M
mjolnir131
Guest
with the fact you have to log onto 2d nearly daily to fix things so 2d people can see them properly i'm really questioning the fact it's really the majority client.
aesthetically speaking, yes that is possible.Yet if Ford currently offered both a 1960s version and a 2010 version side by side today the 1960s would win hands down in sales. CC is dominant for a REASON.
Neither side should be ridiculing the other - it's one of those things that have helped divide the UO community over the years that goes back to the Third Dawn beta, along with Tram/Fel, along with pushing players away from any official community and pushing them off to other websites, and the post AOS versus pre-AOs crowd, etc. So many things have divided UO players over th eyears.Come on people. It is pointless to ridicule the majority players of UO
EC users have the toggle to use classic containers so that they can see what it looks like in the CC, but I think many EC users don't realize that.with the fact you have to log onto 2d nearly daily to fix things so 2d people can see them properly i'm really questioning the fact it's really the majority client.
^^ this.That last post of mine was glib and nasty. I am sorry I allowed emotion to get the better of me.
That's what has surprised me. I simply looked at the basic, inarguable facts:
UO lost 75% of its customers over the past five years.
The original client cannot conceivably attract contemporary customers.
Maintaining two clients with already limited development resources impedes the creation of fresh content and a proper new player experience.
The EC is far easier to learn and use. Plus it has far greater functionality "out of the box." I know you can't see that. Nobody "raised" on the CC could, but it's true nonetheless.
Over the past year I've been playing this game:
I've seen former backbone shards shrink.
Loud and very public migrations of entire guilds to those few remaining populous shards where it's easy to live in denial.
Grave robbing become high entertainment. A building in decay is viewed with excitement and the behavior of people gathering around it as it's about to fall is beyond creepy.
Large clusters of people, on several shards, just sitting at Luna bank on vanity pets, clad in high end combat garb, NOT DOING ANYTHING. The first word that came into my mind was not a pleasant one: tumor....the Luna Tumor.
Not a single new player that is not, in fact, a returning player. Of these, I am the only one who has stuck it out this long - this is NOT a fact, but I simply don't know of any others.
So let me add one last item to the list of premises to this syllogism:
The people who remain care deeply and have enormous capital in time, emotion, and memory invested in this digital world.
Taken all in all, I just don't get it. Why aren't the veteran players BEGGING the dev team to drop the old client entirely? Having to learn a UI is such a small price to pay to improve the chances that something you care deeply for will continue to survive.
So I yielded to my bewilderment and posted something glib and, I now feel, rather insulting.
But I have to wonder if I'm witnessing some heretofore unknown and undocumented online community behavior that mirrors Lemmings in reverse. Lemmings resort of mass suicide when their numbers exceed resources. This lot demonstrates suicidal behavior when its numbers are shrinking.
Taken all in all, who would stick around? All the neat bits are there alright....I still logon....still play at combat in both tram and fel (though I'm not much good at it), still get and fill the BODs (a BRILLIANT character building game system btw) on the crafters I'm slowly creating, and all that. But how much more heart, mind, and time investment in all of this is rational?
I recall a bizarre oversight when house hunting once - an abandoned aquarium sitting the corner of a basement: a corner that, due to the intrusion of an oil tank nearby, kept it in near absolute darkness. Light only being about to bounce at right angles and all that.
There were still fish in it, although all expressions of love and care - lamps, heaters, little bubbly things meant to keep the water rich in oxygen - had long ago been either disconnected or removed. No food of course. So what fish were left? What survived in this dark, airless, cold aquatic universe in miniature where the only possible nourishment were the bodies of the survivors themselves?
Little fish. Nervous, suspicious little fish.
