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Games Entertainment

Lord British Gives UO2 the Axe 139

Posted by michael from the I-don't-want-to-go-on-the-cart dept.
Ashram writes "Well, I didn't want it to be true, but apparently the folks over at Electronic Arts have announced on the Origin website that they are halting production of the game until further notice in order to improve the currently existing Ultima Online game. All I can say is that I've been waiting for this game for a while, and now to see it gone leaves me feeling empty." Origin was going to be 3-D, correct?
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Lord British Gives UO2 the Axe More

Lord British Gives UO2 the Axe

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  • who cares (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    maybe lum?

  • Re:Lord British did NOT do this (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Nowadays EA would have swallowed Interplay whole and thrown Brian Fargo out on the streets.

    Someone SHOULD have thrown Fargo out on the streets a long time ago. Much of Interplay's current financial difficulties stem from him snorting a good chunk of their past profits up his nose and mismanaging the rest in a paranoid delusional state. This will probably get modded down as flamebait, but that doesn't make it not true. If I valued my cushy high-profile game industry job a little less I'd post non-anonymously so it could have credibility.

  • Re:The Good News... (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward

    How is this GOOD news? Electronic Arts has succeeded in ruining just about everything it touches...er..swallows. They destroyed Origin, they destroyed Bullfrog...what do they do for an encore?

    EA is no better than EIDOS...large corporate monoliths that exploit the smaller software shops. What EA has done to seminal companies like Origin and Bullfrog is criminal.

    I for one don't rejoice that they've got the rights to Lord of the Rings. Heck, the "ring" has passed from one clueless company (Sierra) to an even more clueless one (EA). Does anyone remember Middle Earth Online? THIS would have been a killer MMORPG...but the suits at Sierra ruined it, and eventually killed it.

  • Lord British did NOT do this (Score:5)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 21, 2001 @05:44PM (#348567)

    ..rather, EA "The Guardian" did.

    Face it...Origin, as we knew and loved it, died the moment Electronic Arts swallowed them. Ever since, with the exception of the Crusader games, they have released nothing but garbage.

    Richard Garriott had nothing to do with UO2..he was long gone before this fiasco came down. The name "Lord British" doesn't even belong to EA, so please do not confuse Lord British with EA or the current perverters of the Ultima name. Origin died in 1994, along with Ultima. :(

    Sigh...does anyone around here still remember the days when Electronic Arts was a home for electronic artists? Back when Trip Hawkins had a dream for making computer games that approached art. This era gave us gems like Archon, The Bard's Tale (which helped launch Interplay as an independant company) and many others.

    Nowadays EA would have swallowed Interplay whole and thrown Brian Fargo out on the streets.

    "Under my guidance Britannia will flourish and all the people shall rejoice and pay homage to their new...GUARDIAN. Know that you too shall kneel before me Avatar...for I shall be your provider...your companion...and your MASTER." -- The Guardian, a character directly inspired by the attempted takeover of Origin Systems in the early '90s. Why else do you think the three generators were a cube, a sphere and a pyramid?

  • I was never an Ultima fan, but I loved UO. I played night and day for six months straight. I only gave it up when I realized that they were never going to make it the game it should have been.

    I was expecting them to loosen up and let the players take some control over the world. Instead, they put a piece of software in charge of the criminal justice system (karma / reputation) and completely ignored any sense of realism. I can't seem to find the right words to properly frame my criticism, but it gives me the same sense of "that's just WRONG" that "security-through-obscurity" does.

    So, I say forget Asheron's call, UO, UO2, EverQuest, and all that rot. They're closed source. The players are at the mercy of the developers. Why set yourself up for a fall, especially given the amount of time and energy that go into the characters?

    Have a peek at www.worldforge.org

    (Moderators: I have a +1 and did not use it. Consider this post already modded down.)
    The real Threed's /. ID is lower than the real Bruce Perens'.

    --Threed
  • The website looks like they've had some recent updates. I'll agree, it was looking pretty dead for a while but I bet that could be explained by the holiday season.

    They've finished the proof-of-concept for the protocol, object model, and ai and it looks like they're working on expanding each of those.

    Let them cruise along at their own pace and absorb all the best ideas from the commercial games and learn from their mistakes. It's open source, so at least it won't be rushed out the door before its done (like some other games we know).

    (Moderators: I have a +1 and didn't use it. Consider this post already modded down.)
    The real Threed's /. ID is lower than the real Bruce Perens'.

    --Threed
  • Or even: Richard Garriot Leaves Origin by Hemos on Friday March 31 [slashdot.org]


    Slashdot editors not reading even slashdot headlines? That can't be right, can it?

  • Why else do you think the three generators were a cube, a sphere and a pyramid?

    Yes, and there was a Pirate Hawkins character in U5 and U6 that was pretty obviously another EA (Trip Hawkins) slam.

  • Actually, they've introduced a 3D add-on to their original Ultima Online called Third Dawn [uo3d.com]. This basically offers a 3D game engine (albeit still third-person) to those players willing to purchase and install it.

    I guess this is a sort of compromise--give the existing customers something new to play with that also happens to take advantage of shiny new technology, in hopes that it will also attract players who would have thought the graphics dated otherwise.


    -W-

    "Is it all journey, or is there landfall?"

  • Well, the adventure genre is going to stay in the same state if noone ever bothers to add to it. Adventure games have to be the genre that I enjoy most, so things like that irritate me.

    I can't remember where I saw the quote though about the Warcraft Adventure game since it's been a while, but that was right from a Blizzard employee. It was canceled with most of the needed art done and 70% of the voices.
  • Diablo II in my mind proved Blizzard lost their high standards. And with the way Warcraft III is going, it's just going to be more of the same.

