play with that also happens to take advantage of shiny new technology, in hopes that it will also attract players who would have thought the graphics dated otherwise.
-W-
"Is it all journey, or is there landfall?"
-W-
Is it all journey, or is there landfall?
--Ellison & van Vogt, 'The Human Operators'
Well, the adventure genre is going to stay in the same state if noone ever bothers to add to it. Adventure games have to be the genre that I enjoy most, so things like that irritate me.
I can't remember where I saw the quote though about the Warcraft Adventure game since it's been a while, but that was right from a Blizzard employee. It was canceled with most of the needed art done and 70% of the voices.
Diablo II in my mind proved Blizzard lost their high standards. And with the way Warcraft III is going, it's just going to be more of the same.
Diablo II's artists did an excelent job with the art and movies. But the programmers? Honestly, a game should not absolutly require 256 MB ram for no-lag multiplayer gaming on a LAN.
If it wasn't going to meet their high standards (aka a game that somehow catches on with a group and sells a few million copies), they should have at least licensed it to someone else to let finish it up.
Don't mind me, I'm just bitter the adventure genre has gone downhill, partially due to the good game developers not bothering to release anything new in the area. I'd love another Zork game that takes full advantage of DVD quality movies, or another Journeyman Project.
and this just proves it. They would rather give their existing customers something new to play with, instead of trying to win over new ones with shiny new technology. Makes perfect sense, and proves a 3d game dosen't have to exist for people to enjoy it.
I still dislike the fact that Blizzard canned Warcraft Adventures because "it didn't utilize modern technology well enough". So instead they made Diablo II, a game that looks a slim bit better then the first and needs 256MB ram to run at a decent speed in multiplayer.
Anarchy Online has the advantage of not being "fantasy" but dark future sci-fi. Ignoring the Dreamcast-based Phantasy Star Online and Verant/Sony's vapourware Star Wars MMORPG, there won't be much competition when it's released — apparently sometime in the July-September timeframe.
The toys!
The McFarlane toy series... is it never to see the light of day?
At best U9 was one slightly worse than average game that you then had to play 8 times.
* Go To Town
* Find out what evil has befallen them.
* Go to the bottom of a dungeon
*Beat up some guy in a purple outfit and take the sygil he is carrying
* Find someone who is carrying a special item you need
* Go to a broken altar
* Pray
* Everything is hunky-dory
*Lather, Rinse, Repeat 7 more times.
Blech
The first Ultima, written on a 48Kb Apple II in about 1978, was 3-D
Well, sort of - the dungeons are 3D wireframe in Ultima I (which came out in 1980, a year before Wizardry I), but the world map (where you spend most of your time) is in 2D overhead view, just like later games in the series.
I'm not sure if Aklabeth, Lord British's first game (and prequel to Ultima) had any 2D elements or whether it was a pure 3D dungeon crawl.
Personally, even back in the early 80s I was never a huge fan of those 3D first-person dungeons, espescially since there was no automap and you had to sit there plotting out each level with graph paper. Remember "mapping gems"?
Bard's Tale was even worse, but I played through and mapped that whole game on graph paper, so I mustn't have minded too much. Likewise for Dungeon Master (1 and 2). One of the things I liked most about Ultima Underworld was that it had a cool automap with notations etc. Ultima Underworld was a cool game engine for it's time (and a good game to boot).
Uh, no. Lord British was shown the door by his EA masters, because of the horrible fiasco called Ultima 9. He was allowed to pick up his coat and rapier before he left, but the man was fired. Make no mistake.
It's really pretty sad. I actually worked at Origin for eighteen months testing Wing Commander IV (and WC4 Mac and WC4 PSX...) The glory days of that company had certainly passed by the time I got there. The marketroids and EA goons were totally in control, and some brilliant concept games (like Technosaur) were killed because they were too risky. The Friday afternoon happy hours dwindled, leaving behind 70+ hour weeks and no love from management. It was fun, I guess, but I got over it pretty quick when they laid me off.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
If I could mod I would, as it is, I'm just going to second this. I hate misleading titles... it really makes slashdot seem less accountable.
http://www.somethingpositive.net Funny + bitter = comedy gold
Yes. He left and has been leading a pretty private life now. Anyone know what he is up to?
When I lived in Austin I used to hang out with his sister and play roller hockey with the Origin team. Most of the programmers I know from Origin have moved on to other companies - so I don't get the inside gossip anymore.
Is he still doing the Halloween and July 4rth thing?
