Tick tock...

[Anon McDougle]

Little over three months until anniversary surely there's a screenshot a video something anything to show
At this point it should certainly be in beta testing...

Try's to interpret the crickets...

 

[Jepeth]

Let me help you interpret those crickets in a way that will make you happier.

 

[Anon McDougle]

Let me help you interpret those crickets in a way that will make you happier.

While this is funny I'm willing to bet 20% or more of current stratics posters no longer play but still love the game and hope for change

 

[Veldrane]

Little over three months until anniversary surely there's a screenshot a video something anything to show
At this point it should certainly be in beta testing...

Try's to interpret the crickets...

Careful, the pom pom squad will be in here shortly going "OMG CaNT U GUyz JusT BE PatIEnT!!! LeAVe BoNNIe AloNE!!"

 

[Danpal]

Careful, the pom pom squad will be in here shortly going "OMG CaNT U GUyz JusT BE PatIEnT!!! LeAVe BoNNIe AloNE!!"

Yes Leave Bonnie alone she is to busy making her Mesanna Cream pies to throw at people faces. Just don't ask how she makes so many of them.

 

[Stinky Pete]

While this is funny I'm willing to bet 20% or more of current stratics posters no longer play but still love the game and hope for change

I fall into this category, except I know that there is no amount of change from the devs that will make me play again. If I was ever going to resub, it would be to get involved in some sort of player created content.

 

[Anon McDougle]

I fall into this category, except I know that there is no amount of change from the devs that will make me play again. If I was ever going to resub, it would be to get involved in some sort of player created content.

And you're just the type of player NL is aimed at

 

[Stinky Pete]

And you're just the type of player NL is aimed at

Nah, they lost me at consensual PvP.

 

[Anon McDougle]

Nah, they lost me at consensual PvP.

Yeah but haven't you heard the consensual nonconsensual pvp coming with snow in NL

 

[dvv]

OMG CaNT U GUyz JusT BE PatIEnT!!!

 

[Veldrane]

OMG CaNT U GUyz JusT BE PatIEnT!!!

Admittedly, you're who I was thinking of when I wrote that reply. However, your response was perfect - I definitely laughed out loud. Well played!

 

[Anon McDougle]

Are we gonna wait for release date to see anything? Will we see no outside advertising? I mean 25th anniversary come on it merits a national campaign !!! I mean surely mesanne has to have something to show the corporate heads by now . We demand pictures of the snow

 

[Veldrane]

Are we gonna wait for release date to see anything? Will we see no outside advertising? I mean 25th anniversary come on it merits a national campaign !!! I mean surely mesanne has to have something to show the corporate heads by now . We demand pictures of the snow

Well, for a while I was thinking we were a stakeholder in the project and would be getting regular updates on the progress. Including demos, planned features, and a loose timeline. However, if we look at online gaming in general, the player is not the stakeholder. The player is the commodity being sold to investors, our value is based on average spending and time played. I'm sure that there are internal stakeholders at Broadsword that are getting updated, and that EA is asking for Broadsword to increase the value of the average player commodity, but I doubt they are specifically interested in NL.

Given what we know about Bonnie, she is not a trained product manager - I would guess that the timeline and feature schedule for NL is being handled extremely loose and that they most likely are "figuring out what they want to do as they go"

 

[dvv]

They were updating us for a while with the streams but for some reason they stopped doing that, which is unfortunate because I really enjoyed those.

At this point, it does seem like we won’t get to see anything until the server is up. That is okay with me though.

@Veldrane is right about the stakeholders. You’d think it would be the players but it isn’t.

Despite me being the person who says to just be patient, I do strongly wish they had a community manager to give us some communication.

 

[ShriNayne]

Now we're into July and still nothing, never mind the NL newsletter there hasn't been a newsletter at all for months.

 

[petemage]

I mean I still can't imagine Bonnie letting NL go the way of the new account management. But we will see

 

[Keven2002]

While I think the ultimate goal of releasing NL for the 25th anniversary sounds like it makes sense, has anyone actually seen the Devs say that is the plan? I feel with their lack of communication on it (and really lack of content so far) that might not be a hard deadline.

 

[dvv]

While I think the ultimate goal of releasing NL for the 25th anniversary sounds like it makes sense, has anyone actually seen the Devs say that is the plan? I feel with their lack of communication on it (and really lack of content so far) that might not be a hard deadline.

They said NL will be released this year so it appears to correlate.

 

[Keven2002]

They said NL will be released this year so it appears to correlate.

I'd agree it correlates but around that time (Sept 24) also would create a conflict between NL and basically the end of year content on live shards. This is an assumption that we would get these events again but the Halloween event and Holiday content is some of the few consistent events we have each year for the last several years. It's possible but I think they are sort of cutting themselves down at the knees by doing that because it forces people to decide where they spend their time... a temporary shard or temporary event on your full time shard.

They've also been know to go to the 11th hour on certain things too like some of the new content over the past several years where they say "X will be released in March" and it's suddenly March 22nd without anything being released and we find out that the content will be released March 28th (technically still March but barely). It wouldn't surprise me if they release this after Xmas.

