UO has apparently given me the patience of a Saint

[KoolAidAddict]

Just wanted to point out, this is the selfish reasons he was talking about....the defualt EC offers no less than the default CC. And you not liking the graphics is just further proof of selfishness.

But while we are pointing.....your point is contradictory.
The default EC DOES in fact offer LESS, as the graphics suck!
It quite frequently locked up on me, and the CTD issue didnt endear me to it either.
And it is not selfishness to have ones OWN opinion, rather it is indicative of a free society.

 

[Meat Elemental]

I am wondering what does the default cc do that the default ec cannot do and how does it offer less?

 

[Saunders]

I'm in deep agreement with making vendors sell locally relevant stuff.In the old atlas, you were told that different cities aold different colours of cloth, and the inhabitants were differently dressed. It would be great if that actually pertained in the world.
At one time different monsters spawned relevant loot, such as bone armour, opposing group slayers, and so on. It would be wonderful if that kind of logic were to be extended to all or most loot. Magic using humanoids would have armour that is appropriate to mages, and so on.
Give us reasons to go to all kinds of places to do different things, and incentives to hang about in towns other than Luna.

 

[SchezwanBeefy]

Jonathan, thank you for a great post, and I think you have really touched on a lot of topics and shared some ideas that would really help UO grow.
Just a couple of things I wanted to point out that I thought were really interesting in your posts for some of the TL;DRers:

Yet UO survived and grew to over 300,000 customers...impressive, though small compared to a market where even a primitive game, like Runescape, could attract over a million.

I think it should be noted that Runescape was F2P, had terrible graphics and hosted hundreds of thousands of more people on it's servers while UO had less subscribers. Hm. Uo very much can go F2P and should. Runescape figured it out, and I think EA can too. Going F2P would, quite simply, revive the game with subscription numbers and lead to more revenue for:
--Better customer service
--Bigger developing team
--More bug fixes
--Better graphics
--More thought out expansions and lore

It needs fresh players and lots of them. More players mean more revenue and more revenue means more ongoing development.

Long time players have, as anyone would, lost the ability to see the game through new and contemporary eyes. You may love it as you would your dearest friend, but the classic client is too classic. Many of you can't see just how dated it looks nor how it drives prospects off at a glance. Screen shots of it go around the world and videos showing it can be found on You Tube.

And although the game may lose some subscribers, updating graphics (BETTER than EC. EC graphics aren't good. They need to trash EC, stop working on it and work on something much better) would benefit the game in subscribers. I myself have tried to get friends to play, but they take one look at it an say they can't play because it's just too old. They don't really care about how great of a game it is, that you can do so many things and you're not limited and your don't have to level - the first thing they care about is the first impression: how the game looks. Some of the players just want the old client and if it's not the CC then they're quit.

Okay. Do it. See you in a few months when you need your UO crack back. If you truly play the game because you love the sanboxiness and all that about it, then you'll come back... because the graphics don't matter, RIGHT?

Second, you need to cease development of all new features for at least a year, focusing instead on bug fixes and the new player experience.

Third you need to promote the game.

A lot of people have asked for this. In fact, when the event for thanksgiving was regurgitated and the Halloween event was lack luster, I was okay with it. I thought they were working on bug fixes that were much needed. They weren't. Instead, they worked on more features to add to the game that were just as buggy as other features they had added to the game. So just stop releasing new stuff. Have EMs entertain the players as they job specifies and run a few big events, but otherwise, just work on the coding and find the errors. No one cares about another expansion (and if you do, I don't think you care about the game all that much) as long as we know your really the bug reports and working on them as much as you can and patching the game regularly.

Finally, as noted up-topic, create easy to find, one site sources of accessible and current information explaining this game. This can't be just text. It needn't be full multimedia. Just allow veterans to conduct regular open access webinars as they would for their guilds, record them, and store the best ones for later viewing. And, please, create links to these from inside the client itself. They already do this from the help menu but take you to a bottomless pit.

I love this idea!
I know about UOguide and Stratics and all that, but many new players DO NOT. UOguide was not made by the UO team and neither was stratics, and even those that have been playing UO for a long time don't know about these sites. Having a knowledge base on the UO site itself, one like UO guide, would even be more helpful.
The game I have been playing a lot lately, League of Legends, has contests often and rewards their players when they help out. Currently, and it has happened several times in the past, there is a video contest to help new players so they can put in on their website as a guide. These videos range from things like "how to pick your champion" and "how to use the shopkeeper", which is already shown to you in the tutorial, but the videos will also be helpful for those looking at the game before actually downloading it.
EA needs a system like this for UO.

Great post Johnathan, and thank you for the work you did on the game in the past. It's good to see someone who working on the game loves it just as much as we do.

 

[Jonathan Baron]

Thanks, Beefy!

Awoke this morning struck by how these sorts of discussions reach a stage when folks stop listening to each other. The guilty party that came first mind....well, me of course.

Tanivar never said Renaissance diminished total numbers. What he said was that it cost the game players. And he's right. As I said, many players did indeed leave. A larger incoming number followed but that's a separate issue.

Another important point that simply sailed past me was the properly controversial and perhaps appropriately named Age of Shadows. I wasn't around for it, had no visibility into its creation. And, yeah, it's indisputable - now that I've asked the right questions, in game, of folks who summarized its impact well - that it was a MASSIVE change. If a launch is followed by handing out gifts to customers to thank them for not leaving....well....that could have gone better. Plus I keep seeing these "I survived the launch of Age of Shadows" items on vendors. Hmmm......

Oh, and this is an important point....well...to me it is: I had squat to do with UO. I contributed nothing meaningful, to my mind, to the game. I was a witness to a lot because all new Origin employees were cycled through the UO team to learn how Origin developed software, in my case enroute to Wing Commander Online, which became Privateer Online, which became DoA when EA decided we'd yet to fully get what we could from the Ultima property. Origin's tag line: We Create Worlds. Many folks working there thought that should be amended to the singular.

I was strictly a simulations guy at the time. Air Warrior had been my game. I was there to help design the space combat portion of a rather remarkable approach to the MMO in that day: two games, each needing the other. World building on the planets; fleets of space ships "above" fighting their own war to serve, or mess with, colonies planetside. Back then, and now, I love games that demand real world skills rather than abilities delivered by the game in exchange for repetitive tasks. We sought to serve both constituencies....but that's beside the point. I was there for that, not UO. I was shocked by how much I enjoyed UO however, and impressed by the support organization of the day. I love a mad, driven and determined scramble. Had the AOL lawsuit - volunteers suing over not being compensated for their work - not succeed in the favor of the volunteers...well...that was long ago.

Finally I could have better made the point regarding the disruption of change. Point I was trying to make was that no matter what you change, its disruptive. Change is a loaded word though. Put better, you must continue to develop the game. It's stand alone games that are done when they're done. Online game development never ends because it can't. Players experience the content and need fresh challenges. Adding any new element, however much you need to, creates disruption.

An MMO ultimately belongs to players. It's their world. In an extraordinary act of perfect symbolism, someone killed Lord British on opening night. As a dev, you could not hope for a better outcome. Opening night is the act of turning the world you've created over to the players. After that the work is rather thankless. Inevitably, no matter how clever, cunning of well executed your work is, it's their world, you're the hired help and, most player will feel, "Damn....it's hard to find good help these days."

It demands an egolessness that's a hard sell to game developers...well...I had a hard time selling it at first to my guys but I did one smart thing. I made them play the game. Soon, all the feature sets for every iteration of the game I was serving were coming from the team based on what they'd learned the players wanted. What they want has to be evaluated of course. You have to separate the selfish from the global, good of the game desires. Plus, you're a professional at this, damn it. You have to convert desires, both the raw and the thoughtful, into a package better than what customers asked for. And, you have to filter it all though your knowledge of the possible because you know what the software and the architecture of the game can do.

The purpose of software development is to delight the customer. You'll never accomplish it, but that doesn't mean your goal should be anything less.

Which leads me to this point. This client discussion has veered from the possible. Every game client sucks in some way or another. All graphics could be better. For good or for ill, there are but two checkboxes in the here and now. An unforgivable sin for developers is to adopt the attitude, perfect later, not better now. You've got a good, committed, but small team supporting the game at Mythic. It's fine to want them to, but they can't be expected to rewrite clients. They can and should get rid of the naked people....and other bugs....maybe adjust some interface elements to make them more intuitive. That thing with the lower button being the Okay on damned near everything, but Create on the first macro dialog screen drives me half mad for example. User interface navigation should be ruthlessly consistent.

But we're not here to discuss the little things.

Okay, back to Beefy. You started this thing, after all

Mythic lost half their staff over a year ago. A bit more than a skeleton crew supports Dark Age, Warhammer, and UO. You likely don't care about two of the three of those but their customers do. Nobody cuts staff while also increasing budgets. Support goes wanting. The game needs to make more money to get more money and that's a central issue here, even though it's not your original issue. It veered toward attracting new players because that's the best hope of serving existing ones. To use the line from The Right Stuff, no bucks, no Buck Rodgers.

Yes, I heard the disappointment from players at the Halloween event being deja vu. I've only been playing since June, so I was happy killing monster turkeys, even though they made the sound of a Hiryus.

So why weren't they fixing bugs? Well...actually they were. The release notes list them, along with known issues. No one can be expected to read that sort of thing, you don't notice the power failure that doesn't happen, and remaining bugs not only get your attention, but they also leave the impression that nothing was fixed. When's the last time you heard a player say, "Y'know, it's been awhile since the server crashed!" I likely won't even notice when players stop suddenly turning into naked people.

Not saying all is well. I do believe in the team though....and I have my biases. I wonder, for example, if this High Seas thing, as delivered, was released in the manner and in the form they wished. I've never known a dev team that didn't want to deliver more or believed any expansion was truly ready when it went out there. I once said that the goal of a dev team was to get from 50% of what you hoped to deliver to 60. It's not a question of winning, it's an exercise in losing fewer and fewer features. Every effort is divided into A, B, and C. A is "must deliver" and the other two might as well called The Trash Can, along with half of A. In my eighteen years at this, only one MMO, World of Warcraft, got the budget it needed...the budget of a Hollywood feature film.

