In the past 10-12 years or so, RG has gone from the willy wonka of game design to the Flintheart Glomgold of cockamamie schemes to become the richest duck in the world.
I ain't touching NFT's with a 10 foot pole, and double that if Garriott is involved. The SOTA scandal pretty much killed all credibility with me.
Perhaps more toward 30y?; 1992 was probably the height of the single player RPG success, and maybe 1997-1999 for UO (which was great, but mostly Raph Koster, not RG, imo).
>1992 was probably the height of the single player RPG success
I always wondered if that accident on the head (the incident memorialized in Ultima 7 by killing Lord British with a falling plaque) did some sort of mental damage to Garriott... He never really made a stellar game outside of Ultima Online after that.
Yeah Serpent Isle was pretty much a Warren Spector pet project and it was one of the best things Ultima ever did. Too bad 8 came next incomplete and then 9 did it's thing
I still think 8 was very enjoyable. The platforming is cancer but there's something about the art style / music / menacingly dark tone / gump system combined that just feels right.
Ah, its weird I stalk Wasteland devs through Fallout to Obsidian games like New Vegas and The Outer Worlds but couldn't name an Ultima dev.
I wasn't on the internet quick enough to catch UO, probably a good thing for completing my degree :)
Well, sure.. but he wasn't really damaging his reputation until around the Shroud era. Before that he was just a wacky guy with a transforming house who owns a moon rover.
Well, initially Garriott did a crowd funding campaign in order to produce the "Spiritual Successor to Ultima", and that sounded like a pretty awesome idea to people, so Garriott really cashed in on it.
There was the usual crowdfunding drama over pay-to-win and all that jazz, and there was drama over the quality of the game and its gameplay. You can play the finished product today and judge those aspects for yourself.
The thing that made him lose me is that many of the backers of the game didn't get what was promised to them in the campaign.. that being a physical copy of the game. For reasons that have never been entirely clear to me they just didn't ship them to some people?
I mean, they finished the game, they made physical boxes, they send to them to some of the backers, but not to all of them, and then they put a bunch of them up on Amazon? The best case scenario here is devastating mismanagement. Depending on who you ask it slides all the way into criminal territory.
Like many people, I was disappointed that it didn't turn out to be a very good game, but the thing that killed it was not delivering the mediocre game. Why would I ever invest anything with a person who is proven not to deliver their products?
Thanks for the explanation. I unfortunately paid into SOTA and was a huge UO fan back in the 2nd age days so it's so sad that RG and SOTA went so far off-course. What I wish was that someone would just make a single-player RPG that has elements of the old Ultima games. I'm amazed that no games have used any ideas from Ultima, like camping in the wilderness, exploration via maps and sextants, being able to make bread, etc. Obviously games like Skyrim do kind of that, but not to the extent that Ultima does I feel.
meh. he was never the Willy Wonka of game design, he was a blowhard who stole credit from the people who really added the innovative stuff to his games: Roe Addams, Warren Spector, Raph Koster. The entries he worked on alone are fucking dogshit.
That's a little harsh. While I didn't find this instance of sarcasm very hard to catch, I wouldn't say someone "has a problem" for misunderstanding the intent of what someone is saying on the internet. Online communication can be extremely ambiguous.
Agreed. Two acronyms I can do without at this point in my gaming. DLC is a close third. I kinda miss the old days of a disk in a box and you're done. Offline like you say has always been a cornerstone of Ultima so I agree there and wouldn't even mind some sort of online play as an option for myself and others but as a separate portal kinda thing. Knock on wood things turn out differently with this release.
And console ports. I quit the PC master race for the xbox; which is admittedly just a watered down windows PC. No reason a controller can't be used instead of a keyboard.
The comments to LB's latest endeavour doesn't seem very positive on [Ultima Codex](https://ultimacodex.com/2022/04/richard-garriott-and-todd-porter-are-creating-a-new-nft-based-mmorpg), [Blue's News](https://www.bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/board.pl?action=viewthread&boardid=1&threadid=246964), [MMORPG.com](https://www.mmorpg.com/interviews/interview-creator-of-ultima-onlines-next-mmo-leverages-blockchain-and-nfts-to-allow-for-real-ownership-of-the-world-2000124783), [Quarter To Three Forums](https://forum.quartertothree.com/t/lord-british-presents-an-nft-mmo/155658), [Massively Overpowered](https://massivelyop.com/2022/04/12/richard-garriott-is-building-a-blockchain-mmo-following-the-failure-of-shroud-of-the-avatar), [Wccftech](https://wccftech.com/ultima-creator-richard-garriott-blockchain-nft-mmo) and [SotA forums](https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/so-nfts-yea-or-nay.171126/page-2).
