Short answers, pulled from the story.
Richard Garriott created the Ultima series through his company Origin Systems. Electronic Arts has owned the Ultima brand since 1992, though Garriott retains rights to several characters including Lord British.
The main Ultima series consists of nine installments grouped into three trilogies: The Age of Darkness (Ultima I-III), The Age of Enlightenment (Ultima IV-VI), and The Age of Armageddon (Ultima VII-IX). Ultima VII was split into two parts, bringing the total release count to ten.
The Eight Virtues in Ultima IV are Honesty, Compassion, Valor, Justice, Sacrifice, Honor, Spirituality, and Humility. Richard Garriott drew inspiration from Hinduism's sixteen ways of purification (sanskara) and character traits (samskara), as well as characters from The Wizard of Oz mapped to the Three Principles of Truth, Love, and Courage.
The Ultima series had sold over two million copies by 1997. In Japan alone, Pony Canyon's versions reached nearly 100,000 copies on home computers and over 300,000 units on the Famicom by 1990.
Ultima Online is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game spin-off of the main Ultima series, launched in 1997. It became one of the earliest and longest-running successful MMORPGs and received eight expansion packs over its lifespan.
Garriott no longer owns the rights to the Ultima series, which Electronic Arts has held since 1992. He does retain rights to several game characters, meaning neither he nor EA can produce a new Ultima title without permission from the other. On the 30th of June 2020, Garriott stated that EA had turned him down for attempts to revive or remaster the series.