Richard Garriott: Only My Team Can Create Ultima's True Heir
Ultima creator Richard Garriott threw down a rather big gauntlet at the feet of EA and BioWare Mythic in this recent tweet, which was made in reply to a request for his thoughts on the recent spate of legal actions Electronic Arts has taken against hosted downloads of Ultima 4 and the two Flash-based remakes thereof.
Thus spake Lord British!
And at least as far as the first sentence goes, he’s right: he has no power over the Ultima name, franchise, or IP anymore, and cannot shape EA’s plans for it in any way save one: as the owner of the name “Lord British”, he can control whether that character appears in any future Ultima games any EA studio might one day choose to make and release.
But is he right in the second sentence? I don’t dispute that he and his team at Portalarium could probably produce a fine spiritual successor to the original series…but does it necessarily follow that his is the only team which is capable of doing so? Two powerful pieces of evidence — Serpent Isle (with which he was minimally involved) and Ultima Underworld 2 (With which he was not involved at all) — come to mind as arguments against his assertion. And indeed, it has been argued here before, by myself and by others, that Garriott himself left Ultima in a position which was, largely, post-Avatar, post-Britannia, and post-Lord British…and that, consequently, another team could indeed pick up and run with the Ultima name and turn out a worthy successor to the original series.
The comments are open, Dragons and Dragonettes. What do you think?
Quick point, EALA did port RA3 to iphones. oct 2008 RA3 is released, march 2010 cnc 4 is released. I don’t play rts for storylines, in fact I make fun of people that do :P(does chess need a backstory?). Regardless of my opinion on storylines in rts, from what I hear, a lot of fans were disappointed with the lack of the scrin in the story and gameplay. Cnc 3 with 9 factions, cnc4 with 2…
CNC3 is Tiberium Sun with a new coat of paint? Have you played these games before?
CNC2 has two factions, nod and gdi.
CNC3 had more factions nod gdi and scrin. Within nod, gdi and scrin there are 3 subfactions. So 9 factions in total… I could go into intricacies but is an extra 7 factions a new coat of paint?
Because people buy a game for iphone doesn’t mean people are fans of it. Have you ever bought a game you didn’t like? I have never seen figures for the RA3 iphone game being successful or unsuccessful. Link please?
CNC timeline.
CNC3 march 2007.
CNC3 kane’s wrath may 2008
RA3 oct 2008
RA3 uprising jan 2009
CNC4 may 2010
CNC4 is taking a cnc mod from the other games and turns it into a full fledged game, with no expansion pack, and only 2 factions. To say this is anything but a money grab is just silly.
Lets say there was no expansion packs. cnc3-ra3 17months apart ra3-cnc4 18months apart. That’s too quick to go through thorough beta testing.
Again, RA3 has game crasher bugs known since beta testing. RA3 has terrible pathfinding known since the beta. Units get stuck on bridges and can’t move, get stuck on walls and can’t move. EALA likely produced the iphone title to appease stockholders, bring in more money for EA, rather than fixing their game to appease fans. And hey, maybe if they fixed the game early and had more stable servers, they may have made RA3 a respectable esport to compete with sc2. Maybe they could have made a more balanced expansion pack that had multiplayer capability.
Yes, EA doesn’t make designer decisions. Again I quote RG about ultima 8
In this part of the series, Garriott delegated most of the work to others. Garriott later explained, “… I sacrificed everything to appease stockholders, which was a mistake. We probably shipped it three months unfinished.” Even with patches, I’m spending most of my time perfectly positioning myself to pick up items and use doors.
SACRIFICED EVERYTHING TO APPEASE STOCKHOLDERS. EA doesn’t say “make a game this way” it says, “we want more money and we don’t care how it will happen.”
Again I ask, do you have a link for units sold of single player ultima titles?
Micro: You’re becoming increasingly incoherent, and there’s really only one part of your last response that I think needs to be addressed.
But he still set the initial vision, as has been repeatedly explained to you. And if he’d had those three extra months that he mentions in your quote below…guess what? You’d have got the same basic game, only with a couple more areas and one other magic system. And maybe — maybe — less bugs. Maybe.
And is that EA’s fault? No, not at all. You can blame EA for some of the bugs, because more testing time would have been nice (it almost always is). You can blame EA for the lack of the Birthplace of Moriens area, and for the lack of Tempestry magic. But the jumping? Origin. The engine? Origin. The object bounding, collision detection, and item interaction? Origin, Origin, Origin. The lack of a party? Origin. The lack of a female Avatar? Origin.
As to the three months, here’s another Garriott quote that might interest you:
Even Garriott himself admits that within a year, he had managed to signal to EA that Origin was pretty free and easy with money, and pretty poor at project planning and timeline adherence. So really, is it any wonder that EA began to hold Origin to its project timelines? What else would you have had them do with a somewhat plucky, roguish studio that had a habit for burning money?
And here’s Warren Spector, chipping in his two cents:
So no, EA isn’t blameless. There were politics involved, and that’s unfortunate. But Origin isn’t blameless either. And in fact, the only reason that EA began to clamp down on Origin and hold them to deadlines is because Origin acted very irresponsibly with EA’s initial investment in them. And even then, EA gave Origin a lot of leeway with Ultima 9‘s development, more than they probably should have…and Origin, in turn, didn’t exactly make the wisest use of that time.
I wonder at whether things were not similar for Westwood behind the scenes?
Correct. Garriott did that. Garriott bears the blame. You can’t pin Garriott’s decision, to which he openly admits, on EA.
Keep in mind, as well, that Garriott was a master at shaping fan opinion, and at casting himself as the champion developer knight going up against the evil giant EA.
Yeah, big surprise…EA wants to produce good games that make money. What’s wrong with that? You know what you call a publisher who can’t make money off of its games? Closed.
Ah, the iOS ports of Red Alert were developed by EA Mobile Romania.
To make my point a little more clear on cnc 4 let me direct you to metacritic.
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/command-conquer-4-tiberian-twilight
User reviews, 88 negative, 9 positive. Some people bought it, but I seriously doubt it won any longtime fans to the series. From this data you can draw the conclusion 10% of people liked this game, while 90% of people didn’t, is that successful to you WTF?
It’s not a myth that for every dissatisfied user who posts or rates a game/software there are ten satisfied users who just don’t see the need to post anything…
I’m mostly talking about the solo parts of C&C (yeah sorry but these were important parts of all C&C games, just like they are importants parts of Blizzard’s FPS, laugh all you want :P).
And yeah C&C3 didn’t really bring anything new to the table. The sub-factions didn’t really change a lot from the regular factions. And while the unit didn’t look the same, playing NOD and GDI still felt mostly the same. I’ll grant the Scrin were more original, but they had such a small playable part in the campains it was underwhelming.
