Ultima IX: Ascension - Reception

Reception

At the time of its release, many fans felt the game was unfinished and not as polished as the earlier Ultimas were. One of the chief criticisms of Ultima IX was that the story did not do justice to the continuity of earlier parts of the series. The game's plot has many inconsistencies that fans of the series have refused to accept into the Ultima canon. The game was said to be made to attract a more general gamer audience with little or no knowledge of previous Ultimas, so many facts and events from earlier games are disregarded, while others are altered to suit the plot of Ultima IX, as well as dialogue where the Avatar questions certain aspects of past installments of Ultima that the Avatar should remember, such as the infamous "What's a paladin?" quote. Some fans have found a considerable number of errors in the game.

With the previous Ultima VIII considered to be a failure with weak sales, the poor reception of Ultima IX effectively killed the Ultima franchise; all other Ultima projects were canceled and no other Ultima was ever released, save for infrequent expansion packs for Ultima Online. Electronic Arts explained that they were concentrating everything on Ultima Online 2; however, that, too, was canceled, although the original Ultima Online remained active. Richard Garriott left Origin shortly afterward, and parent company EA Games soon shut the studio down.

Addressing one of the biggest complaints by loyal fans of the series, the community at Ultima:The Reconstruction, released an unofficial patch, to fix the inconsistencies within the Ultima IX story line, with the rest of the series.