Anyone think it would be smart for EA to advertise UO's depth of play?

[Tanivar]

UO lacks the modern pixel-crack, It's maybe been around longer than a few of it's current players. But it's got a lot of depth. There's far more to it than just hacking for weeks on the current set of big bad tough monsters for your current level.

Most other games out there have a single play option, hack on big bad tough monsters. End of story, thats it.

Why doesn't EA advertise UO's strengths? That there is more to playing UO than just hacking on a current set of big bad monsters set up for your current level. That your not locked into a set course of progress with UO. That your not stuck with one character class that has one locked solid set of abilities. That you don't have to start over and repeat that same set of monsters in the same order as the last time around.

They should inform potential customers that if your not into only hardcore combat that with UO you have other options. You want less high-stress gameplay after a rough day at work? You want a game thats fun to play when your bored and not in the mood for just heavy-duty combat? You prefer games that are more laid back? Farmville your style? Sim City your style? Try Ultima Online. You can heavy-duty hunt, light-duty hunt, go gather resources by Mining, Lumberjacking, Fishing, and more. Want to spend an evening playing something mellow because the workday was a bear and a half? Spend it Crafting items for other players or to sell to NPC businessmen. Want something even more relaxed? Herd animals, sheer sheep for their wool to sell, heck milk cows and sell their milk.

Ultima Online is a world you can explore. Your not locked into a set series of activities for the entire game.

Ultima Online is a world that grows as time goes by. It's been running for nearly fifteen years, improving steadily over those years. How many other games can say that?

If you like laid back gameplay where it's not all hardcore combat, come check out Ultima Online. A world that your character lives in, can do many different things in, can never kill one monster and yet be successful in.

Ultima Online.

 

[Uriah Heep]

I think i would be good if they would advertise, period. anything.

 

[Nails Warstein]

Features you left out that should be promoted as well.
-Create and design your own home (the types of styles and sizes of the homes should be expanded and any housing restrictions in Malas should be lifted)
-Enjoy dozens of quests which are NOT all grinding quests (should be hundreds to thousands more)
-Enjoy player led events/quests
-Taming your own pets
-Become a flying gargoyle
I'd also like an MMO like UO to integrate a social network system, UO has the best potential for this.

 

[old gypsy]

*envisions wording on 15th anniversary boxed set shipped to stores* [I can dream, can't I?]

"Venture into the enchanted world of Ultima Online, the granddaddy of multiplayer online games, where you can be whatever you wish to be! Become a powerful warrior or magic-user (virtuous or otherwise) and challenge the most fearsome monsters in the land! If fighting doesn't please you, become a skilled crafter, a hunter-gatherer, a tamer, a fisherman, a home designer, or even a gardener or chef! You can, in fact, become all these things and more in the wonderful fantasy world of Ultima Online!"

 

[Petra Fyde]

Actually, you could cover it in a tour of someone's home. From building it to furnishing it.
'my carpenter made those chairs', 'those are vanilla plants, I got the seeds by killing mobs in one of the dungeons', 'That painting my thief stole from the Fan Dancer's dojo, I didn't like the colour so I dyed it with some plant dye made by my cook', That painting was fished up by my fisherman, sunken treasure. Etc etc.

 

[Bryelle Vaughn]

Giving a tour of a town with all the amenities would be good as well. IE: Minoc with the mining area. Show the placement of a ship nearby, and the room in the hold. Maybe include a narrative, (more thought of from an rp standpoint), "A day in the life of..."

 

[Sir Ophid of Yew]

When people say UO is just a game, I tell them that it is more than that. It's a virtual world.

Much more so than WoW that relies so much on leveling and quests.

Ophid

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk 2

 

[Zosimus]

UO could be compared to many facebook social games just rolled up into one.

You have some really great points. Just competeing in todays MMO world is tough unless you have an advanatge to entice players. The issue isnt what UO has to offer, but what would it take in todays MMO player to come play UO? When EA makes comments about SWTOR may go to F2P that catches people attention.

