Haven't seen that in a long time, since before they removed their own forums and used offically used Stratics (is Stratics still the official forums?). A couple of quotes from LB's letter caught my eye though:
Greetings friends,
I come before you today to speak about the amazing new world of Britannia that is Ultima Online. For many years the team and I have dreamt of a world where people from all over the earth could join together at one time. Now we have created it. Ultima Online is the fastest selling PC game in the history of Origin and Electronic Arts.
It's still going strong and comparable with alot of MMOs, but no where near WOW's 10 mil. That's feels totally wrong, there's no reason why UO can't be the success that WOW is. I mean, what do you do in WOW after hitting lvl 70?
Hopefully, we get some solid marketing/advertising campaign globally and boxes on the shelves for SA's release! The development costs put into SA should warrant an equivalent advertising campaign.
Pull out all the stops, also consider free advertising like viral youtube vidoes "leaked" by the devs
Ultima Online has an unprecedented level of support for any game of this scope. Never before have I seen a major release that allowed a player at any time to call for help within the game with a button available on the main screen. The Call GM button sends a request for assistance to our live game masters and counselors requesting assistance. We have live GMs in the game 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Already this group of people is larger than any other department of Origin, and we are dedicated to a high level of customer service. Though some people do have to wait quite a while for help, the average wait time is only about 15 minutes. Our game masters respond to calls in the perceived order of importance.
Does this 24/7/15 min service level commitment still hold true? I'm hoping GM Spada has a plan to improve this aspect and can provide some info here...? In game support is critical to the success of UO, just like after-sales service is when I buy hardware/software from a vendor.
If my vendor keeps giving me canned responses, I will stop buying from them. If they actually make an effort to help me, even though it's not a problem with their product, you bet I will keep buying from them and recommend them to my peers.
Lag
Another often mentioned item is referred to as "lag." This is when players notice a dramatic drop in the frame rate of the game. Ultima Online is a very "latency tolerant" game. It can handle up to about a 6-second round trip communication time between the players and the servers.
Having played it during my dialup days, I have to agree. It deals with lag very gracefully and doesn't kick players off the server if they lag.
