So, I'm bad at math, but I think well over 200 years have passed in Britannia since Ultima Online's launch in 1997*; and over 500 years since Mondain's defeat.
24 Britannian hours every 2 hours
= 12 Britannian days every 24 hours
= 84 Britannian days every week
= 4,368 Britannian days every year
= 78,624 Britannian days every 18 years
78,624 / 365 = ~215
However, that doesn't mean the average lifespan of a Britannian is over 200 years.
That's actually one helluva question. And one that nobody asked, I'll give you that. But hell, it's something to do in-between EC vs CC threads.
Anyone playing now does not represent the average. Our characters are outlying statistics at this point. Most Britannian characters who have ever lived will never be seen again, and haven't been seen in Britannian decades or even a century. Let's declare them Probably Dead By Now (there will always be outliers).
For relative purposes, I'm excluding Elves and Gargoyles in this thought experiment (at least initially), and comparing Britannian days to Earth days; a Britannian calendar month is over twice as long as a month on Western Earth civilization's common calendar (73 days). *So the average Britannian human--and the average lore hound--might argue that only about a century has passed since 1997; understandably so. Of course, the average Britannian wouldn't have any context to refer to 1997, hence the thread title (this is obviously a thread for Earthlings).
So if Sosarian/Britannian humans age similarly to other humans biologically, they would seem to die at an earlier age, but this would be a mere technicality. 30-year-old Britannians would simply be synonymous with 60-year-old Earthlings (making the calendar month longer wouldn't make humans live longer). However, strong magics are common throughout Britannia, which undoubtedly yield mitigating factors upon daily life, including the secrets of youth (and resurrection of course).
This doesn't mean the science of biology is a wash, but it does give players whatever wiggle room they want in determining their characters' apparent youth. And, just to play devil's advocate against myself, it's also possible Ultima/UO's calendar was devised around the idea that Britannians age twice as slowly as Earthlings, but within a time stream which passes 12 times faster than in Earth's universe. This alternative would reflect only about 100 years since 1997--approaching or just past the Britannian Year 400--and it would yield more relatable characters, biologically speaking, before accounting for the effects of magic on health and youth.
The factors above are of course debatable and may influence (or change) votes in the poll. But that's why it's called a discussion thread.
But wait! That's not all!
More importantly, we would need to know the average length of time subscriptions remain active from month to month, especially for those players who never come back. This is called churn. We would need to measure and compare this against the number of active subscriptions across each year, and across the lifetime of the game. We would also need to know the average number of characters created per account, and the number of human NPCs.
In simpler terms, we would need to figure out how many human characters have ever existed upon Britannia, as well as how long each character appears to live on average--excluding temporary deaths which are followed by resurrections--before never being seen again.
Most of the data we'd need is unavailable to players directly. But plenty of industry insider anecdotes exist around the Net (and in books) after 18 years. So a good sleuthing effort might yield evidence, or at least some educated guesses, regarding the average Britannian lifespan.
Because of magic and roleplay and each player's perspective, there are naturally going to be mitigating and exacerbating factors, and some crazy outliers. It's not your job or mine to explain why some player-characters pop back up after 80 Britannian years, or why some roleplayed characters are old but youthful. That's outside the scope of the thought experiment because, frankly, we all know it's just a video game (and one worth returning to). But somewhere in-between all the fiction and variables, there's real account data, real numbers, and thus statistical averages.
If we had, say, a generous hypothetical average of 5 characters per account, it would have resulted in well over a million characters alive at one time during UO's peak, not including NPC humans. But how many characters had already lived and died since then? And how many since? If we can guess these numbers and then measure them against churn, we will have an average character's lifespan.
The game peaked in 2003 at around 250,000 subscriptions with Age of Shadows--that's 100,500 more than it gained after launch for you AoS haters--and afterward began its lengthy decline (A.K.A. the rest of its life). The gaming press was already applying the term market saturation to the MMO industry in the early 2000's, well before WoW even entered the scene. Competition was increasing, yearly growth per title had shrunk from ~50% to ~35%; MMOs were beginning to get canceled before even launching.
I can't imagine how scary those growth numbers look in 2016's dime-a-dozen MMO industry. A proper sleuth might indeed have to investigate subscription numbers for other older MMOs to make an educated guess about some of UO's hard-to-get subscription statistics--especially for recent years.
