Ultima Online


Ultima Online is a fantasy massively multiplayer online role-playing game released on September 24, 1997 by Origin Systems.
Set in the Ultima universe, it is known for its extensive player versus player combat system. Since its release, it has added eight expansion packs, a booster pack, and dozens of free content updates. The release of Kingdom Reborn in 2007 brought a new game engine with upgraded visuals.
In preparation for the launch of the Stygian Abyss expansion, support for the existing client was discontinued to optimize the patching procedure. As a replacement, a revised rendition of the Kingdom Reborn client emerged, rebranded as the "Enhanced Client." This revamped version was unveiled as an open beta in July 2009, coinciding with the release of Stygian Abyss. The "Enhanced Client" is a blend of some of the 3D models and UI from Kingdom Reborn and the 2D art used in the Classic Client. The Enhanced Client and the Classic Client are the two official clients as of 2025.

Gameplay

Ultima Online continued the tradition of previous Ultima games in many ways, but due to advancing technology and the simple fact that it was Origin's first persistent online game, many new game mechanics appeared. Since it was partially designed as a social and economic experiment, the game designers had to account for widespread player interaction as well as deal with the tradition of players feeling as if they were the center of attention, as had been the case in single-player games.

Worlds

Ultima Online began with a single world, with specific expansion packs adding additional territory and new worlds. The second world was the "Lost Lands", often referred to by players as T2A due to the expansion's name, "The Second Age", with additional land, dungeons, creatures, and terrain. The third was Trammel, which was a mirror of the original Ultima Online map. The release of Trammel led the developers to distinguish the original world by making the environment more grim and naming it "Felucca". The two kinds of servers were "normal" servers with both Trammel and Felucca ruleset and "siege" servers with non-consensual PVP and no item insurance. Siege servers support one character slot on an account, limits to ways of traveling and have other rules which generally make them more challenging than other servers.
The worlds in Ultima Online include:
  • Felucca — The original world, which evolved to include dead trees and tombstones to distinguish. It has a harsher rule set where player killing is more common.
  • Trammel — Supported a rule set that does not allow non-consensual PVP and includes additional open land for player housing.
  • Ilshenar — Added dungeons and monsters and evolved to include new land, as well as more than 30 new creatures.
  • Malas — Included a Player versus Player arena and space for 1500 new player homes. It featured Dungeon Doom, the largest dungeon at the time of its release, and two cities: Luna and Umbra. Malas is a series of islands floating in a starry void and is distinguished by a darker artistic style. Malas was praised for its variety of creatures and geographic features.
  • Tokuno — Group of islands based on Feudal Japan.
  • Ter Mur — Land of the Gargoyles. The capital, Ter Mur, features space for player homes.
  • Valley of Eodon — A primitive, prehistoric style land-mass with dinosaurs and giant apes.

    Development

The game had an initial development budget of $2.5 million. Ultima Online is the product of Richard Garriott's idea for a fantasy game involving several thousand people who can all play in a shared fantasy world. Prior games allowed hundreds of people to play at the same time, including Habitat, The Realm Online, Neverwinter Nights and Meridian 59; however, Ultima Online significantly outdid these games, in both graphics and game mechanics. Garriott commented that "it was very important to us that Ultima Online be a game with a theme, and story, and quest - and then support larger, grander activity. We don't want it to be just player controlled and dominated; we want it to be an Ultima experience, with all the qualities that people expect from that. Ultima Online will be, I believe, the very first ever completely virtual world for the mass public to go live out alternate lives in." The goal was to offer the player as much freedom as possible.
The initial team was composed of Garriott, Starr Long, Rick Delashmit, Scott Phillips and, a bit later, Raph Koster, who became the lead designer. Koster wrote public "designer letters" and usually went by his nickname of Designer Dragon. Koster drew inspiration from prior online games, such as DartMUD.
The project started in 1995 and was presented to the public at E3 as "Ultima Online: Shattered Legacy" in May 1996. Origin claimed to have more than 3,000 participants in the preliminary alpha testing. The development cost was much greater than for previous, offline computer games; it relied on people accessing servers via modem. Ultima Online's initial features included persistent player housing, skill-based character progression, a craft-based and player-driven economy, and unrestricted player-versus-player combat.
An artificial life engine was supposed to be implemented into the game. A preview announced that ecological events in the game would affect animal behavior, potentially creating new adventure possibilities in an organic manner. However, this feature never made it beyond the game's beta stage. Richard Garriott explained:

