Ultima X Odyssey - Wisdom In Cancellation? 43
Thanks to Corpnews.com for its discussion of the history of the Ultima MMO franchise in the content of the recent cancellation of MMO title Ultima X: Odyssey. The author argues of the cancellation: "This isn't a surprise. No, really. More fundamentally, all this points to the fact that somebody in EA's headcheese department is scared stiff of potentially sapping subscribers from the only truly successful title [Ultima Online] to come out of the company's development sweatshops." He claims: "Furthermore, all this comes at a time when the amount of 'surefire bets' in the industry seems to be dropping exponentially. Miniscule subscription bases for former hot-ticket games like Horizons and Shadowbane, coupled with disappointing numbers for Star Wars Galaxies - at last count, the game widely predicted to crack the MMO industry open and bring in a new rush of players... make it easier than ever for suits to pull the plug on projects which require millions of dollars to even hit the shallow waters of beta." Where does EA go from here with the online Ultima franchise, given that this is the second cancelled online Ultima title?
Re:Was cancelled for good reasons (Score:3, Informative)
I quit playing Ultima Online because Age of Shadows completely fucked up PVP. Essentially, if you wanted to be able to compete at all, you had to have lots of gold. Something that simply wasn't true before AoS. With AoS it ceased to be player vs player and became item vs item.
I took about a year off from UO then started playing on free servers. I HIGHLY recommend any and all disgruntled UO players looking for a free and better alternative check out UOGateway [uogateway.com] which will allow you to simply and easily connect to player run servers; many of which are highly professional, highly popular, and fuckloads of fun. I'll never go back to EA's twisted version of it.
Re:Soaps & sitcoms (Score:3, Informative)
The ENTRY PRICE you pay for a sitcom is a few bucks a month and 45 minutes a week.
The entry price you pay for an MMO is a few bucks a month and an inconceivably disproportionate amount of time a week. It's the latter element that more and more people realize as the real price of an MMO, and are consequently unwilling to pay it.
That's why quite a few people I know who played MMO's for a while just quit (and I doubt if they'll be coming back). Most modern MMOs highly reward people who literally live in them, and "punish" those who elect to spend "only" a few weekly hours. Use the decaying housing regime in UO as an example to that.
Another point - "older" MMO's are now provided free of charge on the net. UO 1st-gen servers and the like. Think of how OpenOffice affects the sales of MS-Office97-level suites, or how free Linux distros affect the sales of circa-98 desktop OS's.
That doesn't help bring in money to the producers of new games. And there's no corporate market out shopping for MMO's.
You'd be hard-pressed to convince me to invest in an MMO business opportunity, be I a CEO of a VC firm, CEO of microsoft (I fully understand MS's rationale to jam out of this market), or just a guy with a stock portfolio looking for places to stick my money in. (currently, the last being my case).
Re:pretty obvious (Score:2, Informative)
Easy, they hired other companies (like Liquid Development) to do the work and just told them their contract is over. The company stopped working on UXO and worked on another of the numerous projects they were hired to work on. There's noone who could be fired over this.
Re:Madden? (Score:0, Informative)