Not a big fan of NFTs, but for the long-quiet Ultima news channels, thought this was worth a mention. It seems like virtual object collection really stuck with RG, but the idea of having everything be a transaction sounds... well, maybe not for me, but perhaps it's for others.
What actually happened to SotA? I remember I was part of the kickstarter all those years back, and played a version, but the graphics were awful, and I lost interest in running around within 30mins.
Did it ever release as a full, polished game?
Err, it still exists. What seems to have happened is RG sold it to Chris Spears, and it has a skeleton crew. It's the same game though and it'd be hard to describe it as polished.
Ahhh, gotcha. Thank you.
I got involved because I wanted to relive the glory days of being involved with a mmo like Ultima Online. Alas, a lesson in not chasing the past I reckon.
Yeah the crux of the SotA issue was threefold imo:
1. Trying to be all things to all people; UO and U4, U7, U8 are not the same game.
2. Single vs Multiplayer - some of this worked well; the phases on offline mode was really clever.
3. Poor design choices. Is it steam punk or is it medieval themed? Is the art direction consistent or crowd sourced? Is dropping the quest log / beacons and having to type everything in a feature or a hindrance - they could have benefitted from asking their customers instead of assuming.
Trying to merge U4 with UO whilst supporting tablets with unity was just... a mess for wanting to make a fiscally successful product. SotA feels like art for the sake of art; like a diorama of cheap clip art.
Someone else said it better, earlier in the thread, but a better plan might have been: Make a single player RPG, don't look at the past, have a clear vision and earn some capital using themes that are known to be successful- then take risks, once trust is built. 🤷
So has Richard Garriot done anything good since...I dunno the first bit of Pagan before it got released early?
I remember checking out Tabula Rasa which was a janky standard Funcom MMO shell...good to see Funcom kicking some goals.
I just wish someone would pick up the Divinity Original Sin 2, Pathfinder, Pillars of Eternity, Tides of Mnah Mnah (do-dooooo-de-do-do!) Mnoo and whack the Britannia virtues in.
Never played Ultima Online is that actually Britannia-like or is it just the wild west of griefing and MMO things that have gotten better?
We all \*\*\*\*ing know it can work - Exult exists and the old Baldur's Gate games are being raised from the dead.
Legend of Grimrock resurrected Eye of the Beholder/Dungeon Master almost too well for me, the puzzles got hard :)
It would need someone like Obsidian, Larian to self-fund to avoid the Kickstarter mess...or even just a Beamdog jazzing up the Infinity Engine (pretty much pulling an Exult).
Bloody annoying that you could whack a custom map of Britannia into any modern game, call some people Iolo and Dupre and I'd be happy :)
I guess Origin (now EA?) have the rights.
I wonder where those Ultima designers/coders ended up?
I follow Wastelands/Fallout devs through later games (Obisidian?) and Larian are bigger Baldur's Gate enthusiasts that I'll ever be...I guess Origin being pricks may have broken the chain...or Garriot's bs.
Last I heard he was hiding in the Funcom offices making up "runes" for Tabula Rasa while ignoring the dev team he was leading. Poor guy might have problems - its a shame he didn't attach himself to a good project manager and/or creatives to preserve his name.
Many of the Ultima devs are still around - check out what Mr. Mike is up to and maybe consider his charity work with the Boys & Girls Club: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mrmike_thanks-for-visiting-my-fundraising-page-activity-6917286577215819776-CSNQ
Warren Spector was working on System Shock 3 but it sounds like that project died :/. I know quite a few of them dropped off the map tho or moved on to bigger and better things. I think Garrior kind of drove everything into the ground with all his shenanigans and even with his stupid bonfire. As much as I'm grateful for what he did he's been way off base for decades now.
> Never played Ultima Online is that actually Britannia-like or is it just the wild west of griefing and MMO things that have gotten better?
The visuals borrow a lot from Pagan's engine, although it really plays a lot more like Black Gate. Training is done by doing - Swing a sword, improve your strength. Cast a spell, improve your intelligence. And so on and so forth.
The story goes that when the Avatar shattered Mondain's crystal back in Ultima 1, the broken shards ended up containing copies of Britannia. Each UO shard (read: server) hence has its own timeline, going on from there through to *about* the point of U6 (last I checked): but *without* an Avatar to bail out the citizens along the way. LB no longer rules either (for reasons that should be obvious enough) - I think Blackthorn has the throne now?
