Richard Garriott Would Like to Take Ultima Online’s Reins Again

In an exchange with a fan on Twitter, Richard Garriott expressed interested in taking the reins of Ultima Online again. In particular, Garriott has specified he’d like to “strip [the title] down” to bring it back to how it was actually intended, which I imagine means he doesn’t like the changes implemented by EA:

If [Electronic Arts] knew what was good for [Ultima Online], they would give it back to us, we strip it down, bring it back up as intended.

While the sentiment doesn’t really surprise me, this is the first time I see Garriott openly talk about his disapproval of the direction Ultima Online has taken. I can certainly see a lot the influence of his Ultima Online work on Shroud of the Avatar, so I suppose we’ll see how that project works out and what it might say about the direction Garriott would take if he had the chance to work on Ultima Online with his team again.