UO article

[Penderrin]

Ultima Online

I particularly liked this quote:

In his book Postmortems, Koster noted of the Ultima Online project, “Our wisdom was not in inventing an awesome cool collectible feature. It was in surrendering control to the awesome power of emergent behavior.”

 

[Penderrin]

Eh, my poor linking and selling skills, it's there though.

 

[Anon McDougle]

See the developers should be riding the unprecedented momentous historical event that 25 years is but instead we silence..

 

[Anon McDougle]

Since then, Broadsword faithfully has kept Ultima Online moving forward with a modest expansion called Time of Legends in 2015, the Endless Journey free-to-play option in 2018, and the New Legacy ruleset (which is supposed to be coming this year, though we haven’t had an update on its progress in a while

 

[Lore]

Oh, are they going to charge for New Legacy like an expansion you think? I feel dumb for not realizing that before. LOL

 

[Pawain]

More proof players do not want forced PvP:


But even Koster, who was then no longer working on the project, noted that while the attempt to rescue the game from griefers may have marred the simulation’s verisimilitude, “there is no question that the userbase doubled once this went in.” That sentiment was echoed by Gordon Walton, who oversaw Trammel’s implementation; he’s written that the PK environment was driving away 70% of the game’s new players and that Origin had asked him for a “shutdown plan for the game” thanks to the bleed.

“After the change which broke the game space into PvP and PvE worlds, the player base and income nearly doubled (we went from 125k to 245k subs),” he says. “So from a fiscal responsibility standpoint it was a totally winning move. The bad: Without the ‘sheep to shear’ the hard core PvP’ers were disenfranchised” – and the company couldn’t change the “brand” fast enough to recapture former players who’d left in disgust. “But we did keep more of the new players that came in by a large margin, significantly more than than the PvP players we lost.”

Oh, are they going to charge for New Legacy like an expansion you think? I feel dumb for not realizing that before. LOL

The boxes on my bookshelf prove I would be ok with that. They charged for most expansions, ToL, etc.

 

[Anon McDougle]

More proof players do not want forced PvP:


But even Koster, who was then no longer working on the project, noted that while the attempt to rescue the game from griefers may have marred the simulation’s verisimilitude, “there is no question that the userbase doubled once this went in.” That sentiment was echoed by Gordon Walton, who oversaw Trammel’s implementation; he’s written that the PK environment was driving away 70% of the game’s new players and that Origin had asked him for a “shutdown plan for the game” thanks to the bleed.

“After the change which broke the game space into PvP and PvE worlds, the player base and income nearly doubled (we went from 125k to 245k subs),” he says. “So from a fiscal responsibility standpoint it was a totally winning move. The bad: Without the ‘sheep to shear’ the hard core PvP’ers were disenfranchised” – and the company couldn’t change the “brand” fast enough to recapture former players who’d left in disgust. “But we did keep more of the new players that came in by a large margin, significantly more than than the PvP players we lost.”



The boxes on my bookshelf prove I would be ok with that. They charged for most expansions, ToL, etc.

So even though a national publication finds it odd that we've heard nothing it's all ok?

 

[Pawain]

So even though a national publication finds it odd that we've heard nothing it's all ok?

Where did they say it was odd? They stated Fact.
New Legacy ruleset (which is supposed to be coming this year, though we haven’t had an update on its progress in a while).

I have told you many times before:

1. I do not need my hand held.
2. Why do they need to tell us that NL is not ready? It's obvious for most of us.

They are fixing the servers that stop working, they are fixing major bugs.

Until they put out NL or the 25th event, I can play and entertain myself without someone posting something.

I have played this game for this many hours and have never heard from any producer or developer.


Maybe you should go to this link for your insecurity:

Insecurity - GoodTherapy.org Therapy Blog

Insecurity, or a tendency to lack confidence or certainty in oneself, may be experienced by most people regarding some aspect of their lives. For many, feelings of insecurity can be resolved before they have a lasting, harmful impact. When one deals with generalized insecurity for a long period...

www.goodtherapy.org

Maybe they will tell you to move to a different game to play if you find internet trolling more fun than games you can find.

 

[dvv]

Perhaps there is confusion over what the purpose of a forum is..

You communicated your opinions and requests of the dev team in regards to communication on the forum(s).
No problem there.

You reiterated it a few more times.
A little annoying but that’s fine.

