Quoting directly from the Electronic Arts press release announcing the Ultima Online: Kingdom Reborn expansion, Ultima Online was "The first MMORPG to reach the 100,000 subscriber base, far exceeding that of any game that went before it". Since then, it has added seven expansion packs and dozens of free content updates.

C9 Gold Contents
1 History
2 Game mechanics
3 Issues faced
4 Expansions, sequels and other releases
4.1 Sequels
4.2 Expansions
4.3 Other releases
5 Shard emulation
6 Clients
6.1 Original client
6.2 Ultima Online: Third Dawn client
6.3 Ultima Online: Kingdom Reborn client
6.4 Third-party clients
7 Timeline
8 Easter eggs
9 Awards
10 See also
11 References
12 External links

History
Ultima Online is the product of Richard Garriott's idea for a fantasy game involving several thousand people who can all play in a shared fantasy world. There were a number of prior games that allowed hundreds of people to play at the same time, including The Realm Online, Neverwinter Nights (the AOL version), and Meridian 59; however, Ultima Online was intended to be a significant improvement over the previous games, both graphically and in game mechanics. The initial team was composed of Garriott, Starr Long, Rick Delashmit and, a bit later Raph Koster, who became the lead designer for the project. Koster wrote a number of public "designer letters" and usually went by his nickname of Designer Dragon. Koster drew inspiration from a number of prior online games[4] such as DartMUD.