Anyone mind if I take issue with this statement?
I respectfully submit that this is totally inaccurate.
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A very interesting comment from the "Video" posted by Cal (worth a read)
I respectfully submit that this is totally inaccurate.
Please attempt to read the whole post before responding
Ok I know its not gonna happen but one of the only reasons I stuck with UO back in the day was the counselors yes Stratics would have helped I agree but it was the fact that if I was lost or confused I could page someone would show up and talk me through things.
I know I know they ran into problems with scheduling and $ and things...
Blah blah blah it was a volunteer program and they don't wanna run back into that problem again.
I really don't think that should be an issue here is a simple solution.
Proposal
Any one with an account over *Shrugs* a year, or something
Problems this helps to address
Issues this might create
Again I know this is highly unlikely to happen but if you set up the system from the beginning so it is COMPLETELY voluntary, other then forwarding things to the GMs there is no interaction with the staff. Then you can avoid the problems of our past.
Honestly I'd gladly forfeit a character slot to help out and I would play far more then I do now. The community is why I used to play it feels so dead to me now its sad. I think the cost of a character slot would be a fine price to pay to participate in such a noble cause.
I'm half tempted to post this in its own thread but I won't if someone else would like to feel free but I really liked the original post here and I feel that my solution would at least help to address these problems more quickly and effectively while bringing back much of the original charm of UO. That sense of feeling that people in charge care enough to provide you with a service like this. Even if its really just other players providing the actual service the Dev team would have designed it and that would make me rather happy with them as a new player.
Ok I know its not gonna happen but one of the only reasons I stuck with UO back in the day was the counselors yes Stratics would have helped I agree but it was the fact that if I was lost or confused I could page someone would show up and talk me through things.
I know I know they ran into problems with scheduling and $ and things...
Blah blah blah it was a volunteer program and they don't wanna run back into that problem again.
I really don't think that should be an issue here is a simple solution.
Proposal
Any one with an account over *Shrugs* a year, or something
1. Let them make a counselor.
2. Do not allow them to effect the world at all, they would walk through doors and couldnt pick things up.
3. Don't allow them to turn invisable.
4. Let them respond to pages all kinds of pages including GM pages
5. Let them pass the legit things that require a GM on to he GM's
6. Let them suggest punishment *Gasp* I'm not saying a singe person gets to ban someone or something I'm saying if its a griefing issue or something make 3 of them or more if you want be present and have the page system completely random it picks 3 available people, maybe not even just form one server maybe let um server hop somehow... to pass judgment then write up a single official report and send it to the gm to actually make what ever needs to happen happen.
2. Do not allow them to effect the world at all, they would walk through doors and couldnt pick things up.
3. Don't allow them to turn invisable.
4. Let them respond to pages all kinds of pages including GM pages
5. Let them pass the legit things that require a GM on to he GM's
6. Let them suggest punishment *Gasp* I'm not saying a singe person gets to ban someone or something I'm saying if its a griefing issue or something make 3 of them or more if you want be present and have the page system completely random it picks 3 available people, maybe not even just form one server maybe let um server hop somehow... to pass judgment then write up a single official report and send it to the gm to actually make what ever needs to happen happen.
Problems this helps to address
1. GM wait time... Honestly most of the things I hear people paging about are simple things with housing that a more knowledgeable player can help them deal with. Councilors could be there in a matter of min if its something they cant handle they can pass it on to another counselor or pass it on to the GMs.
2. It would reduce griefing if active players are helping to police the shards and passing only legit things on to the GMs we all win.
3. It could serve as a deterrent for scripting and hacking in the same way.
4. It would make our increasingly complicated game more accessable to new people.
5. It would bring back a sense of community.
6. They could help perhaps keep crowds in line at events somehow perhaps through 120 second squelching that only works if 2 -3 o them use it on you in the course of 60 seconds or something.
7. Would provide bored old timers with something constructive to do to make the "Wold" a better place.
8. It could also be used to help pinpoint bugs and issues more quickly as most of us old timers know how to pick things apart when problems pop up.
2. It would reduce griefing if active players are helping to police the shards and passing only legit things on to the GMs we all win.
3. It could serve as a deterrent for scripting and hacking in the same way.
4. It would make our increasingly complicated game more accessable to new people.
5. It would bring back a sense of community.
6. They could help perhaps keep crowds in line at events somehow perhaps through 120 second squelching that only works if 2 -3 o them use it on you in the course of 60 seconds or something.
7. Would provide bored old timers with something constructive to do to make the "Wold" a better place.
8. It could also be used to help pinpoint bugs and issues more quickly as most of us old timers know how to pick things apart when problems pop up.
Issues this might create
1. I could see people attempting to use these characters to monitor things like spawns.
Ways to deal with that
a. As sudgested above don't allow them to be invisalbe.
b. Allow them to pass the same sorts of judgements on each other, so if they do that and someone reports them another one would pop up and call the others t pass judgment on to a GM
c. some how limit how far the are allowed to wander form the paging player.
a. As sudgested above don't allow them to be invisalbe.
b. Allow them to pass the same sorts of judgements on each other, so if they do that and someone reports them another one would pop up and call the others t pass judgment on to a GM
c. some how limit how far the are allowed to wander form the paging player.
Again I know this is highly unlikely to happen but if you set up the system from the beginning so it is COMPLETELY voluntary, other then forwarding things to the GMs there is no interaction with the staff. Then you can avoid the problems of our past.
Honestly I'd gladly forfeit a character slot to help out and I would play far more then I do now. The community is why I used to play it feels so dead to me now its sad. I think the cost of a character slot would be a fine price to pay to participate in such a noble cause.
I'm half tempted to post this in its own thread but I won't if someone else would like to feel free but I really liked the original post here and I feel that my solution would at least help to address these problems more quickly and effectively while bringing back much of the original charm of UO. That sense of feeling that people in charge care enough to provide you with a service like this. Even if its really just other players providing the actual service the Dev team would have designed it and that would make me rather happy with them as a new player.
Reading the posts by Jonathon and others here made me think back to my first days in UO. It was such a unique experience.
"you mean that guy walking past me is another person sitting at a computer?!?!?"
Thanks to a few kind people, I was shown a few places to farm monstear that a new player could handle, helped with armor and weps and was on my way... There are a few people that still help in this way, but many are just *******s to everyone that isn't in their guild... We all should help ANY player that asks for it, if we don't we run the risk of the person running into the aforementioned a-hole and leaving UO before they learn ANYTHING!
At this point, there is SO much gold in the game, 1m IS THE EQUIVALENT of the 1k that was originally intended to be "starting gold". When people are buying/selling EM items for 1 BILLION + gold for single items, I think we can all agree that the economy is quite different than what any of us could have imagined back in 98.
I think 1m, as long as it's not a "farmable" system, is a fair amount. In fact, I would wager that most veterans REALLY would give a true new player much MUCH more than 1m if they knew that the player truly was new.
"you mean that guy walking past me is another person sitting at a computer?!?!?"
Thanks to a few kind people, I was shown a few places to farm monstear that a new player could handle, helped with armor and weps and was on my way... There are a few people that still help in this way, but many are just *******s to everyone that isn't in their guild... We all should help ANY player that asks for it, if we don't we run the risk of the person running into the aforementioned a-hole and leaving UO before they learn ANYTHING!
At this point, there is SO much gold in the game, 1m IS THE EQUIVALENT of the 1k that was originally intended to be "starting gold". When people are buying/selling EM items for 1 BILLION + gold for single items, I think we can all agree that the economy is quite different than what any of us could have imagined back in 98.
I think 1m, as long as it's not a "farmable" system, is a fair amount. In fact, I would wager that most veterans REALLY would give a true new player much MUCH more than 1m if they knew that the player truly was new.
J
jaashua
Guest
FWIW, it's not totally inaccurate...only partially innacurate. The problem is, there is a lot of content here and not all of it gets updated, which means you never know what is or isn't current. The site needs to get trimmed way back and then people can apply more focussed attention to what's still here. It doesn't help that the site navigates like a hedge maze.
Now, quick. Get the last word in, then close the thread.
J
jaashua
Guest
What are the odds that a newbie wouldn't blow that 1M on something stupid and not know to insure it and lose it within 3 days?
I like this idea. On most shards there are guilds who make a habit of mentoring new or returning players. I think the players in those guilds would be very willing to take up these roles.
J
jaashua
Guest
I've said all along, there should be rewards given to guilds if they have characters from new accounts in their ranks for X number of days.
I think this is a great idea, and something we should definitely explore. I agree wholeheartedly, and would use a character slot for this as well.
UO JUSTICE OF THE PEACE!!!!!
Show me the out of date content? I, and my team, have worked very hard on the site. We believe the information in it is current and accurate.
