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Electronic Arts Shuts Down Origin Systems?
An anonymous reader writes "Waterthread.org has picked up the following on the studio that brought us the popular Ultima and Wing Commander series: 'Game company Electronic Arts is expected to tell its Austin employees this week that the company will be shutting down Origin Systems, its Austin operations, according to sources. Employees will be offered an opportunity to relocate to California or accept a severance package. Company officials could not be reached for comment. Austin is the #3 location in the U.S. for game development with more than 50 companies making major contributions to the game industry, including game development, publishing, tools and middleware and chips and hardware." The Wing Commander CIC has also posted a epitaph for Origin."
RIP to the best of the old-school studios, from a former OSI employee and servant of the Crown.
Everybody else just made crappy games. We created worlds.
Even though they lost their main talents, in 'Lord British' off to NCSoft's Lineage and Raph Koster off to wreck Star Wars Galaxies, I still had hopes for them to do something good. Looks like that's over now.
This will result in the death of Ultima Online.
Well, it did have a long run.
Wow this has got to be true. After all, if you can't trust vague and unsubstantiated rumors what can you trust?!
OSI is just a name these days anyway. Very few of the people who currently work there are the ones who were responsiblef or all the great Ultima games.
Although it still sucks that some people will be losing there job. The PC gaming biz is grim these days.
Mumbai Computer Gaming Concern.
can't last forever you know.
Origin used to kick ass. Then EA bought them. They pretty much sucked after that (surprise, surprise). Probably better this than EA releasing crappy games under the Origin name.
I have to say though, Origin had about the best tagline of any gaming company...
Origin - We Create Worlds.
Not anymore, I guess.
I really, REALLY don't mean to sound callous here, but that's the way any business works. They decide to consolidate, to move, whatever...at least they're giving those blokes the choice to relocate (or more likely...take the severance and find other employement).
Yeah. I'm here all night folks.
A Multiplayer Strategy Game for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux
> Austin is the #3 location in the U.S. for game development
Where is the #1 and #2 location for game development?
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
What other studios has EA gutted?
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Having been to Origin Austin and seen their digs, there is no way a company like that could even justify the real estate costs they run up. It's crazy.
*Fortitudo, aequitas, fidelitas.*
I should have added, "Yeah, they did make some kick ass games...but..." the rest still rides. So they want to move.
Maybe I don't know much about the industry, but wouldn't it make more sense to move stuff *to* Austin where the cost of living, including office rent and utilities, is way cheaper than California?
bun-fhuinneog agam!
Thanks EA for making Origin the biggest mistake in its lifetime... Causing the game to make it virtually unplayable when it was obviously "NOT DONE". Did I mentiom "THANKS!"?
I was going to mod you down, but thought I'd reply instaed....
... Ultima Online will now be run from California, and development of Ultima X will continue on the west coast.
Read some of the articles.
This is not the end for Ultima
ultima Online will still continue. I'm sure it will change, especially if people take the sevrense package instead of relocating. But it will still be there.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"First things first -- but not necessarily in that order"
-- The Doctor, "Doctor
When EA bought up Origin I groaned because I knew it was the death of a good company, just like with THQ bought up Volition (not that Interplay was much better in that case).
After EA bought up Origion Wing Commander went into it's declining stages ending up with the catasrophe that was Privateer 2 on Erin's part and the nuclear holocaust that was the movie (On Chris' part). Thus died one of the finest and most groundbreaking gaming series in history.
I never paid much attention to Ultima but I knew it was a matter of time till EA did the same thing to it, I just read an article about after the success of EverQuest EA starting forcing Origin to make Ultima more Everquest-ish and less Ultima-like and thus removing and in forcing those changes it involved making Ultima un-Ultima-like thereby alienating Ultimas fans.
WAY TO GO ELECTRONIC ARTS - You have sucessfully killed two of the longest run and best gaming series there ever were. May you continue to spoon feed people things like Madden ever year with miminal changes and another $50 price tag.
---------------------
To the Origin Guys: Look to the community, we are with you, many would help you start anew to become what you once were. Weh ave confident in you guys.
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
Westwood studios didnt get as much. Now when I head to their website I just get directed to an EA page, on which half of the "support" links are broken - and no news whatsoever on any future C&C projects is offered.
... you are one of the few left standing. The stalwart remnant of a dying breed.
Stand strong Blizzard
Before EA gutted the UO team and started taking it on a rambling development path towards an Everquest clone, Ultima Online was quite an amazingly complex and intriguing game. Despite contemporary wisdom 2d games have plenty of potential if not more than 3d games. UO of 1999-2000 is considered the greatest MMORPG ever for just about any play style besides ph@t l3wt collectors who hate risking said phat loot and even then it did ok.
There are a whole lot of UO emulated player run shards alive and kicking today. Many are attempting to recreate that era for UO which changed, like I said when EA gutted the OSI team. I have found www.preuor.com the best shard for that purpose. They have meticulously made efforts to recreate the small things that made UO great. Try it, you'll be surprised how fun a 2d game mmorpg can actually be and best of all its free (no monthly fee or game purchase required).
www.preuor.com
I saw a really short sighted post saying that EA had 'killed' another developer. The 'developer' is an association of people. The people who made the great games come and go from the 'developer.'
Wing Commander, Ultima, Populous, C&C.... It really makes you wonder why the hell did EA buy these studios in the first place if they're just going to shut them down. Origin, Bullfrog and Westwood. Luckily if they even touch Maxis there will be hell... Damn EA.
Moo!
Ogre, Space Rogue, Wing Commander, Ultima Online and so many others. Origin was one of the originals. I remember playing Ogre on my 386. Every few years these guys seemed to put out another good game. I remember playing Space Rogue, it was one of the first really good 3d space simulations. The storyline sucked, but you could fly your ship by inertia or on a "fighter tracking' style. Mastering inertia thrusters was awesome, and something I will never forget.
Killing Origin is just another sad episode in the tale of "EA Lames". We'll see more game console stupidity with John Madden screaming about football, but truly original game concepts are dying, as are the companies who made them.
I will lift a Guiness to my youth, and the hours of fun I had with Origin tonight.
"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
First let me say that I currently play Ultima Online. UO appears to be a project that is being slowly phased out, I base this of the following:
,more than likely, not be back.
1: The next publish (what UO calls updates) is mostly (90%) about the ability to move characters between shards (seperate UO worlds)
2: The event moderaters have been removed and will
3: It is almost impossible to BUY THE GAME in stores anymore. Next to no brick and morter stores carry it and EA does next to no advertizing for it. So how does it attract new customers?
Anyone else remember when this was considered bloatware for requiring a massive 30MB of disk space?
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You might want to keep in mind that their employees are not objects that can just be traded around, forced into retirement, and fired. They're people. I'm not saying this doesn't happen, I'm just saying that the few guys in upper management have a moral responsibility to attempt to not do such things to other people.
Most people don't feel too bad about killing chickens for meat since chickens don't appear to be persons. Unfortunately, many also see nothing wrong with ignoring the effects of relocations and whatnot on the people at the company.
True story.
IAALS.
I'm a lurker but...
