All Ultima Titles On Sale at GOG This Weekend (Wing Commander Too!)
Well, this perhaps sheds some light on what Jeff Skalski and Paul Barnett were on about with their recent tweets concerning GOG.com:
Ground-breaking, redefining, legendary–however you want to name these two franchises, there aren’t many other series with a comparable fanbase and affection from gamers of all ages. This weekend, all games from Wing Commander and Ultima series available on GOG.com are discounted by 50%. You have the chance to buy Wing Commander 4, or Ultima VII: the Complete Edition for only $2.99 until Monday, June 4 11:59 PM EDT.
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Become the Ultimate Commander (THE ULTIMMANDER!) and buy the complete collection of EA’s Most Famous Classic Series for only $26.91, this weekend on GOG.com.
You’re still here? Get thee to GOG.com, if by some chance you have not yet availed yourself of the availability of all these great Origin Systems games:
- Ultima 1, 2, & 3
- Ultima 4, 5, & 6
- Ultima Underworld 1 & 2
- Ultima 7: The Black Gate & Serpent Isle
- Ultima 8
- Wing Commander 1 & 2
- Wing Commander 3
- Wing Commander 4
- Wing Commander Privateer
Now, if only they’d get on about the business of adding Savage Empire, Martian Dreams, and Ultima 9 to the list. And Wing Commander Prophecy, for that matter.
But I digress. You’re still here?
Will not buy WC1+2 and Privateer without the expansion packs.
GOG would give the expansions for free if they ever get them (and they will get them if anyone does). I finally went and bought the two series from GOG. That leaves about $20 from my Skyrim modding prize money. It made me feel a little better that I wasn’t spending “real” money.
While there, I noticed there was a “Redeem your copy of the Witcher” option. I had previously bought Witcher on Steam, though I kinda wished I had it on GOG. Well… enter your Steam Witcher product key and… presto! Witcher on GOG as well. That was a little bit of awesomeness.
Yeah, I did that too with my old retail copy of Witcher.
The thing GOG have the expansions, they’ve been given the GO from EA to distribute… but are still not putting them for some reasons, citing what seems to be non existant “right issues”. They even went as far as to excice Righteous Fire from Privateer CD (by deleting the RF related trees) even though there never was a Privateer CD version *without* the addon.
That’s just crazy.
We can be grateful Ultima VII’s addon are so embedded in the usecode they cannot be removed 😛
I know this isn’t Open Forum day, but I have to comment on the new site layout. You’ve got to shrink that “Creation takes time…” tagline (which I hate anyway), and get rid of the calendar and the giant first picture. There is practically no readable content “above the scroll” on the entire front page. And even beyond the bottom of the page, there’s the pinned Extra Life 2012 article (and picture) that you have to scroll past before FINALLY seeing new postings.
What’s your opinion on the main UltimaCodex.com layout, just so I know?
I thought it was “retired”, except as a museum of special features like the 20th anniversaries of Ultima 7 and Underworld, and that Aiera was the main site now?
Anyway, now that you brought it up, I clicked Codex Home, and looked over ultimacodex.com.
Same kind of issues, really. On my 1280×800 laptop the screen breaks right below the 6 pics under the main pic. It looks like a single full-screen portal to various special features, with nothing to indicate that recent news and postings exist if you just scroll down.
“Open Forum day”, or the R.I.O.T., is always a blessing although the site admins pay attention to every post including those in the Forums.
In any case, I like the site design though it seems the main page can get a bit stagnant when fresher treasures lay just beneath. I appreciate my imagined cause, as I suspect it’s updated to reflect the posts which seem most important at the time. The charity drive for example is more important than whatever bullshit we generally discuss here. I’m not interested in the charity, but I see the logic and “virtue” of it.
As far as efficient display of new content and navigation thereto is concerned, it may be wise to show brief titles over thumbnails of recent posts alongside more detailed “front page” selections.
We do try to catch everything. My inbox overfloweth with notifications of comments and forum posts, but at least this way I can be reasonably sure I won’t miss too many important things.
Now, if only I could get the damn contact form working…
I think what I might do is see if I can limit sticky posts (which the top “large image” posts on the main page are) to a fixed number, perhaps even just one. That way, if it so happens that I need to sticky a second post, it’ll temporarily hide the first one…but once I un-sticky said post, the post I want to show as a perma-sticky (like the charity post) will pop back into place.
Or something like that. It’s all very much a work in progress, and even now we’re researching new theme/layout options.
It is mostly a portal; all those newsbits just redirect to news here or at UO Gateway (or some of the other sites in the network). Which answer I hope kind of addresses your confusion; Aiera still serves as the general Ultima news portal, in conjunction with the UO Gateway that Deckard maintains. News from both sites is then moved to the main site at his and my discretion.
Blah, blah, blah…I swatted the Extra Life article. How does Aiera look now?