Why the heck would you penalize shards over population? Why would you want them to limit income from cross sharders? Do you actually think the effect would be any different from closing the shards? Again just not very well thought out.
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Not thought out?
I think it would come the closest to allowing people with senitmental value associated with their home shards to keep that. Folks museums and player towns would be allowed to stay and even grow.
But I do think at some point we need to address the otherwise dead shards (mine included). A shard with 5-10 active players is an issue when we continue to devote resources to it, when those resource (at least in my opinion) could serve a larger population.
Closing shards is a HUGE issue, but redirecting the allocation of resources could be done fairly easily.
Not me, I live on Sonoma, I love Sonoma and it's people, I am happy with the size of the population. If you "linked" shards, I would quit, plain and simple. Do not like the idea at all, same as "merge" shards to me.
Will those with the shard merger obsession take a moment, let it sink in those of us on the less populated shards are there because we like that population, not the mob scene population they are fond of, and kindly shut up about ruining the game for so many others that the game would be shut down because you few got what you wanted and everyone else left because the game was ruined for us by the overcrowding your obsessed with! 
You can't make new friends? Like at some point the people you know on Sonoma now were new to you, and there was probably more of them.
Herp!
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No. I really shouldn't even have to elaborate on this, but I will.
I play on Legends, I love the community on the server, I see names I have recognized for 17+years daily, we help each other out & promote new players. The EM events are not what keep me there at all(4 hours or more on Legends per month actually) The thing that keeps me on my home shard, is because it's my HOME shard & has been since AOL Legends went live. I enjoy EM events, I do not participate on any other shards because I don't have the time, but I make it to every Legends event that I possibly can, including the governor meetings. If you take those away from us.. I wouldn't leave, but I'd have a lot less fun on the 4-5 days a month I used to do EM events on and that would eventually lead to just closing my accounts.
How bout we just leave the game as it is? Because there's a LOT of people like me in this game that just play to have fun, kill some time when they can, or chat with friends. I really only hear "WAH I CANT PLAY WIFF ANYONE ANYMOAR!" because everyone is too damned lazy and greedy anymore to just make friends with randoms you see in a dungeon. I met a person last night at Rikktor, told em to feel free to stick around, did the spawn together... is it really that hard? Hell, I've made friends with the guy chasing me down trying to kill me to no avail by typing in Gen chat while auto running lol. I understand that hours don't always work out, I understand we can't all be online when our friends are, or even in some cases when ANYONE else is online at all, but you cannot punish the rest of us because you don't know how to make friends or cannot play when others are available. You know what I do when I can't play UO with anyone because its too late? I play a different game. DERP
If someone doesn't have the mettle to find out which shard fits their preference then they're really screwed when they get to the billing fiasco.
*also they could look at the shard choice screen and see what shards have for populations.
How many times do you need to hear that there are UO players that DO NOT want to play on the CHILDREN'S SHARD called Atlantic and if you force everybody to one shard that is what it will become. Why is it so hard for some of you people that some of us want to play on the less populated shards where people wok together and are a lot more grown up. Why do I have to play YOUR UO to have fun. Force me to play YOUR UO and I will unlock everything and let it decay and then I will delete 21 chars per shard and then I will close out my accounts. There you fixed UO are you happy now.
And we lose the ability to xfer to and from your other shards, now that is really a brilliant idea. Make all my shard shields worthless and EA loses XFER money, man you have such a great idea. Can you come up with more ways to KILL UO.
OMGM there are a lot more people on Napa than that. Maybe they just do not want to be around you with your brilliant ideas. And you are more than welcomed to Xfer to any shard you want to, nobody is stopping you.
Don't you understand that unless we play UO the way they think we should play UO then we are not having fun.Will those with the shard merger obsession take a moment, let it sink in those of us on the less populated shards are there because we like that population, not the mob scene population they are fond of, and kindly shut up about ruining the game for so many others that the game would be shut down because you few got what you wanted and everyone else left because the game was ruined for us by the overcrowding your obsessed with!
Herp!
