Is Uo on a dying countdown?

[Lady Storm]

That's not what they are telling me....
The tablet is more mobile and this gives them the take with ability they want. Parents are forking over for private hot spot Wi-Fi con's and they can play as they travel. Some providers are offering for 10$ a month access for them that is opening up the want for more like it.
You all talk about f2p games well the market for games for these kids on the go are part of that big down turn in game company's like EA... who are scrambling to fit their stuff to the new market.
Kids are not the only ones slipping away from "computer" games. Life in the world has changed from what it was in 1997. The same has happened many times before. It's how time marches on.
For example I was 12 or 13 when we got our first color tv, and I had a round tv tube when I was 5. My son once had a tantrum when I refused him something and he spouted off about how he bet my mom didn't take away my video game or vcr privilages.... I laughed so hard with my hubby who had the hard task of telling him to go to his room with a straight face.
We are evolving...

 

[The Zog historian]

I'm not sure who you mean by "they," but remember that PCs for over three decades still have fundamentally the same design. There's new external technology like mice, networking, etc., but they still boil down to the same box with a keyboard and monitor. Some technological designs simply work. That's why cars still have the same four wheels and a steering, and the first typewriters a century and a half ago had letters laid out in rows.

Tablets in the last few years have been a great innovation, once Apple fomented consumer demand for something practical in price, size and weight. But as long as games like UO are around, we'll need PCs with big screens and more controls than swiping and tapping. A 10" tablet with 1920x1200 looks nice and sharp, but the display is still too small for a sophisticated game, or heavy web browsing. Tablets and smartphones have had their opportunity to penetrate the market, yet PCs still account for over 80% of web traffic..

 

[pumpkin_escobar]

...

For me, personally, Shroud of the Avatar means more than ESO and is more likely to take me away from UO for good. As I've stated before, it comes down to how good SotA is when it releases vs if UO can get the needed updates to the EC within the same timeframe.

In the meantime, UO, for me, is in maintenence mode and I'm more actively playing Path of Exile.

This IMHO ^^^^^^^^^^

 

[Acid Rain]

Didn't read past the OP's third sentence & only skimmed the first 10 posts. Topic isn't worthy of any comments but since they haven't locked it yet... I'll throw my avatar in the ring & get a.

 

[budman23]

In the spirit of the original poster I will list things that will add community across all shards.

Fix faction stat so only the person who killshots a player can force another to go in stat.
Do not go forward with vice/virtue, scrap it all.
Add back Order/Chaos with no rewards but their crappy shield, institute this 2 party system instead and with no rewards or benefit, odds are no one will grief.
Return on the conjurers garb Halloween event (maybe different costumes)
Consider town invasions or some form of static event, it hasn't been done in years.

There that's more than one but they never listen anyways.

 

[Velvathos]

You mean to tell me that a 16 year old out-dated game that costs $12.99 a month with barely any developers left and is now on cloud servers is lying on its death bed!?

 

[Velvathos]

Truth be told, I see less and less players every week and more and more homes fall with no other homes taking their places.. I estimate no more than 10,000 - 25,000 active subs, tops. We're on cloud servers now, the upkeep is barely anything, our monthly fees are the developers paychecks and to keep the updates coming, we close to going into maintenance mode, we are only 1 or 2 layoffs away from being in the state that Warhammer is in or from being shut down.. UO's peak was between 250,000-300,000 players. If it is true that we only have 10k players left then they are making less money than the total active numbers of subs UO has had. We have less developers than ever before working on UO, sure with 300,000 subs and a BIG dev team, $10-12 a month was understandable as a monthly fee.. Let's face it, is anyone honestly going to come back to pay the sub fees for very long to play a 16 year old dying game with barely a dev team, let alone, a website or any advertising..

With a $1 sub fee I am sure you can get 1 million players to UO, easy and generate a million a month but this is something that will never happen.. EA is just trying to milk us as much as they can, the straw for me is when we have to pay $10 for some item package.. Free 2 Play games do that, this is the only game where you pay $10 a month and they charge you for in game items, without it being free 2 play.. At least the other items from the game I am able to BUY off vendors from other players or have been given as a reward like the heritage tokens.. The kings package does NOTHING to add content and that's why I will never buy it.