You continued to post the same issues over and over again, often in threads that aren’t even about dev communication which at times led to the thread topic being hijacked a bit. People are telling you it is annoying. People are starting to dislike your presence on the forums as a result of the incessant complaining about the same topic. Please understand this. You are only annoying the player base at this point.

The devs aren’t feeling the heat being turned up with each complaint about this issue from you. I would imagine there is no system in place that says “If a forum poster complains about the same topic 500 times, then we must address their concern whether we want to or not.”

Please understand your complaints have been heard louder and clearer than any other message. You may sit down and take a break.

 

[Keven2002]

If anything, the Devs are probably like "every time McDougle uses the word communication in a post we will delay our Newsletter one more day....".

Here we are like 6-7 months later with no Newsletter because McDougle has said the word communication 283 times (and counting).

 

[Anon McDougle]

If anything, the Devs are probably like "every time McDougle uses the word communication in a post we will delay our Newsletter one more day....".

Here we are like 6-7 months later with no Newsletter because McDougle has said the word communication 283 times (and counting).

284

 

[Pawain]

284

0 days without communication now.

25th Anniversary Faire – Ultima Online

uo.com

Signed by the Dark Lady herself.

 

[Pawain]

Now we can return to the topic of the Article.

 

[Picus of Napa]

0 days without communication now.

25th Anniversary Faire – Ultima Online

uo.com

Signed by the Dark Lady herself.

It's not grasping at straw but it's not very far away either.

 

[Basara]

Actually, ToL was free for everyone who was active during a certain period leading up to it. The people that were inactive (including some of the people playing the "house timer" game) didn't get it for free.

 

[Veldrane]

That was a good article; I always liked Designer Dragon. Dr. Richard Bartle's claim that Trammel was the beginning of the end of UO's golden age always makes me chuckle. The numbers don't lie; Trammel was an upswing in the player base. They could have probably recovered from the slow rebranding, but other MMOs were coming out on the market (Asheron's Call, etc).

 

[Danpal]

Well it's obviously very ineffective as the developers are still MIA maybe i need to increase my effort

there not MIA they just waiting on the time they have to do anything besides DAOC

 

[John Knighthawke]

Just going to post a close variation on what I posted on the official boards (edited due to changed context).

People's ability to deny reality never ceases to amaze me. The article's couple of paragraphs on the Trammel go something like this.

1-90% of population goes to Trammel and doesn't look back.
(So logically that means most people didn't want the Fel lifestyle.)

2-Someone says that somehow this was the "beginning of the end."
(What? Based on all available empirical data it helped, not hurt.)

3-Someone else says subscriptions doubled after Trammel.
(So not only does this mean most players don't want the Fel lifestyle, but that Fel was actually a problem for the UO brand name. People stayed away because of it.)

4-Same person then says Trammel was somehow a problem because it cost UO the hard-core PKers.
(Umm...what? Based on the information provided, they were a problem...)

And yet I still keep reading here and other boards, time and time again, about how Trammel killed UO, how successful player run shards are that have Fel only, etc.
(Umm....What?)

Oh well. We're living in the post-fact, post-truth world now. When UO finally does shut down these folks will blame Trammel even though the available evidence suggests the polar opposite and even though the end of UO by definition will have occurred decades after Trammel.

 

[Anon McDougle]

I think the lack of players on Siege speaks to this..

 

[dvv]

I think the lack of players on Siege speaks to this..

I think there’s something to that statement for sure. Siege is also more brutal than Fel, so it has that going on as well.

Overall, I think they way UO handles random pking is a big factor. The consequences for being a murderer aren’t severe enough. I’d like pking to be more intentional.

 

[Merlin]

Please stay on topic. Perfomed some clean up and thread banned the troll rivalry.

 

[R00]

I think the lack of players on Siege speaks to this..

Totally different lifestyle than production Fel. No insurance, no recall/sacred journey. Lose a suit and rebuild can be a pain. Lose an epic suit and youll go broke. Less hardcore/solo players cant handle the upkeep. Apples to oranges comparison.

 

[HippoRedux]

Ultima Online

I particularly liked this quote:

In his book Postmortems, Koster noted of the Ultima Online project, “Our wisdom was not in inventing an awesome cool collectible feature. It was in surrendering control to the awesome power of emergent behavior.”

Great article, Pen - thanks for sharing it!