But that doesn't make you happier. It can't. I only say it to help you understand that your disappointment might not be due to thoughtless apathy. Thin consolation I know.

Back to the core issue. Other things that might help but don't cost too much money:

Dump the 20 added skill point veteran reward. It's damned insulting to basically tell a new player that he can't create characters as capable as other players merely because he's new. The notion of vet rewards is as wonderful as it is remarkable. As a new player, its fine with me that I don't get to ride an ethereal armored, rideable Boura, but don't tell me that my money isn't as good as the other players when building my characters. I deserve no game play disadvantage. If anything I should should get the opposite at first. I sure as hell am going to need it before I figure out what's going on. Which brings me to....

Make the equivalent of the Advanced Character Token standard equipment. No, don't give them all those points during character creation but let me leave New Haven, after I've completed all my quests and training, with those levels of skills. Problem with, as you put it, a sandbox game, is that new players are left to head out there into the same dangerous world as 13 year veterans.

Give new players good stuff. The Arms of Armstrong, Bulkwark Leggings, Jockles Quicksword, and that shield you get for the parrying quest, yeah....they'll serve you well in the age of imbuing. The only really good thing you get is the undead slayer book, yet how come I can't leave New Haven with a full spellbook?

What's up with spotting players 1000 gold? That'll go far. Oh wait, you can kill zombies, skells and binders...and loot their bodies too. That'll make you rich. Spot players a mil. Sure, some folks will create all the characters they can, collect the gold, and abandon them. Who cares? What's that...six bucks? New player takes his first trip to Luna....imagine how THAT feels.

Kill Sir Helper. If I say I want to be a Paladin, let me accept that quest and have my quest journal list every quest related to that goal. Wait....what's being a Mage like? Well, save your Paladin and select the Mage profession with a clean sheet. Go through as many as you like at first. Only one is loaded at any one time. Give me two weeks, four weeks, whatever to make up my mind and lock down my first character. Think of it as a large set of soulstones with an expiration date.

Yes, today's templates are usually hybrids but you can't learn how to create one until you know what each skill give you. Hell, offer a Chinese menu at the end listing all the skills acquired during all the quests you've completed. Clicking on any brings up a list of strengths and weaknesses like an extended tool tip. Make it clear that Eval boosts Magery, Focus boosts Mysticism, Spirit Speak boosts Necromancy, and so forth. Let me build my list, click Evaluate, and get a brief summary of the strengths and weakness of my collection of choices. Give a choice of three attributes each of two thirds max intensity to a ring and bracelet and say goodbye to Sugar Mountain.

Okay, what's next? This morning, at 7AM, a new player on Atlantic left New Haven and headed right into Covetous. That went well. What was he thinking? Well, he'd killed everything on Newbee Fantasy Island....got to where he could kill it all handily. He was thinking it was time to try a dungeon. How was he supposed to know that Shame would have perhaps been a better choice?

You get the idea. Yes, whenever I go on this way, I hear the anger and scoffing of veterans....oh, it took us a year to build a character in the old days....back when the game was challenging....when it was tough. New players now have it so easy. Sorry, gaming had to get easier and if it's so easy why do so many give up so soon? Lose the Depression Era parents speech and let's move on. It's a different game and it just as hard as it ever was, just in different ways. Six months in and I still don't understand half the elements of UO today.

Enough for now. Probably too much, actually, but something like THAT should be the next expansion. Filling out the Abyss is important, adding more game elements beyond Orc Ship bits and some new buffed items to High Seas is necessary, but fix bugs/help noobs should lead the list.

 

[Babble]

UO is also definitely a game which could use 10 interns who just put fun things in like tunnels in dungeons. Levers which do something and so on ...
Spawning the pink llama of doom and such silly stuff to keep people more interested in exploring.

 

[Jonathan Baron]

LOL!!

Having managed interns...well...if you could get them to only stop at that....<winces at the memories...imagines the herd of Dreads that would suddenly appear for sale on web sites and in the stables of their friends>

But a pink llama...that would be cool! Best damned ride in the game, the llama....hey, I'm serious!

 

[Fayled Dhreams]

LOL!!

Having managed interns...well...if you could get them to only stop at that....<winces at the memories...imagines the herd of Dreads that would suddenly appear for sale on web sites and in the stables of their friends>

But a pink llama...that would be cool! Best damned ride in the game, the llama....hey, I'm serious!

Ah! no wonder you write so well!
A fellow llama afficianado ... Well met indeed sirrah!
Color? BAH! color is for the foofoo fanatics of "style/fashion"

Now ... if my llama could SPIT ... ahhhhh ...
Such a world We could master that lays still before our feets.
Or even an "engaged in battle graphic" (with/without spit)
where the vortex appears ala tasmanian devil strike (llama AS vortex)

Ah! no wonder you write so well!

​

 

[Cloak&Dagger]

But while we are pointing.....your point is contradictory.
The default EC DOES in fact offer LESS, as the graphics suck!
It quite frequently locked up on me, and the CTD issue didnt endear me to it either.
And it is not selfishness to have ones OWN opinion, rather it is indicative of a free society.

It is selfish to want something at the cost of anyone else possibly gaining. Again my point is not contradictory as the graphics "sucking" is perceptive and only applied to "you" and others of the same opinion. Your opinion does not make it fact. The CC can lock up. Also as I pointed out, if you cant get the EC to work it is either time to look at your system or your ability to install something. The CTD I will grant, but that is not offering less. Also to offer less than the CC you will have to discount all the things it adds, and if you do that you are not giving an accurate comparison. Take what it adds, and minus the 3 things (although 1 being an opinion and 1 being a lack of something) and you still have more in the EC than you do in the CC. So sorry, your argument didn't really work here.

I did not claim his opinion to be selfish, I claimed that his opinion is not that of everyone and thus makes him wanting it selfish.

 

[Jonathan Baron]

Before this turns into Radio Fel at Four AM, and I'm as guilty as anyone of accusations of selfishness, I think everyone here understands that most current players not only are accustomed to the original interface, it also is key to delivering, for them, that crucial sense of place that bonds people to the world. There is an ineffable, undeniable charm to the original client.

At one place I worked, we to shut off three beloved player platforms long ago: the Air Warrior clients for the Amiga, the Atari ST, and the Mac, thereby turning away many of our oldest and important players of many years. Worse, the winner was the not the best by any means....the damned PC. Tough decision but it was that or death for the world's first fully graphical MMO, and the first to get the attention of the mainstream press. Afterward, it finally started making money and kept going for another eight years.

I haven't the hubris to say this game is at that crossroads. Supporting two clients....that I know with conviction and experience is expensive. We all agree that the game needs fresh players and content and few would argue that the original client would capture the imagination seen through uninitiated, contemporary eyes.

Besides, nobody here is in charge. In the end all we're doing is expressing ourselves...not that doing so is a small thing.

 

[KoolAidAddict]

Besides, nobody here is in charge. In the end all we're doing is expressing ourselves...not that doing so is a small thing.

Well said sir.
Just hope EA is listening.
And if some want to call it selfish for doing so, so be it.

 

[Jonathan Baron]

Your sig file caught my attention, Kool, because it was something we never got to - what's up with this business of the bare trees and dire music whenever you wander around Fel? What.....WHAT...is Fel full of EVIL or something? You see, I left the game when Renaissance was released. No, i wasn't mad or anything. Though I believed in the wisdom of the change, it simply wasn't my kind of game anymore. Back then, I believed an online game that didn't feature player versus player competition was not a game really. It was more a virtual world that had lots of things to do that didn't interest me at the time, though I enjoy it now.

Had a house in Fel a month or two ago. It was part of Dragon's Watch, one of the player towns on Chesapeake. I'd be puttering around, trying to get stuff to go where I wanted it to instead of it flying out of my virtual hands and landing, "THUNK!" halfway across the room, and suddenly a music track full of foreboding would begin to play. Huh?! I'd recall to my place from my favorite town, Skara, with its uplifting soundtrack, and arrive home to that same "Ooooooo....eeeeevil" music.

That's something else I felt needed some adjustments: the Felucca side of the world.

Signed up one of my guys for one of the Factions, but couldn't find any fellow Faction members at the so-called Faction stronghold...just entirely too many busy NPCs. Got on General and it was the first time my noob question went unanswered. Are these secret societies? Went on a pirate hunt with a guild from another player town, also based in Fel. Died....as I often do. "Sorry...can't rez ya," one guy said. "Can't even heal ya. You're in Faction." WTF? My Faction guy couldn't even be guilded. None of this was covered on Noob Island....then again, few things are.

Seems to me that one of the ways to keep the game fresh is to better integrate player versus player competition with player versus howling monster battles. As it is all I get from Fel is angry chest thumpers on General calling each other stock names, employing high school level curses in all caps. That can't be truly representative. Some of the most interesting people I've met, along with my closest in-game friend, play almost exclusively in Fel.

I thought I'd need a medivac one night, I was laughing so hard, when a new player went to Fel to find a fight. He didn't know that whole system of getting the "keys" to fight some mega monster, was no doubt puzzled by those altars with their appearing and disappering skull candles and such.

"Hey!" he exclaimed. "I was fighting this guy and, all of a sudden, he turned into a DOG and ran away!"

Ah, Ninjitsu...how do you cover that in a phrase on general?

Another suggestion for new player training: ask them what they want to do and tailor quests appropriately. Select from the following:

Player versus Player

Player versus Monsters (the rest of the industry calls that PvE)

Both

And put some damned leaves on the trees in Fel, will ya? Oh, and lose that It's a Dark and Evil Land music...pretty please How about those distant martial trumpets....like they had in the movie, Patton....or the drums employed so effectively in the movie Master and Commander.

Sorry...getting a little carried away here...been doing too much of that in this topic.

 

[Babble]

You can set the foliage of trees in your config file and I have no idea why the developers chose barren for felucca. Did you know that UO has the graphic files for spring, summer, autumn and winter?

