In a pair of articles at the MMORPG news site, Massively’s Game Archaeologist looks at two Origin Systems MMORPGs that never saw the light of day: Ultima Worlds Online: Origin (or Ultima Online 2, if you prefer), and Ultima X: Odyssey.

Ultima Online 2

Concerning Ultima Worlds Online: Origin, the Archaeologist notes:

Originally given the much saner title of Ultima Online 2 and billed as “the second generation of MMORPGs,” Ultima Worlds Online: Origin’s development was announced in 1999 with the goal of a late 2000 release. Once again, Origin Systems took the lead on the project and came up with a few fairly interesting ideas as the series leaped into the third dimension.

In an early preview, Gamespot found the game to be a step up from its contemporaries: “Ultima Worlds Online: Origin certainly looks good; though it uses a third-person, behind-the-back camera view reminiscent of Asheron’s Call’s default perspective, Ultima Worlds Online: Origin has a much more detailed world populated with much larger and more highly-detailed characters and monsters.”

Reflecting the often-shifting world of Ultima, UWO:O would take place in an alternate timeline to UO, when disasters have reshaped the world and sparked an industrial revolution. Fantasy collided with steampunk in a big way, and anyone entering the game would have to handle the juxtaposition of wizards and clunky robots. Dynamic weather effects were to provide an additional layer of immersion for adventurers.

Three races — the warrior-like Juka, the magical Meer, and the standard Humans — were to be the sole player options. In making the jump to 3-D, Origin used motion capture to provide lifelike animations for character movement and fights. Because characters could no longer cap out multiple skills (or “classes”), grouping was heavily emphasized, with expected gangs of roving players to number between 20 and 30.

It’s tantalizing to think of this world gone unexplored. When one of the technical directors was asked about what his favorite effects were in the game, he responded by saying, “Just last week, I saw some gorgeous dragon wings with specular highlights, cool shiny weapons (using a form of environment mapping, for you tech heads), flaming arrows, and a lot more. I can’t really answer this since it changes each week though ? there’s that much cool stuff.”

Alas, it was not to be:

Obviously, Ultima Worlds Online: Origin didn’t make its 2000 launch date, and by early 2001, EA announced that it was pulling the plug on the project — all of Origin’s projects, actually — axing hundreds of employees and shifting resources back to UO. It was then that Richard Garriott resigned from EA to start work on Tabula Rasa along with a number of other ex-Origin employees.

According to Origin System’s David Swofford, EA didn’t want to monkey with UO’s success by introducing a competing project: “I think when they saw UO2 they saw a product that was very similar to UO that’s already a proven success, and rather than to continue on with two products paralleling each other, they probably decided to continue the upward movement of the original by throwing more resources at UO and making it even better than it is now.”

And indeed, apart from a handful of screenshots, little remains of the game…although at least one of its trailers did make it on to YouTube:

Ultima X: Odyssey

The Game Archaeologist’s take on Ultima X: Odyssey echoes his comments on Ultima Worlds Online: Origin, and captures what I think are the major points about why this game was so damn exciting, even to those of us Ultima fans who — back in 2003 and 2004 — were nursing butthurts about Ultima 9 and the all-online direction that Origin Systems had taken.

Instead of billing this new game as a direct sequel to Ultima Online, EA chose to take a different semantic path by honoring the game as the next true entry in the Ultima franchise…one that just so happened to take place online in a multiplayer environment. It was meant to follow the troubled Ultima IX (Garriott’s last Ultima) and restore honor to the franchise. Hence the “X.”

By merging an Unreal Engine-powered version of UO with the elements that made the Ultima series so beloved by many, EA hoped that Odyssey would be catapulted into greatness.

So…what made the game interesting? Well…lots of things; it had a heck of a backstory, and also intended to incorporate all kinds of neat systems that became mainstays of later MMORPGs:

Odyssey took place in a created world known as Alucinor, which was actually both an experiment and a battleground of sorts. [Lead Designer Jonathan] Hanna explains it better: “At the end of Ultima IX, we learn that the Avatar (the hero) and the Guardian (the villain) merged together at the climax of their final battle. UXO’s story begins with the Avatar and the Guardian struggling for control of the god-like being that they have become. The Avatar is losing this battle and creates the world of Alucinor, a place where adventurers can journey to and learn about the Virtues just as the Avatar did during his travels in Britannia. But, because the Guardian also has great influence over Alucinor, he has created his own minions to thwart any would-be heroes.”

Players had their pick of six races on their journey (Elves, Orcs, Pixies, Phodas, Gargoyles and Humans) and 12 classes, or “Disciplines.” Then they would strike out to explore the land and better their characters through a mix of class- and skill-based leveling.

Another interesting concept that predated Lord of the Rings Online’s legendary item system by several years was Ultima X’s vision for intelligent trinkets that could be leveled up over time to create increasingly powerful items.

But if I had to pick, I would argue that the game’s main appeal lay in the fact that unlike any other Ultima game before it, UXO intended to incorporate the Virtues — and the impacts of acting in keeping with or against them — into the way the game played out:

Returning for Ultima X was the concept of virtues. Instead of always asking you to kill the Big Bad who’s threatening to end the world, the Ultima series often tasked you with seeking out ways to better yourself in several “virtues.” In Ultima, these virtues were Compassion, Honesty, Honor, Humility, Justice, Sacrifice, Spirituality, and Valor.

Each virtue required you to perform different actions and engage in different styles of quests. On top of that, EA promised that you could make choices during your quests that would change the outcome and add to different virtues depending on what you decided to do. Would you take mercy on a starving thief (and increase your Compassion) or lay the smack-down on him (and up your Justice)? Long before BioWare promised the same sorts of tough moral and ethical decisions in The Old Republic, the Odyssey team wrapped an entire game around the concept.

Sadly, it too was not to be:

Despite reports that Ultima X was nearing completion, EA once again pulled the plug on an Ultima Online sequel, echoing its reasoning from last time. On June 30th, 2004 — mere months before World of Warcraft and EverQuest II launched — the company announced that Ultima X was no more.

“We feel that Ultima Online is where we need to focus our online efforts and most of my team will be moving to the UO expansion pack, the UO live team, and an unannounced Ultima Online project. Development on UO will be greatly enhanced as we consolidate our resources behind that franchise,” Producer David Yee wrote in his farewell letter.

Reportedly, one of the biggest reasons behind the project’s death was EA’s decision to relocate the Austin, TX team to California, a move at which many devs balked. With the relocation a failure, the game’s development was hobbled and EA felt it had no choice but to give it the axe.

Here too, very little seems to have survived the closure of the project, although a few videos have made their way onto YouTube.

Ultima fans seem to be split on which of these two titles would have been the better and more enjoyable to play, and which would have been the more ground-breaking. Myself…well, I always wanted to see Ultima X: Odyssey come out, precisely because I found many of the things it wanted to introduce to the MMO space appealing. That was especially true, I think, of the fact that it was meant to feature actual storylines that could be explored in an essentially single-player way; few MMOs since then have tried to attempt the same thing, at least to the same depth that Origin intended to offer.

Bonus link: Alec Meer of Rock, Paper, Shotgun! comments on how he “nearly starred” in Ultima Online 2.

(via ceearrbee and UltimaReturn)