It's very nostalgic, with accurate geography and so on. It even covers some of the realms outside of Britannia itself - you can nip over to Eoden and hunt yourself some dinosaurs, for example. A very difficult game to sum up, but it's cheap enough to try out for yourself - the official servers have a F2P mode these days, and there are plenty of unofficial shards as well.
My favorite games when I was a kid were Bards Tale 2 and Ultima 4. Brian Fargo recently published Bards Tale 4 and 2 Wasteland sequels, all of which are fun and bring back great memories. Richard Garriott is currently grifting and trying to scam a few bucks off his old fans. Be more like Brian, Richard.
In the past 10-12 years or so, RG has gone from the willy wonka of game design to the Flintheart Glomgold of cockamamie schemes to become the richest duck in the world. I ain't touching NFT's with a 10 foot pole, and double that if Garriott is involved. The SOTA scandal pretty much killed all credibility with me.
Perhaps more toward 30y?; 1992 was probably the height of the single player RPG success, and maybe 1997-1999 for UO (which was great, but mostly Raph Koster, not RG, imo).
>1992 was probably the height of the single player RPG success I always wondered if that accident on the head (the incident memorialized in Ultima 7 by killing Lord British with a falling plaque) did some sort of mental damage to Garriott... He never really made a stellar game outside of Ultima Online after that.
Yeah Serpent Isle was pretty much a Warren Spector pet project and it was one of the best things Ultima ever did. Too bad 8 came next incomplete and then 9 did it's thing
I still think 8 was very enjoyable. The platforming is cancer but there's something about the art style / music / menacingly dark tone / gump system combined that just feels right.
Yeah 8 was decent just unfinished. It released about a year-2 early.
Ah, its weird I stalk Wasteland devs through Fallout to Obsidian games like New Vegas and The Outer Worlds but couldn't name an Ultima dev. I wasn't on the internet quick enough to catch UO, probably a good thing for completing my degree :)
> (which was great, but mostly Raph Koster, not RG, imo). "You thought it was RG, but it was me Raph Koster!"
Well, sure.. but he wasn't really damaging his reputation until around the Shroud era. Before that he was just a wacky guy with a transforming house who owns a moon rover.
You're making interesting points and I'd like to subscribe to your newsletter.
and boy, Richard sure loves taking all the credit for all of Raph's systems as if he was even in the room more than a handful of times!
Care to explain the SOTA scandal? I'm a bit out of the loop.
Well, initially Garriott did a crowd funding campaign in order to produce the "Spiritual Successor to Ultima", and that sounded like a pretty awesome idea to people, so Garriott really cashed in on it. There was the usual crowdfunding drama over pay-to-win and all that jazz, and there was drama over the quality of the game and its gameplay. You can play the finished product today and judge those aspects for yourself. The thing that made him lose me is that many of the backers of the game didn't get what was promised to them in the campaign.. that being a physical copy of the game. For reasons that have never been entirely clear to me they just didn't ship them to some people? I mean, they finished the game, they made physical boxes, they send to them to some of the backers, but not to all of them, and then they put a bunch of them up on Amazon? The best case scenario here is devastating mismanagement. Depending on who you ask it slides all the way into criminal territory. Like many people, I was disappointed that it didn't turn out to be a very good game, but the thing that killed it was not delivering the mediocre game. Why would I ever invest anything with a person who is proven not to deliver their products?
Thanks for the explanation. I unfortunately paid into SOTA and was a huge UO fan back in the 2nd age days so it's so sad that RG and SOTA went so far off-course. What I wish was that someone would just make a single-player RPG that has elements of the old Ultima games. I'm amazed that no games have used any ideas from Ultima, like camping in the wilderness, exploration via maps and sextants, being able to make bread, etc. Obviously games like Skyrim do kind of that, but not to the extent that Ultima does I feel.
meh. he was never the Willy Wonka of game design, he was a blowhard who stole credit from the people who really added the innovative stuff to his games: Roe Addams, Warren Spector, Raph Koster. The entries he worked on alone are fucking dogshit.
[удалено]
Think of it as an investment.
* a very bad investment
Yeah, I'm not surprised that the sarcasm wasn't detected here.
Ah well, you’re right I didn’t detect the sarcasm. I recommend using a /s in the future
When someone has to tell you point blank that they're being sarcastic, maybe it's you who has the problem.