Beta and assassination of Lord British

was Garriott's in-game alter ego, who was killed during an in-game appearance at Ultima Onlines beta test on August 9, 1997. During a server population stress test, a player character known as Rainz cast the "fire field" spell, killing Lord British. Producer Starr Long blamed it on human error: Lord British's character, like others, had been made invulnerable to this kind of attack, but by design, the invulnerability did not persist over several game sessions. When the server crashed shortly before the incident, Garriott forgot to reset his invulnerability status. Shortly after, administrators banned Rainz's account from the beta test for repeatedly exploiting, rather than reporting, bugs. According to Origin, he was not banned for the assassination but rather for prior complaints against his account highlighted by this incident. Beta testers protested Rainz's ban as well as subsequent actions of Long and other developers, during which his in-game character used a spell to indiscriminately kill other characters who observed the assassination. September 23, 1997 was the last day of the original beta test. The beta ended with a bang, as players were treated to an "end of the world" scenario with Shadowlords, demons, and other evil creatures slaughtering every character in sight.

Origin era (1995–2004)

In September 1997, Ultima Online launched and opened the first game servers to the public. Upon release, Ultima Online proved popular, reaching 100,000 paying subscribers within six months, causing severe lag problems. In 1999, servers opened around the world to support the rising popularity of the game, in Japan, Europe and South Korea. In 2000, Garriot resigned from Origin, taking Lord British with him. Game players created their own fanfiction speculations as to why the Lord had vanished. In February 2000, a large in-world event had a massive army of undead lay siege to the Britannia city of Trinsic. The event ran concurrently on all servers over several months. Another server opened in Australia during this time. In May 2000, Ultima Onlines second expansion Ultima Online: Renaissance dramatically altered the game. It split the game world into two mirrored worlds called Trammel and Felucca. In Trammel all PVP was required to be consensual, while in Felucca players could be attacked by others players without consent. In November 2000, Ultima Online's first official fanfest was held, called the UO World Faire in Austin, TX. In March 2001, Ultima Onlines third expansion Ultima Online: Third Dawn was released and introduced graphics which attempted to reproduce a three-dimensional effect. It added a new area to the server called Ilshenar which could only be accessed with a new game client that launched with the expansion. The original game client could be used in the previous server areas. In January 2002, Ultima Onlines second official fanfest was called Online Worlds FanFest, also held in Austin. Players were able to meet the developers, as well as guest speaker Todd McFarlane. February saw the release of Ultima Onlines fourth expansion Ultima Online: Lord Blackthorn's Revenge. Notably, it enabled access to the areas previously only available to the newer Third Dawn game client. In February 2003, Ultima Onlines fifth expansion Ultima Online: Age of Shadows was released. It was the most game changing update yet including: offering players the ability to custom design their game homes, a server area that doubled the amount of player housing available, and overhauled the item system.
Ultima Online was the first MMORPG to reach the 100,000 subscriber base, far exceeding that of any game that went before it. Subscriber numbers peaked at around 250,000 in July 2003, but then began a steady decline. In February 2004, Origin Systems shut down. Ultima Online no longer had a named studio managing it. Development headquarters moved from Austin to Fairfax, Virginia.

Electronic Arts era (2004–2006)

The sixth expansion, Samurai Empire, launched in November 2004, was Japanese-themed. It offered two new professions, the Ninja and the Samurai, as well as new Japanese-themed housing tile sets. New lands, the Tokuno Islands, were added, with the cities being styled after ancient Japanese cities.
Expansion number seven, Mondain's Legacy, launched in August 2005. It featured the second player race, Elves. The quest system received a major upgrade, as did the crafting system. Spellweaving was added to the skills. Many new dungeons were added. This expansion was the first that was only available online. Mondain's Legacy was the last expansion for several years, with updates becoming more irregular after that point.