Journeyman
Obviously we just don't know what fun is.
so long as the 30/40 folks are happy on there quiet shards..let them keep trundling along....they can pick choose there luna spots and move castle whenever they like.....they probably solo player types....and added bonus for others is they can afk spawn....solo harrowers un-oppsed and the quiet shards will seem rock solid full on every em event...so its got it uses.....
yah we good...enjoy your OWN UO. !!
yah we good...enjoy your OWN UO. !!
No, locked into your simple little obsession one, we on Siege can't pick and choose our Luna spots. Not in Luna much but last several times in there seems it was the usual full of houses scene. And no, there are not free castle spots to move to whenever you like.
I'm definitely the solo player type because I pop in and out of the game whenever the mood to play happens, in and out all times of the day, typically doing gathering since I'm not into hunting the million hp monsters of the last few expansions.
And no, locked into your simple little obsession one, people very rarely afk play on Siege because even many of us sheep here will kill afkers. We will at least announce the afking ass on General Chat and they are quickly dead.
Like most of you prodo folks who have that powerful characters don't solo Harrowers un-opposed? Me, about the toughest thing I solo are the Fire Daemons of the lava area nw of the Royal City. Most tougher than that kicks my rump into next Sunday with ease.
Can't say I know how mobbed prodo shard EM events get. I tried one way back when on Chesapeake and stopped attending the mass of moving GD and Gargoyle wings that EM events are. That's all you can see most of the event action.
That I do. I came to Siege to finish off my paid for game time about four years back on my way out the door with no intention of letting it hit me on the rear on the way out once my game time ran out. Still on Siege these four years later. Nice rural flavor small population of usually decent folks though some try to do your hide in before rezzing you and proving to be good people, aside from the touch of homicidal tendencies that is.
whatever trevor...just enjoy UO...siege is kinda differnt as we all know.. if someone as 4 accounts they can have 4 siege houses...as well as 4 prodo house.. grow up...go try Mugen [same ruleset] hehehheheeheeee
enjoy the way u like UO... jesus!!!
enjoy the way u like UO... jesus!!!
Mal made a good point too ... that all fits a lot of us.
Main reason we have less in the population is the transfer system.... hard to admit that it was a bad idea that had good intentions for the UO public.
It didn't help that a big guild took it apon themselves to pull the population of every other shard to Atlantic...
This made for a great stuffed shard don't get me wrong..
And here is the BUT....
Had they made it 2 or 3 shards to pull players to it might have been a better idea then just Atlantic.
Reasons abound.. and to top it off was housing.
Atlantic got stuffed fast.... the pvp was heated and a good draw as the others shard leaked players like sieves.
Players who went to Atlantic pushed the gold sales to the roof for even 7 x 7s. The population loss for the other shards didn't start to hurt them till the last few years when numbers of leaving outdid the incoming and new players.
New tried the other shards but when you don't see a soul for hours in the main spots they headed to Atlantic or just quit after the 14 day trial was over.
Finding no housing many of them got frustrated fast.
Now I am seeing Atlantic getting a bit thin.... I can spot multiple spots for plots of the smaller size all over the facits.
We can only blame ourselves for the trouble we are in. We asked for it.
How do we fix it? Can we ?
This has nothing to do with the game or the running of it. So don't point your fingers at the Dev or EA. This is purely our making....
Prime example: the dungeon revamp
How many of you do any of them that have been changed?
Void pool?
You all begged for changes...
We now have Doom revamped
Many who asked and awaited for this are now complaining of the changes...
After looking at the troubles they are talking of I can see why...
I predict that it will die on the vine faster then the others did.
All I can say is .... You Asked For It.
Main reason we have less in the population is the transfer system.... hard to admit that it was a bad idea that had good intentions for the UO public.
It didn't help that a big guild took it apon themselves to pull the population of every other shard to Atlantic...
This made for a great stuffed shard don't get me wrong..
And here is the BUT....
Had they made it 2 or 3 shards to pull players to it might have been a better idea then just Atlantic.
Reasons abound.. and to top it off was housing.
Atlantic got stuffed fast.... the pvp was heated and a good draw as the others shard leaked players like sieves.
