I stumbled upon a Gamasutra article from 1997, regarding Dark Sun Online development and containing the following reference to UO.
I find it funny that this developer would criticize the high expectations of UO, while praising his own game that was plagued by serious bugs and lasted a very short time. UO obviously had a rough release, but I fail to see how lesser expectations would have benefitted the game. Here we are 11 years later though and, hype or no hype, UO lives on. Maybe they should add a footnote to lesson four that a quality game is a quality game and its success is relatively independent of hype and players' expectations.LESSON FOUR. Don't hype the product until it's ready. We purposely kept quiet about the title until very late in the project and were thus mostly able to handle peoples' expectations. (I say "mostly" because there are some people you'll never be able to satisfy.) We wince now when we see the hype that's been built around ULTIMA ONLINE. Although UO is likely to be an impressive and groundbreaking product once it's finished, it's also unlikely to ever satisfy the heightened expectations that have been built up around it.