Now that C&C4 didn’t please longtime C&C fans, that much is obvious – but like it or not it definitly tried to bring more new stuff to the series that previouses episodes did. As I say I prefer when developpers try new stuff at the risk of failing, that doing the same game over and over again.
Regarding sales of single players Ultima, the series had sold over a millions all episodes combined before Ultima 8 came out. You won’t find precises numbers because there are not, but it was stated as fact by Origin (I still have the Lady MOI quote somewhere) that it was the best selling Ultima game, which is basically why they still wanted Ultima IX to aim for the mass market, and not just hardcore fans.
Definitly. Dissapointed fans and haters just seem as a rule to have a very hard time getting over it (ie: just look at people still whining about Ultima IX 12 years after its release) while people who liked something well… they just tend to move on.
There are even some tiles met with glowing praise at their release, who you’d think everybody hate a few years later because lovers moved on, while haters are still hung unto it and keep posting over and over how much it sucked and what else (NeoGaf is a great example of this kind of posting).
Sergorn and Dominus, what is your point? Do you think cnc4 is a good game because a much higher percentage of people disliked it than liked it? If that were so, SC2 should be about 1% positive and 99% negative. So what is your point about that? Are you trying to say cnc4 was a good game because more people felt passionately negative about it, than passionately positive?
WTF at what point am I increasing incoherent?
I can’t blame EA on Garriott’s decision? How are you reading that? Did you only read I sacrificed everything and shipped the game 3 month unfinished? There was a vital part in there that destroys your theory. It was the part where he says TO APPEASE STOCKHOLDERS. So what does that tell us? That he had external pressure from EA to ship a game incomplete, not because he wanted to, because he wanted to appease stockholders.
Again I ask do you have a link to the RA3 iphone game being a success? Again, at which points am I being incoherent? Or is that just a red herring, ad hominem statement to try to discredit me?
Bottom line, as history proves, the more control RG has over his RPG titles, the more passionately positive the fans feel about it. And as recent history has proven EA doesn’t understand how to give money to stable servers. Besides what kind of debate can there be? Who will make a better ultima game the guy that made the series or some EA developer. Is that not like debating whether the sky is blue?
Micro:
I’m not saying anything of the sort, or even anything to do with that. But equally, Metacritic is…hardly an objective measure of how good a game is or isn’t. That’s not to say it’s always wrong, either…but it is to say that it’s quite easily skewed, as recent news stories have illustrated.
In other words: I’m saying nothing which is in any way based on Metacritic scores, and I’d urge you to have a care when and if you are doing the same.
Well…
I sure hope not! EA’s existence has nothing at all to do with Garriott’s decisions.
Because it’s true?
I’ve read that quote (or allusions thereto) at least three times now. And did you read the two quotes I provided, from Garriott and Spector, which served to illustrate the mentality within Origin Systems that was in no small part to blame for the fact that a) Origin needed three more months to add a couple more features and squash a few more bugs, and b) EA started holding Origin to the deadlines that Origin set for its own projects?
That he was trying to make money? That Garriott, the master of shaping fan opinion, was also trying to deflect a bit of blame?
He had external pressure from EA to ship the game according to the deadline that Origin originally set for themselves (though as someone noted, EA was a bit lenient there as well, and actually let Origin miss its original proposed ship date, which was around Christmastime). But why did EA hold Origin to its deadlines? Well, yeah, money had something to do with it…but not so much the pressure to push out a game and get it on sale NOW! Remember what Garriott and Spector both said: Origin was irresponsible with EA’s money, irresponsible with their development teams, and mediocre (at best!) at sticking to deadlines.
That’s the “pressure”, right there; EA wanted to rein in Origin’s poor time management and tendency to waste money. And yeah, that pressure had some negative outcomes; the game was buggier than it might have been, didn’t have Tempestry, and didn’t have the Birthplace of Moriens. But equally, that’s about all the game didn’t have because of that pressure. Ultima 8 was shipped as, basically, the game it was meant to be, minus a bit of additional content.
It’s not like we would have got a drastically different game had Garriott had an extra three months! The ending would have been the same. The quests would have been the same. You’d still have been up against the Titans, you still would have ended the game staring at the big statue of the Guardian, and you still would have had to wrestle with every morally dubious situation and jumping puzzle the game threw at you. The amount of missing content is, really, quite minimal, and wouldn’t have significantly impacted the shape of the game’s story.
So, is my theory destroyed? No, not at all, because I consider all the facts, not just the ones that let me think pretty things about Origin Systems and Richard Garriott.
Not off the top of my head. Though I am aware that EA made an absolute killing in the mobile market from many of their titles, so it’s not exactly an unsafe inference to make.
Which is why Sergorn pointed out that Ultima 7, which Garriott had quite a bit of a hand in, was received quite tepidly by hardcore fans of the earlier games. I’m sure Ultima 6 — which introduced a profound shift in the way Origin built maps for its Ultima games, with the switch to mono-scale — was similarly criticized by fans of the Ultima 1/2/3/4/5 dual-scale world maps. Of course, that was quite some time ago, before blogs and forums and other niceties of the Internet were in existence, so much of the venting and foaming that probably went on is likely lost to history.
I don’t know about that; they may have issues in some places, but at least some EA online games I can think of (WaR, DAoC, and of course UO) have quite respectable server uptimes.
Look around you?
Here, let me put two games in front of you. You pick which one you’d rather play. Over here, we have Ultima 9, made by Origin with quite a lot of involvement from Richard Garriott. And over HERE, we have Ultima V: Lazarus, made by a bunch of amateurs, at least one of which is now a big-time EA developer guy. Which would you prefer to play? And which, in your opinion, is more faithfully an Ultima?
Also, the sky isn’t actually blue; it just looks that way.
Sergorn, did you play cnc3? It really sounds like you’ve never played it if you’re saying Tiberium Sun and Tiberium Wars were the same game with better graphics.
Sergorn and Dominus, what is your point? Do you think cnc4 is a good game because a much higher percentage of people disliked it than liked it? the point is that you are skipping over what we wrote to just read what you like to read. Reread what we wrote, maybe the shoe drops then.
Or is that just a red herring, ad hominem statement to try to discredit me?
Nice coupled with the above cite this thread turns into a Nazi discussion. Everyone steering a discussion towards how a discussion is supposed to be held in theory and especially bringing up the “ad hominem” nonsense kills a discussion for me. That’s why I just invoked Godwins law! 🙂
The point is that your should never, -ever- bring Metacritic into a debate.
