There are several other sites that cover Ultima Online and its fan communities in greater detail than Aiera does, and I don’t intend to step on any toes. However, I figure I might make a point of periodically aggregating news from a handful of UO-related sites, just to keep you all informed about what the other half of Ultima’s fandom is up to.

Raph Koster asks: Does a virtual economy affect player retention?

He goes on to answer with a resounding yes, and notes that Ultima Online struggled because of a broken economy:

The economy in Ultima Online was severely broken because of limited resources being hoarded, resulting in items not spawning. Essentially, insufficient liquidity in the market results in player loss.

…

Once you get to the top tier, there’s additional wrinkles you can add into the mix, the biggest of which is whether you have a perfect information economy or not (WoW’s auction house is global, and basically acts like eBay, flattening prices; original SWG merchants and UO vendors were local, and therefore you could hunt for the best prices). The degree of customizability not just in visuals but in statistics permits varying quality goods, etc. Price fluctuations over time can lead to more sophisticated play tactics such as shorting, arbitrage, and the like.

Ultima Online is “Widely Profitable”.

So sayeth Frank Gibeau, president of EA Games, in his answer to a question about the $300 million budget of The Old Republic:

But when you get one of these launched they persist for a long period of time. Ultima is on its first decade and it still has tens of thousands of subscribers and is widely profitable for us. It’s just the nature of the beast that you have to build this amount of content.

You can’t read the full article without registering at the site it’s posted at, but Deckard at UOJournal says that the read is well worth that brief hassle “if you are interested in seeing the direction that EA is going.”

Producer’s Holiday Update at the UO Herald

Calvin Crowner, the producer for Ultima Online, has posted an Independence Day update to the main UO website, in which he details some of the changes coming to the MMORPG in and after July. These will include changes to PVP, client bug fixes, the second part of the ongoing “live story” in the gargoyle realm of Ter Mur, and new art, items, and rewards.

His closing statement, however, was what really caught my attention:

P.S….We have noted that there is a leadership vacuum in Britannia…Wait until you see how we fill it

This is interesting, since I’m assuming that it is no longer legally permissible for BioWare Mythic to use the name “Lord British” in conjunction with UO. I could be wrong on that point, but it would be my guess. What change they will make in who rules the land…well, I’ve no actual information about that, though I have my suspicions.