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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?
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?
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.
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).
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
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
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.
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>
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."
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!
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.
http://headline.gamespot.com/news/00_03/30_pc_outd adoh/
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.
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.
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. =)
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.
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!
Electronic Arts backstabs Ultima Online 2 for 412 points of damage!
Ultima Online 2 has been slain!
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.
---
Know someone who is stealing cable? Report them!
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
Richard Garriot is one of the best game designers of all time, and he deserves a bit more respect.
The Faxman
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.