It is impossible to have a middle ground sorry. It just pits the two sides against eachother with both claiming their style is the best. Look at WoW they have pvp and pve servers that seperate the playstyles. Trammell just divided UO. It wasn't necessary. They should have seperated the two incompatable playstyles. A classic shard would be open pvp with statloss for reds, which is more punishment then in WoW and nobody complains because they understand the difference and choose what type of realm they want to play.
I disagree that it is impossible, of course I agree trammel wasn't necessary it was merely a knee jerk response to what the devs at the time thought would be a mass exodus out of the game.
In terms of practicality you are probably right however.
I don't think you'll get the 13 year olds playing UO sorry. They will play newer games. However you'll get the immature 20-30 year olds. It would need different player types though. Hopefully people would group more and prepare for the possiblity of non-con pvp. If you like to play solo like many so called sheep usually do then you're a much easier target and it discourages community and player cooperation. Solo play should be viable, but not the norm in a MMO although you don't want to encourage having to play in extremely large groups either IMO.
I was merely generalizing, and the 20 year olds are most likely the 13 year olds ten years later. And the meat of my post was pointing out that any shard needs different types of players otherwise it quickly stagnates and becomes boring.
Organization is much easier now due to the various communication tools especially voice chat.
This was not my experience, but maybe mine differs because I played on Asuka. There was a large American population, but there was a rivalry with the Japanese players at the time. Even Japanese PKs would attack American PKs. If an American group of PKs was running from place to place killing people we had a gang of Japanese anti-PKs chasing us. No lie they went out of their way to try killing us. I think a classic shard would be more prepared and willing to deal out some justice then the first time around knowing what they are getting into. Maybe there is just a huge difference between how cultures game, but I don't remember that many so called sheep on Asuka. Players fought back and there were more then enough anti-PKs to go around. This is how I see a classic shard working because there won't be as many sheep.
It was certainly different on Atlantic and I'm fairly certain Morgana can back me on this one since she was around as well. I don't doubt your experience however, as a culture war of sorts has a very unifying effect on both sides and gives a much greater sense of focus, when it's us vs them we tend to forget our own petty squabbles against each other long enough to get rid of the larger threat.
I don't think a classic shard needs them. In fact I doubt even a classic shard will allow UO to compete with the new games or even production shards. It would be a sandbox niche server that would attract people that don't like what UO and MMOs in general have become. A tougher more mature audience.
To be more clear, since the term sheep means different things to different people in the MMO world. I was refering to anyone not interested in pvp, as that is the way I have seen the term thrown around on forums.
So in that context we do need them, and UO is of course nothing more than a niche MMO and the expectations where new customers are concerned should be kept to a minimum.
Honestly I feel a classic shard would need all styles of play. It doesn't need sheep though. I wouldn't want them at all. It would just lead to boredom and complaints. Sheep are the reason we got Tram and then eventually AoS because sheep will get bored with current content and demand more or complain about non-con pvp. That leads to a item based lvl grind with strictly consentual pvp just like you have now. That trivalizes crafting. It encourages taking the MM and RPG out of MMORPG by encouraging solo play and only wanting the uber gear or it encourages the need for being in large raid guilds to get the uber gear if it can't be soloed like champ spawns. If I want to play that I can just log onto my WoW account. A classic shard would need pve, crafting, player run mall owners and I'd love to see some role playing too. However what people call sheep we don't need and if that drives away the wolves we don't need them either. I want a sandbox a niche doesn't need to appeal to the mainstream.
You and I agree on the crux of the issue, I believe there was just a misunderstanding of the terminology. The devs are the reason we got tram and then aos, the whiners were just the fuel but the trammel was largely the product of lazy developers who reacted poorly to a situation that was much smaller than it was blown up to be.
When checking the numbers a while back I realized that UO was doing well pre trammel, and that I had always bought into the idea that it was losing subscribers simply because I couldn't be bothered to check the numbers for myself.
UO hurt itself the most by trying to be a worse version of superior games that were big in the market at the time.
I also agree that crafting was majorly trivialized, as was thieving, I think we all want a sandbox but what you are asking for is a bit idealistic. It's true there are older players in the game, a much larger number of them than ever before.
However there are a fair amount of players regardless of age, who only play to grief, also as I mentioned in a different thread in todays MMO environment everything is about convenience, you noted yourself in the WoW example how people can filter their servers by play style and the in game world caters to their every whim.
So where convenience is prized so heavily, the intangible parts of the game like community give way to the point where it is barely existent beyond the bank and auction house.
There are so many people in MMOs now who due to their constant demands to be on par with people who play more than they do, who have turned these worlds into Massively Single Player Online Games.
These types generally identify as the "family man or woman" who due to their super busy life (which nobody forced onto them to begin with) can't play as often as jonny hardcore but don't dare tell them they cannot be on the same competitive level despite that.
In any event I went off on a bit of a tangent towards the end there, but the gist of what I am saying is that you and I don't really disagree, and looking back on it I could have said all of that at the start and saved a lot of effort.