EA/Mythic Entertainment mount Ultima's corpse so they can kill it again

[Crooked Bee]

Thank god.

 

[Infinitron]

ITZ officially dead: http://ultimacodex.com/2014/07/ultima-forever-august-29th-online-services-shutdown-announced/

 

[Cyberarmy]

Good riddance.

 

[Astral Rag]

Ultima Forever:

Release date: August 7, 2013
Retired by EA: August 29, 2014

 

[ColCol]

“The flame that burns Twice as bright burns half as long.”

― Lao Tzu, Te Tao Ching

:'(

 

[taxalot]

One day we will think back about this and laugh.

 

[Minttunator]

One day we will think back about this and laugh.

Or we could just try and forget about this horrible train wreck - like it deserves.

 

[Sceptic]

One day we will think back about this and laugh.

I've been laughing since the beginning, does that count?

 

[taxalot]

Maybe this all happened because I broke NDA.

 

[Psquit]

was this game even released?

 

[Jaesun]

 

[Ninja Destroyer]

EA is focusing its efforts on developing new and exciting titles, as well as bringing new content and updates to existing popular games. As such, we had to make the difficult decision to reallocate development resources to other social and mobile games to ensure a continuation of the best game-play experience possible. EA deeply values all of its players and is dedicated to offering the most fun and engaging experiences across all of our current and future titles.

 

[Hoaxmetal]

EA is focusing its efforts on developing new and exciting titles, as well as bringing new content and updates to existing popular games. As such, we had to make the difficult decision to reallocate development resources to other social and mobile games to ensure a continuation of the best game-play experience possible. EA deeply values all of its players and is dedicated to offering the most fun and engaging experiences across all of our current and future titles.

I think this represents codex more.

 

[Jaesun]

 

[Infinitron]

Looks like the U4E team had plans for an alternate history version of Ultima 5. Well, that won't happen.

http://ultimacodex.com/2014/08/ultima-forever-blackthorns-castle-foyer/

Ultima Forever: Blackthorn’s Castle (Foyer)
Kenneth Kully August 10, 2014 Ultima Forever



Blackthorn’s Castle was a planned location within Ultima Forever more or less from the game’s inception. In fact, Mythic’s idea for his inclusion in the game was to show the first hints of his transition from an apparently trusted advisor of Lord British (and, subsequently, Lady British) to the Shadowlord-corrupted tyrant the Avatar faced in Ultima 5. Here’s what it looked like in the PC alpha test of the game:

​

And here’s how it appears now, in the iOS version of the game:

 

[Jaesun]

Every time I see the words lady British I cringe in absolute horror.

 

[Darth Slaughter]

Multiheaded Dick british castle?

 

[taxalot]

Ultima Codex is trying hard to make us happy about this game dying.

 

[made]

Aw. It came, failed, and died and I never even noticed.

 

[taxalot]

That's what she said.

 

[Infinitron]

http://ultimacodex.com/2014/08/where-the-kilrathi-were-in-ultima-forever/

Where the Kilrathi Were in Ultima Forever
Kenneth Kully August 18, 2014 Ultima Forever

In and amongst the numerous content-heavy posts that our friends at the Wing Commander CIC put up over the weekend in celebration of that site’s anniversary was a short — but highly interesting — piece of Ultima Forever-related news:

When Ultima Forever launched last year, there were rumors of a quest that involved a downed Kilrathi ship. The game’s untimely cancellation was announced without the easter egg ever having been found, but thanks to a little birdie, the mysterious relic has been revealed! Here’s the screenshots! So cool!

The “little birdie” in question is none other than former Mythic producer Jeff Skalski:

Jeff Skalski @Jeff_Skalski
@banditloaf @thatbarnettblok Let me see what I can find. @thatbarnettblok any secret side projects I should be aware of?
Jeff Skalski @Jeff_Skalski
Follow
@banditloaf @thatbarnettblok Stumbled onto these. Enjoy. pic.twitter.com/uBya3F7Gtg

10:30 PM - 14 Aug 2014

​

These images prompted me to go back to the massive PNG file I have sitting in a Dropbox folder, which is a full-scale (I think; its dimensions are 11776×11776 pixels) image of the Britannian overland from Ultima Forever.

When Ben “BanditLOAF” Lesnick had asked me — a couple of weeks ago, if not more — if I knew of the Kilrathi ship in the game, I had gone back to the overland map on the Ultima Forever subdomain and checked out the ankh-shaped island located due east of the Fens of the Dead. I had thought — based on a too-distant recollection of seeing the Kilrathi ship in-game whilst on-site at Mythic’s now-closed studio — that it was either this ankh-shaped island or the smaller island situated still yet further to the east of it that had been the intended location for the downed Kilrathi.

Unfortunately, these islands are barren on the map…or, at least, seem to house nothing so interesting as the ruins of a Kilrathi fighter. So I mistakenly assumed that the Kilrathi had been removed from the game prior to its being shipped.

But clearly, I was wrong.

I took the liberty of making some crops of the full-scale map for this post; these are the same islands that Jeff Skalski tweeted out images of:

​

As it turns out, I had been looking too far to the north. The Kilrathi crash site is due east of Serpent’s Hold, while the Kilrathi monument is situated on the island that should have played host to Buccaneer’s Den:



I say “should have” above because, as you can see, there’s no indication of Buccaneer’s Den being on the island, despite the fact that an in-game map of the town is available.

But I digress.

It’s important to note that none of these locations is accessible in Ultima Forever by regular means. Indeed, I’ve only heard of people reaching Serpent’s Hold by means of some manner of game glitch which has resulted in their Avatar’s location being shifted thereto, and this glitch has not proven to be particularly replicable. Had boats been kept in the game, it would have been trivial to at least sail up to each island and grab some screenshots…but, alas, Mythic removed that mode of travel from the game some time between the alpha and the iOS soft-launch.

And sadly, I’ve no other information available to offer concerning what story, if any, would have surrounded the downed Kilrathi. But if anyone is reading this who was formerly a Mythicemployee, I’m sure that both we here and the good folks at the CIC wouldn’t mind hearing additional details about this part of the game!

 

[taxalot]

UltimaCodex should be renamed "Much ado about nothing". I guess Ultima fans are really starved for news.

 

[Infinitron]

UltimaCodex should be renamed "Much ado about nothing". I guess Ultima fans are really starved for news.

Well, there's still SotA.

 

[taxalot]

And Underworld Ascension, none of which are really Ultima... sadly.

 

[Bubbles]

To think what the Ultima fans could accomplish if they were willing to do something useful with their time. There are still lots of typos in Lazarus that need patching.