Players who went to Atlantic pushed the gold sales to the roof for even 7 x 7s. The population loss for the other shards didn't start to hurt them till the last few years when numbers of leaving outdid the incoming and new players.
New tried the other shards but when you don't see a soul for hours in the main spots they headed to Atlantic or just quit after the 14 day trial was over.
Finding no housing many of them got frustrated fast.
Now I am seeing Atlantic getting a bit thin.... I can spot multiple spots for plots of the smaller size all over the facits.
We can only blame ourselves for the trouble we are in. We asked for it.
How do we fix it? Can we ?
This has nothing to do with the game or the running of it. So don't point your fingers at the Dev or EA. This is purely our making....
Prime example: the dungeon revamp
How many of you do any of them that have been changed?
Void pool?
You all begged for changes...
We now have Doom revamped
Many who asked and awaited for this are now complaining of the changes...
After looking at the troubles they are talking of I can see why...
I predict that it will die on the vine faster then the others did.
All I can say is .... You Asked For It.
Lord Nabin
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Sonoma is a pretty great community
I can think of at least one small change that would help keep returning or new players on the less active shards: Decrease or eliminate vendor fees, perhaps just on items with a cost of less than a set amount, e.g., one million or 500,000 or even 250,000 gold. That way players could keep some of their vendors stocked with items that would be useful for new or returning players (e.g., full spellbooks, runic atlases, rune books, cheap 100% LRC suits, etc.), no matter how long it takes for the items to sell. I know a lot of people have lost interest in selling these items on the less-busy shards because they can frequently take so long to sell that you end up being taking a complete loss on the items when you account for costs to make the item and vendor fees. I would hope that the dev team would consider experimenting with a change like this, perhaps in conjunction with implementing "endless" trial accounts, to see if it helps with reviving the population on smaller shards.
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Sorry friend. I have to disagree a bit here. Common sense marketing of the game by Broadsword and EA would have and will help immensely.
When you don't put gas in your car you will only get so far. When you run out the people who have stopped what they are doing to get out and help push, will only push you forward for so long. Eventually you come to a dead halt and could start rolling backwards.
Marketing is a key factor for success
Lord Nabin
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Exactly, a casual player plays the game. A bard mage is my first character fighting dragons and ancient wymn. A nice guildmate made a GM suit to my bard mage, then I start hunting in Despise. When the skills are 80+, I hunt dragons in destard. I occasionally died, and nice folks may give me a hand and rez me. I can get the VQ weapons and Invul armors from the loot of dragon. I got all these best weapons and armors through casual game plays.
When my skills are 90+, my bard mage did hunt the ancient wyrms. It took me not more than half hour to finish it. I also tried archer, he can do the job as the Ancient wyrm does not move as fast as today. My archer, equipped with the best weapon from the bard, can move around the rocks and shoot the Ancient Wyrm. It is always interesting to play a game with terrain designs.
Sometimes, I may hunt other monsters depending on what I want, such as blood elementals at Shame and balrons in Hythloth. I can finish all these game contents.
I joined 3 active guilds for my chars, when I login, usually, there were some guild activities. I may join if I like.
All these are just regular game play.
The dungeon revamps were a brainfart, pure and simple. The Devs around back then chose the changes to make and those changes were the fabled fubar, fouled up beyond all recognition. Players may have asked for the changes, but I suspect they had fun changes in mind when they asked for the dungeons to be redone, not what we got. I checked out the new dungeons, and they were trash, rarely been in them since.
One thing that would likely help is letting those who join the game and want to play spellcasters know that they have to spend a weekend day they can put real life on hold and spend that day building up the reagent vendors by buying their stock out every half hour for 3 or 4 hours until the quantities get large enough they can buy up a stockpile. If they're still working for a living, have a family to take care of, or schoolwork to take care of, that can be a problem.
All I read here is "all the US Shards", "east coast", "west coast", "3 hours apart". Can you please be less ignorant? Dude, not all players are from US. So this makes your universal argument "go to ATL, if you want a populated shard" pretty much wortless.
