Speaking as a person who had not finished any Ultima games before I played Ultima 9 (bit I have done that afterwards), I could not spot all the plot inconsistencies (just a handful of them), I did not hate the game. The gameplay in Ultima 9 is not bad (though the bugs are obviously a big issue), so if you only look at it from a gameplay point of view, and ignore the story, it is not bad.
But, having finished most Ultimas since then, re-visiting Ultima 9 was painful. Sure, the gameplay was still quite alright, but suddenly all the stupid plot holes were just overly obvious. Ultima 9 was (kinda) liked by the people who had no emotional attachment to the series, and hated by everyone else. EA was, during the 90's, known for buying & killing successful companies. They bought Origin, Westood & Bullfrog, and forced these major companies to adopt to EA's way of doing things, rather than to let them keep doing what made them so successful. As a result, all of these companies went under, all for the very same reason (you would have thought that EA would have learnt at some point why these companies died). This is why so many dislike EA.

Wow, seriously? Look the only reason why they ended up shuting them down was because EA ran them into the ground in the first place before that Origin, Westwood, and Bullfrog were highly successful and making lots of money making both comerically and critically well received games which was why EA actively sought them out and bought them up, which in turn they destroyed.

So if your going to post a response at least have the sense to get your facts straight or post all of them.
I have to disagree on Ultima 9 being a decent game if you were to take away the story since at least in my opinion at least, the gameplay is really mediocre to just outrght bad and bland at best Yeah it's not outright terrible but it still pretty bad.

You forgot to add forcing them to produce such turds in a minimum development time cutting corners, then close after making games which are poorly received commercially and critically!

I thought the puzzle solving was pretty good, and the combat was "alright". I've played better games, but I was almost never bored while playing Ultima 9.

Well everyone has different tastes and such and if you liked the gameplay that's fine, I known people who liked Sonic next gen, Shadow the hedgehog, Dragon Age 2, Deus Ex: IW and so on and that's fine if someone likes a game that is widely regarded by gamers as terrible and was panned by critics, that's their right my argument has always been that the game is still terrible and there is nothing wrong with liking a bad game. I love quite a few bad games but I would never say "oh there not terrible or as bad as people make it out to be", which always bothers me when people who like bad game A or B tend to do that(not directed at you, just talking about those types in general) "oh Dues Ex IW isn't bad, I like it honestly if it wasn't called Dues Ex people wouldn't be so hard on it" no we would since it still a title that walks between being mediocre to just bad game.

Honestly I think people just overreacted when it came to IW, and it was not widely panned by critics, in fact most praised it. The main complaint that Ultima 9 got by gaming critics was the fact that it was a buggy mess on release, though at least the local magazines also have it a fare amount of praise. It is widely considered to be a bad game by the people who had played previous Ultimas, but not by those who had not. Same with IW, it was the people who loved Deus Ex that hated IW, but the people who had not played the series before thought it was a pretty good game.

Eh they still suck if you ask me and this was coming from someone who played both IW and IX before I really got into Ultima(well I played 3, 6, and 8 but never was very into the series till a few years later) and Deus Ex. but they still both were just sub par to bad games, were they Drake and the 99 dragon's awful no but they still weren't great or even decent just really below average. Not saying I'm completely right and your wrong you have you opinion and I have mine.

ill watch it later.


but i liked part 9.

my only complaint, when i played it new, was how small the world had become. towns felt like they were right on top of each other. combat was a little clunky, but most 3D games with melee combat suffer from this.

i should go replay it; i doubt it has aged well.

Damn, now i want to play it.

I wonder if he'd do a betrayal counter for MEh3. Probably not, he'd likely need a 5 digit counter for that one.

i dont know the story... but, why does no one blame the studios for selling out? if they were all making so much money, why did they need EA's money? did they think they would only benefit from the marketing and distribution and be left alone creativly? i dont know... but i do know, these studios were as much a part of the merger as EA. they had to be.

i dont want to come off as an EA appologist; origin broke my heart when they closed!

lets hope Maxis doesnt join that list!

I don't know the story behind Bullfrog and Westwood but Orgin's reasoning according to Richard Garriott and Warren Spector was due to the increasing production and mass production cost of the games this was before CD roms would be come the new strandered so it was costing them alot of money to release games to the public so EA offered to purchase them with the promise that they can continue to run Orgin they way they have been.

The lesson of the story: Don't sell yourselves out to big corporations unless it looks like you might go tits up in the near future, which wasn't the case for any of them. Yup, usually in these cases it is for security reasons, but there's only a very few cases of studios surviving this kind of deal.

Well now yes, but back then these kind of deals were few and far between. So how were they to know?

uncommon to gaming, probably. but not uncommon to business.

how often is an acquisition given full freedom? i cant think of a single example in MY industry... and i work in just about the oldest industry there is!

reminds me of the "first axiom of business" i was taught when i first started sales in my early 20s: "tell them anything they want to hear, as long as it doesnt cost you any money."

fucked up words to live by!