    Diablo II's artists did an excelent job with the art and movies. But the programmers? Honestly, a game should not absolutly require 256 MB ram for no-lag multiplayer gaming on a LAN.

    If it wasn't going to meet their high standards (aka a game that somehow catches on with a group and sells a few million copies), they should have at least licensed it to someone else to let finish it up.

    Don't mind me, I'm just bitter the adventure genre has gone downhill, partially due to the good game developers not bothering to release anything new in the area. I'd love another Zork game that takes full advantage of DVD quality movies, or another Journeyman Project.

  • 3D is not needed for a fun game... (Score:5)

    by Drakino ( 10965 ) on Wednesday March 21, 2001 @04:41PM (#348575) Journal
    and this just proves it. They would rather give their existing customers something new to play with, instead of trying to win over new ones with shiny new technology. Makes perfect sense, and proves a 3d game dosen't have to exist for people to enjoy it.

    I still dislike the fact that Blizzard canned Warcraft Adventures because "it didn't utilize modern technology well enough". So instead they made Diablo II, a game that looks a slim bit better then the first and needs 256MB ram to run at a decent speed in multiplayer.
  • Dark Age of Camelot, Anarchy Online, Horizons, etc. are all in various stages of development, but this makes me wonder who is taking the risk that they are actually going to work and whether that risk is going to continue to be viable if even the well-branded Ultima name wasn't considered enough...

    Anarchy Online has the advantage of not being "fantasy" but dark future sci-fi. Ignoring the Dreamcast-based Phantasy Star Online and Verant/Sony's vapourware Star Wars MMORPG, there won't be much competition when it's released — apparently sometime in the July-September timeframe.

  • The toys!

    The McFarlane toy series... is it never to see the light of day?
  • At best U9 was one slightly worse than average game that you then had to play 8 times.

    * Go To Town
    * Find out what evil has befallen them.
    * Go to the bottom of a dungeon
    *Beat up some guy in a purple outfit and take the sygil he is carrying
    * Find someone who is carrying a special item you need
    * Go to a broken altar
    * Pray
    * Everything is hunky-dory
    *Lather, Rinse, Repeat 7 more times.

    Blech

  • Re:Yeah, Yeah (Score:3)

    by double_h ( 21284 ) on Thursday March 22, 2001 @05:54AM (#348579) Homepage

    The first Ultima, written on a 48Kb Apple II in about 1978, was 3-D

    Well, sort of - the dungeons are 3D wireframe in Ultima I (which came out in 1980, a year before Wizardry I), but the world map (where you spend most of your time) is in 2D overhead view, just like later games in the series.

    I'm not sure if Aklabeth, Lord British's first game (and prequel to Ultima) had any 2D elements or whether it was a pure 3D dungeon crawl.

    Personally, even back in the early 80s I was never a huge fan of those 3D first-person dungeons, espescially since there was no automap and you had to sit there plotting out each level with graph paper. Remember "mapping gems"?

    Bard's Tale was even worse, but I played through and mapped that whole game on graph paper, so I mustn't have minded too much. Likewise for Dungeon Master (1 and 2). One of the things I liked most about Ultima Underworld was that it had a cool automap with notations etc. Ultima Underworld was a cool game engine for it's time (and a good game to boot).

  • Uh, no. Lord British was shown the door by his EA masters, because of the horrible fiasco called Ultima 9. He was allowed to pick up his coat and rapier before he left, but the man was fired. Make no mistake.

    It's really pretty sad. I actually worked at Origin for eighteen months testing Wing Commander IV (and WC4 Mac and WC4 PSX...) The glory days of that company had certainly passed by the time I got there. The marketroids and EA goons were totally in control, and some brilliant concept games (like Technosaur) were killed because they were too risky. The Friday afternoon happy hours dwindled, leaving behind 70+ hour weeks and no love from management. It was fun, I guess, but I got over it pretty quick when they laid me off.
  • If I could mod I would, as it is, I'm just going to second this. I hate misleading titles... it really makes slashdot seem less accountable.
  • Yes. He left and has been leading a pretty private life now. Anyone know what he is up to?
    When I lived in Austin I used to hang out with his sister and play roller hockey with the Origin team. Most of the programmers I know from Origin have moved on to other companies - so I don't get the inside gossip anymore.

    Is he still doing the Halloween and July 4rth thing?
  • Hehe worldforge? A close friend of mine is doing some development work for them, networking code... hasn't heard a peep out of anyone on the project in close to a year, I think.
    ----
    Dave
    MicrosoftME®? No, Microsoft YOU, buddy! - my boss
  • He was NOT fired. Both UO and U9 were released months before being ready, thanks to EA, and he got fed up with that.

    FYI, Peter Molyneux left Bullfrog (owned by EA) for exactly the same reasons (Dungeon Keeper, his last game there, was released before he wanted to). EA has a history of doing that: "we've spent too much with your game already, release it now or it's cancelled".
  • I thought Origin had gone out of business after the release of Ultima IX. However, it doesn't surprise me that they pulled yet another product due to quality problems.

    It no longer matters, at least to me anyway, how cool their stuff is. Ultima IX was the worst programed pile of trash I've ever purchased. It was pretty and it may have smelled nice but it was trash. I will never play in that particular sand box again.

    Yuck.

  • Actually, from what I know, Blizzard canned Warcraft Adventures because adventure games where not "hot" genre for computer games at the time.

    Still looks like they are correct.

  • I heard that it was really close too.

