The Game Developers Conference announced today that its next event will feature a postmortem on Ultima Online with producer Richard Garriott de Cayeux, director Star Long, and creative lead Raph Koster. GDC 2018 will take place March 19 to March 23 at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, California.
Ultima Online came out for PC in 1997. It was one of the first modern massively multiplayer online role-playing games. It would influence other landmark MMOs like Everquest and World of Warcraft.
Garriott created the Ultima series in 1981. It was one of the first major computer RPG franchises. Garriott has appeared in the games as his digital alter ego, Lord British, a moniker he often goes by in real life.
“The postmortem will tell the complicated history of the pioneering massively multiplayer RPG and examine how many contemporary games share similar challenges to Ultima Online even as it celebrated its 20th anniversary last month,” GDC explained in an email sent to GamesBeat. “Some of the fascinating topics that will be explored about the game and its huge, living community of players, include the death of Lord British, simulated ecologies, playerkillers, The Bank of Britain, city sieges, player weddings, sports events, role-playing as orcs, and much more.”
Past GDC postmortems have focused on classics like Diablo and Ms. Pac-Man.