At the official site for Ultima Online 2 (aka Ultima Worlds Online: Origin), there is now a statement from EA and Origin announcing the cancellation of the game. Apparently, the two companies have “decided to put those resources [formerly devoted to UO2] into growing and improving the core offering for Ultima Online’s 230,000 loyal subscribers.”
Tabletop role-players may be worried by this announcement. Why? As we learned at last year’s Origins Game Fair, Agents of Gaming had been planning to demo their new, semi-secret tabletop RPG based on Ultima Online 2, but had to cancel the demonstrations when the computer game got delayed. Now that the computer game has been cancelled entirely, what does that mean for the tabletop RPG?
Rappan Onna Door
Necromancer Games has posted yet another freebie for fans of their D20 adventure, Rappan Athuk. This time, a 19 page description of the wilderness around the dungeon, complete with bandits and wandering beasts, is available to download. If you have the freebie code from the first page of the adventure, of course.
Draconians Sighted for Third Edition
A free D&D 3 encounter has been posted over at Wizards, and it has the unusual distinction of being set on Krynn. The game stats for Baaz and Sivak Draconians are listed in the encounter. A few more helpful posts like this, and it won’t matter that Wizards doesn’t plan to bring Dragonlance to Third Edition — we’ll figure it out for ourselves.
D&D 3 Schedule Update
Eric Noah’s D&D3 News has reported a flier that Wizards of the Coast handed out at GAMA, which announced following product schedule:
- July: Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, by Monte Cook
- August: Master Tools
- August: Manual of the Planes, by Jeff Grubb
- October: Oriental Adventures, by James Wyatt