Ultima Online celebrates 14 years

Happy birthday, Ultima Online! In an era when some games last not even a year and others seek to continually reinvent themselves, the grand-daddy of the genre has made it to 14 years.

To usher in the anniversary, Mythic Entertainment released publish 72.0 to the live servers last week. The patch introduces another round of the Clean Up Britannia event, which allows players to trash their junk items (thus cleaning up the servers of wasted data) in return for lucrative rewards. The devs also tweaked the Honesty virtue mechanic and added new anniversary gifts that are claimable through Halloween.

Finally, the UO team has promised a high-resolution art update, one of many graphical overhauls in the game's long history.

Here's to 14 more, old girl.

[Update: After the break, we've embedded an anniversary video by Sosaria Reels over on the official forums at UO Stratics. Enjoy the stroll down memory lane!]