Ultima Online

Ultima Online is a massively multiplayer online game set in the Ultima universe (to a greater or lesser extent). It was developed and published by Origin in 1997 for the IBM-PC, in a time when the Internet just started to become popular.

The game is basically a huge online Britannia, where all kinds of players live their digital lives and do whatever they want... as long as it is allowed. It is constantly developed and new versions come into the stores every year.

Ultima Online was a huge success for Origin, essentially giving birth to the MMORPG.

The Story
The premise is that when the Stranger shattered Mondain's Gem of Immortality, each of the fragments of the gem held a perfect copy of Sosaria in them. In these many Britannias, the people, the players, interact on a daily basis, live their lives and have lots of fun. It is a huge multiverse with countless Britannias, where people act in this world, fight, trade and live.

Development
Development of Ultima Online actually started rather low-key, as expectations in the project were not very high in the company. Indeed, the most positive estimations were about 30.000 sold boxed games and 5.000 subscribers inhabitating the online Britannia. Then the open alpha in April and May 1996 drew an unexpectedly huge interest, causing Electronic Arts to shift all personel from the Ultima IX project to this one (with nasty results for that game) in order to finish the game in 1997. After an open beta in July 1997 (which got so crowded access had to be restricted), the breakneck speed enforced by the publisher allowed releasing the game in September 1997.

Release
Ultima Online was released in Setpember 24, 1997. Its original retail price was $64.95, and the monthly cost to play the game was $9.95. The original game was only released in the US, with exception of Japan, which did get its own edition.

Included with the game
With the first edition of the game came with these things:


 * A cloth map of Britannia in Ultima Online.
 * An UO Pin.

Interestingly, a detailled manual was not part of the package for whatever reason.

Expansions
Several expansions were released for Ultima Online, adding new features and areas to be explored:


 * Ultima Online: The Second Age
 * Ultima Online: Renaissance
 * Ultima Online: Third Dawn
 * Ultima Online: Lord Blackthorn's Revenge
 * Ultima Online: Age of Shadows
 * Ultima Online: Samurai Empire
 * Ultima Online: Mondain's Legacy
 * Ultima Online: Kingdom Reborn
 * Ultima Online: Stygian Abyss
 * Ultima Online: High Seas
 * Ultima Online: Time of Legends

Other releases
Ultima Online has had several special releases which were not expansions, but came with boxed or in-game extras.


 * Ultima Online: Charter Edition (September 30, 1997) was available to pre-order from Origin Systems at the launch of Ultima Online and in small quantities alongside the standard retail box. It included a signed lithograph of the Ultima Online artwork by the Hilderbrandt brothers, a pewter pin badge bearing the Ultima Online logo and the box was signed by Richard Garriott. The Charter Edition also included the cloth map which was also a feature of the standard box.
 * Ultima Online: 7th Anniversary Edition (September 25, 2004) was a special release of the game to celebrate Ultima Online's seventh birthday. Like all of the items listed in this section, this release did not bring anything new to the game and is not an expansion, although it did include a more recently patched CD; the Age of Shadows was still the most current version at the time.
 * Ultima Online: Gold (July 18, 2005) was a special release sold by Wal-Mart and includes the same content as Ultima Online: Samurai Empire.
 * Ultima Online: The Eighth Age (September 25, 2005) was a boxed game CD with an array of in-game tokens. Though not bringing any new features, the release was to celebrate Ultima Online's eighth birthday.
 * Ultima Online: 9th Anniversary Collection (October 31, 2006). Formerly known as "Eve of a New Age."

Shard emulation
Fans of Ultima Online have reverse-engineered the game to produce server emulators of the original Electronic Arts servers. With the modern emulation server software available today, it is possible to customize most aspects of the game and support large numbers of concurrent players on a single server.

Several Tools exist to connect to these freeshards. The most notable are:
 * ConnectUO
 * Razor
 * UOGateway

Known UO shard(server) emulators are:
 * RunUO
 * POL
 * Sphere Server

Trivia

 * There was an hilarious scene during the Beta-test. A character called "Rainz" used a stolen firewall-scroll while Lord British gave an audience. Richard Garriott, who had forgotten to activate his "Lord British-invincibility" must have looked quite shocked, when his alter ego dropped dead on the spot. (See picture)
 * Additional UO releases have included what many consider non-canon worlds and items into the Ultima universe, such as the Samurai-based Tokuno Islands.
 * Lord British's throne is the top half of the Ultima Online logo.
 * Lord British's throne is in the exact center of the main world map. For the curious, you can sit on the throne and use a sextant to find your coordinates.
 * On rare occasions, casting the spell energy vortex will summon a purple llama instead of the cloud-like creature the spell is meant to summon. The purple llama is labeled in-game as "an energy vortex" and has the same powers as the creature the spell is named for.
 * A monster called a slime existed in-game which is a small slithering blob. Some years ago on rare occasions, it was possible to encounter a slime that was renamed a "jwilson," which was purportedly named after magazine editor Johnny Wilson, who had given Ultima Online a bad review and thus earned a derisive place in the game by the developers. "Jwilsons" can still be seen today.
 * Cows may be tipped by clicking on them numerous times.
 * On some occasions, cows would be named "corey johns" and would turn into a blade spirit when clicked on multiple times.
 * The first attempt at a multiplayer Ultima game was very different from Ultima Online. More details here: multi-player Ultima.