Richard "Lord British" Garriott should be known to all who consider themselves fans of the RPG genre; his Ultima series of games was hugely influential to both the Western and Japanese schools of RPG design. He oversaw the Ultima games for roughly two decades, launched the era of the graphical MMORPG with Ultima Online (and was, I believe, the one who coined the term "Massively Multiplayer Online RPG"), tried to re-invent the genre with Tabula Rasa...and then he kind of just left the gaming industry for a while. During which time, he went to space. On his own dime.
He returned to the gaming world a few years ago now with the launch of Portalarium, an online-focused game development company that has gone on to release a handful of titles, mostly casino or artifact collection games for Facebook. A couple of years ago, Garriott started teasing the idea of his Ultimate RPG, which he said would be a triumphant return to his fantasy RPG roots...albeit one still firmly grounded in the realm of social games. He has repeatedly spoken of social gaming as the "third age/era" of gaming, and Portalarium's various efforts in the market have demonstrated his commitment to that vision.
The Lord British Presents website went live today, beginning a countdown that will end next Friday. There's not much on the face of the site to go on, although most of the text on the site face uses the Avatar font, the iconic font of the Ultima games. You can subscribe to a mailing list to receive news about the game and what I presume will be its upcoming Kickstarter campaign -- we'll know next Friday for sure, but it's not an unsafe bet.
I'd also recommend following (and liking) the Ultimate RPG on Facebook...that seems to be Portalarium's preferred means of publishing material related to the game.
Exciting times are ahead! Lord British returns with a spiritual successor to Ultima...there's a ton of potential there.
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