Getting busted by Lord British while chasing bugs in Ultima Online

The new book Braving Britannia: Tales of Melancholy, Malice, and Peril in Ultima Online is a “sequel” to 2018’s Braving Britannia: Tales of Life, Love, and Adventure in Ultima Online, collects 30 additional interviews with players and developers of the grandfather of massively multiplayer online PC games Ultima Online, and explores how their lives were forever shaped and changed by their experiences. The following is an excerpt from an interview with Jason Spangler, a former software engineer at Origin Systems, Inc.

Wondrous things

In 1997, Ultima Online was close to shipping, and the development team at Origin Systems was deep in the throes of crunch. As the devs worked to squash bugs and add in those last-minute bells and whistles from their wish lists, deep within the Austin, Texas-based studio, software engineer Jason “Stormwind” Spangler was working late.