F
Fayled Dhreams
Guest
Don't know about no decade or such ...
But the com base thread?
EA kb has it at Mag(old location) ... and the one stratics (I found) ... same
taps head ... called for a Dev to verify ... verify ...
slayer sword? uoguide has yes, stratics nada ... hmmmm
http://vboards.stratics.com/uhall/232211-dev-team-not-aware-game.html#post1890041
There being some "disparity" between two expert sources ... yep ...
*shrugs* all I have ...
*cheshire grin* where's popps .... muwahahahahaha ...
Fair enough. I have not been able to use animal lore on Lady Melisande. I'm afraid that's down to my incompetence as a player.
J
Jonathan Baron
Guest
My apologies, Petra. I know you've applied an industrial strength scrubber to Statics. When I first returned it was a mess and you fixed it. Plus I was entirely too harsh when I came across perhaps the last major article that was woefully outdated. Most search results still are choked with horribly outdated material but it's not coming from Stratics any longer.
What I should have said is that, left on their own, new players will inevitably encounter out of date information. The suggestion was made here to point them - in the client - to a good current source. And that is also a very good idea.
I remain puzzled though not surprised by resistance to the notion that updating the new player experience should be first priority. Yes, every single person reading this has certainly shepherded multiple new players: given them good suits they no longer use (UO could turn a Spartan into a pack rat after all), viable weapons, gear, jewelry, spell books, gold and - even more precious - their time. Plus THERE IS NO SUBSTITUTE for the non-virtual magic of being aided by a veteran player. No scheme, no plan, no tutorial, no *system* can beat that.
But that's not enough. That entry/exit checklist of game provided assets is a Rorschach test of sorts. Everyone sees a different image, which is good. Makes for a good discussion because there is no correct answer. But concluding that the answer is nothing at all is short sighted in my view. It assumes that one is meant to replace the other. It's binary thinking and that seldom plays out well
Tutorials are the most avoided features in all software. They're like those horrid splash screens and home page intro videos on web sites that make you search desperately for perhaps the most sought after two words on the Internet: Skip Intro. Run a search with those two words I think the only other pair of words that will get more hits are, "she moaned."
Motivation drives learning. Delivering motive is the goal, not pedantic forced fed content. It doesn't matter how well it's organized or how cleverly it's delivered. It doesn't work.
You don't just hand someone a bunch of gear, quote the St. Crispin's Day speech from Henry the V, and tell new players to sally forth. You stimulate their interest and make them want that gear and, in wanting it, they find themselves learning a lot about this, a now item based game.
Saying you might as well forget it because UO is too complex to be handled by any new user scenario assumes that delivering all the information is the goal. No....making players want to learn is the goal and they need the tools to do so. A newly minted Private Pilot is not Charles Lindbergh. That's why aviators call it A License to Learn. All it means it that you now have a chance to learn without killing yourself. The player exiting New Haven should have a chance to have fun learning the game without terminal frustration. I don't think that's true now without the intervention of chance encounters.
Gaming is this simple: what do I want, and what's keeping me from getting it? No new user experience can work without employing this.
The D&D example makes sense but is not entirely pertinent. Of course D&D would be boring and worthless if everyone started out with lots of stuff gifted that would be fun if earned. Again, I never meant to suggest it not be earned.
D&D began as a game played with a group of people, usually friends (at first at least) gathered in a room, and relied HEAVILY on one person - the DM - to orchestrate the adventure. The poor souls who were gifted at this....oh, you had to feel sorry for them because they became hounded endlessly, but I digress. Although steeped, nay, SOAKED in D&D, MMOs are not D&D or the smaller MMOs of the past where every new player was an event and individual veteran attention was a near certainty.
The counselor, mentor scheme proposed is pretty much what most games used and relied upon until the AOL lawsuit in 1998. Like the person who sued McDonald's for the hot coffee being....well...hot, nobody expected that to succeed but it did. And forever afterward no MMO game design that so much as mentioned volunteer aid had any prayer of success. Big companies live in fear of litigation. I cannot recall a single feature discussion regarding the Xbox Live launch when I was at MS that did not mention lawyers. Comped accounts, signed agreements, countless people of good will, all of it withers under the fear of silly lawsuits. And keep in mind that UO had its first lawsuit thrown at it just months after its release.
Love the plan though Doesn't mean we can't do it, or something very close to it. But it must be organic, and it cannot be linked to any sponsorship by any party who stands to make money from it.
That's really enough outta me for now.
-
What I should have said is that, left on their own, new players will inevitably encounter out of date information. The suggestion was made here to point them - in the client - to a good current source. And that is also a very good idea.
I remain puzzled though not surprised by resistance to the notion that updating the new player experience should be first priority. Yes, every single person reading this has certainly shepherded multiple new players: given them good suits they no longer use (UO could turn a Spartan into a pack rat after all), viable weapons, gear, jewelry, spell books, gold and - even more precious - their time. Plus THERE IS NO SUBSTITUTE for the non-virtual magic of being aided by a veteran player. No scheme, no plan, no tutorial, no *system* can beat that.
But that's not enough. That entry/exit checklist of game provided assets is a Rorschach test of sorts. Everyone sees a different image, which is good. Makes for a good discussion because there is no correct answer. But concluding that the answer is nothing at all is short sighted in my view. It assumes that one is meant to replace the other. It's binary thinking and that seldom plays out well
Tutorials are the most avoided features in all software. They're like those horrid splash screens and home page intro videos on web sites that make you search desperately for perhaps the most sought after two words on the Internet: Skip Intro. Run a search with those two words
I think the only other pair of words that will get more hits are, "she moaned."Motivation drives learning. Delivering motive is the goal, not pedantic forced fed content. It doesn't matter how well it's organized or how cleverly it's delivered. It doesn't work.
You don't just hand someone a bunch of gear, quote the St. Crispin's Day speech from Henry the V, and tell new players to sally forth. You stimulate their interest and make them want that gear and, in wanting it, they find themselves learning a lot about this, a now item based game.
Saying you might as well forget it because UO is too complex to be handled by any new user scenario assumes that delivering all the information is the goal. No....making players want to learn is the goal and they need the tools to do so. A newly minted Private Pilot is not Charles Lindbergh. That's why aviators call it A License to Learn. All it means it that you now have a chance to learn without killing yourself. The player exiting New Haven should have a chance to have fun learning the game without terminal frustration. I don't think that's true now without the intervention of chance encounters.
Gaming is this simple: what do I want, and what's keeping me from getting it? No new user experience can work without employing this.
The D&D example makes sense but is not entirely pertinent. Of course D&D would be boring and worthless if everyone started out with lots of stuff gifted that would be fun if earned. Again, I never meant to suggest it not be earned.
D&D began as a game played with a group of people, usually friends (at first at least) gathered in a room, and relied HEAVILY on one person - the DM - to orchestrate the adventure. The poor souls who were gifted at this....oh, you had to feel sorry for them because they became hounded endlessly, but I digress. Although steeped, nay, SOAKED in D&D, MMOs are not D&D or the smaller MMOs of the past where every new player was an event and individual veteran attention was a near certainty.
The counselor, mentor scheme proposed is pretty much what most games used and relied upon until the AOL lawsuit in 1998. Like the person who sued McDonald's for the hot coffee being....well...hot, nobody expected that to succeed but it did. And forever afterward no MMO game design that so much as mentioned volunteer aid had any prayer of success. Big companies live in fear of litigation. I cannot recall a single feature discussion regarding the Xbox Live launch when I was at MS that did not mention lawyers. Comped accounts, signed agreements, countless people of good will, all of it withers under the fear of silly lawsuits. And keep in mind that UO had its first lawsuit thrown at it just months after its release.
Love the plan though
Doesn't mean we can't do it, or something very close to it. But it must be organic, and it cannot be linked to any sponsorship by any party who stands to make money from it.That's really enough outta me for now.
-
J
Jonathan Baron
Guest
Sorry to sound like Doctor Who, but one more thing....well...two.
Lay off Petra. Citing Stratics was a HUGE and unfair screw-up on my part.
No one could count the hours Petra has doubtlessly devoted to bringing this site up to date.
Again, Petra...forgive me. I mean that literally. She's already had to forgive me once for an earlier incident <cough>
Sorry about the sounding preachy part
Lay off Petra. Citing Stratics was a HUGE and unfair screw-up on my part.
No one could count the hours Petra has doubtlessly devoted to bringing this site up to date.
Again, Petra...forgive me. I mean that literally. She's already had to forgive me once for an earlier incident <cough>
About an hour and a half....well depending on the traffic on the Beltway...or the "oy g'valt way" as I used to call it. Yeah, like I'm gonna go there and that would, somehow, be useful....made me laugh thinking about it though.