That's all I wanted to say..

 

[Viper09]

Another thread so soon? The other one hasn't even been locked yet.

Anyways, why will we see the end eventually? Because all MMO's must come to an end. Simple as that.

 

[Uvtha]

With a $1 sub fee I am sure you can get 1 million players to UO, easy and generate a million a month but this is something that will never happen.. EA is just trying to milk us as much as they can, the straw for me is when we have to pay $10 for some item package.. Free 2 Play games do that, this is the only game where you pay $10 a month and they charge you for in game items, without it being free 2 play.. At least the other items from the game I am able to BUY off vendors from other players or have been given as a reward like the heritage tokens.. The kings package does NOTHING to add content and that's why I will never buy it.

I read somewhere WOW is actually considering an item shop. EVE also is starting an item shop as well. Are there any other subscription games? I honestly am not sure. Is Conan free yet?

 

[FrejaSP]

I see new players everyday and old players coming back. Maybe they just need to fix the economy on normal servers so it become healthy as the Siege Perilous economy

 

[Sauteed Onion]

I'll be there til she sinks gov. Or goes F2P, then she can tank in all her glory. Well, maybe another one of these situations ( http://stratics.com/community/threads/refinements-yes-or-no.297490/) might be enough to tick me off and outta here.

oh and maybe putting cinnamon rolls in will help generate interest for some of us. u know.

 

[Hannes Erich]

For me, personally, Shroud of the Avatar means more than ESO and is more likely to take me away from UO for good. As I've stated before, it comes down to how good SotA is when it releases vs if UO can get the needed updates to the EC within the same timeframe.

Don't take this as an argument, it's more just me sharing a different perspective. I don't think Garriott and friends are trying to build a "UO replacement", I think they're building a game that holds true to many of the core principles and concepts that Ultima Online introduced into the world and which have (stupidly and sadly) never been expanded on by the industry--at least not to the extent that we know all those principles and concepts deserve. This might sound like I'm splitting hairs, but the distinction is that Richard Garriott would have rather lived in a world where the industry did take the cues, and where there were lots of better MMORPGs and CRPGs to choose from all this time; and he's said this on many occasions. This doesn't mean he wishes there had been "lots of UOs"--developers could have taken those principles and used them across many genres.

If this game replaces UO for you, well I think that's okay; if you've been here since or near the beginning, obviously you've given it a good run. But I'm sure people will continue to play Ultima Online for years to come, and that will be testament to what an irreplaceable game it is, and I imagine this will make designers like Garriott very happy.

In the meantime, UO, for me, is in maintenence mode and I'm more actively playing Path of Exile.

THIS you can take as an argument. UO is not in maintenance mode. I realize you're playing dodgeball here by saying, "UO, for me, is in maintenance mode," but all you're doing is removing yourself from reasonable objectivity by doing so. It still gets updates beyond just bug fixes. It still has official events inside the game. It's not in maintenance mode.

If you're just trying to make a reasonable gripe that they're not reaching your standards of content development, well, I'm not going to rake you over any coals for that TOO much. Everyone wishes the team had more resources, including the team. But I do think you've lost some perspective. I think many of ya'll have. The fact that UO exists and is still taken care of in ANY shape, at sixteen years of age, is phenomenal. The devs aren't just babysitting the game, they do work on it (however slowly).

The only other games I have truly been hooked on besides UO were Earth and Beyond and City of Heroes. If the game's closure was announced tomorrow, the majority of us would be begging them to just leave the servers up and running, just leave it in maintenance mode, and we'd pay our dues. I know how this goes. Gratitude is all about perspective!

 

[Hannes Erich]

Ultima Online (the game itself) will be around for decades probably, but its publisher will eventually cease support of the official servers. At that point there will still be options before everyone is stuck with the obvious final option, emulated shards. Another publisher or studio could buy the game. Perhaps Portalarium. At that point in time, EA might see the Ultima franchise as sufficiently devalued to sell off the entire IP. For those of you who don't get around much, these types of deals do happen with MMOs and studios in the industry. Truth is, any type of deal is possible between two parties who are willing to exchange money and intellectual property and assets and call it a day.

