Ultima Forever: Quest for the Avatar

[Regolyth]

Ultima Forever: Quest for the Avatar



"Ultima is Forever, and you’d be silly to think it was dead. Ultima IV is being reborn as Ultima Forever: Quest for the Avatar, from a small but dedicated team at BioWare Mythic, with Paul Barnett as the Creative Director. It’ll be cross-platform on your PC (not Facebook) and your iPad and it won’t cost you a penny to play. Oh, and it’s a complete re-imagining of the classic Ultima IV, only this time you can adventure through Britannia with your friends at your back. It’s not quite an MMO, and it’s not quite an offline RPG. But it’s all Ultima, and it’s sounding like something we should all get excited about.

I was able Paul Barnett late last night after he’d flown out to San Diego for Comic Con, such is the man’s commitment to making sure we nerdy press types get our info to feed our readers. That and I pretty much begged he and the PR folks to take a late call so we could hit the 9am embargo time when earlier appointments fell through due to scheduling conflicts. So before we write anymore: thank Paul, Alana, and Teresa for working so hard to make sure the call happened. I hope they all slept more than I did. Now… where were we? Oh yeah, Ultima Forever. It’s a thing!"

Well this is interesting news. It's the RPG form of UO for PC/iPad (a remake of Ultima IV. It could be cool, but I doubt it. Given that EA owns the UO license now, I do not have very high expectations for this. However, there is something positive that could become of this. It could open the doorway to UO2. That would be pretty awesome, provided they bring Lord British on board and don't do their usual EA stuff (like ruining things).

In reading the comments about this article, it is clear that the fans are not happy. They are immediately skeptical about EA, Bioware and Paul Barnett (whom I always liked).

Something unrelated to this that I would like to share. Also while reading the comments, someone mentioned that Bioware was a part of this, and said they "threw up" at the mention of it. It made me sad. I remember back when if someone said that Bioware was doing something, you immediately knew it would be a great game. It's sad how far they have fallen by selling to EA.

[Morreion]

Thanks for this, Rego. Here's another article about Ultima Forever I saw recently:

EA's Paul Barnett: Ultima Forever reboot is not an MMO (Massively)

Barnett compared the game to the hunting areas in older BioWare titles like Baldur's Gate, and he pointed out that the essence of Ultima Forever is focused on improving your virtues through a BioWare storyline and plenty of dungeoneering. "It's very much a classic RPG adventure. It's more in Dragon Age's territory than that of an MMO," he explained.


The comments on the Massively article are virtually all hostile as well. This is interesting to me. I think some of this hostility has to do with disappointment that it wasn't an updated version of UO- there's a decent amount of restlessness over the fact that MMOs are in a rut and new ideas (or sandboxes) are wanted. Paul Barnett is forever linked to the disappointment in how WAR turned out. Of course few people like EA, and Bioware has taken a hit since SWTOR.

It just seems that there are lots of gamers who are unhappy with the industry right now. Great game series from the past like the Ultima series are just another F2P quickie release now. It is sad when you think about how far the hobby has fallen, and once-great studios have disappointed.

[Regolyth]

Jul 16, 2012 9:24:32 GMT -5 Morreion said:

The comments on the Massively article are virtually all hostile as well. This is interesting to me. I think some of this hostility has to do with disappointment that it wasn't an updated version of UO- there's a decent amount of restlessness over the fact that MMOs are in a rut and new ideas (or sandboxes) are wanted. Paul Barnett is forever linked to the disappointment in how WAR turned out. Of course few people like EA, and Bioware has taken a hit since SWTOR.

I got that same impression. And to be honest, I'm not sure it's completely unwarranted. EA has really destroyed several gaming studios. And I'm very surprised that EA took the route of creating UO:QA instead of just an updated version of UO. I mean, how many years has the community been begging for it? How long have we asked for something different? How long have we wanted a giant sandbox just to do whatever we wanted in?

Give us what we want! Not what you think we need!

On a side note, I was happy with Warhammer. It was the first game I could PvP my way to the max level (and I did, on more than one character). I realize the game wasn't what some people were expecting, but it was still solid, good, and loads of fun (or at least it was for me). I will say though, something that would have made the game better, would have been for three factions. And three factions in WAR would have been very easy, given the Warhammer universe. Actually, there could have easily been five factions and it would have made more sense than two.

[Morreion]

Jul 17, 2012 10:02:54 GMT -5 Regolyth said:

EA has really destroyed several gaming studios. And I'm very surprised that EA took the route of creating UO:QA instead of just an updated version of UO. I mean, how many years has the community been begging for it? How long have we asked for something different? How long have we wanted a giant sandbox just to do whatever we wanted in?

Give us what we want! Not what you think we need!

Amen, brother! Archeage is the only AAA sandbox in development now, though there are a few indie ones on the way that are worth rooting for.

As for WAR, I can't figure out why Mythic did the 2 factions instead of 3. Perhaps time and money constraints (I remember being really worried when I heard that WAR was cutting back on the 6 cities they said they would have and only doing 2).

WAR should have been DAoC 2. They blew that chance and I doubt they'll have another chance to do it, sadly.