The Conspiracy: The secret pact between Garriot and EA
After the dissolution of Origin Systems in 2004, the future of the Ultima series was left in an uncertain state because Electronic Arts now owned the series but Garriot owned a bunch of crucial parts from the series. Then, in 2012, EA suddenly announces Ultima Forever: Quest for the Avatar, which is to return to the old Britannian lore, and the next year, Garriot announces his own SotA, throwing around such Ultima-laden terms as "the Avatar" and "Virtues", etc. The obligatory conspiracy theory is then as follows: Garriot and EA got in touch and quietly agreed not to spit into each other's cauldrons as they take separate paths to reinvent the Ultima series.- I guess Jossed, if at this point anyone can trust a single word said by Garriott. The monumental failure to develop Shroud of the Avatar and putting Lord British in a net negative by the end of the ordeal (to say nothing about his reputation) points out a far more mundane course of events: he decided to make the game to piggyback on EA's marketing. And like many old big names in the industry during the early days of Kickstarter, he saw crowdfunding as a neat tool to fund his pet project.