And yes I did play C&C3 (and loved every second of it). The question is: did you? Because really you’re like the first person I’ve ever seen who seem to think this was an innovative C&C game by any means. Even the biggest lovers of this game tends to agree this was pretty much a revamped C&C2. This was also the main complain that most of the critics brought forward: that while the game was exciting and efficient… it was basically *very* formulatic and brought very little innovation since the last C&C games (I would argue the rare new things brought between C&C2 and C&C3… were mostly thing already existing in RA2). It doesn’t mean it is a bad game – but it means C&C3 was basically the Starcraft II of the C&C franchise: a very good and effective game but which consisted for the most part of bringing back the exact same gameplay with shiny new graphics.
And considering this WAS the major complain C&C3 suffered (and RA3 even more) – can you blame EALA for trying a new approach with C&C4?
I would argue also that thinking EA might have “forced” C&C’s dev team to try this new approach for C&C4 is ludicrous at best. If anything corporate type are the kind who want to play it safe, and I’d bet anything that they would have prefered if C&C4 had stayed with the old and true (and successful) formula. This was the developer’s call.
I’m beginning to think you’re just playing dumb and just troll us by pretending not to understand but I will explain this for the LAST time.
Yes, Ultima VIII was shipped incomplete. Nobody is denying that. Some content (such as the Water magic, Moriens’ birthplace and other events) was cut. But the point is that even if Ultima VIII had had a few more month of development IT WOULD STILL HAVE BEEN THE EXACT SAME GAMEPLAY.
Ultima VIII with more content and less bugs (though I don’t recall the game having a lot of bugs actually), would still have been the same game at the core. It would still have been an action hack’n slah RPG with very few towns and NPCs, and mostly focused on dungeon crawling with a lot of jumping and clickfest combat.
Had U8 gotten its three extra months of development – it would still have been the basic game and would still have been HATED by a LOT of fans (except they wouldn’t have the excuse to blame it all to the evil EA). Ultima VIII was the way it was because it is the game Richard Garriott and Origin wanted to make at this time. As a matter the part you quote is revealing – Garriott has often expressed how he regretted that U8 was incompleted and had to be shipped early… but he never trully expressed regret over the kind of game it was. And there’s an obvious reason for this…
For starters, Lord British’s new game while it might consider itself a spiritual successor to Ultima will never be an Ultima game. Because it won’t have Britannia, it won’t have the Avatar and the Companions, it won’t have the 8 virtues and so on. It will hopefully be similar, but it won’t be an Ultima. Sure it will have Lord British in it… but if that was sufficient to make an Ultima game, then Lineage would be an Ultima game too.
Second: why would the work of the original creator necessarilly be better? I would argue there are multiple exemple of the opposite in multiple mediums.
Let’s stick to Origin games: but what do you think was the better Wing Commander game between Wing Commander Prophecy (made without the original creator) or Starlancer (produced by Chris Roberts’ Digital Anvil) ?
I doubt you’d find many Wing Commander fans thinking Starlancer was a better WC that Prophecy…
(Yes LOAF I know Starlancer was made by Privateer 2’s Warthog and DA basically just crafted the cutscenes, but it’s just to make a point :P)
And as a matter of fact, Ultima IX was Garriott’s game through and through: he had his hand on everything in this game, this was HIS game more than any Ultima since Ultima VII.
And it was the Ultima game which was the most poorly received by hardcore fans and the most controversial of the series.
Sure the game suffered from its deadline. But likewise the core gameplay and plot (which really was the main issue for a lot of haters) would not have changed with a few more month of polish.
But the point is that while I may not agree – there is a reason that a LOT of Ultima IX haters do NOT wish Richard Garriott to ever make a new Ultima game.
I’m beginning to think you’re just playing dumb and just troll us by pretending not to understand
That seems increasingly likely. I like the way he keeps going back to his C&C4 hobbyhorse again and again, on an RPG-centric blog.
Well, keep in mind that arguing for Garriott’s brilliance being necessary for a good Ultima is kind of a dead-end argument for someone who also doesn’t care that much for Ultima 9.
All the sillyness and trolling aside, I learnt some nice things about what went on behind the scenes in the Austin days. Thanks for that 😉
(and I learnt too much about CNC about which I don’t care at all)
I love the herd mentality here. Can’t even agree cnc 4 was a crap game. Even most critics didn’t really think it was stellar. Why try to defend cnc4?
I bring cnc into the debate because it’s an EA franchise I’ve followed for a while, and a very good example of how EA milks franchises. I keep bringing it up because you guys keep bringing it up.
It’s not a myth that for every dissatisfied user who posts or rates a game/software there are ten satisfied users who just don’t see the need to post anything…
Definitly. Dissapointed fans and haters just seem as a rule to have a very hard time getting over it (ie: just look at people still whining about Ultima IX 12 years after its release) while people who liked something well… they just tend to move on.
There are even some tiles met with glowing praise at their release, who you’d think everybody hate a few years later because lovers moved on, while haters are still hung unto it and keep posting over and over how much it sucked and what else (NeoGaf is a great example of this kind of posting).
Again what’s your point? CNC4 isn’t -so- bad? Or are you trying to put words in my mouth saying no one who’s ever played cnc4 has liked this game? Sure some people like it. Hey, I liked vexx for ps2 also. Doesn’t make it a good game. I honestly wouldn’t recommend vexx to anyone but a hardcore platformer fan. Let me post a few more links to high scores of cnc4.
http://pc.ign.com/objects/003/003684.html
http://beta.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/commandandconquer4/index.html?tag=result%3Btitle%3B0
The user score is much lower than the critics score. The critics average score being pretty mediocre. Now for ULTIMA 9’s user score-
http://beta.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/ultima9ascension/index.html?tag=result%3Btitle%3B0
http://pc.ign.com/objects/011/011753.html
Ultima 9 actually scored higher from players of the game than from the reviewers, but by your logic the score should be much lower, right? There’s no changing your minds. Long time players of franchises skew scores and statistics because people that like game don’t vote, whereas people that hate games vote over and over again, right?
From what I’ve seen most cnc fans wanted cnc4 to do well financially to keep the franchise going. Even if they don’t like the game itself.
At no point have a picked a bone about u8’s storyline. I don’t know why you keep bring that up, or more easily stated, that’s a red herring. My main problem with the game was how difficult it was to pick up items and use doors. Which I would hope, would have been fixed if a little more time was put into it. As with ra3’s pathfinding, and game crashing. Game crashing is a whole new ballpark when stats and ladders are entered into the equation. Another one of my points on u8 is
RG’s original plot was awesome. But deadlines are deadlines, and EA sets the deadlines.
WTF let me quote both RG and Spector for a moment,
integrating us into the machine in subtle and not so subtle ways, and that’s when things started to get a little less pleasant. Every company has its politics but, in my relatively limited experience, EA was an incredibly political place – lots of empire building, folks jockeying for bigger, better jobs, competing for resources, marketing dollars and so on.