There are many ways to advertise UO but why would EA invest in it? They left that department free of charge in the community's hand. I see many great ideas in this thread and I would suggest Facebook and a youtube channel contributed by the community as a whole that could help advertise UO.

 

[Mirt]

I personally think that some ads could make a huge difference especially if they were print adds where you talk about what you can do as opposed to trying to win over with graphics talk about how unique it is. If you bring them in it will make a huge change and then there might be more money for more ads and more improvments as well.

 

[Woodsman]

When people say UO is just a game, I tell them that it is more than that. It's a virtual world.

Much more so than WoW that relies so much on leveling and quests.

UO is very much a persistent world, compared to WoW, where you can't just toss things on the ground or build structures that will be seen by others. Games like WoW encourage you to throw away anything you're not currently using and move on, and they make no effort to tie you to a particular location. One of WoW's biggest strengths is bringing large groups of people together for raids, and yet they have no guild houses, because the designers do not want a truly persistent world. Of course, they have their reasons - nobody here could imagine something Cataclysm-like happening with UO where huge areas are laid to waste and reshaped. I'm not talking about something like New Magincia, but something on the scale of the Tokuno Islands or Malas.

There is one huge problem with the thinking that deep gameplay and a truly persistent world is enough to sell UO. That problem is that we've been saying all of this since the beginning of UO in 1997, since WoW came out in 2004, and the issue is constantly raised by MMORPG websites every few months, yet here we are, with a very small number of players.

UO needs a graphics update, among other things, if they want to attract people, because no matter how deep UO is, 15 years has proven that depth and a persistent player-driven world is clearly not enough to attract people.

And it's not for a lack of advertising or exposure - large MMORPG websites mention UO on a weekly or near-weekly basis in various articles.

All is not lost though. Games that are focused on depth and a persistent player-driven world can thrive and can even grow over time if they keep themselves updated technically/graphically and if they do a lot on the community side of things.

After all, EVE Online launched in 2003. It's a persistent world, it's player-driven. Hell, it's really the only major open-world PVP game left. And yet in 2012, they've not only reached their largest number of players ever, they are growing again, and they've got tie-ins planned that will only increase their numbers.

That's what pisses me off the most. EVE Online has shown EA how you can take a persistent, player driven world, focused on open-world PvP, something the industry turned its back, and grow it over time. It really pisses me off, because when EVE launched, they didn't even have the huge fanbase to draw upon like UO did. It's not like EVE Online has had a smooth run either, they've done plenty of things to piss off players, just like UO did, the difference is they bounced back, fixed the problems, and ultimately grew even larger as a result.

And CCP doesn't have a fraction of the resources that EA has at their disposal. Yet they've been able to do some amazing graphics upgrades, and they've been able to retain much of what makes it unique.

And for a bitter sense of irony, the EVE Online devs looked towards early UO for their PvP model. I'm mentioning that just because if EVE Online can learn from UO, EA should be able to learn from EVE Online.

This is a really long post, but clearly, if you look at EVE Online's growth, they did not rely on depth and a persistent player-driven world to finally hit 400,000 players a few months ago, they did the necessary things to attract people, such as graphics upgrades and community support and interaction.

 

[Woodsman]

If you want something really ironic, EVE Online even ran a major ad focusing on the sandbox aspect of EVE:


Anybody who thinks that a game like UO that is built around a persistent player-driven sandbox world cannot grow or compete in the face of the WoWs and RIFTs and other modern MMORGPs need only look at EVE to see that they are wrong.

 

[Driven Insane]

I think i would be good if they would advertise, period. anything.

I think I'd probably have a stroke and heart attack at the same time if I was watching tv one night and an ad for UO came on.

 

[Felonious Monk]

A friend of mine said "hey,I saw an advert on your game. I was thinking," my how endearing, my friends doesn't understand how dysfunctional EA is regards to UO".
It ain't gonna happen. Sure enough with a semi self satisfied air he said "ah here it is". Lords of Ultima.
I honestly wonder if EA wont advertise UO out of embarrassment. Take in consideration how easily our player base flips out and you can see the nature of the enigma.....

