Is UO being Left to die?

[Woodsman]

Free shards hold i'd say 50% of the old UO player base. Not to mention the rest of the players on there who have never played UO excet on those shards.

We need those # back in the real game. For those of you who know the players on them get them to return to the Real UO. Even a small # would boost the shards.

The problem with free shards is that some kind of f2p model or a graphics update or whatever aren't necessarily going to attract them.

In fact, they probably won't attract the free sharders at all, because the free sharders are usually after a specific ruleset within UO's history (or a custom one). EA doesn't have the resources devoted to UO to build classic shards.

 

[Zalan]

NO! However, I do believe it is on life support. EA seems to leave a minuim Dev crew. If nothing else UO is used to train Developers. These Developers get carted off to other games over time.

 

[Squeax]

There are plenty of younger games with less players and in worse shape, but UO has the most emo and fainthearted playerbase of any MMO out there.

 

[Aroma]

UO is not dieing nor on the way to the grave. Just everyone is takeing there break from it for now. There there feel better now?

 

[georgemarvin2001]

Let's do a little comparison of the two major sandbox-type MMORPG games:
UO, 2003: This sandbox game, with 350,000 subscribers, where people could risk everything for glory and fleeting fortune, was undergoing a change to become a Diablo 2 clone, where there would no longer be real consequences when you die, and shifted their emphasis from building a world, where players could do their own thing, into a dungeons and fighting oriented game.
EVE, 2003: This sandbox game, with less than 100,000 subscribers, where people could risk everything for glory and fleeting fortune, stood behind its original ideal of creating a universe and letting the players do their own thing.
UO: 2007: An estimated 100,000 players remaining
EVE, 2007: An estimated 200,000 players and growing
UO, 2011: An estimated 60,000 players remaining
EVE, 2011: Over 350,000 players and growing
Both games are senior citizens in the fast-changing world of MMOs. However, the fact that a game is old and dated isn't the problem. If it has interesting content and a dedicated staff, and remains true to its roots and understands the needs of its customer base, it can be successful for a long time.

The truth is, despite its horribly dated graphics, UO is actually very popular and still growing, with thousands of new subscribers playing the game for the first time every day. Unfortunately, they are free shard subscribers, playing a pre-AOS version of UO.

Yeah, it looks like, after the disaster that was AOS, a little stubborn pride wouldn't let any of the devs that followed admit that they may have made a mistake in turning an online world into a carebear fighting game. Now that the constant defection of customers has gotten to the point where the game is only marginally profitable, it's just being left to slowly drift to the point where they pull the plug for good. Which is a shame, considering that UO has been so much more, and could be again.

 

[HD2300]

Yes. They are milking the cow dry.

Any devs that we got UO pays their salary, but are working on other projects like SWTOR and UltimaForever.

 

[Woodsman]

I would throw Darkfall into that mix. I agree with some of your points, and think that EVE Online can't be ignored - it has some of the best PvP around as far as consequences and the like, and it's a sandbox, but you are leaving out two very important things.

EVE Online doesn't have a lot of competition. Many companies aren't going to risk that kind of hardcore PvP where you can lose everything, and having a single universe (two if you count the Chinese one) is also something that companies are wanting to avoid

The second is that around the time UO started declining after 250,000 subs, that just so happened to be the true rise of MMOs. EverQuest, Camelot, AC, those were the biggies for UO's early years but UO was still the "first" and still had a lot of momentum or it would never have gotten to 250,000 subs, but around the time leading up to AOS and the year or so after, you started seeing EVE Online, Star Wars Galaxies, and the elephant in the living room, World of Warcraft, which was coming out of beta and had the media's attention, plus EverQuest II and some of the others. Things just exploded after that, especially in Asia. There were so many choices, and some of these MMOs had built-in fanbases such as the Warcraft franchise.

