Isnt it weird that there is no cross promotion between UO + Ultima Forever?

[Promathia]

Its not like it would have taken much. You could have done the Blizzard approach (For instance, when you bought Diablo 3 CE you got stuff in WoW + Starcraft 2).

Say, downloading Ultima Forever gives you a code for something in UO. Or all new accounts paid for in UO get a code for something in Ultima Forever.

Is it much? Not really. Would it have required alot of effort? No

I guess it boils down to a major problem we have had for a long time, lack of marketing. UO is a good game and really the graphics dont matter. The gaming community has definitely leaned lately more towards indie games (Graphics do not make those games, the actual game does). Its not like we expect TV commercials or Boxed versions in stores, but atleast do something.

 

[Winker]

R U NEW? UO gets ZERO promotion

 

[Ron Silverbeard]

Since product Management and Marketing is my Job IRL, i totaly agree and i am also surprised nobody working at this companies went to start such a cross-selling and Promotion Program....*sigh*
Not much more to say....

 

[Ron Silverbeard]

R U NEW? UO gets ZERO promotion

Thank you Winker for a free

 

[Winker]

Thank you Winker for a free

we are like the step child kept under the stairs, everyone knows we are there but no one talks about it!

 

[cazador]

I don't think we are allowed in the main house! We are tied in the basement of the guest house, and we are not real popular, so visitors are few and far!

 

[GalenKnighthawke]

From a sensible marketing perspective it is indeed weird and to ask why not is a perfectly legitimate question.

Someone should pose this to Skalski on Twitter.

-Galen's player

 

[UODeckard]

It's not weird. Look at the Mythic website.

http://www.mythicentertainment.com/

Leading the charge into the core RPG market, we're putting strong IPs on mobile in new and exciting ways.

The General Manager of Mythic is the one that got Ultima Forever going, so it's no surprise that he's steering Mythic into mobile gaming. I don't know what that means for the future of the desktop MMORPGs in Mythic, but the fact that they are so blunt about mobile in their mission statement makes me wonder at times.

 

[SlobberKnocker]

there is now new blood in uo. most times u see a guy who played some years ago come back for a bit but that's about it.

i'm not sure given the severe learning curve that exists in this game that you really can market it to new players anymore. a lot of the gear worn and pets used cannot be had without paying insane amounts of gold. i'm definitely looking at things from what is the ultimate end game in uo but still in all this is a very hard game to come into cold and understand what you need to do to compete.

 

[Tina Small]

there is now new blood in uo. most times u see a guy who played some years ago come back for a bit but that's about it.

i'm not sure given the severe learning curve that exists in this game that you really can market it to new players anymore. a lot of the gear worn and pets used cannot be had without paying insane amounts of gold. i'm definitely looking at things from what is the ultimate end game in uo but still in all this is a very hard game to come into cold and understand what you need to do to compete.

Yeah, I agree. A guildmate I used to play with on Great Lakes when I first started playing UO recently returned. He's been gone since about May 2005. There is just a ton of stuff he needs to catch up on. I hope he'll stick around and try, though.

 

[G.v.P]

Its not like it would have taken much. You could have done the Blizzard approach (For instance, when you bought Diablo 3 CE you got stuff in WoW + Starcraft 2).

I thought the same thing while I was playing the UO browser game, Lord of Ultima. It's even worse with Ultima Forever, considering it's in the Mythic family.

I asked Cal about Lord of Ultima, and I know you probably remember that because you've played forever like me, but he made it pretty clear they had no communication with the team that produced that browser game. I hope there is at least some creative back and forth between Ultima Forever and UO.

But wait, Ultima Forever isn't out yet, is it?

 

[Tina Small]

I thought the same thing while I was playing the UO browser game, Lord of Ultima. It's even worse with Ultima Forever, considering it's in the Mythic family.

I asked Cal about Lord of Ultima, and I know you probably remember that because you've played forever like me, but he made it pretty clear they had no communication with the team that produced that browser game. I hope there is at least some creative back and forth between Ultima Forever and UO.