Sorry about the sounding preachy part
blackrock was never used to cast "armageddon" ?
Armageddon destroys everything...
it still is pointless...
free spirit, light heart, ethics ; that is of the essence.
How can a company allow its virtual gold to be sold online without any direct profits to the whole ?
What is this mess ?
How can you then ignore the volunteers and ... not feel bad ?
Feeling awful, sour taste in the mouth.
I mean honestly, has even a jurist reviewed this ? That famous AOL thigny... to me it sounds ridiculous... its totally improbable
I'll film myself live with witness confirmation on webcam saying I agree not to benefit from any of this ? Or would we be allowed to say it our own way ?
I honestly never tought I'd see the light of this day. Sooooo marginalised, let it be.
A cynic ?
Armageddon destroys everything...
it still is pointless...
free spirit, light heart, ethics ; that is of the essence.
How can a company allow its virtual gold to be sold online without any direct profits to the whole ?
What is this mess ?
How can you then ignore the volunteers and ... not feel bad ?
Feeling awful, sour taste in the mouth.
I mean honestly, has even a jurist reviewed this ? That famous AOL thigny... to me it sounds ridiculous... its totally improbable
I'll film myself live with witness confirmation on webcam saying I agree not to benefit from any of this ? Or would we be allowed to say it our own way ?
I honestly never tought I'd see the light of this day. Sooooo marginalised, let it be.
A cynic ?
I'll forgive you. As for counting the hours, I never have and I'd rather no one else did either tbh. Every time someone finds the answer to what the need to know it makes them worthwhile. I just wish more people would actually learn to use the custom google search box after the effort we put into finding a working search function for our uo.stratics front page.
Interesting discovery I made, it's actually easier to find things in the uoherald archives using that than it used to be to find them when they were on uoherald.com.
J
[JD]
Guest
I like the idea of including the UO CD with any of their other products as a 30 day free trial. Free piggyback advertising baby.
But again, if you're going to advertise, you need to have something to sell. Which goes back to fixing the EC so it will draw users in and making sure they aren't turned off by Nintendo graphics, bugs, or a poor beginning experience.
The new player experience can also be tweaked without diluting it. For example if you die it can actually say "You have died", instead of leaving them in confusion why everything is gray. Use common sense here- I'm not going to go into every detail. Some of the suggestions were good and some were not.
You can't rely on other players because some shards just aren't populated enough. On Atlantic if you log in sure someone will help you, there are tons of people. But someone logged into my home server Sonoma the other day and there was someone who had been spamming for a while. I wanted to help so I went to meet him, but I had to go to work and couldn't end up doing much. No idea how much longer he ended up spamming for. Sonoma is so slow there arent really even low armor things available on vendors. And on Atlantic the 70 LRC suits I've seen for sale sell for 1 mil, way outta reach of a newb.
But again, if you're going to advertise, you need to have something to sell. Which goes back to fixing the EC so it will draw users in and making sure they aren't turned off by Nintendo graphics, bugs, or a poor beginning experience.
The new player experience can also be tweaked without diluting it. For example if you die it can actually say "You have died", instead of leaving them in confusion why everything is gray. Use common sense here- I'm not going to go into every detail. Some of the suggestions were good and some were not.
You can't rely on other players because some shards just aren't populated enough. On Atlantic if you log in sure someone will help you, there are tons of people. But someone logged into my home server Sonoma the other day and there was someone who had been spamming for a while. I wanted to help so I went to meet him, but I had to go to work and couldn't end up doing much. No idea how much longer he ended up spamming for. Sonoma is so slow there arent really even low armor things available on vendors. And on Atlantic the 70 LRC suits I've seen for sale sell for 1 mil, way outta reach of a newb.
This is exactly what I needed, thanks !
I felt often like I wasn't even able to find stuff I had found earlier on this website, hopefully I can find that BNN transcript somewhere, any of you know where they are ?
I felt often like I wasn't even able to find stuff I had found earlier on this website, hopefully I can find that BNN transcript somewhere, any of you know where they are ?
C
canary
Guest
I have to side with Petra on this one.
She and others have worked very hard at bringing stratics info up to date with UO.
Agreed. Plus she puts up with people like me.
As for the "Councilors" ...... as I recall you can't volunteer to work for UO because it's a "for profit" organization. So technically you can not volunteer.... legally.... at any rate you CAN spend time in New Haven helping new players.
I often help new players when and where I find them. Believe it or not I often find them wandering the lands looking extremely lost. You can usually spot them pretty easily they are the ones either going around OOoOooing or they are the ones dressed in newb clothes... like NPC's.
It's also good to help those that return after YEARS of hiatus... they too are often overwhelmed and lost. Not understanding simple things like insurance.... how to set their titles.... how to build a suit.... what kills what best.... I try to turn them on to stratics... as well as uoguide....
Often I attempt to help them get settled. Find a place to put down roots. Alert them to the General Chat where they can often ask questions and get answers. I know there is a "help" chat but it's not often patrolled..... I find at least on GL's that the General Chat is often occupied by folk willing to assist others.
If we want more players one thing we all have to think about is how to make their experience fun and engaging. Make them want to stay and log in... Help take the frustration out of the game. I still remember my first encounter with a Gargoyle... I still have no idea what he was saying but I'm guessing it was something like "Now you die!"
W
Woodsman
Guest
The lawsuit thing may sound ridiculous, but it is real and companies think about it a lot. It was not handled well by either side, and it was frustrating for a lot of us who had no interest in being a part of the lawsuit and that never felt like we were being taken advantage of. I'm not going to say anything else about it, other than it is still affecting EA and the industry to this day.
W
Woodsman
Guest
If you were going to piggyback it, in addition to EC updates and graphics updates, you'd have to deal with the turf wars in EA - there maybe executives who would resist allowing UO into their retail boxes. Just because everybody works for EA doesn't mean they act like it.
Still, UO is under BioWare, which carries a lot of advantages and disadvantages.
G
Gunga_Din
Guest
Seriously, forget new players. Anyone getting into MMO's is just gonna pick WOW or one of the new games.
Work on getting back people that have played the game and the players you have now.
Example: A classic shard would have worked to get back vets.
Revamp legacy dungeons
Take a look at each skill and make each one more important (like fishing)
-Make unique items spawn in dungeon chest that people can pick
-Forensic Eval on random corpses to open up a quest
-Tracking for unique monsters in the wilderness
You get the idea.
You have to figure out ways to bring back those that know the game and keep the ones you have. Simple as that.
Don't waste resources on trying to get new players.
Work on getting back people that have played the game and the players you have now.
Example: A classic shard would have worked to get back vets.
Revamp legacy dungeons
Take a look at each skill and make each one more important (like fishing)
-Make unique items spawn in dungeon chest that people can pick
-Forensic Eval on random corpses to open up a quest
-Tracking for unique monsters in the wilderness
You get the idea.
You have to figure out ways to bring back those that know the game and keep the ones you have. Simple as that.
Don't waste resources on trying to get new players.
Stratics and uoguide content editors are doing a great job, compared to.. hmm.. let us all check this atlas page in uoherald official playguide:
Atlas | Mythic Entertainment | Ultima Online
It is only natural to have some out of date information about a game of this age. You need to report these for them to fix. One five on friday every two months does not give content editors much information about the game mechanics, so they spend hours to figure them out themselves. Too many content editors stay awake night after night during the high seas beta just so that players get the essential information on the new systems prior to the booster's release.
Atlas | Mythic Entertainment | Ultima Online
It is only natural to have some out of date information about a game of this age. You need to report these for them to fix. One five on friday every two months does not give content editors much information about the game mechanics, so they spend hours to figure them out themselves. Too many content editors stay awake night after night during the high seas beta just so that players get the essential information on the new systems prior to the booster's release.
W
Woodsman
Guest
There are so many reasons why people leave and have left UO that have nothing to do with the things you mentioned in regards to bringing back or retaining players.
People get older, their priorities change, UO is no longer the only game in town and they can find an MMORPG that is suited to what they want, they start families and don't have time, etc.
As deep as UO is, and as much as it's loved by many of us, many people played UO because it was that or Meridian 59 or because it had Ultima in the name. Nothing more, nothing less. When you are all but the only game in town or you are supposed to be the culmination of a beloved game series, you get a lot of slack.
This idea that new players are pointless, you could get away with that in 2003 when there were 250,000 accounts and you could afford to lose 175,000 accounts over the following five years. You could get away with that attitude in 2008 when there were still 75,000 accounts, most of whom were the devoted fans who weren't going anywhere.
