I know this game was roundly hated, but I thought it was excellent. One
of the best open world RPGs at the time.

Its the ultima game I'd like to see on gog.

Good for you.

With Ultima 1 - 6 already on GoG as well as Underworld 1 & 2 there is a huge chance we will see this on gog maybe not right now but pretty soon i think.

I myself am after Ultima 7. Had the disks for it but could never get it to work.

If you still have them then Exult is your answer.

Me too, even though I wouldn't buy it from GoG because I have it already. It would make sense because it is a quite old game already, and apparently GoG is destined to get the other games in the series as well.

I just wish their Ultima series collection will be complete, with all the parts of U7 and possibly also Ultima 0, just because it was included in the original Ultima Collection as well.

What's with this game-killing bug that I read about in Exult pages? Something about vital items disappearing from the game, and the game crashing due to it? EDIT: gyokzoli was faster.

BTW, doesn't Ultima 7 run ok under DOSBox? I think Exult was pre-DOSBox solution to running U7 in modern systems, albeit it apparently has some enhancements too like higher resolution, better user interface etc.

I remember the original U7 was a bitch to get running satisfactorily under real DOS, but then DOSBox seems to make that easier for other games because apparently it doesn't need e.g. extra mouse driver or disk cache program (smartdrive) to eat skimpy DOS conventional memory.

I do have game somewhere too - it takes me a VM and 3 patches to run it.
Most of the games I get from gog.com, I already owned. I'm paying for them to store it and keep it running on modern hardware.

I'm waiting for 7 (with expansions), 8 (with voice pack) and 9.
I had fun with all of them.
7 was this insanely huge pretty hardcore RPG, 8 was more action oriented but still cool and I could barely run 9 but I had a lot of fun exploring the world.
Of course that's probably mostly due to my nostalgia goggles.
But I'm also sure I'm not the only one that buys certain games from GOG for nostalgia reasons alone.

I'll second that. Done it on steam and gog.
Ultima 9 was the only game I played through twice.

Loved #9... still have the cloth map and Tarot Cards somewhere at home, that were included with the game pack :)

Unfortunately, I can't run the game anymore on my system... even with the community patch, it still crashes for me when I am done with the character creation at the gipsy and teleport into the real game :(

I haven't played 9 yet but I do wonder about something.

Is there any significance to the fact that you're a literal titan by the time the game starts, or is that overlooked?

Ultima 9 really wasn't an open world game even for the time. It was pretty linear in all aspects.
But nowdays you can get patches for it, that make it open world game and there's even that Beautiful Britannia project, which makes the world prettier by enhancing the textures and adding more vegetation to the world.

http://forgottenworld.de/index.php/projects/beautiful-britannia

I've played through all of Serpent Isle in Exult without ever noticing that bug. Of course, that doesn't mean everyone who plays will be as lucky, but it is possible.

If anyone tries playing in Exult, I guess the advice is: save often. (It is also possible to avoid the problem altogether, apparently, by disabling item creation schedules in the game, but I never did that.)

As for Ultima 9... well, it had its problems. But I must say, I still have the image of Moonglow at night etched in my memory. It would be nice to go back. :)

Ehhh... about the only good thing about Ultima 9 was some of the music. Like this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7cUEhA2wdA