We don’t really cover Shroud of the Avatar news around here all that much on the Codex anymore, for various reasons that aren’t worth getting into at the moment. But while Richard Garriott has largely moved on from that particular project, his Lord British persona does still exist as a character in the game, and he does still pop in for things like birthday livestreams. And this year, the livestream promised…something:

This July is truly going to be a special Lord British birthday! Richard Garriott (aka Lord British) will be joining us on July 17th for a special update stream, celebrating his birthday and talking about things to come.

As I am sure, most everyone has heard some rumor of the rights to Ultima changing hands from Electronic Arts (EA) back to Richard Garriott. I have no doubt we will be able to entice Richard into providing some good solid info on what is happening and maybe some inkling as to the plans for Ultima. I also plan to provide some details as to how this will affect SotA and the story line.

Now, before you get too excited, it’s worth noting that the good folks at MassivelyOP were able to catch the livestream — unlike yours truly — and their report back on it was that allusions to Ultima therein were “vague” (their word) at best:

Richard Garriott celebrated his birthday over the weekend, and as he’s done a few times now, he joined in with Catnip Games’ Chris Spears for a birthday livestream on the Shroud of the Avatar Twitch channel to discuss some things about the game, the Ultima copyright, and other general matters.

We’ll touch on the Ultima news first, and the short summary here is that there is no news yet. Garriott repeats some of what he said in previous reporting about a path to regaining the copyright for Ultima, but also points out how discussions with various others are making that more complicated. Ultimately he hopes that he will meet a “soft deadline” of having more substantial things to discuss at this year’s DragonCon event.

Tangentially, Spears interjected with the belief that a revival of Ultima would actually bring more people in to SOTA, but he also points out that making video games takes time and that he’s doing everything he can in order to make sure Catnip’s current MMORPG stays around for as long as possible. Yet perhaps most interestingly, Garriott and Spears both suggest that ideas for another Ultima could be concepted and tried out in SOTA.

EA still holds the trademark for Ultima, and in fact recently updated and expanded upon it, so any new Ultima would have to happen under license. There was a time when that sort of licensing would have had no chance in being granted, and that may still be the case for all I know. It was nearly a year ago that EA announced that it was being purchased and would be transitioning to a privately-held company; not having to satisfy pressure from investors can sometimes open companies up to projects and ventures that they wouldn’t have been willing to risk otherwise. But it would, I think, be aspirational to even call a new Ultima “aspirational” at this point.

Also:

Otherwise the broadcast [featured]…a moment that discusses not advertising for SOTA until it’s in a more marketable state.

Perhaps getting Shroud of the Avatar to a point where the developers feel confident in even advertising it would be a good first goal, before any effort is made to use it as a testbed for a hypothetical Ultima title?