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Lord British Returns To Ultima Online
Thanks to Origin for their news release announcing Lord British is returning to the world of PC MMORPG Ultima Online. The article trails: "Talk circulates throughout the land of the return of a figure from Britannia's past, whose whereabouts have been shrouded in mystery for these many moons", and GameShark has contacted NCSoft Austin, where Ultima creator Richard 'Lord British' Garriott now works (and where he has even introduced Lord British's character into Lineage), and reports that "Richard Garriott... gave [Origin/EA] permission to reintroduce the character into the world of Ultima. Origin apparently made a deal with Richard that allowed them to use the character if they had Richard's blessings."
Lord British used to be one of my fav characters, and i play lots ultima online, with the character back, I guess I won't have much time for any other game :/
The IT section color scheme sucks.
I thought he was dead. ;)
Considering how tightly Garriott has held onto that persona in the past - to the point of very deliberately blurring the line between Lord British and himself, allowing a company he is no longer at all associated with to continue using it is somewhat surprising - especially considering that the relationship between Garriott and EA has not always been cordial.
Then again, now that Garriott no longer has any rights to the Ultima line, which Lord British was always associated with, maybe he's just letting go of the past and moving on to entirely new ventures.
Philip Sandifer's academic website
The headline made me think that Richard Garriott was returning to create more Ultima games. I have read a couple interviews with him, and think that he has an interesting take on game design. I never got a chance to play any of the Ultima games--though I remember reading reviews of them in the gaming magazines when I was little. Virtue in gaming seems like a very interesting idea given what we usualy see in games.
Lord British in UO was cool because he was Richard Gariott; running into him was kinda like a celebrity sighting. It's nice for story continuity that Gariott is letting Origin put Lord British back in, but it's not going to have the same "wow" factor now that it'll just be some random Origin rep behind the keyboard.
The bold print giveth, and the fine print taketh away
I don't know where to begin. I hate you all.
So...how do you bring back a dead man?
Goo goo g'joob.
You reach a certain age, and you're supposed to stop with this childish crap.
More importantly, this also marks the return of human-run plots. UO's volunteer quest-makers were axed 2 years ago, along with the volunteer customer support and newbie-helpers, when EA got skittish about possible lawsuits like the one brought against AOL by its volunteers. Since that time, UO tried to make do with plots events scripted in code, rather than enacted by DM-like volunteers.
The return of Lord British was the first event enacted by the new Event Moderators - contracted employees doing pretty much what the former volunteers did. At least half of them are former volunteers, only now paid by the hour.
I think this is a very important positive step for UO, as the lack of human intelligence behind plot characters really sucked the soul from the game. Plots scripted by humans (sometimes partly on the spot) was, and will be again, one of the primary differentiating factors that sets UO apart in an increasingly crowded MMOG marketplace.
For great justice.
No Lord British = Not an Ultima
:)
No Richard Garriot = Not Lord British
Thanks for the series Richard, I'm really looking forward to your next creations. Here's hoping they will be as influential as the past ones.
P.S. Think "single player"... wink wink
E.
Never rub another man's rhubarb - The Joker
Why would you mod that down? It's informative, and amusing. It's also on-topic, because it concerns Lord British, just as the article concerns Lord British.
Who cares if it's old news. Just because you don't find it interesting doesn't mean other people don't.
oops
I didnt mean the parent. I ment the post with the link. And I had 2 points. The second was that the page was so old that 2 out of the 3 linked items were broken.
If you are going to post something for some quick Karma, at least point to a useful page.
Like this one
One that has pictures and the official response and the interview without broken links.
All it took was a 2 second google search.
When I went to the site, all of the links but the one for the pics worked for me...
honestly, i could care less about richard garriot and uo, what i want to know is if he is still wasting his time and money building a castle along lake austin?
wait....is that why? is mr. garriot running out of money for his brick and mortar? ahh, i see...the truth is revealed...
if it wasn't for that horse, i wouldn't have spent that year in college.....
Admittedly, I stopped playing UO years ago, but when I was still playing Lord British was still around. It was indeed a celebrity sighting to be running around and suddenly walk right into the -real- Lord British. It was highly cool.
On the Lake Superior server, a bunch of us staged a RP event that lasted for like months, 'The Rebellion of Trinsic'. The city of Trinsic basically seceded from Lord British's realm, citing poor government as the reason. We had rebels in one color, loyalists in another, and we'd run around having engagements and battles and spying on each other and stuff. And big philosophical debates about the nature of kingship and the obligations of rule. It rocked hardcore.
Ah, for the good ol' days.