Does EA sound like a great place to work? Does EA sound like it is lenient and lets game developers do whatever they want to?
We doubled the size of the company from 200 to 400 that first year [after the EA acquisition]. We went from 5-10 projects to 10-20, and staffed those projects almost entirely with inexperienced people. It won’t surprise you to learn those projects were not well managed. That was totally Origin’s fault. We failed, and we ended up killing half of those products.
Origin is not a perfect company, no where have I stated this. EA has not just held origin to deadlines. I’m surprised they gave u8 more time to be completed, considering EA’s track record.
Sergorn and Dominus, what is your point? Do you think cnc4 is a good game because a much higher percentage of people disliked it than liked it?
WTF this question was not directed towards you. Why did you think it was?
Trolling eh? Am I name calling? Am I swearing? Am I making fun of someone’s religion or political viewpoints? Am I being inflammatory in anyway? If you are somehow put off because I believe EA is more responsible than RG for ultima’s downfall and will defend my viewpoint, sorry buddy, but I tend to believe using the term troll without any proof or evidence is actual trolling. I’m surprised I would be referred to as a troll talking about ultima, EA, RG, and using examples from another popular EA franchise.
I wasn’t aware disagreeing with your assessment of the game made us a mindless herd. Silly me. 😉 Way I see it, though, you’re the one parroting the Metacritic scores as some kind of final proof that the game was utter crap, so I suppose I should wonder at who is really just following along with the crowd here.
Because you know what? Not everybody on this site agrees with me all the time, or even all that much. As popular as Aiera has become, and as much notice as some of the articles here get, I shape nobody’s opinion but my own, and I base my own opinions on facts and reason as much as is humanly possible. That’s not to say I’m always right, of course, but it is to say that I’m willing to consider all sides, and I’m willing to approach things with the assumption that I might be wrong in some way. It’s because I think that way that I changed my mind about EA, in fact.
Um…which is it? You bring it up because it’s a good example for you to use, or you bring it up because we bring it up?
Also, your definition of “milk” is highly subjective.
I don’t see how you can draw that conclusion. All anyone has said against scores so far is that Metacritic isn’t a valid source for a whole host of reasons; we were puzzled why you thought citing it strengthened your case.
It actually wouldn’t surprise me that Ultima 9 was rated lower by critics than by fans, given the newness of its technology and gameplay experience back then. But then too, I would question the validity of the information you provide, given that Gamespot (for sure) and (I think) IGN as well haven’t locked out the ability for someone to give Ultima 9 a rating today, twelve years after its release. And that’s a key consideration, because I would be curious to see what the user ratings would have been on such sites (not that they existed in their present form, or afforded users the ability to grade games in the present way that they do, back in 1999) at the time that the game released? I can link to any number of Ultima fansites (live and archived alike) that express little more than hatred for the game, after all. It was very controversial over a decade ago, although with the benefit of time it’s easier to appreciate for the groundbreaking — and actually quite enjoyable — game that it is.
Point is: sure, the user scores NOW are higher than the critics’ scores…but was that always the case? How much has the user score been affected by people revisiting the game five, seven, or ten years after its release and realizing that it’s really quite a good piece of work, if somewhat buggy.
Unlikely; that is just the nature of the game’s engine. Even if Origin had been given another year to work on it, you’d still see that problem most likely. Because really, that’s not a bug; that’s just how the game’s engine works. You’re of course welcome to blame EA for that all you like…but we are equally free to note that your saying “it’s EA’s fault” doesn’t make it so. And, in fact, that particular issue is not EA’s fault at all.
Multiplayer. Feh.
No, Origin set the deadline for Ultima 8‘s development; they planned for a Christmas release. Partly over the controversy of the game’s name and darker focus, and partly because they had more work to get done, they extended it past that deadline, with EA’s permission. But EA still wanted — needed, you could almost argue — to keep Origin on a bit of a leash, given Origin’s proclivity to spend money and blow past deadlines. So they did enforce a deadline eventually, yeah, and yeah, that meant a bit of content got cut. But the plot of Ultima 8 that we got was very close — missing only minor bits, like the Birthplace of Moriens and Tempestry magic — to the original vision set out by Garriott.
Also, wait a minute…I thought you said you didn’t have a bone to pick with Ultima 8’s storyline.
I see you took the bait. 😉
Note that I’ve never said EA is blameless; I’ve only ever said that EA shares in the blame, as does Origin. And so I will agree with you that the EA of the late 1990s wasn’t necessarily the best employer a game developer could have, though they probably weren’t the worst either. But I’ll also note that the EA of the 1990s is not the EA of the 2010s, and in fact I have cited evidence to that effect already. Heck, we’ve been periodically discussing this fact on the site for the better part of two years already.
Also: now who is being selective? You chopped off the first half of the Spector quote, which explains the context and reason for why things got as weird and as political as they did. Again, Origin were not passive participants in their own fate here; they dicked around, wasted money, wasted time, and generally did some pretty irresponsible things with EA’s investment in them. Can you really blame EA for wanting to rein them in?
True, but neither have I seen you admit — until this exact point in time — that Origin erred at all. Indeed, I’ve seen you try explain away Origin’s various mistakes as being the fault of EA, even after it has been explained to you that, no, it just ain’t so.
I’m not. But then, I’m not blinded by an irrational hatred of the company, so I suppose I’d notice that sort of thing.
Are you talking to me? I don’t believe I said the thing you cited just prior to this statement.
While those are all excellent examples of trolling, they are not all that trolling entails.
Although, for the record, you did begin by calling everyone who disagrees with you about C&C4 a herd thinker. Which, really, is an instance of name-calling.
Hell yes you are. You’re also refusing to listen to reason, refusing to listen to evidence, and misconstruing what others have said.
I don’t really care what you or anyone believes about the situation. The facts are there for all to see, and they paint a different picture than the one you are trying to. You’re welcome to persist in your mistaken understanding of things, of course, but to call those who try to correct you herd thinkers is, well…we already know what it is. To claim that your views are entirely correct and beyond debate (which I believe you’ve done at least twice) even in the face of both contrary evidence and the existence of debate is equally problematic.
It’s not your subject matter…it’s your methodology.
Ultima 8 created its share of controversy, but keep in mind that while the game was missing some parts because EA imposed a timeline on its development, the game we got was still very much the game that Origin envisioned.
There was a vital part in there that destroys your theory. It was the part where he says TO APPEASE STOCKHOLDERS. So what does that tell us?
That he was trying to make money? That Garriott, the master of shaping fan opinion, was also trying to deflect a bit of blame?