It's 2011, that attitude will end up with EA pulling the plug in a few years. Profitability doesn't mean much to EA - they wanted to pull the plug years back when UO was even more profitable and if it weren't for Mark Jacobs, they would have. Now they don't want games that just make a profit, EA wants big games that make big profits. They are out there telling investors that they are focusing on reducing the number of titles they support in favor of fewer titles that make more money. UO does not fit into that scheme.
Don't live in the past, live in the present, and look towards the future. Without new blood, this game is done. EA is not a charity and EA no longer feels that a game being profitable is enough.
UO is not as important to EA's future as you think it is, otherwise we'd be on one modern client and the CC would be a distant memory, we would have had high resolution graphics long before now, and we would have had a better new player experience, and there would be UO boxes in Best Buy.
Watch what happens to Warhammer over the next year or so, now imagine that happening to UO in a few years. Thanks to the advances in hardware combined with the lower costs, we've been spared the nightmare of shards being merged, and I think that's lulled people into a false sense of security. The signs are still there - time and again, layoffs have impacted UO over the years, we got yanked out of the retail channels, and so on.
On top of it all, we've got Star Wars looming over us. EA spent over $600 million just buying BioWare, spent $300 million on Star Wars, and who knows how much LucasFilm will wind up with, but it will be a lot. If Star Wars goes down the toilet after what happened with Warhammer, EA will have effectively spent around $1 billion with the only results being the Mass Effect and Dragon Age franchises. To say the investors would be looking for blood would be an understatement - BioWare would be dismantled faster than you can believe, and if UO somehow survived, we'd end up under The Sims or EA's iPhone and Facebook stuff. We would look back with fond memories of the layoffs in 2009 that impacted UO, because it would so much worse.
I have suggested giving new players alot more help, before as well..
my suggestions include a proper set of armor (without being anything close to high end) but good enough to actually survive most things you encounter. with a stat useful for the temlpate you rolled and roughly 10-15 short in every resist. lrc if caster.. etc etc. maybe personally blessed?
also 1k gold is nothing these days. you can buy a horse and a skill to 40 = money spent.. you can easily increse this at least 10 folds without being abused. noone is gonna wait 7 days to delete a char to make a new one for 10k over and over. since you can make that in 10 minutes with a little advice, as a half-newbie as well.
the 20 points short of being not veteran does not cause an issue i find. it is not in any way unbalancing that you are missing these points to total cap. there are many templates availible that can comply with 700 max cap, and you cant afford the scrolls for a 6x120 template anyways, nor should you. (though you will be able to afford it before you are at 720 cap normally) but its good to have things to look forward to.
small stat scrolls can be bought after a wee while playing, remember as new you appresiate small things. and you get the stat bonus after 6 months, also no issue i find. even today there is no issue running 225 total stats for regular newbish things. tho you would have to manage your stats, and bring none to cap.
but in conclusion, if you are starting uo alone, you are in for one tough time, although normally ppl at banks will help with basic gear and a bit insurance money. and similar.
but would be better if the new player got this automaticly, since a new player dont really know where wbb or luna is finding the haven moongate on your first ever login can prove hard enough i reckon.
my suggestions include a proper set of armor (without being anything close to high end) but good enough to actually survive most things you encounter. with a stat useful for the temlpate you rolled and roughly 10-15 short in every resist. lrc if caster.. etc etc. maybe personally blessed?
also 1k gold is nothing these days. you can buy a horse and a skill to 40 = money spent.. you can easily increse this at least 10 folds without being abused. noone is gonna wait 7 days to delete a char to make a new one for 10k over and over. since you can make that in 10 minutes with a little advice, as a half-newbie as well.
the 20 points short of being not veteran does not cause an issue i find. it is not in any way unbalancing that you are missing these points to total cap. there are many templates availible that can comply with 700 max cap, and you cant afford the scrolls for a 6x120 template anyways, nor should you. (though you will be able to afford it before you are at 720 cap normally) but its good to have things to look forward to.
small stat scrolls can be bought after a wee while playing, remember as new you appresiate small things. and you get the stat bonus after 6 months, also no issue i find. even today there is no issue running 225 total stats for regular newbish things. tho you would have to manage your stats, and bring none to cap.
but in conclusion, if you are starting uo alone, you are in for one tough time, although normally ppl at banks will help with basic gear and a bit insurance money. and similar.
but would be better if the new player got this automaticly, since a new player dont really know where wbb or luna is
finding the haven moongate on your first ever login can prove hard enough i reckon.Thank you Petra, those new pages are well organised, but I cannot find what I am looking for.
It was an interview pf Minax by some BNN reporter, around the year 1999-2000...
I think it was a transcript from one of the audio section, but I cannot seem to find it anymore since the revamps...
Oh and about that AOL lawsuit...
It's so simple it hurts my eyes, I mean the only thing that is required of EA is to allow someone to start a non-profit company who's role is dedicated to help the noobs !
Is the world so silly that noone tought of this ? The professional decision to "crown" the new organisation with a special form of robe and some finer teleportation skills constitutes in no way in an element that can be used in court.
I have merely studied basic law, but my friend here is a lawyer and he knows alot about those things.
Take the Ronald McDonald mission house no nprofit organisation. Is it REALLY for non profit, or do they want the kids to replain playing in their games, and that they ask their parents to go to mc donalds ?
It dosen't take the head of mondain to see the options here...
It was an interview pf Minax by some BNN reporter, around the year 1999-2000...
I think it was a transcript from one of the audio section, but I cannot seem to find it anymore since the revamps...
Oh and about that AOL lawsuit...
It's so simple it hurts my eyes, I mean the only thing that is required of EA is to allow someone to start a non-profit company who's role is dedicated to help the noobs !
Is the world so silly that noone tought of this ? The professional decision to "crown" the new organisation with a special form of robe and some finer teleportation skills constitutes in no way in an element that can be used in court.
I have merely studied basic law, but my friend here is a lawyer and he knows alot about those things.
Take the Ronald McDonald mission house no nprofit organisation. Is it REALLY for non profit, or do they want the kids to replain playing in their games, and that they ask their parents to go to mc donalds ?
It dosen't take the head of mondain to see the options here...
Is this it?
Breaking Britannia - The Minax Interview
Breaking Britannia - The Minax Interview
This one?
UO Herald archive! - Ultima Online Stratics
TGN.TV - Get more views!Edit : Strangely similar to Petra's link ...
That honestly looks like it... but the one I am looking for was a bit longer, and was a bit less ... PG-13.
Were the archives edited ?
Were the archives edited ?
Not by us. We put them up exactly as they were given to us.
Try this: http://uo.stratics.com/secrets/tc/h_61.shtml
Try this: http://uo.stratics.com/secrets/tc/h_61.shtml
What I remember is that it was in a series of transcript, and it was the last of the series...
however with this one when I click next, I fall on another. Is it possible that they were, rearanged somehow ?
however with this one when I click next, I fall on another. Is it possible that they were, rearanged somehow ?
If you look at the main listing: UO Herald archive! - Ultima Online Stratics TGN.TV - Get more views!
you can see that the 'next' you get is dated quite a long time later and is a totally different topic.
TGN.TV - Get more views!you can see that the 'next' you get is dated quite a long time later and is a totally different topic.
Wow you are good !
The text I am talking about however was formatted in a different manner, I know it was on this website... there is a longer Minax rant at the end of it too, where she explains how she actually won over lord Brittish.
Try explaining that to new players, that they must not delve too much into the story lest they get extreemly confused at all the dicrepancies...
Most of my friends were roleplayers and if they remained a week we're lucky.
To this day I log in and we explore old sites of interest, for the sake of making the RPG a RPG, and we find tons of clues, left over by previous EMS...
as it is right now we could spend 6 months running in circles about clues in the story that are past events... time lost.
I have also lost many people due to that... people are willing to try our game, they say ok so the graphics are crap... there must be content, lots of attention put on lore and roleplaying.
But there we are, grapsing for EM chests which probably pop in our face because they were used in an event 3 months ago and are simply empty.
If it was only that it would be good, but when the clues left hint at a complex riddle, that we must use TRUE creativity to acquire the treasure, not simply kill mobs in an event...
Well we can spend days, see weeks trying to resolve the riddle, while it's only a compendum of clues from past events with a bit of imagination thrown in...
It's honestly very frustrating. And I put my personal feelings aside on this one...
The text I am talking about however was formatted in a different manner, I know it was on this website... there is a longer Minax rant at the end of it too, where she explains how she actually won over lord Brittish.
I tought this was extreemly on topic because I was introducing many new players to UO back in the day... and when this day came that Minax won over Lord Brittish, they stopped the story alltogether.
Try explaining that to new players, that they must not delve too much into the story lest they get extreemly confused at all the dicrepancies...