Would have set fel as autumn but not barren as it is now.

And why EA never enhanced pvp for felucca is a mysterium for all.
before HS rumour had it they were working on fixing factions ... again ...

And too many npcs in too many empty towns, with too few dynamic systems is another problem I have with UO

 

[Cloak&Dagger]

Before this turns into Radio Fel at Four AM, and I'm as guilty as anyone of accusations of selfishness, I think everyone here understands that most current players not only are accustomed to the original interface, it also is key to delivering, for them, that crucial sense of place that bonds people to the world. There is an ineffable, undeniable charm to the original client.

Of course, no one can claim to never be selfish. Even my act of telling people not to be selfish can be considered selfish, as I selfishly want this game to improve. In all honesty while I no longer play the original client, I do not do so because I dislike it, on the contrary I love that client, and the new client Still, after more than a year, feels very awkward to me. But I play the new client, because I have hope that the Developers will follow through with something, improve something that has a great deal of potential, to support their choice as much as I can.

I do not shun people who use either client, but the facts remain that the current situation of the clients is a major downfall for the game, I would agree with something you said in I believe your first post in this thread, remove the classic client as a download option. For those who use it now, that is fine. Continue to fix any bugs that might be causing problems for actually playing the game in that client.

 

[Skrag]

Game needs to go F2P. Nuff said.

 

[Cloak&Dagger]

Game needs to go F2P. Nuff said.

Speculative.

 

[Skrag]

Turbine made D&D Online F2P and liked it so much they made Lord of the Rings Online F2P as well. Blizzard has said publicly that they'll probably make WoW F2P once it gets old. Runescape is one of the largest MMOs in the world despite being a stupid-looking UO ripoff.

Nothing speculative about it.

The only arguments I've really heard against it are "IF THEY ADD THINGS TO THE GAME YOU CAN ONLY GET FOR CASH (EXCEPT ALL THE THINGS YOU CAN ALREADY ONLY GET FOR CASH) I WILL QUIT AND KILL MYSELF!" and a smattering of "I DON'T WANT THIS TO BE A GAME WHERE MONEY CAN GET YOU EVERYTHING, EVEN THOUGH IT ALWAYS HAS BEEN!"

Seriously, unless your game is a big-shot "destination" game like WoW, you're probably better off as F2P than normal subscription model. This is pretty close to being settled precedent.

 

[Cloak&Dagger]

Turbine made D&D Online F2P and liked it so much they made Lord of the Rings Online F2P as well. Blizzard has said publicly that they'll probably make WoW F2P once it gets old. Runescape is one of the largest MMOs in the world despite being a stupid-looking UO ripoff.

Nothing speculative about it.

The only arguments I've really heard against it are "IF THEY ADD THINGS TO THE GAME YOU CAN ONLY GET FOR CASH (EXCEPT ALL THE THINGS YOU CAN ALREADY ONLY GET FOR CASH) I WILL QUIT AND KILL MYSELF!" and a smattering of "I DON'T WANT THIS TO BE A GAME WHERE MONEY CAN GET YOU EVERYTHING, EVEN THOUGH IT ALWAYS HAS BEEN!"

Seriously, unless your game is a big-shot "destination" game like WoW, you're probably better off as F2P than normal subscription model. This is pretty close to being settled precedent.

Nothing speculative about what? What made/makes WoW so popular? Obviously has nothing to do with it being non-f2p. So again, your opinion is speculative and only your opinion, you state it as a fact when it is not. UO could remain p2p and be just as or more successful than its f2p model, all comes down to the effort put in by the developers, well rather, the company supporting the developers.

None of my arguments about making UO f2p have had anything to do with buying things, or quitting the game. So out goes that. So I guess even that statement was speculation? Or do you simply ignore the posts people make that have valid points in them, and only use the ones that don't as examples?

 

[Skrag]

Nothing speculative about what?

There's nothing speculative about the fact that F2P will serve you better than that "$15 a month or GTFO" subscription model if you're not a lavish "destination" game. DDO, LOTRO. Everquest 2 just recently added F2P as well I believe. Even the WoW people plan to F2P it when it eventually quits being a big draw.

Give this game a browser client and an F2P option and we'll have players all over the place. Runescape is an ugly terrible game, but those two things keep it swimming in players.

 

[Fayled Dhreams]

There's nothing speculative about the fact that F2P will serve you better than that "$15 a month or GTFO" subscription model if you're not a lavish "destination" game. DDO, LOTRO. Everquest 2 just recently added F2P as well I believe. Even the WoW people plan to F2P it when it eventually quits being a big draw.

Give this game a browser client and an F2P option and we'll have players all over the place. Runescape is an ugly terrible game, but those two things keep it swimming in players.

pfffft!

Serve "you better" to what ends? << IS the speculative nature of the discussion.
there is NO "fact" as to the results on UO ... as it has Not been tested and weighed.

UO IS a "browser based client" it is a "thin client" played through a windowed(minimization without terminating) Interface.

Runescape is an ugly terrible game, but those two things keep it swimming in players.

As "ugly" is your singular opinion(re:taste). "Swimming in Players" is the only logical "goal" for doing anything.

i disagree.

... $15 a month or GTFO" subscription model if you're not a lavish "destination" game.

That is Not an accurate or even "fair" portrayal of the existing model.(it IS $ to get in ... doh!)

The "destination" of all "games", I submit, is PLAY ... sometimes considered entertainment.
sometimes defined as: a pleasurable use of idle time to while the passing moments between necessary work and sleep.

That "play" can sometimes be viewed as a learning tool ... remains what it is: "A" view ...
a singular perspective, and no matter the numbers or masses that ascribe/agree with that view ...
the nature of play remains, in truth, the nature of play ... and
that learning tool view, in truth, remains a singular view.
regardless of how you look at it or believe.

F2P might indeed have UO "swimming in players" ... which would seem to satisfy "your goal".

I would prefer to have UO >only< populated with novice class and above Role Players. Ones who know the purpose and boundaries of "the construct"(UO)

As opposed to the likely result of your supposed sea of fresh free meat.
Especially likely in that (from your "ugly" opinion) that a majority of "players" PREFER free and ugly.

I submit: your chances of long term "success" after the opening of the flood gates, would be better served by FIRST
Polishing graphics(ala Sepherina{sp}) AND
Stabilizing the software(bugs) & hardware(server's) AND
having not only rules and boundaries well defined and posted and agreed to, but a sure and competent group of enforcers (GMs) to maintain those who would be known as Players of UO.

Failing that(those >combined< Firsts above)
>I see< your hurried opening of flood gates as doing what has not been done before: actually and finally and completely: Killing UO

MERELY to satisfy Your "immediate gratification" needs.
Purely due to a lack of understanding the benefits of DELAYED gratification ... specifically in regards to PLAY.

I'm no Joker, and you sure the hell ain't no Batman ... still:

Why so serious?

 

[Widow Maker]

LOL..I love reading your posts Fayled. The dryness and the obvious need of an above the average 10th grade education to follow and comprehend them is always both amusing and refreshing. *tip-o-the-hat*

I would like to also thank Jonathon for his extremely insightful input. Rarely do we see such well constructed and valuable information / opinions / thoughts. These should be copied and placed on the desks of Dev teams everywhere. Hell..tatoo it to the back of their eyeballs so they are constantly reminded.

 

[Skrag]

pfffft!

Serve "you better" to what ends?

To getting a game more players and more money. WTF do you think I'm talking about?

<< IS the speculative nature of the discussion.
there is NO "fact" as to the results on UO ... as it has Not been tested and weighed.

No kidding. That might be the reason it's being discussed. Seriously, what a terrible argument. It's been tried on multiple commercial MMO games with positive results. What else do you want?

UO IS a "browser based client" it is a "thin client" played through a windowed(minimization without terminating) Interface.

A browser based client is played through a browser. UO is played through a downloaded and installed client. They are absolutely not the same thing, and are in fact completely opposite.

I don't know where you got the idiotic idea that "browser based" means any program you can minimize, but I'm not even reading the rest of your terrible incoherent post. It's obvious you have absolutely no idea WTF you're talking about.

 

[Vlaude]

To getting a game more players and more money. WTF do you think I'm talking about?



No kidding. That might be the reason it's being discussed. Seriously, what a terrible argument. It's been tried on multiple commercial MMO games with positive results. What else do you want?



A browser based client is played through a browser. UO is played through a downloaded and installed client. They are absolutely not the same thing, and are in fact completely opposite.

I don't know where you got the idiotic idea that "browser based" means any program you can minimize, but I'm not even reading the rest of your terrible incoherent post. It's obvious you have absolutely no idea WTF you're talking about.

Goodness. I can't believe that actually had to be explained

F2P makes a lot more sense than the elitist "preference" Fayled envisions if they actually want to MAKE money that is. Btw, posts like Skrag's give off the impression of erudition far more than incoherent babble.

 

[Jirel of Joiry]

Jonathan-

Wow, just simply wow! Your posts in this are by far the most brilliant posts I've ever seen on stratics. You are one brilliant guy and truly "get it". Well met, sir, well met indeed!

-Jirel

Sorry in advance for what's likely to be a very long post. I'm a long time game developer, worked briefly for Origin many years ago in my travels, and this hits many nerves and pulls more than a few strings of my heart.

You've run through the game content, you're bored, angry that you feel it's time to leave. You blame the developers...EA....someone has let you down as you seek UO Viagra. Alas, nothing can make the game fresh and fascinating for you again. For you, and I'm sorry this sounds heartless or glib, it may well be over.

For eighteen years I was on the other side of things, losing sleep and time spent in the physical world - going so far as to make one of my teams work on the fourth of July one year - striving to make that crucial change that would keep long time customers from leaving an MMO I was working on. And I felt this the keenest when the games were at their most successful at times. Didn't matter. I wanted to keep those people - those customers who had kept me fed and housed for years - excited, involved, absorbed in the alternate world and life we all strove to create and continue to make meaningful to them.

