Lord of Ultima

Last updated
Lord of Ultima
Lord of Ultima Logo.png
Developer(s) EA Phenomic
ReleaseApril 20, 2010 (2010-04-20) (Open Beta)
Genre(s) Real-time military strategy
City-building

Lord of Ultima was a free-to-play, browser-based, massively multiplayer real-time strategy (MMORTS) video game by Electronic Arts. The game started a beta test on April 20, 2010 and was developed by EA Phenomic. [1] [2] While it is, technically, part of the Ultima series of games, there was very little actual connection to the other games in the series. [3]

Contents

The game was a 2D strategy game similar to Evony. Though the game was nominally free, players could purchase "Funds" for real-world money, providing the game with its revenue stream. The "Funds" could be used for three types of enhancements: improved user-interface features through the purchase of "ministers" which reduce micro-management of resources; "artifacts" which provide increased resources and can speed completion of commands; and protection from player attacks.

The game used pure JavaScript Web technology, and was not based on Adobe Flash, unlike many other browser-based games.

EA announced that all servers would be turned off on May 12, 2014. On March 1, 2014 EA no longer offered support through their official LOU forum. User reports suggest most servers had already been turned off as of March 5, 2014 well in advance of the May 12th closure, prompting anger among remaining players who were told days earlier by EA to spend their remaining funds as no refund would be issued. A number of websites had urged players to seek refunds via PayPal for recently bought game funds. [4]

Lord of Ultima shut down on May 12, 2014 at 07:00 UTC.

Fans of Lord of Ultima supported a KickStarter campaign to recreate the game. This Kickstarter campaign was fully funded in just 17 minutes. [5] The remake was released as "Crown of the Gods" which focused on emulating the gameplay while using different artwork and lore to avoid copyright infraction. [6]

Gameplay

In Lord of Ultima, game-play primarily revolved around collecting resources to develop cities and armies and then battle against each other for power and prestige.

Players started off with a single city, which was protected from attack for seven days. A player could choose to settle inactive cities or create new cities after the required prerequisites have been met. A player can also build a castle enabling them to conquer other cities with castles and vice versa. It was a common mistake for new players to "castle their first city", resulting in their elimination. Players without castles could raid dungeons (PvE battles) but cannot plunder other players' cities. Joining an alliance was crucial in this game for both protection and economic support.

The objective of the game was to attain the title "Lord of Ultima", which can only be done with the support of an alliance by jointly completing and holding a level 10 alliance palace of each of 8 in-game faiths.

Several third party tools were commonly used to support the player. City planning tools help to design a city layout by displaying the potential resource gain per hour. City design was crucial for the player to rank highly on the in-game leaderboards.[ citation needed ]

Reception

According to GameRankings, PC Gamer magazine in the UK gave it a score of 75%, and Game Vortex awarded it 82%. [7]

MMOHut cited the game's positive points as an "original strategy script", and the fact that "city layouts take thought." It criticised Lord of Ultima's "slow paced gameplay" and "very weak connection with the Ultima franchise." [3]

IT Reviews concluded: "Ultimately... this browser-based strategy affair proved rather too slow paced for our liking." However, the reviewer noted that: "If you're the sort of player who can happily dip in and out of a game very casually, it's worth checking out. There's considerable depth in the town planning, a decent guild system, and after all, it's free to play." [8]

Related Research Articles

<i>Ultima</i> (series) Role-playing video game series

Ultima is a series of open world fantasy role-playing video games from Origin Systems, created by Richard Garriott. Electronic Arts has owned the brand since 1992. The series had sold over 2 million copies by 1997.

<i>The Sims Online</i> 2002 massively multiplayer online game

The Sims Online was a 2002 massively multiplayer online game (MMO) developed by Maxis and published by Electronic Arts (EA) for Microsoft Windows. The game was a subscription-based online multiplayer version of the 2000 Maxis game The Sims, in which players could interact with others on virtual user-made lots, buy and customise properties, and make money by taking on jobs the game's virtual economy. The Sims Online was the project of Maxis founder and Sims creator Will Wright, who sought to create an open-ended online game based on social interaction, with ambitions for the game to be a platform for emergent gameplay and the creation of virtual societies and politics. In line with these ambitions and the prior commercial success of The Sims, The Sims Online received considerable pre-release coverage, with expectations that it would be successful and break new ground for online multiplayer games.

