Throughout my schooling, from kindergarten through graduation from high school, I did science fair projects literally every year, and often did very well just because I was so well rehearsed. I knew the science and math faculty at the school quite well, and they knew that I was a self-motivated, studious person, so I actually negotiated with the faculty to have my own class, with no teacher. I got that classroom for a period at school during the school day, and I got a grade for my self taught class. At the beginning of the semester I would say “Here’s my project, I’m going to write some more games.” They’d say “OK, show them to us when you get done.” That’s what I did for four years of school. I had my own class – no teacher, no grades, and I always got an “A.” Every time I’d make a new game I’d show it to some of the faculty and they’d say “That’s really cool – do another one. I just called them DND1 through DND 28. I’d first write them in a notebook, then type them up on paper tape, and read them in through the paper tape reader into the modem. Then I would finally get the chance to play them on this paper spool printing teletype.

As a teen, he published the role-playing game Akalabeth that lead to the 10-title Ultima series for which he is best known.

“From a true legal sense, my belief is that ‘abandonware’ does infringe on the copyright holders’ legal protection…if they care,” says Richard Garriott, the creator of the classic Ultima role-playing series.

“Electronic Arts, for example, does care about early Ultimas, as they don’t want to lose protection on current Ultimas,” says Garriott. “Truly ‘abandoned’ properties are less worrisome. That being said, personally, I think that sites that support these old games are a good thing for both consumers and copyright owners.” He explains: “If the options are (a) having a game be lost forever and (b) having it available on one of these sites, I’d want it to be available. That being said, I believe a game is ‘abandoned’ only long after it is out of print. And just because a book is out of print does not give me rights to print some for my friends.”

• 230102 Press Release :: Sony Online Entertainment and NCSoft Join Forces to Expand the World of Everquest
• 230102 Interview with David Swofford and Kyuho Kim
• 180102 Lineage wins MacWorld Best of Show Award

One of only two games chosen for the award, the Mac version of the world's most popular subscription-based online game will be available for play in February.

• 020102 TheChosen :: The Year of Our Lord

In order to gain insight into the new player’s challenges, we focused our exit survey research on why players left. Specifically, we focused on those players leaving early within the first month of play. We quickly realized that we were losing most of our new players within the first three play sessions due to a lack of clearly defined goals upon entry.

The siege element gave Lineage its big publicity push: Lord British of Ultima fame has an association with the game and made a brief appearance some time back during one of the sieges. But he seems to have gone AWOL, and there are no indications of what his future association with the game will be.

• Limited-edition Lord Blackthorn action figure designed by Todd McFarlane bundled into the first retail editions of the game.
• Limited-edition, full-color collectible comic book produced by Todd McFarlane depicting the Lord Blackthorn fiction also bundled into the first retail editions of the game.
• Full-color, double-sided map of Britannia and the New Lands on one side and the expanded land of Ilshenar on the other included with all retail editions.

On the last project you worked on with them, Origins (UO 2?), were you upset when they canned it?
I kinda didn’t know what went wrong. Here we have to coordinate for a release, you know, go out and start developing to get ready for a sort of “grand opening,” but that opening never came so… The biggest frustration of the whole process was just trying to go ahead. At one point we were ahead of them, we were saying, “We’re ready to go, when’s the game coming?”

Do you play Ultima Online?
No.

Interested in a behind-the-scenes look at Ultima Online’s upcoming expansion, Lord Blackthorn’s Revenge? If so, take a peek into the minds of the Designers involved in its development as they discuss the details of its conception and construction in a collection of Designer Diaries that are being published on various popular gaming websites. Two of these diaries, written by Designer Calandryll, have already been released and can be found via the following links:

• GameSpy – Calandryll discusses the expansion and how it relates to UO’s ongoing fiction in this Gamespy article.
• MGON – Insight into the UO:LBR comic, as well as its heroine, “Dawn”, can be found at MGON.

Future diaries will be posted on both of these sites in the coming weeks, and we will update again once they are released!