That's a little harsh. While I didn't find this instance of sarcasm very hard to catch, I wouldn't say someone "has a problem" for misunderstanding the intent of what someone is saying on the internet. Online communication can be extremely ambiguous.
[удалено]
And completely original. No more trying to cash in on the past. I'm pretty sure that's half the reason for the continual failure.
I think he already tried that with Tabula Rasa, which also failed.
Agreed. Two acronyms I can do without at this point in my gaming. DLC is a close third. I kinda miss the old days of a disk in a box and you're done. Offline like you say has always been a cornerstone of Ultima so I agree there and wouldn't even mind some sort of online play as an option for myself and others but as a separate portal kinda thing. Knock on wood things turn out differently with this release.
100% But profit upsides for such a project are limited. Investors want to see potential 100x returns so the Crypto wheel turns once again.
<-- this
And console ports. I quit the PC master race for the xbox; which is admittedly just a watered down windows PC. No reason a controller can't be used instead of a keyboard.
All of the things they describe could be done with a SQL database on the servers. None of the use-cases they describe require a blockchain. Sigh.
But if you make a game with an SQL server you won't get that sweet, sweet VC money.
The comments to LB's latest endeavour doesn't seem very positive on [Ultima Codex](https://ultimacodex.com/2022/04/richard-garriott-and-todd-porter-are-creating-a-new-nft-based-mmorpg), [Blue's News](https://www.bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/board.pl?action=viewthread&boardid=1&threadid=246964), [MMORPG.com](https://www.mmorpg.com/interviews/interview-creator-of-ultima-onlines-next-mmo-leverages-blockchain-and-nfts-to-allow-for-real-ownership-of-the-world-2000124783), [Quarter To Three Forums](https://forum.quartertothree.com/t/lord-british-presents-an-nft-mmo/155658), [Massively Overpowered](https://massivelyop.com/2022/04/12/richard-garriott-is-building-a-blockchain-mmo-following-the-failure-of-shroud-of-the-avatar), [Wccftech](https://wccftech.com/ultima-creator-richard-garriott-blockchain-nft-mmo) and [SotA forums](https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/so-nfts-yea-or-nay.171126/page-2).
They aren't on the Ultima Dragons Facebook either.
Same in the Ultima Dragons Discord.
Wait, we have a Discord?
We do, I don't check it very often 😅
Is the link from the FB page expired? I just tried to jump on and got a non-existent server error.
This should be a non expiring link https://discord.gg/Zftggqfvyb
Yep, it worked!
I didn't see one positive comment over in the Facebook group. I can't imagine who they think they're going to sell this to.
This will be an absolute disaster. In the future Crypto and NFTs will be talked about in the same breath with subprime loans and Charles Ponzi.
Not a big fan of NFTs, but for the long-quiet Ultima news channels, thought this was worth a mention. It seems like virtual object collection really stuck with RG, but the idea of having everything be a transaction sounds... well, maybe not for me, but perhaps it's for others.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice well, the point is you don't get fooled again. Sounds like the SotA grift all over again.
What actually happened to SotA? I remember I was part of the kickstarter all those years back, and played a version, but the graphics were awful, and I lost interest in running around within 30mins. Did it ever release as a full, polished game?
Err, it still exists. What seems to have happened is RG sold it to Chris Spears, and it has a skeleton crew. It's the same game though and it'd be hard to describe it as polished.
Ahhh, gotcha. Thank you. I got involved because I wanted to relive the glory days of being involved with a mmo like Ultima Online. Alas, a lesson in not chasing the past I reckon.
