Twenty-four years ago — on February 27th, 1992 — the Ultima Dragons virtual club was founded by Doug Ricket (who came to be known as Gold Dragon) on Prodigy. Initially, the club was known as Playing Ultima For Fun (PUFF); Ricket became known as PUFF1. The club held on to this name for a couple of months, before Ricket took on the Gold Dragon moniker; the first Great Council of Dragons was comprised of Silver Dragon, Dark Dragon, Black Dragon, Green Dragon, and Emerald Dragon (who were later joined by Copper Dragon, and I am told that how he went about acquiring the name is quite the tale indeed).

Prodigy distinguished itself early on in the online services market by offering both message board and email services, among other features; these two features, in particular, proved to be staggeringly popular with users. As such, Prodigy made a couple of very controversial decisions regarding its fee structures: it limited the number of free emails users could send per month (charging 25 cents for each additional message past that limit), and then later began charging hourly rates for several of its features (including the bulletin boards).

These changes in fee structure led tens of thousands of users to abandon Prodigy, including many of the early Ultima Dragons; the Prodigy club was all but abandoned by 1994.

However, in September of 1994, Gold Dragon and Stephen Brindle (also known as Ethereal Dragon) partnered up to create a new, Internet-based presence for the club; Ethereal set up the original alt.games.ultima.dragons Usenet newsgroup, and also put together the first FTP archive for the club. This iteration of the club — which quickly began attracting members — was called the Internet Chapter to distinguish it from the original Prodigy-based iteration. However, soon after the formation of the Internet Chapter, the remaining Prodigy Dragons voted to disband that part of the club.

Today, the Ultima Dragons Internet Chapter keeps that name, formally, although it would be just as correct to refer to them as the Ultima Dragons. The official website of the Dragons is still udic.org, and it is there that one is able to join the Dragons and choose a Dragon Name. There are also Facebook and Google+ groups whereat Dragons congregate, and many members of the club frequent the Weyrmount MOO.

Exactly how many Dragons there are is a bit unclear, but the commonly-accepted estimate appears to be 16,000 members. Individual Dragons have been featured in three Ultima games — Arbuthnot Dragon in Ultima 5 and Ultima Underworld, and Umbrae Dragon in Serpent Isle. (Arbuthnot also created the Codex Symbol trinket that came in the Ultima 5 box.) The Dragons were also acknowledge with the release of the Dragon Edition of Ultima 9. And if you search the Ultima Dragons grand roster (or even the current members roster) you’ll find a number of famous names on the list, including John Romero, Greg Kasavin, and Felicia Day. Many Dragons have come to regard the club almost as a family; Dragons have established lifelong friendships — and, in some cases, even marriages — with other Dragons over the years. Members of the club have, in a lot of respects, grown up together, even though most have never met each other in person.

That is, as Gallara Dragon put it, “pretty good for a club started by a 13 year-old boy”!

And really, it’s a profoundly awesome thing that the club continues to exist — and continues to be as active as it is — seventeen years after the release of the last new Ultima game (since 1999, Ultima Online has been the only project carrying on the Ultima namesake, apart from the short-lived Ultima Forever: Quest for the Avatar and the only slightly longer-lived Lord of Ultima). And it’s a testament, I think, to the impact that the Ultima series has had on people who have played the games that comprise it, that the Dragons are still active, still discussing the games, and even still finding out new things about them.