24 Britannian hours every 2 hours
= 12 Britannian days every 24 hours
= 84 Britannian days every week
= 4,368 Britannian days every year
= 78,624 Britannian days every 18 years
78,624 / 365 = ~215
However, that doesn't mean the average lifespan of a Britannian is over 200 years.
That's actually one helluva question. And one that nobody asked, I'll give you that. But hell, it's something to do in-between EC vs CC threads.
Anyone playing now does not represent the average. Our characters are outlying statistics at this point. Most Britannian characters who have ever lived will never be seen again, and haven't been seen in Britannian decades or even a century. Let's declare them Probably Dead By Now (there will always be outliers).
For relative purposes, I'm excluding Elves and Gargoyles in this thought experiment (at least initially), and comparing Britannian days to Earth days; a Britannian calendar month is over twice as long as a month on Western Earth civilization's common calendar (73 days). *So the average Britannian human--and the average lore hound--might argue that only about a century has passed since 1997; understandably so. Of course, the average Britannian wouldn't have any context to refer to 1997, hence the thread title (this is obviously a thread for Earthlings).
So if Sosarian/Britannian humans age similarly to other humans biologically, they would seem to die at an earlier age, but this would be a mere technicality. 30-year-old Britannians would simply be synonymous with 60-year-old Earthlings (making the calendar month longer wouldn't make humans live longer). However, strong magics are common throughout Britannia, which undoubtedly yield mitigating factors upon daily life, including the secrets of youth (and resurrection of course).
This doesn't mean the science of biology is a wash, but it does give players whatever wiggle room they want in determining their characters' apparent youth. And, just to play devil's advocate against myself, it's also possible Ultima/UO's calendar was devised around the idea that Britannians age twice as slowly as Earthlings, but within a time stream which passes 12 times faster than in Earth's universe. This alternative would reflect only about 100 years since 1997--approaching or just past the Britannian Year 400--and it would yield more relatable characters, biologically speaking, before accounting for the effects of magic on health and youth.
The factors above are of course debatable and may influence (or change) votes in the poll. But that's why it's called a discussion thread.
But wait! That's not all!
More importantly, we would need to know the average length of time subscriptions remain active from month to month, especially for those players who never come back. This is called churn. We would need to measure and compare this against the number of active subscriptions across each year, and across the lifetime of the game. We would also need to know the average number of characters created per account, and the number of human NPCs.
In simpler terms, we would need to figure out how many human characters have ever existed upon Britannia, as well as how long each character appears to live on average--excluding temporary deaths which are followed by resurrections--before never being seen again.
Most of the data we'd need is unavailable to players directly. But plenty of industry insider anecdotes exist around the Net (and in books) after 18 years. So a good sleuthing effort might yield evidence, or at least some educated guesses, regarding the average Britannian lifespan.
Because of magic and roleplay and each player's perspective, there are naturally going to be mitigating and exacerbating factors, and some crazy outliers. It's not your job or mine to explain why some player-characters pop back up after 80 Britannian years, or why some roleplayed characters are old but youthful. That's outside the scope of the thought experiment because, frankly, we all know it's just a video game (and one worth returning to). But somewhere in-between all the fiction and variables, there's real account data, real numbers, and thus statistical averages.
If we had, say, a generous hypothetical average of 5 characters per account, it would have resulted in well over a million characters alive at one time during UO's peak, not including NPC humans. But how many characters had already lived and died since then? And how many since? If we can guess these numbers and then measure them against churn, we will have an average character's lifespan.
The game peaked in 2003 at around 250,000 subscriptions with Age of Shadows--that's 100,500 more than it gained after launch for you AoS haters--and afterward began its lengthy decline (A.K.A. the rest of its life). The gaming press was already applying the term market saturation to the MMO industry in the early 2000's, well before WoW even entered the scene. Competition was increasing, yearly growth per title had shrunk from ~50% to ~35%; MMOs were beginning to get canceled before even launching.
I can't imagine how scary those growth numbers look in 2016's dime-a-dozen MMO industry. A proper sleuth might indeed have to investigate subscription numbers for other older MMOs to make an educated guess about some of UO's hard-to-get subscription statistics--especially for recent years.
