The development team switched again in 2014, this time to newly founded EA studio Broadsword.
Mythic didn’t just sit on the title and do nothing - they continued to develop and expand the game, releasing the Kingdom Reborn client with updated graphics and later, the Stygian Abyss expansion that added new zones, mechanics and a new map. Ultima Online was one of many MMOs being trampled by Blizzard’s behemoth. According to, by April 2008, Ultima Online’s market share was less than 0.06% (around 75,000 players), compared with World of Warcraft’s 62%. In 2006, EA handed development responsibility over to Dark Age of Camelot developer Mythic Entertainment. Electronic Arts had closed Origin Systems in February 2004, leaving Ultima Online without a developer. What is certain, however, is that by the time the third generation of MMOs began in 2004 (most notably with World of Warcraft), Ultima Online was experiencing a steady decline. Slate reported in 2003 that Ultima Online still maintained 225,000 subscribers, but reported numbers are scarce after that. Source: UO.com.Īs the core business of MMO games is to provide vast, vibrant and populated worlds, specific player numbers are often difficult to come by, particularly when an MMO game is past its prime. This would be Ultima Online’s peak popularity. Numbers continued to rise into the early 2000s - in October 2000, CNET Gamecenter reported that Ultima Online had reached 250,000 subscribers. Three months after its September 1997 release, Ultima Online had achieved 70,000 subscribers, and by December 1998 it was recognised by the Guinness Book of World Records for being the first MMORPG to reach 100,000 players. They had previously been referred to by several different names, most commonly “graphical MUD”, an evolution of the “Multi-User Domain” term that emerged after Beyond Software’s Neverwinter Nights (1991) added a visual element to the historically text-based MUDs of the '70s and '80s. Richard “Lord British” Garriott, creator of the Ultima series, allegedly coined the term “MMORPG” in 1997 (like much of gaming history, this is shrouded in ambiguity). No game better defined the MMORPG genre than Ultima Online - quite literally, in fact. Stepping away from gear grinding and leveling up sounds awesome, and I'd love to play something that rekindles the sense of community that older MMOs like Ultima Online had in spades.Source: Museum of Computer Adventure Game History. I'm pretty excited to see if Shards Online can actually introduce something different to the genre. Though you also might just want to wait until the beta appears in spring of 2017. It's currently in pre-alpha, which you can buy into for $20/€17,99. That's not a lot for an online role-playing game, but Shards seems to be trucking along just fine.
Shards Online was first Kickstarted back in November of 2014, and has since gone on to raise over $200,000 in funding. Right now servers are limited to only 64 players, cue my hesitation at calling it an MMO, but Shards Online also has so many other similarities, like questing and character progression, that I'm not sure it'll make that much of a difference. While there will be some official servers offering a few variety of flavors like a permadeath PVP shard, custom servers will let you tweak every little detail of your shard by using custom scripts and built-in modding tools. Nifty!ĭeveloped by some of the people from Ultima Online, Shards Online's big focus in on giving players the tools to create their own adventures by building "shards" or custom servers that link together to form a comprehensive world. There's even a system to play as monsters much like a dungeon master would in a Dungeons and Dragons campaign. A new trailer to announce Shards Online's Steam Greenlight campaign shows there's still the basics like combat and questing, but things quickly get much more interesting when custom servers and the modding tools used to shape them are demonstrated. While it'll still have that familiar structure, Shards focuses on letting players build their own, smaller worlds to exist in instead of giving them one giant one. Shards Online isn't quite an MMORPG, and I think that's great.
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