 

[Llewen]

I've said it over and over again. UO is highly marketable, it could be doing so much better than it is right now, but the idiot suits at EA don't give a flying f' about real gamers, and real games that are worth playing. All they care about is buying and destroying the next smaller successful gaming studio, and dreaming up more ways to micro-milk their customers out of their nickles and dimes. The worst corporation in the world? Maybe not. The worst gaming company in the world? Certainly the worst that I've ever heard of.

 

[Madrid]

It's a pipe dream for anyone who think UO can attract players without a major graphics upgrade. There is virtually zero chance any kids today would play UO the way it currently looks. Why would they when everything else on the market looks so much better. Even the video which Hawkeye Pike put together which was fantastic (It was like a Ultima Online Commercial) wouldn't be able to draw in new players because the resolution of this game is so bad.

So the answer no it's not smart of EA to advertise UO in it's current state.

Einstein's theory of insanity seems to be the one constant in UO.

 

[Driven Insane]

It's a pipe dream for anyone who think UO can attract players without a major graphics upgrade. There is virtually zero chance any kids today would play UO the way it currently looks.

Umm don't market it to kids duh.

Market it to people like most of UO's current players. People in their 30's, 40's and more. People who care more about the content of games over the latest 3d graphics.

Anyways, most of the games today (especially console games) blow and can be beaten in less than a week, unlike games when we were kids which took months to beat.

 

[MalagAste]

I'm going to say this and I really don't want to but I have to:

I don't think they should do any sort of advertising at all until they actually FIX the EC and get it working properly... No more crazy crashes, no more memory leaks and get the (*&)(*&)(& hotbars and healthbars working right. I'm absolutely sick and tired of not having a clue what the health is of the monster I'm fighting. And I'm also mad as all get out about the bug that makes it impossible for me to toggle war mode... How many times I've had to close down the client and reboot just so I can toggle into war mode and get a stinking rez I can't even say! And trying to get folk to play when they get frustrated by crap like that isn't going to be good at all.... infact it's going to have folk walking away faster than staying. Either you support the EC or you don't.... make up your mind and get on it. Many are getting FED UP with any new client because you bring it out then after a short while quit giving it your support.... and it flops from lack of support not from lack of use.

They need to get the bugs out.... 100's of them... especially age old bugs. And lets fix things like "Your spirit lacks cohesion for gate travel"... and other such BS. Lets have messes cleaned up and keep working on that new player guide and getting all the bugs worked out of that BEFORE we try to draw anyone NEW into UO.

It would be counter productive to try to bring folk into the game in the state that it is currently in.

And finally EA/DEV's/GM's need to take a FAR tougher stance on cheaters, hackers and scammers or you'll never get folk to come and stay. When 99% of other games on the market do a FAR better job of treating their customers RIGHT... what kind of message do you think that sends to potential new players??? NO ONE in their right mind would chose a game that treats their customers like liars, cheaters and thieves when other gaming industries treat their customers way better. If you get hacked other game companies RETURN your stuff... they even go after the hacker... Scammers in other games are caught and booted... and there are many games that take a very serious offense to the bots... Gil sellers and other things.

So before anyone thinks even REMOTELY about doing any serious advertising or recruiting of players some things NEED to be addressed. I see little point to trying to draw in new players when we know the game isn't ready to keep them.

 

[Driven Insane]

And finally EA/DEV's/GM's need to take a FAR tougher stance on cheaters, hackers and scammers or you'll never get folk to come and stay. When 99% of other games on the market do a FAR better job of treating their customers RIGHT... what kind of message do you think that sends to potential new players??? NO ONE in their right mind would chose a game that treats their customers like liars, cheaters and thieves when other gaming industries treat their customers way better. If you get hacked other game companies RETURN your stuff... they even go after the hacker... Scammers in other games are caught and booted... and there are many games that take a very serious offense to the bots... Gil sellers and other things.

Never ceases to amaze me how many people will argue that a decade plus of unchecked cheating hasn't had an effect on the game.

UO has a horrible reputation of being filled with cheaters and that even worse the people in charge do nothing about it and probably never will.

