Blogs

We took part in the End of Nations beta this weekend, and while I can’t speak too much on it (it’s under an NDA) I think I can say that it’s made me rethink exactly what the MMO genre is capable of. There was a time when playing any massively multiplayer game meant creating a vaguely elven looking character and venturing out into the world without as much as a goal or purpose. Now the MMORPG genre has evolved to the point where quests and instances rule, but the idea behind it hasn’t changed all that much and when you think about MMOs, that’s probably the sort of game that you think about. That’s changing though, the genre is rapidly expanding and developers are working to create new and exciting challenges the likes of which couldn’t have been imagined even a decade ago.

Ultima Forever is an attempt by EA to bring back an aging classic, an important franchise that has seen little to no love since the turn of the century and there hasn’t been a mainstream release involving the Ultima brand since 1997. While both the Ultima series and Ultima Online hold an important place in the history of the MMO genre, as well as the history of gaming overall, the series has fallen into disrepair and, after several attempts at getting a new Ultima game off the ground were thwarted, nobody expected to ever see a revival and, for the most part, I’m not sure too many people cared. There had been upwards of 10 games in the series, there had been multiple re-releases and novel tie-ins and, three decades after the original game was released and without the original creator, there was no way EA could recapture the soul that made the series a success.