Ultima III Exodus was the first computer game I ever saw and I never forgot those 10 minutes since. I was in preschool i think.
Regardless of what anybody says and whether I like it or not... this news does sadden me.
I hope there are others who know where I am coming from.
pushing jobs/internships at origin's home here in austin (and EA ones elsewhere). Hell, I still have the info sheet on it and was going to send over my resume soon. If this is true, it must come as quite a shock.
-
I have a friend that works there. It is true. Here are the details that I know about:
1. They are not done with UOX. It is in Beta. Origin Beta or real Beta, who knows. They think they can move development to california for the Earth and Beyond people to finish?!?!?!
2. There were 230 people working there.
3. The studio management may have known, but I know they were still hiring and relocating people to Austin several weeks ago.
4. This was the worst kept secret in Austin. Everyone knew last week. Except the employees.
5. UO support moving to california.
6. Origin owned that building.
I have been gone from there for almost 6 years, but I spent 10 there. It is a little sad, but not unexpected. EA tried to shut it down back in '99, but pulled back from the brink for some reason. Feel sorry for their new employees, especially the new GM.
-Donut, Origin Alumni 1990-1999
Ultima VI, Ultima VII, Strike Commander, Serpent Isle, Pacific Strike, Longbow, Longbow2, A-10.
This site tries to install some very weird shit under IE6.
Have you considered that the upper management have determined that, if they don't move and consolidate, they won't be able to afford to keep the Austin office open, at all? Maybe it's better that some employees move than they all lose their jobs.
I'm not saying this is definitely the case, but while corporate management may be heartless, it usually isn't malicious. You make it sound like they're moving people just to have something to do.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
I loved playing Ultima7, the game was awesome and in my opionion provided more interaction and creativity than anything I've seen to this date. Mix water with flour and cook it, you get bread. It gets dark, turn on a light. Grab a dirty diaper and terrorize your comrads with it. It was creative interaction like this that blew my mind away. Then EA bought them an forced them to release U8 too early and also caused problems with U9 the final installation. Damn, is everything becoming a commodity where everyone uses the same SDK and cranks out the same crap with different textures and sound?
Origin has been a shell of itself since 1992. Ultima VIII was rushed by EA, Ultima IX was at least negatively influenced by them, and Ultima Online honestly bears little resemblance to the cardinal Ultimas. Sad, yes, but not really a disaster. Maybe Garriott's new company will accomplish something eventually :)
EA has bought its way to the top. Bullfrog, Westwood, Maxis, Origin have all fallen before the giant. Eliminating whole divisions--even highly successful ones--is nothing new. Just ask the people from Dynamix who got chopped shortly after Tribes 2 became a hit.
Infogrames, er, Atari, is no better. They went a from a small publishing house to one of the titans of the games industry by buying everything they could. Adopting the name "Atari," plastering it over their corporate monolith as a relatively cheap facade (the company was only a few million dollars) is, to me, the most cynical thing I've seen from a gaming company in a long time. Yet, there is no media outrage, not even a notice that they're a completely different company that adopted the same name.
Creativity is dead. There are no more juicy steaks of games, no more Command and Conquers or Homeworlds, the games that bring gaming into a whole new dimension, at least from the major houses. Instead, we get reheated leftovers or ground chuck, tossed on a bun and served up McDonalds style. Yet another game in the same series, yet another Sims expansion back--Is this the future of gaming that you want? This is the future of gaming as in the hands of EA and "Atari." EA did not produce a new, original game in 2003--only rehashes and expansions.
Support an independent developer with fresh ideas, or support an open-source game. Look to the endless parade of closed studios and stifled creativity, sequels following the same pattern, only with few shiny new features. Is this the way you want your games? Or do you want something fresh and new?
Remember, there were no nuclear weapons before women were allowed to vote.
First Westwood now Origin. If it weren't for tiger woods 2005, you would be on the list.
lose != loose
There's some good from consolidation, but these days it mostly seems like only bad is coming from it. Every type of company is being merged, or assimilated, and I think it's stifling comeitition and innovations. I mean, look at AOL. Not exactly a stellar comapny at their best moments, but AIM has defined a generation. Now people have to hack the crap out of their products (DeadAIM et al, the worms) for them to make any major changes.
And now the same crap is happening to our beloved bastion of video games, and it's starting to piss me off. Good luck Origin.
Xbox reviews.. We think they're funny.
Of course when i say Seattle, I really mean greater Seattle area which would also include cities like Redmond, Bellevue and Kirkland amongst others.
I live in the greater Seattle area and there are quite a few game companies here. EA has offices here and obviously MS does as well. Others include Valve, Sierra, Turbine, Monolith, Nintendo, Bungie, Wild Tangent, Zombie and many more. Just check here --> http://www.igda.org/seattle/developers.htm
Ahh Ultima, the source of my online screen name Veramocor. I will miss thee. +1 karma to anyone who can tell me what the word Veramocor does in U4 and what it does in U5. (nota bene: I have no power to actually give out karma)
Though there are some great ultima projects being worked on such as the lazarus project
Veramocor
Why mod it down? Because you didn't agree with it? That isn't the purpose of the moderation system and it is because of people like you that the system doesn't work as well as it should.
You should apply for a moderator position at freerepublic.com and/or democraticundeground.com as you moderation system fits in a lot better at those two sites.
I think if all of the guys at the top took a pay cut, they could build their own office. That's exaggerated, but, seriously, they (management) don't deserve the money they're getting. The only reason they get it is that people are in such a hurry to get a job developing games that they don't care how corrupt or wasteful the company is and wind up selling their soul to the devil (I meant "corporation," of course). Not unlike music artists under record labels (except music apparently can't be outsourced as efficiently due to more pronounced cultural differences in music taste).
Additionally, they could probably save money and keep their current offices open if they used slave labor. Just an idea.
True story.
I don't care anymore, Origin destroyed Ultima Online in early 2000 starting with their "R" patch and continuing with their shotty work on things like UO:Third Dawn.
"Austin is the #3 location in the U.S. for game development with more than 50 companies making major contributions to the game industry, including game development, publishing, tools and middleware and chips and hardware."
And the first two?
(Yes, I know Silicon Valley, and ?)
