No, not bingo. I explained this above. If I run somewhere and see someone and want to talk to them, maybe ask a question or make an offer, they will most likely be in global chat and not see my questions.
Yeah, and if you run up to me when I'm talking in IRC, or ICQ, or browsing a forum, guess what's not going to happen.
I'll give you a clue - it's very similar to me noticing your question.
There's a whole ton of assumptions you're making, high among them being that the person you've run up to isn't just plain ignoring you.
So no, ignoring it doesn't solve my problem, and it doesn't solve this problem that ALL MMO's are suffering from.
Players making false assessments, and parading them around as fact?
That is a problem you're currently having here...
Kiminality, UO's losing subs because they keep trying to make it more like other games, and less UO. Every new change brings a short burst of new hope and hype, followed by a long sustained pattern of losing ground. And those other games out there, they aren't so successful. Other than WoW, none of them are doing all that well. Some have outright failed.
No.
Wait...
Nope, I'm still going with "No".
Sure, that's a factor. A factor that's barely statistically significant.
UO's subscriptions are dropping naturally, as all subscriptions do. Even WoW's drop at a similar relative rate. What UO's not doing is retaining enough subscribers from the churn, to improve subscription numbers.
That's, in large part, because UO isn't terribly accessible to the general MMO player. This is... *
drumroll* because the UI is incredibly non-standard.
Take a look around. Players are bored with the current state of MMOs. They say so everywhere. What they don't general know is what exactly it is they want, because most of them have not experienced anything else, and they just can't picture anything else. But with every new release, WoW tries to combat it with their own. Yet players leave for those new games, WoW slows way down for a while, then the players see that the new game is just more of the same and go back to WoW. The better version, but also because they are established there. They don't have to go through the same boring level grinds again with a new system. Players have been game hopping for several years. It's always the same story, they try it and just go back to WoW, other than the few.
Yes, players have been "game hopping"... They call it "churn", and it's been going on since there was competition in MMOs.
It's these people that need to be retained when they come here, by not driving them away with seemingly arbitrary systems.
Sometimes, I try out f2p MMOs. Trying out new things, broadening my horizons and all that. Sticking around the same games and mechanics all the time is terribly stifling.
At times, I might find one that I quite enjoy, but the translation from its original language is seriously lacking, to the point that often parts of it make little sense.
Do I soldier on, and trial-and-error my way through the game, in the hopes that beyond the language barrier is a brilliant game?
Not likely.
So, hypothetically, I'm a WoW-esque MMO player. I've player WoW, WAR, LotRO and others I could spend all morning listing.
I come to UO, and a bunch of stuff acts completely different to how I'm used to. And on top of that, I can't talk to anyone that's not on my screen, so the only way to talk to someone is to find them, which in the spirit of your "UO is losing players" thing, would be harder than ever.