Over the quarter century - let's hope there will be a second - history of the MMO, this remains more persistent than any persistent digital world. No crime has been committed here. No one has thoughtlessly let you down. Behind even the worst expansion, or the most misbegotten attempt at further development of UO, were people who gave a sh*t. Driven by passion few occupations can inspire, it's never just a job...and countless people have applied their passion to it over the years, with good results at times, and horrid outcomes at others.

First some history of UO from the other side of the server. Created in secret - meaning created without either the knowledge or approval of Origin's new parent at the time, Electronic Arts - UO was made by people who may have been among the very few in the industry to "get" the new medium, but they were not among the most technically astute.

The client was written employing WinG and Win32s because Windows 95 had not yet been released when development of the game began. Host libraries capable of handling huge numbers of IPs per server had already been created elsewhere but were unknown to UO's original team. And nobody expected one hundred thousand people would try to squeeze through the door. In many ways UO was technically obsolete on release.

The rest was scrambling to compensate for this and over 80% of every incoming dollar was needed just to keep the game running and properly supported. The shard scheme was a scramble. Each UO coin was a separate object that already maxed out servers had to account for. Inevitable lag as you crossed server boundaries created opportunities for exploits no one had foreseen. There wasn't even a support client in the beginning for GMs to enter the game world with the tools at hand to help customers....it had to be cobbled together too.

Over a decade of catch-up. Not just with those problems but with a competing product, released not long after UO, that had five times the subscriber base. But unlike UO, which viewed online gaming as a narrative told by the audience (try to explain THAT to a traditional media exec), the leveling game provided a clear path for new users to play and feel a sense of accomplishment from the very first night onward. This, far more than 3D, explains the larger success of Everquest and subsequent games.

We now come to the first instance of a fundamental change that existing customers, and the development team which, by then, was comprised of original UO players, felt would drive people away, just as certainly as many people here believe that retiring the old client would kill the game now. Renaissance: the division of the world in two. The lead programmer stormed into the office of the Producer to announce he no longer had confidence in the game's leadership. Others held a sort of wake for the game. Shortly after its release, though, subscriber numbers doubled. UO would never have a more successful expansion again.

Horrid missteps followed. Rather than keep trying to plug the leaks and keep bailing water out of the boat, EA thought it best to start over. They assembled what they considered an "A Team" of developers to redo UO. They called it UO II. They canceled all other game development in the studio to focus on "fully leveraging the Ultima Property." We all know what became of that, just as we know what has become of all efforts to stick a II after any extant online world.

More mistakes followed until no EA exec cared to champion Ultima. Doing so was viewed as a CLM (Career Limiting Move). Lacking an executive champion is usually death for any game. Yet UO survived and grew to over 300,000 customers...impressive, though small compared to a market where even a primitive game, like Runescape, could attract over a million.

It's now in the autumn if not the winter of its life. 75% of its customers left in the past five years. Two thirds of its customers live in Japan and keep the game going. Along the way, though, it became a diverse amalgam of different environments, and the richest collection of game systems in the world.

Sadly it's also become the most impressive array of game systems in search of a multiplayer game. In many ways UO is the world's only Massively Single Player online game. Nothing is connected to any larger metagame, all the quests are solo quests, and players are forced to create numerous characters on their own to explore and experience the game fully. There's lots to do but you will run out of reasons to do it. And that brings us to this moment, the core of this thread, and the question: what would best revive UO?

Let's begin with an indisputable point. It needs fresh players and lots of them. More players mean more revenue and more revenue means more ongoing development.

Long time players have, as anyone would, lost the ability to see the game through new and contemporary eyes. You may love it as you would your dearest friend, but the classic client is too classic. Many of you can't see just how dated it looks nor how it drives prospects off at a glance. Screen shots of it go around the world and videos showing it can be found on You Tube.

It's also, as Raph Koster - the original designer of UO put it - "In the hands of the enemy." Its technology cannot be defended against hacks, cheats, and myriad exploits. When an 18 year old, who has no good old days behind him, chooses to employ a client that would looked dated to his grandparents, you know something is going on that's probably not good. Kids don't "get" quaint.

It should not be offered as an option on the introductory free trial download page. Not saying the alternative is wonderful and eye popping but it will run on current machines in high definition, it looks better to the uninitiated, and new prospects have not grown fond of that charming (and it is charming), old UO look. Grandfather it for old accounts perhaps, but deny it to new ones and plan intelligently and thoughtfully for its retirement. Mods to the EC now have options allowing you to see runebooks and containers in their original form. You needn't kill off the artistic style of UO to update it.

Second, you need to cease development of all new features for at least a year, focusing instead on bug fixes and the new player experience. Hell, how many of you using the EC constantly see characters suddenly running around stark naked? How many of you constantly run afoul of the UI due to its design inconsistencies? How many of you are burned nightly by its memory leaks, get kicked to the desktop or lockup and have to reboot? Just make sure the veteran reward for that year really kicks ass.

Third you need to promote the game. Literally millions of people have tired of leveling games where everyone has the same gear and is forced to dress alike, where you own little, and can leave no lasting mark on the world. These games can only create so many character levels after all.

The Sims was the most popular stand-alone PC game to-date, selling millions and millions of copies. The core of its appeal was player control over their housing and immediate environment. True, as on online game it failed horribly because this same audience didn't want their stuff messed with. Well, in UO, you can have a full, rich experience without ever having to endure a monster or seek a healer to rez you. The world should know that and, given the nature of the web, they can be led to discover that without millions spent on marketing.

Make pertinent what you've created. My god, this world is so full of such diverse, wondrous places that rival any Myst (the second most popular PC game of all time) or Riven. Ten years away from it, I explore this place...these cities and ruins hinting at fascinating backstories of tales untold. Hell, if the only thing you did was let people place vendors in the towns, give the NPC vendors good stuff to sell and made those goods different and appropriately themed in each town, just that - only that - would make so much of the world relevant again. Oh, and revoke these new vendor licenses if they're not restocked every 30 days....sorry...personal peeve.

Finally, as noted up-topic, create easy to find, one site sources of accessible and current information explaining this game. This can't be just text. It needn't be full multimedia. Just allow veterans to conduct regular open access webinars as they would for their guilds, record them, and store the best ones for later viewing. And, please, create links to these from inside the client itself. They already do this from the help menu but take you to a bottomless pit.

There's more, lots more, that needn't mean huge new investment in either development or promotional funds. Yet, still, no matter what's done, all of us must face a day when it's over for us, when no change or new feature can make it as fun or as absorbing as it would need to be to press on. They may well be no solution for that.

Again, please excuse the long post.

 

[Cloak&Dagger]

No kidding. That might be the reason it's being discussed. Seriously, what a terrible argument. It's been tried on multiple commercial MMO games with positive results. What else do you want?

You are still speculating, simply because you base your speculation on other positive examples does not make it any less of a speculation in our current case.

Find a game as complex as UO that went from a p2p model to a f2p model and succeeded and then we will have a discussion about what is speculative and what is not. I rather not turn this thread into the argument for or against the f2p model, as there is one already out there. So I will end the topic with this last post. I have never claimed the f2p model to be a bad one, not at all. I never claimed it to be unsuccessful, I just claimed you are speculating the results, and exaggerating them as well.

 

[Thav12]

Thanks, Beefy!

Awoke this morning struck by how these sorts of discussions reach a stage when folks stop listening to each other. The guilty party that came first mind....well, me of course.

Tanivar never said Renaissance diminished total numbers. What he said was that it cost the game players. And he's right. As I said, many players did indeed leave. A larger incoming number followed but that's a separate issue.

Another important point that simply sailed past me was the properly controversial and perhaps appropriately named Age of Shadows. I wasn't around for it, had no visibility into its creation. And, yeah, it's indisputable - now that I've asked the right questions, in game, of folks who summarized its impact well - that it was a MASSIVE change. If a launch is followed by handing out gifts to customers to thank them for not leaving....well....that could have gone better. Plus I keep seeing these "I survived the launch of Age of Shadows" items on vendors. Hmmm......

Oh, and this is an important point....well...to me it is: I had squat to do with UO. I contributed nothing meaningful, to my mind, to the game. I was a witness to a lot because all new Origin employees were cycled through the UO team to learn how Origin developed software, in my case enroute to Wing Commander Online, which became Privateer Online, which became DoA when EA decided we'd yet to fully get what we could from the Ultima property. Origin's tag line: We Create Worlds. Many folks working there thought that should be amended to the singular.

I was strictly a simulations guy at the time. Air Warrior had been my game. I was there to help design the space combat portion of a rather remarkable approach to the MMO in that day: two games, each needing the other. World building on the planets; fleets of space ships "above" fighting their own war to serve, or mess with, colonies planetside. Back then, and now, I love games that demand real world skills rather than abilities delivered by the game in exchange for repetitive tasks. We sought to serve both constituencies....but that's beside the point. I was there for that, not UO. I was shocked by how much I enjoyed UO however, and impressed by the support organization of the day. I love a mad, driven and determined scramble. Had the AOL lawsuit - volunteers suing over not being compensated for their work - not succeed in the favor of the volunteers...well...that was long ago.

Finally I could have better made the point regarding the disruption of change. Point I was trying to make was that no matter what you change, its disruptive. Change is a loaded word though. Put better, you must continue to develop the game. It's stand alone games that are done when they're done. Online game development never ends because it can't. Players experience the content and need fresh challenges. Adding any new element, however much you need to, creates disruption.

An MMO ultimately belongs to players. It's their world. In an extraordinary act of perfect symbolism, someone killed Lord British on opening night. As a dev, you could not hope for a better outcome. Opening night is the act of turning the world you've created over to the players. After that the work is rather thankless. Inevitably, no matter how clever, cunning of well executed your work is, it's their world, you're the hired help and, most player will feel, "Damn....it's hard to find good help these days."