I truely believe that all of the cheating that has occurred over the years is in the top 3 reasons, if not the #1 reason, why UO's population continues to plummet. No one likes being continually screwed over, even if it's "just a video game".

 

[MalagAste]

Never ceases to amaze me how many people will argue that a decade plus of unchecked cheating hasn't had an effect on the game.

UO has a horrible reputation of being filled with cheaters and that even worse the people in charge do nothing about it and probably never will.

I truely believe that all of the cheating that has occurred over the years is in the top 3 reasons, if not the #1 reason, why UO's population continues to plummet. No one likes being continually screwed over, even if it's "just a video game".

I'll say this... I "know" dozens and dozens of people who have come and gone from the game...

Even though I play mostly always on GL's I have had 100's of friends over the years and even more contacts. People I never even played with would tell me things over the years. One of the biggest complaints I've seen over the years has been about being cheated, hacked or otherwise scammed and how EA and the DEV's treated the "victim" as the culprit. You got cheated because YOU... either did or didn't whatever. No I'm very sorry you got hacked. But You had to have been cheatting! You where using a 3rd party program or they couldn't have hacked you!... I knew at least a dozen folk who were hacked through their e-Mails. And you know where their e-Mails were posted? On forums like this... Not through any 3rd party program they downloaded. Heck a few of the folk that I know who got hacked and lost tons of stuff including beloved characters... wouldn't even KNOW how to install a 3rd party program, let alone use it. They played UO and they loved it until they felt ****d.

Many folk say "Oh it's just pixel crack"...... but to me that's a lie. After playing a game 5, 10, almost 15 years I'll say this.... to many folk what I have in my homes in UO all the pixels... and my characters ..... are like my children and my own home... would I want anyone who came in and harmed my children or robbed my house prosecuted????? Hell YES I would! Would I feel violated?? Hell YES I would!... Do I want to be told that it's my fault I had my children deleted and my home taken away??????? Hell NO.... would that make me want to never play another EA game?????? You bet your life! Would I want to go to another game where they treated me better??? You bet. So do I blame a single person that has quit because they felt that they were treated poorly by EA????? NOT in a million years. Do I blame them for never wanting to come back????? Nope. Do I miss them? You bet.

Many times it's the actual players of the game that have driven away sooo many people. For a long time my shard has had the misfortune of having a guild on it that while VERY large has had the reputation of being HORRIBLE.... and I don't just mean that they aren't nice. They have a reputation of purposely going to events to spoil them for others. They show up to heckle, to harass and to purposely grief. They don't care and they make no apologies for it. They act like a bunch of 3rd grade bullies, yet time and time again there was nothing anyone could do.... eventually many folk either quit putting on events... or moved events into private homes where they could ban folk... or they left the shard and some even quit the game over treatment they received from this particular group. THAT has hurt the community on GL's terribly. Was that the fault of the DEV's? EA? Who's to say.... I put most the blame on the players. Even I have certainly reduced the number of events I host. Why? Because either folk show up like them that are only there to hassle and harass... or they don't show up because they only want "stuff".... stuff "worth" 100's of millions in Gold they think they can make a buck on. They don't show up for the reason the event is hosted.... which is to have fun and be entertained...

I'm not sure when it happened but I'll say AoS certainly helped... but at some point UO quit being about fun and entertainment and moved to work and money. Somewhere UO lost the fun and became about Money and greed. Something that has SERIOUSLY fueled Cheating, Stealing, Duping and Hacking. It is my "HOPE" that we return to fun and forget the greed. But somehow I rather doubt that will happen. If we could find a way to return to the fun and lose the greed... I think that coupled with fixing the game and REALLY fixing the game... I mean DEV's putting nose to the stone and fixing bugs and clearing up things that are confusing and such... would bring back players. If EA would start adopting many of the practices used by other Gaming Industry leaders and start treating their playerbase not as thieves and liars but treating victims as victims and stop cowing to the REAL thieves and creeps then I think UO could grow again and become something really spectacular. But until then we will continue to lose p(l)ayers and friends.