No... Reducing Vendor Fee's only lets the rich get richer... it does nothing for the poor... It's like trickle down economics flawed and silly... Fees are good... If you price your crap ridiculously it'll sit on your vendor and eventually cost you more to keep it there than it would get you in profit... remember how you GOT said item to sell... Sell things reasonably and it will fly off your vendor and not cost you much at all... And if you gauge the "loss" as something that is less than what you got it for consider that most prices on Atl and stuff are exceedingly bloated due to demand... Why people think they ought to get Atl prices on a dead shard is beyond me. I refuse to play the Vendor game at all myself... If I sell anything it's personally delivered. Getting an item in game be it a Legendary Item or an arti or a gift or whatever technically cost you only TIME... which means everything you sell it for is PURE PROFIT. Don't kid yourself. If you craft something it costs materials... which again if you gather your own cost you time... Nothing more.
First point, Tina is not talking about high end items, she is talking about normal everyday items that new players want and all of us use, the vendor fee eats those up on a small population shard that takes time to sell, even if you only put on 1 or 2 items of a kind. I do not disagree with the fee on legendaries, rares, etc, - big ticket, big charge, up to you but make it easier to sell the everyday items.
And your time comment is certainly not correct to me at least, I have lots of time to play but frustration of keeping up a vendor and the time involved, even if the ingredients are free is valuable to me. I am on a very small population shard with non-rare, everyday item vendors outside of Luna for 13 years and now have in the last 5 years have a Luna vendor house just FYI so I know what I am saying is from experience.
My idea to throw out is make anything under say 10k or even 50k vendor fee free until the vendor gets to a certain worth, then start charging. Seems to me this would make it easier for a new player or anyone to have a viable, profitable vendor.
Hmm what a heated debate which is great to see. A variety of opinions of which some I agree with and some I feel are off base.
In my opinion this game is pretty unique in that I can pick it up and play it almost any time of the day. I can solo things or go with a group for more interaction. If I get bored with that I can craft or work on deco's on one of my houses. Not very many games can claim that. Having housing was probably the one single best idea that had for this game. Not only does it allow more things to do in the game but players tend to have more accounts for this reason. Not everyone wants to take the risk of rotating houses every 90 days and run the risk of messing up the timing.
Players should have the choice to play on smaller shards if they wish period. If they want to play on a larger shard at another time that option is open. Plus now if you like we are allowed to place another property on siege along with our main shard for a change of pace. Siege has a great community of players and this is the closest option to the way the original game came out 18 years ago.
Having the choice of options makes this a great game lets not reduce those options for some players due to the population of there shard.
Ok on a different subject I have been wishing for an expansion which includes basements for our homes with added storage space
In my opinion this game is pretty unique in that I can pick it up and play it almost any time of the day. I can solo things or go with a group for more interaction. If I get bored with that I can craft or work on deco's on one of my houses. Not very many games can claim that. Having housing was probably the one single best idea that had for this game. Not only does it allow more things to do in the game but players tend to have more accounts for this reason. Not everyone wants to take the risk of rotating houses every 90 days and run the risk of messing up the timing.
Players should have the choice to play on smaller shards if they wish period. If they want to play on a larger shard at another time that option is open. Plus now if you like we are allowed to place another property on siege along with our main shard for a change of pace. Siege has a great community of players and this is the closest option to the way the original game came out 18 years ago.
Having the choice of options makes this a great game lets not reduce those options for some players due to the population of there shard.
Ok on a different subject I have been wishing for an expansion which includes basements for our homes with added storage space
I was talking about selling things like full spell books, blank and filled rune books or runic atlases, and cheap LRC suits. Those are the kinds of things I attempted to sell on Balhae for a year or two because no one else was selling them. The prices I was charging are listed in this old post here: NEWS - The Countdown Has Started! . I have never done IDOCs and I don't buy resources from third party shops either. All the resources I used on Balhae were ones I gathered myself or purchased from NPC vendors (e.g., regs, small gems). I really was trying to charge reasonable fees, but by the time anything sold, the vendor fees had eaten up any potential profit and made practically everything I sold more of a gold sink/give-away from my perspective. By the time I closed down the shop, my crafting account that owned the shop only had about 7 million more gold in it than when I started out with the shop and that wasn't because I'd spent any gold along the way to buy stuff on Balhae because there really wasn't anything much there on sale to begin with!