Two quotes from you WTF dragon. Is this coherent? You admit that EA imposed the deadline in your first post, and that it caused problems with the final product. Then allude to Garriott deflecting blame of his product, not rightfully so, to EA’s imposed deadline. I can concede that origin, as a company, made the game(obviously, never alluded to the contrary) and it came out imperfect. The reason that they came out so spotty was EA imposed deadlines for one BIG reason, and lack of direct control from RG. I’m sure if it were entirely up to the man himself, u9 would have had more of the Bob White plot.
One more point that RG didn’t have as much control as he used to. Why would he leave Origin unless he was not happy with the way EA was treating him?
Again, where am -I- being inconsistent?
I misspoke slightly, since it is in fact true that all EA did was hold Origin to the deadline that Origin itself had set. Although even then, EA did let them delay the release until after Christmas. And yes, I can admit that holding Origin to the deadline caused some problems with the final product…but equally, I’ve noted before (and will do so again) that these problems were small in the grand scheme of things. So we lost the Birthplace of Moriens (one additional area). So we lost Temptestry magic. And so a few bugs didn’t get squashed right away, and had to be addressed in patches later. In the end, that’s pretty minor stuff, and I don’t think the final game was really any poorer for it.
Garriott had the option to return the game to the Bob White Plot after he took control of the project back from Ed Del Castillo. He didn’t do that; he took the story in a different direction instead. The Ultima 9 we got was very much Garriott’s vision of the game, whether we like it or not. (Personally, I do rather like it; YMMV.) The effect of EA holding Origin to a project deadline — and this after allowing them to delay and restart the thing at least twice! — meant that the game was buggy on release. That’s unfortunate…but it’s only EA’s fault to a point. Origin could have opted to not dick around and restart the project two times, and maybe they’d have had the time they needed to properly bug-test the thing as a result. But that didn’t happen, did it?
Garriott had a lot of control over Ultima 9; he really jumped back in to the nitty-gritty of things with that game. He was more “hands off” with Ultima 8, admittedly, but that game was still pretty close to his initial vision for it at the time of its release.
I’ve been calling you on it as it happens, with quoted examples.
While we are blaming and pointing fingers at EA and Origin, does anyone clearly remember or even better know what happened back then with U9 support?
I am very bad at remembering and then quite selective 😉
I remember that after the last patch the foum for U9 support was hastily closed “no more bugs – so no need for this support forum”, but on the good side we were promised a replacement install CD with the last patch (which I eventually received, even shipped here to Austria). The replacement CD and the clockwork behind it must have been on the expensive side…
So can anyone retell that story for me? And who was to blame for the sudden support stop? I know atsome point you have to disbandthe development team. Keeping them on the team of the already released game, seems like a money waster…
@C&C4 Okay one last tmie and this is gonna be the final time I bring the topic.
Once again you’re completly missing the point. The point is not about debating the quality of C&C4. You’re certainly intelted to your opinion of the game, and so am I (even if you seem to be going to great length to try to prove your subjective opinion is the “right one”, which trust me is hardly a proper way to make an interesting debate).
The point is that YOU keep bringing up C&C4 as an exemple of how EA ruined/sacrificed a franchise on the altar of corporate business and so on, like U8 & U9 before.
And like U8, the point your are missing and that we are trying to make is that C&C4 is the way it is because the developpers wanted to create a game that would bring the series in a different direction, and not because the Evil Corporate EA Entity as whole decided to evil-ly ruin the franchise. If anything EA’s Stockholder (since you seen fond of that term) wants the C&C franchise to continue to bring money.
This is of course irrelevant to the quality of the game, whch is a completly different and subjective debate.
@Metacritic scores. Yeah no really, stop that if you want to keep some credibility. And WtF is right, had there been Metacritic 10 or 15 years ago you can bet the user reviews would have been terrible at the game’s release. As a matter of fact, Gamespot’s User Reviews of U9 have been steadily raising over the last decade.
@U8 doors and items. I find that very amusing that you consider these “issues” to be a bug. I am assuming you are referring to the fact that unlike Ultima VII (where you could do that from anywhere on the map), you have to be close to a door to open, and close to an item to pick them. Guess what? This was not a bug but a feature. It was implemeted this way in Ultima VIII because they wanted to make it more realistic, and a such limit the interaction to things that are close the player’s Avatar rather than allowing him to use any item from the other side of a room. This was even more important because this limitation was an integral part of several puzzles that would have been ruined if interaction had work as in Ultima VII.
Indeed had this been considered an issue, this would have been fixed by that infamous Ultima 8 patch that was released in early 1995 which fixed… well pretty much every gameplay aspect fans had been complaining about for month. The way items and door interaction work was not a source of complain.
You may not like how door opening and item picking work: but it works exactly as it was intented to.
@Herd mentality You obviously haven’t been on Aiera very long to make this sort of claim. There are plenty of disagreements all the timem, but as it happens me and WTF tends to agree with a lot of things, so don’t surprise that we are both “against” you.
That was EA’s decision. After already spending lot of money on Ultima IX they obviously wanted to be done with it, hence the decision that once the final patch meant to fix all remaining issues was done, to close the forums and stop more U9 support. Remember what I said above about publishers deciding when/if to patch a game ? Developpers don’t have their word to say (altough the unofficial 1.19 patch was definitly done and leaked by an anonymous U9 developper).
I understand what they were going for with u8’s object interface. I have no problem with other games like fallout 1-2, u6o, and didn’t serpent’s isle work a little like u8 with opening doors and using objects? I’ve talked with people that loved u8 that have told me using doors, walking up and down stairs, and using objects was a test in tedium. The interface was too picky with perfect positioning, and I mean PERFECT positioning. I somehow doubt if this game got more playtesting, that would not be a main complaint.
You admit u9 developers wanted to keep patching u9. But you somehow believe u8 is completely patched up. Is this not a double standard?
Parroting metacritic scores? I posted one link to metacritic. Then IGN and gamespot.
Sergorn- All three sites had -extremely- low user scores. And yeah, using u9 is a little overboard. But there are very few games with user scores consistently that low across the board on multiple sites. One site may be skewed, especially with only 100 votes. But 3 sites skewed with thousands of votes? I doubt it. It’s not very likely. It’s as likely as you keeping up with gamespot’s user score of ultima 9 over the years, and if you did, it would show you put stock into these scores. It’s about as likely as you playing cnc 3. OK, maybe you went through the storyline, so you don’t know why each subfaction is different. Each subfaction has completely different units, with completely different abilities. Even if each subfaction was a CLONE of the other, cnc3 had the scrin. So I guess a new coat of paint consists of 50% more factions.
It’s a moot point to say the subfactions are the same. Many cnc3 players, especially pros, pick one subfaction and stick with it.
The point is not about debating the quality of C&C4. You’re certainly intelted to your opinion of the game, and so am I (even if you seem to be going to great length to try to prove your subjective opinion is the “right one”, which trust me is hardly a proper way to make an interesting debate).
