Missed Opportunities

OSI, which wrote Ultima Online, was part of Electronics Arts (EA). Given the positive effect of the Ultima name on sales, other brands from the EA stable were considered contenders for implementation as virtual worlds. Thus began the Privateer Online project. Raph Koster was installed as lead designer, with Rich Vogel as producer. Work was well advanced when the project was suddenly, bizarrely cancelled. Raph, Rich, and others were immediately snapped up by Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) to work on the Star Wars license they had recently acquired. SOE was the new name of Verant, a company spun off from 989 Studios to develop EverQuest. In other words, EA presented some of its best virtual world experts to one of its two major competitors. EA would shortly give most of its remaining experts to its other major competitor.

Ultima Online 2 was planned to be set in the same universe as UO, but to be fully 3D with an EQ-style moveable camera. Early screen shots showed it to be much superior in looks to EQ, and with Damion Schubert (of Meridian 59 fame) as lead designer and Starr Long (Rich Vogel’s predecessor at UO) as producer it was sure ¹ to be a hit. Also involved was Jeremy Gaffney, who was a founder of Turbine and had worked on Asheron’s Call.

Signs of strangeness appeared when the game was renamed as the unwieldy Ultima Worlds Online: Origin, but it wasn’t until 2001—three years into the project—that it was insanely canned.

Starr Long, Jeremy Gaffney, and most of the other talent involved left almost immediately to set up with the designer of the Ultima series itself, Richard Garriott. Their new company, Destination Games, was shortly thereafter acquired by NCSoft, developers of Lineage, who saw an opportunity to use their Korean profits to break into the American market. Jake Song moved from Korea to Austin, Texas, to work with them. Electronic Arts had done it again. They were not the only company capable of such monumental gaffes, however.

Venerable games publisher Sierra had dipped its toes in the online marketplace before, having set up The Sierra Network in 1991; they sold it in 1994 for around $50,000,000 to AT&T, who renamed it ImagiNation Network ². Sierra had maintained an interest in a virtual world called The Realm, designed by Steve Nichols, which was eventually launched early 1997. The Realm was graphical, but had separate, static 2D pictures for each location that acted as a stage across which animations of the players’ characters moved. It dated rapidly and failed to attract more than about 25,000 subscribers at its peak (late 1997). Nevertheless, it was proof of concept, and Sierra had an ace up its sleeve.

Some mainstream entertainment properties would make poor virtual worlds. The Harry Potter universe, for example, doesn’t really allow for more than one Harry Potter in it. There are three franchises, however, that are especially well suited to being embodied as graphical virtual worlds ³ and which would produce a guaranteed hit: Star Wars, Star Trek, and The Lord of the Rings. Sierra had a Lord of the Rings license.

In 1998, Steve Nichols signed up as lead designer of Middle Earth Online, along with Janus Anderson (also of The Realm), Daniel James (from a top-notch commercial text-based virtual world called Avalon), and Jay Esparza (already with Sierra). The designers were keen to discuss all aspects of the development with prospective players, and consequently generated a lot of buzz. They also generated a lot of friction with Sierra executives, who didn’t like some of what was being mooted—especially with regards to plans for the permanent death of player characters.

The project continued, however, until during a company-wide reorganization of Sierra in 1999 the opportunity was put on ice. The design team was removed. Sierra also decided to abandon The Realm because it didn’t look good against Ultima Online and it looked worse against EverQuest. The game was taken up by Codemasters and newly released Steve Nichols joined them.

The story does not quite end there, however. Sierra secretly hired a new design team to work on Middle Earth Online. This was perhaps not unrelated to the fact that the first of the Lord of the Rings movies was due to be released in 2001, which would generate massive, free publicity. Again, though, Sierra mystifyingly canned the project—although at least this time the developers, MM3D, sued.

Sierra had missed its chance. In December 2001, the movie The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring was released. It grossed $155,862,412 in its first two weeks ⁴.

That is how out-of-touch management decisions shape an industry.