Someone asked not long ago why I get to ranting and raving about UO stuff sometimes and this was the answer I gave, because even though it is "just a game," it is still a
product and a service that I pay each month to use:
I want my money’s worth and to feel like I’m paying for a product that is produced and managed by professionals who know their business and care about their customers!
I pay almost $1100/year to keep 7 accounts open (I’m paying monthly because I’m so apt to quit at any time) and since about 2010, I've felt less and less each month that I am paying for a quality product. I am at the point where even if I could use additional items from the game code store, such as a Britannian ship or two or upgrades to a couple of accounts to get more storage and the garden beds, I'm unwilling to pay anything extra above the minimum to keep accounts open every month because I don't have a strong sense at this point that I will continue playing long enough to make those extra purchases worth what I paid for them. I am also not getting any strong vibes from the dev team that UO will even be around in six to nine months' time, since they refuse to talk about UO's future in anything other than the vaguest of terms and they have apparently cancelled any plans to try to attract new or returning players. As Uriah Heep pointed out elsewhere, EA has a history of dumping games shortly after introducing features to compel players to dump extra cash into them. I have little faith that they wouldn't try the same thing with UO, in spite of many of its remaining players having been their faithful customers for 15 years.
I have no idea anymore where the game is headed in general, nor do I have sufficient information to know if there’s any reasonable expectation for me to enjoy this product even two to three months from now.
I have no idea anymore whether updates to the product (i.e., “new content”) will simultaneously come with significant cutbacks (e.g., virtue and township loyalty decay), or whether those updates will be so buggy that no one dares to take advantage of them for fear of losing things, or whether those updates will require such an investment of time to utilize that no one except a scripter would be able to stand doing it for the length of time required to make using the product update meaningful.
I also have no idea if my ability to use product updates (e.g., live events) will be constrained by such updates only being made available at times that are mostly only convenient for people who don’t have reasonable family and job obligations.
In addition, I have no sense of whether product updates for this product that derives much of its essence from being a product used simultaneously and cooperatively by a multitude of customers will have a reasonable chance of appealing to the majority of existing customers, or whether such updates will just drive away more of them. I also see no visible effort being made on the part of the manufacturer to attract customers to replace those that have aready left. I also have no way of confirming that product updates will not just serve to pit more and more customers against each other, as they struggle to get the manufacturer (EA) to focus on what each group wants and feels is needed to help the product survive. I truly despise the idea that players must compete with each other to get the developers to spend apparently severely restricted resources to provide new content or fixes for the things they each enjoy in UO.
I also have no assurance, no recent examples, that make me feel as if I’m paying for development/fix-up work that’s well-diversified and not primarily focused on catering to only a handful of customers.
Lastly, as a consumer, I’m also very disappointed and concerned by the fact that most of the information I need to have to enjoy using the product is compiled and posted, not by the manufacturer of the product, but instead by dedicated but still unpaid volunteers on third-party websites that could potentially disappear without a moment’s notice and that would apparently be impossible for the manufacturer to replace to any degree within any kind of reasonable timeframe.