 

[lancelot99]

Advertising it would be great but i would recommend maybe some volunteer old timers to help guide new players into the game, and try to avoid the many *****oles who would try to stifle the game for the new players with various garbage advice... (see below)
** Ohh you must make a Sampire if you want to play this game as all other templates are useless etc ...
** Kryss is the only weapon you need, all other weapons suck etc ...
** You need orny/apron/orb/Super enhanced weapons/armour to have any fun in the game etc ...

These things really turn a new player off (speaking from experience)

 

[Tanivar]

I'll say this... I "know" dozens and dozens of people who have come and gone from the game...

Even though I play mostly always on GL's I have had 100's of friends over the years and even more contacts. People I never even played with would tell me things over the years. One of the biggest complaints I've seen over the years has been about being cheated, hacked or otherwise scammed and how EA and the DEV's treated the "victim" as the culprit. You got cheated because YOU... either did or didn't whatever. No I'm very sorry you got hacked. But You had to have been cheatting! You where using a 3rd party program or they couldn't have hacked you!... I knew at least a dozen folk who were hacked through their e-Mails. And you know where their e-Mails were posted? On forums like this... Not through any 3rd party program they downloaded. Heck a few of the folk that I know who got hacked and lost tons of stuff including beloved characters... wouldn't even KNOW how to install a 3rd party program, let alone use it. They played UO and they loved it until they felt *****.

I suspect that EA is this way because too many of those people who enjoy getting items they can sell for mega-millions have likely called EA Customer Service and demanded that these mega-million gold items that were 'lost', 'stolen', or whatever be returned to them **now**!

<on phone with ES CS>

Yeah! I lost This! & This!, & This!, and This! and and and This! No wait... thats from Stars Wars... I lost This! & This! and... <on & on & on>

Unless they document every item in the game and what happens with it everytime a Player so much as mouses over it, they can't be sure it even ever existed much less was 'lost', 'stolen' or whatever.

EA created this situation when they made UO a near clone of a Blizzard game back with the release of UO:AoS and added all the junk item clutter to this game. They definitely did create an Age of Shadows in what had been a much better game before that Shadow was cast over it.

Until EA decides to:

ban Players who grief other Players until those other Players take their monthly account payments elsewhere.

ban Players who use Robots to farm goods 24/7 (how does the owner of that account stay awake 720 hours straight each & every month anyway? Maybe EA should force them to log out for 10 hours sleep at least once each month. A Player could die from staying awake 720 hours a month, month after month, and his family could sue EA!)

& ban Players who get their jollies swearing on the Chat system on & on & on. (Just set up a subroutine to watch for certain series of letters with a space before & after them, and flag a GM whenever they appear.

Have CS auto-email the account owner every time an account closes and find out why they closed it. Such documentation might show some common causes as to why EA is losing those monthly account fees, and changes could be made to slow the bleeding away of more monthly account fees.

 

[Sir Ophid of Yew]

What is Eve Online?

 

[Tanivar]

Advertising it would be great but i would recommend maybe some volunteer old timers to help guide new players into the game, and try to avoid the many *****oles who would try to stifle the game for the new players with various garbage advice... (see below)
** Ohh you must make a Sampire if you want to play this game as all other templates are useless etc ...
** Kryss is the only weapon you need, all other weapons suck etc ...
** You need orny/apron/orb/Super enhanced weapons/armour to have any fun in the game etc ...

These things really turn a new player off (speaking from experience)

And tell new players there's nothing worthwhile to do until you've got a maxed out skills character.

& tell them to sit and hammer on a golem for a week or two as the best way to train their characters skills up. <yawn>

I'd certainly be willing to mentor a newbie. I'd have them roll up the flavor character they want to play and take them out hunting the monsters they can handle. Making them minimal gear while I do it. I've made up characters where I've dumped the starting skill points into skills I don't plan to use and started with zero skills hunting rabbits. A new player learns this world and how to survive in it this way, and it's fun.

 

[Woodsman]

What is Eve Online?

It's a persistent, player-driven, open world PvP MMORPG that is just about as close to a pure sandbox as you can get in a mainstream MMORPG.