Basically they have been cashing the Ultima and Wing Commander cows for years, complete list from IGN:
publisher
3DO, CyberMage, Super Wing Commander
Amiga
Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness,Ultima II: Revenge of the Enchantress,Ultima III: Exodus,Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar,Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny,Ultima VI: The False Prophet,Wing Commander
Apple IIe/c/c+
Ogre,Omega,Ultima,Ultima III: Exodus,Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar,Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny
Atari 400/800/XL/XE
Autoduel,Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness,Ultima III: Exodus,Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar
Atari ST
Ultima III: Exodus,Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar,Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny,Ultima VI: The False Prophet
Commodore 64
Ultima III: Exodus,Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar,Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny,Ultima VI: The False Prophet,Ultima: The First Age of Darkness
MSX
Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness (Pony Canyon),Ultima III: Exodus,Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar
Macintosh
Super Wing Commander,Ultima III: Exodus,Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger
PC
Abuse,CyberMage: Darklight Awakening,Privateer 2: The Darkening,Shadowcaster,Ulitma IX: Ascension,Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness,Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness (Pony Canyon),Ultima II: Revenge of the Enchantress,Ultima III: Exodus,Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar,Ultima IX: Ascension,Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds,Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss,Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny,Ultima VI: The False Prophet,Ultima VII Part II: Serpent Isle,Ultima VII: The Black Gate,Ultima VII: The Forge of Virtue,Ultima VIII: Pagan,Ultima Worlds of Adventure 2: Martian Dreams,Wing Commander,Wing Commander II: Vengeance of the Kilrathi,Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger,Wing Commander: Privateer,Worlds of Ultima: Martian Dreams,Worlds of Ultima: Savage Empire
PlayStation
Crusader: No Remorse,Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger,Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom
Saturn
Crusader: No Remorse
Sega CD
Wing Commander
Super NES
Wing Commander: Secret Missions
developer
3DO
CyberMage,Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger
Amiga
Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness,Ultima II: Revenge of the Enchantress,Ultima III: Exodus,Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar,Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny,Ultima VI: The False Prophet
Wing Commander,Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger
Apple IIe/c/c+
Ogre,Omega,Ultima,Ultima II: Revenge of the Enchantress,Ultima III: Exodus,Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar,Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny
Atari 400/800/XL/XE
Autoduel,Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness,Ultima II: Revenge of the Enchantress,Ultima III: Exodus,Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar,Ultima: The First Age of Darkness
Atari ST
Ultima II: Revenge of the Enchantress,Ultima III: Exodus,Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar,Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny,Ultima VI: The False Prophet
Commodore 64
Ultima II: Revenge of the Enchantress,Ultima III: Exodus,Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar,Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny,Ultima VI: The False Prophet,Ultima: The First Age of Darkness
Game Boy
Ultima: Runes of Virtue,Ultima: Runes of Virtue II
MSX
Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness (Pony Canyon),Ultima II: Revenge of the Enchantress,Ultima III: Exodus,Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar
Macintosh
Super Wing Commander,System Shock,Ultima II: Revenge of the Enchantress,Ultima III: Exodus,Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger
NES
Ultima: Exodus,Ultima: Quest of the Avatar,Ultima: Warriors of Destiny
PC
Crusader: No Regret,Crusader: No Remorse,CyberMage: Darklight Awakening,Strike Commander,Ultima Collection,Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness,Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness (Pony Canyon),Ultima II: Revenge of the Enchantress,Ultima III: Exodus,Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar,Ultima IX: Ascension,Ultima Online,Ultima Online: Age of Shadows,Ultima Online: Lord Bl
The fact that Mythica (Online) is affected seems interesting to me. I can't help but remember how Microsoft's Mythica suffered a similar fate very recently. Is this a sign of poor performance in the online gaming industry, or is simply a "normal, healthy" restructuring of a company. While coming from the background of a high school student who has limited experience with MMORPGs, I find it hard to believe that this move is isolated.
My karma really hurts.
Other than watching over UO and developing UO2/X what has origin done lately? I used to buy every one of their releases (as long as my system could handle it) but that was 7-10 years ago. I remember games like strike commander really pushing people's systems. And wasn't Origin the first company to go Cd-rom only for their titles? I remember that being a big deal. As far as i was concerned, Origin was the gold standard for dev houses in their era, along with Bullfrog. But I cannot think of one 3D-accelerated Origin title off of the top of my head (UO doesn't count, it started out 2d). Why are we mourning now for a dev house that hasn't put out a major release since I got a processor with three digits of mHz?
Well, at least they're shutting down one of their OWN companies instead of someone else's.
Goodbye, Origin
For twenty two years Origin Systems set the tone for the computer gaming. Ultima, Wing Commander and dozens of others set the gold standard for which the rest of the industry could only hope to catch up. This era has finally come to an end as Electronic Arts readies an announcement that it will shut down the Austin-based Origin studio.
This is not the end for Ultima or Wing Commander. Ultima Online will now be run from California, and development of Ultima X will continue on the west coast. Hopes that another Wing Commander game would be developed in Austin were dashed long ago; the longtime belief that a California-based EA team would develop the next Wing Commander title may, ironically, be bolstered by this news.
What it is, however, is a tremendous moral loss on all fronts. Origin Systems will always be the ultimate symbol of gaming's greatest days, and its dissolution to a faceless corporate entity is, sadly, equally symbolic of the world today. Origin entertained, challenged and inspired our generation in a way that seems impossible today. Though the individuals who developed our games long ago moved on to greater careers, the very existence of the company itself continued to stand for something special; something amazing.
The CIC will continue to dedicate itself to Origin's legacy - we will redouble our efforts to archive anything and everything related to the company. We will strike to make the world remember what Origin meant. I wanted to end with a quote - something plithy and literary to express the meaning of such an ending. I came up with only this:
well, the price of playing wing commander III, slowly, on my 486 was 200 dollars. that was what it cost me to buy another 4 megs of ram (bringing me to whopping 8). it was slow as hell. you needed a pentium to play that game, and those just came out, and i sure as hell couldn't afford one.
but i played it all the way through. i even watched all the cheesy movies (with mark hamil and the bad cg kilrathi). and i wasn't mad, even when it ended in a trench battle.
i was mad, however, when i tried to run it again on my p2 years later and it ran way too fast to play. i guess they never considered that, one day, someone might break the 100mhz mark.
Instead of shutting Origin down, can't they just rename it Destination or something?
i dont s'pose anyone else had issues trying to download this free 15 day trial thingamabobber?
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
Strangely, on #3, that isn't even that big a deal- This wasn't very widely publicized, but you can actually download it (Ultima Online- Complete including Age of Shadows, both 2d and 3d clients) *completely legally* WITH a 2 week free trial account from a few places online- Fileshack has it, I believe, past that, I don't know.
Upper management at a billion dollar company caring about the employees? That doesn't happen, if it did people like the CEO of HP spending 70,000,000 on two jets while she fired thousands.
If it doesn't effect them directly they just don't fucking care.
This didn't happen overnight. The seeds for Origin's demise were planted years ago in a military style coup-de-tat with Chuckles waiting in the wings!
Source 1
Source 2
Here ya'll go! Free Ultima Online to mourn the loss of OSI with.
No, the AoS client that you download doesn't come with the code to enable the new AoS areas. I have a 4-5 page tech support ticked on this issue.
In the end they refused to get me a code. This are several postions on uo.stratics.com (the official UO boards) about this 'issue'.
Origin died when Garriot was forced out. That was pretty much the end of it IMO. Their Ultima Online was kept going but nothing new really came out of EA.
:)
Branding under one name, such as EA, is very attractive to corporations. Having "subsidiaries" with their own creative control is a big no-no for corporations. EA also pretty much ran Westwood Studios (famous for Dune, and C&C) down to the ground as well.
Origin may have died...but Ultima and Wing Commander will live on in our memories
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
I think the last Ultima was 3D, maybe 3DFX only.
I can still remember some of the moongate codes in Ultima III... yikes, how many years ago was that?
