Welcome back to another year of Spam Spam Spam Humbug. This year, to ring in 2016, episodes for the month of January (and, now, into February) will mostly be focused on re-capping the news pertaining to Ultima, including Ultima Online (which, at least for now, is the only game still in active development that is carrying on the Ultima namesake), various Ultima fan projects, and also different games that have been inspired by Ultima (including Shroud of the Avatar and Underworld Ascendant, as well as — possibly — Shards Online and Crowfall).

This week, we will be looking at what has transpired with Ultima Online over the course of 2015. Toward the end of the podcast, we discuss what became of Stratics, since as of the end of that year the site was up for sale. And while I initially thought that the campaign by the moderation staff to buy the domain had failed, it turns out that they did in fact succeed in purchasing Stratics. And since that time, they have migrated it to new servers, are working on updating the site documentation, and are also looking to hire some new team members.

Golem Dragon, in the pre-show discussion (which, sadly, I wasn’t able to find audio for), mentioned The Realm Online as another long-running online game. And toward the end of the episode, he also noted that Stephen Nichols has launched a GoFundMe page to crowdfund initial development on a spiritual successor to The Realm; evidently, he’s dissatisfied with the neglect that the original game has been on the receiving end of under its current owners.

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