When people cite "graphics" as the reason for playing CC over EC, I roll my eyes. It's a rather lame excuse, frankly.
Nothing "lame" to it.
In 2017 AD, it isn't even current or relevant to speak of some "nostalgic feeling" of CC graphics. That kinda implies we'd have " the old and familiar " and " the new and exciting!" We don't. In less than two years, EC too is over a decade old. They are both old and familiar. Both of them are aged and objectively speaking obsolete in terms of visuals. It's just that different graphic styles and different quality of work ages differently. - SNES game with 2d graphics from early 90's can look perfectly fine, even appealing today. It withstands time. Meanwhile, a more ambitious SNES game from the same era that attempted a 3d approach looks, despite once very impressive in it's own time, hopelessly obsolete and difficult to look at today. When it comes to UO, and purely in terms of graphics, I feel time is undeniably on CC's side now. It looks sharp and crisp and out of time and colourful. More technology marches onwards, more blurred and messy EC appears.
Over the 10+ years of playing UO, people have understandably developed a very strong impression of how the game they play looks. How graphics style of it feels. I think this image can (or could) be altered. You can improve, tweak and enhance graphics. But if you start CHANGING the entire graphics style, it gets very dangerous very quickly.
When talking about EC/CC, I often end up thinking of World of Warcraft. WoW is an MMO with resources at it's disposal that are of entirely different scale to what UO has ever had. WoW, too, is an old game by now. It too, had it's old character graphics enhanced few years back. But the thing is, despite the stellar size of their graphics team, WoW's devs needed ages before they began doing anything concrete. Instead, they were all talk. They talked a lot and they talked for long. Directly to their playes too. For years, they spoke how.. A) It is clear for them how the character models of their game need to be updated. B) How they are absolutely terrified to do so. They spoke about how they understood what a personal, important and even sensitive thing the looks and feels of one's own character/pet is for the player. How easy it is to ruin it by " improving", even if you do good job.
Everything in EC character models screams how the above simply was never a a line of thinking that ever belonged to Mythic's tables and equations. What really ticks me off about EC graphics isn't about the graphics looking like the outcome by a bad, sloppy shareware studio(they do) or things looking strangely blurry all the time( things do.); no, it is all about quality of work looking so..careless. Characters, clothes and pets look like an afternoon job that pays no mind to the original material. It is of different style and could and should belong to some different game.
Without illicit scripting programs, the CC would lose a major part of it's player base.
This is bit petty, quite insulting and very inaccurate. Despite some bitter..thing you have going for CC, it pays to accept majority of people simply like it more There isn't any malign reason or desire to exploit behind this. Despite EC being incredibly intimidating for returning vets and new players,it's UI is very powerful for sure. I'd love to make use of it. I just can't stand the way it looks and feels. So many things look like they shouldn't. It doesn't look or feel or play like UO.
Stratics population is skewed toward older players... even older than the average UO player age, which is considerably higher than most video games. Those players are more likely to favor CC over EC.
I see absolutely no reason to assume a typical Stratics poster wouldn't be a typical UO player. Not everybody who plays UO uses or reads stratics. But all kinds of people and players do. It isn't the entire population for sure. It is without a doubt a perfectly good sample of the population. And in broader sense, sample of people who have UO on their map in 2017.
Even if these poll results are indicative of the community as a whole, I don't think it would be wise to write off an entire third of us.
Unfortunately UO is stuck with two clients. This has been the case for over half of it's life time. Which is completely crazy when you think about it. Three attempts to replace a client made in 90's. Three failures to do so. It is fortunate and kinda miraculous how the game itself and the development teams responsible for UO survive miscalculations and mistakes of this scale. You'd think one or two mistakes on this front had been enough to show and tell which basket the eggs should have been placed. Sadly it wasn't.
I think you are right, neither client can be killed. Sadly UO is stuck with the ones it now has til the end.
...But I feel much, much more love and attention should go to client majority of people use.