-- Virtual Windows Project
He was NOT fired. Both UO and U9 were released months before being ready, thanks to EA, and he got fed up with that.
FYI, Peter Molyneux left Bullfrog (owned by EA) for exactly the same reasons (Dungeon Keeper, his last game there, was released before he wanted to). EA has a history of doing that: "we've spent too much with your game already, release it now or it's cancelled".
The Tlog - a technology blog
I thought Origin had gone out of business after the release of Ultima IX. However, it doesn't surprise me that they pulled yet another product due to quality problems.
It no longer matters, at least to me anyway, how cool their stuff is. Ultima IX was the worst programed pile of trash I've ever purchased. It was pretty and it may have smelled nice but it was trash. I will never play in that particular sand box again.
Yuck.
Beware the wood elf!!!
The Origin offices were nearly empty today after firing... ahem.. laying off over 2 floors worth of people in the Austin office. Overheard from one of those left behind.. "I wish I would have been one of the ones to go. Next time there probably won't be a severence package."
Why did you change the name from 'UO2?' It's a sequel to Ultima Online, right?
Actually, 'Ultima Worlds Online: Origin' is not a sequel to Ultima Online. It is a very different product, blending medieval, ancient and futuristic civilizations in a really cool and bizarre 3D world. The combat and motion capture technology is really outstanding, and we have monsters co-designed by Todd McFarlane, creator of Spawn.
One wonders whether, when Richard Garriot left in March 2000 he took some rights to the "Ultima" trademark with him...
--LP
>Advocate use of OpenPlay, which is an Apple open source game networking API that runs on Windows, MacOS, and Linux.
;-)
I'll pass that onto the network programmer and see if they have heard of it. I know the Mac version uses [Net] Sprockets (which isn't supported on Mac OS X.) Does OpenPlay work on both OS 9 and OS X ?
> I recently decided against buying Majesty because even though it is multi-platform,
That's too bad - you're missing out on a fun game. Especially with the Expansion Pack coming out this Friday. It has a lot of new goodies!
<gameplug>
New Spells, New Buildings, New Monsters, New Quests, and a challenging difficulty.
</gameplug>
Now, here is what OSI needs to do to "fix" UO:
Moving to a 3D world is irrelevent for sales. Proof: Diablo 2 has sold 2 million copies! Graphics are the "bait" of a game. Gameplay is the "meat" of a game.
*shrugs*
What do I know though, I'm just a vet player and game developer
Thank God. My grades are spared for at least another semester...
Eric
Make it idiot-proof and someone will build a better idiot.
Doh
Martin Widmark
Everybody knows that we are the evil boys, making noise with deadly toys.
Lord British left EA/Origin ages ago, rather than be involved with the fiasco that is UO2.
The UO2 project has had issues from day one. EA wanted the game done far too soon, and cut out most of the features it would have had over EverQuest (Beyond the obvious graphical differences.). It was announced that most of the features would instead be introduced in a later expansion, at an additional cost to the players.
After that, Lord British, sick of EA marketing shoving all of his games out the door far too soon, left the company. A little later most of the game's developers left at once, and quickly (And suspiciously.) reappeared at Verant's new studio in Texas, to work on Star Wars: Galaxies.
The problem here is EA. EA is a company driven by marketing. They see Ultima as nothing beyond a brand name, and always assume that a game will sell more copies by being released during a huge, carefully planned advertising blitz, right before christmas, just as school lets out for summer, etc.. If they would just look at how Blizzard works, releasing games with little care about what anyone else thinks, or what the game looks like, they would see that with a little patience Ultima could be revived and turned around. Or at least they could have before every decent Origin employee got sick of it and quick.
* side note - before you reply about Blizzard complaining about Warcraft Adventures not taking advantage of modern technology, the big facter was actually that adventure game sales have been in the toilet for years and the time it would have taken to finish the game would have cost more than an adventure game will ever sell.
For those who are fans of the Ultima series, my web site, The Notable Ultima, contains quite a bit of historical information on the series. It's sadly out of date - I've never bothered updating it for U9 or most of the UO stuff, for obvious reasons - but if you'd like a trip down memory lane, you may enjoy it.
</blatantplug>
Three. I thought it was a great game.
Typical RPG: Walk around. Slay monsters. Talk to NPC's. Find or kill what they specify.
Typical adventure: Walk around. Click on everything. Pick up items. 'Use' each on everything.
I only had a handful of crashes through 40-80 hours of gameplay, and they were all to the desktop (meaning I just had to restart the game).