Command & Conquer (C&C) is a real-time strategy (RTS) video game franchise, first developed by Westwood Studios. The first game was one of the earliest of the RTS genre, itself based on Westwood Studios' influential strategy game Dune II and introducing trademarks followed in the rest of the series. This includes full-motion video cutscenes with an ensemble cast to progress the story, as opposed to digitally in-game rendered cutscenes. Westwood Studios was taken over by Electronic Arts in 1998 and closed down in 2003. The studio and some of its members were absorbed into EA Los Angeles, which continued development on the series.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Garriott</span> American video game developer, entrepreneur and space tourist (born 1961)

Richard Allen Garriott de Cayeux is a British-born American video game developer, entrepreneur and space tourist.

<i>Jagged Alliance</i> (series) Video game series

Jagged Alliance is a series of turn-based tactics video games. The first games in the series were released for DOS. From Jagged Alliance 2 on, the games were developed using DirectX for native Windows operation. Jagged Alliance 2 was also released for Linux and is available on Steam and on GOG.com for Windows.

<i>Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar</i> 1985 video game

Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar, first released in 1985 for the Apple II, is the fourth in the series of Ultima role-playing video games. It is the first in the "Age of Enlightenment" trilogy, shifting the series from the hack and slash, dungeon crawl gameplay of its "Age of Darkness" predecessors towards an ethically-nuanced, story-driven approach. Ultima IV has a much larger game world than its predecessors, with an overworld map sixteen times the size of Ultima III and puzzle-filled dungeon rooms to explore. Ultima IV further advances the franchise with dialog improvements, new means of travel and exploration, and world interactivity.

<i>Ultima VI: The False Prophet</i> 1990 video game

Ultima VI: The False Prophet, released by Origin Systems in 1990, is the sixth part in the role-playing video game series of Ultima. It is the third and final game in the "Age of Enlightenment" trilogy. Ultima VI sees the player return to Britannia, at war with a race of gargoyles from another land, struggling to stop a prophecy from ending their race. The player must help defend Britannia against these gargoyles, and ultimately discover the secrets about both lands and its peoples.

<i>Elite Dangerous</i> 2014 space trading and exploration simulator

Elite Dangerous is an online space flight simulation game developed and published by Frontier Developments. The player commands a spaceship and explores a realistic 1:1 scale, open-world representation of the Milky Way galaxy, with the gameplay being open-ended. The game is the first in the series to attempt massively multiplayer gameplay, with players' actions affecting the narrative story of the game's persistent universe, while also retaining a single-player mode. Elite Dangerous is the fourth game in the Elite video game series. It is the sequel to Frontier: First Encounters, released in 1995.

<i>GunZ: The Duel</i> 2005 video game

GunZ: The Duel, or simply GunZ, was an online third-person shooting game, created by South Korean-based MAIET Entertainment.

<i>The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II</i> 2006 real-time strategy game

The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II is a 2006 real-time strategy video game developed and published by Electronic Arts. The second part of the Middle-earth strategy game series, it is based on the fantasy novels The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien and its live-action film series adaptation. It is the sequel to Electronic Arts' 2004 title The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth. Along with the standard edition, a Collector's Edition of the game was released, containing bonus material and a documentary about the game's development.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aeria Games</span> German video game publisher

Aeria Games, formerly known as Aeria Games and Entertainment, was an online game publisher. The corporate headquarters were in Berlin, Germany.

<i>Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight</i> 2010 video game

Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight is a real-time strategy video game, part of the Command & Conquer franchise, released on March 16, 2010. It constitutes a final chapter in the Tiberium saga. The game was originally intended to be an Asian market online-only version of Command & Conquer 3. It was released for download via online gaming distribution service Steam on March 19, 2010. Command & Conquer 4 also uses EA's own servers for online play, rather than GameSpy Servers which EA has relied on for previous Command & Conquer games. A closed beta of the game was released by EA to contest winners on November 21, 2009. The game received mixed reviews from critics.