Just a general question: did anyone else pillage the city of Yew over and over to build up money and experience? (Note: it was the only city that didn't have guards, and the druids were easy pickings). Getting killed by orcs was humiliating, and I had to level up *somehow*
Origin will be missed... those games are unqualified classics.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
One good thing about the end of Origin and the Ultima line of games is that we won't have any more impossible to load computer games which take hours to configure. I'm glad to see that the plague I called down on that company for enticing me with that Ultima game in the black box (ten years ago?) which I could never get to run properly is finally feeling my wrath.
Enjoy your Karma, after all you earned it. Feel your Karma Joe, feel it burn.
I honestly can't say i've been all that impressed with the games EA has released. The worst was dungeon keeper.
Maybe they're making their living on the kind of games I've generally considered "beneath me" - sports, car racing games and the like. But that leaves me wondering why they'd buy out a company that makes games in a totally seperate genre. What genre? Hardcore geek - Intelligent - True cyberpunk - Worth the money because the game is absorbing. Examples that I've played: System Shock 1 and 2, Asheron's Call, anything by blizzard, Deus Ex.
Did anyone ever play system shock 1? It was made by looking glass studios back in the early 80's. EA bought them. I just replayed that game a few months back. (took weeks of hacking just to get it to run on a modern machine) It's 20 years old, made on low budget, and it's STILL better than anything I ever played from EA.
It sounds to me like EA needs to parse out its game planning into seperate departments, because there's alot of talent that they've wasted in the process of assimilation. If they're aquiring good geek companies and making crappy geek games, they're losing something major.
My first guess is that they've got a non-geek calling the shots in what should be their insular geek games department. And that ain't good, because the mindset that makes Indy500 entertaining is not sufficient to keep a true geek satisfied.
If I don't like it, I don't play it. So in a way it's not a problem for me, but it saddens me that EA has taken so many good programmers off of interesting game projects, and cubbyholed them into EA style games.. all the while forgetting that it wasn't just programming that made the parent companies good. It was vision.
I can't help but hope that somebody at EA reads this, and somehow fixes the problem. It would be nice to be able to say: "I remember back when EA games weren't any good. It took them a while, but they finally got their act together."
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
[Insert pseudo-intellectual anti-Amerikan/pro-socialist sig here]
Capitalism is an individualistic system. Many capitalists are social Darwinists (i.e. who believe the markets should dictate everything and the best should survive (similar to how social Darwinists believe in "survival of the fittest")).
Within that context (of capitalism), employees are not humans. Instead, it is more appropriate to call them worker-consumer ants. You are just building the colony for someone. You are quite replaceable. You are nothing! If you can't work as wanted by the capitalists, you deserve to die. That's capitalism for you.
If you want to be happy, live like an ant. Pretending you are human will actually depress you more than anything...
Ok, you don't have to follow that.
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
Now EA will focus on making good games again, like this
1.) There was a study done. Literally on a ratio of like 3 to 1. For every 3 titles that come out EA needs to buy or sell one small company. EA buys away its competition.
2.) It markets the hell out of everything. NBA live for example has out sell Sega ESPN basketball every year. Soon competition from Sega might disappear and voila less competition again. They can keep the baskeball standard low for 5 years while they tweak their engine. Not good for consumer
3.) EA is losing quality yearly like M$ especially on the PC product line.
Just got linked to Slashdot
Batten the hatches!!
haha
Ultima IX came out in 1999 with the following requirements (note the 3d-accelerated graphics and three-digit processor ;)
MINIMUM
Windows 95 or 98
266 MHz or faster Intel Pentium II processor
64 MB RAM
8x CD-ROM drive (1200K/second transfer rate) using 32-bit Windows 95/98 CD-ROM driver
8 MB 3D graphics Accelerator with DirectDraw and Direct 3D or Glide compatible driver
640 x 480 screen resolution
DirectX 7 compatible sound card
600 MB free hard disk space, plus space for saved games (additional space required for DirectX 7 installation)
Keyboard, mouse
RECOMMENDED
400 MHz or faster Pentium II processor
128 MB RAM
1 GB free hard disk space plus space for saved games
16 MB 3D graphics accelerator using the Voodoo3 chipset
DirectX 7 compatible sound card with EAX and DirecSound3D support
The end of origin/ea's austin location really began after Chris Roberts was booted years ago. That was after Wing commander 4 came out, a year late and something like 10mil over budget (I think it costs 12mil total in the days when games rarely exceeded 1mil). They've been scaling back by attrition since then, and combined with the fact that EA long ago folded all of its disparate brands into the EA umbrella... This has been a long time coming.
Origin is gone
not soon forgotten by us
Long live Ultima
John Susek
Actually, the Ultima Series is still living outside our memories as well. :-) Groups of dedicated fans are working on updating the original games with modern graphics/sound, rewriting U9 dialogue so that it's in line with the history within the Ultima universe, creating programs that enable the pre-9 Ultimas to run successfully under Windows, adding multiplayer/online abilities to older Ultimas, creating fan fiction & fan spinoff games, and all kinds of other fun things.
And now, an epitaph for the poor site that has been slashdotted so brutally.
It seems as if the industry is in a movement to get rid of all the old-school gameplay that so many of us love. EA is definately working in the direction of replace substance with aesthetics. *sigh*
Trent Polack
www.polycat.net
Yeah but Ultima ix was also a piece of crap that was much more an EA title than a Richard Garriott/Ultima title. Same goes for the very last Wing Commander games. Are there any GOOD single-player Origin games required a three-digit processor and a 3d card? No.
I learned about this months ago. But maybe that's because I'm in an Urban Planning program, and it was big news that the Playa Vista Development finally found their office tenant.
This development has been followed closely by a whole lot of people. Environmentalists freaked out about it, because it borders the Ballona Wetlands. The protest caused them to completely redesign the site *and* include several acres of wetlands restoration (because Hughes Aircraft, the former owner of the site, was none too kind to the native flora and fauna). Urban planners and designers are fascinated to see if the site can work, because it incorporates a lot of new (old) ideas, such as a mix of uses, high-density development, and a range of income groups.
When they originally were planning the site, Dreamworks SKG had just formed up, and was going to move in as the big anchor office tenant. When the project was massively delayed, they backed out, and one of the big issues was finding another tenant to take over that huge, state-of-the-art space. EA finally anted up late last year. They're cashing out their Irvine, San Jose, and Austin locations, and consolidating everything there.
If they're paying moving costs, it's a pretty good deal for folks moving, especially from San Jose. Units in Playa Vista start in the low $200k range, and the complex has a *ton* of amenities (including its own childcare center, market, and amphitheatre). Every unit has broadband built in and I think even data jacks in the walls, and the complex has its own intranet for reserving rec rooms, checking out events, and so on.
Frankly, I wouldn't mind living there myself... my husband feels it's a bit remote, though (you'd never guess you're in the second-largest city in the country; Lincoln Blvd. looks empty except for Playa Vista). It's between Venice and Marina del Rey, though, just about 5-10 minutes in one direction or the other.