Although it saddens me that I recall this often when playing UO now, that the last lines of Tennyson's Ulysses no longer resonate in my wee brain as they did when I first elected to return, I can't quite seem to quit yet. Still bouncing from server to server, thinking that something of those braver days when online games had such a powerful hold over enormous personalities and fascinating people remains. You can't find it in those silly leveling games, that's for sure
-
Don't know if you were around at the time, Woodsman, (i.e., spring of 2007) but there was a terrible amount of gloating when the 3D client was closed down a few months before the KR client actually became available to all to try. I was one of the people who started playing UO many years after everyone else, knew no one else playing the game when I started, and naturally assumed 3D had to be better than 2D and therefore spent my first two-three years playing UO using the 3D client. Those couple of months between the time the shut-down was announced and when it was actually shut down were pretty painful if you were a 3D client user because you had no idea whether features of the client that were unique (e.g., resizable container views) would even be available in the new client. Then KR was rolled out. As a player who'd rudely had the only client she'd ever experienced yanked out from under her, I can tell you it was a HUGE disappointment to spend literally hours downloading the client when it was released for the public beta and then actually logging in and seeing how very, very ugly all my characters were and how absolutely useless the KR client "user's manual" actually was.Neither side should be ridiculing the other - it's one of those things that have helped divide the UO community over the years that goes back to the Third Dawn beta, along with Tram/Fel, along with pushing players away from any official community and pushing them off to other websites, and the post AOS versus pre-AOs crowd, etc. So many things have divided UO players over th eyears.
When people bash the other side, it puts the other side on the defensive, and they turn around and do bashing of their own - most of us have done it, perhaps more subtle than others, but a lot of us have, especially when it comes to the client.
Ideally, EC users would accept that CC users will be around for a while, and CC users would accept that the EC and updated graphics are important to bringing in new users. CC users shouldn't gleefully bash EC users over the crashing problems and EC users shouldn't mock the CC users for being forced to use such outdated resolutions, etc., but many of us do it anyways (including myself).
I missed KR but used the 3D client quite a bit before that.Don't know if you were around at the time, Woodsman, (i.e., spring of 2007) but there was a terrible amount of gloating when the 3D client was closed down a few months before the KR client actually became available to all to try.
The whole point of the little things that you see no value in such as the live events and distillery is that they can be done alongside the EC updates, new quest system, new player experience, and graphics update.As a person hoping for some updates that will get me interested in playing UO again, this producer's update is very discouraging. The developers seem to be more interested in live events and adding silly trinkets such as distillery instead of substantial content updates. They appear to be completely sidestepping major issues such as PvE, PvP, the economy, and scripting.
They can keep adding as many gargoyle statues and animal hedges as they want. It won't bring new players to UO and it won't keep current ones from leaving.
I kind of wonder if all of the stuff being done for UO is being done since next year is the 15th anniversary.Boy you have a world of hurt coming when they decide to scrap EC for the Ultimate Enhanced True 3D Client (That is really still 2D) - Coming Fall 2012.
That consideration begs the question. And I will ask it not with any prejudice.I kind of wonder if all of the stuff being done for UO is being done since next year is the 15th anniversary.
I play CC for nostalgia. Hell, I play UO anymore for nostalgia. CC does for me all I need it for. I make my rounds on vendors, I chat with my friends, and I polish my rares. As far as content is concerned, I feel like I have to be that person who lived under a rock his whole life to get excited over anything the game has to offer anymore....
As long as it's:
1. A client that is moving forward in terms of UI capabilities, resolution, and artwork
and
2. I can make the swap over from an older client to a newer client without a delay of losing the first before having access to the second
I'm fine with giving up the EC for something better.
At the time both 3D and KR were shut down this really was not the case.
Hopefully, the upcoming work on the EC will make the difference.
I didn't say those things had no value. If UO had 100 developers, adding all this content is great. But they are doing holiday gifts, live events, Magincia, new items in the UO code store, etc. Where does the time for the EC updates and the new player experience come from?The whole point of the little things that you see no value in such as the live events and distillery is that they can be done alongside the EC updates, new quest system, new player experience, and graphics update.
The EC, new quest system, new player experience, and graphics are HUGE projects for the team, given their size.
I think the EC and graphics stuff and the new player stuff was pushed onto them earlier this year, after they had already started working on trying to finish the New Magincia/Virtuebane arc. It feels like this mini booster thing is just some cleanup work of stuff that was already in the pipeline, just like with how High Seas may have been either a part of something bigger that was canceled or well under progress by the time they turned it into a booster pack. Somebody said that a lot of the work was already done by the time they announced it.I didn't say those things had no value. If UO had 100 developers, adding all this content is great. But they are doing holiday gifts, live events, Magincia, new items in the UO code store, etc. Where does the time for the EC updates and the new player experience come from?
Sunsword (former UO producer) said it himself 10 years ago when Scenarios (live events) overtook the UO team. It bogged down the development process and the team had no real time to work on other things. Obviously the UO team was larger back then, so with them doing all this Magincia stuff it could be even worse now.
