We spoke with Starr Long to get some insights on the history of Ultima Worlds Online: Origin and its eventual cancellation and the founding of Destination Games.

	Starr Long, Ultima Online producer

Starr Long: About six months after the commercial release of Ultima Online, we started discussing what we were going to do next. We considered a wide spectrum of options, including a sequel, but also a variety of other products--a space opera, a futuristic post-Armageddon game, strategy games--you name it. But since everyone involved was coming from a traditional "packaged goods" perspective on computer games, it did seem most natural to come out with a new, updated version of the product, and so we opted for a sequel as our follow-up to Ultima Online.

I, at the time, was leaning more heavily toward not doing a direct sequel and investing more time into improving Ultima Online, but that wasn't the decision that ended up being made.

GS: What was the sequel's original target release date?

SL: That depends upon who you talk to, but our schedule anticipated releasing the game after about three years of development. We came up with that schedule based upon our experience with Ultima Online, which took us about three years to complete, and because the design we came up with for Ultima Online 2 contemplated the inclusion of improving everything we had in UO and using a 3D engine, along with a few extra features.

	Ultima Worlds Online: Origin poster

GS: So the original target date, however tentative, was mid-2001?

SL: That's right, but we were asked to figure out a way to reduce that timeline so that the game would be ready for Christmas 2000, which is what we tried to do.

GS: Was everyone at Origin in favor of working on a sequel, or was there, even initially, some concerns that a sequel would cannibalize the following of the original game? It sounds like you had mixed feelings yourself on the decision.

	A 3D model of the cyborg

GS: When it became clear that online games could have considerably more longevity than anyone could have reasonably anticipated, did people within the company start to raise concerns that your sequel would just take away existing customers from UO?

SL: There was always that concern, but that was one of the reasons we made many of the sequel's game systems different from those in the original game. We had a different character advancement model, and the fiction had some new elements to it that weren't just traditional medieval fantasy. We hoped to not just directly cannibalize the original game.