If it comes down to the final option, emulated shards, there's still a big problem, and I don't mean the EULA. I've always skirted around my opinions about this, because I do not believe big emulated shard communities should exist while a game is still active, generally speaking. But I'm aware there are emulation developer tools and shard software that are far more technologically advanced and optimized than the sixteen year-old official shards and the code and databases that run them. The problem might be, of course, the impossibility of transferring all of our characters, skills, veteran rewards, and belongings to a completely alien database.

The people who have developed these tools over the years must be passionate about them, but I've never heard rumor of a tool that can do that. And who wants to start over from scratch after nearly twenty years or whatever? And then, how long is that volunteer-run shard going to last? If there was some standard method used by emulated shards to copy and encrypt my character data, so I could move from shard to shard (think of the way your Terraria character can move between shared worlds), then I'd be more into the idea in a pinch. The thought of starting over and over again, which is the more likely scenario if the official shards ever go away, really sucks.

 

[Parnoc]

My gawd you people, are your glasses still half empty, even when they're running over??? Such pessimism, it's a wonderful enjoyable fun game, just enjoy the game and play.

 

[Hannes Erich]

My gawd you people, are your glasses still half empty, even when they're running over??? Such pessimism, it's a wonderful enjoyable fun game, just enjoy the game and play.

Well this is my usual routine, but I do run the occasional nightmare scenario through my head.

 

[Dag Nabbit]

Sure the game will close...eventually. The whole sun going red giant in a few million years will put a damper on game play for all but the most hard core player.

 

[Winker]

And life goes on

 

[Wenchkin]

Well, everything ends including ourselves, so it's not really news to say the game will end. But UO has survived for an awful long time with people predicting its demise. I think of UO like that sneaky mouse that sneaks into your home. It survives everything, the cat, the traps... It's teeny but good luck killing it I think UO is going to be small and shrinking gradually for a fair while yet. In that time it's up to EA to realise they could advertise and handle the game differently.

What I suspect is that UO will be left with roughly the player base it has now and the other franchise games (particularly UF) will help fund their older stable mate. Because if that isn't the strategy I'm a little puzzled why EA aren't trying to make more money from a product with an already dedicated community that could easily grow. Some of the retro look games are stupidly popular on mobiles these days and UO is the real deal. If they could just mention UO on twitter/FB it would be a start. Perhaps we need to post on their FB page about UO or interact with them on Twitter to see if they can be persuaded to mention UO to their followers lol. Underhanded and sneaky, but maybe we could turn our passion for UO into helping advertise it. We shouldn't have to, but if you want to make a difference a few seconds tweeting isn't a big deal. If every current player tweeted just once about UO and we got #ultimaonline trending, curious people might stroll by. It sure takes less time to tweet than post here on Stratics

But, even without direct advertising, UF might just enlighten people about the Ultima franchise and curiosity gets them to look at UO. I'll be interested to see what happens when UF is on mobiles and PCs worldwide and we maximise those curious folks. I really hope it does bring in new players, because EA seem to deliberately neglect advertising UO directly lol. UO seems to survive despite the worst efforts at EA sometimes. Not the devs (though sometimes they have moments heheh) but more those who look at UO on a balance sheet and wonder why it ain't dead yet.

Wenchy

 

[Petra Fyde]

I have merged 2 threads and now I am going to lock them with a quote from Kyronix:

We (the entire team) are incredibly dedicated to Ultima Online. We live and breathe UO. We aren't in maintenance mode, the furthest thing from it. We've got some really exciting stuff in the works right now that falls in line with exactly what you (and others) are asking for - new content....some of it modeled after past events like Treasures of Tokuno with a fresh twist, along with visiting some classic Ultima that has never been seen in our version of Britannia before. Are we nearing the end? Heck no...we are just getting this party started. We've got some exciting new stuff in the planning and early development stages right now (Hop on over to Mesanna's Virtue vs. Vice thread) and continue to look forward to reading your feedback.

http://community.stratics.com/threa...ussion-about-new-content.301504/#post-2286005
The sky is NOT falling