A tidbit of history for those interested in how Trammel was started

[Goldberg-Chessy]

It wasn't just because people were whining. They were losing subscriptions over it, and by the tens of thousands. Both RB and Kosner have both said the same thing. And the guy there gives out numbers. Trammel effectively doubled their subscription base. Who knows how large it would have been if Trammel (or something similar) had been done sooner.

Having only one basically lawless land was a factor but the real reason they were losing large amounts of players was the fact that they were no longer the only game in town. Plain and simple.
You can dissect it anyway you like but that is it in a nutshell.
Online gamers are without a doubt a fickle bunch and always want the latest and greatest. That was true then and it is ofc true now.
And you cannot try to compare sub numbers with current popular games that sustained a longer growth period simply because the entire genre itself has exploded
UO was created and thrived in a wild west atmosphere. That same atmosphere was not its downfall a few years later.

 

[Percivalgoh]

Well even though I settled in Trammel and these days never go to fel I was somewhat skeptical of this divide. Still I went around and marked about 10 runes for places that I wanted to place a house. When housing happened I was so lagged I couldn't get to any of those places initialy. By the time the extreme lag subsided every single place I had marked had a house allready. Fortunately for me my guildmistress knew a place and I placed there north of Moonglow city. Now looking back at that divide I think it was a good thing. Really I was just about to quit playing and the way things were was so much better for me . Not only did I enjoy playing more but it interfered with my real life less. A double win from my perspective. But at the time I thought maybe trying to create an environment where players could actually police the lands would have been a better idea. Like allow for a player based police force that can arrest and confine criminals or render them temporarily unable to commit crimes similar to real life so that there would be less criminals around. But I think that would not apeal to pvpers. Anyway I still love to play

 

[Picus at the office]

Don't forget that EQ was a different view point compared to UO's god view and this alone brought people into the game who wanted that type of game play that UO just couldn't compete with.

With the benifit of 20/20 vision and playing arm chair Dev person there were lots of things that could/should have been better.

 

[TandaBSK]

"I used to enjoy RPPvP... however that seems to have died out... Again sometimes that's not fun either if the sides are not more equal. No one likes to always lose and to me being part of a gank squad isn't fun either... if the fight lasts only .2 seconds that's hardly enough time to even enjoy something and you spend more time getting ready for the fight than actually doing anything." stated by Malag Aste

Funny my mother in law use to say the same thing about dinner, anything that takes me more than 15 minutes to make should take you longer than 10 minutes to eat. Ha! Other things come to mind with the statement too.. but well this is a PG 13 game.

Always been a mule/crafter, died a few times to reds in the day. Was never about the fight, I never fought back, stood there and let them kill me. UO began in felucca for me too, I made a few friends, cut a crap load of bandages for players who loved the fight both pvp and pvm. Bought me my first house when Trammel was born. I sheared sheep, picked cotton, wove cloth, sold my time doing things I enjoyed to make the gold to work my mage/alchemist/scribe. It was that bit of symbiotic relationship I miss now. Was a time when being a crafter or mule had some value and being a non pvp player to a few didn't drop you in their gaming world to a third class citizen, rather they appreciated that my play style allowed them to take their time in game and do what they liked to do too without spending hours preparing.

For a group that claims all we Trammies did or do is whine, it was the theft of armor by crafters that prompted the complaints that brought about repair deeds. Risk?? Just sayin' the rope swings both ways.

 

[NuSair]

Having only one basically lawless land was a factor but the real reason they were losing large amounts of players was the fact that they were no longer the only game in town. Plain and simple.
You can dissect it anyway you like but that is it in a nutshell.
Online gamers are without a doubt a fickle bunch and always want the latest and greatest. That was true then and it is ofc true now.
And you cannot try to compare sub numbers with current popular games that sustained a longer growth period simply because the entire genre itself has exploded
UO was created and thrived in a wild west atmosphere. That same atmosphere was not its downfall a few years later.

Everquest wasn't released until early 1999. UO was losing those subscriptions way before that. UO was pretty much the only game in town. (yes, Trammel was in 2000, but this is about loss of subscriptions).

They were losing subscriptions before Everquest. Your assertion holds no water. They were the only game in town at that point. It's explosion was not based on it's open PvP environment. The people who replied as to why they were quitting the game was overwhelmingly because of the non-consensual PvP. That is a fact. In the first year people were leaving the game by the tens of thousands. Before EQ was out (UO September 1997, EQ March 1999).

 

[Garen]

for years i never knew how to express what went wrong with UO, but in the write up it hit it right on the head.



i really like that saying; Lions like to eat sheep - lions don't like to eat other lions.

Not at all. When they killed off Dreads they introduced guild wars and the fun only continued.

 

[Goldberg-Chessy]

Everquest wasn't released until early 1999. UO was losing those subscriptions way before that. UO was pretty much the only game in town. (yes, Trammel was in 2000, but this is about loss of subscriptions).

They were losing subscriptions before Everquest. Your assertion holds no water. They were the only game in town at that point. It's explosion was not based on it's open PvP environment. The people who replied as to why they were quitting the game was overwhelmingly because of the non-consensual PvP. That is a fact. In the first year people were leaving the game by the tens of thousands. Before EQ was out (UO September 1997, EQ March 1999).