LOL So they can hear all the little children in Gen Chat and never want to come back. That would be a great first impression of UO. At least on the smaller shards they would get to talk to adults that would be willing to help them and not get called a NOOB and told to leave.
What are you talking about? There are no people to talk to on a dead shard!
I'm just proposing a solution that would keep everyone happy. Nobody would have to give up their houses. And hermits such as yourself can continue playing alone. But new players would be able to find other players to play with.
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Herp!
Journeyman
I can attest to this, I personally only sell items that are worth 5m+ and will sell within the week because it just seems like a waste of cash otherwise. If I could put 100lrc/40lmc suits, full spellbooks, runic atlases to all the cities/dungeons/good locations on the shard, for free, I would happily be placing LOADS of **** on my vendor for anyone new to grab for a super low price. Instead, timing has to be just right & the new person has to encounter me, my friend, or one of the other helpful people on the shard(we kind of all play at different times) and we will just give them stuff for free. If the need for timing was removed, that would be very helpful in keeping anyone who (for some crazy reason) picked up UO for the first time in 2017, or is returning with naught.
I'll say this about new players... first off they are put into the "Help" channel which you would think would be helpful but of course NO ONE is in there but the guy spamming to sell gold...
Now if the "new" player manages to get rid of "young" status and switch to Gen Chat... they are BOMBARDED with jerks being total A$$hats to them and saying some of the most disturbing stuff to them... it's a wonder anyone stays beyond the introductory 14 day trial..
Now if the "new" player manages to get rid of "young" status and switch to Gen Chat... they are BOMBARDED with jerks being total A$$hats to them and saying some of the most disturbing stuff to them... it's a wonder anyone stays beyond the introductory 14 day trial..
There are no DEAD SHARDS contrary to what people are trying to make it out. Yes there are lower populated shards and most of them have adults playing on them, something that is hard to believe when you go to Atl and listen to the CHILDREN in Gen Chat and you want that to be someones first impression of UO, yea right. LOL
It's not just Atl... I see it day in day out on GLs too... mostly I tell them to shut it... or I make them look dumb... which often isn't hard... but they never stop... between that and the people that can't seem to figure out how to vendor crap so they spam 24/7 in Gen Chat thinking someone they haven't spammed in the last 10 days might buy their duped item at ridiculously over inflated prices... More often than not they just keep spamming day after day after day... Sometimes I think people finally break down and buy the crap just to get the person to shut up... but I never do...
And when folk spam that they are buying this or that day after day after day... sometimes I tell them to make it worth my while to stop what I'm doing and go get the item and I might consider it... otherwise if they want me to just give it to them for next to nothing forget it...
Now I often go out of my way to get a new player a 100% LRC suit... now it's never anything "special" or fancy or spendy... usually it consists of some of the catch of the day items I got from the last EM Event that happened to still be in the box for unraveling... generally relic worth items I wouldn't necessarily wear myself but are fine for training skills... I sometimes give them things like Kelp leggings just because if you have a fisherman who's worth a hoot you likely have a box somewhere overflowing with them... I even have supplied a few weapons and such... again from the chest of stuff I plan to unravel at some point...
But the fact of the matter is that anymore I'm almost never in game since well... I refuse to be a slave to the grind and there isn't much going on in-game to get me interested in logging in. I don't really see that changing anytime in the near future.
Without events going (I could care less about Doom now thanks)... ToT etc... not much really to log in for... I do not play UO to play Solo... And since it's hard to get anyone on to do something... I mostly don't log in... There are a ton of things I'd like to do... but I don't solo most of the stuff that others do... I can solo a few things like the Styngian Dragon... and maybe a few others... but most the stuff I can't solo... be it age or inability or lack of proper template or whatever it's not the point... IMO the game is boring Solo. I loved UO for the years of wonderful and fun RP... guild hunts and yes even guild vs guild RPPvP... But since most of that is gone now... and the DEVs seem intent on rewarding the few and telling the rest to sit and spin or adapt to solo gameplay... I keep wondering why I stay. If I'm going to play solo I'd rather play Skyrim or Diablo... Much more fun... and prettier. I've tried Shards... and it's interesting... but not yet there for me. Certainly needs to get out of the foghorn leghorn graphics... and add some character customization stuff...
