Starr Long’s Comments in a GameSpot Interview:

As far as I know, obviously without having access to the corporate meetings, the game wasn’t a prospect for cancellation until close to the very end, but the momentum to cancel it had been building. The company wanted the product out sooner than we could deliver, and to try to meet their dates, we trimmed features and added lots of staff, which added to the costs. The momentum was building, since the team was so expensive, and we had spent a lot of money already.

External Sites
- Wikipedia entry
- PC Gaming Graveyard: Ultima Worlds Online: Origin - GameSpot
- Ultima Worlds Online: Origin Site Threatened - Oct 5, 1999 - GameSpot

For about a week, a small Web site was posting character illustrations, maps, logos, and background information about characters, game data, and cities in Origin and EA’s upcoming massively multiplayer online sequel Ultima Worlds Online: Origin, and it seems that very few took notice. Well, all that changed Tuesday morning when the webmaster of that site was served legal papers demanding that all UWO:O information be removed from the site.

The webmaster of the site, remaining under the alias Dr. Twister, says that a legal document delivered to him claimed that he had “illegally published certain confidential and proprietary information concerning our client’s development of Ultima Worlds Online: Origin.” He had obtained loads of Ultima Worlds Online: Origin information from an anonymous source

- Ultima Worlds Online: Origin First Impression - May 12, 2000 - GameSpot

However, unlike its predecessor, Ultima Online 2 won’t take place in an exclusively medieval, swords-and-sorcery setting. A terrible disaster has occurred in Britannia, resulting in something of an industrial revolution. The game itself will take place two centuries after the cataclysm. In the new Britannia, mechanical contraptions - and beings - are about as common as the land’s wizards and swordsmen.

One of the new options that players can expect is the absence of full player-vs.-player combat. Instead of allowing freeform player-killing, Britannia will possess special player-vs.-player arena zones in which players may duel with each other. In addition, skill sets and magic spells will be rebalanced and retuned, such that it will be difficult to be a grand master in multiple skills. Players will be encouraged to group with each other more often, as the game promises both overt and subtle rewards for social adventurers.

Ultima Worlds Online: Origin Hands-On - May 23, 2000 - GameSpot

Ultima Worlds Online: Origin certainly looks good; though it uses a third-person, behind-the-back camera view reminiscent of Asheron’s Call’s default perspective, Ultima Worlds Online: Origin has a much more detailed world populated with much larger and more highly-detailed characters and monsters. All of the game’s characters and monsters were carefully motion-captured with the help of professional martial artists. The game will also feature dynamic weather effects, such as moving clouds and lightning.

Ultima Worlds Online: Origin has three playable character races (humans, juka, and meer), but it will feature the same sort of open-ended, skill-based character development model as the previous game. However, unlike with other online role-playing games, the developers of Ultima Worlds Online: Origin are attempting to create what they described as a “much more dense world” than in other games; a world full of scenery and non-player characters, and where player-vs-monster battles aren’t fought in pairs or small teams, but in groups of 20 or 30.