There are FAR better ways to "Fix" this game.
#1 GET Customer Service! Hire GM's and train them to KNOW WTF they are doing. Start dealing consequences. At EM events stop the griefing, In Gen Chat stop the griefing and vulgarity... be there when someone pages for help. TODAY not 3 weeks from now. But within an hour.
#2 Account Management needs to be managed. We need to be able to get our accounts. No I don't mean steal them from other players we gave/sold them to.... I mean lost accounts folk can't recall how to get back or the system refuses to acknowledge... Like my friend whom for a long time couldn't come back because the silly system changed his account from a UO account to a DAoC account... though he never played DAoC. Make it "easier" for the owner to get their account back and keep it paid. Accept Paypal!
#3 Get our **** off the Origin website and onto something managed by Broadsword! Add more things to the store! There are 100's of things we could be/should be selling and don't. These things should be sold where we can buy more than one at a freaking time. Put this perhaps in-game so folk can buy with either gold or cash. Again Accept Paypal...
#4 Hire a Community Leader. Someone who IS a liaison to the public. Not Stratics. A real public Liaison. Preferably someone that can spell. Certainly someone who is communicative.
#5 Give the EM's a bit more time and power. They could use more hours a week to give them more time to bring things to life.
#6 Don't just rely on EM's to bring on the entertainment... honestly there really needs to be cycles of Events. ToT, Halloween stuff, invasions, some sort of Threat that needs our attention more often than once a week. We miss the threat to our well-being. Sure we could go hit a dungeon... but it's just not the same as being victorious over a mighty invasion. Defending our city and our home is something that brings us together...
#7 BRING BACK COMMUNITY! We have fallen to a soloist game... we are no longer an MMO.... we are an MO. There is no multiplayer....
#8 realize that looks DO matter. Keeping the congruity of the game is important as well as maintaining a crisp look. Don't shelf the high Res update... and get someone on the graphical glitches and fix them. Get into UO and seriously look at the world. First off get into the EC and take a walk around Gravewater Lake and tell me that looks "ok". Because it doesn't. It's NOT ok..... but that is the image WE see. And it's one that says we don't really care how the game looks. And know that what is there is EVERYWHERE.... And trust me if you can't see it... or won't see it and clean it up... then truly all hope for UO is lost. Don't give up on the EC. It really CAN work if you put the effort into it. Consider what folk have been saying about some of the mob graphics and a toggle for 2d mobs and paperdolls. And yes maybe a toggle for the old KR graphics as well... Looks ARE important.
Doing some of this would improve the game by leaps and bounds. I know some is being worked on like #2... but the bandages need to come off soon and we need these things done.
1) Yes. A few weeks ago, a guy told me I should kill myself and my mother in gen chat. I paged immediately. AFAIK, absolutely NOTHING happened to him. AYFKM? For a while, I was farming Blackthorn on my sampire, and someone complained about the people afk farming in both. I responded to her, but an advisor showed up anyway, less than 5 minutes after I proved I was there. He was just doing his job, but come on. (Side note: This was a few days after I was pulled to the afk macroing area for the first time ever, by a GM. I even said "so, uhh, I take a gate now, right?")
2) I had no problem recovering mine two years ago, but it was easy for me, e-mail tag aside - I gave a detailed summary of when I opened my account, when I closed/reactivated, came back for RTB, etc. Only thing I didn't remember were my security questions, which they provided for me and I answered.
3) Agreed. The only things I've bought in-store have been: gametime codes, account upgrades (Stygian, High Seas, 7th Character), a few forged metal tools, and a couple xfer tokens.
4) No real opinion here, you said enough.
5 and 6) Yes. LS does have community hunts Tuesday-Friday, but that depends on the # of people. Sometimes they don't go off (Corgul nights.) If I do go to a dungeon, there's no real danger, just boredom. The Ogre General/Security Consultant invasion back in 2005 was fun, although it annoyed me that people wouldn't let me solo them (I know, I know. It was supposed to be a cooperative event, but even back then, I did like a challenge.) I've spent most of my time in UO lately pvp'ing, but I do like to beat on monsters from time to time, since it's easy & doesn't require much effort.
7) Yup. Monsters need to be "smarter" - buffing their HP doesn't make them hard, it's just tedious. But there is such a thing as too difficult - last week, an event on LS ended with the boss being a Slasher (which prompted me to come back on my Thrower), but the EM made it a bit too powerful, which he realized (hey, he's new. You gotta learn somehow) - it howled frequently, but also had the ability to teleport you to it. A story arc boss isn't supposed to be easy, but that whole fight was a corpse factory - you couldn't even FIND your corpse in the mess. But I digress - "smarter" monsters is why I (occasionally) enjoy fighting captains. Yes, you can solo those too, but you can't just throw your **** at the wall and hope it sticks.
8) Ehh. I'm too used to the CC's graphics at this point. Granted, if there was a better looking 3D client, I would, without question, use it. EC has some good features, but it's too ugly for me to use it for more than 30 seconds every couple months.