Ultima Online

Ultima Online (UO) is a popular graphical massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), released on September 25, 1997, by Origin Systems. It was instrumental to the development of the genre, and is still running today. The game is played online, in a fantasy setting similar to that of the other Ultima games that preceded it.

The success of Ultima Online opened the door for the creation of many new massively multiplayer games. Ultima Online is a fantasy role-playing game set in the Ultima universe. It is online-only and played by thousands of simultaneous users (who pay a monthly fee) on various game servers, also known as shards. It is known for its extensive timing-based player versus player combat system. Over a million paid accounts have been created in the game. To maintain order in the online community, there are Game Masters who resolve player disputes, police the shard for terms of service violations, and correct glitches in the game.

Several expansions have been released, but its aging game engine and graphics make it outdated compared to competitive, new massively multiplayer games. This changed with the release of Ultima Online: Kingdom Reborn in 2007, which features a new game engine. Since Ultima Online's prime in 2003, the overall subscriber base has seen a steady decline. Subscriber numbers peaked at around 250,000 in July of 2003, and to date sit around 135,000 subscribers (approximately 70,000 of whom are Japanese). As of June 2006, Ultima Online held a 1.1% market share of the massively multiplayer online game subscriptions.

Quoting directly from the Electronic Arts press release announcing the Ultima Online: Kingdom Reborn expansion, Ultima Online was "the first MMORPG to reach the 100,000 subscriber base, far exceeding that of any game that went before it. Since then, it has added seven expansion packs and dozens of free content updates, making it one of the deepest, largest MMORPGs ever created. It is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest continuously running MMORPG in history."

Expansions

Expansions have been released regularly, all of which add new content in the form of landmass, art, quests, items, or game mechanics.

* Ultima Online: The Second Age (October 1, 1998) featured a new area of land called the Lost Lands, along with an in-game chat system and new creatures. Also known as T2A. It was released in two boxed versions with the first having different artwork and a single manual.
* Ultima Online: Renaissance (April 3, 2000) doubled the size of the world, as there were literally two copies of it. The worlds were called Felucca and Trammel, after the two moons in Ultima's Britannia world. The Trammel world did not allow player killing, while the Felucca world did. Felucca also adopted a darker, more foreboding look.
* Ultima Online: Third Dawn (March 7, 2001) included a 3D client to compete with 3D competition like EverQuest. Also, a special Third Dawn only land was created, called Ilshenar. It was accessible only to 3D clients until the release of Lord Blackthorn's Revenge.
* Ultima Online: Lord Blackthorn's Revenge (February 24, 2002) brought "a dark new world based on new characters from Todd McFarlane" to Ultima Online with improved game artificial intelligence, in-game help, and improved character creation.
* Ultima Online: Age of Shadows (February 28, 2003) brought the landmass of Malas with space for new housing, two new character classes (Paladin and Necromancer) and the ability to customize house designs. The item system was completely reworked with this expansion. Armor resistance was split into five types of resistance, and many new properties that affected game play were added to weaponry. As good equipment became vital, this expansion also brought with it item insurance.
* Ultima Online: Samurai Empire (November 2, 2004) brought ancient Japanese mythology and folklore to the game, two new classes (Ninja and Samurai) and a new area to explore, the Tokuno Islands. The new class skills shifted the balance of player vs. player combat away from mage dominance.
* Ultima Online: Mondain's Legacy (August 30, 2005) introduced a new race, elves, and a new skill, spellweaving. Several dungeons were also added.
* Ultima Online: Kingdom Reborn (June 27, 2007) introduced a new client with new graphics and interface.
* Ultima Online: Stygian Abyss (TBA, originally planned for 2007) will feature a new playable race of Gargoyles and the largest dungeon in UO to date.

Ultima Online is a bad game. It is the product of Richard Garriott's idea for a fantasy game involving several thousand people who can all play in a shared fantasy world. There were a number of prior games that allowed hundreds of people to play at the same time, including The Realm Online, Neverwinter Nights (the AOL version), and Meridian 59. However, Ultima Online was intended to be a significant improvement over the previous games, both graphically and in game mechanics. The initial team was composed of Garriot, Starr Long, Rick Delashmit and, a bit later Raph Koster, who became the lead designer for the project. Koster wrote a number of public "designer letters" and usually went by his nickname of Designer Dragon.

The project started in 1995 and was shown to the public at E3 in 1996. At the time (in the mid-1990s), Ultima Online was a very expensive project and quite risky for the company. The development cost was much greater than traditional computer games, it relied on people accessing servers with modems, and it attempted to transform the Ultima series into an entirely new genre. Ultima Online was an ambitious game on a number of fronts, such as:

* Players may buy housing and build houses within the persistent landscape (this is still an uncommon feature in many online games).
* A skill system without the more traditional experience-based levels or classes.
* Many different trades or crafts can be performed by the players to create an in-game economy.
* Players could be freely attacked [by other players] anywhere in the game, even in cities (this has since changed).

Upon release in mid-1997, Ultima Online proved to be very popular, reaching 100,000 paying subscribers within six months of release even despite severe "lag" problems at the time. Subscriptions continued to grow for several years reaching a peak of some 250,000 paid accounts. Origin was able to make a great deal of money from the monthly fees required to play Ultima Online and many other companies took note and began development of their own massively multiplayer games. The most successful games after Ultima Online have been EverQuest (released in March 1999), Dark Age of Camelot (released in October 2001), and World of Warcraft (released in November 2004). The Korean massively multiplayer game Lineage was very much inspired by Ultima Online, as have many other subsequent online games.

Ultima Online has included some well known Easter eggs throughout the years.

* Lord British's throne is the top half of the Ultima Online logo.
* On rare occasions, casting the spell energy vortex will summon a purple llama instead of the cloud-like creature the spell is meant to summon. The purple llama is labeled in-game as "an energy vortex" and has the same powers as the creature the spell is named for.
* A monster called a slime existed in-game which is a small slithering blob. Some years ago on rare occasions, it was possible to encounter a slime that was renamed a "jwilson," which was purportedly named after magazine editor Johnny Wilson, who had given Ultima Online a bad review and thus earned a derisive place in the game by the developers.
* Cows may be tipped by clicking on them numerous times.
* Occasionally, an aggressive "mad cow" will be spawned in place of a docile cow.
* Pack horses will eat jester hats.
* Walker the legendary Ranger trainer, an NPC trainer in New Haven, looks suspiciously like Chuck Norris, with references to Walker Texas Ranger in his dialog boxes.