At any rate I don't think I'm alone in my feelings.
u can place large towers quite easily and +15x15s if u go care look....fellucca malas and even trammel
If players are playing on low pop shards only due (history, community) , why don`t move one low pop us server to south america, and another to poland? Since you don`t pvp, latency doesn`t matter, and for us outside us are simple impossible play pvp or high end pvm in the same level as us players, since while a us player on us server ping 30ms and a br player on a us server ping 200ms.
It will give at least a chance for uo get bigger on countries where have a lot of (no-official) servers, some with 500+ online.
It will give at least a chance for uo get bigger on countries where have a lot of (no-official) servers, some with 500+ online.
Funny you would say that, brought back some memories to me. I started playing at the beginning of 1998, and the game started in like September of 1997. Well with like 3 shards one of them being chessie and living
on the East Coast I went with that shard. I worked for like a months time to make enough gold to buy a small house, that was like 28K in gold app. But one day as I was approaching my goal all my gold vanished and
I almost quit. But then a new shard was going to open named Europa, so I jumped ship and joined Europa. A bunch of family members also joined with friends and we made enough gold for a large tower and had a guild
of as many as 70 members. This was all pre trammel great times but being on dial up the lag at times was horrid, plus the game was just not as stable back then. Latter on when trammel opened up, I was lucky enough to
place a castle, but i still remember the freezing up of my character at the front steps of the castle. We also did PVP as well and the lag was a real challenge living in the USA.
But the best part was the international players that we meet from around the world that play on that shard. We had great converastions about things other then UO, and that my friend is what makes UO special is
the variety of players and interaction. I can understand on some of the smaller shards that players have a special bond of friendship and history that they have shared.
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Nabin all the marketing in the world would be needed to even dent the lost players we have had leave.
As for that EA would need to write off on it first not that Mesanna has not put out some for the game anyway cause she has.
And that's a issue in a nut shell. LIMITS
EA would prefer to shelf the game.
The only reason we are still here is Mythic's creator wanting to keep us and DoAc alive.
Yes the revamps are not great for most of UO players... then again to some they are fantastic...
Tina yes some ppl are gouging on fees for vendors on the nearly dead shards.... they play Atlantic.. so how do you change their minds?.
What I have seen and had the exp of is there is no player run vendors with basic newbie type things to help them.
Yea you can go to a npc for an example and buy a skillet for a few coins but 34 to 72 uses is a bit low when a gm tinker can make over 200 use ones for the same amount in iron ingots.... and sell if only they had a vendor up and working, filled mind you.
Look
We do get new players and returning vets
The issue is when they pick or return to a home shard there is no one there.
Not hide nor hair of a player to even answer a question!
They then move to Atlantic.....
Which most times chews them up and spits them out and they quit.
I have even caught players being mean and telling the youngs to quit and why to quit...
So don't go telling me its the games fault.
We caused it, we need to do the fixing.
First is attitude.
Stop the doom sayers... this game has plenty of life left in it.
The creeps on Atlantic need to stop the "Quit" routine.
They sound like 2 year olds in chat. Grow up.
I have also noticed many leaving Atlantic to go back to home shards... this in a way is good.
Use your icq's list of friends... invite them back. No I am not joking.
The game has changed and the new stuff just might get them to try again...
Use social media...
I hear its a good way to get a message out..
Don't just sit there and let the game rot away because we made a mistake, we can fix it.
As for that EA would need to write off on it first not that Mesanna has not put out some for the game anyway cause she has.
And that's a issue in a nut shell. LIMITS
EA would prefer to shelf the game.
The only reason we are still here is Mythic's creator wanting to keep us and DoAc alive.