Most of my friends were roleplayers and if they remained a week we're lucky.
To this day I log in and we explore old sites of interest, for the sake of making the RPG a RPG, and we find tons of clues, left over by previous EMS...
as it is right now we could spend 6 months running in circles about clues in the story that are past events... time lost.
I have also lost many people due to that... people are willing to try our game, they say ok so the graphics are crap... there must be content, lots of attention put on lore and roleplaying.
But there we are, grapsing for EM chests which probably pop in our face because they were used in an event 3 months ago and are simply empty.
If it was only that it would be good, but when the clues left hint at a complex riddle, that we must use TRUE creativity to acquire the treasure, not simply kill mobs in an event...
Well we can spend days, see weeks trying to resolve the riddle, while it's only a compendum of clues from past events with a bit of imagination thrown in...
It's honestly very frustrating. And I put my personal feelings aside on this one...
T
Trevelyan
Guest
Regarding giving newbies 1 mil gold: instead, just divide all gold amounts in UO by 10 (or even 100).
Frees up resources, solves the problem of too much gold and makes things sound cheaper.
Frees up resources, solves the problem of too much gold and makes things sound cheaper.
That sounds nice in theory but as with the real world, it would solve nothing.
Problem is ; more than half the gold circulating around has been duped.
Funny, we have the same problem in the real world... it's called reserve banking... duped gold.
I wonder how they were inspired ...
*********************
Edit :
Hey Petra I finally found it ! it was indeed hidden... well I think.
Ouch... just ouch.
I think I really do deserve some explanations... game or not...
Problem is ; more than half the gold circulating around has been duped.
Funny, we have the same problem in the real world... it's called reserve banking... duped gold.
I wonder how they were inspired ...
Are we learning from our past ? Or are we plagiardising *sp* the past ?
*********************
Edit :
Hey Petra I finally found it ! it was indeed hidden... well I think.
http://uo.stratics.com/secrets/bnn/b_117w2.shtml
Ouch... just ouch.
I think I really do deserve some explanations... game or not...
the issue to dumping counselors was not whereever they were useful or not, because everyone will agree they were a great accet for uo.
the decision to dump counselors is a result of a few disgrumbled counselors sued EA for PAY for thier VOLUNTARY work, and i do believe they won.
talk about a few that makes it worse for the most.
I would love to see counselors back, and counselors didnt really have any tampering abilties back then, they practicly only had abilities to be fully or partially invisible and teleportion abiltieis. everything beyond that they had to ask a gm to assist, i know i used to be one.
the decision to dump counselors is a result of a few disgrumbled counselors sued EA for PAY for thier VOLUNTARY work, and i do believe they won.
talk about a few that makes it worse for the most.
I would love to see counselors back, and counselors didnt really have any tampering abilties back then, they practicly only had abilities to be fully or partially invisible and teleportion abiltieis. everything beyond that they had to ask a gm to assist, i know i used to be one.
I have a problem with that whole 'smaller download for the new player area' thing...
So theyre gonna download a small 'newb' client, and basically download the actual client while theyre playing in newb land? Thats gonna lag the crap outta them.
So now not only is the new player experience confusing, inadequate and generally pointless.. its also extremely laggy cuz u get to download a huge file while your playing.
Nice job.
So theyre gonna download a small 'newb' client, and basically download the actual client while theyre playing in newb land? Thats gonna lag the crap outta them.
So now not only is the new player experience confusing, inadequate and generally pointless.. its also extremely laggy cuz u get to download a huge file while your playing.
Nice job.
J
Jonathan Baron
Guest
Gunga....I get the feeling that you never read Kippling
You're a very silly fellow, but I like you anyway.
Woodsman's got a rather good grasp on things. The first time I met Mark Jacobs he was throwing a chair at a speaker at the last GEnie syscon in '93 and for good reason. Half of GEnie's profit came from 5% of their customers and guess what those customers were doing? But GEnie treated developers like garbage. The real life military history expert, Jim Dunnigan, had two games on GEnie, the most notable being The Hundred Years War and he was shouting at GEnie speakers too before that conference was through.....though he skipped the chair throwing part.
Jacobs got his start with Dragon's Gate in '89 I believe. Oddly, GEnie funded him because they hated David Watley - founder of Simutronics and an early MMO developer - and wanted something to compete with the popular MMO, Gemstone 3. Ah, Jacobs was a warrior and just when he nearly had to close the doors on Mythic he got the funding he needed to create Dark Age of Camelot.
But I doubt many of you care about this history of this medium...sometimes I simply can't help myself....sorry.
The AOL lawsuit came during a very strange time. When you're pouring your heart out to help people and are seeing often indifferent members of the night shift in the technical support staff walk away with 9-14 million dollars each....well, those were the days when Yahoo's market value exceeded the GNP of some European countries.
AOL nearly killed online gaming in other ways too. So many of us - Kesmai, Mythic, Interplay, Simultronics and others - went to AOL because they were the first to offer lots of online time as part of their subscription fee. Other online services charged by the hour. The hourly fee on AOL only kicked in after you spent...I forget...but it was some substantial number of hours. Then, abruptly, they slapped a two dollar an hour surcharge on online games. It's one thing to charge by the hour upfront for everything. It's quite another to offer it "for free" and then slap a high fee on it after the fact.
The notion of offering an online game on the open internet was almost unthinkable at the time. As people joked, "Yeah, and if you have a problem, just call Internet customer support," because there was no such thing.
But UO did, charged no hourly fee, and it changed the course of everything in the medium.
I know you didn't want a damned history lesson but I think folks need to appreciate UO's importance. Plus folks really need to understand better why volunteer efforts can't be supported by game providers. It's not that game developers and providers fail to appreciate volunteers. Too often these volunteers have been used and abused....never by Origin, but all it takes in one predatory company, or one group of disgruntled volunteers, as Elric noted, to ruin it for the rest in a litigious culture.
-
You're a very silly fellow, but I like you anyway.
Woodsman's got a rather good grasp on things. The first time I met Mark Jacobs he was throwing a chair at a speaker at the last GEnie syscon in '93 and for good reason. Half of GEnie's profit came from 5% of their customers and guess what those customers were doing?
But GEnie treated developers like garbage. The real life military history expert, Jim Dunnigan, had two games on GEnie, the most notable being The Hundred Years War and he was shouting at GEnie speakers too before that conference was through.....though he skipped the chair throwing part.Jacobs got his start with Dragon's Gate in '89 I believe. Oddly, GEnie funded him because they hated David Watley - founder of Simutronics and an early MMO developer - and wanted something to compete with the popular MMO, Gemstone 3. Ah, Jacobs was a warrior and just when he nearly had to close the doors on Mythic he got the funding he needed to create Dark Age of Camelot.
But I doubt many of you care about this history of this medium...sometimes I simply can't help myself....sorry.
The AOL lawsuit came during a very strange time. When you're pouring your heart out to help people and are seeing often indifferent members of the night shift in the technical support staff walk away with 9-14 million dollars each....well, those were the days when Yahoo's market value exceeded the GNP of some European countries.
AOL nearly killed online gaming in other ways too. So many of us - Kesmai, Mythic, Interplay, Simultronics and others - went to AOL because they were the first to offer lots of online time as part of their subscription fee. Other online services charged by the hour. The hourly fee on AOL only kicked in after you spent...I forget...but it was some substantial number of hours. Then, abruptly, they slapped a two dollar an hour surcharge on online games. It's one thing to charge by the hour upfront for everything. It's quite another to offer it "for free" and then slap a high fee on it after the fact.
The notion of offering an online game on the open internet was almost unthinkable at the time. As people joked, "Yeah, and if you have a problem, just call Internet customer support," because there was no such thing.
But UO did, charged no hourly fee, and it changed the course of everything in the medium.
I know you didn't want a damned history lesson but I think folks need to appreciate UO's importance. Plus folks really need to understand better why volunteer efforts can't be supported by game providers. It's not that game developers and providers fail to appreciate volunteers. Too often these volunteers have been used and abused....never by Origin, but all it takes in one predatory company, or one group of disgruntled volunteers, as Elric noted, to ruin it for the rest in a litigious culture.
-
FWIW, the new player companions were not stripped of their powers back when Seers and Counselors were eliminated. Since we were not required to put in any set number of hours each week, they were not part of the lawsuit.
So for all these years, companions were still around. I know I still checked the new player queue frequently and helped when I could.
Then immediately after the launch of SA, the commands simply stopped working. No notice, no warning, no gratitude..
If they plan on a big push for new players, they should consider bringing back us Companions.
W
Woodsman
Guest
If you've ever used Steam, there are plenty of games that you can start playing before the download is finished, and they adjust accordingly to your connection and don't lag you out.
