I'm not impressed with the new offering for new players. That ship has sailed. This team needs to quit looking to gather new players without a real graphics option and work on getting back old customers. They need to put in a couple classic servers and put in place a reliable and on time content addition plan that works. Going months and months with little to no new content does not work in the MMO world anymore.
Quite true.
Being realistic and as others have suggested, this game is highly unlikely to gain sufficient momentum to make it worthwhile aiming at new players. New players are of course a bonus, but the likelihood of new (arguably younger generation?) players even contemplating playing what is in essence and "old" game, is extremely slim. Not considering what's out there that's free to play, has more "shiny" graphics, or both.
The incentives and ideas being used are very good. Or they would have been a good few years back.
"That ship has sailed" as phantus said.
Yes I'm biased. Yes I also would like a classic option. However I'm also realistic to understand that a niche market game like UO, is only ever going to appeal to a particular target audience. When those playing the game now is estimated to be half (or less) than the numbers playing six, seven or eight years ago, then that tends to clearly suggest that those who left, didn't like the direction the game was heading. Most sensible customers who don't like the service they receive, usually tend to vote with their wallet/purse.
Ultima Online doesn't offer "new" or "younger" players what they want.
Yes it's got a great history behind it,
yes it broke the mould when it started,
yes it has unique aspects that no other games either feature, or do as well. Those positives are unfortunately,
not enough to bring sufficient new players to the game. Period.
Today's MMO market is something entirely different to the model that UO and the other games that quickly followed, gained their success from. There's nothing at all wrong with focusing efforts on what is now a niche market, target audience. Other games, although considered small when compared to some of the "big players" in MMO's now, do it well. There's no reason UO can't too. Focus on the market that wants to play a game like UO. Give them a good enough reason to do it.
So, there's a captive audience of existing players, there's a hopeful audience of former players. Give former players a solid enough reason to return to UO and you'll quickly see the numbers
return to the game. There's plenty of reasons mentioned as to why players decided to leave. Offer the solutions to the core of their reasons and they
will come back. There's enough threads explaining the reasons and suggestions on Stratics, so you don't need to look far.
Finally, is it just me, or does "Call to Arms" smack of some sort of impending disaster? Are things
really that bad?