They were directly inspired by UO - Gamasutra - Features - Interview: Evolution and Risk: CCP on the Freedoms of EVE Online

“The founders had two passions which they wanted to join,” explained Richardsson. “The sci-fi feel and vastness of space from Elite and the social interaction of massively multiplayer and player vs. player gaming from Ultima Online. I should also add that they were quite active PvPers in UO and this is the main reason for our emphasis on PvP. We feel that the emotions involved with losing something of value is just as important as gaining something of value, it makes a very immersive experience. There have to be lows to make the highs more enjoyable. PvP allows us to achieve that.”

Not only did they borrow from UO's early days and early PvP, they also "borrowed" some of the UO devs and community relations people along the way.

It's also a the best example that a persisten, player-driven sandbox-like game can still succeed. They are more successful now than they were when they launched nearly 10 years ago, and they've done it by sticking to their roots and making the necessary technical/graphic upgrades along the way.

It shoots holes in the theories of people who think that UO can never really grow unless it became like World of Warcraft.

Actually it pretty much destroys the theories of people who think games like UO can never be big again. Plenty of MMORPGs would kill for 400,000+ subscribers and as rabid of a fanbase as they have.

 

[Woodsman]

As for the cheating and scripting, it's in every single MMORPG out there. No matter what game you're in, you can't get away from it (although you can ignore it and pretend it doesn't happen). SWTOR had people scripting and doing RMT on launch day.

And Diablo 3 has an in-game RMT auction house - I've already almost paid for the game with it, and I'm just selling stuff that I no longer need. I imagine there are people who are farming/scripting the hell out of it.

Cheating/scripting are big problems in UO, we see them every day in Luna from the scripters doing their rounds, we see the gold for $0.35 a million, but honestly, they aren't what's keeping people away or what drove most people away. Go out and look at the comments on MMORPG.com or Joystiq.com, a lot of the comments about UO are not "I quit because of the scripting/cheating" but "UO's graphics LOL" or "God I wish they made UO2."

We seem to forget that UO had very little competition in its early years. Asheron's Call and EverQuest had an impact, and while they had upgraded graphics and PVE options, UO was still drawing in enough new people to stem the losses to those games.

But after World of Warcraft, Star Wars, EVE Online, and some of the others started to really take off in 2004-2006 (when the media really noticed MMORPGs) and combined with AOS really starting to alter the game, that was when UO really began losing players.

Scripting/hacking don't hold a candle to UO radically changing the combat and crafting systems in combination with an explosion in choices for MMORPGs.

But UO can still recover, it just needs some work and the graphics upgrade. EVE proves that persistent play-driven sandboxes can succeed, and it's open world PvP no less.

I think we just notice the scripting/hacking because it's been so long since there was a mass banning and because we see the scripters making their rounds in Luna in plain sight. I don't think there is any more or any less scripting/hacking than during UO's peak. Probably less if anything since there is a fraction of the players there used to be.

UO's reputation among the mainstream/non-players is not one of cheating/hacking, it's one of outdated graphics.

 

[MalagAste]

Woodsman It IS about cheating... hacking and scripting.... Outdated Graphics and the laughable customer service..... top that off with the INSANITY of the billing system and I honestly have ZERO idea what would compel ANYONE to give UO a second glance. Ask any former UO Player about UO and they laugh... it's ancient graphics and lack of High Def/Res quality.... is just a drop in the bucket...

The art update that Grimm was working on needs to be one of the top priorities not the last.... finishing up MYUO and getting that back up and running needs to be addressed.... FIXING the Nightmare that is the Billing system has GOT to be taken care of...... NO ONE will return because quite simply they CAN'T. You know how many have said well I tried to restart my account but hell I can't get it to work...?????? I myself have had a heck of a time getting that all straight and I'm still not all fixed back up on my billing cycles.

And then add in the deplorable reputation of EA Customer Service and I think you have a picture of what needs done... I don't want to see a big ad campaign until they get the game back in order, the website back up and functional and the graphics updates IN.