    There are good Adventure games out right now, but they aren't/haven't been doing too well.
  • UO2 was not going to be based on any code from Ascension. It's in the FAQ somewhere...
  • The Origin offices were nearly empty today after firing... ahem.. laying off over 2 floors worth of people in the Austin office. Overheard from one of those left behind.. "I wish I would have been one of the ones to go. Next time there probably won't be a severence package."
  • How do you figure? Baulder's Gate was a critical and market success (the later evidenced by the fact that it's spawned a sequal, an add-on, and 2 branches, one of which has its own sequal. This is not the mark of a game that didn't do well.
    --
    Remove the rocks to send email
  • From the UO2 FAQ [uo2.com]:

    Why did you change the name from 'UO2?' It's a sequel to Ultima Online, right?

    Actually, 'Ultima Worlds Online: Origin' is not a sequel to Ultima Online. It is a very different product, blending medieval, ancient and futuristic civilizations in a really cool and bizarre 3D world. The combat and motion capture technology is really outstanding, and we have monsters co-designed by Todd McFarlane, creator of Spawn.

    One wonders whether, when Richard Garriot left in March 2000 he took some rights to the "Ultima" trademark with him...

    --LP

  • >Advocate use of OpenPlay, which is an Apple open source game networking API that runs on Windows, MacOS, and Linux.

    I'll pass that onto the network programmer and see if they have heard of it. I know the Mac version uses [Net] Sprockets (which isn't supported on Mac OS X.) Does OpenPlay work on both OS 9 and OS X ?

    > I recently decided against buying Majesty because even though it is multi-platform,

    That's too bad - you're missing out on a fun game. Especially with the Expansion Pack coming out this Friday. It has a lot of new goodies!
    &ltgameplug&gt
    New Spells, New Buildings, New Monsters, New Quests, and a challenging difficulty.
    &lt/gameplug&gt ;-)
  • They fail to mention that a LOT of people have more then 1 account. So if "vet" player leaves, that is 2 or 3 accounts that no longer provide revenue. Allmost everyone in my guild has 2 accounts.

    Now, here is what OSI needs to do to "fix" UO:
    • Implement the vet rewards!
    • Look at all the TODO items. Start implementing the easiest ones. This shows people that they are listening to the players.
    • When a patch gets released, SAY what was fixed/changed!
    • Read through the stratics forums [stratics.com], looking at all bugs, AND gameplay elements that are frustrating players. Start making changes!
    • Start adding in a TON of VARIETY for the magic weapons. EQ and Diablo2 have this area down pat. Set items, socketable items, etc. A game must provide lots of "toys" !
    • Add new spells! Again, MUCH more variety in EQ and D2.
    • Fix the servers so they do running backups every 15 mins. If I ran servers the way OSI does, I'd be fired in 30 mins. Servers go down hapharzardly (not as bad as b.net) Get the servers with 99.999% uptime.

    • Take a poll from CURRENT PLAYERS, asking them what they would like to see in the current game. Then DO IT! This is how you keep a community strong.


    Moving to a 3D world is irrelevent for sales. Proof: Diablo 2 has sold 2 million copies! Graphics are the "bait" of a game. Gameplay is the "meat" of a game.

    *shrugs*
    What do I know though, I'm just a vet player and game developer ...

  • Whew... (Score:5)

    by ChunkOChowder ( 71324 ) on Wednesday March 21, 2001 @04:37PM (#348594)
    Thank God. My grades are spared for at least another semester...

    Eric
  • They didn't can UO2, they delayed it in order to get UO:Third Dawn updated. UO's servers can only handle so many users, they still get new customers by word of mouth, and really just need to protect their current customer base from jumping ship to Everquest and Asheron's Call. In the long run UO2 is a great idea, but if what they need are some short term fixes to keep UO viable then this might not be a bad idea. I was playing UO when they came out with the last major update. The server updates were a month late. There were lots of server crashes. They had to hive all their new customers who bought the new version in the box a free month of service. Putting a project on hold and putting developers on another project isn't a very efficient solution, but with growing competition in their market, they can't afford to piss off their customer base.
  • Doh

    Martin Widmark
  • Lord British left EA/Origin ages ago, rather than be involved with the fiasco that is UO2.
  • The UO2 project has had issues from day one. EA wanted the game done far too soon, and cut out most of the features it would have had over EverQuest (Beyond the obvious graphical differences.). It was announced that most of the features would instead be introduced in a later expansion, at an additional cost to the players.

    After that, Lord British, sick of EA marketing shoving all of his games out the door far too soon, left the company. A little later most of the game's developers left at once, and quickly (And suspiciously.) reappeared at Verant's new studio in Texas, to work on Star Wars: Galaxies.

    The problem here is EA. EA is a company driven by marketing. They see Ultima as nothing beyond a brand name, and always assume that a game will sell more copies by being released during a huge, carefully planned advertising blitz, right before christmas, just as school lets out for summer, etc.. If they would just look at how Blizzard works, releasing games with little care about what anyone else thinks, or what the game looks like, they would see that with a little patience Ultima could be revived and turned around. Or at least they could have before every decent Origin employee got sick of it and quick.

    * side note - before you reply about Blizzard complaining about Warcraft Adventures not taking advantage of modern technology, the big facter was actually that adventure game sales have been in the toilet for years and the time it would have taken to finish the game would have cost more than an adventure game will ever sell.
  • <blatantplug>
    For those who are fans of the Ultima series, my web site, The Notable Ultima [hiwaay.net], contains quite a bit of historical information on the series. It's sadly out of date - I've never bothered updating it for U9 or most of the UO stuff, for obvious reasons - but if you'd like a trip down memory lane, you may enjoy it.
    </blatantplug>
  • Three. I thought it was a great game.
  • Typical FPS (Quake, etc): Run around. Shoot things.

    Typical RPG: Walk around. Slay monsters. Talk to NPC's. Find or kill what they specify.

    Typical adventure: Walk around. Click on everything. Pick up items. 'Use' each on everything.

  • Just concurring: I had almost the same setup, except for a K6-2/333. The game didn't even seem particularly buggy, certainly far less than Gabriel Knight 3.

