UO Team Being Moved To Virginia

New Ultima Online Producer Chris Rabideau delivered a difficult message today on the UO Herald. He announced that the entire San Francisco-based Ultima Online development team would be moved in-house to EA Mythic's offices in Fairfax. Likely, this means that a lot of developers will not follow the studio as it moves yet again.

Destructoid has more specifics on the news, which is part of an overall shuffle at Electronic Arts. According to them, many Ultima Online developers and others within EA Mythic have or will lose their jobs. Read about that here.

Citizens of Britannia,

I wanted to share with you a significant change that is about to take place with the UO development team. Over the next several months, we'll be moving the team from its current location at EA's headquarters outside of San Francisco, CA to the EA Mythic studios in Fairfax, VA.

So what does this mean to you? This is a big move for the team, but we expect it to have very little impact on the game and community in the short term. Planned development and operations will continue with minimal interruption.

In the long term, we believe this move will be a big win for UO and will allow us to better support the game as we move into its second decade of operation. By having all three MMO teams together here in Virginia, we'll be better able to focus on Ultima Online's development and ensure a long and lively future for the game.

Moving the UO team into the same studio that currently houses the Dark Age of Camelot and Warhammer Online teams has other advantages as well. We'll be bringing a wealth of MMO experience together under one roof with a clear studio vision and strong leadership. This will benefit all three titles as we'll be able to share resources, experience and technology to continue to improve all of our games.

We know what UO means to you and it is as much a part of our lives as it is yours. For that reason, we are committed to the game's continued development, support and success. Moving the UO team to the EA Mythic studio will provide this most cherished game and its community with the love, attention and resources it needs to continue to grow and thrive.

Thank you,

Chris Rabideau
Producer, Ultima Online

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That still remains as the only "official" announcement we've had so far. (by 'we' I mean the UO player's community forums at UO Stratics).
Mark Jacobs, EA/Mythic top dog posted a few vague comments on the f13 forum site yesterday and there's been a couple of "let's dodge the issue" comments made by EA/Mythic's Comunity Co-ordinators.
There's a lot of nervous UO subscribers right now, wondering whether the game we play is about to vapourise, but like most online communities, we do tend to see anything like this as a potential disaster.
The post to our forums by Tensor, claiming to be a now ex-employee with the UO team was pretty emotive stuff and layoffs in any company always give rise to "The Sky Is Falling" reactions.

Still, UO has survived this kind of thing before and, I guess there's no solid reason to believe it won't ride this bump and continue with the new Kingdom Reborn client and the Stygian Abyss expansion, if Chris's comments can be taken at face value.

Although, as a UO player for almost 7 years, I would be like to hear a little more re-assurance from someone like Mark Jacobs that the game will survive the trip from California to Virginia basically intact before I pay for another 6 months on my accounts which are due in a couple of weeks.