I've wondered this myself. They need at least two more developers. A full time dev for the client and one for the NPE, in addition to enough time from the art team. Then they could keep the main team tasked to the day to day stuff they are producing.I didn't say those things had no value. If UO had 100 developers, adding all this content is great. But they are doing holiday gifts, live events, Magincia, new items in the UO code store, etc. Where does the time for the EC updates and the new player experience come from?
That's what has surprised me. I simply looked at the basic, inarguable facts:
UO lost 75% of its customers over the past five years.
Much too absolute.The original client cannot conceivably attract contemporary customers.
This one is, obviously correct.Maintaining two clients with already limited development resources impedes the creation of fresh content and a proper new player experience.
That latter part I've actually heard disputed. Some have said that both the WoW client and UO's EC are actually not usable out of the box, need skins or mods to work well.The EC is far easier to learn and use. Plus it has far greater functionality "out of the box."
Umm....House camping is not new.Grave robbing become high entertainment. A building in decay is viewed with excitement and the behavior of people gathering around it as it's about to fall is beyond creepy.
Before this the same thing happened in West Brit. People used to say nearly the same things about WBB sitters that they say about Luna Bank sitters now. Right down to wanting more invasions so they all die, and talking about vanity pets, save then it was white wryms and Faction Warhorses.Large clusters of people, on several shards, just sitting at Luna bank on vanity pets, clad in high end combat garb, NOT DOING ANYTHING. The first word that came into my mind was not a pleasant one: tumor....the Luna Tumor.
Because it is foolishness to assume UO's problems are due solely to the old client.Taken all in all, I just don't get it. Why aren't the veteran players BEGGING the dev team to drop the old client entirely?
I would say they need more than just two new ones, but it's EA. I don't think it's being left to wither - they are updating several major systems of UO. It's just that it's not being supported like it should be. Maybe that's the same thing though.I've wondered this myself. They need at least two more developers. A full time dev for the client and one for the NPE, in addition to enough time from the art team. Then they could keep the main team tasked to the day to day stuff they are producing.
But I doubt it will happen. They are making the bed that we will all have to lay in, and it doesn't appear very comfortable. It is sad to see such a great IP left to wither.
They are both playable, but not ideal. The idea (and it's not just WoW) is that players are different and have different ideas about what makes sense, so the developers give them the basics and let the community fill in the rest.That latter part I've actually heard disputed. Some have said that both the WoW client and UO's EC are actually not usable out of the box, need skins or mods to work well.
I am so completely tired of this guy. Dude, we know the game doesn't have as many customers these days. It came out in 1997 and even the "enhanced" client looks like something from ten years ago. You running around doomsaying and weeping big fat emo tears over every IDOC is just tiresome bellyaching at this point.baw baw baw
If you're having trouble sleeping at night, may I recommend a small glass of Robert Mondavi Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley. It's a pure, rich and concentrated wine. This bold, graceful wine offers a deep core of earthy currant, blackberry and plum, with hints of herb, mocha an black licorice, giving it uncommon complexity and depth. Ends with firm tannins and a long, persisent finish. Best from 2010 through 2017.I am so completely tired of this guy. Dude, we know the game doesn't have as many customers these days. It came out in 1997 and even the "enhanced" client looks like something from ten years ago. You running around doomsaying and weeping big fat emo tears over every IDOC is just tiresome bellyaching at this point.
Virtually all MMOs enter a state of subscriber decline after the first five years or so, there are lots of them out there still trucking along with fewer players than UO, and whatever magic plan you're hyping wouldn't change any of that.
Are the people still playing Everquest 1 as whiney as this? I swear. Yeah someday the game will close and we'll all end up playing on some semi-professional "donation" supported freeshard. Big deal. In the meantime try to have some damned fun with the game for a change.
Or go troll the Asheron's Call forums with "THIS GAME HAS LOST 90% OF ITS CUSTOMERS IN THE LAST 7 YEARS" or whatever.
That time period just so happened to coincide with Asheron's Call 2, Turbine taking full responsibility for Asheron's Call from Microsoft, and botched housing that left a sour taste in a lot of player's mouth. Housing doesn't get a lot of attention, but had it not been botched it could have been something to help keep a lot of people around, much like UO does.Nevertheless, between 2002 and 2007 the game lost about 90% of its subscribers, declining to something like 10-15k.