I'm sure that they're counting on the consolidation saving them on staff, and it sucks that some people will lose their jobs. Me, I'm not crying about them bringing a whole mess o' jobs into Los Angeles, since I live here, but I suppose it does suck for those in the locations they're closing. I don't know if it's a good business move for them... unless they're changing their (fraudulent) policies on MMOG billing*, they'll have no business from me for a while, so who knows? But it's an interesting development, to be sure, from many perspectives.
*Used to have an Earth and Beyond account. Discovered from personal experience (twice) and a guildmate's experience that E&B accounts *always* expire two days before they are supposed to (according to the date that comes up on the screen to nag you EVERY FRICKIN' TIME you log in, after you've cancelled). You have to call them, during business hours, to get it fixed. Sure, they'll fix it right up, but oh... you got booted in the middle of a battle and now you can't log in, but they're closed? Pay up or die. I chose to leave my account permanently expired.
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
I think it's because it gives us all a mark. The truth, as you said, is that Origin has been effectively dead for a long time. Their last success was Ultima Online. That was a service, though, so one can't really say the success was when UO was released. Some might say it was 1998, some 1999, some 2000... doesn't really matter.
The point is that, as unlikely as we all knew it was, some of us still held some hope that there would be a Truly Great game from OSI someday. That's gone now. We have nothing but sweet memories... and, at least in my case, a wish that it had died a bit earlier so the memory wouldn't be quite as tarnished.
Actually,
They Made Great progress on
Ultima Online 2(not UOX).
Which EA promptly destroyed as soon as they
realized that it would draw most of the
user base away from UO(or so they imagined).
Doubt is has anything to do with labor/real estate costs and everything to do with trying to get products out the door -- something Origin has sucked at for a long time.
I wonder what the chances are of EA open sourcing old projects such as Privateer or any of the Wing Commander stuff; I'd love to see games built using some of that framework, even if it's old: you'd be able to have a complex world without too much hastle, as the framework is already available, and content creation could be focused on.
Probably not. Old games tend to just die, unfortunately.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
The Ultima series died at 7.0
It's virtue lied in a combination of a HUMONGOUS open-ended, non-linear world with SO DAMN MANY non-generic niches, It was probbably the most replayable game in the world. I played 6 and 7 maybe 3 times each, and I just kept discovering more and more stuff I didn't find the previous times.
Then things started to go down. 7 Part II was nicer than 7 graphicswise, was as complex and full of niches as 7, but it was LINEAR. So much for a huge world you could explore at your leisure. You were now guided by the nose through the game.
Then came 8. Oh, the pain, the PAIN. Not only was it non-linear, it was DUMBED DOWN into oblivion. The game-world was no longer one large map.. rather, it was a series of "screens" you go from one to the other. 90% of the niches in the game unrelated to the plot were gone. Much of the gameplay was replaced by jumping puzzles that looked like a birdseye 2D tombraider-wannabe. And here, they put the good old Ultima atmosphere (with the mandolin music that followed when you were in the forest on the way to cove) to rest with 3 0.44 magnum shots to the forehead. Let's skip 8.
Enter 9. Gariott is no longer around. Still, 9 was a good try. Really, it was. The goal was in the right direction, and they were actually going for it. First, they put in the heaviest block, a 3D engine. Second, they got the atmosphere back, and they made an almost-successful attempt at bringing back the humongous world that was U7. But they fell short. There were no niches with side-quests and goodies to discover. There was no replayability. It was still linear. And there was no future - EA pulled the plug.
Then came UO, and EA decided they did not want me to be their client no more. They shut down all of Origin except for UO.
The genre was not completely lost though.
Two titles by other companies prevailed in my consiousness:
Elder Scrolls3: Morrowind made a shot at a humongous world. They did manage to get that right. But they went astray. There was no Garriot. No Lord British. There was no atmosphere. It was just an endless [beautiful] world of immensely over-recycled content, unbalanced gameplay, flat-as-a-plank characters and utterly boring [and endless] fed-ex quests that required spending too much of the game time on travel. The company who made it just wasn't Origin, it lacked a guide. And the game was a flop.
The one light that did indeed shine bright in the genre was Gothic. I truly salute the guys who made it. While it posed a slightly different atmosphere than Ultima, It was immersingly wonderful. The world was huge. The story thick, unpredictable, brutal at times. Real-world trust-noone and fend-for-yourself style. Main storyline put aside, the game world was accessible in an unlinear fassion.
And in a streak of genious, they took all the effort put into making the first game world, added a similar amount of effort to create a second, and had a world twice as big for Gothic II. Kudos guys.
Ultima genre aside, we come to the lancers. The wing-commander/privateer teams were stashed (and bought by M$), making Starlancer and Freelancer, games made by great devs, having the ability to soar, and trampled to garbage by executives with the intellect of a retarded coccaroach. Freelancer could have been a "Privateer 3", and could have borne the title proudly. It had it all. Graphics, missions, weapons, secret niches.
All but a decision to force down the plot on you at square one, drive you faster than you'd like towards its end, forcing you to finish it, then having you stuck in a beautiful humongous and largely-unexplored galaxy, with NO quests or goals of any kind save for random encounters and randimized generic missions to "go discover it" and make money you no longer need. Woohoo.
I'd love to meet the moron who made that call.
Or the one saying you can't take more than one mission at a time. DAMN. What was THAT good for?
I take solace in the fact that the team is still together, and maybe the executive
-
Well, they havent done anything (good) since richard garriot left to ncsoft.
we don't do *all* the sports games - madden/ncaa is made in tiburon, tiger is made elsewheres too
also EA acquisitioned Black Box recently, so we have another downtown office
threewave don't really make games - though they'll probably kill me for saying that...(mods & levels, afaik)
Origin's games were an important part of my fun when I was younger. I still remember the "Stones" music from the Ultima VII serie. And for various reasons, I still see the attack of Kilrathi Mang when listening Bach music. /tear
... ...
EA destroyed Bullfrog, Origin,
What do they sell now ? The Sims
Irrelevant news and morons using moderation to mod down what they disagree on. 2018 resolution: so long.
If system shock 1 was in the early 80's, they must have first invented time travel to bring it a few years into the future to publish, since I recall playing a warez beta when I was in highschool (early ninties) ...
Actually, Ultima IX has been changed a lot of time. I don't think it would have been the same without the interference of EA.
...
The trouble with EA is that it targetted money with statistics and targetted audience instead of fun and gaming.
Why do the Sims (a good idea when it was lauched : training IAs) looks now like a trash-TV Voyeurism. I expect soon there will be sex etc
Irrelevant news and morons using moderation to mod down what they disagree on. 2018 resolution: so long.
For no other reason than stock price. Aquisitions - no matter how stupid and pointless - often raise expectations and therefore stock prices, especially on tech stocks.
Think of all the bank mergers in the late 90's/early 2000's - guess who made all the money on those deals? Tons and tons of jobs lost, communities without competing banks, and a lot of wasted effort and money. But the execs made off big time.
But it's also true that Origin just wasn't the same when Roberts left and Wing Commander fell apart. Damn I spent a lot of hours on that game. Hell, I even upgraded to a 386 to play Wing Co II!