The point is that YOU keep bringing up C&C4 as an exemple of how EA ruined/sacrificed a franchise on the altar of corporate business and so on, like U8 & U9 before.
Let me parrot myself, you are the ones using this imagery of EA being “evil”, I have not.
The reason why I post user scores of this game is to counter WTF’s statement. That’s a rather subjective view; from what I understand, C&C4 is quite a decent game I hope that clarifies for you why I bring up user feedback on the game. Do you have a better way to judge if a game is quite decent or barely decent without playing it?
It’s a working game. But quite decent? No, it was a huge step backwards. Regardless of gameplay elements it features 2 factions, 0 subfactions. It was a game rushed out, more than likely due to EA’s decision to dissolve EALA. Yes, Jeremy Feasel is definitely to blame for trying to take cnc in a more rpg direction.
But maybe if EA wasn’t as concerned with deadlines than putting out quality games at launch. Maybe more people would buy the games and the studios wouldn’t have as much pressure to put out title after title, and put in rpg elements to attract the WOW crowd to rts games.
Maybe cnc 4 would have featured the scrin if EA hadn’t told them they were dissolving the studio and had a limited time to make the game? EA really didn’t give EALA a chance.
Westwood ran into it’s own problems with EA. And westwood’s cnc’s have sold a lot better than EALA’s.
EA screws developers. EA is not the only one, not by a long shot. But I don’t think there are any more sob stories from developers than from EA.
I bring cnc into the debate because it’s an EA franchise I’ve followed for a while, and a very good example of how EA milks franchises. I keep bringing it up because you guys keep bringing it up.
Um…which is it? You bring it up because it’s a good example for you to use, or you bring it up because we bring it up?
My grammar is not perfect, but it’s intellectually dishonest of you to make that conclusion. I’m sure you understand what I meant to say. Let me slightly rephrase. I -initially brought- cnc into the debate because it’s an EA franchise I’ve been following for a while. I keep bringing it up because you guys keep bringing it up. You’re not dumb, you knew that is what happened in this discussion and you knew that is what I meant by my statement.
In my example of your inconsistency. You say you misspoke, but what did you mean to say? That Garriott, the master of shaping fan opinion, was also trying to deflect a bit of blame?
Again, where am -I- being inconsistent?
I’ve been calling you on it as it happens, with quoted examples.
Ah my reading comprehension must be that bad. This would be a perfect opportunity to call me out, and discredit me without a shadow of a doubt. Because I’m completely sure you have not.
Let me clarify one last thing. I love EA games but I hate EA. I love the studios, but I hate the support EA gives to servers and allows teams to work on their titles. Can we all agree on this point?
Unlikely.
Highly unlikely.
As to the rest, well, you’ve got your opinions, and we have our facts. The rest, as they say, is just details, and I for one am tired of repeating myself. Which I would be doing, yet again, if I deigned to respond further.
Update: Just saw this…
I can only go by what you say. I’m pretty bad at reading minds even when I’m in the same room as the target; you’re about 2,300 miles away from me (Meriden, right?), and my telepathy is pretty much useless at that range. 😉
So if you want to be “heard” correctly, proof-read.
I’m so tired of the whole EA is/isn’t responsible for shitty games argument I could off myself. Please, for the love Jesus/Allah/Whatever, let it all go!
What’s next, arguing about whether there is or isn’t a god? This is the type of argument that can’t be settled, and both sides obviously are convinced and aren’t moving an inch. At least see that point, which if valid means this argument will go on forever with no one gaining any ground until someone gets so tired they give up on having the last word.
Agree to disagree. Only fatigue or some random good mood is going to bring a temporary compromise. And in this discussion of OPINIONS, on both sides, the discussion isn’t benefiting anyone anymore.
Now excuse me while I go find a good rope…
You do realise that U8 and U9 both come from a different era altogether ?
Back in 1994, developpers were not yet into the habits of releasing gazillion of patches for a a single game. As far as Ultima games goes, the few games that did get patched (U7, UW, UW2) never went past a single patch either.
Also the U8 patch came nearly a year after the game’s release – and this wasn’t so much as fixing bugs (since really Ultima VIII wasn’t exactly a buggy game to begin with) as it was about changing/improving features based on fan feedback. Indeed pretty much all the stuff changed in the patch were feature who where meant to work this way but which they modified because fans found it annoying (for instance the fixed jumping distance in the pre-patch version was the way they wanted it, because the jumping sequences has basically been conceived as puzzles that could only be solved by following a predeterminate pattern on the jumping stones).
So really, considering how much they changed based on fan feedback, do you REALLY think they wouldn’t have changed the way interaction worked if it had come as a major issue? The fact they haven’t changed anything in that regard kind of show it was considered an issue at all by most.
Juste because you don’t like a feature, doesn’t mean it’s a “bug” that should have been patched.
There is no way to give a proper opinion of a game without playing it.
God damn it Sergorn. All worthy arguments, but at an empty shore. The waves still crash, unabated.
Sorry I got busy for a while.
I can only go by what you say. I’m pretty bad at reading minds even when I’m in the same room as the target; you’re about 2,300 miles away from me (Meriden, right?), and my telepathy is pretty much useless at that range. 😉
So if you want to be “heard” correctly, proof-read.
Honestly, I probably didn’t have to change the one word ‘bring’ to ‘brought up’. You were here, you’ve read the posts. By saying I bring it into the conversation, next sentence, I keep bringing it up presumes bring being the first step, and keep bringing being the next steps.
It’s not mind reading, it’s basic reading comprehension. You’re definitely an intelligent enough guy to understand that. Hence you are being intellectually dishonest.
I love the studios, but I hate the support EA gives to servers and allows teams to work on their titles. Can we all agree on this point?
Can -you- agree on this wtf dragon?
Sergorn, sure it’s a slightly different era of gaming. Even in 99 we didn’t see as many patches as we see now-a-days. I don’t see how getting hung up on stairs and doors is a feature. And again, I don’t mind being close to an item to use it, that’s intuitive, and I’ve liked other games that do this. If you read my post you read that too.
So are you saying getting hung up on a staircase is a feature? Man, I gotta ride for you, it’s called waiting in line. Only a dollar a ticket. You buy a ticket, get in a line, and then you can stand there for as long as you want. It’s an amazing feature, we have no complaints about the ride itself. People complained about the trash all over the place, but we fixed that, now our ride is flawless.
Do you have a better way to judge if a game is quite decent or barely decent without playing it?
There is no way to give a proper opinion of a game without playing it.
So does this mean you buy every game that comes out on the off chance you’ll like it?