    I only had a handful of crashes through 40-80 hours of gameplay, and they were all to the desktop (meaning I just had to restart the game).

  • Origin was going to be 3-D, correct?

    Who cares if the game was going to be 3D? The last two 3D games I bought were very disapointing. The Bouncer and Shadow of Destiny. Both of them were hyped up because they have such great graphics, but the game play itself bites. So then I pick up Luna: Silver Star Story Complete (no 3D graphics, 2D sprites) and I'm having a wonderful time playing it.

    3D graphics don't make a game. It's gameplay that matters. I'd be more focused on the gameplay elements that we'll be missing from UO2 before I'd care if it was going to be a 3D game.

  • Okay, so I should learn to read the other posts before I go off on my rant. :)
  • Yeah, what happened to free movement and the freedom of exploring the world yourself? Without having the creepy feeling you must go there, you must do that, you must go there, you must do that... etc, etc till the end of the game?

    The freedom of exploring and discovering things yourself was what attracted me to play alot of Ultima III, V and VI. From there it only went downhill. Of course with the exception of Ultima Underworld I and II, but that was Looking Glass..

    - Steeltoe
  • I simply can't agree enough with what ShaunC said here...

    I think this is an EXCELLENT move on the part of Origin and EA. Why make a new continuously on-going monthly game from scratch instead when you have one with an existing fan-base and lore that you can simply revamp??

    As an example, look at Asheron's Call. When Asheron's Call first debuted more than a year ago, it was a decent MMORPG. However, over the last year, with free monthly updates (unlike Everquest's BS expansion packs), Asheron's Call has continued to expand and grow and develop. Monthly, new quests are added, new weapons, new monsters, and about 5 or 6 months back they even re-did a lot of the light rendering in the graphics engine which made it look substantially better (IMHO, the best of all the existings MMORPGs).

    In fact, one of the big problems lately with Asheron's Call has been the player communities' feeling that AC was being progressively less continuously developed and expanded as resources were moved within Turbine to work on AC2. This has been a great source of anxiety and frustration with the player community as a whole. "Why work on developing a character in a world that may just be deleted in a year?" is the common thought...while unlikely, what is more likely is that the amount of new monthly content will shrink down to next to nothing.

    So why is everyone all bent out of shape over the UO2 cancellation?? If I were a UO player, I'd be ecstatic! I, for example, would far rather see Origin continue to re-vamp and update the game that I spend a lot of time monthly playing, than dump it, and go off to work on some new game, leaving me to wonder, why am I still playing? Instead, why not make the rendering engine fully 3D -- heck use the one they were working on for UO2! And, expand the world to, oh, twice the size!...add twice as more creatures!...fix all the bugs! And so on... No reason to start from scratch.

    My $1.95...
  • Baldur's Gate is an RPG, not what is typically called an "adventure game". Adventure games are games like the classic Sierra (Space Quest, King's Quest) and Lucasarts (Maniac Mansion, Sam & Max, Day of the Tentacle, Monkey Island, ...) games.
  • I have not been able to get Ultima 9 to run out of the box on win98, NT or 2000. I have read all the FAQs and have applied all the official (and some unofficial) patches.

    I have really paid a lot to get this game, and the bits I did get to see of it looks fantastic.

    I used to be a great Ultima fan, now I'm only a sad Origin hater.
    -sigh-

    Another patch would not hurt too much, right?
    Hmm...

  • I had the latest MS patches, (Win2K PRE2) The latest MOBO drivers (and some beta too) as well as BIOS update. Latest Gfx Drivers (tried beta too) Tried DX 7 and 8, tried everything!

    -sigh-

    I got it running on win98, even though I *Hate* win98... and it crashed once too often and I had to re-install the machine... that put an end to that.

  • I know... I have considered it.

    But I had a feeling at the time that 3dfx was not doing so well, and didn't want to buy one. (a good move)

    But I will consider getting one for playing ultima 9.

    (I've spent about 1 month's salary in time and effort already trying to get the game working.)
  • Yup, I know all this. I have undrestated the trouble I have taken to get the game working. I have read and posted on nearly every place I could, so I know the situation.

    Damn EA! I will bring them doooownnn! ;)
    hehe

  • The Good News... (Score:4)

    by DESADE ( 104626 ) <slashdot@@@bobwardrop...com> on Wednesday March 21, 2001 @05:11PM (#348612)
    From TheOneRing.net....

    EA acquires rights to Lord of the Rings games...

    Under the direction of Imhoff, the licensing department has already attracted key licensees such as Toy Biz, which has the master toy license; Electronic Arts, which is developing and distributing video games based on the franchise; Applause Inc., which has the master gift license; and HarperCollins UK, among others."
    1. Diablo II was in the pipe already when WCA was announced.
    2. Blizzard didn't can WCA because of any other reason than the huge collective cry of NO! that rose up from the WarCraft fanbase. (Smart marketing 101: Given a fanbase in one genre, release the next sequel not only in a different genre, but in a genre that hasn't sold well since like 1993, duh...)
  • Hate to break it to you, but Everquest does it right now, and has been doing it for two years now. It can be run on a 266-MHz machine and uses approximately the bandwith of a 28.8 modem. Technically, at least in terms of the 3-D part of the equation, another game was out even before EQ that dealt with it. I'm sure you've heard of it? Quake?
  • Considering that UO2 was arguably one of the best-funded and biggest first-person massively multiplayer RPGs currently on the way, I wonder if this bodes ill for the rest of the crop. If EA/Origin didn't think they were going to make a profit off the game (come on, what other reason would they REALLY have for cancelling the game?), even with an already installed base of users (in the current Ultima Online), what hope do the smaller game companies have? Dark Age of Camelot, Anarchy Online, Horizons, etc. are all in various stages of development, but this makes me wonder who is taking the risk that they are actually going to work and whether that risk is going to continue to be viable if even the well-branded Ultima name wasn't considered enough...