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
Google has some applicable cache hits.
Rap Sheet - Ultima Series
Rap Sheet - Wing Commander Series
Wing Commander CIC
It is my pleasure to serve you caches, for I am a bot.
The PHB's have to move too.
"Derp de derp."
[Insert pseudo-intellectual anti-Amerikan/pro-socialist sig here]
Just last week I bought Dungeon Siege, the first computer game I've bought in a year, just so I could play the fan-based remake of Ultima V featured on slashdot the other day. It was a neat concept to remake an old (but loved) game.
There's also a user created Wing Commander mod for Vega Strike.
I really dig the user-created remakes. They're just so crappy in comparison to the originals.
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* Monkey may not be available in your state. *
they have released nothing I care to spend my money on in recent memories :) the economics
will take care of themselves.
EA RIP
"Dost thou have any idea of the number of dead people and creatures there are? I thought not. The dead of the ages are mine to summon and control. The graves of beloved ancestors will spew forth their contents into an army. A special treat for the living, mine undead monsters will be. Imagine a skeletal dragon that cannot be killed. Consider a cabal of everliving mages eternally enthralled to me. And the most beautiful part of my plot is that, as the living die in these battles, and they will die, they will swell the ranks of the undead host. I will rule supreme - a world of the dead!"
- Horance the Liche in Ultima VII: The Black Gate
Bioforge: The "Interactive Movie".
On PC and in VGA (320 res. and 256 colors)
The announced a sequel an then a "plus" Version.
Never came out.
Good story, nice to play back then...
Privateer 2 was something else: it didn't even bear the wing commander name nor Universe. Privateer 2 was the last DOS game I ever bought and never did complete it...I lost interest and had other things going on in my High School years.
But, hey, Sierra killed of my other favorite developer from back in the day, Dynmix or something like that...the folks that made the Aces series of flight sims. It was the gold standard until Combat Sim by microsoft came out...
I don't buy games anymore for computers. For starters, I use Macintosh now, second off, just don't have the time. Although its a shame to see such an old vetern fade away...
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
brap. beep. beep. beep.
:)
--malfunction!--
--malfunction!--
--malfunction!--
sorry - you're right. i first played it around 1991. anyhoo, the point remains the same..
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
Very true, I agree with you.
The problem is that Origin as a whole was a pawn for a number of years. Wing Commander, one of the great original series of games (along with Warcraft, Command & Conquer, Doom/Quake), was last active in 1998 with the release of Wing Commander: Secret Ops. UO was good, so I hear, but got pushed in the direction of an EQ clone. Good folks were cut off and the Make Money Fast scheme was pushed down from EA.
Origin became nothing more than a commodity as opposed to an original developer.
The whole thing is sad if you ask me.
~Dalcius
Rome wasn't burnt in a day.
sorry - you're right. i first played it around 1991.
IGN lists the release date as 1994, which is also the copyright date on my System Shock CD.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
Really, Origin was pretty much dead when Chris and Richard were gone. It was those two guys that made it great and I don't see the need for excessive mourning now that it's just an empty shell to sell Ultima Online.
Of course they had a lot of talented developers to make their big hits real and we should all write them thank-you letters, but without the real pushing forces behing the Wing Commander (up to part 4) and Ultima (up to 8) series, they wouldn't be any more than unknown names in the scrolling credits.
BTW, that reminds me: does anyone have a copy of the Claw Marks (WC1 manual)? I lost mine long ago and would like to at least read a scanned version once more.
Fight hunger. Filet a politician and send him to a 3rd world country of your choice.
they won't be able to afford to keep the Austin office open, at all?
Then, they should drop their 500% profits and profit expectations to something lower!!! I am sick of this: the "upper" management to decide the fate of hundrends of people!!! they don't have a clue what is it to live in an unstable environment where you don't know if the next paycheck will arrive and when. They live a luxurius life, with big houses and cars, and they don't give a fscking damn about their employers.
And I am not talking specifically about OSI (they may be good, after all). Take a look around and you will see. US corporation profits have been raised to 300% since the 80s, yet unmployment and uncertainty is at an all-time high.
Really?
Very well, you're right, again. My point remains firm. Knock my memory if u like. I'm still right.
EA hasn't made a better game than system shock 1. Which they acquired by destroying the company that made the game.
EA hasn't made a better game.
Ever.
never.
ever.
ever.
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
is anything that can get out of EA now. Any good games? Difficult. I still play the old Origin stuff if possible.
It's not without reason that EA got renamed into EF in some circles.
EF standing for Electronic Farts....
Unemployment is nowhere near an all-time high. Unless "all-time" only includes "height of dot-com boom levels".
But, it was a nice troll up until that point.
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
I used to love Ultima 6 / Wing Commander. They came on the CD following my 1x CD-ROM drive. I had just finished Wing Commander when WC2 came out. I finished it, start to end in 8 days and I have no idea how. Even the damn difficult missions that took endless attempts whenever I tried it later, were no problem.
After that, it wasn't really the same. The later Wing Commanders felt more like movies (How many CDs was WC4? 6?) with a little gaming inbetween. None of the later Ultimas managed to capture me in the same way either.
And the final nail in the coffin was the WC movie. It was so terrible, and ruined pretty much all the good WC vibes I had, that I'd never want to buy another WC game, even if there'd been one.
So personally, I took my good-byes long long time ago. Great stuff in its time, but that was a while ago. A name is only that, a name. The meaning a "Origin game" had for me, is long lost...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
OK OK - so yes - we've known this was coming for a long time and it was obvious by their output (or lack thereof) that something was wrong with OSI but.....
That doesn't change the fact that U IV was one of the reasons that I got into computing in the first place - the power of that world - I mean honestly - what other game forced you to take notes!!!! Hello! I was a freshman in high school at had like 6 notebooks - one for each subject and one for Ultima.
In many ways, I think, it was the first departure from the true D&D style of the very early TSR games that was sucessful and paved the way for so many great games later.
Just because we knew it was coming doesn't make the final death knoll any less sad.....
Goodbye old friend
ULTIMA ONLINE KILLED ULTIMA. Ultima has been DEAD since UO aborted the original Ultima 9 project. Starr Long and Richard Garriott ruined the series when they threw out the Doug White script for Ultima 9. They spent all their time, effort and money on the online mockery of the Ultima universe called "Ultima Online", letting the crown jewels get dusty.
They took so long getting the last Ultima game out that everyone outside of the hardcore Dragon fanbase had forgotten about it. And by then...the original design (which would have been AWESOME) had been jettisoned and bastardized, the original team had been dissolved and the end result was the abortion known as "Ultima: Ascension". If you want to see what Ultima 9 done right should have been, I recommend you pick up Gothic and Gothic II.
Here's a quick tip for any fanboys awaiting sequels: The second they abandon the sequel number, expect the game to suck. Ultima 9 was killed and resurrected as the undead thing called "Ultima: Ascension". The final game in the long series and they were afraid to put the number on the box! How insane...they wanted to draw in "new players" with the final game in the series. Imagine Tolkien dumbing down "Return of the King" because he wanted to "draw in new readers".
