At the moment, there’s not much that I can really tell you Dragons about the game. I’ve signed up for the beta, but can’t seem to log in — the servers are always “full” (or they may not be on yet and that’s just the generic error message being thrown out). Nor can I access the game’s wiki or forums.

And I’m not sure what to think about this whole thing, either. This is apparently supposed to be a broswer-based strategy game, and those generally are far less than awesome (let’s be honest: the best ones are good for a few minutes of distraction, nothing more). At the same time, Phenomic is no second-tier developer…so I’m not sure at all what EA is getting at by enlisting them for this effort.

Would Ultima even render well as a strategy game?

Methinks it’s too early to tell with this one.

Also, Fenyx Dragon noted that Gamasutra had an article up about the game; give it a look.

And finally, from Sergorn Dragon, a possible Lord of Ultima screenshot:

Apparently, some of the “new interests” that he suggested that he wanted “to devote [his] time and resources to,” following “the unforgettable experience” of space travel, includes the possibility of a return to gaming.

And just to sweeten the pot:

BIZ: If you did return to games, would it definitely be an online game?

Garriott: I wouldn’t use the word definitely. I think that if it were today, it’s most probable. That’s just what I find the most interesting, still. That being said, I am still a huge fan of solo-player games as both a player, and as a storyteller. I just think there’s an intimacy in solo-player games that is much easier to do in a solo-player environment than it is to shoehorn it into a multiplayer environment. One of the things we were trying with Tabula Rasa was to offer more storytelling in an MMO setting. And we made some strides in that direction. But I still don’t think it was nearly to the level that the middle Ultimas did.

BIZ: If Electronic Arts wanted you to return and author a single-player Ultima for the consoles, would you do that?

Garriott: Conceptually? Sure. The property Ultima is still very near and dear to my heart. I think that if, by hook or by crook, I had access to that property, either in solo-player or multiplayer, I would absolutely love to continue to play in the Ultima universe.

Yeah, I know…it’s not a formal announcement of his triumphal return to the Ultima franchise in the wake of recent shifts in EA’s game development strategies and policies. It’s still interesting, all the same, to see just what Lord British is up to these days, and what his vision for the future might just be.

The latest signings bode well for the company’s new “studio-focused philosophy,” which EA Partners general manager David DiMartini describes as “giving the world’s best independent developers access to EA’s global publishing resources, letting them focus on what they do best — making great games.“

Perhaps there’s hope for BioWare’s Dragon Age yet!

Currently, only the Ultima Collection box has been scanned in, but the reproduction is very high quality (all covers are 300 dpi scans).

I’ll be happy to be proven wrong, of course…but EA’s track record of turning effective companies into wrecks and producers of poorly-executed, buggy, narratively weak games has been pretty consistent since the days of Ultima VII Part 2: Serpent Isle.

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. – Electronic Arts Inc., the video game developer known for titles such as “Madden NFL” and “The Sims,” said Thursday it will acquire two software studios from Elevation Partners in a deal worth up to US$860 million.

The studios, BioWare Corp. and Pandemic Studios, have a total of 10 games under development. Elevation owns their parent, VG Holding Corp.

Together, the studios employ about 800 people in Los Angeles and Austin, Texas, as well as in Canada and Australia.

I guess we’ll see if Dragon Age gets rushed out the door now, or (worse) cancelled.

You can read the official press release from BioWare here.

Update: Further thought…

U3 Project

Render Dragon has posted a couple of major updates concerning his re-creation of Ultima 3. It has been almost three years since his previous update (dated June 30th, 2004, marking the cancellation by EA of Ultima X: Odyssey), and as the sole developer on the project he has found that it is subject to the slings and arrows of real life.

(Render, man, I hear you!)

But he has picked up the project and plans ‘to tinker with it’; some of his proposed changes include:

• Converting the project to Visual C++ 2005
• Using SDL instead of his improvised DirectX wrapper
• Finishing up the combat mechanics
• Reworking command handlers
• Bugfixes and more thereof

Render also brings notice that he will no longer be maintaining the project’s SourceForge CVS repository, preferring instead to make use of the SVN capabilities of that site.

He further notes that in the absence of DirectX (see above), the project is giving him a few compilation problems, but that so far he has been able to at least port the audio over to SDL. That means that SDL and SDL_Mixer will be required to download and build the project from source.

Exult

The Exult team have posted the first news update in over a year (the last one is dated April 10th, 2006). They bring news of several improvements and changes:

• A new-ish team member, Philip George, has successfully ported Exult to the PocketPC
• Many bug fixes, including implementation of missing weather effects in Serpent Isle
• Support for the Hq2x and Hq3x scalers

The latest snapshot (1.4) version of Exult has been updated, and Lanica Dragon (Mr. George) has released a downloadable binary of Exult for PocketPC (ARM) that I have also added to the Exult entry at the site here.

Arx Fatalis

JoWooD Productions seems to have pulled Arx Fatalis from their site. I’m investigating.

Ultima: Iris

Iris, the 3D client for , has been updated again, and build version 1130 is available for download. As well, build version 1131 is available as source.

Both versions are available for download from the project entry at the site here.

Project Britannia

I missed a couple of May updates to the Project Britannia data files and utilities, as both the Conversation Compiler and the NPC/Schedule/Chest Generator were updated in mid-May.

Additionally, earlier this month the britannia_logic.dsres file was updated as well, with improvements made to some of the monsters, the banter system, and the reagent tree system (among other things).

All these updates can now be obtained through the project entry here at the site.

Lost Sosaria

I’ve finished sorting things out after the big move, and while my computer is getting insanely buggy and impossible to use, I have managed to get the project caught back up to where it was at before I had to switch mountain tilesets, and have resumed development on new areas of the map.

Update: Thanks to Petrell over at Dino’s Ultima Page (a frothy mug of ale unto Petrell!), there are a few more updates to report!

The Dark Key

This project, so new and so young, seems to have folded. The project site has been taken down, replaced with a brief notice.

Ultima 5 for TI Calculators

David Randall has resumed development on his port of Ultima 5 to the TI calculator.

Savage Empire Total Conversion for Exult

Scythifuge has posted some new screenshots of his project.

Matthew Johnston’s Ultima VII Mod

This is a relatively new project, and I will have to add an entry to Aiera for it. It is another total conversion for Exult, set in the fictional land of Norstadt — a land under siege by Goblins and other monsterforms, in which humans have been pushed to the brink, as many refugees flee to the south.

Update, part the second: I’ve added a new sub-category to the site to encompass Exult Total Conversions, which there seems to be a growing number of lately.

Additionally, I have added to Aiera a project entry for Matthew Johnston’s Exult Total Conversion (see above), and an early release of the project is available for download there.

Update, part…whatever: Arx Fatalis apparently only had its splash page taken down — the main English site is still active, as is the American media site (which does not allow downloads of the demos).