3) Ultima IX – 1999
We’ve just about come full circle now, because Ultima, the much-beloved and heavily lauded role-playing game, is Ultima-tely (ha!) responsible for the problems with EA Online (see: item 7). Fans were outraged when the series took such a critical misstep, and developer Origin soon met their demise after, with EA shutting them down and acquiring the name for their now infamous online services.
So just what was so bad about this installment, after a successful previous eight? Well firstly, it must be noted that, for the time at least, it did require a comparatively high-end PC, as it was the first game to feature 3D polygon rendering. But even with that, there was no disguising the infestation of bugs that would halt players progress. Save game corruptions, routine crashes and broken quests all requiring that you start over, and all meaning that a game you should spend hours immersing yourself in rarely let you have 10 minutes alone with it. I even spoke to one player who genuinely maintains that it took him nine years to eventually make it through to the end.
A group of dedicated fans even set up a community entitled Ultima: The Reconstruction that sought to fix not only the broken game, but even the aspects of the story that they felt didn’t fit in with the original instalments.
It’s good to have a hobby, right?