They are creating a special area though that sounds like it will be a lot more focused, so that it's not confusing and inadequate, and lag probably won't be an issue. They could even in theory give you a stand-alone/offline mode of sorts for teaching new players the basics.
F
Fayled Dhreams
Guest
heh!
one problem though ... EA ain't steam ... and EA ain't exactly "good" at these new "network thangs" ... simultaneous play/download?
*shrugs*
We shall see ...
Just saying ... the only "surprise" instore
is if they pull 40% of your "optimistic" QFT above ...
Lag wise?
Maybe they learned something with/@
OOOOOOOOOOCeania kanga kanga Roo! Roo! Roo!
G
Gunga_Din
Guest
Your in dreamland. The only shot of getting more people back is working on those that know Ultima Online to begin with. No teenager is gonna try UO over something like WOW. You have to cater to vets.
Jynxx ?
What do you mean companions until the launch of SA ?
I was a companion after being fired as a seer (and was told I was the ONLY exeption to the rule because of all that I did, the sheer quantity of bugs I spotted and suggested correction for)
Most companions even had to sign a contract by hand and then send it back to EA for the terms and conditions...
But all my team of companions that I know of were all fired because once again two of them (who were probably paid to be *******s) asked to be compensated in game time for their work...
It wasn't money this time, they wanted their companion account to be free.
They all fired us at that time, no thanks, nothing.
But this time there was an invisible barrier and all my e-mail even my bug reports went ignored, ALL of them.
So I started hacking the hell out of them and trying to get players to call a GM on me so I could reason with them...
But then the strangest thing (for me) was that I could stand there all day long, even at peak times ; and there would be players protesting against me at the britain bank (I mean a real protest, like 20-30 people whom I had stolen the full backpack in one click)
But a GM never came ! I was on a blacklist (ignore list?) !
I was really bad... I knew the game more than most programmers that were left and my skills in C++ were getting good, so I jumped in the boat with the creator of UOE (who was amazed that I could do such things at 15 y.o.)
(yes I know I wasn't even supposed to be able to be a companion, oh the shame when they discovered that)
And oh my... I wrecked this game, and even if I already asked for forgiveness to the community (who warmly accepted I am human and make errors) I still feel bad to this day.
Because of me the amount of gold of all servers at least doubled, many chars were maxed out in hard to gain skills because of the bugs I invented.
I wrecked the economy both inside and out just in hope to get a little acknowledgement...
But it was worse than that, and I was too young to understand ; but my hack was soon used on other client-server systems... and the quantity of fraud that was made is simply insane...
Casinos, penny stocks... and many others...
What makes me talk about it today and its really important that people understand... is that our law system never even attempted to punish those people, we failed ; not only I.
What Jonhatan is saying is totally true... I have seen my seer and GM mentors hand billions of gold to dummy accounts that probably have some left even to this day ; houses were filled with gold so that when the dupe would be gone they would still profit out of it.
And EA protected them unwittingly by creating their new tighter TOS, which guarantees privacy in your own house. What a terrible shame...
These people are now rich, in the bahamas for fraud, and basically the policement and lawyers I talked to told me it was impossible that we will ever get them.
Well watch me.
What do you mean companions until the launch of SA ?
I was a companion after being fired as a seer (and was told I was the ONLY exeption to the rule because of all that I did, the sheer quantity of bugs I spotted and suggested correction for)
Most companions even had to sign a contract by hand and then send it back to EA for the terms and conditions...
But all my team of companions that I know of were all fired because once again two of them (who were probably paid to be *******s) asked to be compensated in game time for their work...
It wasn't money this time, they wanted their companion account to be free.
They all fired us at that time, no thanks, nothing.
But this time there was an invisible barrier and all my e-mail even my bug reports went ignored, ALL of them.
So I started hacking the hell out of them and trying to get players to call a GM on me so I could reason with them...
But then the strangest thing (for me) was that I could stand there all day long, even at peak times ; and there would be players protesting against me at the britain bank (I mean a real protest, like 20-30 people whom I had stolen the full backpack in one click)
But a GM never came ! I was on a blacklist (ignore list?) !
I was really bad... I knew the game more than most programmers that were left and my skills in C++ were getting good, so I jumped in the boat with the creator of UOE (who was amazed that I could do such things at 15 y.o.)
(yes I know I wasn't even supposed to be able to be a companion, oh the shame when they discovered that)
And oh my... I wrecked this game, and even if I already asked for forgiveness to the community (who warmly accepted I am human and make errors) I still feel bad to this day.
Because of me the amount of gold of all servers at least doubled, many chars were maxed out in hard to gain skills because of the bugs I invented.
I wrecked the economy both inside and out just in hope to get a little acknowledgement...
But it was worse than that, and I was too young to understand ; but my hack was soon used on other client-server systems... and the quantity of fraud that was made is simply insane...
Casinos, penny stocks... and many others...
What makes me talk about it today and its really important that people understand... is that our law system never even attempted to punish those people, we failed ; not only I.
What Jonhatan is saying is totally true... I have seen my seer and GM mentors hand billions of gold to dummy accounts that probably have some left even to this day ; houses were filled with gold so that when the dupe would be gone they would still profit out of it.
And EA protected them unwittingly by creating their new tighter TOS, which guarantees privacy in your own house. What a terrible shame...
These people are now rich, in the bahamas for fraud, and basically the policement and lawyers I talked to told me it was impossible that we will ever get them.
Well watch me.
J
Jonathan Baron
Guest
Yes, that's true, Ahuaeyjnkxs. When I started in around June of '10 two folks popped up out of nowhere, the way the counselors used to do, to ask if I had any questions and whether I was enjoying myself.
Gunga Din is right in one sense. Just look at the ads surrounding these posts. Look at the idealized images - those images created specifically to entice people because they want to look like that - and you know the age group they're intended to appeal to.
Where your logic breaks down, though, Gunga is your assumption that improving the new player experience is only valuable if it attracts the youth market alone. Were that true, your argument would indeed be sound.
As Woodsman said, and EVERYTHING you've said has been spot-on, many UO players have aged and many moved on because the of intervening priorities that shift over time. How many people do you meet in WoW, for example, who witnessed the first moon landing live on television? Well, you meet a whole lot of them in UO. I'm one of them. Doesn't mean there is a dearth of other players, past their teens, whose priories would not fit perfectly with what UO has to offer. As you age you tend to meet fewer people and your circle of friends grows smaller. That leaves a hole in many people's lives....a hole this game can help fill.
Having had experience with a game with a customer average age of 37, I know that, although it may not be a courted market, it's an existing market. I've seen people in their 70s playing a scrupulously modeled Air Combat simulation that few teenagers could master. Why? Because we added compelling roles for people that had little to do with with besting aces in the virtual air. The more community centered features we added, the more we shifted the emphasis of the game away from the Aces, the most customers we got. And, as Woodsman noted regarding other games, Air Warrior was canceled by EA (who bought us largely due to our extant contracts with AOL) even though it had substantial player numbers and made good money.
UO is perhaps the last of what we now call MMOs that has absorbing activities that have nothing to do with jammed packed action, right down to the cross pollination of plants for god sakes. It is the one MMO that has a style and ambiance appealing to adults. Is the 10-13 dollars a month coming from someone in their 30s, 40s, 50s and beyond any different from the same money coming from teenagers? Would adults be any less inclined to buy most of the items on EA's UO game item sales site, or UOStock, or MMO Source, or UO Resource or SearchUO?
Keep in mind that not long ago the measure of a man in many circles was the number of prime tools he had arranged on peg boards in his garage and workshop. Tim Allen made a career out of the humor contained in that. People of all ages and both sexes feel the drive to create something to display that they can call their own. UO provides more ways to do precisely that in ways no other MMO can. What's Farmville after all?
What I think you mean, Gunga, is that you see little hope of UO attracting more of your kind of player. One of the the things that has surprised me about UO is the number of people who believe that there is some ideal way UO should be played. Human nature I guess. But there are more ways to play UO than any other game.
Where I think was wrong was in criticizing the original client simply for looking dated. That's' not it really. It's obtuse. Not saying the EC is easy but it simply makes more sense and runs with greater graphic clarity on contemporary computers. Most have HD displays and the CC does not display well on those, your stuff is just piled into your backpack (EC has grid lined containers by default) and myriad other aspects that simply make more sense when you start. Because it could be much better than THAT doesn't mean it should be rejected. Perfect later, better now is an approach that is not only best, but it's only viable approach we have. The CC reflects an earlier era where time spend puzzling those basics out was widely accepted.
As I'm sure Woodsman recalls, UO was put before several focus groups to get their reaction to the graphics. Too many in the industry believed 3D was the only way. The reaction of most, however, was the the UO world "looks beautiful."