Was there some horrible, horrible mistake made over there that's keeping new players from flocking to Asheron's Call?
A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.We Used To Know lyrics
Songwriters: Anderson, Ian;
Whenever I get to feel this way
Try to find new words to say
I think about the bad old days
We used to know
Nights of winter turn me cold
Fears of dying, getting old
We ran the race and the race was won
By running slowly
Could be soon we'll cease to sound
Slowly upstairs, faster down
Then to revisit stony grounds
We used to know
Remembering mornings, shillings spent
Made no sense to leave the bed
The bad old days they came and went
Giving way to fruitful years
Saving up the birds in hand
While in the bush the others land
Take what we can before the man
Says it's time to go
Each to his own way I'll go mine
Best of luck in what you find
But for your own sake remember times
We used to know
A game absolutely no one played, whose empty servers were shut down in disgrace after mere months. The idea of it stealing players from AC1, or anything, is laughable.That time period just so happened to coincide with Asheron's Call 2
Bla bla bla, there's always some unpopular design decision you can try to fob responsibility off on, but get real. AC didn't shed 90% of it's customers because they "botched housing". They shed 90% of their customers because the game is older than crap and dozens of high-budget competitors have come out since its heyday. AC used to be one of the "big three" when there were ONLY three. Now you get at least three big MMOs per year.Turbine taking full responsibility for Asheron's Call from Microsoft, and botched housing that left a sour taste in a lot of player's mouth. Housing doesn't get a lot of attention, but had it not been botched it could have been something to help keep a lot of people around, much like UO does.
And was a giant disastrous failure, garnering only about 50k subscribers in it's first two years. The only reason EVE existed long enough to eventually find success was because it was bought off the publisher for pennies on the dollar.I think a better comparison/model for UO is EVE Online - it came out in 2003
Again, only because their release was an unmitigated disaster and there was nowhere to go but up. Besides which, EVE has no real competitors. There's no useful lesson for EA to take from EVE. "Be a space-based sci-fi MMO that has no direct competitors, but still flop on release so you can steadily grow as you slowly get your crap together!" isn't really useful advice for UO.is PvP-oriented and is a sandbox (more so than UO), has went through graphics upgrades, and rather than starting off strong and peaking within 5 years, it has instead been steadily growing since its release.
It lasted three years which is longer than "mere months", and it consumed resources that could have been better spent on AC, just as all of the resources spent on UO2 and Ultima Origins could have ultimately been spent on UO. There were some bad decisions made.A game absolutely no one played, whose empty servers were shut down in disgrace after mere months. The idea of it stealing players from AC1, or anything, is laughable.
I didn't say it lost 90% of its customers because of one thing. I used housing as an example of a botched decision decision/design issue that did not help with customer retention, but it wasn't older than crap in 2001 when player housing was introduced and when some of the other major decisions were being made. It still had room for growth, especially as it was one of the "big three" as you pointed out, although Dark Age of Camelot was around the corner, as were a few others.Bla bla bla, there's always some unpopular design decision you can try to fob responsibility off on, but get real. AC didn't shed 90% of it's customers because they "botched housing". They shed 90% of their customers because the game is older than crap and dozens of high-budget competitors have come out since its heyday.
UO was "old" in 2004 at 7 years old when it peaked and when 3D MMORPGs were the norm so there is a lot more at work than merely age.And EQ1, and Anarchy Online, and Dark Age of Camelot, and City of Heroes, and Lineage, and everything. Did they all just coincidentally screw up, all at the point where they got to be old and the competition got stronger? Games get OLD.
It took UO several years to get its act together until it offered non-PvP options. Say what you will about EVE Online, but here we are 8 years later and they continue to grow in subscriptions and number of people simultaneously logged in, and they are about to spin off a highly-anticipated MMOFPS that will be played within the EVE Online universe.Again, only because their release was an unmitigated disaster and there was nowhere to go but up. Besides which, EVE has no real competitors. There's no useful lesson for EA to take from EVE. "Be a space-based sci-fi MMO that has no direct competitors, but still flop on release so you can steadily grow as you slowly get your crap together!" isn't really useful advice for UO.
Really not much of one though. EA said they would concentrate on the EC this year, while continuing to support the CC, so both sides should be pretty happy.Yay! A CC vs EC flamefest!