Origin was going to be 3-D, correct?
Who cares if the game was going to be 3D? The last two 3D games I bought were very disapointing. The Bouncer and Shadow of Destiny. Both of them were hyped up because they have such great graphics, but the game play itself bites. So then I pick up Luna: Silver Star Story Complete (no 3D graphics, 2D sprites) and I'm having a wonderful time playing it.
3D graphics don't make a game. It's gameplay that matters. I'd be more focused on the gameplay elements that we'll be missing from UO2 before I'd care if it was going to be a 3D game.
Yeah, what happened to free movement and the freedom of exploring the world yourself? Without having the creepy feeling you must go there, you must do that, you must go there, you must do that... etc, etc till the end of the game?
The freedom of exploring and discovering things yourself was what attracted me to play alot of Ultima III, V and VI. From there it only went downhill. Of course with the exception of Ultima Underworld I and II, but that was Looking Glass..
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
I simply can't agree enough with what ShaunC said here...
I think this is an EXCELLENT move on the part of Origin and EA. Why make a new continuously on-going monthly game from scratch instead when you have one with an existing fan-base and lore that you can simply revamp??
As an example, look at Asheron's Call. When Asheron's Call first debuted more than a year ago, it was a decent MMORPG. However, over the last year, with free monthly updates (unlike Everquest's BS expansion packs), Asheron's Call has continued to expand and grow and develop. Monthly, new quests are added, new weapons, new monsters, and about 5 or 6 months back they even re-did a lot of the light rendering in the graphics engine which made it look substantially better (IMHO, the best of all the existings MMORPGs).
In fact, one of the big problems lately with Asheron's Call has been the player communities' feeling that AC was being progressively less continuously developed and expanded as resources were moved within Turbine to work on AC2. This has been a great source of anxiety and frustration with the player community as a whole. "Why work on developing a character in a world that may just be deleted in a year?" is the common thought...while unlikely, what is more likely is that the amount of new monthly content will shrink down to next to nothing.
So why is everyone all bent out of shape over the UO2 cancellation?? If I were a UO player, I'd be ecstatic! I, for example, would far rather see Origin continue to re-vamp and update the game that I spend a lot of time monthly playing, than dump it, and go off to work on some new game, leaving me to wonder, why am I still playing? Instead, why not make the rendering engine fully 3D -- heck use the one they were working on for UO2! And, expand the world to, oh, twice the size!...add twice as more creatures!...fix all the bugs! And so on... No reason to start from scratch.
My $1.95...
I have not been able to get Ultima 9 to run out of the box on win98, NT or 2000. I have read all the FAQs and have applied all the official (and some unofficial) patches.
I have really paid a lot to get this game, and the bits I did get to see of it looks fantastic.
I used to be a great Ultima fan, now I'm only a sad Origin hater.
-sigh-
Another patch would not hurt too much, right?
Hmm...
I know... I have considered it.
But I had a feeling at the time that 3dfx was not doing so well, and didn't want to buy one. (a good move)
But I will consider getting one for playing ultima 9.
(I've spent about 1 month's salary in time and effort already trying to get the game working.)
From TheOneRing.net....
EA acquires rights to Lord of the Rings games...
Under the direction of Imhoff, the licensing department has already attracted key licensees such as Toy Biz, which has the master toy license; Electronic Arts, which is developing and distributing video games based on the franchise; Applause Inc., which has the master gift license; and HarperCollins UK, among others."
Hate to break it to you, but Everquest does it right now, and has been doing it for two years now. It can be run on a 266-MHz machine and uses approximately the bandwith of a 28.8 modem. Technically, at least in terms of the 3-D part of the equation, another game was out even before EQ that dealt with it. I'm sure you've heard of it? Quake?
Considering that UO2 was arguably one of the best-funded and biggest first-person massively multiplayer RPGs currently on the way, I wonder if this bodes ill for the rest of the crop. If EA/Origin didn't think they were going to make a profit off the game (come on, what other reason would they REALLY have for cancelling the game?), even with an already installed base of users (in the current Ultima Online), what hope do the smaller game companies have? Dark Age of Camelot, Anarchy Online, Horizons, etc. are all in various stages of development, but this makes me wonder who is taking the risk that they are actually going to work and whether that risk is going to continue to be viable if even the well-branded Ultima name wasn't considered enough...
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Either way, the Ultima series has been dead since 7, so it doesn't matter. Any company that produces such shallow pieces of crud don't deserve any money. Well, not my money at any rate.
