Ultima Online: Odyssey (inexplicably abbreviated “UXO”) was to be the Next Big Thing in massively multiplayer online gaming from Origin. It had been in development for quite a time when EA moved operations to California and terminated nearly all the developers. The other shoe dropped today when EA announced UXO’s cancellation. Oddly, they didn’t do so with a press release, but left it to the project lead, who put a small note on the UXO website.

Ironically, EA has been down this road before. When I first came onboard, Origin was busily working on UO2, which was summarily cancelled and its developers released just in time for Richard Garriot to hire back all his old developer friends at his new company. Hopefully the vagaries of project management will be kinder to my friends who decided to go to California with EA and continue working on the existing Ultima Online and its forthcoming expansions.