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Released in September 30, 1997 by Origin Systems Inc, Ultima Online (UO) was the first of the real massively multiplayer games. The game is played online and has a fantasy setting, like the other Ultima games that preceded it.
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2 The Assassination of Lord British 3 Expansions 4 Shard Emulators 5 External Links |
Ultima Online's success opened the door for the creation of many exciting new massively multiplayer games that have or are about to hit the market. UO is a third-person/isometric fantasy role-playing game set in the Ultima universe. It is online-only and played by thousands of simultaneous users (who pay a monthly fee) on various game servers, also known as "Shards." There have been hundreds of thousands of subscribers. To maintain order in the online community, there are gamemasters who resolve player disputes, police the shard for terms of service violations, and correct glitches in the game.
Several expansions have been released, but its aging game engine and graphics make it fairly outdated compared to competitive, new massively multiplayer games. The original Ultima Online sequel, "Ultima Worlds Online" was canceled before it's release citing the competitive nature of the Massively Multiplayer Online Gaming market, fearing that the sequal would harm Ulimta Online's subscription numbers and vice versa. A new sequal is currently under development called Ultima Online X: Odyssey, which is to bring together the stories from Ulitima IX and Ultima Online. The number of subscribers achieved by UO was surpassed by Everquest in 1999.
Technically-inclined fans of Ultima Online have reverse-engineered the game to produce emulators of the original game servers. This emulation is perfectly legal, and Origin is aware of its existence, although in certain countries the authors of these emulators are considered to have violated their software license by reverse-engineering the game, and may be banned from the official UO servers as a result (other countries don't allow restrictions on reverse engineering). These shards are usually run on a spare computer. They are almost always operated without a charge to the player. These "player-run" shards are often set in environments other than the Ultima universe, and their rules of conduct for their players vary greatly. Many shards encourage or enforce their players to roleplay and remain in-character.
Lord British (Richard Garriott's character) is supposed to be immortal. However, this was not the case during an in-game appearance in Ultima Online's beta test on August 8, 1997. A player character known as Rainz cast a spell called "fire field" on Lord British that surprisingly killed him. Shortly afterwards, Rainz's account was banned from the beta test for previously exploiting bugs rather than reporting them (infamously used by his character Aquaman to kill many player characters). According to Origin, he was not banned for the assassination but rather for previous complaints against his account that were brought to light as a result of this attention.
Overview
The Assassination of Lord British
Expansions
Shard Emulators
External Links