The way i see it is that a classic shard consists of three things, out of the many posts i read
-PVP anywhere, no insurance
-No high intensity armor, no artifacts, etc
-pk vs anti pk community
2/3 of these points can describe siege if siege had more players, and siege is still dead so therefore a classic shard would be as dead as Siege. this is why they arnt going to make a classic shard.
If most of the player base don't like the siege ruleset, what makes anyone think that a classic shard would be popular? makes no sense to me.
Your reasoning is correct.
Now here is some more detail, copied and pasted from a previous post I made on this topic. Because it was made for a similar but not identical thread there are some differences between the older post I was replying to and this one, the most notable of which is that I was replying to a PRO-custom rules shard thread, whereas this post (thankfully) is against the idea.
Anyway, here goes and remember this is a response more to the idea than to the specific post...Here we go.
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Others have made the point that creating a custom rules shard is impractical at best. We've been told by multiple dev team members (most notably Draconi) that the old code is gone and was not kept, and he's also described the poor state the game's documentation was in when he was on the team. (I note that WoW is a younger game and, based on what I've seen of the game and its team, way better documented and has access to historical information about itself that we only can dream of.)
To say they "could" do it is pointless. They "could," given an unlimited amount of time and money and personnel, code in anything they wanted, including a different rules set on every shard. They also "could" fix some pretty basic bugs that we'll never, ever see fixed. (Don't open books in the EC; don't go to EM events in the CC except under rare conditions, and then don't go to EM events in the EC; etc.)
So in the bulk of this post I'm going to focus on why this is a bad, bad idea even if it were possible. The long and the short of it is that the assertions the proponents make are flawed at best and demonstrably false at worst.
Like all custom rules shards proposals, this one at some point devolved into a pre-Trammel thread. Such threads usually begin by suggesting pre-AOS as the rule set to use, this one had a slight variation in that it used pre-Publish 16, then eventually the true intent becomes clear: pre-Trammel or bust!
The rather bizarre and unsupportable premise of such threads is that the pre-Trammel days were more successful, and were so on the basis of being pre-Trammel, and that bringing in a custom rules shard would emulate that success.
The proponents forget what should be obvious: That there was way more limited competition in the pre-Trammel days, that most players left Fel behind when Trammel was created (because few wanted the Fel lifestyle), and that UO's competition that was successful was way less Fel-like than UO ever was.
If the premise of these custom rules thread was true, the following list of things also would be true. But, as you're about to see, they are not.
Publish 16 never would have happened. Posts from the dev team at the time said that Publish happened because most people had left Felucca for Trammel and there was a need to balance out server loads for a greater degree. If Trammel hadn't been a success, most people never would've left, and Publish 16 never would have happened.
But it did happen.
(Same for the Dungeon Khaldun a little bit earlier -- they were creating content for Fel as a lure because most people didn't want the lifestyle that place promoted.)
Let's go back further: Trammel never would have been created, because the discontent created by Fel never would have existed and thus there never would have been a need for it.
But it was. (Then see also above.)
People wanted to just play, not be stolen from, killed at the new player spawn point, called names, etc.
Richard Garriott's Memorable Moment from UO would not have consisted of a realization, caused by an incident of one player harming another, that he had to think hard about the rules of the world he'd created.
But it was.
Link:
Memorable Moment – Ultima Online
Starr Long would not have indicated that the creation of Trammel was necessary when he spoke at the 15th anniversary anniversary party.
But he did. (Lost the link for this long ago.)
Siege and Mugen would be the most-populated shards in UO because people would like to play that way.
But they are not.
There never would have been a need to have the Siege housing gimmick as people would have played there without it, because they liked to play that way.
But there was.
The Fel Abyss spawns would be crowded with folks doing them. (The undead one in particular has a lot of cool content and good rewards.)
But they're not.
There wouldn't be posts on Stratics complaining that VvV was dead, because people would jump at the chance to PvP.
But there are those posts.
Games that came out post-UO that had more of a Fel type environment would be prospering, whereas games that came out post-UO that had more of a Tram type environment would be failing. Everquest would be dead, Shadowbane would be thriving. Pre-Tram UO free shards would have huge populationsm dwarfing the proper game itself.
But that's not the case. Shadowbane is dead. Darkfall has 3,344 likes on facebook;
Everquest has 66,431; UO has 27,757. I found a Facebook page for a free shard! Number of likes: 3,773. I found a Facebook page for another free shard, specifically dedicated to the Second Age era. Number of likes: 1,680.
Darkfall Online
EverQuest
Ultima Online
(No links for the free shards so as not to break the Stratics TOS.)
Note that the free shards don't have a lot of likes, way less than the "official" UO that supposedly needs rescuring by a new rules set.
Facebook likes aren't a perfect indicator of a game's popularity but it's a much better metric than individual posters. (Consider how little time it takes to "like" and how much time and effort it takes to post. Clearly we're going to get the extremes here on Stratics and therefore aren't going to be a representative sample. I've met way more people who just play than who post.)
Regarding the "classic" free shards, I note that they're free (which for those who don't know, means they do not charge subscription fees, and that's usually a powerful incentive to give a product a whirl), offer additional content or services that aren't in the real game (I've seen cool customized pets, mass bannings of cheaters, and stellar customer service), and frankly aren't as populated as they're reported to be here.
Finally, Fel would be so popular on its own that threads like these wouldn't exist. We wouldn't need a custom rules shard (because, rest assured that is what this is -- the team would have to rebuild it from scratch to please a vocal minority). The old rules never would have left.
I could go on and on.
I miss the days of Petra, who would do her best to nip these threads in the bud, recognizing that the mere raising of the issue is toxic for the environment here.
I don't expect to post in this thread again because it'd be pointless. The false assertions have been made and I and others have done my best to counter them. Those of you who will continue to make your faith-based posts in the face of all reality.
Finally I note that this thread is great proof of something I pointed out in another thread: That Stratics posters are a way more intense bunch than the game's normal population and that we aren't a representative sample of anything. If "normal" UO players liked the pre-Tram rules we'd still have thm today and this tread wouldn't be here!