I’ve gotten a lot of emails asking about the license that NetDragon picked up a few years ago for making their own 3D version of Ultima Online and for some reason it keeps coming up on some UO forums.
I think it’s important to talk about, because there is a lot of speculation floating around and being pushed by a few people, and it’s clouding the issue with what we currently know is actually happening with UO, versus a proposed game from a third party company.
This is longer than most posts I make, but this post was started in March, and I’m making this a part of a series of large articles I’m working on about the future of UO, since it does fit into the scheme of things. I’m not trying to lay the issue to rest, I’m trying to gather information to present a bigger picture of where such a game, if it exists, would fit into the scheme of things.
Note: I’m going to refer to the Ultima Online that is currently in production and being played as BioWare’s UO. Mythic seems to be in the process of being replaced with BioWare as a brand at all levels, so forgive me if I don’t mention Mythic. BioWare is its own label, something that Mythic was never able to achieve, and as such, it makes sense.
Here is the original press release from two years ago: