New Ultima Coming

[Anon]

Also, what's Ultima Online even looking like these days? That would be a good litmus test to see the potential for this. I stopped playing sometime around 2001 I think it was, and things were sliding downhill fast. The game was adopting armor properties, farming/grinding, samurai and all sorts of stupid crap that had nothing to do with Ultima.

[Warder]

They introduced ninja, elves, a few new lands and stuff. Their latest expansion, Stygian Abyss, is actually... I don't know what to think about it. The Stygian Abyss itself features plenty of canon stuff! It has Tyball, the Slasher of Veils and rooms lifted straight from Ultima Underworld 1. The expansion pack also features Ter Mur, the gargoyle homeland - with the U6 gargoyle world copied almost 100% accurately in one corner.

So they had to go and ruin it by adding female gargoyles.

[WtF Dragon]

I wonder if this LoU initiative isn't a stepping stone for EA, an effort to spread the Ultima name around (if, admittedly, by slightly annoying means). I mean, browser games are kind of a niche market...but we all probably know what Evony is, even so. Right?

I've had a couple of inquiries, at Aiera, from EA devs, regarding things Ultima. They're keeping an eye on the remake community and the fans, and not in the sense of looking for a reason to file a lawsuit. I'm fielding questions about "what makes an Ultima?" to these folks.

One of my buddies, who has quite a lot of contacts in the games industry, and who is attempting at present to source funding for a games convention in our home city, opined that LoU *might* just be a precursor to a new full-on Ultima release. I rather hope he's right, and I note that there is a wee bit of evidence emerging that he might just be.

[Natreg]

I don't think myself that female gargoyles is that bad.


It's true that Ultima VI and VII had only male gargoyles and it's explained as if there are no female gargoyles.


But Ultima IX addedn the Queen and all (which is true it was a big mistake without any explanation).


And then came Ultima X fiction and explained the female gargoyles. And I think that it can fit.

Personally I consider more innacurate that they are more human like than the original gargoyles instead of the female gargoyles.

[Warder]

Yeah, my female gargoyle comment was meant as tongue-in-cheek. I don't like it myself - in fact, I think it's a blatant disregard of Ultima continuity to pander to the MMO masses - but it's still something I could live with in the grand scheme of things.

Unfortunately, I believe that "blatant disregard of Ultima continuity" saturates all of Ultima Online with all their other crazy additions, and it doesn't end there - Ultima X Online had a lot of the same, and Lord of Ultima is going down the same path. I don't have any faith in the current franchise-holders to create a worthy sequel, if that's their plan. Maybe if I signed up as a designer...

[Wizardry Dragon]

If Ultima is to grow and evolve as a franchise it needs to use the past games as a springboard into new and exciting games, not simply wallowing in the ultima-isms of the past. In fact, it would probably do itself some good with seperation from the past plot, what with all the holes.

wizardry dragon

[Warder]

One does not exclude the other. Springboarding into new and exciting games does not mean you need to disregard continuity, especially when there is so little (read: nothing) to gain from it. IMHO, the ideal way to create a new Ultima would be to have it take place in Britannia's future, with a new protagonist and build upon the already existing lore.

[Dominus]

I quite like it how the last Star Trek movie fixed their ever tightening continuity problem... It's nice to be able to keep continuity watch but also very nice to see how to escape that watch

[Anon]

I think a future setting would be the way to go, with the Avatar being a legend even on lands that have been divided by war, Lord British having passed on and buried in Britannia instead of Earth, and depictions of the series' battles scattered sparsely.

Seems they could certainly use the previous games as a base and do so in a manner that even new players to the series would have a rough idea of who everyone was and what they did.

Hell, why not incorporate red moongates into the new game? Allow the player to travel freely between Earth, Pagan, and Britannia with different effects in each one? Today's technology can handle it.

Oh well, I'm straying from this topic's purpose. I'll be crossing my fingers for something productive to come out of this.

[Natreg]

I think the best way would be exploring a different world instead of Britannia.

We could have some familiar characters like Shamino, or Seggallion around, and of course a new main character.

There is a lot of possibilities in the Ultima universe thanks to the moongates.