Ultima Online Service Rate Change

According to an announcement on Origin's official Ultima Online website, The Ultima Online monthly service rate will change from $9.95 per month to $12.99 per month on June 25, 2003. They are, however, introducing some pre-payment plans. If you pay 6 months in advance you can still get the $9.95 per month rate. Here's the snip:

We're introducing the following two multi-month discount packages, which will be available on June 25th:
3 Month Prepaid Discount Package - $34.99
6 Month Prepaid Discount Package - $59.99
By choosing our new 6-month discount package, you can keep your monthly rate at $9.99 per month - maintaining your rate where it is right now!

As much as it's a bit of a pinch on the pocketbook, I don't think this comes as much of a surprise to most UO players. Seems to me that they started talking about this a couple of years ago. It's a good sign. If Origin didn't plan on keeping the UO servers up for a long time to come, I don't think they'd bother doing this.
Read the Service Rate Change article at uo.com