  • A couple years ago, I think he finished building his third castle here in Austin. It was described on the tv news as having secret passages (like the other two), a mote (sp?), a staircase that disappears into the wall (so people can't get up to the second floor), and a revolving floor in the guest rooms so that when the guests wake up in the morning, they are actually in different rooms than what they went to sleep in.


    He doesn't have the halloween or birthday bashes anymore. Some guy told me he was having too many freaks sort of lurking around his property for days afterwards and it weirded him out so he stopped them.



    Seth
  • Garriot has shown that either A) he does not care about story or quality anymore when balanced against the 'quick buck' or B) he does not know how to manage a project properly to insure quality and tell the marketroids to piss off.

    Either way, the Ultima series has been dead since 7, so it doesn't matter. Any company that produces such shallow pieces of crud don't deserve any money. Well, not my money at any rate.

    Then again, I can easily imagine on U9 at least, Garriot trying to make a quality game but taking so much crap from marketing and executive weanies that he gives up... and quits! On the other hand, U8 showed everyone what NOT to do, but they went ahead and made super-U8 with Ascension. I agreed with the tons of people that called Ascension, "Super Avatar Bros." because of its simplistic and absolutely linear plot, pathetic story, and non-existant combat. (Why train or use tactics when your first 'moves' and a Bo can easily defeat anyone)

    As a slight aside, check out this link [fansforultima.com] for info on fan made patches and add-ons to U9. In addition, many other of the Ultima series are undergoing revivals, from complete redo's to overlays and patches. Of course, EA will probably sue these folk if it turns out to be good... why compete with quality when you can sue, destory or maybe buy it out... the M$ way.

    Either way, I will give Garriot a vote of confidence in that I think he was a victim of his own naivety and short sidedness (ok, that sounds odd, but I won't change it). I imagine he learned his lesson and his hopefully looking to tell a story and create an experience, not sell a gimick. One can only hope.

    Now about Chris Carter... I really miss AutoDuel. From what I read, Loose Cannon looked more like a driving game with some shooting, not the great story and experience within the Car-Wars universe like with AutoDuel. But then again, Loose Cannon seems still wanting for a publisher last I heard. (a good prospective is on the tables though)

  • looking into my crystal ball, I can see that soon, so many fans and developers will get sick of this that they will work together and create executive-less companies devoted to CREATING games not selling assembly line POS. Later after this establishes itself as a fad and most forget its underlying reason and purpose... there will be such a paranoid mass exidos in the industry that the non-corporate method will become the new paradigm. Then there will be so much crap out there that is incomplete and unplayable and as shallow as possible that interest will drop for a time. Then two things will happen simultaneously.

    Some of the more successfully financed companies will survive and bob along with the float-som

    New "innovative" groups will emerge that work hard once again to tell a story, not make money or just put crap out because they can.

    Later you will see both groups get bigger and bigger, gobbling each other up to the point that competition becomes so fierce that market analyzers and enterprise level management experts will be needed to keep up. Later, these marketers and executives will become so powerful as to drown out the developers and fans to the point that the reason for their sole existence is lost to the 'bottom line'

    Now, lather, rinse and repeat.

    Damn, my crystal ball is broken, it was actually focusing on my monitor screen with its text distorting program that is apparently taking input from historical documents and changing the times and names to another set. oh well, sorry for the false alarm!

  • If you could get past the massive bugs, memory leaks, extremely low frame rates, etc. there was a staggeringly good game to be found in U9.

    The problem, of course, was that you had to get past the massive bugs, memory leaks, extremely low frame rates, etc. to find it.

    I followed the development of Ascension from the 'mkdir U9' quote in Pagan. U9 was a game that suffered from alot of thigs, many of which I lay at the feet of EA. Inconstant resources, rushed ship date to make the Christmas shopping season, etc. all contributed to keeping it from being what it could have been.

    I was dissapointed in but I still think that it was a good game even if it did have far too many rough edges.
  • I'm not sure if Aklabeth, Lord British's first game (and prequel to Ultima) had any 2D elements or whether it was a pure 3D dungeon crawl.

    Akalabeth had a 2D worldmap and 3D dungeons. The dungeon engine was later re-used for U1.
  • Actually, UO's been fried for a lot longer than that, and for even darker reasons. EA canned the original UO dev team-- who left a legacy of poorly-optimized, and generally undocumented code. Everything that's come afterwards has been a mess of guesswork and half-assed patching.

    UO:3D is UO-- given an extraordinarily ugly facelift. Like virtually every other aspect of UO, it's been pushed out the door far too early. The original version of UO could have stood another four to six months of beta testing, easily. UO: Renaissance shipped months early-- "Factions," one of the new features listed on the box only left testing a few months ago-- long after the UO:R boxes were shipped to stores. UO:3D just got booted out the door-- because it's the end of the bloody quarter.

    Finally, exactly who is left to 'focus' on the fouled mess that UO has become? Certainly not the eighty or more employees that were canned at Origin alone. EA doesn't give a damn about 'focusing' anything on UO-- except the potential millions of subscriptions, overseas (No, I'm not exaggerating. Check out the subscription stats for titles like "Lineage," for example). Veteran rewards, factions, the ever-elusive Necromancy, and everything else that they've tossed out in one barely-usable form or another, has been a sop-- a half-assed attempt to keep players interested in the game, as opposed to slipping off to Everquest, or to whatever the newest threat to their slipping player-base is.

