Lord Blackthorn: The New King (The Once and Future King?)
Britannia evidently has a new king: Lord Blackthorn!
As Ben “Bandit LOAF” Lesnick reported in his liveblog of the Ultima Online 15th anniversary party at BioWare Mythic’s studio, Starr Long was on-hand. Ben, of course, got a picture with Starr, and announced it thusly:
Starr Long, your new king, and LOAF, your humble servant. http://twitter.com/banditloaf/status/252160291280932864/photo/1
When pressed for clarification, LOAF went on to explain that:
They declared Blackthorn to be the new king. Starr isn’t returning but he’s allowed to okay the character.
That’s why Jeff was dressed as Dupre, for the proclamation.
So, citizens of Britannia…Lord Blackthorn is your new king! Hopefully his new reign works out better than the last one did!
For more on the in-game story, see The Awakening Act VIII, Part 2
Update: I totally missed this post from Ben’s liveblog, confirming the coronation of Blackthorn:
Speech is reintroducing Blackthorn… in Ultimaspeak. I think.
Yup! Starr Long is here as Blackthorn!
Blackthorne has been crowned king of Britannia!
He’s being given a new castle.
So, that’s that, then!
That’s way too much stuff to process. At least I know Starr and Loaf were having a good time. Reminds me of the Christmas parties my previous employer used to have prior to closing down. It was an atmosphere of nervous revelry, with everyone very much the friend and the careful politician simultaneously.
As far as Blackthorn being the new king, it makes perfect sense since “Lord British” is trademarked by a competitor. Kinda lame however, recycling such an obvious IP in place of what should but can’t be. Then again I consider it equally offensive that “Lady British” was used as the ruler in Ultima Forever, as I take that to be Garriott’s wife which out of respect should have been left alone. Guess respect is only as deep as the occasional tweet these days, if even that.
I’m pretty sure they planed to have a Lady British in Ultima Forever way before Richard Garriott got married.
But I thought in UO’s continuity Blackthorn ha turned into an evil mecha ? 😛
Twas a retcon (that actually makes sense) Blackthorn – UO Guide:
Over the last 4-5 years, slowly but surely they’ve been working on bringing more Ultima elements into UO.
Back in 2008, UO followed Ultima V pretty closely with the Warriors of Destiny scenario, with a few adjustments dealing with previous changes/divergences from Ultima (such as Blackthorn supposedly being dead).
In 2009, we got The Stygian Abyss, which gave us a large amount of elements from Ultima VI, and it gave us the Stygian Abyss Dungeon which was based on the Ultima Underworld version. Gargoyles were introduced as a playable race.
There is a chance that we are about to move into an era of events and characters influenced by Ultima VII. There have been some vague hints.
UO is at a crossroads of sorts, if you’ll pardon the reference. The team is focusing on a lot of older elements and reconciling things/cleaning up past things or systems that weren’t finished, along with a high resolution artwork update and some client work. There is even an upcoming publish dedicated to fixing hundreds of older bugs, some of which have hung around for years.
If they are doing what I think they are doing, they are upgrading/cleaning up large parts of UO, including the ongoing dungeon revamps, and getting a high resolution updated client into place before they tackle elements of Ultima VII.
It will be tough without Lord British, however UO did diverge from Ultima prime, and there is room to bring in many of the elements from Ultima VII, even if they can’t fully recreate it.