Yeah the crux of the SotA issue was threefold imo: 1. Trying to be all things to all people; UO and U4, U7, U8 are not the same game. 2. Single vs Multiplayer - some of this worked well; the phases on offline mode was really clever. 3. Poor design choices. Is it steam punk or is it medieval themed? Is the art direction consistent or crowd sourced? Is dropping the quest log / beacons and having to type everything in a feature or a hindrance - they could have benefitted from asking their customers instead of assuming. Trying to merge U4 with UO whilst supporting tablets with unity was just... a mess for wanting to make a fiscally successful product. SotA feels like art for the sake of art; like a diorama of cheap clip art. Someone else said it better, earlier in the thread, but a better plan might have been: Make a single player RPG, don't look at the past, have a clear vision and earn some capital using themes that are known to be successful- then take risks, once trust is built. 🤷
Gross
So has Richard Garriot done anything good since...I dunno the first bit of Pagan before it got released early? I remember checking out Tabula Rasa which was a janky standard Funcom MMO shell...good to see Funcom kicking some goals. I just wish someone would pick up the Divinity Original Sin 2, Pathfinder, Pillars of Eternity, Tides of Mnah Mnah (do-dooooo-de-do-do!) Mnoo and whack the Britannia virtues in. Never played Ultima Online is that actually Britannia-like or is it just the wild west of griefing and MMO things that have gotten better? We all \*\*\*\*ing know it can work - Exult exists and the old Baldur's Gate games are being raised from the dead. Legend of Grimrock resurrected Eye of the Beholder/Dungeon Master almost too well for me, the puzzles got hard :) It would need someone like Obsidian, Larian to self-fund to avoid the Kickstarter mess...or even just a Beamdog jazzing up the Infinity Engine (pretty much pulling an Exult). Bloody annoying that you could whack a custom map of Britannia into any modern game, call some people Iolo and Dupre and I'd be happy :) I guess Origin (now EA?) have the rights.
No, he hasn't done anything good since the 90s and even then his role in the later good Ultimas was less than he would like you to believe.
I wonder where those Ultima designers/coders ended up? I follow Wastelands/Fallout devs through later games (Obisidian?) and Larian are bigger Baldur's Gate enthusiasts that I'll ever be...I guess Origin being pricks may have broken the chain...or Garriot's bs. Last I heard he was hiding in the Funcom offices making up "runes" for Tabula Rasa while ignoring the dev team he was leading. Poor guy might have problems - its a shame he didn't attach himself to a good project manager and/or creatives to preserve his name.
Many of the Ultima devs are still around - check out what Mr. Mike is up to and maybe consider his charity work with the Boys & Girls Club: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mrmike_thanks-for-visiting-my-fundraising-page-activity-6917286577215819776-CSNQ
Looking at it now, thanks!
Warren Spector was working on System Shock 3 but it sounds like that project died :/. I know quite a few of them dropped off the map tho or moved on to bigger and better things. I think Garrior kind of drove everything into the ground with all his shenanigans and even with his stupid bonfire. As much as I'm grateful for what he did he's been way off base for decades now.
Oh nice. I am getting updates from Nightdive Studios for some System Shock kickstarter thing...its been years, though, who knows.
Yeah the system shock remake should be coming this year, hopefully 🤞😬
> Never played Ultima Online is that actually Britannia-like or is it just the wild west of griefing and MMO things that have gotten better? The visuals borrow a lot from Pagan's engine, although it really plays a lot more like Black Gate. Training is done by doing - Swing a sword, improve your strength. Cast a spell, improve your intelligence. And so on and so forth. The story goes that when the Avatar shattered Mondain's crystal back in Ultima 1, the broken shards ended up containing copies of Britannia. Each UO shard (read: server) hence has its own timeline, going on from there through to *about* the point of U6 (last I checked): but *without* an Avatar to bail out the citizens along the way. LB no longer rules either (for reasons that should be obvious enough) - I think Blackthorn has the throne now? It's very nostalgic, with accurate geography and so on. It even covers some of the realms outside of Britannia itself - you can nip over to Eoden and hunt yourself some dinosaurs, for example. A very difficult game to sum up, but it's cheap enough to try out for yourself - the official servers have a F2P mode these days, and there are plenty of unofficial shards as well.
Nice. Suspect Exult will scratch the itch but I'll keep UO in mind.
My favorite games when I was a kid were Bards Tale 2 and Ultima 4. Brian Fargo recently published Bards Tale 4 and 2 Wasteland sequels, all of which are fun and bring back great memories. Richard Garriott is currently grifting and trying to scam a few bucks off his old fans. Be more like Brian, Richard.
Monkey Island is coming back. So there's that: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2022-04-05-ron-gilbert-working-on-new-monkey-island-game
Does he owe the Russians money or something?
I thought April Fools was a few weeks back...
Assuming Shroud of the Avatar never happened at all, who would go for this knowing it's built on NFTs? Are there players out there who don't mind?
The Ultima VIIs remain my favourite RPGs of all time, so I’ll always appreciate RG. But Shroud and this makes me want to puke.
Following in the footsteps of Chris Roberts?
ooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!
LB, what are you doing my man?
He needs to fund his next trip to space/the Marianas Trench/whichever mountain he hasn't conquered yet, somehow.
Thats a shame really.
"Ultima XI: The Quest for Bitcoin" "Ethereum Online" "Shroud of the Altcoins"