I find it pretty disturbing that the Ultima community is apparently dead nowadays, so I'd like to hear your thoughts on the franchise.

I personally find most of the installments very enjoyable and on-par with most of today's RPGs, except for the graphics/interface of course. But those games still have a unique touch of originality in them. Makes me wonder why they're almost non-existent on the internet.

Well, Ultima 8 was a severe blow to the franchise, and Ultima 9 - which was supposed to fix the damage - exacerbated it instead by an order of magnitude. After that, the franchise was simply dead, and has remained so for a long time.

Recently there have apparently been some attempts at a revival, but from what I hear, it's going to be an action RPG with very little regard for the series' unique strengths, and very little creativity put into it ("Lady" British?). The interviews with the Bioware guy who presented the project also showed some blatant disregard for Ultima and oldschool RPGs in general.

Ultima fans will probably be better off checking out the various fan projects instead - Exult, Project Lazarus, and similar efforts.

Like you mentioned, the graphics and interface really haven't aged well.

For old gamers like us, that's not an issue. We remember what these games were like and are able to see past these issues.

I personally only dabbled in Ultima when they were new. I started playing the first 3 games earlier this year for the first time and loved them. Well maybe not ultima 2, but the others I loved.

The modern day gamer is not going to see a reason to play the older games when newer games are so much easier to get into.

Yeah, that remake is a recipe for disaster. But anyway, I'd appreciate if we could aim the discussion towards the great Ultima games, everything that came out before U8.

Oddly enough, i actually enjoyed Ultima 3-9. I know i'm in the minority here. I still would love to get a digital copy of U9 to complete my collection.

I enjoyed Ultima 7 but 8 and 9 where unfinished and damaged the series. I rmember buying ultima 9 box and was amazed at the goodies in it only when did i try and play it did i find the game was a disaster bugs crashes and poor optimisation and even after 3 patches EA washed their hands of the game and the patches got the game upto about a release state but a number of bugs remained unfixed.

The series like Might and Magic had some really good games but by the end the games where a shadow of their former glory.

Look for the Ultima Dragons. They used to hang out at rec.games.computer.ultima.dragons but usenet has become more marginal for discussion after everyone decided it was for distributing warez. I'm sure they're still around somewhere.

That's rather interesting, I think I'll join up. Hopefully they're still active.

Alot of them are still around I know some of them worked on various fan projects like Ultima 5: Lazarus and Exult and at least two Xe Dragon and Sergorn Dragon helped with getting Worlds of Ultima 1+2 here on GOG. And Voyager Dragon can be spotted here on the forums under the user name mcmagi(he did a few ultima upgrade patches as well).

As for Ultima, I missed out on alot of them when they came out mainly because alot of the shops here didn't carry them so in my youth I only played Exodus, False Prophet, Underworld 2, Pagan and Ascention(which I still can't bring myself to finish) but man did they ever stick with me and thanks to alot of efforts to get them re-released I can finally enjoy the ones I missed out on. Just finished Quest of the Avatar for the first time two days ago
http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g169/Evilmonkey6669/end.png

honesty there still fun to play once you get past the controls and graphics and the graphics can be upgraded easily and the controls while not the best are not that bad once you get used to them.

Well, I'm pretty much a new Ultima fan. I gave it a try back in 2006, but I couldn't get it. Then, I got Ultima 4 and Ultima 1+2+3 and I was surprised on how simple and addicting it was (still trying to finish Ultima 1). As for the remake, I don't have much to say (haven't played the most beloved Ultima games before, I'm not exactly sure what to think). But I won't say anything negative untill it's released and that I actually play it.

Best case scenario, it might actually turn out to be good (ex. Deus Ex Human Revolution (remember how rabid the fans were when they first heard the news? They were more rabid than the Ultima fans).

Medium case scenario, the game might now satisfy the oldest fans of the series, but it might bring more attention to the franchise leading to better games (ex. Fallout New Vegas).

I'll keep my judgement until I actually play it.

And I've seen Ultima 9 in action. I kinda liked it (despite for the ugly graphics) because it reminded me of Gothic. The music was awesome too.

Yeah.
What gets me is that these games are still really fun to play. Having to rely on your game game manuals and maps is a refreshing change for someone who began with modern RPGs.