It demands an egolessness that's a hard sell to game developers...well...I had a hard time selling it at first to my guys but I did one smart thing. I made them play the game. Soon, all the feature sets for every iteration of the game I was serving were coming from the team based on what they'd learned the players wanted. What they want has to be evaluated of course. You have to separate the selfish from the global, good of the game desires. Plus, you're a professional at this, damn it. You have to convert desires, both the raw and the thoughtful, into a package better than what customers asked for. And, you have to filter it all though your knowledge of the possible because you know what the software and the architecture of the game can do.

The purpose of software development is to delight the customer. You'll never accomplish it, but that doesn't mean your goal should be anything less.

Which leads me to this point. This client discussion has veered from the possible. Every game client sucks in some way or another. All graphics could be better. For good or for ill, there are but two checkboxes in the here and now. An unforgivable sin for developers is to adopt the attitude, perfect later, not better now. You've got a good, committed, but small team supporting the game at Mythic. It's fine to want them to, but they can't be expected to rewrite clients. They can and should get rid of the naked people....and other bugs....maybe adjust some interface elements to make them more intuitive. That thing with the lower button being the Okay on damned near everything, but Create on the first macro dialog screen drives me half mad for example. User interface navigation should be ruthlessly consistent.

But we're not here to discuss the little things.

Okay, back to Beefy. You started this thing, after all

Mythic lost half their staff over a year ago. A bit more than a skeleton crew supports Dark Age, Warhammer, and UO. You likely don't care about two of the three of those but their customers do. Nobody cuts staff while also increasing budgets. Support goes wanting. The game needs to make more money to get more money and that's a central issue here, even though it's not your original issue. It veered toward attracting new players because that's the best hope of serving existing ones. To use the line from The Right Stuff, no bucks, no Buck Rodgers.

Yes, I heard the disappointment from players at the Halloween event being deja vu. I've only been playing since June, so I was happy killing monster turkeys, even though they made the sound of a Hiryus.

So why weren't they fixing bugs? Well...actually they were. The release notes list them, along with known issues. No one can be expected to read that sort of thing, you don't notice the power failure that doesn't happen, and remaining bugs not only get your attention, but they also leave the impression that nothing was fixed. When's the last time you heard a player say, "Y'know, it's been awhile since the server crashed!" I likely won't even notice when players stop suddenly turning into naked people.

Not saying all is well. I do believe in the team though....and I have my biases. I wonder, for example, if this High Seas thing, as delivered, was released in the manner and in the form they wished. I've never known a dev team that didn't want to deliver more or believed any expansion was truly ready when it went out there. I once said that the goal of a dev team was to get from 50% of what you hoped to deliver to 60. It's not a question of winning, it's an exercise in losing fewer and fewer features. Every effort is divided into A, B, and C. A is "must deliver" and the other two might as well called The Trash Can, along with half of A. In my eighteen years at this, only one MMO, World of Warcraft, got the budget it needed...the budget of a Hollywood feature film.

But that doesn't make you happier. It can't. I only say it to help you understand that your disappointment might not be due to thoughtless apathy. Thin consolation I know.

Back to the core issue. Other things that might help but don't cost too much money:

Dump the 20 added skill point veteran reward. It's damned insulting to basically tell a new player that he can't create characters as capable as other players merely because he's new. The notion of vet rewards is as wonderful as it is remarkable. As a new player, its fine with me that I don't get to ride an ethereal armored, rideable Boura, but don't tell me that my money isn't as good as the other players when building my characters. I deserve no game play disadvantage. If anything I should should get the opposite at first. I sure as hell am going to need it before I figure out what's going on. Which brings me to....

Make the equivalent of the Advanced Character Token standard equipment. No, don't give them all those points during character creation but let me leave New Haven, after I've completed all my quests and training, with those levels of skills. Problem with, as you put it, a sandbox game, is that new players are left to head out there into the same dangerous world as 13 year veterans.

Give new players good stuff. The Arms of Armstrong, Bulkwark Leggings, Jockles Quicksword, and that shield you get for the parrying quest, yeah....they'll serve you well in the age of imbuing. The only really good thing you get is the undead slayer book, yet how come I can't leave New Haven with a full spellbook?

What's up with spotting players 1000 gold? That'll go far. Oh wait, you can kill zombies, skells and binders...and loot their bodies too. That'll make you rich. Spot players a mil. Sure, some folks will create all the characters they can, collect the gold, and abandon them. Who cares? What's that...six bucks? New player takes his first trip to Luna....imagine how THAT feels.

Kill Sir Helper. If I say I want to be a Paladin, let me accept that quest and have my quest journal list every quest related to that goal. Wait....what's being a Mage like? Well, save your Paladin and select the Mage profession with a clean sheet. Go through as many as you like at first. Only one is loaded at any one time. Give me two weeks, four weeks, whatever to make up my mind and lock down my first character. Think of it as a large set of soulstones with an expiration date.

Yes, today's templates are usually hybrids but you can't learn how to create one until you know what each skill give you. Hell, offer a Chinese menu at the end listing all the skills acquired during all the quests you've completed. Clicking on any brings up a list of strengths and weaknesses like an extended tool tip. Make it clear that Eval boosts Magery, Focus boosts Mysticism, Spirit Speak boosts Necromancy, and so forth. Let me build my list, click Evaluate, and get a brief summary of the strengths and weakness of my collection of choices. Give a choice of three attributes each of two thirds max intensity to a ring and bracelet and say goodbye to Sugar Mountain.

Okay, what's next? This morning, at 7AM, a new player on Atlantic left New Haven and headed right into Covetous. That went well. What was he thinking? Well, he'd killed everything on Newbee Fantasy Island....got to where he could kill it all handily. He was thinking it was time to try a dungeon. How was he supposed to know that Shame would have perhaps been a better choice?

You get the idea. Yes, whenever I go on this way, I hear the anger and scoffing of veterans....oh, it took us a year to build a character in the old days....back when the game was challenging....when it was tough. New players now have it so easy. Sorry, gaming had to get easier and if it's so easy why do so many give up so soon? Lose the Depression Era parents speech and let's move on. It's a different game and it just as hard as it ever was, just in different ways. Six months in and I still don't understand half the elements of UO today.

Enough for now. Probably too much, actually, but something like THAT should be the next expansion. Filling out the Abyss is important, adding more game elements beyond Orc Ship bits and some new buffed items to High Seas is necessary, but fix bugs/help noobs should lead the list.

Not sure about your pay scale at the moment, but perhaps a job with the UO team might yet again be an option for you? As an experienced "noob" in UO you point out in your last couple of posts, a myriad of problems that, once fixed, should get this game back on track. You would have an instant following! I agree with most of what you stated. In fact, perhaps we, the UO players and virtual property occupants, can hire you to do the job:

I believe that ultimately a business is a business. I have mentioned before, but got only criticism for it in return, that perhaps ownership of the game should be transferred to the players. As the ultimate free to play, but pay to own, it could set a new standard for online real-estate. I know that this sounds ridiculous at first glance, but a property ownership model is not unlike say a country club membership. You buy in to play and own. A small but devoted group of people (and by small, i mean say 5000 people) can own the game and by virtue of being financially and emotionally invested, encouraged to make it thrive again and pay for the grounds men. I could expand on the model, but probably will get destroyed again by people without even a high school degree who think they know. Suffice it to say that this kind of a model can definitely work, as it is out there as a successful business model, just not (yet) in the virtual world. It would make sense, though, if the goal is to preserve UO and to preserve "online" property, that otherwise will be lost and sent into oblivion due to lack of support and lack of profit. One problem that i foresee though is that a lot of people playing UO are unfortunately not the folks that financially could stomach this transition. This would create owner/membership tiers that are reflective of IRL financial status and not in-game status. Anyhow... Appreciate your posts mr Baron.

 

[Jonathan Baron]

Dang! That little bit of software that's supposed to tell when when someone has said something after you say something has failed me! I had no idea the discussion had carried on.

Free to Play. Some years ago Nexon of Korea decided to try something. Keep in mind that the market for MMOs in the West is paltry compared to that in Asia. Hell, Perfect World created perhaps the best ecommerce payment method in China for purchasing goods around the world, but I digress. Point is that MMOs are HUGE in Asia. Asia - specifically Japan - is keeping UO alive, that's for sure.

Okay, back to Nexon's notion. Dump subscriptions. Just get rid of 'em. Make the games free to play. The catch? Charge for game items. Huh? You mean I have to pay for every in-game item? Nope. You can earn them by playing. Ah, but time is money, and if but just a handful of customers - by percentage - pay for game items, the way folks do from UO Stock, MMO.SC, UO Resource, you get the idea, you not only make a boatload more money....hell, you make fleet of container ships more than you would through the subscription model.

Bandwidth came down in price. UDIs (Unique Digital Items) went up in price because supply is governed by the publisher. Sometimes they goof up, like UO did with the 120 fishing scrolls. That was simply a mistake, not intentional. The rare drop serves a different purpose in UO: keeping an economy viable after its currency has lost most of its value, while providing game play motivation. Scarcity of resources does too. If imbuing ingredients went the way of UO gold...if, say, Essence of Control was as easy to get as Fertile Dirt....well...you get the idea.

The F2P model is hard to retrofit. Easy to establish if it's part of your core design.

With existing games that money was made by folks other than the publishers. Yes, yes, each game has tried to ban such activity and some have succeeded, though I don't get how imposing barriers to a free market is proper or even legal but, point is, that's where the money is. Not in UO anymore. The days of players getting rich on UO are over....it's more a trickle now, each site relying on the other to not get into a gold price war that would ruin them all. Then there's what I call the buzzard market - grabbing old accounts on the cheap from departing players, stripping them, selling off the pieces and offering high age blank accounts at the end.

This is money the publishers could have made, though they would have had a difficult time selling old accounts and maintain any integrity to the veteran reward system. That's a separate issue. Point is, it is money publishers will be making from now on in all future MMOs.

EA, of course, has entered this market with UO as you all know, with their game code store. I've purchased stuff there....more storage space, a hitching post, SA, High Seas, this and that. The forged tool....uhhhh....that's pushing it a bit. To provide a "tool" that gives you a 100% success rate on enhancement after you've imbued regardless of the skill level of your crafter....well, that's a separate discussion too. In a F2P, pay for items model, they'd also be selling Tangles, Crimmies, Slithers, you get the idea.