<i>War of Legends</i> 2010 video game

War of Legends was a massively multiplayer online strategy game set in "a world of ancient Chinese mythology" and was published by Jagex on January 19, 2010. It was the company's first full online strategy game, the first game to be published by the company rather than produced by them, the first game published by Jagex not to be written in Java, and the company's first microtransaction game. On January 29, 2015, Jagex announced that the game would be permanently closed effective immediately, following a security issue that took the game offline over a month earlier on December 22, 2014.

Kunlun Group or their alternative name KoramGame, is a Hong Kong software developer and publisher.

<i>Dragon Age Legends</i> 2011 video game

Dragon Age Legends was a 2011 freemium Flash game developed by EA2D and published by Electronic Arts (EA) for Facebook and Google+. Set in the Dragon Age universe, Legends was developed as the successor to the 2009 Flash-based browser game Dragon Age Journeys and served as a tie-in to the 2011 main series game Dragon Age II. Released on March 16, 2011, for Facebook and August 11, 2011, for Google+, Dragon Age Legends generated significant media coverage and its promotional campaign attracted substantial "likes" on social media, but the game itself was ultimately not a commercial success. By June 18, 2012, the servers for Legends were decommissioned by EA, although an altered version of the game was made available as a free download for offline play.

<i>Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues</i> Fantasy role-playing video game

Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues is a fantasy role-playing video game. Described as being a spiritual successor to the Ultima series, Shroud of the Avatar was developed by Austin, Texas-based developer Portalarium, with a team led by Richard Garriott as creative director, Starr Long as executive producer, Chris Spears as lead technical designer, and Tracy Hickman as lead story designer. It is currently maintained by Catnip Games.

<i>Armello</i> 2015 video game

Armello is a 2015 digital role-playing strategy board game developed by League of Geeks. Announced as an iPad title in September 2012, the game has been in development since mid-2011, with music by composers Lisa Gerrard and Michael Allen. Between April and May 2014, a successful Kickstarter campaign was started to help fund a port to Microsoft Windows as well as stretch goals to bring the game to Android and Windows tablets. The game was chosen to receive additional support from governmental funding agencies Screen Australia and Film Victoria.

<i>Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night</i> 2019 video game

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is a 2019 action role-playing game developed by Japanese indie studio ArtPlay and published by 505 Games. The game's development was led by former Castlevania series producer Koji Igarashi and is considered a spiritual successor to the series. The game was released for PlayStation 4, Windows, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch, in June 2019, for Amazon Luna in October 2020, for Android and iOS in December 2020, and for Stadia in July 2021.

<i>BattleTech</i> (video game) 2017 video game

BattleTech is a Mecha turn-based strategy video game developed by Harebrained Schemes and published by Paradox Interactive. It was released on macOS and Windows on April 24, 2018, with a Linux release on November 27, 2018. The developers set aside US$1 million to create the game, and turned to Kickstarter to secure funding for additional features, including a single player campaign, an expansion of that campaign, and a player versus player multiplayer mode.

<i>Underworld Ascendant</i> 2018 video game

Underworld Ascendant is a first-person action role-playing game developed by Otherside Entertainment and published by 505 Games. It is the sequel to Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss and Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds. Players assume the role of the Avatar, as they return to the Stygian Abyss. As in the original games, there is an emphasis on non-linear progression, simulated systems, and emergent gameplay. It was released on Microsoft Windows on November 15, 2018.

References

  1. Sliwinski, Alexander (2010-04-20). "EA launches free-to-play 'Lord of Ultima' browser-based game". Joystiq. Retrieved 2012-08-17.
  2. Reahard, Jef (2010-04-20). "EA launches Lord of Ultima browser game". Massively. Retrieved 2012-08-17.
  3. 1 2 "MMOHut". Archived from the original on 9 August 2010. Retrieved 20 June 2017.
  4. "Service Updates". www.ea.com. Retrieved 20 June 2017.
  5. "Crown of the Gods". Kickstarter. Retrieved 20 June 2017.
  6. "Crown of the Gods - An empire-building strategy game". Crown of the Gods. Retrieved 20 June 2017.
  7. "Lord of Ultima for PC - GameRankings". www.gamerankings.com. Retrieved 20 June 2017.
  8. "IT Reviews". Archived from the original on 27 January 2011. Retrieved 20 June 2017.