Dear mother …

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.

Hmmm. First I was wondering if OSI had confused its dates and thought it was April 1st, or I had missed all my mid term exams, and it really was April the 1st, but to no avail. Apparently this is real, real sad that is.

UO2 looked pretty good, filled with creamy goodness, lots of warm fuzzes that a lot of other MMO games just seemed to miss out on.

Just another example of how Computer related business is being pushed further and further into a likeness of 70’s used car dealerships. (Don’t get me started on this subject, I could fill a whole rants section on this bit).

:(

That really does piss me off
game's come out not as good as they could be
simply for the market. then they try to fix it up by releasing lots of patches.
its just s***

To paraphrase The Sopranos: "EA is like King Midas in reverse - everything they touch turns to crap".

This is most probably a side effect from the huge money that ea.com is burning through right now ($45 million PER MONTH if you believe fatbabies), as well as the assimilati...er..I mean, incorporation of Origin staff into the big happy EA family.

i think thats good news, UO is a sweeet game, just a bit buggy still :\

hah, UO am ghey

UO was a good game, and with the new client might be a ok game considering current standards.

The bit that gets me is that UOO looked pretty good, the world seemed to be taking shape, nice ideas. Not only that but it seemed to have a good combat system, and of course UO patently good Trade skils.

Now EA just throw that all away in the name of why have two games competing with each other. Is that just silly to me? or do other people see some flaws in EA brain process.

The 230,000 players, ok I understand that they have 2.3Million dollars a month income from this. That is a pretty good amount of money, of course considering that most of these fans have been playing for years, and all have uber characters tends to make me belive that most of them would stay with UO (not to mention that some UO freak friends of mine say this too).

EQ, AC currently have people who are playing them because they have no real option to go too, or who do not play because they do not enjoy them. UO had the rep of learning from its mistakes, and building of the mistakes of others, and the current experiance from UO, all gone to waste.

All I can say can be summerised into a few points.

-Shadowbane looks freaking awesome.
-Neverwinter Nights should be HUGE (not to mention bloody awesome)
-EA have no clear clue on just about anything.
-OSI must have stuffed something up quite badly to make this go though.

I was talking with xyzzy on ausgamers about NWN, I think both he and I agree this is the best model for a Online Roleplaying game. You get a lot of the advantages of MMOGs, and you get a lot of just MOGs, not to mention a lot of the bonuses you get from Pen and Paper Roleplaying ...

As long as Bioware keeps up the job.

Now EA just throw that all away in the name of why have two games competing with each other. Is that just silly to me? or do other people see some flaws in EA brain process.

Hey, lets take a simple situation and blow it out of proportion by adding our own conclusions and insults. They're not 'throwing it all away'.

I haven't really looked into it that much since it's UO and I'd rather suck the sweat out of trogs bandanna, but if you think you're know what they're doing, you're wrong. UO online players will be pleasantly surprised.

Build a bridge and get over it.

Err,

I may have missed the point, but with 230,000 players (loyal), you'd want to "improve" there experience and make the game "better". So you can came more players and therefore more money.

I sure UO -2 would probbaly still come out at a later date, but until then your got so many people actually WANTING to play the game.

I don't think anyone can be sure on what actually drives EA/OS to do what they do, so you cannot say thats it a bad thing. But making the product on what they set out to do better it 2 thumbs up from me.

Torm.

B2, I dont think anyone knows what EA is doing, including EA.

Also on getting new players into UO ... the main problem with that is you start all new and fresh, and everyone else in the world is uber ... Doesnt make a very fun experiance for newbies.

A couple of quotes from members of the development team of UO2.

"Electronic Arts has capitulated in the online war for market share in the massively multiplayer online game market. The capitulated. They gave up. There's a fundamental misunderstanding among EA top executives about what would make a successful massively multiplayer game in terms of bringing in revenue long-term. They went for the short term gain at a very extreme long-term cost."

"The code for combat was done. Magic was done. Banking was done. Secure trading was done. The interface was completely re-written. We had a completely playable game that needed a huge balance pass but was certainly achievable. Beyond that, I leave you to draw your own conclusions about my current thoughts."

Hmm.