I can feel the outrage at this notion when you're talking games built on time investment, as UO is. I've four tamers, spent goodness knows how much time and collected countless gray apparel getting quite the collection of Hiryus have good stats *and* bright, varied colors. When I see someone just sitting there, seeming forever, at Luna bank, perched upon a rare, colored pet (careful to never dismount or else you could lore the creature ) I want to say (have said actually), "Don't you have someplace to be? Do you actually play this game?")

But I've purchased stuff from websites. I've also made money in-game. I needn't say which meant more to me. And if we didn't have shard hoppers, using those duped transfer tokens, to move goods that are cheap on one shard to shards where's they're not, relic frags would still be going for a mil per 10 on Chesapeake.

Creating meaning and value in online gaming is the toughest of the MMO quests. I continue to believe the answer lies in the richness of gameplay itself. I've long viewed items as the sideshow the seized the main stage.

I've experienced game play in some games so intense that I could not type afterward, having to shove my hands into my armpits to stop them from from shaking. That's not mass market though. Yet something lay in between pixel-crack and raw adventure adrenaline. Finding it....being able to create it...wow, that would an astonishing stroke of genius and tough, grueling work.

 

[Fayled Dhreams]

To getting a game more players and more money. WTF do you think I'm talking about?

pffft!
I'm sorry that you could not follow my context.

turns out YOU did state

There's nothing speculative about the fact that F2P will serve you better than

and if you had had that "context" to work from ... you may have been able to divine that I also addressed the chance that F2P would open a flood of noobs into UO.

I merely opined as to the likely Nature OF that slathering herd. (As opposed to my preferences)

*shrugs*

Civil debate should be something to aspire to. skrag

btw ... the login screen is NOT browser based? DOH!!!

 

[Cloak&Dagger]

I have mentioned before, but got only criticism for it in return, that perhaps ownership of the game should be transferred to the players.

Not downing your idea, just simply stating that as long as EA is making more money on UO than a different business model could gain (such as selling it, in whole or in part) It will simply never happen.

Dang! That little bit of software that's supposed to tell when when someone has said something after you say something has failed me! I had no idea the discussion had carried on.

We are still worlds away from UO working as a f2p model, not because of the flaws in the model, or the complexity it brings to UO but because of how poorly managed UO has been for years. Bugs that exsisted almost a decade ago? Not to mention the SAME cheat programs working with out flaw for that same decade+. I understand all games compete with cheats, but most at least do something to try and stop cheats, while none are successful (Despite what some of my fellows here would like to believe) at least they are pro-active in their efforts. By this I mean actually stating they are doing something, actually do something for the purpose of just this. There is so much that could be done for UO, so much to increase profits and HOPEFULLY (huge hope) increase the value put on UO as a game in general. I am not really sold on the fact that if UO makes more money would they get money in return, as I believe the amount it makes now compared to what it gets is not balanced.

UO has long since failed in the department of bugs and cheating, sure it has claimed to have new checks in place, and others being worked on, but have they updated on it? Have they told us anything in relation to actual things having been done? I don't think every player I meet is cheating, but there are some, maybe an excessive amount, this I don't know, but still no word on the topic.

 

[King Frankie]

I love when a thread turn intelligent. Why change a concept when you can adapt, take a look at "small games" that was released during 2010. A good example is the Ultima online revamp Battle of immortals wich now draw more money per week then Ultima online do per 3 months. Accept and adapt thats the only solution we can "have" and it didnt take 800 words or more to reach that conclution.

 

[Skrag]

Should I link that article we've all seen, about how Turbine refit Lord of the Rings Online as an F2P game and tripled their income in like four months?

I know some crack-addled illiterate will just be like "Yeah Skrag but UO is different because blah blah sandbox blah complexity blah I don't know any of the words I use blah blah."

 

[Cloak&Dagger]

I love when a thread turn intelligent. Why change a concept when you can adapt, take a look at "small games" that was released during 2010. A good example is the Ultima online revamp Battle of immortals wich now draw more money per week then Ultima online do per 3 months. Accept and adapt thats the only solution we can "have" and it didnt take 800 words or more to reach that conclution.

Another speculator, it is so wonderful you could join in with your speculative income assessment.

Should I link that article we've all seen, about how Turbine refit Lord of the Rings Online as an F2P game and tripled their income in like four months?

I know some crack-addled illiterate will just be like "Yeah Skrag but UO is different because blah blah sandbox blah complexity blah I don't know any of the words I use blah blah."

Again, they might have done something but it is speculative to think the same, or even anything close to that would happen with the game in question. You could have picked any game that is already f2p and the argument would still be the same, because aside from ONE <-- keyword, try to remember it, game on the f2p market all of them are based on a leveling system, and a checks and balances system between their classes (Not that all of them actually work well, but still it is there.). The success of UO ultimately relies on them actually focusing on the game play, the bugs, the cheating, and any other flaw you or anyone else might think it has. After that, then we can discuss if going f2p will or will not generate more revenue. (but even in the future it will always be speculation, for unless you have visited the future you know nothing about it.)

 

[Skrag]

So F2P won't work in a game unless it has levels, for... uh... some nebulous reason you can't actually articulate. Except of course for Runescape. But we should ignore Runescape (a crappy UO ripoff which has become one of the biggest MMOs in the world thanks to it's F2P option and browser client) for some other reason you ALSO can't articulate.

Wow, you're a master debater.

Seriously, why don't you just admit that you were looking for SOME difference between UO and successful F2P games and "levels, uh except for Runescape" was the best thing you could come up with?

Oh but UO relies on gameplay and fixing bugs. Wow, gee, like every other game in the world doesn't rely on those too. They could fix every bug in this 500 year old game and it's still isn't going to draw that many more new players.

Get this through your head: "Give your $15 per month to us instead of Warcraft!" is a terrible marketing angle to grab new players with unless your game has serious $100 million dollar production values. Can anyone even name the last successful Western subscription MMO? Warhammer, flop. Conan, flop.

Go F2P, make some money, and maybe you can hire more people to fix your bugs.

 

[King Frankie]

Another speculator, it is so wonderful you could join in with your speculative income assessment.



Again, they might have done something but it is speculative to think the same, or even anything close to that would happen with the game in question. You could have picked any game that is already f2p and the argument would still be the same, because aside from ONE <-- keyword, try to remember it, game on the f2p market all of them are based on a leveling system, and a checks and balances system between their classes (Not that all of them actually work well, but still it is there.). The success of UO ultimately relies on them actually focusing on the game play, the bugs, the cheating, and any other flaw you or anyone else might think it has. After that, then we can discuss if going f2p will or will not generate more revenue. (but even in the future it will always be speculation, for unless you have visited the future you know nothing about it.)

I do wonder what you base your "speculation" on, its a comon term in your post. My knowledge would come from playing the game and knowing people that work on it. Other then that yeah probably speculation but a really close speculation i must admit. Speculation speculation, id say its magic you use since you found out were i get my information. Sim salla bim.

 

[Jonathan Baron]

But....but I used to get paid by the word, Frankie.....lots of folks do or did. And you wonder why the novels of Charles Dickens are so long? No...you probably didn't.

<sigh> I'm always the guy who gets stuck saying we've been here before....'cause I'm OLD and have played waaaay too many of these games back when the the medium was but a toddler with chronic colic. Now it just gets drunk and wrecks your car.

Leveling games make it worse, not better. Player twinking was an issue within days of the release of EverQuest. Anticipating this, of course, that enemy of fun team set adventure party level range limits and actually got Ebay to refuse to allow people to auction off EQ items. At least that's my memory of it. F2P with item purchases based an player character levels are more difficult if you must impose limits on what you can equip. Buy it but you can't use it....happens all the time on UO item sites with vet rewards, leading to disclaimers of course, but in games with millions of players, most with short attention spans and eyes not keen on details, that could become one support headache for which no pain reliever has yet been concocted. And what are the consequences of no such limits?

And if I have to hear one more guy plead to let him kill people so he can wear, say, the Faction crimmy....oy vey.

But I digress as I march with a grim eye toward my 800 words.

Making an association of failed new games with a subscription model precludes the more obvious possibly that the games themselves were fatally flawed. Remember that horrid frame rate on even high end machines in Conan for example? The host crashes of Hellgate, London? The paucity of content in Earth and Beyond, though they nailed the new user experience pretty well.

Yes, the subscription model sticks this commitment barrier in front of you, making you far less forgiving of launch snafus. But did 700,000 people come and go from Warhammer because a subscription loomed in front of them? Perhaps it was WoW's lack of serious launch snafus that accounts for its success as a subscription game...that and consistent art direction but that's the sort of crap I notice first. I didn't stick around for other reasons, though I admired the execution. Still, even with 11 million or more subs, WoW may have saved the MMO from extinction in the West, but Farmville kicks its ass.

We are devotees of a genre that's been living on the brink of extinction for several years now. Growth until WoW was flat. Now WoW is flat. Expansions have never increased long term player numbers. These games may simply demand too much time of a population that has little of it. Folks generally like their entertainment in small doses and the novelty of online - the factor that grew it, sustained it for years, and allowed it to grow despite software integrity below that of other games (e.g. nearly every console title) - has worn off. Unfortunately the prejudices against it in the popular mind did not diminish.

I've long maintained that digital worlds and physical ones are simply two interfaces for human consciousness, both very real because they stimulate emotion and thought equally. You needn't play an MMO or read Snowcrash to know THAT. But again I digress. More to the point, to borrow from the bard and twist his words, the problem lay not in our business models but in our games. The MMO remains stuck in version 1.0.

Still, it's not like massive innovation was taking place elsewhere. It just looked nicer and had fewer bugs. Apart from Guitar Hero and Being John Malkovich, what successful game or movie has been vastly different from all the others? We love predictable entertainment....probably why we're in cultural stasis.

