Re: State of the Game video/answer to classic shard.
Except of course for, you know, the fact that there's been all this downtime for new servers, which cost some money by definition.
That's what makes this all so weird to me.
-Galen's player
Why is it weird? The answer is really, really simple... And I address it not to you personally Galen, but the rest of this thread; because most of the commentary here is living in it's own little virtual world, listening only to their own thoughts and selfish desires, and this completely detached from reality. Look at this thread for an illustration of that; nowhere in Cal's original comment about hoping to be able to make a statement on a classic shard was a video response mentioned.
Nowhere. That "Locked thread on the state of the game"...?
It's a Rick Roll. Did anyone go and cross check even that? Did anyone then bother going and locating Cal's own original statement to get the basic facts?
But because the original poster has confused something completely unrelated, suddenly everyone's not just taking it as a fact that Cal promised a response in a video that wasn't even conceived of at the time he made his statement, but assuming from that false premise they can still know all about working conditions at EA and Mythic, better even than the people who actually do work there.
So here's another perspective which might explain what is confusing you.
Don't listen to the few remaining obsessives here at Stratics. Widen your perspective a little. Someone also mentioned Everquest, and how the first game is still going... go and read a bit about the larger MMO market then, and you'll see that there's a small number of MMOs that seem to have a relatively stable, but small user base that remains no matter what. They don't make a huge fortune, but they are a guaranteed trickle of income. Ultima Online has turned out to be one of them. It won't be here forever of course, but with all the start up costs decades out of the way now, it's a tempting offer to keep ticking over. If it wasn't, Mythic wouldn't have bought the game, would they?
Of course, in this age of Randian self-absorbtion, people like to think they are experts in everything, just because they happen to want the produce involved. So they wibble on about how if you do this, and do
that and ignore the facts that as far as Ultima Online is concerned, there's now more than 13 years of customer behaviour data built up. And even recently they gave those who requested a "Classic Shard" a template to show how committed you were to the idea even now; but most of you just childishly complained about how it wasn't
exactly what you wanted and you'd be damned if you'd give
a single minute to playing something which didn't bow down before you...
If you think I'm being excessively harsh, look at this thread again. Many of you are too busy mocking Cal for having a little fun and wanting to share it with you, as if his job entails that he miserable for every single minute of every day until
you get what you want, and expressing absolutely no sympathy for the injury he experienced during the making of the video. Unlike Cal though, I'm not restrained by my contract or by public relations training from pointing out that's an unbelievably dickish attitude.
Nor am I restrained from pointing out that they are restrained in turn from telling you what the actual make up of the game is, because they know some of you will throw wobblies and make all kinds of ridiculous claims and threats and that a very, very small minority of you will then back up; look at the same old names here, so many years later, still spreading at least the name and power of "Ultima Online" by being unable to walk away from it totally... like the abusive husband, observers will look on and sometimes wonder just what addictive qualities that husband must have to get them to stay with him... And of course, in the meantime the rest of you keep paying that monthly fee. What ever Cal would love to say to you all, the suits above him will be reminding him to not say
anything whilst they've got you by the danglies.
And you do that to
yourselves. All you had to do was go and check your attitude by checking the original facts. Or admitting to yourself that you've not been the target audience for
any successful MMO for decades. Right now I'm afk flying between item pick ups 14 jumps apart in EvE Online, on a mining template with absolutely no combat skills at all and a slow Industrial ship with no weapons equipped... and completely relaxed, even in that supposedly Wild West-esque MMO, because even there remains disincentives to unrestrained player killing.
EvE Online by the way I'd include in the "likely to have just enough of a core audience" MMOs... it's not entirely my thing (I'm messing about on an Xmas gift account), but yeah, looks like they've found a viable model too. And you'll find life a lot less stressful and confusing if you are honest enough to look at the world as it really is, not as you wish it was or selfishly demand it become.
So again... why did Ultima Online get server upgrades? Maybe they know something you don't, or at least someone in the organisation thinks they know enough to plonk the extra cash down. Or you can persist in declaring you're all that matters, you know the game better than they do, and it serves them right when they break your foot... and keep wondering why they don't talk to you any more, but just keep take your money from you; "Baby, just one more day getting High (Seas) and I promise I'll stop hitting you."
not bloody likely ...
