source uo u.hall

Introduction:

Hi, I’m Walt Yarbrough, from EA Mythic.

In January of this year, I was offered the opportunity to join Ultima Online in an executive role. I’ve been a fan of the Ultima Series my whole life, going back to the ancient days of loading Ultima I and Ultima III on my Commodore 64 using a 1541 disk drive.

I was such a fan, I even found out where my unwrapped Christmas gifts were hidden in 1983. I ‘borrowed’ the copy of Ultima III and razored open the plastic wrap so that I could play in October and November – then I tried to act surprised on Christmas day. (Hi Mom! Sorry!)

Status:

I’d like to inform you that, due to our continuing commitment of resources towards Kingdom Reborn, we will be delaying the launch of Stygian Abyss.

We had previously announced a release date for Stygian Abyss of Summer 2007, and, even though we still have some time left in ‘Summer’ – we will not rush Stygian Abyss out the door.

As of today, we will remove all official references to Stygian Abyss’s launch date from our sites. We’ll announce a new launch date in the future.

For now, we will continue to focus on Kingdom Reborn, getting this expansion into the polished state that we all want.

I’ll monitor this thread over the next few days to listen to your concerns.

Good to know they are going to focus on polishing up KR instead of rushing SA out the door.

Yes I have to say I am impressed

w0o+!!!!1 Someone is finally thinking!

wowzers. This was unexpected. Yippeeee!!!

:5cool: considering only half the people in this house can even load KR on their machine *turns and grins at Kellen* glad to hear they will take their time.

Yup, I agree. Let them focus on KR first before SA. And it's good that they've officially come out and said there's no release date for SA.

Thread Rez!!!

I saw this thread pop up again in Stratics and it looks like there's an update posted by Admiral Ruffie.

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Will poke my head in to other threads as the situation warrants.

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Actually, he won't folks.

According to Warcry , Walt Yarbrough has left EA to work for Turbine, and as they put it "he is now the Executive Producer of an unannounced title, and the Acting Senior Producer for Lord of The Rings Online."

Without so much as a goodbye. Sorry if this is old news (although I hadn't seen it anywhere before), but I thought it important to show yet another shift in the upper ranks of EA Mythic that will certainly have some impact on UO's future.

Good Sailing Walt, we hardly knew ye.

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Here's the story on WarCry:

Former EA Mythic Producer Joins Turbine Team as Executive Producer
Matt Lowery posted on 4 Oct 2007 8:31 am


In other news concerning Turbine, we have found out that Walt Yarbrough has been hired by Turbine to produce a still unnamed title for the company. Walt was the Producer for EA Mythic's Dark Age of Camelot, and later Ultima Online. This was quite a move for Walt who had been with Mythic since 2000, and the launch of DAOC. According to his Linkedin profile, he is now the Executive Producer of an unannounced title, and the Acting Senior Producer for Lord of The Rings Online.

We still don't know anything about the upcoming title, however it has been hinted at before. In our interview with Jeff Anderson (now ex CEO of Turbine) at AGDC, Jeff hinted at new projects. It would seem that they are looking at new titles sooner rather than later.

dont care about KR. SA will be for 2d so I'll stay happy even if SA is pushed back.

The names change, but as long as the game continues, I'm a happy half-elf!

That makes two executives leaving UO at roughly the same time. No doubt was a shake-down after Stygain Abyss was delayed so much and the state that Kingdom Reborn is in.