Finally, I must return to a sour issue when it comes to hacks and cheats. Even with cunning and determination from developers, the classic client is a porous fortress. In fairness, I've not looked under the hood of the EC. Criticisms of UO development are fair - all customer criticism of every product carry, by definition, an essential element of fairness. If you pay money for something you get to complain about it; you just do. Yet name me a single online game that is richer and reflects more thought and imagination than Ultima Online. WoW borrowed previously proven ideas brilliantly but created nothing new. And you can't just toss UO's age at it. UO, is by no means, the longest running MMO of all time.

 

[Cloak&Dagger]

So F2P won't work in a game unless it has levels, for... uh... some nebulous reason you can't actually articulate. Except of course for Runescape. But we should ignore Runescape (a crappy UO ripoff which has become one of the biggest MMOs in the world thanks to it's F2P option and browser client) for some other reason you ALSO can't articulate.

Wow, you're a master debater.

Seriously, why don't you just admit that you were looking for SOME difference between UO and successful F2P games and "levels, uh except for Runescape" was the best thing you could come up with?

Oh but UO relies on gameplay and fixing bugs. Wow, gee, like every other game in the world doesn't rely on those too. They could fix every bug in this 500 year old game and it's still isn't going to draw that many more new players.

Get this through your head: "Give your $15 per month to us instead of Warcraft!" is a terrible marketing angle to grab new players with unless your game has serious $100 million dollar production values. Can anyone even name the last successful Western subscription MMO? Warhammer, flop. Conan, flop.

Go F2P, make some money, and maybe you can hire more people to fix your bugs.

Your failure is to be actually thinking I was debating with you about game models. I guess you just lacked the comprehension to actually know what the debate was about, or the examples used.

I will say one last time, that if you seriously do not believe you are speculating, then you may need to look deeper into what you know vs what you don't and apply that to the future to understand you know nothing about it.

Then when you understand that the model will do nothing for the game, at all, given its current state and the effort being put into it, then once again you can claim I was debating with you, although you will always be wrong. My only debate here was that you, can never tell me what will happen in the future if we do "this or that". I will humor you though and give in to your debate using the same articulation you do (which is none at all). UO could survive as a subscription game if they improve the New Player experience and the Marketing. Depending on how well they improve the over all game they might even be able to get away with the crappy CS they currently have. You prove differently, which you can't, and maybe I will start to listening to anything you have said.

 

[King Frankie]

But....but I used to get paid by the word, Frankie.....lots of folks do or did. And you wonder why the novels of Charles Dickens are so long? No...you probably didn't.

<sigh> I'm always the guy who gets stuck saying we've been here before....'cause I'm OLD and have played waaaay too many of these games back when the the medium was but a toddler with chronic colic. Now it just gets drunk and wrecks your car.

Leveling games make it worse, not better. Player twinking was an issue within days of the release of EverQuest. Anticipating this, of course, that enemy of fun team set adventure party level range limits and actually got Ebay to refuse to allow people to auction off EQ items. At least that's my memory of it. F2P with item purchases based an player character levels are more difficult if you must impose limits on what you can equip. Buy it but you can't use it....happens all the time on UO item sites with vet rewards, leading to disclaimers of course, but in games with millions of players, most with short attention spans and eyes not keen on details, that could become one support headache for which no pain reliever has yet been concocted. And what are the consequences of no such limits?

And if I have to hear one more guy plead to let him kill people so he can wear, say, the Faction crimmy....oy vey.

But I digress as I march with a grim eye toward my 800 words.

Making an association of failed new games with a subscription model precludes the more obvious possibly that the games themselves were fatally flawed. Remember that horrid frame rate on even high end machines in Conan for example? The host crashes of Hellgate, London? The paucity of content in Earth and Beyond, though they nailed the new user experience pretty well.

Yes, the subscription model sticks this commitment barrier in front of you, making you far less forgiving of launch snafus. But did 700,000 people come and go from Warhammer because a subscription loomed in front of them? Perhaps it was WoW's lack of serious launch snafus that accounts for its success as a subscription game...that and consistent art direction but that's the sort of crap I notice first. I didn't stick around for other reasons, though I admired the execution. Still, even with 11 million or more subs, WoW may have saved the MMO from extinction in the West, but Farmville kicks its ass.

We are devotees of a genre that's been living on the brink of extinction for several years now. Growth until WoW was flat. Now WoW is flat. Expansions have never increased long term player numbers. These games may simply demand too much time of a population that has little of it. Folks generally like their entertainment in small doses and the novelty of online - the factor that grew it, sustained it for years, and allowed it to grow despite software integrity below that of other games (e.g. nearly every console title) - has worn off. Unfortunately the prejudices against it in the popular mind did not diminish.

I've long maintained that digital worlds and physical ones are simply two interfaces for human consciousness, both very real because they stimulate emotion and thought equally. You needn't play an MMO or read Snowcrash to know THAT. But again I digress. More to the point, to borrow from the bard and twist his words, the problem lay not in our business models but in our games. The MMO remains stuck in version 1.0.

Still, it's not like massive innovation was taking place elsewhere. It just looked nicer and had fewer bugs. Apart from Guitar Hero and Being John Malkovich, what successful game or movie has been vastly different from all the others? We love predictable entertainment....probably why we're in cultural stasis.

Finally, I must return to a sour issue when it comes to hacks and cheats. Even with cunning and determination from developers, the classic client is a porous fortress. In fairness, I've not looked under the hood of the EC. Criticisms of UO development are fair - all customer criticism of every product carry, by definition, an essential element of fairness. If you pay money for something you get to complain about it; you just do. Yet name me a single online game that is richer and reflects more thought and imagination than Ultima Online. WoW borrowed previously proven ideas brilliantly but created nothing new. And you can't just toss UO's age at it. UO, is by no means, the longest running MMO of all time.

Im with you on many points but it really eludes me when you say there is no new players and i ask myself i wonder why? You dont achive much by getting "new players" into an old MMO, id rather see the returning of old players. Counting the amount of old uo players is far vast then the small %tage of new players. So why not aim the effort into getting old players back by offering something that they remember and once upon a time was cherished more then your daily bread.

Just a thought.

 

[Skrag]

Making an association of failed new games with a subscription model precludes the more obvious possibly that the games themselves were fatally flawed.

It's been over four years since WoW launched, you'd think SOMETHING else would have succeeded by now. Instead the entire post-WoW history of Western subscription MMO gaming has been nothing but a string of flops. Flops with huge budgets, flops based upon dynamite intellectual properties, but flops all.

The era of monthly subscription being the default MMO business model is well on it's way to being over. It may survive among a couple of dominant ultra high-budget games, of which only a few will exist at any one time. Unless something big happens, like Blizzard deciding to launch Titan as F2P. That would essentially kill the subscription model permanently.

Yes, the subscription model sticks this commitment barrier in front of you, making you far less forgiving of launch snafus. But did 700,000 people come and go from Warhammer because a subscription loomed in front of them?

Would all 700,000 of them have quit if sticking around was free? How much more likely would those 700,000 be to poke their head back into the game and see what's up if they could do so at any time for no money?

Still, even with 11 million or more subs, WoW may have saved the MMO from extinction in the West, but Farmville kicks its ass.

What's the monthly subscription fee on Farmville again? MMO isn't dying, it just needs to quit thinking that "give us your CC number and submit to a monthly fee or you can't touch our game" is a good business model when there's so much else out there that lets you in the door for nothing.

Your failure is to be actually thinking I was debating with you about game models. I guess you just lacked the comprehension to actually know what the debate was about, or the examples used.

No, my problem is that your posts don't actually SAY ANYTHING. You keep screaming "speculation" over and over and over again like that MEANS something. Yeah Sherlock, any possible action anyone could ever undertake regarding anything is "speculative" until it's actually done. Congratulations, do you want a god damn cookie? There's a difference between your idiotic stance of "Oh no everything is speculation, the future is a formless void!" and my own stance of looking around at other games for examples of what's likely.

Let me write the point on the face of a hammer and bang it off your skull a few million times: If a game's status in terms of bugs and production values can harm it's success as an F2P game, then it will harm it's status as a subscription game EVEN MORE since the subscription game comes up once a month and forces you to decide if you want to keep playing.

 

[King Frankie]

Ouch! anyone else?

 

[Cloak&Dagger]

No, my problem is that your posts don't actually SAY ANYTHING. You keep screaming "speculation" over and over and over again like that MEANS something. Yeah Sherlock, any possible action anyone could ever undertake regarding anything is "speculative" until it's actually done. Congratulations, do you want a god damn cookie? There's a difference between your idiotic stance of "Oh no everything is speculation, the future is a formless void!" and my own stance of looking around at other games for examples of what's likely.

Let me write the point on the face of a hammer and bang it off your skull a few million times: If a game's status in terms of bugs and production values can harm it's success as an F2P game, then it will harm it's status as a subscription game EVEN MORE since the subscription game comes up once a month and forces you to decide if you want to keep playing.

Except you state it as if it is a fact in stone that f2p will do wonders for this game. And it simply is not. So I said it was speculative, you responded with "Nothing speculative about it" But now in your response you say everything is speculative until it is done, which is all I said to begin with....so which one is it?

Why didn't you use negative examples to back up your "non-speculative belief"? How many f2p games have come and gone? I don't see you mentioning any of those games as possible outcomes to what will happen if UO went f2p.

Like it or not, this could go both ways if not done right, and I never said anything against f2p even once, I only said what they should do before taking the game f2p as with out the dedication of improving the game, f2p won't gain any revenue. I think I asked you this before, do you think the money they make currently from the cash shop can sustain UO if they removed the subscriptions? Although we have agreed houses should cost a monthly fee, so I guess nothing would change "currently" except a "possible" influx of players, although there might not be any at all.

And have I ever disagreed with how much things hurt the various models? No, I never even took the stance against f2p, I simply outlined what SHOULD happen BEFORE they consider f2p, and the things that need to happen after would be marketing, very simple and basic. But again, you did not prove my argument wrong at all, only went back to your same repeated response as you have done in two threads now.

 

[Jonathan Baron]

Well, this one's sailed over the fence and may not even remember the name of the stadium it was launched from.