And look at the game formerly known as Deus Ex 2...they renamed it "Deus Ex: Invisible War". Where's the sequel number? Oh that's right, it's not a sequel at all--they dumbed it down for console gamers, "in order to reach new players". The end result was a game no one liked, and the fans of the original game almost universally hated.
And look to the future: The game formerly known as "Thief III" has been renamed "Thief: Deadly Shadows" (I could have come up with a better name if I puked in a fountain pen and mailed it to the monkey house). Again, same thing...they deny the lineage (denying that it is the third game in the series) and compromise gameplay dramatically to "appeal to new gamers" (in this case, console idiots). The end result is a game that already is being widely disparaged, mainly by the fans of the original.
This is why I hope there is no System Shock 3. SHODAN must stay DEAD. Why? Because I'm sure that if this series is ever continued (especially now in this age of stupid consoleitis), it will be dumbed down and will completely ignore the previous games (it'll probably be called "System Shock: Ascension" or something stupid). The original fans will hate it, and the "new players" (ie console gamers) will not care about it one way or the other.
This is just another sad day in Austin's history...First the Armadillo World Headquarters...now Origin Systems. I remember when you could float down Barton Creek from waaaaay above Lost Creek Country Club all the way to Barton Springs and get in for free. Club Foot, Angles, Gas Light, Balboas, Liberty Lunch....I think its over.
Who the hell is Robert Garriot?
"We are the Borg. Your technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. Resistance is futile." No longer needed, any unused shell will be discarded. This is the way of Electronic Arts. L.A. sucks, and at least with the Borg there, maybe they'll slide in to the sea on that reclaimed land that Playa is built upon (hopefully not too unlike some nasty spacial vortex that will pull the cube apart). Resistance IS NOT FUTILE! If you people out there stop buying these sub-par, half finished games, then maybe things would improve but obviously E.A. is doing something right.
They faked it, they had a pretty engine that barely functioned, and massive design document. EA shitcanned it for wasting their money.
Even things regarding a game's difficulty is being gutted. Whens the last time anyone here played the singleplayer mode of any game and actually had trouble with it?
I certainly wouldn't attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained as stupidity.
Given that a house in Austin will translate to a ratty apartment in California, I wonder how many grateful employees will opt to move, and how many will decide to go work for another game company in Austin...
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
This has most definitely been a long time coming, considering Origin even hinted at their unhappiness with EA in Ultima 7: The Black Gate. Sure, EA gave them the money to finish the game, but that doesn't mean EA had to slow suffocate Origin to death.
In Ultima 7 (and later games as well I believe), the Guardian needed three generators to help control the minds and hearts of the people in Britannia, shaped as a square, triangle(tetrahedron) and circle, which all just happen to be a part of EA's logo. I'm sure it was quite intentional to hint at EA's controlling of Origin within the game (especially considering all of the subtle in-jokes and such in all of their games).
Sadly, it seems, the Guardian has won in the real world...
Let's be honest here, these development teams (Origin, Black Isle, etc) are no longer the crack creative outlets they once were. Why care about their dispersion?
The developers who made the games you love most likely left years ago, before they descended into mediocrity. It is unlikely they would (or could?) have made a title you would love like your old favorites.
My personal disallusionment with the gaming industry largely stems from the overwhelming lack of creativity. The PC game industry is looking a lot like the movie industry right now. Lots of big companies rehashing old ideas for the sake of profit. Well I'm not buying it (literally). Unless I see something really worth buying (something new & well made or *original*) I won't be spending my money on it.
If that means that my old favorite game companies go out of business, or are sold, dispersed, etc, then so be it. This is a do or die environment, and they didn't do it for me.
My only real concern is who ends up owning the franchises after the original groups dissolve. For example, Fallout. I don't care who makes the next title in the Fallout universe, as long as its *good*.
Horror & SciFi Erotic Nudes
AS IF. Get over it.
In 1990 I was finally able to fulfill that longing in the rec room of the Tiger's Claw, where there was, you guessed it, a standup video arcade simulation. Before I ever flew a mission I got scores in the millions fighting wave after wave of Dralthi. From then until the fireworks at the end, I was totally absorbed in the world that was Wing Commander. For the next several years, every time an expansion came out I was there. Malcom McDowell, Mark Hammell, John Rheys-Daves and even Ginger Lynn Allen!
In 1996 Chris Roberts, the man behind the Eing Commander Universe left for two projects. One is Digital Anvil the other was an extension of the movie sequences.
When Wing Commander hit the big screen in 1999 Chris finally made it to the big screen himself as the pilot of the salvage ship that rescues 1st Lt Blair.
Chris went on to Freelancer and other games, and we've moved on as well. But Chris and the whole team at Origin will always be remembered as the ones who first brought true 3D space combat to a computer near us!
"Can there be a Klein bottle that is an efficient and effective beer pitcher?"
For fan-based remakes of ultima, get neverwinter night!
We're in the process of rebuilding Zonker's adaptation of Ultima IV. We need more players!
We're missing a second DM and players for Dupre, Katrina, Jaana and Mariah.
Ultima Fans Allied on neverwinterconnections, an excellent site for player matchup and campaign management.
Nouvelles de jeux et technologies en français. TC
What the fuck are you smoking man?? Morrowind a FLOP?!?!? It was the biggest RPG of the last 5 years. Everyday more & more mods are being released for it. Morrowind was far from a flop. Morrowind was a fresh of clean air to show the way that RPG games should be played. I for one always hated the Ultima games. They are too much like Final Fantasy. It's not a true RPG where YOU get to decide who you are. You just play the part that is handed to you. How is that any different than an action game? It's not.
TKO Software is in Austin, and they recently bought a third-party MMORPG. They've already siphoned off a few workers from Origin, and the company that made the game they bought, Asylumsoft, is largely composed of former Origin workers. They'll probably pick up at least some of EA's leavings.
TKO recently bought up Asylumsoft, which already was comprised mostly of people who'd worked for Origin on the later-half of the good Ultima games (6 through 8, which wasn't all that great, but a lot better than 9), Wing Commander, and Crusader.
In addition to that, they've already scavenged a few Origin people before this happened, as well as picking up a couple Looking Glass developers. There's a rumor that they have a Black Isle guy, but he's been silent thus far, if he exists.
The whole plan is working towards developing Asylum's MMORPG, which is a lot like Ultima Online was before EA bought Origin and turned it into an EQ clone. I'm betting they'll try and pick up a few more Origin workers after this, which could be a good thing or a bad thing.
One notable exception: The follow-up to "Dead Or Alive 3" was named "Dead or Alive: eXtreme Beach Volleyball" and it was a masterpiece.
But then again, my opinion might be shaded by the fact that I'm a dirty old man.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
I never got into the Ultima series.
Crusader: No Remorse and No Regret however, were amazing. To this day I wish someone could figure out how to get them to run on WinXP systems (Installer refuses on non-win9x and no compatiblity didnt help) so i could spin through them again.
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
Yay for Vega Strike. The Wing Commander Universe mod will let players fly across the entire Wing Commander universe map (if you've ever seen it... it's very big and very detailed), flying pretty much any ship from the WC games, as any faction.
