They Break the News, I Break it Again!

In the grand tradition of websites that don't generate new content and merely republish other people's content and call it "news," let me "gank" the "stylings" of recent the news.

Taken from: http://www.uo.com/news.html

"We're excited and enthused about the upcoming publish of Ultima Online: Renaissance and we sincerely hope you'll enjoy all the great systems and updates we've bundled together in this new package. However, the changes and features included in Ultima Online: Renaissance are some of the most complex and elaborate changes we've published since the game was released, and because of this, we've decided to delay the publish of Ultima Online: Renaissance until we are secure in delivering a quality gaming experience to our customers.

Additionally, in the interest of providing a smooth and expedient publish, we have chosen to remove the faction system from the Renaissance publish. This system will be brought back into testing following the next publish. We expect it to be active on the shards within a few weeks of the Renaissance publish. While we can delay the release of Ultima Online: Renaissance to our servers, we cannot delay the retail release... "

Translation: we are sorry publish. The game you paid for in retail stores publish doesn't work as advertised publish. Keep playing the old game publish and please don't sue our asses again even though we richly deserve it, publish. Maybe we'll have the game done soon, publish.

Ultima Online: Rennaisance becomes Ultima Online: PR Disaster just a few years after the buggy and problematic UO launch, just a year or so after the class-action lawsuit against them starts and stops, just a year after Origin announces they won't make anymore single player games (aside from Ultima 9), just five months after Ultima IX: Ascension is released and is found to be horribly unfinished, just a few weeks after Richard Garriott (Lord British) and twenty other folks get fired (some say quit, I heard "fired") and just a few days after its rumored that Raph "Designer Dragon" Koster and Rich Vogel leave Origin for the world of EverQuest (more probably Star Wars: EverQuest).

After all that, I have to commend David Swofford (the PR guy there at Origin). At the moment I can't imagine a more trying and difficult job that trying to manage "press and public relations" for all this mess. He has, in my learned opinion, the hardest job in the business, aside from my editor and Brian Kemp at Eidos (who is handling Daikatana). Have some Pepto Bismol on me, David.