Just wondering if it has ever been brought up to make all UO expansions up to Stygian free to play and then make Stygian monthly payment of like 10 bucks. That would rock and would bring back alot of players. I know UO has a ton of content, I played for 8 years and I am back now after a 2 year break. Merging some servers I know has been brought up many times. I would like to see servers full again and I really think this would do it! What do you guys think?
They already did your first suggestion (gave everyone access to all content up to and including Mondain's Legacy) a short while before SA came out. It's not free to play, but it doesn't require buying any expansion packs. I doubt they would ever make it F2P - I'm sure a large majority of their player base would opt to go that route (on at least a majority of their accounts) and it would lose them a significant amount of their current revenue.
As for dropping the monthly fee... I seriously doubt it would happen - they would have to gain half of the player base to make up the difference and I'm sure they realize doing so probably wouldn't bring in near enough new/returning players to compensate for the 50% loss form all current subscribers in addition to attrition from the above suggestion.
Not that I wouldn't love to pay less, but if they did either of these suggestions it would probably reduce the game's revenue below the point that makes it viable to keep running (hardware, support, dev, etc. costs vs. revenue) and they would shutter it (which I would hate to see.)
