1997-08-26: Rumor Control Announcement

Rumor Control Announcement

To All Concerned,

In the last week or so there has been rampant speculation among UO testers and fans that the game would be released in the very near future, without being fully tested or debugged. We at ORIGIN wish to assure all interested parties that we have no intention of releasing Ultima Online until such a time as it is complete, balanced and ready for public consumption. The game is not yet to that point, and therefore ORIGIN is not preparing to ship UO at this time. This is a matter upon which ORIGIN Marketing, Quality Assurance and Lord British Productions are all in full agreement.

So when will Ultima Online be released? It has been ORIGIN's policy throughout the development process to announce no release date until that date is certain. However, the game is currently progressing at an encouraging rate -- all essential functionality is in, debugging of the new systems is proceeding rapidly, and we are preparing to move into a period when all our energies will be directed towards stability, balancing the game and fine tuning the fun factor. Under the current schedule we are not trying to release the game in the next few days, but neither do we anticipate that the wait will be measured in months. We hope to have a game that lives up to the tremendous potential of the Ultima Online concept finished and in the stores in a matter of a weeks. As always, we thank you for your patience and assistance. Please be assured that we are committed to getting UO finished and released as quickly as we possibly can, but absolutely not at the expense of the level of quality which you the gamer expects from ORIGIN and the Ultima series.

Tuesday, August 26