Yes the revamps are not great for most of UO players... then again to some they are fantastic...
Tina yes some ppl are gouging on fees for vendors on the nearly dead shards.... they play Atlantic.. so how do you change their minds?.
What I have seen and had the exp of is there is no player run vendors with basic newbie type things to help them.
Yea you can go to a npc for an example and buy a skillet for a few coins but 34 to 72 uses is a bit low when a gm tinker can make over 200 use ones for the same amount in iron ingots.... and sell if only they had a vendor up and working, filled mind you.
Look
We do get new players and returning vets
The issue is when they pick or return to a home shard there is no one there.
Not hide nor hair of a player to even answer a question!
They then move to Atlantic.....
Which most times chews them up and spits them out and they quit.
I have even caught players being mean and telling the youngs to quit and why to quit...
So don't go telling me its the games fault.
We caused it, we need to do the fixing.
First is attitude.
Stop the doom sayers... this game has plenty of life left in it.
The creeps on Atlantic need to stop the "Quit" routine.
They sound like 2 year olds in chat. Grow up.
I have also noticed many leaving Atlantic to go back to home shards... this in a way is good.
Use your icq's list of friends... invite them back. No I am not joking.
The game has changed and the new stuff just might get them to try again...
Use social media...
I hear its a good way to get a message out..
Don't just sit there and let the game rot away because we made a mistake, we can fix it.
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That's true, but UO really has little to nothing to market in today's competitive gaming world. The up and coming generation of people likely to have disposable income are those that grew up with 6th generation gaming consoles, that's PS2, and XBox era system, the graphics and artistic style of UO likely isn't visually appealing to them, and games they are familiar with already while possibly open world aren't UO's flavor of "Sandbox" in nature. They may be open world but not fully a Sandbox experiance yielding these games a distinct benefit of not having the inherit problem of UO's comparatively massive learning curve as you're guided through everything progressively.
You can market nostalgia to a point but there would be no connection for any new folks to engage and keep them in the game beyond a short period while the aforementioned learning curve burns them out. Do you think someone joining the game for the first time is going to care about the Invasion of Trinsic? UO's ideal audience at this point in their lives are likely somewhere between looking forward to long days of drooling in front of a cozy fire while pooping in their depends, and being too occupied trying to figure out how to put their children through college, both of which due to financial constraints that naturally occur at that point in life are more likely to turn to Non-Official Servers. Of course there are a limited amount of outliers but those can't be accounted for either.
UO is a niche game, and unfortunately it's niche is diminishing and will continue to do so as those of us that grew up on 8 and 16-bit graphics and saw the pinnacle of Western RPGs (Which the Ultima games are part of) are largely a dying breed eventually destined to obscurity. Even WoW long the biggest kid on the block has fallen it is the 2nd or 3rd most active MMORPG on the market at this point. Unlike UO though, WoW isn't getting horribly botched publishes with every patch they receive introducing numerous bugs, have artists that actually make new content fit the perspective and style of the game world, and a somewhat aggressive stance on combating harassment of other players, cheating and exploitation of the game to add to it's milder learning curve and more modern graphical style. Compared to those advantages what does UO offer to a new player for the first time?
Herp!
Journeyman
I live in Texas and ping 50 to Japan, so I don't quite understand high ping....
Drachenfels is in Germany, Poland should ping <80 (with pretty garbage internet, 10-25 megabits per sec) which makes it very possible to do high end pvm and pvp. I know of someone who plays from Brazil to a US server and has 150-200+ ping always, still does high end pvm(solo I might add). Though I do believe the addition of a South American shard would be beneficial for the players in South/Central America, I do not believe that it would be a great idea to add another shard to the game or move one. It is not so simple to just move a shard from one place to another, they'd have to own a location where they could run the server from, have maintenance workers paid hourly for said server room, rent, utilities, security, etc. Financially speaking, it would cost more to move and run the server than it would be to keep it where it is and lose a few people that don't wanna play due to ping.
Oh, and we do pvp on our small shards, just not to the capacity of Atlantic or other low/medium borderline pop shards.
Lord Nabin
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Glorious Lord
Herp!