A third could be UO has also gotten hurt by major layoffs or reassignments, and with all of that, there wasn't a guiding vision that everybody stuck to. One year they were moving towards a 3D game, the next that was put on the back burner, the next they are moving towards a Diablo-like game as far as items, etc. UO bounced around way too much and it still does in 2011, and because of how it started, it never had a solid gameplan or was as carefully guided as say EVE.

With that said, had AOS not happened, I think UO would have still lost subscribers. Too much going on in 2003-2005. I think the amount of subscribers it's lost since 2004 is alarming, but that's not say to that it can't be reversed with solid support from EA.

I hate to admit it, but I see the point of the classic sharders. I don't think it should be a priority, but I am coming around to them doing a classic shard, maybe as a 15th anniversary. I don't think a classic shard is for me, and I wouldn't play it, and I think many wouldn't leave to play it, but I'm seeing the appeal.

So mark that on your calendars, I have admitted that a classic shard is not a bad idea. I just think it needs to be further down the list of priorities.

 

[Nexus]

Is UO coming to a end? Ik i'm gonna get bashed and yelled at for saying this but seriously think about it...

Most shards are either dead or dying out...[not all but most]
PvP is mostly gone
Activity is going lower each day and no new players are coming in.


Just think about all the stuff we've been wanted fixed and EA/Devs havn't done it.

P.S. I've Been played this game since the opening day [no joke] and i've watched it die little by little. UO doesn't deserve this at all....

I'm not going to say it's being left to die, but that UO is day by day heading one step closer to what will eventually come for all the MMO's on the market.

Someday WoW won't have a million subscribers, LOTRO and DDO will be gone, EQ will finally have the plug pulled, and somewhere along that road UO will finally grind to a halt. All things have a life cycle in some sense, I'm not going to say UO doesn't deserve to reach the end of it's when the time comes. If that day is 3 months from now, or 30 years from now, it doesn't matter it will happen sooner or later and every second is just one more second closer to that happening.

As to UO's current state and trying to estimate when I think it will happen? Well I don't see a 20th anniversary on UO's horizon. SW:ToR will be released in a year or so and if it lives up to half of what people expect it will succeed giving EA a new "Standard" to judge by and DAoC and UO even Warhammer won't live up to those standards. Which one would you in EA's position dump money into bring up to par? DAoC and UO are old games, they need the most work to "update" and have a smaller player base to build off of. Either that will happen or DAoC and UO will have another game drawing subscribers away and will shink to non-existence. Either way it's normal, and nothing to stress over, you can't change it.

I split my time between UO and LOTRO these days, I play one predominately for a few while then play the other, and play the current off game casually in between. Why? I realised that someday UO isn't going to be there when I go to log on, and I don't know if I really want to deal with another EA MMO after seeing how they treat their aging franchises. So I experimented found a game I like, and I'm preparing to make that transition as easy as possible when the time comes.

 

[Woodsman]

I worry about Star Wars more in the sense that if it fails, BioWare's MMO group will be gutted. They have that British guy that is behind the Ultima Forever campaign who is obsessed with Ultima IV and Facebook, but it won't help him a bit if his parent group is slaughtered because EA lost a lot of money.

On the other hand, EA is already looking at another big-budget fantasy MMO based on Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, that just so happens to have Todd McFarlane doing a bunch of design and artwork for it. That's a ways off though and is dependent upon Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning succeeding.

Plus the EA Sims group is making another run at an online Sims game.

EA is pretty schizophrenic. They will dump $300 million into an MMO, but they can't make up their minds about their other properties.

 

[Lady CaT]

Is the Wolf coming, or the Sky falling this time?

[YOUTUBE]Vnp4kj5lLOU[/YOUTUBE]

 

[Fayled Dhreams]

Is the Wolf coming, or the Sky falling this time?

Actually ... to be a bit more on point and accurate ...

Tis the great darkness approaching, from the never ending story
The believers are growing up ...

Takes triple points for best analogy ... chaching!-chaching!-chaching!