Then again, I can easily imagine on U9 at least, Garriot trying to make a quality game but taking so much crap from marketing and executive weanies that he gives up... and quits! On the other hand, U8 showed everyone what NOT to do, but they went ahead and made super-U8 with Ascension. I agreed with the tons of people that called Ascension, "Super Avatar Bros." because of its simplistic and absolutely linear plot, pathetic story, and non-existant combat. (Why train or use tactics when your first 'moves' and a Bo can easily defeat anyone)
As a slight aside, check out this link for info on fan made patches and add-ons to U9. In addition, many other of the Ultima series are undergoing revivals, from complete redo's to overlays and patches. Of course, EA will probably sue these folk if it turns out to be good... why compete with quality when you can sue, destory or maybe buy it out... the M$ way.
Either way, I will give Garriot a vote of confidence in that I think he was a victim of his own naivety and short sidedness (ok, that sounds odd, but I won't change it). I imagine he learned his lesson and his hopefully looking to tell a story and create an experience, not sell a gimick. One can only hope.
Now about Chris Carter... I really miss AutoDuel. From what I read, Loose Cannon looked more like a driving game with some shooting, not the great story and experience within the Car-Wars universe like with AutoDuel. But then again, Loose Cannon seems still wanting for a publisher last I heard. (a good prospective is on the tables though)
I seek not only to follow in the footsteps of the men of old, I seek the things they sought.
Some of the more successfully financed companies will survive and bob along with the float-som
New "innovative" groups will emerge that work hard once again to tell a story, not make money or just put crap out because they can.
Later you will see both groups get bigger and bigger, gobbling each other up to the point that competition becomes so fierce that market analyzers and enterprise level management experts will be needed to keep up. Later, these marketers and executives will become so powerful as to drown out the developers and fans to the point that the reason for their sole existence is lost to the 'bottom line'
Now, lather, rinse and repeat.
Damn, my crystal ball is broken, it was actually focusing on my monitor screen with its text distorting program that is apparently taking input from historical documents and changing the times and names to another set. oh well, sorry for the false alarm!
I seek not only to follow in the footsteps of the men of old, I seek the things they sought.
If you could get past the massive bugs, memory leaks, extremely low frame rates, etc. there was a staggeringly good game to be found in U9.
The problem, of course, was that you had to get past the massive bugs, memory leaks, extremely low frame rates, etc. to find it.
I followed the development of Ascension from the 'mkdir U9' quote in Pagan. U9 was a game that suffered from alot of thigs, many of which I lay at the feet of EA. Inconstant resources, rushed ship date to make the Christmas shopping season, etc. all contributed to keeping it from being what it could have been.
I was dissapointed in but I still think that it was a good game even if it did have far too many rough edges.
I'm not sure if Aklabeth, Lord British's first game (and prequel to Ultima) had any 2D elements or whether it was a pure 3D dungeon crawl.
Akalabeth had a 2D worldmap and 3D dungeons. The dungeon engine was later re-used for U1.
UO:3D is UO-- given an extraordinarily ugly facelift. Like virtually every other aspect of UO, it's been pushed out the door far too early. The original version of UO could have stood another four to six months of beta testing, easily. UO: Renaissance shipped months early-- "Factions," one of the new features listed on the box only left testing a few months ago-- long after the UO:R boxes were shipped to stores. UO:3D just got booted out the door-- because it's the end of the bloody quarter.
Finally, exactly who is left to 'focus' on the fouled mess that UO has become? Certainly not the eighty or more employees that were canned at Origin alone. EA doesn't give a damn about 'focusing' anything on UO-- except the potential millions of subscriptions, overseas (No, I'm not exaggerating. Check out the subscription stats for titles like "Lineage," for example). Veteran rewards, factions, the ever-elusive Necromancy, and everything else that they've tossed out in one barely-usable form or another, has been a sop-- a half-assed attempt to keep players interested in the game, as opposed to slipping off to Everquest, or to whatever the newest threat to their slipping player-base is.
Five tons of flax.
Actually He still does his birthday thing. Recently I heard from a waitress that worked the event, that he had a mock titantic made on Lake Travis that actually sunk (into 4 feet of water). As to the halloween gig, he has not done that in quite a while. Alot of the people involved with Garriots' "Britania Manor" now work on event called the Haunted Trails. Not quite as much money but a hell of lot of fun. It serves as fund raiser for Austin's wildlife preserve, the Wild Basin. It's haunted house with a plot and it takes over an hour to go through it. And it takes over an hour to walk through. If you live in Austin and are intrested, send me an email. I'm this year's recruiting director.
