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The history of the gaming world, especially MMO is more interesting than one could imagine. While all the gaming genres have gone through some famous and infamous events during their evolution, MMO has one infamous moment that veteran players even remember to date. It was the result of two wrong decisions taken back-to-back.
If you are a veteran in the gaming world who has been playing MMOs since the 90s, you must have heard about the notorious Lord British incident inUltima Online. It was a remarkable moment in the history of MMOs, which was triggered by a player’s burning curiosity.
Lord British’s Death Led to a Mass Assassination in Ultima Online
TheUltimaseries used to be one of the biggest RPG gaming series during the late 80s and early 90s. To be more precise, these games used to be considered the literal definition of how an ideal single-player RPG should be made. Taking this fame a little further, in 1997,Ultima Onlinewas launched, which was one of the first MMOs ever created.
In this very first massively multiplayer online game of the series, Origin Systems created an open progression system, where players could choose how they wanted to go forward. They can either choose a decent profession or they can kill others to progress through the storyline. While creating this, little did the developers realize the consequences of it.
Lord British was an in-game character created by therenowned producer ofUltima Online, Richard Garriott, who wanted this character as the king of these games. Therefore, Lord British was coded as an invincible one who’s resistant to every type of in-game attack. Additionally, he always had his guards with him to save him from all kinds of dangers.
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During the game’s beta test, Garriott wanted to talk with the players and invited them to his Castle Britannia. While he was giving his speech, an over-curious player named Rainz cast a spell, Fire Field, to probably check whether the Lord was unbeatable or not. Surprisingly, that immediately set the Lord on fire, and he died.
This event was shocking for the players who were in that event, but there was something more shocking awaiting them. Along with Garriott, there was another developer, Starr Long, attending that event with his in-game character, Lord Blackthorn.
As soon as Lord British was slain, he summoned demons to kill the assassin, but Rainz managed to escape. Instead, those demons killed almost all the innocent players who weren’t related to this massacre.
A Little Mistake From the Developers Caused This Entire Slaughter
We have already mentioned that Lord British was coded to be resistant to all kinds of attacks. Therefore, it is natural to wonder then how Rainz managed to set him on fire. Well, he didn’t hack the game, but that murder was the result of a mistake that actually the developers made.
After this slaughter, it was revealed that before the event began, the game server crashed. It was restored, but the producer of the game forgot to restore his invulnerability flag, which left him open to all the attacks just like regular players. This clearly explains why he was killed almost instantly.
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However, shortly after this infamous assassination event, Rainz’s account was banned from the beta test. Although the stated reason was him exploiting bugs during his playthroughs, players weren’t convinced by that because exploitingbugs is a natural thing in the gaming world.
The most interesting factor was that after this sudden assassination of Lord British went viral, it initiated a new trend where players started finding ways to kill Lord British in otherUltimagames.
To do this, they started using different tricks that not only angered others who became victims to those but created a mess in the game that the developer never anticipated while making this massively multiplayer game.
Therefore, to handle this mess, Origin Systems has divided the game into nine different servers, each of them having a copy of the in-game world. This reduced the load on a single server and made things manageable.
Antara Bhattacharyya
Gaming Writer
Articles Published :97
Antara is a passionate gamer who loves trying different gaming genres, though her love for shooter games is on top. Turning her passion into a profession, she has been working as a gaming content writer for the last three years, and her love for gaming has led her to join FandomWire as a content writer and cover all her favorite games.If you don’t find her battling in the fields of Call of Duty and Fortnite, you’ll find her at the library, buried between the pages of a book.