I thought the timeline was different but as you seem sure on the dates I will stand corrected

 

[Picus of Napa]

UO certainly had at least 1.5-2 years before EQ came out but I never tried it only because of the PVP switch theory, something about non-con PVP has always made me think UO was amazing.

 

[JC the Builder]

One guy I have played with said he would never step foot in Felucca ever again when Trammel opened. He now has a PK.

If you gathered 100 random memorable player stories, I bet at least 80 would have happened in Felucca.

 

[hungry4knowhow]

One guy I have played with said he would never step foot in Felucca ever again when Trammel opened. He now has a PK.

If you gathered 100 random memorable player stories, I bet at least 80 would have happened in Felucca.

And I bet that would be a conservative estimate JC

 

[The Craftsman]

If you gathered 100 random memorable player stories, I bet at least 80 would have happened in Felucca.

Probably true. Nothing very memorable ever happens in Trammel.

 

[Nexus]

Ooooh! Oooh! I know! *raises hand* By learning what damages people in 600 million gold expensive armor in less than 3 seconds!

I'd guess armor ignore special attack helps a lot. *laughs*

But isn't that preferable to back in the day when someone with a Quarter Staff would just destroy it?

 

[The Craftsman]

But isn't that preferable to back in the day when someone with a Quarter Staff would just destroy it?

No. Because the armour was easily replaceable or repairable from a trustworthy grandmaster smith. Economy. Player interaction. Remember those things?

 

[Darius Bloodbain]

Sounds like a discussion I once heard about Mountain Dew vs Mountain Dew Throwback vs the original Mtn Dew.
Anyways, I been playing this game since January 1998. In all those years, I tried to adapt myself and my game play as the game evolved with many changes over all those years. Some changes I liked, some I did not like so much. But none the less, I stayed for the love of the game, and the friends I found and made along my long journey in this little escape from reality we call UO. I agree that they got lazy when they made trammel the way they made it. A lot more thought could have been put into it at the time than just mirroring the main land mass.
Looking back, I wish it had been a completely different land mass, with different towns, ect.
I agree that the introduction of Trammel played heck on the hard core Player Killers back then because most folks that didn't like being player killed moved to Trammel, and the existing first created lands and Cities slowly
dwindled to ghost towns. There were way fewer players in the old lands for them to hunt. But looking back, I would have to say if Trammel had not been created, I would still be here, as I am now. Each person is different.
Either way it went, you would lose or gain player base. At that time there was a real shortage of housing. Even when they made Trammel, housing demand over ran what was created. When they made Malas, I can remember how everyone was so relieved to see more housing finally come. Nowadays, you can go on most any shard and plop down a house, except for maybe Atlantic.
Anyways, this is a discussion that's been ongoing for many years and if you look back in past threads everyone has their opinion and there's always gonna be people on both sides and a few on the fence, but none the less
it was a good read, and thank you for posting the link.

 

[Nexus]

No. Because the armour was easily replaceable or repairable from a trustworthy grandmaster smith. Economy. Player interaction. Remember those things?

What I ment was isn't AI preferable to destroying armor if the economy of the game was in it's current state, where people would consistently be losing 600mil suits to someone with a Q-staff.

 

[the 4th man]

Not quite.............trammel was around when ultima was on the original nintendo entertainment systems.......so mutt stole the concept......

 

[Smoot]

What I ment was isn't AI preferable to destroying armor if the economy of the game was in it's current state, where people would consistently be losing 600mil suits to someone with a Q-staff.

then they wouldnt be 600mil suits. they would be more like 500k suits at about one third less intensity than we have now. personally i would prefer not being attached to armor and making use of "ok" stuff i find as loot. as it is now, there is no reason to hunt because only 1 out of 1000 pieces is worth keeping. if suits were replaced daily, there would be a constant demand for the majority of loot that right now is just left to decay.

 

[Sneaky Que]

Tram is by far the worst thing EA/OSI ever did. It permanently made the game a million times easier and less exciting and cost UO tens if not hundreds of thousands of players for ever.

Before Tram, UO's population was rapidly increasing, which smashes the argument that the Britannia ruleset (what we now call Fel) was damaging the game. The truth is that UO's subs only started to decline AFTER Tram was introduced, though to be fair it wasn't straight after. When Tram was introduced a huge number of players quit straight away or in the months soon after, while a new group of players started to join the game in their place. These new group of players are commonly known as Trammies.

While many Trammies did join the new game that UO had become (make no mistake, UO before and after Tram are two VERY different games), there wasn't enough of them to continue to sustain the raise in population that the Britannia ruleset had achieved. Other "Trammie" MMOs were released in the years following and UO lost it's unique appeal to the Trammies and many left, while potential UO players chose to play other games instead.

EA/OSI's UO had a uniqueness pre-Tram that they gave away for good. The proof of this is the enormous amounts of players who still play in the Britannia ruleset "elsewhere." These other places have populations that not even Atlantic can match.

However, I will finish on a positive note and say that even though Tram was such an unquestionably bad decision, it is a credit to UO that even after such a terrible change it still remains the best MMO out there by a very large margin.