The first releases are going to be Privateer remakes only... but then it will grow. I know some of the guys working on it, and may even contribute some 3d model work of my own.
no thanks
I agree, creativity is dead. Some people may think "oh well X game got Y features in its latest game." IMO thats not creativity, thats evolution. In another 5-10 years, unless we see some serious change, every game on the market not made by independent developers will be a rehash or a remake of another game.
That's silly. In the last several years we've got numerous creative games from major companies, and no reason to believe this will change. Animal Crossing, Dance Dance Revolution, Shenmue, Space Channel 5, Pikmin, and the Sims, off the top of my head.
So they get to trade their $100K-$200K house for one costing $500K to $1000K. I've seen lots of job ads from game companies touting their great locations near the beach in L.A. What they don't mention is that few of the employees will be able to afford to live anywhere near there.
Umm, ever been to austin? I take it you have. Nevertheless, the weather is very nice year round. The summers are mild compared to surrounding areas (Dallas, Houston). Usually there are only a handful of days where the temp goes above 100 degrees.
I lived there for five years, and I would like to move back.
A witty saying proves you are wittier than the next guy.
As in, Ultima X(10): Online.
UX:O's development is being moved to EA's headquarters in California.
Anyone who knows what was really going on with TGFKAUO2, knows that the game was nowhere near finished, and that they'd been faking milestones, and in general had nothing to show for years of work and a fuck-ton of EA's money but a barely functional game engine, a huge design document and some artwork. All the artwork was outsourced, so they couldn't even claim that as their own.
A lot of that artwork got reused in Ultima Online expansions, so the money spent there wasn't completely wasted.
In the early 90's, it was mostly geeks that owned PC's, so games that were meant for intelligent people were the rule. Nowadays, PC's are as common as TV's, and the games have changed accordingly.
I still try to slap on screen characters with a right click. Nothing was quite a saticefying as caputuring a bunch of goody-goody invaders and having the choice of letting them starve in prison or torturing them until they saw the error of opposing my rule. Evil is Good!
In Por Ylem
Corp Por
Vas Ort FLam
Corp Por
OoOOOooOoOoooo
OOoOoooOOoOOoo
ooOooooOOOOOoo
You too? Sweet!
I'm gonna go buy some CD-Rs and get more stuff for nothing!
To play Ultima Online the way it was supposed to be, you can play on the Siege Perilous shard. It is one of the official UO servers, but with a special "old-tyme" ruleset, designed for veteran players and to enhance player-to-player interaction. For example, no [Young] status, PvP fights are allowed everywhere (no Trammel), and vendors will not buy from players, making crafters having to directly interact with the fighting classes. Siege Perilous has a small but tight community, and there is material for everyone to enjoy, from the hardcore roleplayers, the assiduous crafters, and down to the berserk PvPers.
If you want to give Siege Perilous a try, I suggest you join NEW. It helps a lot until your character is strong enough to stand a chance on his own.
There is also a japanese equivalent of Siege Perilous: Mugen (page in Japanese).
I code, therefore I am.
So we have seen the loss of:
EA:
Westwood studios
Maxis
Origin
Interplay:
Black Isle Studios
and Looking Glass Studios
And yet Ion Storm, the same people that brought you Daikatana are still around...
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
LOL...where do you get this stuff from?
"They live a luxurius life, with big houses and cars, and they don't give a fscking damn about their employers."
Seriously, that's hilarious...I mean, you're basically just shouting nonsense that seems like it might be true because you saw it on TV once or something...do you have any source for this at all?
If anything, you should be talking about Eidos.
>> It's not a true RPG where YOU get to decide who you are. You just play the part that is handed to you. How is that any different than an action game? It's not.
t urn2Town-SellLoot games.
You're right. But if that's the case, neither is Morrowind. If you want to stick to the real definition of RPG, there is only one that was ever released, and that's Torment. All the rest are character buildup Explore-EarnXP-findTreasure-CompleteFedExQuest-Re
And yes, morrowind was a flop. I spent over 250 hours playing it. It wasn't a MAJOR flop. It was a game with a gorgeous and humongous map, which managed to be mediocre. It's tech details placed it in the top legue, and if a game like that manages to come out mediocre, it's a flop.
The storyline was uninteresting and too sparse.
The quests extremely boring, mainly because of the large amounts of travel, even when you mastered the boats, insects, mage guilds spells and have an enchanted staff that's a mouse-scroll-click away that lets you fly when held.
And, there is, of course, the issue of balance.
I cranked it to 100% difficulty right from the start. It started at a very decent level, and was hard at first. But then I discovered the wonders of weapons that paralyze, and there went the game. I was god soon thereafter.
Besides, so many of the dungeons were so darn repetitive, and offered so little unique value, it sucked. I stopped bothering going into them. Another skeleton. Another zombie. Another potion. I wasn't going to finish them all anyway.. there's, what, about 300 of them in the game?
50 hours into the game, I didn't need money anymore either, and had a huge hoarde of stuff on the floor of that store with the imp that had 5000gold to buy from you each day.
The game had very serious balance issues, and an extremely weak side-questing, pathetic story-telling.. and no atmosphere at all. It was too damn artificial. When I played Gothic, I felt like I was in that world. When I played Ultima I was immersed. When I played BioForge (remember it?) I was immersed. When I played Morrowind, I was in my study next to the computer. I was not immersed.
So no. It wasn't all it was made to be. Sorry.
1: The next publish (what UO calls updates) is mostly (90%) about the ability to move characters between shards (seperate UO worlds) 2: The event moderaters have been removed and will ,more than likely, not be back.
1 and 2 are alrgely wrong too: first off, UO does call them publishes, updates are client patches. Secondly, you're disagreeing with yourself there, UO is adding the character shard transfer service to attract customers (old and new) and bring in some cash on the side. Lastly, EMs have been gone for years, I don't know what you've been doing since then, but they've been gone, and apart from the occasional lagfest geared around giving away artifacts, there hasn't been any content developed within UO. Know what that means? OSI/EA (I will forever call them that) is creating new content. Give them some credit, they're not going to say "Hey... this game is lacking... let's rob our 6-year playerbase of all of their money and... stop supporting the game!" trust me, they would have done that 3 years ago.
There are lots of great ideas floating around, but current hardware is not good enough yet.
If they have it so good, why aren't you in upper managment? "Wow it fucking sucks at the bottom, might as well chill here..."
This is a teeny bit off-topic I suppose but...
/. community (a decent sized subset of the gamers, I'd venture) have a serious dislike for products that have the EA stamp on them, and yet people are still buying their games in droves.
I read a lot of anti-EA sentiments in this thread. A lot of people speaking about how EA rapes game developers, their talent and their franchises. About how everything they put out is trash, incrementally updated yearly to milk money from everyone... and I have to wonder one thing: why are they still in business? Why do people persist on purchasing their games? It's obvious from reading this thread that a large segment of the
Witness the case of a friend of mine, who's extremely anti-EA in conversation, but then secretly enjoys Tiger Woods 2003 (and 2002, and in fact 2001...). What gives?
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn