Houses.

[Frarc]

Can we go to one house a account per shard ?

With playing 2 shards we have 18x18 houses on one shard but we have to life from a bank on another. Or like my friend have 2 very small granfathered house on 2 shard. She realy could use a bigger house on both shards. But if she place a bigger one she loose a house on one of the shards.


We like both shards but its hard to life like this .

 

[Eyes of Origin]

I'm sure you are among others who wish we could have more than one house per account. I really wish they would give us a booster pack or something that would allow us to have 2 houses per account. I would gladly pay for it.

 

[Frarc]

Yup.

The resize option for the house also condem the houses on the same account. That might help a little if that was not the case.

 

[aarons6]

i would love another house so i can actually play my chars on napa instead of just borrow stuff.

you cant do anything with the limited space from the bank..

 

[Schuyler Bain]

Agreed.

I would also gladly pay for more plots (1 per shard, max of 3/5?) as part of a booster.

 

[Bazer]

id gladly give em $30+ to be able to own a second or 3rd house on another server easily.

 

[Warpig Inc]

Good ideal with a monthly charge for a Brit Barge with max storage and works as a one story house plot. Movement equal to a row boat. One per account. Same decay rate as a boat. Only can use and anchor in certain areas.


Bad ideal with giving players an excuse for having less accounts. We could easily have an account total drop more then 30% if everyone with multiple accounts got rid of one.

 

[Lord Raven]

Good ideal with a monthly charge for a Brit Barge with max storage and works as a one story house plot. Movement equal to a row boat. One per account. Same decay rate as a boat. Only can use and anchor in certain areas.


Bad ideal with giving players an excuse for having less accounts. We could easily have an account total drop more then 30% if everyone with multiple accounts got rid of one.

Anyone that wants more than one house can just open another account. UO already offers it and you can just consider it a monthly fee. There is NO reason for them to offer it for less as that would directly affect their revenue.

There are existing tokens you can purchase for bank/house storage expansion.

I think the OP meant to say facet instead of shard... Tram/Fel aren't shards. Atlantic, Chessie, Origin, etc.... shards. Oh, and lets not forget Siege or Kelmo will be jumping into this!

 

[Warpig Inc]

No the OP is shard minded and all the locks boost is not enough for them. Unless there is a huge wallet sink there is no reason for more then one house per account. Another account is and should be the only option. The low population in the game is no excuse for sucking up housing spaces. Not like those pulling the strings will do what it takes to make UO a clean and playable game

 

[Siteswap]

Anyone that wants more than one house can just open another account. UO already offers it and you can just consider it a monthly fee. There is NO reason for them to offer it for less as that would directly affect their revenue.

There are existing tokens you can purchase for bank/house storage expansion.

I agree. If you want a second house pay for a second account and only use it for house placement. Many people already do this and EA would be saying goodbye to those accounts and the revenue they bring in if they ever allowed a second house per account. Which means they have a perfectly good business reason not to do it ... so they wont.

 

[Woodsman]

Good ideal with a monthly charge for a Brit Barge with max storage and works as a one story house plot. Movement equal to a row boat. One per account. Same decay rate as a boat. Only can use and anchor in certain areas.

I used to want this with the Britannian ship - go down inside the ship, have the space of a 7x7 or so and you could place add-ons and items and storage stuff, but then I realized you're talking about the equivalent of a moving house and the unholy amount of lag that even just a few of these could create if they started constantly traveling around certain areas.

 

[Sargon]

Anyone that wants more than one house can just open another account. UO already offers it and you can just consider it a monthly fee. There is NO reason for them to offer it for less as that would directly affect their revenue.

That is not necessarily the case. It is really a business question of how many 2nd accounts are open to hold houses and whether that could be offset by one-time fees that allow additional houses to be placed. I personally would not pay a $12.99 monthly fee just to hold a house, but I would certainly pay a $30 or $40 one-time fee to allow for a 2nd house on my main account. If there are a lot of other people like me, that is an untapped revenue stream that may very well be more profitable than the $12.99 monthly fees.

 

[Amber Moon]

That is not necessarily the case. It is really a business question of how many 2nd accounts are open to hold houses and whether that could be offset by one-time fees that allow additional houses to be placed. I personally would not pay a $12.99 monthly fee just to hold a house, but I would certainly pay a $30 or $40 one-time fee to allow for a 2nd house on my main account. If there are a lot of other people like me, that is an untapped revenue stream that may very well be more profitable than the $12.99 monthly fees.

So in essence your saying that people only keep house holding accounts for 3 or 4 months. Sorry, not gonna buy into that. There is no way a one time payment beats recurring charges.

 

[Sargon]

That is not necessarily the case. It is really a business question of how many 2nd accounts are open to hold houses and whether that could be offset by one-time fees that allow additional houses to be placed. I personally would not pay a $12.99 monthly fee just to hold a house, but I would certainly pay a $30 or $40 one-time fee to allow for a 2nd house on my main account. If there are a lot of other people like me, that is an untapped revenue stream that may very well be more profitable than the $12.99 monthly fees.

So in essence your saying that people only keep house holding accounts for 3 or 4 months. Sorry, not gonna buy into that. There is no way a one time payment beats recurring charges.

No, that's not exactly what I'm saying. I'm saying that someone like me does not keep a house-holding account at all. So if EA sells me a $30 2nd house code, that is $30 they weren't going to get from me otherwise. For someone else who was holding a house on a $12.99 account, sure EA will lose money on that person if they cancel their 2nd account... but would they make up for that money with all the extra account codes they are selling to people who didn't have 2nd accounts before? I honestly don't know what the answer to that question would be, but I suspect that it could be to EA's benefit, especially if they allowed people to buy multiple housing codes.

 

[Woodsman]

I personally would not pay a $12.99 monthly fee just to hold a house, but I would certainly pay a $30 or $40 one-time fee to allow for a 2nd house on my main account. If there are a lot of other people like me, that is an untapped revenue stream that may very well be more profitable than the $12.99 monthly fees.

Anybody using an account just for house-holding should be doing the 6-month prepaid $10 a month fee rather than the $12.99 fee.

 

[Amber Moon]

No, that's not exactly what I'm saying. I'm saying that someone like me does not keep a house-holding account at all. So if EA sells me a $30 2nd house code, that is $30 they weren't going to get from me otherwise. For someone else who was holding a house on a $12.99 account, sure EA will lose money on that person if they cancel their 2nd account... but would they make up for that money with all the extra account codes they are selling to people who didn't have 2nd accounts before? I honestly don't know what the answer to that question would be, but I suspect that it could be to EA's benefit, especially if they allowed people to buy multiple housing codes.

Yes, I understood what you were saying, and still disagree. We can leave it there.

 

[Amber Moon]

I personally would not pay a $12.99 monthly fee just to hold a house, but I would certainly pay a $30 or $40 one-time fee to allow for a 2nd house on my main account. If there are a lot of other people like me, that is an untapped revenue stream that may very well be more profitable than the $12.99 monthly fees.

Anybody using an account just for house-holding should be doing the 6-month prepaid $10 a month fee rather than the $12.99 fee.

Well, they could do some kind of polling or market focus group and then calculate what the cross overo point for max profit would be. I suspect it would be much higher one time fee though. Over a $100 I'm willing to bet.

You can't base this on your personally play style choices. That is too anecdotal. Remember there a lot of folks that post here that have lots of accounts, far more then I have ever held. I think my max was 3 years ago. Many of those would be trimmed off.

 

[Amber Moon]

Just thought of another approach: A special single character/single shard account at a reduced month cost. How much per month would pay for that?

 

[Woodsman]

You can't base this on your personally play style choices. That is too anecdotal. Remember there a lot of folks that post here that have lots of accounts, far more then I have ever held. I think my max was 3 years ago. Many of those would be trimmed off.

I think quoting is screwed up, but I was just saying that a lot of folks would be doing the pre-paid thing for $10 a month versus $12.99, but you're right, the one-time fee would have to be a lot higher, or they could offer a yearly fee of like $80.

As a result of the lower shard populations, one of the nice things for returning players is the ability to easily place 18x18s or towers on many shards, and that would probably disappear on some shards if they offered a one-time low fee for additional houses, which would hurt retention of returning (or new) players.

Additional storage plus some kind of basements (that we've been asking for, for 10 years) would probably help more. I understand about the basements though.

 

[AtlanticVlad]

Anyone that wants more than one house can just open another account. UO already offers it and you can just consider it a monthly fee. There is NO reason for them to offer it for less as that would directly affect their revenue.

That is not necessarily the case. It is really a business question of how many 2nd accounts are open to hold houses and whether that could be offset by one-time fees that allow additional houses to be placed. I personally would not pay a $12.99 monthly fee just to hold a house, but I would certainly pay a $30 or $40 one-time fee to allow for a 2nd house on my main account. If there are a lot of other people like me, that is an untapped revenue stream that may very well be more profitable than the $12.99 monthly fees.