I don’t buy games based solely off of reviews. But I do read them to see what the game contains. And more or less, they are right on. And if a game is in the 3.0 out of 10 range for user reviews, there’s probably a reason for it. Most reviews are just about equal to the user scores. But when you see a dramatic shift to a downward spiral, it goes from ‘quite decent’ to ‘shovelware’.
Whether you like it or not, the vast majority of people do not find it ‘quite decent’. So when someone says to me, I’ve heard cnc 4 is quite decent. My response is, have you seen user feedback? Again, the vast majority of people do not find it ‘quite decent’.
Lets go with some things we know the game for fact. Less factions. 33% less factions than the last 3 cnc titles. Less gameplay modes. In other cnc titles you can basebuild and resource manage. You also always have the classic tower defense, and war arena mods. War arena being the whole cnc 4 game. Unless someone mods it to include base-building and resource management, which would be a heck of a job. It has not happened yet, the game has less gameplay modes.
Harder for noobs, the longer you play the better abilities and units you have. 4v4 option. 4 people vs 4 people at a time. That’s good! But does that make it quite decent?
To illustrate my point, Sergorn, this is a feature?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pye1FSJFe4A
Read the comments.
MicronMagic:
It’s the engine. Even with the missing three months Garriott bemoaned in the quote of his you kept citing for a while there, and even if EA had not bought Origin (assuming, of course, that Origin had magically found the money to complete this and other games in that case), the game’s movement and jumping systems would have been every bit as kludgy as the linked video and the comments thereto suggest.
You get that, right? Origin built this game; EA didn’t make any of the design decisions for them, didn’t contribute code to the project, didn’t do anything except a) finance the game and b) hold Origin to a deadline (that Origin set for themselves, mind you)…and then only eventually, after allowing Origin at least one extension past the due date.
Even if you removed EA from the equation, and even if you had given Origin ten more months, the game’s movement system would have been this finnicky. That’s the nature of the game engine. In other words, I have no idea what you’re trying to prove here, but you are likely not proving it.
No. Oh, I can acknowledge that the italicized text is your opinion. But it’s not an opinion I share anymore, and I’ll thank you to stop assuming that I or anyone else agrees with your biased summary of things.
In conclusion:
Interesting how long one can troll a dead horse
Dominus:
Indeed.
WordPress has a feature that automatically disables comments on posts older than a specified date. The problem is, it applies to all posts, including the project entries. And I like to keep those comment forms open, because occasionally it’s useful that they are. (This whole bit with Ram Dragon updating his U4 map editor began with him commenting on the relevant project entry, for example.)
So I suppose for now we’ll have to accept the occasional bit of thread resurrection. Though I am looking for workarounds.
No, but it means I won’t go and whine that a game suck when I didn’t even played it myself.
And after playing videogames from basically all my life, I know for a fact never to take for granted reviews from either users or critics – I’m seen to many poor games brought up as the best thing since sliced bread and too many good games labelled as trash.
even if you had given Origin ten more months, the game’s movement system would have been this finnicky
I guess you are a mind reader. Is that a fact now?
You’re question to me was, if origin had 3 months to fix the game, what would I have wanted fixed. And that was my answer. I can’t say it would have been, but I feel it would have been considering RG’s other projects in the past.
I love the studios, but I hate the support EA gives to servers and allows teams to work on their titles. Can we all agree on this point?
Can -you- agree on this wtf dragon?
No.
Yet in the past you’ve said EA is not blameless. That’s pretty inconsistent.
And I like how dominus and Sergorn won’t agree with this point with their opinions of ultima 9. Proof of herd mentality here.
I don’t nitpick your grammar.
So WTF dragon, I know I’ve asked it several times before, but can you show me two of my quotes that are inconsistent? Call me out, and show me proof, or I guess it could be your poor reading comprehension at it again.
Sergorn, again, this is a feature of ultima 8?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pye1FSJFe4A
Ah I see, so if we can’t give a proper opinion of a game without playing it Sergorn, why don’t you tell WTF he can’t call cnc 4 quite a decent game without playing it? Or is it that you all like to gang up on one person here.
Micron:
Pretty much. The game’s engine was mostly set in stone, and any revisions to it would have been fairly minor (like removing the jump “bounce distance”, as was done in a patch). Something more complex, involving stuff like object bounding boxes (as the movement system does), wouldn’t have seen much in the way of additional, last-minute revision.
I don’t really care what you “feel”; I care what is. One does not partially gut and re-tune the movement system in one’s game engine mere months before release.
Not at all, because there is a quite a gulf of distance between my being able to admit that EA are not perfect and my being in total agreement with your views concerning EA’s antagonistic treatment of developers. You present a far-too-distorted picture of the reality on the ground for me to agree with it.
Or proof that people are capable of critical thought. Most people — me included — can point to specific technical issues in any Ultima game you’d care to mention, Ultima 9 included. But does that mean we must, by definition, agree that most of these issues can be traced back to EA’s meddling and its antagonistic treatment of its development studios? Of course not! But that is because we have done our homework and understand a little better than some others just what sort of influence EA actually exerted over Origin.
I don’t usually provide a target-rich environment.
I believe you asked, initially, for proof that you were being incoherent. And I believe I highlighted at least one specific example, and alluded to another comment of yours as being generally representative of the issue.
He’s called me on this a few times, in fact, though not in the comments here. In my defense, I tend to assume that any game is at least decent, and in truth I’ve rarely met a game I felt was truly abysmal.
But note that your objection here doesn’t invalidate the point Sergorn is making to you. You are content to pan C&C4, and content to condemn EA in the process, solely on the basis of Metacritic, IGN, and Gamespot user scores for the game, rather than on the basis of your own experience of playing it. So fine…maybe I’ve no legitimate right to say the game is at least decent. Your own statements are equally baseless, and yet you’re trying to sidestep this simple truth.
You force me to resort to drastic measures:
Interesting how long one can troll a dead horse
I’m aware of what trolling is to most people. What is trolling to you?
Tempting… But not feeding the troll… The reason why I keep the Exult forum mostly on Exult business. No interest in giving trolls a forum.
Tempting… But not feeding the troll… The reason why I keep the Exult forum mostly on Exult business. No interest in giving trolls a forum.
That’s cool, from the definition I use, it would be those that stray from the topic at hand, or saying things to primary exhibit an emotional response.
This topic is about RG and EA. I believe we’re basically staying on topic. And if I’ve said anything to exhibit an emotional response from you, that was not the intent. I haven’t been anymore inflammatory than anyone else here. But that’s cool if you want to single me out. Kinda proves my point about herd mentality here. In fact Sergorn has apparently called out WTF in private about cnc4. I wonder what else people have agreed with me on, but don’t feel it popular to agree on the board about.
