The Ultima Series / Ultima Online
Setting expectations, then upsetting them
Some story themes are classic, showing up over and over. None more than “Defeat the Dark Lord,” possibly mixed in with “Dungeon Crawl.” Tolkien. Gygax and Arneson. Rowling. Rogue/Nethack. The tropes are well known now, but the pioneers defined the standards.
On the computer side, one of the standard bearers was Ultima.
Richard Garriott’s first entries in the Ultima Series followed a well-trod path. You (as “The Stranger”) wandered around a world, fought monsters, got stronger, and eventually defeated the bad guy. As the series grew the story-telling aspect got larger and the world grew more complex1. My initial experience was Ultima III: Exodus and the world felt enormous. There were two moons and they mattered, a fact I eventually discovered. You could meet and talk with Lord British, Garriott’s in-game persona and real-world-alter-ego.2
You did the standard stuff of “recruiting a party” and combat, but it was more than a tactical experience.
But the series really started blazing it’s own trail with Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar. Instead of ‘typical’ D&D character creation (with a bunch of dice rolls) or assigning points, or picking your race and class, you were presented with …. dilemmas.
“You have sworn an oath to protect your lord, but he is being investigated for committing a crime. You know he is guilty. Do you break your oath or stay silent?”
Depending on how you answered, you were assigned a class. Perhaps a paladin or mage. Perhaps a shepherd. Unbeknownst to the player (at least initially) the game measured your ranked various virtues against each. There was no ‘wrong’ answer to the above; but you’d demonstrated whether you (or your character) valued honesty over justice (or vice versa).
Ultima would notice how you treated NPCs. In order to win you had to gain experience, fight monsters, and explore the world; but you also had to demonstrate nobility and virtue! The “Virtue System” (as it has become known as) revolutionized game design, moving what had been a purely mechanical system into a narrative choice.
I never did figure out how to win Ultima III & my experience ended with IV, but it kept going. Ten games (plus spin-offs) and over 2 million copies were sold, and a Massively Multiplayer Online RPG3.
Ultima Online wasn’t the first MMORPG when it was released in 1997, it was the largest with over 100,0004 players joining in the first year, far more than any prior game, and the game was expanded and ran for nearly two decades, meaning that the Ultima Series (start to finish) ran for over thirty five years.
Given all of that, it is easy to see why I consider the Ultima Series one of the 100 Most Influential Games of the 20th Century.
The growth was no doubt based partially on the success of the series; but also Moore’s Law. Modern computer games are limited mostly by the cost of running a team of developers or generating graphics, but back then one or two programmers could write a game that used all of a computer’s capabilities in a year.
Garriott lived (lives?) in Austin and apparently used his money to throw legendary Halloween parties and also built a mansion with secret passages before deciding to spend a lot more money to go into space. In short, he’s my spirit animal.
Also known as “MMORPG,” a term coined by …. Richard Garriott!
In comparison, Ultima I sold only 50,000 copies, but that’s more a statement as to how much more wide-spread computer games became in the 90s than in 1981.