Where were you when Lord British was (virtually) assassinated?
When Lord British was PK'ed in his own game it instantly became the most famous online assassination in history.
Which is another way of saying that you've probably never heard of it.
August 8th, 1997. Beta was ending for the phenomenon that would become Ultima Online. In good cheer, Lord British and Lord Blackthorn made an appearance at the castle, allowing the unwashed masses to gather in the courtyard.
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| In UO, crowds like this are about 80% pickpockets and about 5% asshole-mages-with-chain-lightning. I imagine if you haven't played UO before then this screen must look like a complete fucking mess. |
Here's what nobody knew at the time: After the last server reset Lord British did not default to invulnerable. Everyone else, (even Richard's jester) were safe from the mob, but Lord British was pretty-much an open target, and the only thing keeping him safe was that everyone just assumed he was un-killable.
Among the huddled, uneducated numbers was a thief named Rainz who spontaneously decided that he wanted to try and murder the figure-head of the game. Rainz didn't have much in terms of firepower, but he did manage to steal a scroll of Firewall from someone in the crowd.
It was around this time that Richard Garriott was telling everyone to stop stealing from each other, most likely thinking to himself that this whole meet your subjects event was a bad idea; never for a moment suspecting that he had just spoken his last words.
Rainz used the scroll and dropped a wall of flames on top of the assembled lords. Blackthorn laughed it off.
But British dropped dead.
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| That's him in the grey robe. |
Everything went crazy after that.
I wish I had a screenshot of it, but either Lord British's death triggered the script of a very evil programmer, or the GameMasters just decided that they didn't give a fuck, but a truck-load of demons appeared in the middle of the Caligulan crowd and started murdering everyone.
Shortly after, Rainz was banned from playing UO ever again.
The entire event was crazy, and while it might have looked like a colossal fuck-up, Richard Garriott unwittingly managed to end UO's Beta with the two things the game would be best known for:
Exploits and player-killing.
Richard Garriott here... The information you have here is mostly correct. Let me fill in a few details. When the fire field appeared at my feet, i instinctively backed out of it... but thinking I was immortal, I waded back in, and then promptly dropped dead! The GM's quickly revived me and set the immortality flag, but too late for appearances, everyone knew I had been killed. Unable to determine that Rainz had done the deed, the QA department, on their own, decided to kill everyone in the courtyard! We at Origin, thought this was good fun, but many who died were upset that they had come here to see the end, and died just before the shut down.
ReplyDeleteGood fun for all I say!
- Richard "Lord British" Garriott
Is it true that during Alpha you had a full conversation with one of the NPCs (Gilberto) because you thought that he was an Origins employee?
ReplyDeleteBecause that's what I heard.
The guy who forgot to set his invulnerability flag is the same guy who thought a half-baked AI was one of his developers.
Just thought I'd mention that.
Oh, and as long as I've got you here; could you tell me when Origin will be releasing the next Ultima? I mean, hypothetically, if EA didn't ax the team, abandon the series, and salt the earth, when would Ultima 10 be happening?
Didn't Lord British just get married to some French woman (IRL)?
ReplyDeleteThis is why I miss uo.... the cold blooded murder :( Richard please make uo2 and bring back the pre-statloss t2a era. Nothing like trying to loot the corpse of an unprotected miner before being lynched by a wandering group of antipks. I stopped playing mmos when peoples inability to cope with loss, resulted in restrictive player options/punishments and I'm tired of seeing good games ruined by developers who pander too much to the masses
ReplyDeleteThis is why I miss uo.... the cold blooded murder :( Richard please make uo2 and bring back the pre-statloss t2a era. Nothing like trying to loot the corpse of an unprotected miner before being lynched by a wandering group of antipks. I stopped playing mmos when peoples inability to cope with loss, resulted in restrictive player options/punishments and I'm tired of seeing good games ruined by developers who pander too much to the masses
ReplyDelete