  • Actually He still does his birthday thing. Recently I heard from a waitress that worked the event, that he had a mock titantic made on Lake Travis that actually sunk (into 4 feet of water). As to the halloween gig, he has not done that in quite a while. Alot of the people involved with Garriots' "Britania Manor" now work on event called the Haunted Trails. Not quite as much money but a hell of lot of fun. It serves as fund raiser for Austin's wildlife preserve, the Wild Basin. It's haunted house with a plot and it takes over an hour to go through it. And it takes over an hour to walk through. If you live in Austin and are intrested, send me an email. I'm this year's recruiting director.
  • That's the conclusion I came to today. If they see a threat, they don't just try to beat them - they just swallow them whole and spit the bones out at the innocent bystanders. First the swallowed Kesmai and Gamestorm, promising that they would continue my old haunt Air Warrior 3 (or rather, Air Warrior 3 Millennium Version *eyeroll*). They are doing, for now, but it's a total mess and I think they'll stop supporting it soon. I'm sure they just did it do give AW's followers a false sense of confidence before finally plunging the dagger into their backs. Lo and behold, they killed Air Warrior 4, which was looking to be totally awesome too. I don't know what their competition is, but obviously they couldn't stand the threat that AW4 gave it. So next, they decide they've had enough of Origin. Maybe they're creating their own MMORPG or something. So they bought them too, decided to milk UO for a little while, and quietly axed UO2 before it became too much of a threat. *Sigh* EA.com are evil. Nothing less. Anyone want to start an antitrust lawsuit? They're a lot more deserving than Microsoft, and that's saying something.
  • How come I am missing ultima3 and ultima4? There seems to be a dearth of such games nowadays. But I guess MUD would be more fun than UO2. In meantime, CS here I come....
  • Yes, Lard British is no longer with Origin. He left following the fiasco known as the last Ultima. The success of UO notwithstanding, LB's hippocracy in the face of the obviously weak state of the released final chapter of the Ultima franchise lead to him losing face with his remaining fans.

    I think he begs for change now or something =)
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • You forget that they charge per month. If they have 100,000 players on their current game at $10 per month. That is $1,000,000 they are going to lose per month. I don't know about anyone else but the MMORPG that I play takes up WAAAY too much of my life. Since I have started playing, I haven't played any other games since (3 months).
  • Thanks for saying it dude. I agree one-hundred percent with you.

    Beyond the valid points you make, from a personal point of view, I have zero interest in playing a first person MMORPG, for a number of reasons. The big one on the list is that it makes it virtually impossible to do anything in a group. And if you can't do anything in a group, there isn't much point in playing a MMORPG.

    I think that OSI's resources will be much better spent focusing on the existing Ultima Online.

  • Two points.

    First, I don't think you understand the real issues with Warcraft Adventures. Some hotshot producer was hoping to make a quick buck with little effort from Blizzard. They licensed an animation team in Russia that had some mediocre credits, figured they'd hire a few voice actors, and they'd just have to do some game design and QA. They even pretty much isolated the team that was working on it. They were cranking along, and when they finally showed off the first real stuff to the rest of the company-- it was crap. Really, real crap.

    2) It's too bad about the adventure genre being smaller now, but I personally loved Grim Fandango and Monkey 4, and Longest Journey ain't too shabby either. (Grim Fandango was the best adventure game I've ever played.) So while there are few titles being released, and a lot are crap, you still have the occasional title-- nothing compared to the Sierra boom days, of course.

  • layoffs too? (Score:5)

    by mad_cow ( 152516 ) on Wednesday March 21, 2001 @06:26PM (#348632)
    Got the following from http://lum.xrgaming.net/ [xrgaming.net]. There's a note about the site suffering from frequent outages, so I'll paste their update:

    Electronic Arts and Origin Systems have announced a plan that will increase their focus on Ultima Online and halt production of OWO: ORIGIN (UO2). The reason is simple, rather than creating OWO: ORIGIN (UO2) as a parallel world competing with UO, we've decided to put those resources into growing and improving the core offering for Ultima Online's 230,000 loyal subscribers.

    In the near future and with the release next week of Ultima Online: Third Dawn, players will see new lands, new creatures, and a world that is continually evolving within Ultima Online.

    Latest update as of 3:30p: Massive layoffs throughout EA. 85 from OSI alone. Kesmai also gutted (at least 40, Battletech and Air Warrior 4 both cancelled) and 80 elsewhere in EA. Harry Potter cancelled. Jack Heistand (OSI's CEO) gone. Gordon "Tyrant" Walton moved to Sims Online.

  • Pretty sure that is correct, he is no longer with Origin.

  • Petition (Score:4)

    by Malicose ( 154517 ) on Wednesday March 21, 2001 @05:11PM (#348634)
    Petition for UO2/Origin [petitiononline.com]
  • Actually this is really horrible news. EA does basically nothing as multiplatform. Which means that it will be one more game that only runs on windows. Yeah, need more windows only games to compete with the existing 10,000 windows games. yeah whatever. I recently decided against buying Majesty because even though it is multi-platform, the Mac and Windows versions cannot multi-paly with each other because the windows version uses Direct-Play. Direct-Play mostly rules out Linux Windows multi-player games as well since it is so proprietary. Advocate companies that avoid this sort of crap. Advocate use of OpenPlay, which is an Apple open source game networking API that runs on Windows, MacOS, and Linux. It's open source as well, so it can be fixed and expanded as needed.
  • "and proves a 3d game dosen't have to exist for people to enjoy it. "

    so i can not make a 3d game and people will enjoy it? NEAT!

  • I'm working on a project whose goal is to create a game that gives a similar feel to the older Ultima games (3-6). There isn't much code yet but I'm looking for interested people who want to help out. It's being written in Python/SDL. You can find the very modest page for the project here [sourceforge.net].
    I don't want to do a rip-off of an existing game, but would instead like to produce a game that had some of the mystique that the older Ultima's had. Huge worlds, lots of monsters, lack of a cheesy plot, etc.
  • Origin was going to be 3-D, correct?