That's the conclusion I came to today. If they see a threat, they don't just try to beat them - they just swallow them whole and spit the bones out at the innocent bystanders. First the swallowed Kesmai and Gamestorm, promising that they would continue my old haunt Air Warrior 3 (or rather, Air Warrior 3 Millennium Version *eyeroll*). They are doing, for now, but it's a total mess and I think they'll stop supporting it soon. I'm sure they just did it do give AW's followers a false sense of confidence before finally plunging the dagger into their backs. Lo and behold, they killed Air Warrior 4, which was looking to be totally awesome too. I don't know what their competition is, but obviously they couldn't stand the threat that AW4 gave it. So next, they decide they've had enough of Origin. Maybe they're creating their own MMORPG or something. So they bought them too, decided to milk UO for a little while, and quietly axed UO2 before it became too much of a threat. *Sigh* EA.com are evil. Nothing less. Anyone want to start an antitrust lawsuit? They're a lot more deserving than Microsoft, and that's saying something.
http://headline.gamespot.com/news/00_03/30_pc_outd adoh/
How come I am missing ultima3 and ultima4? There seems to be a dearth of such games nowadays. But I guess MUD would be more fun than UO2. In meantime, CS here I come....
Yes, Lard British is no longer with Origin. He left following the fiasco known as the last Ultima. The success of UO notwithstanding, LB's hippocracy in the face of the obviously weak state of the released final chapter of the Ultima franchise lead to him losing face with his remaining fans.
I think he begs for change now or something =)
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10)'
That was supposed to be in reply to the AC's message right below this.
--
Karma: Terrifying (mostly affected by atrocities you've committed)
You forget that they charge per month. If they have 100,000 players on their current game at $10 per month. That is $1,000,000 they are going to lose per month. I don't know about anyone else but the MMORPG that I play takes up WAAAY too much of my life. Since I have started playing, I haven't played any other games since (3 months).
Thanks for saying it dude. I agree one-hundred percent with you.
Beyond the valid points you make, from a personal point of view, I have zero interest in playing a first person MMORPG, for a number of reasons. The big one on the list is that it makes it virtually impossible to do anything in a group. And if you can't do anything in a group, there isn't much point in playing a MMORPG.
I think that OSI's resources will be much better spent focusing on the existing Ultima Online.
--- Math illiteracy affects 8 out of every 5 people.
Electronic Arts and Origin Systems have announced a plan that will increase their focus on Ultima Online and halt production of OWO: ORIGIN (UO2). The reason is simple, rather than creating OWO: ORIGIN (UO2) as a parallel world competing with UO, we've decided to put those resources into growing and improving the core offering for Ultima Online's 230,000 loyal subscribers.
In the near future and with the release next week of Ultima Online: Third Dawn, players will see new lands, new creatures, and a world that is continually evolving within Ultima Online.
Latest update as of 3:30p: Massive layoffs throughout EA. 85 from OSI alone. Kesmai also gutted (at least 40, Battletech and Air Warrior 4 both cancelled) and 80 elsewhere in EA. Harry Potter cancelled. Jack Heistand (OSI's CEO) gone. Gordon "Tyrant" Walton moved to Sims Online.
Pretty sure that is correct, he is no longer with Origin.
Petition for UO2/Origin
Uh duh. Glad to see we know what we're posting.
If CmdrTaco wasn't such a jerk, and banned my email from his account, he'd be able to take my application for becoming a poster.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Had I nevered played Metal Gear Solid, I would not only have agreed with you 100%, but would've gone as far to say that using 3D in an RPG is an awful idea (I wasn't a fan of Ultima Underworld). However, MGS has shown us that you can take an existing 2D game concept, preserve both the 2D game play and the 2D appearance, and still come out with something better.
So while some uses of 3D are just "shiny new technology" and jumping on the bandwagon, others instances are what can be described as no less than art. I honestly can't tell you which UO2 would've been, but I could imagine them doing it right -- leave the core game as what appears to be 2D but is rendered via a 3D engine and then really show off that engine (by shifting the camera around to a more first-person angle) when you want to do something to advance the story.
On the other hand, it's entirely possible that they were trying to cash in on what Everquest does, in which case I'd agree with your comments 140%.
That's just the PR cover story. EA has been slowly killing Origin since they bought it, and the rumor mill strongly suggests that's why L.B. left the company. Not only did they kill UO2, they also laid off over half their staff, and the ones still there are earnestly putting resumes together as we speak.
