Gotcha: What a nonsense. Origin was awesome. It was EA's fault for rushing U7: Serpent Isle and every game after that.
If they had the time, Origin could have improved on Serpent Isle (although it's already a damn good game) and made a proper sequel out of Ultima 8 and 9.
Even if Origin was a "100 year old man", it sure was EA stabbing this old man right in the heart.
To top the insult off EA named their sucky Steam-wannabe download platform Origin.
EA was and still is a damnable monstrousity.
Gotcha speaks the truth. It was EA's fault, not Origin.
Serpent's Isle was a very linear game... which is very much the opposite of what Ultima is supposed to be. Why was it linear? Because they didn't have time to make it the involved open-world game they wanted it to be.
Richard Garriot mentioned some of the great ideas he had for Ultima 8, but they were so rushed it didn't even become a fraction of what he envisioned it would be. You can tell it was rushed if you play it. Zombies, zombies, zombies. Have you ever seen an Ultima game with less variety of enemies? Tired of killing zombies? Too bad... here's more zombies.
Ultima 9 was also rushed... but you can tell that there would have been a good product there if it was given the love and attention Origin wanted to give it. The devs at Origin released an "unofficial" patch to fix a lot of the bugs. Why was it unofficial if it came from Origin? Because EA told them not to work on it anymore. So anything that came from Origin afterwards was not approved by EA and was therefore considered "unofficial". That right there should tell you how both Origin and EA felt about the Ultima games and the fans.
The problem is that Origin was trying to do large scale projects, but EA was giving them a deadlines that can only be met with a project a fraction of its size. EA was accustomed to releasing games "seasonally" because they were focused on sports games. They were too stupid to realize that you don't handle other types of games the same way.