    Uh duh. Glad to see we know what we're posting.

    If CmdrTaco wasn't such a jerk, and banned my email from his account, he'd be able to take my application for becoming a poster.

  • 3D is not needed for a fun game...

    Had I nevered played Metal Gear Solid, I would not only have agreed with you 100%, but would've gone as far to say that using 3D in an RPG is an awful idea (I wasn't a fan of Ultima Underworld). However, MGS has shown us that you can take an existing 2D game concept, preserve both the 2D game play and the 2D appearance, and still come out with something better.

    So while some uses of 3D are just "shiny new technology" and jumping on the bandwagon, others instances are what can be described as no less than art. I honestly can't tell you which UO2 would've been, but I could imagine them doing it right -- leave the core game as what appears to be 2D but is rendered via a 3D engine and then really show off that engine (by shifting the camera around to a more first-person angle) when you want to do something to advance the story.

    On the other hand, it's entirely possible that they were trying to cash in on what Everquest does, in which case I'd agree with your comments 140%.


  • That's just the PR cover story. EA has been slowly killing Origin since they bought it, and the rumor mill strongly suggests that's why L.B. left the company. Not only did they kill UO2, they also laid off over half their staff, and the ones still there are earnestly putting resumes together as we speak.

    Origin has had numerous promising new projects that have been killed and/or shifted to other EA companies in the past year. With UO2 getting the ax, they now have nothing in the pipeline for new releases. Yes, you read that right. Origin is no longer working on anything other than UO maintenance.

    UO still makes money, so EA won't kill Origin altogether. At least not yet. But their actions have led to the inescapable conclusion that Lord British's once-mighty empire will soon be nothing but a memory.

    Kiss Origin goodbye. This was the final blow.

  • I guess I sort of jumped around what I was trying to say... No one plays their character's role. No one at all. Paladins and necromancers team up without a thought, etc, etc... The character itself has no meaning - its just quake with swords and magic.

    I don't really care, but advertising them as role playing games is a bit incorrect because then you get people buying it expecting it to be full of people playing their roles in the world, with clerics actually caring about what gods they worship and/or anger, or high elves looking down on the other races as inferior. Verant (the people that made EverQuest) actually started calling their game a MMOG (massively multiplayer online game) rather than a MMORPG to avoid this confusion. They realize that the amount of roleplaying going on in their game is practically nil.

    Anyway, I'm just talking about my experience with EverQuest. It was fun for the first few days and then it was all about "Level 16 wizard looking for group!" ... From what I hear UO has a bit more potential for role playing. I just wanted to speak up because I'm bitter about buying EQ and getting bored with it so quickly. It's a mark of how addictive it is though that I continued playing it for months. =) Maybe I should give UO a try...
  • It's actually MMOG's, not MMRPG or MMORPG's as they used to be called. You really only need to play one for a few minutes before you realize that there's absolutely no role playing at all in these games unless you really look for it.

    I think online games like UO and EverQuest are a neat idea, but they really don't work out. Grief players really ruin the experience (no pun intended) in a world where level and equipment advancement, rather than mindless shoot 'em up, is the goal.

    There's fun to be had in these games, but if you're looking for a role playing game, you're still better off with a piece of paper, a pen, and some dice. =)
  • Unless I'm mistaken, I thought, that "Third Dawn", the next release of UO, was based on a 3-D engine. No sigs, I just quit ; )
  • The problem with that, however, is that people are going to be leaving UO1 anyway, to the next generation of MMORPGs. Only, with UO2 gone, they will not be going to a EA.com product.

    UO has far too many underlying problems to be fixed by more and more patches. UO2 looked quite nice. But, now the dancing is dead.
  • Err, I believe that UO1 was going to continue for awhile after UO2 started, and after UO2 came out I doubt many would be playing UO1 much anyway. And with this, UO1 isn't gaining any resources. OSI had 80-some people fired because of this, not more put on the UO Live team.

  • This makes no sense whatsoever. (Score:3)

    by SpitefulBen ( 201793 ) on Wednesday March 21, 2001 @04:40PM (#348646) Homepage
    They are stopping development of what they have been working on for years so they don't compete with their older product? Did competition with earlier products stop id from releasing Quake 2, in fear of losing sales on Quake? Does Ford not release new cars every year, even if it reduces the number of previous models sold?

    Anyways, most UO players are just waiting for something else to come up. Once Shadowbane, Anarchy Online, Neocron, and all the other upcoming MMORPGs come out, UO will be dead. This is a bad move by EA.com.
  • Well consindering they just laid off a good portion of their employees this is not much of a shock. They did this before when they were Kesmai they went from 9 to 96 employees almost overnight and had to trim the fat. They wiil probably call all the decent people back just like last time too.

  • This is good news, not bad. (Score:3)

    by ShaunC ( 203807 ) on Wednesday March 21, 2001 @06:07PM (#348648)
    There, I said it. This isn't bad news, it's good news, and I'd reckon a lot of other UO players feel that way. In the past year, the current incarnation has seen many times more than its share of serious bugs. Bugs that were left unchecked and went unfixed for far too long, even when being reported by tens or hundreds of people a day.

    Why did this happen, why did UO in its current state fall into such a lapse of disrepair? Because they took half the UO development team and put them to work on UO:3D and UO2. They claimed they had separate dev teams - and yes, there were even some new faces working on UO2 - but eventually the truth came out.

    One of the bigger flops of late, a "Veteran Rewards" program, was supposed to come out last fall. The program was launched in January, and pulled a week later because it was so bug-ridden. Months later it still hasn't been finished, and the reason? Yeah - "Our development resources are better spent on stuff like UO:3D and UO2." So much for all these different dev teams they were boasting about.