Do the hand painted backgrounds in, say Gone With the Wind not look beautiful? Does CGI's attempt at realism always succeed? Oh, and alas, all that time and resource squandered bringing UO into the realm of 3D, imagining that it was required to entice the market, not to mention the ill fated UOII.
The market, my friends, is there. We simply need to open the door, invite them in, and show them some respect while they get accustomed to their surroundings.
Forgive what may, perhaps, be hyperbole, but what the new player experience is doing now is telling them they're not wanted. And, as Woodsman and other have said, that will be the death of this game.
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Gunga Din is right in one sense. Just look at the ads surrounding these posts. Look at the idealized images - those images created specifically to entice people because they want to look like that - and you know the age group they're intended to appeal to.
Where your logic breaks down, though, Gunga is your assumption that improving the new player experience is only valuable if it attracts the youth market alone. Were that true, your argument would indeed be sound.
As Woodsman said, and EVERYTHING you've said has been spot-on, many UO players have aged and many moved on because the of intervening priorities that shift over time. How many people do you meet in WoW, for example, who witnessed the first moon landing live on television? Well, you meet a whole lot of them in UO. I'm one of them. Doesn't mean there is a dearth of other players, past their teens, whose priories would not fit perfectly with what UO has to offer. As you age you tend to meet fewer people and your circle of friends grows smaller. That leaves a hole in many people's lives....a hole this game can help fill.
Having had experience with a game with a customer average age of 37, I know that, although it may not be a courted market, it's an existing market. I've seen people in their 70s playing a scrupulously modeled Air Combat simulation that few teenagers could master. Why? Because we added compelling roles for people that had little to do with with besting aces in the virtual air. The more community centered features we added, the more we shifted the emphasis of the game away from the Aces, the most customers we got. And, as Woodsman noted regarding other games, Air Warrior was canceled by EA (who bought us largely due to our extant contracts with AOL) even though it had substantial player numbers and made good money.
UO is perhaps the last of what we now call MMOs that has absorbing activities that have nothing to do with jammed packed action, right down to the cross pollination of plants for god sakes. It is the one MMO that has a style and ambiance appealing to adults. Is the 10-13 dollars a month coming from someone in their 30s, 40s, 50s and beyond any different from the same money coming from teenagers? Would adults be any less inclined to buy most of the items on EA's UO game item sales site, or UOStock, or MMO Source, or UO Resource or SearchUO?
Keep in mind that not long ago the measure of a man in many circles was the number of prime tools he had arranged on peg boards in his garage and workshop. Tim Allen made a career out of the humor contained in that. People of all ages and both sexes feel the drive to create something to display that they can call their own. UO provides more ways to do precisely that in ways no other MMO can. What's Farmville after all?
What I think you mean, Gunga, is that you see little hope of UO attracting more of your kind of player. One of the the things that has surprised me about UO is the number of people who believe that there is some ideal way UO should be played. Human nature I guess. But there are more ways to play UO than any other game.
Where I think was wrong was in criticizing the original client simply for looking dated. That's' not it really. It's obtuse. Not saying the EC is easy but it simply makes more sense and runs with greater graphic clarity on contemporary computers. Most have HD displays and the CC does not display well on those, your stuff is just piled into your backpack (EC has grid lined containers by default) and myriad other aspects that simply make more sense when you start. Because it could be much better than THAT doesn't mean it should be rejected. Perfect later, better now is an approach that is not only best, but it's only viable approach we have. The CC reflects an earlier era where time spend puzzling those basics out was widely accepted.
As I'm sure Woodsman recalls, UO was put before several focus groups to get their reaction to the graphics. Too many in the industry believed 3D was the only way. The reaction of most, however, was the the UO world "looks beautiful."
Do the hand painted backgrounds in, say Gone With the Wind not look beautiful? Does CGI's attempt at realism always succeed? Oh, and alas, all that time and resource squandered bringing UO into the realm of 3D, imagining that it was required to entice the market, not to mention the ill fated UOII.
The market, my friends, is there. We simply need to open the door, invite them in, and show them some respect while they get accustomed to their surroundings.
Forgive what may, perhaps, be hyperbole, but what the new player experience is doing now is telling them they're not wanted. And, as Woodsman and other have said, that will be the death of this game.
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Thats well worded... I wonder sometimes why I feel such an urge to say thats its all done on purpose.
Like UO was being put on an artificial respirator by none other than the guardian himself.
It's all been orchestrated that way, I had the opportunity to learn a bit how UO code works, and to me it looked much like "the palace" scripting language.
It is very easy to change simple features in this game for a programmer, more complex things like pvp is pretty hard in a way since you have to go around all objects set with that memory frame, it's a pain... but for the rest, like making New haven simpler, more interactive... more enticing ?
Thats easy ! New players should be shown many things, including house customisation and how people can do other things than just learning bushido or chivalry...
I cannot seem to figure another explanation than that... it's not logical ! Unless every UO developper that ever was hired by EA never cared a bit about UO and for them their job was like sweeping a boring floor.
But we know it aint true, we had Draconi, we now have Messana ?
About the companion thing, I am positive that all the companions were fired and their companion deleted. I cannot recall the exact date but that was wayyy after the counselors were fired, almost a year I'd say.
Maybe they forgot a few of them ?! or maybe some new ones were hired for some reason... but I don't see why they would have done that either !
I can't beleive either after years of loyal and faithful service to the game, that I would be put on a blacklist for being absolutely one of the coolest person in the game. (I helped noobs for more than half a year straight, I didn't even play cause I found it fun to be a companion)
Why I think it is orchestrated is because EA has done many things for people on my server, some people were handed "blessed" buildings.
A big example is Greypawn, he had worked so hard on the mage tower guild, when the guildmaster Tifric died ; greypawn was CLEARLY*** emphasis *** the sucessor, and if not him it was Jenny the lady of the tower and if not her it was to come to me.
I was with Tiffric when we elaborated the ethical conduct for the mage tower, a text that inspired almost every shard to have their chapter. I was his confident, I was always there, working on helping new players.
But EA stepped in, transfered the tower to a man totally unknown to any AMT members... and even worse he had an anti-roleplay name he was called VIRUL LORD. Well beleive it or not he took the tower, and one week later, had booted all the mages from the stone and transformed the blessed (GM PLACED) building into the NEC (necromancy institute) where it became haven for many murderers (very convenient).
Then there was this story with JC the Builder (hey lurker) he was given the wintermoor museum out of nowhere, it's still locked and private to this day. The story is still being silenced, noone will tell what happened or why.
I have about a dozen such examples, when EA stepped in and did stuff for "privileged" players. Heck even Messana recently remade the mage tower and openly claims its ownership ! She did that for Hallister, he's one of the lore keepers alright, but recently for example Derium of LS was named curator of his mage tower, he has even received a special place amongst the Stratics crew.
As you study more history you will realise the culprit of this problem occured on atlantic, and atlantic was never handled like the other servers. Strange I know, but the evidence can never be totally removed (and they are really trying hard)
http://uo.stratics.com/shard/Atlantic/al_MageTower.shtml
If you are curious go look what they did of it... they replaced a beautiful memorial with statue and the eternal flame of mages (and LOTS of necromancy stuff, a clear insult, even a sacrificed wish surrounded with blackrock *known way of trapping and torturing them*)
Well instead, Messana didn't even pull up an actual screenshot and put dark wisps chests inside, piled them up like we were a bank, not a school...
Everyone that remembers the mage tower remembers about Jenny ...
See it's ironic, there at the bottom, is me.
Raistlin of AMT
I was the man of honor for her wedding, along with Nick-of-Time and Odin.
But strangely enough even if Both Tiffirc and Jenny died (after fighting strongly with the ebay goldsellers), EA would not make any memorial, even after all they gave to reinforce the community and their immense contributions to the game (they even attended the live conferences so loved they were, and met Richard Gariott himself).
EA prefers to encourage the necros, whom I suspect to have made a FORTUNE out of Tiffric's rares. Whom I suspect to have TRASHED his writtings. Whom I suspect to have done many things...
But that point remains moot. As you can see, the AMT is abandoned and has become a kind of laughing stock for the Atlantic community, they are laughing upon two very strange graves ... and as I mentioned earlier, lore from UO itself says that Richard HAD BUT NO CHOICE to leave UO.
I knew em, it was his baby, he was forced to leave.
Like UO was being put on an artificial respirator by none other than the guardian himself.
It's all been orchestrated that way, I had the opportunity to learn a bit how UO code works, and to me it looked much like "the palace" scripting language.
It is very easy to change simple features in this game for a programmer, more complex things like pvp is pretty hard in a way since you have to go around all objects set with that memory frame, it's a pain... but for the rest, like making New haven simpler, more interactive... more enticing ?
