Bringing Ultima Online To The Masses

Thanks to GameSpy for their section featuring extracts and articles centered around the previously Slashdot-mentioned new book, Dungeons And Dreamers, which discusses "the rise of computer game culture" through figures such as Ultima creator Richard Garriott. The feature includes a three part extract from the book, dealing with "the trials and tribulations Richard Garriott and his team at Origin underwent in order to bring Ultima Online to the masses." There's also an interview with the book's authors, as well as a chat with Garriott himself, in which he trails his new NCSoft-backed massively multiplayer title, Tabula Rasa, which he says "combines MMP with story-based scripted adventures for parties of players."

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:hmmm

[WinnipegDragon]

Ummm... In the gaming world 'to the masses' clearly excludes Mac users. 5% of the desktop market does not 'the masses' make.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:hmmm

[WinnipegDragon]

Touche' good falcon. I concede the point. Allow me to make this rebuttal, however. In the words of a wise man, Aristotle I believe, 'Macs are teh suxxors!'

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:hmmm

[PainKilleR-CE]

Active X used to big a big problem, since there was for some time no program to convert Active X controls to Mac, but that has also changed.

ActiveX? Never a big problem with porting games, since game developers rarely (if ever) used it. Maybe application developers had big problems there, though.

While I love the 3 month wait time from PC release to Mac release, since it both gives me a wait period to see if A) the game is good, and B) get rid of the huge amount of bugs Games always have since they are p

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:hmmm

[PainKilleR-CE]

then explain the 3 to 6 month port times of games that where written for Wintel only by companies for the Mac, since most Mac games are not ported by the firm that created them (obviously some are built with the plans for them to be ported in the first place, Blizzard which has put out plenty of cross-platform games even subscibes to the multi-platform disk idea, which gives them major points in my mind) examples of this would be the huge number of games MacPlay ports over, many in 6 months or less with th

Re:hmmm

[Colazar]

What I find funny about your comment is that Garriott is now at NCSoft. So maybe he's bringing Lineage to the masses, instead? :)

But seriously, as well as RPGs do on the Mac, I would expect MMORPGs to sell extremely well there. So my impression is that they're extremely hard to do cross-platform. But the first company to do it well is should rake it in. As frustrating as it can be on a bad day, I do still see a lot of Mac users playing Shadowbane. (And on a good day, it is still damn fun.)

Note, I don't

What about

[Pingular]

The trials and tribulations Richard Garriott and his team at Origin underwent in order to bring Ultima Online to the masses.
The article completely fails to mention the fact that Richard Garriott and the Ultima Online team turned the largest and (in my opinion) best MMORPG ever into a waste of time for everyone involved, with players, having played for four years deserting it mere weeks after them bringing out the Age of Shadows [uo.com] expansion pack. For those unaware of what happened with Ultima Online, the Ag

Re:What about

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't disagree with your assessment of the Age of Shadows expansion, but you can't blame that on Garriott. He left the company almost 2 years prior to that. In my opinion, that's when UO really started going downhill. Everything that was visionary about the game and everything that made it "an Ultima" has been slowly stripped from it ever since. I still consider UO the best MMO ever made, but that game died when Garriott, Long, Koster and others left. Now it's just another product in the EA catalog b

Re:What about

[ggwood]

What was in the expansion which was so horrible? (I know nothing about UO I'm just curious perhaps it should be a caution for other game designers...)