Ultima Worlds Online: Origin and Ultima X Odyssey
Setting: Fantasy | Developer / Publisher: Origin / Electronic Arts | Platform: PC | Cancelled: June 2004
After Electronic Arts initially had to be convinced to give approval for the development of Ultima Online, the publisher evidently found a taste for the MMORPG genre due to its success. Already in September 1999, the Origins team announced that they wanted to develop a direct successor to Ultima Online with Ultima Worlds Online: Origin.
The plan was for the game to take place in an alternative timeline, where a cataclysm brought the past, present, and future of the world of Sosaria together in a single time frame. This was supposed to allow different elements such as steampunk, medieval times, and the Industrial Revolution to collide.
Ultima Online is still online:
Moreover, the developers wanted to tackle some often-criticized areas of Ultima Online differently with its successor (such as the always-active PvP) and provide a modern 3D engine. However, this ultimately never came to fruition.
In March 2001, the project was canceled to provide more support for the still-successful Ultima Online. Shortly after the cancellation, the publisher was also hit by a wave of layoffs that affected Origins as well.
Ultima X
However, the subject of a “new Ultima MMORPG” was not off the table yet. In August 2003, EA announced Ultima X: Odyssey, another online offshoot for the popular RPG franchise. Ultima X was supposed to inherit not Ultima Online, but rather expand the main series after Ultima IX.
It would have been the first Ultima game to be made after the departure of series creator Richard Garriott at Origin. In Unreal Engine. With a subscription model. Third-person perspective. And a sophisticated virtue system. However, in February, Electronic Arts closed the venerable studio and thus buried several projects – including Ultima X: Odyssey. For those wanting to breathe in nostalgic Ultima air, that can now be done since 2024: The father of MMORPGs does what WoW Classic did to achieve success – but better
