Do you remember Ultima?

Yes Indeed!

Our old friend Ultima makes a return, in the guise of a browser strategy game.

For those who are too young to remember, Ultima was an 80's game that introduced many of the RPG elements that today we take for granted. The game spanned over 10 sequels, all improving upon the original formula. It met great success in the United States, but somewhat of a mixed reaction over here in Europe. Until we heard no more about Ultima or a new sequel for quite a long time.

Electronic Arts, having the IP to this game lying around somewhere in their archives, must have thought that they could make some money out of it, contracted it to a third party who had a finished game already, gave it a new paint job, and here we are with Lord of Ultima.

The first impression is that it looks like any other medieval browser game that I played before. First I am greeted by a good-looking lady who wants to view, ahem, my mighty dominion. She guides me through the tutorial, gives me gifts and leaves me to expand my army and fortune.

So far so good. Lord of Ultima has the looks, and follows the formula of other well-established browser strategy games, but I will reserve my judgement until I have played it for a few more days. So I'll leave you with an image of my humble land of Brittania.

Why The Old Republic Will Not Beat Warcraft

Star Wars: The Old Republic (TOR) was officially released around two weeks ago, and although it has a huge following from Star Wars fans and curious users alike, I believe that it does not do enough to dethrone World of Warcraft (WOW) as the current MMO champion.

Here are my reasons why I think that TOR will be just another has been:

1. The system requirements for TOR are larger than those for WOW, so people with older rigs have no other choice than to play WOW since it practically works on anything. And most importantly, TOR does not look that much different from WOW to justify its higher requirements. By contrast, games such as Conan and Rift, to name a couple, do have higher requirements than WOW, but the end result is that they look much better so it is an understandable trade off.
2. It is too similar to WOW for my tastes. My opinion is that if you want to lure users away from a competitor en masse, you must provide somewhat of a better experience other than a different universe.
3. When you compare how much copies of Skyrim I sold from my website to the number of TOR sales, there is no competition as Skyrim was immensely more popular than Star Wars. Truth be told, you can also buy TOR digitally from the dedicated website, but I would still pretend more sales of boxed copies. And the website for the game's online store does not work properly on my browser (Chrome).
4. There are two opposing factions to choose from with four classes each. It should be enough for a starter, but still when comparing the numbers with other games...
5. It seems that the budget for this game's development was around $150 million. That is a lot of money, and if the game does not monetize soon, I suspect that it will be simply shut down. Currently playing TOR costs around the same as WOW.
6. WOW has been adding additional races in its line-up to counter the multi-ethnic character choices from the Star Wars universe. So it all depends if you want to be a panda or a character that looks like Yoda.
7. Obviously, WOW has a head start and has been refining the gameplay for all those years in order to make it more appealing. That is why TOR has to do much more in order to beat the competition.
8. [edit] WOW also gives you a totally free game if you subscribe for the next year. And it's not just your usual free game, but none less than Diablo 3, one of the most anticipated games of 2012.

Although my thoughts may sound negative, I want to say that Star Wars: The Old Republic is still a good game and you can do much worse than checking it out. However it still has not convinced me that it is going to be the World of Warcraft killer. Next please...