Journeyman
There's a LARGE amount of those "outliers" as you call us in the world of UO. I make enough that I'll never have to worry about children going to college, I also won't ever have children because I care about the environment. I personally know 20-25 people that play this game across a few shards that are in the same boat as me. Just because YOU sit around pooping your pants all day, have a crap job, and had kids without being financially stable doesn't mean the rest of us are living that life. I can honestly say that I've met some of the smartest and richest(monetarily, spiritually, and family rich) people I've ever known in this game, and we all still play when we wanna just sit around and kill some time. The game will not die as a result of people leaving or as a result of new people not staying around. The game will die as a result of age, as most things do. When the time comes that EA and Broadsword decide that the game is not worth the upkeep because it is hemorrhaging money, it will die. Deal with it, when UO dies, I'll be moving to another game with my friends that I have met here and known since I was 10 years old. Good news is, it's not hemorrhaging money at all, so many of us has 2-10+ accounts active at all times... I don't see it happening for at least 5 more years, though I would happily welcome another 20 years or more. I don't play for nostalgia, I don't play because it's a unique game anymore, because it isn't. I play because I like my friends, I like playing games with my friends, and it's nice to have a way to relax at the end of the day that's just like walking in to the old hole in the wall bar/Cheers... that feeling when people know your name and enjoy your company, that's what keeps me here, and I know it keeps a few of those people that I speak of around too.
So why even bother marketing nostalgia? They don't market UO at all and it is doing just fine and paying quite a few paychecks, and I'll happily keep paying my portions of their check every month til the sad day that the game has to be shut down.
Honestly though, you really need to account for us outliers because I really don't think we are outliers
I don't understand all of the hate for ATL...surely all of the ADULTS understand that when you have a large amount of people you are surely going to have some bad apples... I hang out in gen chat, I notice the normal pvp trash talk. Which by the way is in EVERY game. There is nothing unique about the trash talk on ATL in UO. As a matter of fact, I'd venture to say my experience on ATL every time I've come back is much more welcoming and helpful than any other MMO I've played.
I'm not an ATL fanboi, but I just find the downright hatred, and blind wand waving of the ATL population is crap. The same people who don't want a wand waved about their "dead shard" (which i also don't agree with) quickly wand wave the entire population of ATL, when in fact it is a very small portion, and as I said earlier is really just the same type of locker room trash talk you find in any other game pvp community.
So confused.
I'm not an ATL fanboi, but I just find the downright hatred, and blind wand waving of the ATL population is crap. The same people who don't want a wand waved about their "dead shard" (which i also don't agree with) quickly wand wave the entire population of ATL, when in fact it is a very small portion, and as I said earlier is really just the same type of locker room trash talk you find in any other game pvp community.
So confused.
Just FYI: The shards are all running within the Amazon cloud nowadays. Broadsword does not touch a physical piece of hardware nor do they have to employ on-site people
Then why do all East Coast servers go to the same spot, and West Coast Server, and Japan. Why did they have to put a server in Aust then? If what you say is true then you would just hit the nearest Amazon Cloud hub and be in UO and you would ping to all servers the same. Try tracing the Shard IPs sometime, those are physical locations.Just FYI: The shards are all running within the Amazon cloud nowadays. Broadsword does not touch a physical piece of hardware nor do they have to employ on-site people
Servers are running on AWS, so no its all on cloud, and south america, and other countries have AWS too, try go any hard encounter with a mage with 150+ ms, or go pvp with any class 150+ ms, its impossible, if you are a dexxer, the mage can self heal and run from you, the only viable class is archer with moving shot....
Even AWS are hosting some no-official servers, some with 400+ players, on 150usd month packages(at least in my country), so i think its complete viable, actually you can move anything from one country to another in some hours, remember its all bytes!
AWS have datacenters in all world, so the oceania server (australia) is on the australia hub of aws, same with west and east cost (each one was in one aws hub)
A cloud isn`t worldwide oriented, its datacenter oriented, so the ip xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx ping into one datacenter and the yyy.yyy.yyy.yyy ping into another one.