I'll be honest, I've pretty much lost interest in NL at this point and won't really put much thought into it until we can log into the shard. They've been pretty tight lipped about the whole thing which I think is a bad marketing plan because majority of people are going to (or have already) cut bait with such a lack of buzz. My only thought now as it relates to NL is that I hope it doesn't impact the live shards new content.

 

[Anon McDougle]

Many people think that once NL comes out we won't get new content for a while.(not even treasure of)this would be a terrible decision honestly we have had no actual real content for how many years? The last two new pets weren't even tamable just tokens

 

[skett]

Many people think that once NL comes out we won't get new content for a while.(not even treasure of)this would be a terrible decision honestly we have had no actual real content for how many years? The last two new pets weren't even tamable just tokens

I have a feeling we will not be getting any events this holiday season. If we do it will probably just be an old event reused again

 

[Keven2002]

Many people think that once NL comes out we won't get new content for a while.(not even treasure of)this would be a terrible decision honestly we have had no actual real content for how many years? The last two new pets weren't even tamable just tokens

Oooof

 

[Anon McDougle]

Oooof

The same people of course suggest that NL isn't for us current players but for new players which of course makes 0 sense would we really be expected to pay for nothing it wouldn't shock me if NL was free to play with a pay to win system

 

[skett]

The weather and new moon gates look great
If they really simplify crafting I might try it out

 

[Anon McDougle]

The weather and new moon gates look great
If they really simplify crafting I might try it out

We used to have weather and changing a skin is middle school coding....

 

[skett]

Yes remember the snow been playing since 99
I’m talking about the new seasonal weather

 

[Anon McDougle]

Yes remember the snow been playing since 99
I’m talking about the new seasonal weather

View attachment 132173

Weather unless it impacts your character is cosmetic the bar is low here i hope it's successful but given the current developers track record..

 

[skett]

Ya I agree

 

[dvv]

Weather unless it impacts your character is cosmetic the bar is low here i hope it's successful but given the current developers track record..

Supposedly the weather will affect your character on NL.

 

[Anon McDougle]

It's been 2 years and anniversary in two months it's show me time..

 

[Cinderella]

I have a feeling we will not be getting any events this holiday season. If we do it will probably just be an old event reused again

we do know that the Artisan Festival and Krampus will be back.
They have to finish out the collections and they have to put the Candied Staff back into Krampus rewards

other than that, we won't know what the holiday stuff is yet.
usually they turn on trick or treating, carving pumpkins, zombie skeletons. (all new items will be on TC to test out, just hasn't been added yet)

-----------

About NL
people kept asking for a date for it to come out.
I believe Mesanna said they were aiming for this year.
Last newsletter had a calendar with August on it.
(which must have been a Britannian calendar due to the unusual days)

if it does come out in August I will be surprised.
There is so much info that we don't know about.
That could be because they just don't want us to know
until it actually gets turned on.
If they gave us all the information,
we could get burn out on it, before its live.

 

[Keven2002]

we do know that the Artisan Festival and Krampus will be back.
They have to finish out the collections and they have to put the Candied Staff back into Krampus rewards

other than that, we won't know what the holiday stuff is yet.
usually they turn on trick or treating, carving pumpkins, zombie skeletons. (all new items will be on TC to test out, just hasn't been added yet)

-----------

About NL
people kept asking for a date for it to come out.
I believe Mesanna said they were aiming for this year.
Last newsletter had a calendar with August on it.
(which must have been a Britannian calendar due to the unusual days)

if it does come out in August I will be surprised.
There is so much info that we don't know about.
That could be because they just don't want us to know
until it actually gets turned on.
If they gave us all the information,
we could get burn out on it, before its live.

I wouldn't be so sure they have to finish out collections. If they weren't able to give the staff adequate testing (or it had too many issues) they might end up scrapping it. That said, I don't think it's too much effort to "turn on" these events you mentioned but there might not be any new stuff.

____

That is very possible that the Dev team is keeping things hush and it will release NL sooner than we might expect. I think that would probably be a huge risk though because they are assuming that their small team has thought of everything. I understand keeping some details on the low, but as it currently stands they've kept essentially all details on the low to the point the customer base has zero idea how anything is going to work.

If they were going to make all decisions and design in a vacuum then it would have probably been a better idea to just keep the project secret until it was ready for release. They kind of set up NL for failure (IMO of course) by proclaiming "a huge announcement" in March 2020 then pushing it back until like Aug and over the next 2 years they're reply on things like skill gain or PvP has been "we are still working on that" OR just no reply. That gives me the vibe they just haven't landed on something yet.

 

[Naitch]

when will new legacy be released ?
you want answers !?

i want the Truth!
YOU can't Handle the TRUTH!!

 

[petemage]

That is very possible that the Dev team is keeping things hush and it will release NL sooner than we might expect. I think that would probably be a huge risk though because they are assuming that their small team has thought of everything. [...]

