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Lord British Returns To Ultima Online

Posted by simoniker on from the return-of-the-king dept.

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."

3 of 34 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Bringing Back the Dead? by Gothic_Walrus · · Score: 4, Informative

    Aha. After a quick Google search, I found a site that's got an interview with the player who killed Lord British, and the official response from the Ultima Online team. That site is here.

    --
    Goo goo g'joob.
  2. More important, the return of plots by Hythlodaeus · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.
  3. Re:mod parent DOWN by Alex2000 · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.