But wait, Ultima Forever isn't out yet, is it?

As of a week or two ago, you could download it from the Canadian version of the Apple Store to play on iOS devices and they've also got official Mythic forums for it up and running. I think EA is going to announce the release date for iOs devices in the rest of the world at the E3 conference, which runs June 11-13, if I remember correctly. At some point, they will probably also announce release dates for Android devices and the PC.

I hope there will be some kind of cross-promotional efforts. But honestly, after watching Paul Barnett (GM of Mythic) and Kate Flack (Ultima Forever Lead Developer) in some of the videos that exist where they are talking up Ultima Forever, I get the feeling that they pretty much ignore UO at this point. I thought for a while that Kate was working with the EMs on story arcs, but haven't heard her name mentioned in connection with UO since she was a judge for the writing contest. Paul Barnett seems to be a huge fan of "things Ultima," but I can't honestly remember ever hearing him doing one of his excited talks about Ultima Online. So, it's hard to know what his vision for UO is as a Mythic bigwig. He may only care at this point about getting more Ultima-themed games into production. As Deckard pointed out, if you read the Mythic home page, it looks like Mythic is diving headlong into games for mobile devices.

It's very troubling to hear nothing but a very occasional tweet from anyone such as Jeff regarding UO. Judging by the info he has on his Twitter page, he is still the Ultima Franchise Producer. Yet we haven't heard anything formal from him regarding UO in a long, long time. I guess the industry's must be just too competitive for him or anyone else to say anything much about UO's future. Personally, I still think EA used NetDragon to do the majority of the development/programming work for Ultima Forever, but other than a lot of circumstantial evidence I won't rehash, have no real proof of this. So who knows if they might not be using them or someone else "behind the scenes" to work on additional Ultima projects, including new stuff for UO. The possibility that something like that might be happening is honestly one of the main reasons I've continued to foolishly keep paying for UO. I sort of took to heart Jeff's request almost a year ago to keep supporting UO, in hopes that the majority of the money I've been forking over every month for 8 to 10 accounts is actually being spent on improving UO. But it's really getting close to the point where something MAJOR and GOOD needs to happen soon with UO before I just give up and consider myself well and truly fleeced.

 

[Winter]

OH Please, oh please, ohpleaseohplease... someone with the initials of "RG" please buy back the rights for UO...

 

[Velvathos]

Richard Garriott has promoted Ultima Online more with his new company through Shroud of the Avatar than EA or Mythic have!

 

[DJAd]

I'm sure it's on the teams huge to-do list.

 

[Hannes Erich]

It's been almost 16 years. I'd just be thankful we can still play with our original characters on the official servers. No other MMORPG's playerbase in the world is quite that lucky. We're in maintenance mode as far as marketing is concerned, and I don't expect that to ever change. At least we're still getting updates. There are newer MMORPGs that have more players and get fewer updates than we do, like Champions Online and Vanguard.

I have complaints, but that doesn't keep me from being EXTREMELY grateful. The first time I left UO for another game, it was Earth and Beyond. I fell in love with that game and community, made friends, and I still have the final server disconnect message burned into my memory from sunset. I played City of Heroes for four years, and had friends there who had been playing it for eight years when it was ripped away from us--and it was still pulling in a few million dollars a year. Both times, the first thing I did was come back to UO and play for a long while, because there's always UO.

The one suggestion I have for anyone who cares, is to put Ultima Online on Steam. A lot of younger retro RPG fans have never played UO and if you get around, you'll find that a lot of people don't realize UO is still running (a consequence of zero marketing and UO's age). I know EA hates Steam, but if they did this, retro RPG fans all over the world would discover UO and it'd probably make more sales in a week than the game has had in years--and I'm predicting this based on what other RPG developers have said about their own Steam sales. I was playing one of the recent Avernum games recently, and every time I play that game it reminds me of UO. Well the Avernum games do very well on Steam!