    At least now they're presumably going to focus in one place; it's better to do one thing well than to do several things half-assed. This was a move they needed to make, and I think they probably (finally) wised up to that by looking at the churn rate of long time vets. They've already got a core playerbase, they need to work on keeping us happy, paying customers before branching off to bigger and (better|worse) things.

    Shaun
  • While I am not sure I am HAPPY about them scrapping
    UO2, I know that the 3rd Dawn client is slower than all
    hell.

    Perhaps with UO2 cancelled they can get rid of the room
    full of monkeys on keyboards trying to write code (this
    is after all a universe with infinite possibilities)
    and get those ole UO2 programmers in on 3rd Dawn and fix
    the slow client issues.

    For graphics this badly rendered to REQUIRE A 16 meg video
    card... who'd they hire to do their programming? Emmanuel Lewis!?

    Hopefully they just put all their eggs in UO2 and can move em back.
  • "one of the few who"

    Two. Just two ( and that's counting Lord British.)
  • "I still dislike the fact that Blizzard canned Warcraft Adventures because "it didn't utilize modern technology well enough". So instead they made Diablo II, a game that looks a slim bit better then the first and needs 256MB ram to run at a decent speed in multiplayer."

    I dont know why you put that in quotes because I know blizzard never said that. Warcraft Adventures was canned because it was not living up to their high standards. Not because it wasn't high tech, not because it was a hot genre.

    Diablo I/II was NOT MADE BY BLIZZARD. It was made by Blizzard NORTH. A different company pretty much. Blizzard north titles still go through the QA at blizzard hq, and there is a small "strike team" that is sent to north, from HQ. But the artists, programmers, and designers are completely different than those who brought us Warcraft and Starcraft.

    I dont know what was wrong with your D2. Mine ran great on my 400Mhz PII w/ 128MB Ram.

  • EA (Score:5)

    by rattid ( 214610 ) on Wednesday March 21, 2001 @06:38PM (#348653)
    Electronic Arts backstabs Ultima Online 2 for 412 points of damage!
    Ultima Online 2 has been slain!
  • I was just playing Diablo 2 over the internet with only 128mb of ram on a p2 266 no less. I have friends who have played it with a p1 166 and 64 mb of ram and still no lag.(the min. requirments I think) I think your computer is kinda crappy if you need 256mb...are you playing it though wine or something?
  • Richard Garriot was canned over a year ago by Electronic Arts. Origin Systems Inc is dead and buried, the Ultima property is basically the publicity concubine of EA these days.
  • Why reinvent the wheel, as the saying goes. UO is a fine game, yes it has some major flaws, but nothing that can't be fixed. It would be a huge disrespect to all the current players to abandon UO for "UO2". The bugs can be fixed in patches, the way the system works there isn't really any limit to the changes that can be made. It would be foolish to recreate the whole game, and with UO AND UO2, the support costs would double easily.

  • Re: Origin 3-d? (Score:3)

    by sheetsda ( 230887 ) <doug DOT sheets AT gmail DOT com> on Wednesday March 21, 2001 @04:59PM (#348662)
    Origin was going to be 3-D, correct?
    Yes. Here [uo2.com] are some downloadable video files. Unfortunately, the original trailer for UO2 (later renamed Origin) isn't listed on that page. It was quite well done, corregraphed to music and such, and showed some footage of the movement capture techniques they used for the humanoids, various combat scenerios. I just uploaded this video on some of my webspace, .mov format, 22 megs, worth the download if you have the band. original trailer [muohio.edu]

    "// this is the most hacked, evil, bastardized thing I've ever seen. kjb"

  • Lord British is owned by EA as a trademark. In other words, Lord British != Richard Garriot. Richard Garriot ceased being Lord British when he quit last year.

    As Lord British embodies the Ultima franchise, there is, metaphorically, nothing wrong with the title of the article.
    ---

  • question (Score:3)

    by tangloser ( 243578 ) on Wednesday March 21, 2001 @04:38PM (#348669)
    Didn't LB leave origin a while ago? and wasn't that the reason for the name change from "ultima online 2" to "origin:worlds online"(or something like that) -nick

  • Please change the "Lord British Gives UO2 the Axe" (Score:5)

    by thefaxman ( 244575 ) on Wednesday March 21, 2001 @05:00PM (#348672)
    As has been said, Richard Garriot (aka Lord British) left Origin last year, and as we see now, he did so for a reason. EA and OSI have made a HORRIBLE mistake here, but don't blame it on Lord British (even if it was accidental).

    Richard Garriot is one of the best game designers of all time, and he deserves a bit more respect.

    The Faxman

  • Sorry to be negative in a public forum, but Richard Garriot WAS one of the best game designers of all time. He's been coasting on fumes & past glory for almost a decade now.

  • Re:question (Score:3)

    by geomcbay ( 263540 ) on Wednesday March 21, 2001 @05:20PM (#348678)
    Fired? For Ultima 9? He should have been drawn and quartered...

    Oh well, I get as nostalgic as anyone else when it comes to Ultima 1-3...But the series lost its spark years ago. Maybe killing it off completely is the best thing they could do.

  • Re:This makes no sense whatsoever. (Score:3)

    by geomcbay ( 263540 ) on Wednesday March 21, 2001 @05:24PM (#348679)
    The one error in your analogies is that Ultima Online is subscription-based. id loses nothing if people who bought Quake stop playing it years after it had stopped selling in significant numbers, ditto Ford...But Origin has a steady income stream from UO players...The vast majority of which would certinly jump to UO2, forgetting about UO, once it was released.

    Of course, despite all that, there has to be more to it than they announced...They've sunk a lot of resources in the game thus far..they must have hit some technical or creative (or, most likely, monetary) brick wall to halt development now.

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