Thats easy ! New players should be shown many things, including house customisation and how people can do other things than just learning bushido or chivalry...
I cannot seem to figure another explanation than that... it's not logical ! Unless every UO developper that ever was hired by EA never cared a bit about UO and for them their job was like sweeping a boring floor.
But we know it aint true, we had Draconi, we now have Messana ?
About the companion thing, I am positive that all the companions were fired and their companion deleted. I cannot recall the exact date but that was wayyy after the counselors were fired, almost a year I'd say.
Maybe they forgot a few of them ?! or maybe some new ones were hired for some reason... but I don't see why they would have done that either !
I can't beleive either after years of loyal and faithful service to the game, that I would be put on a blacklist for being absolutely one of the coolest person in the game. (I helped noobs for more than half a year straight, I didn't even play cause I found it fun to be a companion)
Why I think it is orchestrated is because EA has done many things for people on my server, some people were handed "blessed" buildings.
A big example is Greypawn, he had worked so hard on the mage tower guild, when the guildmaster Tifric died ; greypawn was CLEARLY*** emphasis *** the sucessor, and if not him it was Jenny the lady of the tower and if not her it was to come to me.
I was with Tiffric when we elaborated the ethical conduct for the mage tower, a text that inspired almost every shard to have their chapter. I was his confident, I was always there, working on helping new players.
But EA stepped in, transfered the tower to a man totally unknown to any AMT members... and even worse he had an anti-roleplay name he was called VIRUL LORD. Well beleive it or not he took the tower, and one week later, had booted all the mages from the stone and transformed the blessed (GM PLACED) building into the NEC (necromancy institute) where it became haven for many murderers (very convenient).
Then there was this story with JC the Builder (hey lurker) he was given the wintermoor museum out of nowhere, it's still locked and private to this day. The story is still being silenced, noone will tell what happened or why.
I have about a dozen such examples, when EA stepped in and did stuff for "privileged" players. Heck even Messana recently remade the mage tower and openly claims its ownership ! She did that for Hallister, he's one of the lore keepers alright, but recently for example Derium of LS was named curator of his mage tower, he has even received a special place amongst the Stratics crew.
As you study more history you will realise the culprit of this problem occured on atlantic, and atlantic was never handled like the other servers. Strange I know, but the evidence can never be totally removed (and they are really trying hard)
http://uo.stratics.com/shard/Atlantic/al_MageTower.shtml
If you are curious go look what they did of it... they replaced a beautiful memorial with statue and the eternal flame of mages (and LOTS of necromancy stuff, a clear insult, even a sacrificed wish surrounded with blackrock *known way of trapping and torturing them*)
Well instead, Messana didn't even pull up an actual screenshot and put dark wisps chests inside, piled them up like we were a bank, not a school...
Everyone that remembers the mage tower remembers about Jenny ...
http://www.atlantic-orcs.org/UOHistory/jenny.html
See it's ironic, there at the bottom, is me.
Raistlin of AMT
I was the man of honor for her wedding, along with Nick-of-Time and Odin.
But strangely enough even if Both Tiffirc and Jenny died (after fighting strongly with the ebay goldsellers), EA would not make any memorial, even after all they gave to reinforce the community and their immense contributions to the game (they even attended the live conferences so loved they were, and met Richard Gariott himself).
EA prefers to encourage the necros, whom I suspect to have made a FORTUNE out of Tiffric's rares. Whom I suspect to have TRASHED his writtings. Whom I suspect to have done many things...
But that point remains moot. As you can see, the AMT is abandoned and has become a kind of laughing stock for the Atlantic community, they are laughing upon two very strange graves ... and as I mentioned earlier, lore from UO itself says that Richard HAD BUT NO CHOICE to leave UO.
I knew em, it was his baby, he was forced to leave.
You sure you're not confusing Companion with Counselor?
When I was hired as a Companion, I filled out an application on the UO website and was contacted back. The training class I took was actually in an IRC channel. We bounced back and forth from the IRC chat to UO for training simulations and understanding of our "powers" After completing the class, a GM joined us on our home shard and confirmed were were logged in with the exact character that we wanted as our Companion. The GM then enabled all the Companion commands (like the command '=th' to automatically appear in Haven)
I remember about 10 others being trained as Companions during my class time. All on different shards as me, but I was friends with another Companion on my home shard. (He eventually lost his status one day while abusing his powers while annoying some reds in Fel)
I remember a Senior Companion as a type of supervisor. He popped in to chat with me on occasion whether I was assisting a new player or not. After the lawsuit I remember him showing up to tell me he was losing his Senior status and would be just a regular Companion back on his home shard and I would not see him anymore.
I couldn't create anything. The powers were limited to automatically appearing in Haven, generating lists of current young players logged in (and their location) appearing next to a young player, removing them from the new player queue, ect.
The only way you could "see" a Companion is if you were young. Then my overhead name said Lord Jynxx (Companion) I seem to remember my name would appear in purple too..?
Anyway, as I said before, I was able to do all Companion commands up until Stygian Abyss launched. After that, all commands ceased to work.
It's not a bad thing that they stopped the few who had their powers still enabled, since the ability to abuse them would likely go unnoticed. It's kind of sad that it took so many years to get around to stopping it.
But I think they should bring the program back. It worked.
No no... I was a seer during the time of the counselors.
Then I was fired, I became real bad, so they made me a companion to "shut me up"...
I had no applications to fill, followed no course. A GM showed up straight in game and robed me ; explained the basics and off I went.
They told me to behave, and I did, hoping to get a better chance at participating again.
Then ACB and the whole atlantic team was fired on the grounds that someone (they could not divulge) wanted free game time.
Maybe it was handled differently on some servers... but I remember ACB being the elder companion, he was around lately too and we talked about it... he remembers clearly as well.
I was the only companion not bound by the contract... and probably the only one under 18 as well...
Then I was fired, I became real bad, so they made me a companion to "shut me up"...
I had no applications to fill, followed no course. A GM showed up straight in game and robed me ; explained the basics and off I went.
They told me to behave, and I did, hoping to get a better chance at participating again.
Then ACB and the whole atlantic team was fired on the grounds that someone (they could not divulge) wanted free game time.
Maybe it was handled differently on some servers... but I remember ACB being the elder companion, he was around lately too and we talked about it... he remembers clearly as well.
I was the only companion not bound by the contract... and probably the only one under 18 as well...
W
Woodsman
Guest
If you cater to vets who might potentially return, you are catering to a very small group of people. Many who left will not come back, and it has absolutely nothing to do with UO. Either because of life changes - a lot happens over 14 years, especially for those old enough to have been playing the Ultima games prior to IX, or because UO was the only game in town until other MMORPGs that suited them started rolling out.
I feel like I'm insulting UO or at least the spirit of UO when I say that so many played UO because it was the only game in town, but that's what happened a lot. Every time a major MMORPG launched, it would peel away UO players. Up until World of Warcraft went into beta and then launched in 2004, EA was able to keep enough replacements coming in.
Everquest and Asheron's Call peeled away players who wanted a certain look to their MMORPGs. Camelot peeled away players who wanted a certain type of PVP. Star Wars Galaxies and EVE Online peeled away people who wanted some sci-fi and space mixed into their MMORPGs. EVE Online peeled away people who wanted some extremely hardcore PVPing. And then there was World of Warcraft in 2004. WOW has more people quit every year than UO had playing at any one time. And then there are so many MMORPGs that came after WOW, and each one of them appealed to different groups of people.
Take a recent one - Lord of the Rings Online. You know how many Lord of the Rings fans there are in UO? A lot. My god, the place is full of characters and houses and player-run towns named after LOTR stuff. I'm sure LOTR helped in the decline of UO in the past few years, because it gave some of those people what they wanted.
EA is a profit-driven company. If they were to look at catering to vets, are they going to cater to those vets who were around in 1997-1999 when there were 100,000 subscriptions and when UO had no competition? No, they are going to cater to post-Trammel and up through post-AOS when there were over 200,000 subscriptions and UO was still able to grow in the face of growing competition. It's all about the money.
Of course, if you played UO post-AOS and really enjoyed it, not much has changed, and if you enjoyed it in 2004-2005, you will enjoy it in 2011, and EA knows they don't need to do anything special.
You cannot keep going back to a well that is slowly running dry, because eventually you will run out of water, and by then it's too late to start looking around for more water.
When UO hits a certain subscription level, EA is not going to give the devs an ultimatum to get numbers back up to a certain point within a certain amount of time, they are going to do their bit about closing UO in 90 days, hand out refunds for those with six-month payments, and be done with it. They aren't going to talk about getting vets to come back, they are just going to close it.