Origin has had numerous promising new projects that have been killed and/or shifted to other EA companies in the past year. With UO2 getting the ax, they now have nothing in the pipeline for new releases. Yes, you read that right. Origin is no longer working on anything other than UO maintenance.
UO still makes money, so EA won't kill Origin altogether. At least not yet. But their actions have led to the inescapable conclusion that Lord British's once-mighty empire will soon be nothing but a memory.
Kiss Origin goodbye. This was the final blow.
I guess I sort of jumped around what I was trying to say... No one plays their character's role. No one at all. Paladins and necromancers team up without a thought, etc, etc... The character itself has no meaning - its just quake with swords and magic.
... From what I hear UO has a bit more potential for role playing. I just wanted to speak up because I'm bitter about buying EQ and getting bored with it so quickly. It's a mark of how addictive it is though that I continued playing it for months. =) Maybe I should give UO a try...
I don't really care, but advertising them as role playing games is a bit incorrect because then you get people buying it expecting it to be full of people playing their roles in the world, with clerics actually caring about what gods they worship and/or anger, or high elves looking down on the other races as inferior. Verant (the people that made EverQuest) actually started calling their game a MMOG (massively multiplayer online game) rather than a MMORPG to avoid this confusion. They realize that the amount of roleplaying going on in their game is practically nil.
Anyway, I'm just talking about my experience with EverQuest. It was fun for the first few days and then it was all about "Level 16 wizard looking for group!"
It's actually MMOG's, not MMRPG or MMORPG's as they used to be called. You really only need to play one for a few minutes before you realize that there's absolutely no role playing at all in these games unless you really look for it.
I think online games like UO and EverQuest are a neat idea, but they really don't work out. Grief players really ruin the experience (no pun intended) in a world where level and equipment advancement, rather than mindless shoot 'em up, is the goal.
There's fun to be had in these games, but if you're looking for a role playing game, you're still better off with a piece of paper, a pen, and some dice. =)
Unless I'm mistaken, I thought, that "Third Dawn", the next release of UO, was based on a 3-D engine. No sigs, I just quit ; )
We apologise for the fault in this post. Those responsible have been sacked. -- Signed RICHARD M. NIXON
The problem with that, however, is that people are going to be leaving UO1 anyway, to the next generation of MMORPGs. Only, with UO2 gone, they will not be going to a EA.com product.
UO has far too many underlying problems to be fixed by more and more patches. UO2 looked quite nice. But, now the dancing is dead.
Err, I believe that UO1 was going to continue for awhile after UO2 started, and after UO2 came out I doubt many would be playing UO1 much anyway. And with this, UO1 isn't gaining any resources. OSI had 80-some people fired because of this, not more put on the UO Live team.
They are stopping development of what they have been working on for years so they don't compete with their older product? Did competition with earlier products stop id from releasing Quake 2, in fear of losing sales on Quake? Does Ford not release new cars every year, even if it reduces the number of previous models sold?
Anyways, most UO players are just waiting for something else to come up. Once Shadowbane, Anarchy Online, Neocron, and all the other upcoming MMORPGs come out, UO will be dead. This is a bad move by EA.com.
Well consindering they just laid off a good portion of their employees this is not much of a shock. They did this before when they were Kesmai they went from 9 to 96 employees almost overnight and had to trim the fat. They wiil probably call all the decent people back just like last time too.
Where am I going and why am I in this handbasket?
There, I said it. This isn't bad news, it's good news, and I'd reckon a lot of other UO players feel that way. In the past year, the current incarnation has seen many times more than its share of serious bugs. Bugs that were left unchecked and went unfixed for far too long, even when being reported by tens or hundreds of people a day.
Why did this happen, why did UO in its current state fall into such a lapse of disrepair? Because they took half the UO development team and put them to work on UO:3D and UO2. They claimed they had separate dev teams - and yes, there were even some new faces working on UO2 - but eventually the truth came out.
One of the bigger flops of late, a "Veteran Rewards" program, was supposed to come out last fall. The program was launched in January, and pulled a week later because it was so bug-ridden. Months later it still hasn't been finished, and the reason? Yeah - "Our development resources are better spent on stuff like UO:3D and UO2." So much for all these different dev teams they were boasting about.
At least now they're presumably going to focus in one place; it's better to do one thing well than to do several things half-assed. This was a move they needed to make, and I think they probably (finally) wised up to that by looking at the churn rate of long time vets. They've already got a core playerbase, they need to work on keeping us happy, paying customers before branching off to bigger and (better|worse) things.
