Ultima X - Odyssey Development Cancelled

eToychest writes "According to a post by David Yeeon on the front page of the official EA site, PC MMO title Ultima X: Odyssey has been cancelled. The post reads: 'As of today, development on Ultima X: Odyssey has ended. We feel that Ultima Online is where we need to focus our online efforts and most of my team will be moving to the UO expansion pack, the UO live team, and an unannounced Ultima Online project.' It's too bad, but perhaps it was for the best." GameSpot sketches out the background, explaining: "The [August 2003-announced] game went through an evolution when its design and development staff were recently moved from EA's Austin, TX studio to the company's main Redwood Shores campus... UXO was to have picked up where the Ultima IX storyline left off", and GameSpy adds that the new Ultima Online expansion pack "will be officially revealed later this month at an EA press event."

Comments

In a way, I'm glad to hear it.

[Doctor Cat]

I've seen bit by bit what little was left of Origin dissappear more and more. Richard left the company after Ultima 9. Then I went to the wake at Lord British's place when they cancelled UO2, with the big bonfire. Then they shut down what was left of the Austin office altogether. But for me, once Richard left, it really was about a big corporation trying to make money out of a franchise they bought - the name "Ultima".

To me, one of the high points of my career was working on Ultima 5 and 6. (And some of the more obscure spinoffs, like the Gameboy Ultima I got to design). I started out as a fan, buying Ultima I right when it came out. I met my best friend 'Manda when she was hired to work at Origin, and she started out as a fan too - a huge admirer or Ultima IV. To me, the series was always about what Richard's vision was for the next game to be. Sure, he did worse with some of them, better with others, but all together the whole series, 1 through 9 (as well as Savage Empire, Martian Dreams, Serpent's Isle, and Ultima Online) were the results of his ideas and vision for what he wanted them to be.

Seeing an Ultima X that was made by someone else would be, for me, a little like seeing Peanuts comic strips done by someone other than Charles Schulz. He managed to keep that from happening to Peanuts, though the syndication company tried to make that happen. A lot of other comic strips HAVE been moved over to other creators when the original artist retires and/or dies, and I always found the results a little unsettling. Not that I'm against it, if that's what the creator wants. But in this case, I'm glad that the main numbered Ultima series will stand in gaming history as the results of one man's work and vision and game design over a period of 20 years or so. (And a lot of us who helped him do it, yes, but primarily they're the games he wanted to make, the way he wanted them to be made).

Now if somebody could just tell me why the name "Atari" will never die, I'd be a happy cat. My personal theory is it's been bought and sold so many times it's turned into a vampire-mummy-zombie-liche. Yeah, that must be it. (Did you know Eugene Jarvis, creator of Defender and Robotron and more, used to work at Atari before hooking up with Williams? So did Steve Jobs. Ok, enough pointless digression. Bye bye Ultima X.)

Is It Time For An OSS MMORPG?

[blueZhift]

At this point the cancellation of yet another MMO effort isn't really news anymore. This can be attributed to a number of things, but two of the most important may be

1. The great expense of MMO development and support

2. Consolidation within the games industry

The first is pretty obvious as it takes millions of dollars and almost as many years (it seems) to develop an MMORPG. Then it takes money for servers and bandwidth to support the game.

The second is important because consolidation means less competition. This makes it easier for companies like EA and LucasArts to cancel even hotly anticipated titles.

So I pose the question (probably not original), will fans have to band together to create and support their own MMO's? The development of such games is no small task, but if the development of FPS mods and total conversions is any clue, then there is talent and dedication out there for this task. Next if a distributed support model can be developed wherin gamers and other interested parties donate computing resources in some kind of Seti At Home meets BitTorrent sort of fashion, then the effort could be successful.

Yeah, its pie in the sky, but we seem to be on the road to only a few MMOs to choose from. So as time goes on, DIY may be the way to go.