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1) The Assassination of Lord British - Ultima Online - August 8, 1997

Lord British was killed during an in-game appearance on Ultima Online's beta test on August 8, 1997. A royal visit was conducted as a part of server population stress test. A player character known as Rainz cast a spell called "fire field" on Lord British that, surprisingly, killed him. According to Starr Long, the whole thing was just a human error: Lord British's character, like others, had been made invulnerable, but by design the invulnerability did not persist over several game sessions. Shortly before the incident, the server had crashed, and Richard Garriott had forgotten to set his invulnerability flag on when logging on again. Shortly afterwards, Rainz's account was banned from the beta test for previously exploiting bugs rather than reporting them (infamously used by his character Aquaman to kill many player characters, a purported griefing incident). According to Origin, he was not banned for the assassination but rather for previous complaints against his account that were brought to light as a result of this attention. The massive amount of lag, caused by the stress test, was a factor in Lord British's death, as well as the guards being deactivated in the area, which allowed Rainz to steal, avoiding immediate death. 99% of the players were at Lord British's castle. Only the few at Lord Blackthorn's castle were the lucky witnesses to this historic event. Those known to have been present besides Lords British and Blackthorn were their jesters Chuckles and Heckles and the following players; Rainz, Dr.Pepper, Mental, DemonSoth, Haaaaaach, Helios, Phobos, Gildoreal, Wind Lord and Kylan.