As I’ve stated before I initially brought cnc into the discussion being an EA game that shows EA’s lack of support to their games. If you play multiplayer, you know what I mean. Whether you like multiplayer games or not, it’s an undeniably huge part of gaming today. To have very long server down times and instability for weeks on end is not as acceptable as it might have once been.
I have also not personally attacked anyone. Which is why I ask you, what is your definition of a troll? I find calling someone a troll over and over again, without any reasons, an act of trolling.
Something more complex, involving stuff like object bounding boxes (as the movement system does), wouldn’t have seen much in the way of additional, last-minute revision.
That is an opinion, not a fact. If it’s a fact prove it. If you didn’t care how I feel then why ask?
You Asked
And what would have been changed had EA given him those three extra months?
I didn’t work for origin, so that is a very open ended question.
10 months and you don’t think they could have gotten some of the controls a little more precise. Interesting.
More points I’d like to touch upon… later…
MicronMagic: It amuses me, to some extent, that you feel you can toss casual assertions of people here having a “herd mentality” about, and then claim that you haven’t been excessively inflammatory.
Just because I’ve been corrected on a point doesn’t mean I agree with you now, or that I agreed with you before. I had an opinion about the Command & Conquer series based on my experience of the three games in the series that I have played: Red Alert (the only one I count as a favourite), the first one, and Tiberian Sun (which told a pretty good story, but was “meh” as far as engine and implementation were concerned). Sergorn corrected me on some points, informed me of the different direction that the series had taken post-Westwood, and overall improved my opinion to the point that a) I thought the game sounded decent and b) was interested to give it a try.
But even before that point, note that I did not agree with you. I rather didn’t care about the series. That was me.
Not by name, perhaps. But calling the lot of us a herd? That’s…something else, isn’t it?
Without attempting to imply that I am an expert in the field of engine design, might I suggest that you obviously have no idea just how complex game engines are?
I’d say it’d be doubtful, yeah. Something that core to the engine would be a risky undertaking to heavily tweak in the last few months prior to release, unless it was causing game-breaking bugs on a consistent basis. Which, simply, was not the case with Ultima 8.
Dominus:
Yeah. I think I’m gonna lock the comments down.
All in all this is an interesting argument. In my opinion, there is no arguing that Ultima VIII and IX are flawed as Ultimas. Origin bit off more than they could chew while under the yoke of a corporate publisher. They tried to make changes as to avoid redundancy, though were unable to successfully do so within allotted times.
Ultima VIII was a good game, though a failed Ultima experiment. Ultima Online was a catalyst for the state of Ultima IX. This is the fault of both Richard Garriott and Electronic Arts. Period. From interviews and financial reasoning, this should be apparent. Work on IX ceased in order to finish the potential perpetual money maker that is Ultima Online. 3d cards became popular, and Origin adhered to an old design philosophy, and thus scrapped the Ultima IX that the majority of us were waiting for. I still look upon some of those old screen shots in a state of nostalgia.
Giving that Ultima Online was a perpetual money-maker, EA started to lose steam with Origin. Two flagship titles could not be produced in a certain period of time, and financially failed. Companies are usually “in it” for money, after all.
Now we are wondering if an unrelated studio can create a “true” Ultima. Perhaps. Maybe if the studio in question plays IV-IX (while taking notes), ignores console gaming, and is somehow able to capture the atmosphere of the original games, then maybe they can. Or possibly we will get something like Gothic 4 – Arcania. I personally have to judge any potential new Ultima game on its own merits, as there is no Origin, we have a different EA, and they are unlikely to work with Richard Garriott on anything.
Agreed, and remarkable post. Now for my shepherd’s rambling pittance:
I think Ultima is best kept in the hearts of its fans, whether they just play the game or are professional developers. It should, as it always has, inspire us to create worlds where we could experience the same feeling of when we first discovered it.
I like to look at the situation now without strong emotion, other than an overarching sense of satisfaction and gratitude for what the series has to offer us, even if it stays where it is now (or was “then”).
So, passionate fans, get together and make something good. Keep each moment that sparked our imaginations and give them life in your own fiction. Let Ultima live on with dignity, not a frantic rat race.
Ultima is more about artistic interpretation now than a way to make a ton of money or exploit IP. If it is used to make a ton of money, that doesn’t have anything to do with the concept of an Ultima game (at least not to me as a fan). It’s good for someone, but doesn’t improve the idea.
I think we need a survey of what everyone’s idea of an Ultima game is best at. Let’s make a list of commonly attributed attributes to the series. Choose your favorite. I’ll start.
Powerful story
System of virtues/ethics
Charismatic characters
Leveling system
Spell system
Combat system
Soundtrack/Score
Sandbox
Quests
Nice Intro and Ending sequences
Simulated landscapes
Simulated cities and towns
Simulated people and societies
Simulated physical object interaction
Simulated ecosystems
Simulated survival mechanisms
Graphics
Sound
Interface
Humor
Additions welcome. Oh, and I vote for “Simulated physical object interaction”, thank you very much.
I’d vote for a powerful sandbox and logical npc scheduling. Only Richard Garriott can make this happen. Again, the guy has been to outer space.
By that logic, Buzz Aldrin could build an NPC-rich sandbox game too. 😉
Trolling at its best, thanks for proofing my point. Saves me some writing I’d not have done 🙂
🙂 I was hoping you’d call me out on incoherence. I’m glad someone got that, that was a joke!
See, I couldn’t tell. That’s how much sense you’ve been making in this thread of late. (It doesn’t help that I’ve seen similar arguments on Twitter and elsewhere from other EA-haters…including the space bit, at times.)
Regarding the whole “Only Richard Garriott can make a powerful sandbox with logical scheduling”, I can’t help to point out that Richard Garriott hasn’t done such a game since Ultima VII which was basically twenty years ago 😛
I also feel that when Garriott thinks of a heir to Ultima for New Britannia he very much thinks of a spiritial successor to Ultima Online – which is something that would not work for many fans.
Recreating Ultima online would be very unwise in my opinion. Sure it may generate perpetual revenue, at least for a while, though Garriott needs to remember that Ultima Online was a major contributor to the demise of a company that he started above his parents garage. Also, Tabula Rasa unfortunately was a failure. The market is flooded with MMO garbage, and what we need are good, solid, single-player story-driven CRPGs.
Perhaps that is why I am driven to work with Exult Studio. I feel the need to consistently revisit the era where games had the kind of magic that is severely lacking in today’s games.
I am not trying to bash Garriott, as he is still an idol in many respects, and I owe him a debt of gratitude for creating Origin and Ultima. However, I call things as I see them and feel that it is unfair to pull any punches.
Whatever he is a cooking at Portalarium it WON’T be a story driven single player RPG so there is no point of even remotely hoping for something like this.
I suspect that like Tabula Rasa (And unlike UO) it will have a strong story component but it’ll still be an online game.