EA launches free-to-play 'Lord of Ultima' browser-based game

The Avatar weeps.

Oh man... I will probably have to try this.

*facepalm* This is what the venerable Ultima series has been reduced to? I think I'll just go reinstall Ultima 7.

Direct from the Lord of Ultimate wiki: "We, the developers, make our money, by selling a variety of convenience items, which e.g. enable you to accelerate building construction and army recruitment times or increase your build queue."

So far it's pretty fun. The money you can spend has more to do with making it go faster or getting automatic resources. You buy diamonds @4.99 for 10 and with those diamonds you can get items. The items offer things like 5000 gold or 5 hours fast forward on construction time. I don't know if I would get that into it to buy more stuff, but considering my safety went off today, I might find myself getting raided when I login again.

I have been enjoying the game so far. It even prompted me to spend $5 on some diamonds. I found the biggest benefit of paying some cash is what can be done while you are away from the game. You can set more in your build queue, that sort of thing. It isn't like a full paying member is going to crush a non-paying one, but they will have advantages for sure.

I like these browser world turn based games. Ikariam was/is a good one too. I wish the Civilization franchise would take a page from these books.

Will the servers be reset on this game after a few months or something, like in Travian? If not, I may have to give this game a try.

You know what might be nice in this article? A link to the browser based game that you are talking about, rather than just a press release about it.

...but can I play it on my iPad?

XCom turns into an FPS, Ultima turns into a browser based war game. Particularly impressive considering Britannia doesn't even really have warring factions. Wonder if the Guardian is a playable character...

*snif* :(

My friends and I have been playing this for days. It's pretty fun.

Basically, you get 7 days to build your city and army before being thrown into danger.

You can buy magic items to help you out (they still take manna to use), and they usually cost about 12 in-game "diamonds". You can buy 500 diamonds for $5, but they have buying options all the way up to at least $100. The mana requirement tends to keep it a little fairer, so people that pay don't just roll over everybody else...I haven't found a way to buy mana yet. -- You can use paypal or any number of credit cards to buy diamonds. You don't have to leave the game to buy them, and the server only saves your credit card/paypal data if you want it to.

Once your city gets built up, you join alliances with other players and can raid/loot other player cities, as well as send troops on quests.

To be clear, most of my friends are playing the game without buying anything, and like it a lot.

Anyway, you can get the magic items in-game by completing quests, but you can also buy them too.

For an in-browser game, my friends and I have enjoyed this so far, even though it's a huge time sink. The best part though is that your resources keep building while you're asleep at night, so every morning you have a new load of resources to use. It's sort of like an MMO version of the old Command and Conquer series set in a mid-evil time period. That's the best way I know to describe it.