Shaun
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
While I am not sure I am HAPPY about them scrapping
UO2, I know that the 3rd Dawn client is slower than all
hell.
Perhaps with UO2 cancelled they can get rid of the room
full of monkeys on keyboards trying to write code (this
is after all a universe with infinite possibilities)
and get those ole UO2 programmers in on 3rd Dawn and fix
the slow client issues.
For graphics this badly rendered to REQUIRE A 16 meg video
card... who'd they hire to do their programming? Emmanuel Lewis!?
Hopefully they just put all their eggs in UO2 and can move em back.
~- Llah -~
Pay attention.
"one of the few who"
Two. Just two ( and that's counting Lord British.)
I dont know why you put that in quotes because I know blizzard never said that. Warcraft Adventures was canned because it was not living up to their high standards. Not because it wasn't high tech, not because it was a hot genre.
Diablo I/II was NOT MADE BY BLIZZARD. It was made by Blizzard NORTH. A different company pretty much. Blizzard north titles still go through the QA at blizzard hq, and there is a small "strike team" that is sent to north, from HQ. But the artists, programmers, and designers are completely different than those who brought us Warcraft and Starcraft.
I dont know what was wrong with your D2. Mine ran great on my 400Mhz PII w/ 128MB Ram.
Electronic Arts backstabs Ultima Online 2 for 412 points of damage!
Ultima Online 2 has been slain!
Richard Garriot was canned over a year ago by Electronic Arts. Origin Systems Inc is dead and buried, the Ultima property is basically the publicity concubine of EA these days.
Go Lakers!
Why reinvent the wheel, as the saying goes. UO is a fine game, yes it has some major flaws, but nothing that can't be fixed. It would be a huge disrespect to all the current players to abandon UO for "UO2". The bugs can be fixed in patches, the way the system works there isn't really any limit to the changes that can be made. It would be foolish to recreate the whole game, and with UO AND UO2, the support costs would double easily.
I love going down to the elementary school, watching all the kids jump and shout, but they dont know I'm using blanks.
Dice? Isn't that known as 'rollplaying'? I mean, if you're such a stickler for 'true' RPGs.
On the bright side, the special effects in Joe's Apartment were done by the guys who used to program all the games for the Intellivison.
Perhaps it was Garriot who made the mistake,
and EA's only cleaning up after him. It's clear
to me that if the main customer base for UO2
scavenges UO one customers, this is not a cost-
effective proposition.
C//
Ah, them were days.. first two games I ever bought were these.
In a sea of copy-my-genre, era of 'sequals', 'prequals' and the like, I really just hope they focus on an original idea instead.
Like Ultima and Wizardry were when they came out... both 'adventure' games but oh how different (and fun!).
A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess? - Joshua (Wargames)
Yes. Here are some downloadable video files. Unfortunately, the original trailer for UO2 (later renamed Origin) isn't listed on that page. It was quite well done, corregraphed to music and such, and showed some footage of the movement capture techniques they used for the humanoids, various combat scenerios. I just uploaded this video on some of my webspace,
"// this is the most hacked, evil, bastardized thing I've ever seen. kjb"
As Lord British embodies the Ultima franchise, there is, metaphorically, nothing wrong with the title of the article.
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Know someone who is stealing cable? Report them!
It's a project to remake Ultima 9 with the original story and it also does their best to explain all the plot holes etc.
So it looks like it isn't as dead as you think.
Didn't LB leave origin a while ago? and wasn't that the reason for the name change from "ultima online 2" to "origin:worlds online"(or something like that) -nick
The Faxman
Richard Garriot is one of the best game designers of all time, and he deserves a bit more respect.
The Faxman
I thought that Akalabeth was basically a dungeon crawl with no world map, but then later on he took Akalabeth and added to it to create Ultima I. It was in his interview on the Ultima Collection CD that came with the Ultima IX Dragon Edition.
Sorry to be negative in a public forum, but Richard Garriot WAS one of the best game designers of all time. He's been coasting on fumes & past glory for almost a decade now.
UO came out so long ago I can't imagine the player base is large enough to sink more capital into. They would have been better off releasing a new game to attract both old and new players. As a result of this game scrapping, I don't think they can expect to see huge increases in the UO gaming population.
Bummer.