How you come to think it's a huge risk? Even if it's trash, the players still left will keep paying their subs for prodo shards. They could delay NL for another year and people still would not quit. Worst that happens are a couple angry forum posts that @Petra Fyde will be happy to delete.

 

[Keven2002]

Mesanna said that NL would be something that brings UO the biggest audience ever. They've lost a good amount of the hype with the current player group with the amount of time it's taken and the total lack of detail / excitement. That said, this wouldn't really give "the biggest audience ever" but rather the same audience, so my thought is they are looking to push it out to new people (or returning). If they put out a half-ass tested product with just a bunch of reskins like we've seen with some Prod releases (ie Destard Fey spawn as the latest but even before that stupid things like spell check on items), the risk is that people log in the first time (or few times) while ultimately having a bad experience and they decide to stop wasting their time with it - ie 2.5+ years of work dedicated to a project that falls completely flat.

Especially when they aren't creating a completely new game from scratch. They are still using the UO platform (likely graphics and many of the same mechanics) so they can't act like this is their first rodeo in unchartered water. They need to perfect what they release and at least if all the wrinkles are out, they can say "well this is the NL concept...sorry you don't like it". Compared to them not preparing for the volumes of people and the server keeps crashing and nothing saves. That might have been ok 25 years ago but now there are so many other games out there that will function properly, people won't stand for half-ass development.

I'd say that's a pretty big risk.

 

[Anon McDougle]

Surely with some accounts hitting 25 years the anniversary fast approaching and not a peep from the developers even the most steadfast fanbois must be having doubts. How on earth has there been no advertising. And just who is the target audience and how the f/uck will they know...

 

[ShriNayne]

They didn't take advantage of any free advertising for the 20th Anniversary either, they could have invited some gaming journalists to the party but they didn't bother. I'm not even surprised any more, a lot of people who might have given UO another go have probably already forgotten about NL.

 

[Lore]

I'm still looking forward to it.

 

[Anon McDougle]

I'm still looking forward to it.

What exactly are you looking forward to?? Snow?? Some other vague hint they gave two years ago?

 

[Lore]

What exactly are you looking forward to?? Snow?? Some other vague hint they gave two years ago?

Anything I say to you is going to be met with your **** take so... I'm looking forward to playing it and not reading your **** takes. For a relevant thing related to you.

 

[Anon McDougle]

Anything I say to you is going to be met with your **** take so... I'm looking forward to playing it and not reading your **** takes. For a relevant thing related to you.

Ah i remember why i blocked you now carry on

 

[Lore]

Ah i remember why i blocked you now carry on

Yea, you said that before, yet here we are.

 

[dvv]

I’m looking forward to it too. I do not need to be shown anything more before it is live to still anticipate it. From what info we have already gotten, I find it to be interesting.

 

[Anon McDougle]

I’m looking forward to it too. I do not need to be shown anything more before it is live to still anticipate it. From what info we have already gotten, I find it to be interesting.

And you're not at all concerned with the lack of information or advertising?

 

[dvv]

And you're not at all concerned with the lack of information or advertising?

Generally speaking, I’m curious why they have been quiet. Not really in regards to NL but the newsletters and such.

 

[Keven2002]

I agree with you @dvv . I don't really care too much about NL personally but the lack of communication on just UO as a whole is a little concerning.

McDougle's approach is pretty terrible (no offense) but he does have kind of have a point about NL. Lack of communication (and following a timeline) is an issue there if they are looking to reach the "biggest/broadest audience ever" (unless maybe they overstated their goal). They (likely) already have our subscriptions so we are not the target audience; it's going to be people that quit 10+ years ago or brand new people. For those people to want to play the Devs need to be building some major hype by giving sneak peaks and some cliff hangers while sticking to a reasonable timeline (ie giving a sneak peak 18 months ago and then going silent kills the buzz). Get people talking/speculating and then drop another crumb. What the Dev team has actually done was drop the announcement like 2+ years ago and then go radio silent so whoever might have been interested has lost interest because there doesn't seem to be any progress.

So what is the actual expectation of the Dev team? They are going to release NL in a couple months THEN start building hype after the people that are reading this post who already play UO get a head start on building up stuff (and with a major head start on UO basics)? That will just put these people in the same boat they are now if they were to play a regular non seasonal shard.

 

[skett]

It’s only a month away I would think anytime now we’d get an update/newsletter

 

[dvv]

I’d hope it is part of the anniversary but if it is released on December 31st 2022 that would be okay too.

They never seemed to be good with marketing. I wonder if EA even helps with marketing as it doesn’t appear so. No one to market to product besides the devs and artist… I’m not expecting much if that is the case.

They really shouldn’t have said NL would appeal to the largest audience or whatever because I’d argue they don’t really know who it will appeal to. People keep holding them to that statement and I think the general consensus is that is probably an overstatement.

I’m just hoping for a fun new experience. A different take on a classic.

 

[Anon McDougle]

And with just one announcement this morning the dead sota has as many developer announcements as NL for the year...

 

[skett]

Ya saw that also saw they removed account bound from their heritage items. Interesting that you pay to have it removed before. While here we are adding more account and shard bound items.