Adventures of Blackthorn, originally located at http://www.e-prizm.com/blackthorn/, was once a project led by Wind Walker aiming to allow Ultima fans to experience the chronicles of Blackthorn after his exile at the end of Ultima 5, by playing his role in this new spin-off set on the Guardian's homeworld.
In mid-February 2004, the above address changed to a redirection to The Road to Allysium. The project disappeared without any explanation, and the Allysium site mentioned Wind Walker joining their team.
On 26th June 2004, I had a chat with Wind Walker in which I asked what made him abandon his project. The following is an excerpt from the conversation:
© by Daniel D'Agostino 2002-2025Dino: how did it come to pass that AOB joined allysium?
Wind Walker: well AOB was done for and Allysium looked v. promising. Since we had a lot of experience with the DS engine, we figured instead of wasting it, lets join a promising team and thus keep our talent in the DS community
Dino: but what made you give up on AOB?
Wind Walker: It was my first project, and I realized in early 2003 that making an Ultima on any engine other than one written specifically for Ultima would not work. Plus the fact that AOB was not taking place in Britannia only made it more difficult because similar people, music, landscape etc would not be part of AOB. Thus making people realize that they are playing an Ultima would be almost impossible to accomplish with a project like this
Wind Walker: why do you ask this all of a sudden?
Dino: simply because I remember going to the AOB site and seeing the redirection to Allysium, and nobody knew why AOB had closed down
Wind Walker: after we switched to Morrowind and realized it wasn't going to work out, I didn't want to go through another explanation session. It wasn't the best moment of my life :( Plus I really didn't think we had that much support or fans who cared. I felt the jump to the allysium site would be self explanatory but maybe I should have put a small message on there
Dino: well, I think many people did understand that AOB had joined Allysium... it was written on the Allysium site after all
Dino: people just didn't know why it happened
Dino: that's why I asked
Wind Walker: yes, that is true, I should have explained better. If you want, you can put our discussion or a summary of our discussion on your site. For anyone who is interested, they can know the reason