Dancin Santa
Stocks
.Com's
MMRPG's
Help save UO2, go to www.petitiononline.com/40kay/petition.html and to www.petitiononline.com/uo2/petition.html and help save this game, thanks! Mike Mishou
Mike Mishou "Your sexual organs to sprout wings and fly away!"--Terry Pratchett
According to several people over on boards.uo.com, There was not going to be (when originally released) any housing any boating any guilds any mounts in other words, a NeverQuest/Assh*les Call clone.
Taken from their UO2 faq
What's that, you say? Isn't Origin the name of the company? Won't that be confusing?By the time this game ships, we won't be putting the Origin (company) logo on the box. It will be our first title going out under the new EA Games logo. Keeping this new branding strategy in mind, naming the game 'Origin' is a good way to keep our name out in the community. Granted, there may be some confusion at first, but change is never easy and we feel this is the best decision for the long-term.
I think that's fairly obvious if the other actions (Getting rid of Garriet, sacking employees...) don't show it enough, that EA is really getting rid of Origin, but of course they want to still take advantage of the name Origin, and what better way to do so? Take the companies name (well known in the industry) and give it to a game that is sold by EA...
Does this announcement of UO2 development stopping mean a halt to this grand plan? or merely a way of loosening the link between Origin the company and Origin the game? Are they now going to have a team of EA programmers (if there are such) take over the development of Origin [the game]?
It's in that place where I put that thing that time
The first Ultima, written on a 48Kb Apple II in about 1978, was 3-D. I remember reading an article by LB about how he hacked the 3-D perspective views (they were only wire-frame) in the old Space Gamer magazine. It was a pretty far-out game for the times.
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www.lucernesys.comHorizon: Calendar-based personal finance
Hey, this COULD be good! Remember all of us who bought Ultima IX, only to find it filled with more bugs than Joe's Appartment? Let them work on it, I'm sure we'll have plenty of other games to play, both online and offline.
Nobody is developing a game that has the isometric view point, so it has that going for it.
The original 'vision' of the UO world has been totally muddled. When it first came out, it was shunned in a way because of the rampant 'murdering' or PKing that was going on. There were very few restrictions on your actions and it had vast potential to be a truly dynamic world.
Then in steps EA. They have pussified UO to the point where players can live wrapped in a warm fuzzy blanket of safety. Amassing virtual stuff until they get bored and quit playing. This pussification is what will kill UO, not the new games coming out. Before it was dangerous and intriguing, now its just how much pixels of crap you can collect.
http://artifact-entertainment.com
THIS game (Horizons) looks to have the vision to do something truly cool. This along with Star Wars:Galaxies are my highly anticipated games. Hopefully one or the other will let the players acctually shape the world. That would be awesome.
Much better to have one (hopefully) excellent game, with the steam of the company behind it, than two average games that are fighting over the same users. Would be somewhat different if the games were run by seperate corporations.. but if Origin owns them both, they could really care less if the players jump ship from one to the other.
"Oh, by the way, this game is archaic, but we'll keep it running even though we have a sequal" isn't the best line to use when courting new players. Its right up there with "We know you paid $1,000 on ebay for that house, and we aren't stupid enough to cancel the service before your contract expires."
I don't care... I gave up with my MMORPG after UO came out and being poor + going to CMU was really getting hard for me. Now that I see that no corporations can design fun 'content' but can just do good art... I'm psyched to finish my MMORPG. However lame the graphics might seem at start. www.ebayrp.bizland.com
God spoke to me
The united states is now under martial law. The US economy is in the crapper. All projects new gaming projects have been canceled. Do not attempt to contact electronic arts, richard garriot, or origin staff. SHUT UP! be happy.
sig.object.lame
I guess i wont be "wasting" hours on end from now on.
Hey ppls, do you thing you could visit my website? I've been wanting more ppl to go there so i thought i might try here
He basically sold his soul when he sold Origin to EA, even if it was for 10 million. He could have made all that money back with Ultima Online. Now he's lost the rights to Ultima forever! No more TRUE Ultimas will come out. This is just like what happened with Wasteland back in the day (thank God for Fallout, though).
It's still too bad that UO2 isn't going to be released, but there are other games on the horizon.
Why would I want to pay a monthly fee to be the pissboy for some 14 year old who started playing the game three years ago?
You should read all the angry responses from people who were maintaining their UO accounts just to get into the beta. Does anyone know of a way that we can watch the UO subscription numbers drop following this announcement?
Same game, new land mass. I still have no desire to start playing a game that others have been playing for three or four years. That sounds like as much fun as walking into a theater to watch the Matrix when Morpheus is being rescued - the movie is almost over, walk into another theater!