Devs: A suggestion for the sorting of "% Full" servers ...

[Wallenstein]

Well I'll make this short.. right now when you log into Ultima Online you have the options to sort the servers by Time Zone, % Full, and Connection Speed. When sorting the servers by % Full you'd imagine the most popular servers would be listed first, but the complete opposite is true. Rather than Atlantic, Europa and Great Lakes being the top 3 listed servers due to popularity, Oceania, Mugen, and Wakoku are the top three.. and also the least populous servers in all of UO.

When new members join and choose '% Full' they're being shown Oceania, Mugen, and Wakoku. Thus, many of them may assume these are the most popular servers and select one only to find out it's dead. This could easily cause the new player to quit thinking the game is dead, all while the most popular servers were at the bottom of the list.

Is this something that's going to be addressed with SA? Hopefully, because it really could potentially be causing new players to leave before they even have the chance to truly play UO.

 

[Lynk]

When I get to that screen ATL, Cats, and GL are the first ones to pop up for me.

 

[Wallenstein]

When I get to that screen ATL, Cats, and GL are the first ones to pop up for me.

Are you on 2D? Just tried again and the same results, it seems to be listing them from least to most popular.. Anyone else seeing this?

 

[Fogsbane]

When first going to the login page, I See

Legends
Atlantic
Lake Superior

BUT, if i hit the % Full, it sorts much like Wallenstein says -

Oceania
Mugen
Arirang

 

[Spree]

I always get Legends and Atlantic showing as first and second. Siege show up as 6th or 7th. What do the red and green dots mean I could never figure out what the mean.

 

[Lynk]

Well I have mine sorted by ping so thats probly why.

 

[Wallenstein]

What do the red and green dots mean I could never figure out what the mean.

They appear next to servers when you click one of the sort methods.

So, say you wanted to click all three buttons; Time Zone, % Full, and Connection. You would click them, and each will have a color dot appear next to the server corresponding to which sort method it matches. So, if you lived in England and clicked the Connection sort button, Europa would have a blue dot next to it because it matched your sort better than other servers.

You can sort by all three and all three dots will appear. Thus, if you are looking for a shard to play you can sort by all three methods and if one has two dots next to it then it means that shard matched two of your sorting methods-- and is probably a good shard to play.

Does that make sense?

 

[Sabbath]

Well I'll make this short.. right now when you log into Ultima Online you have the options to sort the servers by Time Zone, % Full, and Connection Speed. When sorting the servers by % Full you'd imagine the most popular servers would be listed first, but the complete opposite is true. Rather than Atlantic, Europa and Great Lakes being the top 3 listed servers due to popularity, Oceania, Mugen, and Wakoku are the top three.. and also the least populous servers in all of UO.

I'm getting the same results as you but I believe this is by design. Forgive me if I'm saying something you already know but I think the purpose of the "%Full" query is to help determine which shards are NOT full. The reasoning would be that "full" shards tend to have the most lag.

Now this used to be an actual problem but certainly isn't anymore. I do however experience this issue with another popular MMO I play - the devs actually "recommend" new players to choose some of the less populated shards due to all the lag we're suffering in the older, heavily populated shards.

The "% Full" query could probably be done away with in UO, at least for now. Or perhaps altered to show "Highest population" to make it serve the purpose that you suggest: for new players to find a more populated shard in which they might make friends and receive the assistance they need.

Again I apologize if I misunderstood your original point.

By the way, I thought it was very odd that when I selected % Full, Atlantic appeared near the bottom right in the middle of all the Japanese shards! LOL