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By Stefan "Desslock" Janicki
Designed by Katie Bush

Ultima Online wasn't the first massively multiplayer online role-playing game, but it was the game that finally brought the genre mainstream attention. Prior to Ultima Online, games such as Meridian 59 and the original Neverwinter Nights allowed dozens of players to concurrently explore expansive online worlds, but it took the legendary Ultima series to finally demonstrate the genre's commercial and creative potential. Origin Systems and Electronic Arts overcame legions of technical problems and an aborted class-action lawsuit to finally deliver a game that continues to addict hundreds of thousands of players almost four years after its initial, shaky launch.

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Ultima Online became one of the most commercially successful games ever.
Ultima Online quickly became one of the most commercially successful games ever, which made a sequel seem inevitable. Almost immediately after the game's release, Origin Systems was reorganized to focus exclusively on developing online multiplayer games after a few remaining legacy games in production were completed. For a while, the company considered developing other online games and even commenced production on an ambitious Wing Commander Online game, but those plans were eventually abandoned so that Origin could solely focus on Ultima Online products. So it wasn't at all surprising when Origin finally officially unveiled a sequel at the May 2000 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3). But it was shocking when the company announced less than a year later that it was halting production on the sequel, effectively consigning the game to our PC Gaming Graveyard.

What went wrong? Why did Origin seemingly capitulate in the war for the increasingly lucrative online gaming when the company had been restructured to capitalize on that market? After the game's cancellation, rumors that Electronic Arts had pulled the plug on the game's development when it was relatively close to being completed quickly circulated on the Internet. The game was actually likely at least a year from retail release and, ironically, the original game's ongoing success played a role in its would-be successor's cancellation. Ultima Online's monthly subscriber base had continued to grow, and Electronic Arts reasoned that the game's continued longevity might just be jeopardized by a sequel. Instead of continuing to fund the sequel's substantial development costs and gamble that the sequel would eventually earn more than the original game, Electronic Arts opted to stop subsidizing the sequel's development and just focus on maintaining and improving Ultima Online.
 

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