I used to stream on Twitch while playing Ultima. I averaged about 100 - 200 people per night. The most common question was "What is this game" followed by "I'm not paying 15 bucks a month for this old game". You can interpret from there how well advertising will work for this game.
If you are looking for young blood in this game it will need to be F2P for starters. Secondly you'll have to start having GM's give items back to players after they are killed and loose items cause they couldn't get back to their bodies, or someone took them.
Fresh blood isn't always a good thing especially when it comes to UO. The best we can hope for is people stream game play / upload to YouTube. That will hopefully draw in a few people with the free trail and they stick around for a bit and sub. Most will end up on a free shard though.
Although I agree with you in most things there is something that shouldn't be done, a GM give items back.
My reasoning behind is, theres a great room to explotation on this, say a newbie gets given a half decent suit so that he can train, he decides that he stronger than he is and goes into a stronger dungeon and gets killed and losses the kit cause of no insurance, giving the items back, doesnt help the player to evolve and learn to play the game and choose correctly what enemy to fight at what time, its just spoiling him by giving him his suit back, Ive lost suits when I started, I know Kiri in Eu lost like 10 suits and dont learn but it helps to evolve into a better player.
Personally I wouldnt allow new players until they reach 70s in the 3-4 skills to leave New Haven, yeah might be boring as there is not much to do, but get a new 70s skill player into shame with **** suit and not full hci/dci and he cannot make it there, the spawn will kill him. The game is very item based in that sense now.
The main reason people leave this game after the trial, is the sub, 15 Eu for 1 month on a 17 year old game with 2002 graphics.... It wont go down well!!
Then the fact that they need to farm/grind for everything unless it given to them is also another mayor factor. A new one without the help of some veteran player cannot hunt for Crimmies, Tangles and other stuff, until his gear is well above average and has some full caps met.
AND if you do give them stuff, theres no more reason for them to hunt, as they already have a decent suit/weps, so the game suddenly is made easy and interest is lost.
I used to run a guild to help new & returning players, I used to try to equip them out slowly so that their gameplay could be enjoyable and avoid so much grinding of monsters and loot.
Some I even made suits so that they could hunt with me and not die so often and have a chance a better loot, yet after all the investment I did to sustain and help improve the numbers in the community, many left, and all quoted to me the same reason, too much grind still after been given a suit and the sub price.
Many of them were European also, so playing in Atl wasnt their cup of tea due to time differences, lag and other issues.