Wow... Just Wow... obviously you don't fathom the differnce between one time payments and lasting ones. I hope for your sake you don't run a business.

I don't know if you ACTUALLY play UO but if you did you would certainly know a number of players who own multiple accounts more then likely original due to housing. Sure some of these folks now have characters on all of their accounts but it is highly unlikely if they could keep all of their housing on one that they would keep the multiples open. I my self have 3. and Know people with 12 or more... Now assuming these folks keep their houses for multiple years like my self... Then just with the 3 I own over lets just say the last 3 years and forget about the fact that I don't close my accounts. like some folks. That's 360-468$ in revenue VS. your idea of 40-60$? you really think this is a good idea? In the fist example they will continue to collect revenue form me until I quit UO for good... in yours they lose most of that and go down to 10-13$ a month form me... How can you really defend this logic?

We were at one point allowed to own multiple home. It was decided it was a poor business plan I believe it then went to 1 house per shard. That too was decided to have been a poor business plan. Here we are now at the Optimal housing structure.

My advice to you. Don't beat a dead horse.

 

[Sargon]

Anyone that wants more than one house can just open another account. UO already offers it and you can just consider it a monthly fee. There is NO reason for them to offer it for less as that would directly affect their revenue.

That is not necessarily the case. It is really a business question of how many 2nd accounts are open to hold houses and whether that could be offset by one-time fees that allow additional houses to be placed. I personally would not pay a $12.99 monthly fee just to hold a house, but I would certainly pay a $30 or $40 one-time fee to allow for a 2nd house on my main account. If there are a lot of other people like me, that is an untapped revenue stream that may very well be more profitable than the $12.99 monthly fees.

Wow... Just Wow... obviously you don't fathom the differnce between one time payments and lasting ones. I hope for your sake you don't run a business.

Of course I understand the difference, but it is not so black and white. If you re-read my post, I didn't make any definitive conclusions. I simply said it is a question of whether there would be enough interest in the additional house codes to make up the difference for the cancelled accounts. Neither you nor I know the answer to that question, so let's not pretend that you do.

 

[Frarc]

If they made it so that New Magincia was the only place where it would be allowed to have a second house on a account, then it would been a even bigger gold sink i think.

 

[Dermott of LS]

...

I'm very much in favor of allowing an account TWO houses, one per shard with a maximum tile allotment to allow one large and one small or two medium sized houses (keeps and castles would take up both slots, so only one house if you choose one of those).

Two main reasons, one personal, and the other because I think it would help a certain shard.

Personal reason: I'm holding a house on Chessy that a friend is using on one account as well as a house I use on LS (grandfathered). Unfortunately I can't either resize or move the LS house without condemning the Chessie house even though there is space open to move it beside my main cabin (which is on my second account).

Non-personal reason: I believe allowing a player to have a secondary home on Siege would be a help to the shard. I don't think the "empty plot" issue will be as big as people think and it would be a big help for people to try out the shard and maybe actually get established there.

 

[Tina Small]

...

I'm very much in favor of allowing an account TWO houses, one per shard with a maximum tile allotment to allow one large and one small or two medium sized houses (keeps and castles would take up both slots, so only one house if you choose one of those).

Two main reasons, one personal, and the other because I think it would help a certain shard.

Personal reason: I'm holding a house on Chessy that a friend is using on one account as well as a house I use on LS (grandfathered). Unfortunately I can't either resize or move the LS house without condemning the Chessie house even though there is space open to move it beside my main cabin (which is on my second account).

Non-personal reason: I believe allowing a player to have a secondary home on Siege would be a help to the shard. I don't think the "empty plot" issue will be as big as people think and it would be a big help for people to try out the shard and maybe actually get established there.

I'm down to just having three accounts open, with less than a month to go left on all three of them. For a while a few months ago, none of those accounts even had houses on them. Now all three hold a house on Siege. If I decide I don't like Siege, well then that's it for me and UO. Just not happy enough with how the game is going to see myself placing a house on another shard other than Siege at this point. I don't know if how I feel about UO at this point is typical of other people who land on Siege or not, but I suspect it might be for at least a few of them. The houses go on Siege and with Trammel to hang out in to avoid most thieves, it's not that difficult to live out of bank boxes on most any other shard.

If the developers ever did allow a second house on Siege, I would want them to put in a requirement that the house has to be refreshed at least weekly and cannot be above a certain size. Perhaps allow maximum storage but limit the footprint. Like any other shard, Siege doesn't need to be flooded with keeps and castles that have no occupants 95% of the time.