There is a saying among my people: they fight over an empty box

Great discussion though. Wonderful eight month tour of a magnificent old game too.

Someone said he saw the character of an old EA honcho of the past the other day, out near Vesper bank on Chesapeake. I saw a note on a house bulletin board apologizing for canceling Sunday's little get-together but promising the one this coming Sunday would make up for it. Everyone would be there, it said. Was dated, May - 2005.

A buddy had to give up a couple of accounts that were very old. Said to have a look before it all went IDOC. There were runes to houses, long gone. Oddly sometimes the Heralds are left behind, rendered mute witnesses, no longer announcing arrivals with hyperbole because neither master nor home exist any longer. The IDOC scavengers can't grab 'em. They don't decay. Instead they stand there, meant only to serve someone who'll never return.

These past months, I've wandered a land of a quarter of a million ghosts. I remember all the excitement at game conferences over every little unexpected thing that happened there, and every month of every year seemed to produce yet another one.

This is a topic about an impending parting. I would dump the idiot tag, "like hundreds of thousands of others," at the end but no two are the same. What they all share, though, is disappointment and that's a pity.

"Grabbed you by the collar on your way to the afterlife," a guy said to me after a fight over ten years ago. Was dead for sure....the whole....death sound and art sequence thing had started playing I thought. Somehow the heal got to me though and we ended up killing those PKs.....well...running them off. That's usually how it ended. The ones that wait in ambush may not fight well but they run well. Just the avatar of the guy who snared my collar was standing there but I could feel him smiling at me.

Nothing like UO in any world digital or physical. Its successors will be new but not brave. Most will bathe you in easy, soft excitement and dazzle your eyes.

Don't curse or grumble as you head out the door though. Chances are you got more out than you put in and you're living with more bad, buggy software in the OS of your personal computer than ever existed in any online game.

You can't help but feel let down. It's a pity but you can't. Yet someday soon, when some fool insists that WoW or something after WoW was the first MMO - or whatever acronym they have for online games, rather than games played online - your pride at having been here, at having been a part of it and it a part of you will rise with immense force and intense fury and, though you won't do it, you'll want to smack that sucker all the way to the afterlife and not be grabbing their collar on the way there either.

There are no doubt parallels in human history for the likes of this but they simply don't occur to me just now.

 

[Skrag]

Man, I can never get past people's urge to treat "This 13 year old MMO has markedly fewer players than it did 5 or 6 years ago when there was no WoW and the western MMO market was like 6 games" like some sort of existential crisis. I need to go hang around the Asheron's Call forums and see if a game almost as old and with even less players has the same stink of despair on it.

You want to know what UO's real problem is? The in-world housing keeping it from merging shards the way EVERY other game has done past a certain age. They need to come up with a system like Star Wars Galaxies did, one that allows an entire house to be packed up and dumped in a different location on another server. Then condense down to like 8 well-populated shards.

 

[Jonathan Baron]

That was as sensitive as it was helpful. Thank you.

 

[kelmo]

*chuckles*

 

[Cloak&Dagger]

Man, I can never get past people's urge to treat "This 13 year old MMO has markedly fewer players than it did 5 or 6 years ago when there was no WoW and the western MMO market was like 6 games" like some sort of existential crisis. I need to go hang around the Asheron's Call forums and see if a game almost as old and with even less players has the same stink of despair on it.

You want to know what UO's real problem is? The in-world housing keeping it from merging shards the way EVERY other game has done past a certain age. They need to come up with a system like Star Wars Galaxies did, one that allows an entire house to be packed up and dumped in a different location on another server. Then condense down to like 8 well-populated shards.

ok. Agreed. But now how? Although I have given an option for how they "could" do something like this...just doubt they would use that option =\

 

[Jonathan Baron]

No, no, it's simple really.

Create a program that shows all available housing space in the game. Just make sure it's a bit smarter than the one that kept spawning goats and gypsies in the walled in grassy areas of my Keep. Felt bad for those goats.

Rank housing sites by value.

Think of it as the UO Pet Power Calculator for housing. Location location location, as they say. Most desirable would be a castle plot in Fel....well...maybe not now. Luna, yeah, inside Luna's walls would rate a 1. I'd rather spend a month doing nothing but filling smith BODs than live in Luna but be objective. Go by selling prices on the big shards. 10 would be one of those spots in the swamp choked with Bog Thing spawn. "They thought I was daft to build a castle in the swamp." Well...people do. Output: value per square tile per location.

Apply it to each shard to get a sort of...housing optimization level. Kind of like load factor in the utility business: what percentage of available capacity is being used. Cross reference it with value. Output: value of usable housing space unoccupied on each shard.

Run a housing lottery. Instead of forcing people to leave shards with top scores, take houses on the most valuable spots, relocate them to the least valuable spots, and compensate owners with an amount of land on the destination shard equal to the value of what they lost. Your little a 10x10, let's say, in Luna on Atlantic is now on Origin, but there you have ten 18x18s in the swamp. Cool, huh? Objective, fair, and no cause whatsoever for existential angst.

Seriously, the population of UO is stable. WoW didn't kill the game. WoW saved the MMO and got people's attention after a long string of disappointing launches of new MMOs and flat growth among the extant ones. Coming back to UO after all these years has been, by turns for me, captivating and moving. Any game of such age will have an element of pathos to it. I don't think pathos has a bad smell or anything. Rather it's a quality of depth, but that's just me.

In all games folks come and go. Has anyone here gone a week without meeting at least one returning player who left the game long before the debut of WoW? There is an ineffable appeal to UO that will continue to attract certain core demographics that would find a leveling game insipid. UO is not dying.

Finally, on Atlantic you see plenty of folks running around Old Haven with (young) above their heads, killing zombies and skells while looking out for that Dregor guy who keeps showing up with a WOOSH loudly proclaiming that the wretched place is being defiled by them. Why? The power of alphabetical order. Rename Atlantic after one of the player towns on Chessy. Call it Zedland!

 

[red sky]

I have to go with the smokes vs monthly dues. The transition might be to much for them to go to F2P like the RL can't get off the oil company nipple over night. UO is a form of entertainment or a hobby. And as far as a bass boat or golfing goes UO is a bargin. So much I'd rather see a monthly fee cost raised as much as 5$ if they make a promise written and signed in their own blood.

Dedicated GMs and New Player assistance that live and breath only UO.

Policing, investigating and trapping all that cheating that amounts to the game's hugest failing.

The hell with new content. For one year all the issues and balances of UO are delt with. Code Mages listen to and argue points, be it here in Stratics, shard event gathering of minds or chat channel. Fix and make UO marketable.

When it comes to even $15 a month at $180 a year. For 23 hours a day, 365 days of entertainment. Electricity and internet cost don't count, would have them even if there was no UO. Cheeper then a monthly bass boat payment or a new club purchase. After wrapping the old one around someones neck for playing on a green I was on first without asking my permission, Griefer. And I'd be getting no use of either with the snow and ice thats outside right now. The mailperson most likely wont be by in this weather but I do have my UO. At $15 you can spend one day a month for few hours at best watching a movie while washing down popcorn & Junior Mints with a soda. Only if you walked the 7 miles to the theater and went alone.


As far as patience. Years of hurry up and wait for the Army learned me real good. Took them decades to get the uniform close to functional. Miss those Elvis collared woodland cammo jackets though, LOL.

This is it. ^^^

I'd have to say that what the OP is asking for is something new that has the functionality of UO. UO is what it is and as long as the players are willing to pay then it will be here. It is better to take the time and make it better and fix issues then worry about "2011 graphics".

 

[Fayled Dhreams]

hehehhehe
Clever solution ... missed a few variables that will apply ...
basically every variable that >is not addressed<.
Call a large group of those variables: Players Perceptions (essentially: the GAME don't care. whereas Players are ..... emotional creatures)

Closing/consolidating ONE shard(witness the recent mere moving of a server) is likely to be seen as concrete evidence of the good ship UO "going down" and the emotional creatures will respond / react to their >perceptions<.

Also: Any "lottery" will likely be perceived (at best) as having some contact with UOs current iteration of the RNG.
Whether it does or not >in fact< have any contact ... the Perception that it might will be the rule that decisions are based on.

I could go on ... but those two are sufficient to reach a decision as to the likely "success" of your soulless algorithm. (goes to player interactions being removed to a machine decision)

well writ all in all though.

 

[phantus]

Server consolidation will be the beginning of the end for UO. If it wasn't for housing this game would have sunk years ago. There are no solutions that will work.

For those that want a more populated shard they can transfer to one within the current system. Those players have already said items are not important to them and housing shouldn't matter.

As for the client wars, there is a simple solution to that. The devs just need to create an EC only FREE optional patch that allows them to go to a new dungeon with a couple new items. Nothing that is better than anything else in the game but something that people will want. A new system only capable in the new clients. The goal would be to create an experience that others would want to enjoy.

I, like many others, don't play the EC. The reason is because I don't have to. What is my motivation to using it? So far the features it has are not enough to make me learn how to use it. If they phased it out I would. If they offered something the 2d client wasn't capable of I would. I just simply won't do it for little to no good reason.

 

[Skrag]

Server consolidation will be the beginning of the end for UO. If it wasn't for housing this game would have sunk years ago. There are no solutions that will work.

SWG pulled off server merges in a game with in-world housing. It's not impossible. And really, server merges are called for. Many games much younger than UO, stable and successful games even, have done so.

For those that want a more populated shard they can transfer to one within the current system. Those players have already said items are not important to them and housing shouldn't matter.

Problem is every newb who does decide to try UO for the first time in 2011 lands on some empty shard and quits because "nobody plays that game".

As for the client wars, there is a simple solution to that. The devs just need to create an EC only FREE optional patch that allows them to go to a new dungeon with a couple new items. Nothing that is better than anything else in the game but something that people will want. A new system only capable in the new clients. The goal would be to create an experience that others would want to enjoy.

I remember when Ilshenar could only be accessed through the Third Dawn client. We didn't all switch to Third Dawn, we just stayed out of Ilshenar.