Dot is just using hyperbole to make her point and shaming people to not argue. There are facts out there that classic versions of games are wanted and are profitable. Limited team aside, you can hire someone that is strictly for the classic versions if enough people subscribe to pay for it.
Everquest has found it profitable.
Runescape has found it profitable.
Warcraft is implementing it and hiring a whole new team for it.
You can argue around with opinions all day, but these are facts.
Lets look at the "facts" you brought to the table, without placing them in a contextual void.
We'll start with WoW: a game with ~10.1
million subscriptions that grosses OVER 1 BILLION DOLLARS A YEAR. Blizzard has an already-huge team and modern assets. They can piss away millions on speculative ventures without it hurting their bottom line. The mining of their millions of nostalgic past subscribers for more money
makes sense. Comparing WoW and UO is like comparing a Lamborghini to a Pinto. The upcoming Battle for Azeroth is likely to significantly blunt the effectiveness of Endless Journey, especially if their releases overlap to too great of a degree.
EverQuest and RuneScape are much better comparisons to UO, but it's still like comparing the aforementioned Pinto to a Cadillac ATS. While neither Daybreak or Jagex have published subscription numbers in a considerable length of time, both communities are significantly more vibrant than UO's. Runescape claims over 101K+ members online as I write this, which UO certainly can't match (even if only half that number are paid subscribers). Internet conjecture speculates EverQuest subs are between 75-150K, but who knows (10 of their 22 main servers are listed as "Medium," and 1 as "High" population ATM). Both games have ingame stores that simply put UO's to shame, so we can logically deduce they are a significantly greater revenue stream than UO's current offering. (Both games have also had their integrated stores a hell of a lot longer) Even with both games having been F2P for the better part of a decade, they probably still gross more than UO. They have the willingness and the resources to invest in their classic servers.
All three games still advertise to varying degrees.
All three games have a community team or liaison to interact with their players.
All three games at least attempt enforce their ToS/RoC, sometimes even publicly.
Now let's look at UO:
- UO has a 6-person dev team, 4 of whom do not code.
- Two people who actually make changes to the game code: Kyronix & Bleak
- 2 artists: Onifirk and Levitica
- 1 QA: Misk
- 1 producer: Mesanna
- EA holds the purse strings and collects all monies through Origin.
- They contract Broadsword to administer and develop UO.
- UO has an unknown number of subscriptions, but we like to throw out 50K because its an easy number to work with number.
- 50K subscription ≠ 50K players. Most players have multiple accounts, sometimes excessively so.
- A fair number of those accounts play the three-month-cycle.
- UO likely grosses significantly less than its main rivals.
- Broadsword doesn't have server code backups prior to the move from Redwood Shores to Virginia.
- No community person
- They have been virtually inactive on Stratics since September 30th (only 6 posts, all responses to bugs).
- Many M&Gs can charitably be described as hostile.
- No meaningful advertising since at least Stygian Abyss ('09)
- uo.com is woefully underutilized
- Doesn't even bother hosting a local copy of the newsletter or announce that it was sent out.
- The 20th Anniversary felt like a state secret outside the community
- Were any of the UO-friendly gaming sites even invited?
- No advertising of additions to the ingame store, they simply appear without fanfare.
- Devs have given random podcast interviews that are neither announced or retroactively linked to.
- UO's ToS/RoC enforcement is a joke.
- Mesanna isn't going to bother enforcement until EJ; likely because that's when the official forums return, and she wants to be able to infract posters.
- Mesanna has publicly said no to a classic shard on at least two occasions.
If Broadsword were to venture down the classic shard path, there would have to be a payday at the end. EA isn't going to throw money at UO for what could be a losing proposition. Those who want a classic shard like to point at the free shards as shining examples of the fact that it can be done - glossing over the fact that said shards aren't running UO server code, were made by people who specifically wanted to do it, and have a comparatively low overhead. Pinto to a Fiesta.
Maybe if Broadsword greatly expanded the ingame store or got enough people to resub through EJ they could convince EA that the money for a classic shard was a worthwhile investment. If so, great! But the cart cannot come before the horse.
Sometimes I shake my head and roll my eyes so much I wonder why I don't get headaches. The world moves on. FYI ya can't go back to the 1950s either. Just let it go.
