Posted over at UO Stratics:

Player: UO has killed off Blackthorn and Lord British.

Wilki: That's kinda because we don't own the rights for those character's these days. LB and BT have left the building, folks. Not to mention, having grown up playing Ultima, the idea of messing around with that lore is really not something I'd personally feel comfortable doing.

We want more Ultima in Ultima Online too! We've got some hard core Ultima fans on the design team (I actually saw Draconi playing Ultima IV a few weeks ago after work) and I have a feeling they'll be slipping more of it into the game as time goes on...

(Either that or they'll have to listen to me whine about it!)

Bad news….Ultima without those chars don’t make sense…
If Lord British “dies” we need to choose another King, UO can’t continue with a dead King… Maybe a new expansion about this matter would be a good idea. Nobody can resist to an event about the ascending of the new Britannia King…

Ultima doesn't depend solely on particular characters I think, it's more about the world itself. The locations, the history, the magics, etc. After all, the single-player games all were based around the Avatar yet we've never had him in UO either and it hasn't stopped anything.

A resounding yes to more Ultima in UO though. Like where's blackrock and glass swords?

Yeah i have to agree... its more about the community then one single character... and btw.. Blackthorn and Lord British have been dead for quite some time... a few years at least... and Sosaria has survived with out them.. and as Adrianna said.. we have NEVER seen the Avatar...lolol..