EA's failure as an organization

[Pan Arcane]

I have balls.. so here goes my post..

EverQuest
EverQuest II
Dark Age of Camelot
World of WarCraft
Warhammer
Final Fantasy
Lord Of The Rings
Conan

And now Darkfall is on the rise.

What do all of these listings have in common? They leech away from the common population in Ultima Online. Sad, but true.

Origin had in development what looked to be the best of them all, Ultima Online 2 or Ultima Worlds Online: Origin as it was labelled. We all know what became of its fate. Richard Garriot has become a bit if a clown with his whole Tabula Rasa dream too although thats a little off topic.

Let's talk about sustainability.

I feel it is only a matter of time before they close down half of the shards and give everybody free character transfers to move onto the ones that remain. It sounds sad, but it would fix UO. Or some day, they will just shut down Ultima Online all together. With the competitors today, it is inevitable.

Look past my post. Look at the playerbase on each of the North American shards. The only ones that stand out are Pacific, Atlantic, Lake Superior.

What is EA's failure as an organization? Failure to deliver!

Devoting resources to pointless causes - small yearly expansions as an attempt to generate revenues, artwork and 3D clients that nobody is interested in, etc. Change after change the community is becoming progressively worse and depleted. They are wasting money paying employees to build a 3D client. WHAT FOR?

There has been a huge movement toward a classic brand of UO. Thread after thread, complaint after complaint. Electronic Arts has never delivered. Their portrayal of a classic brand of UO is Siege Perilous, possibly the biggest waste of resources imaginable in the eyes of the true veteran playerbase (pre-2000).

Originally people cried out for pre-Renaissance shard. But now, imagine a pre-AOS style shard and how many former players would come back. Imagine an opportunity to profit. Imagine an opportunity to do something that would for once appeal to the customers.

CUSTOMERS ARE EVERYTHING.

However, they look at us as expendable "video gamers" before they look at us as customers or consumers. We will PAY for what we get.

EA's failure as a company is that they ignored the money maker that would be a classic brand of Ultima Online that they could leave alone, whilst continously enhancing the new variety which is what UO is today.

Unfortunately we are going to watch our great game suffer for this down the road.

Thanks for reading.

 

[JC the Builder]

And now Darkfall is on the rise.

You say say all that about EA and then point to Darkfall? A game run by a company who hasn't been able to put up a second server in over a month now, citing "complications". Darkfall is currently exhibiting a bit of UO history with invulnerability bugs, speedhacking (real speedhacking, not the stuff people complain about today), massive lag, etc.

 

[Bomb Bloke]

I feel it is only a matter of time before they close down half of the shards and give everybody free character transfers to move onto the ones that remain. It sounds sad, but it would fix UO. Or some day, they will just shut down Ultima Online all together. With the competitors today, it is inevitable.

Shutting down half the shards = losing a good deal of their playerbase with no way to recover it.

Losing a good deal of their playerbase = losing a good deal of their profits.

Losing a good deal of their profits = end of Ultima Online.

Frankly I think it'll just keep "ticking over" until such time as something really important breaks (for example, the devs decide they've had enough and quit all at the same time).

What is EA's failure as an organization? Failure to deliver!

Er, you do know that EA deals with far more then just a few MMOs, right?

These guys aren't just some little company that no one's heard of.

These guys are comparable to Microsoft in terms of how long they've been around, how well known they are, and how many evil stunts they've pulled off.

In regards to their MMOs, I don't think they care in the least as to whether any of their games becomes the "best in the market". All they need to do is make money. It's a lot easier to make a few different games on the cheap and soak up a large crowd overall then it is to make one really kickass game, because if that one kickass game fails then your basket full of eggs just got dropped.

Granted, each of the games will have it's own set of fans, and each set of fans will be disappointed in that their game isn't getting the treatment they think it deserves. But the extent of EA's interest only goes as far as whether the game is making money or not.

And why should they care? You say you'd PAY for a classic shard. But you're already paying for what's on offer.

Granted, your point is that there would be a lot more people paying, but if that were true, wouldn't the free shards be waaaaaay more populated...?

 

[Raina]

Dark Age of Camelot
Warhammer


Well, I have a feeling that if all of UO's customers moved to one of the two above games, EA wouldn't really care...

~Rai

 

[Gawin]

Granted, your point is that there would be a lot more people paying, but if that were true, wouldn't the free shards be waaaaaay more populated...?

you do know that the PRE AOS free shards are busier then any North American shard.

 

[GalenKnighthawke]

I have balls.. so here goes my post..

It takes no balls whatsoever to jump on a bandwagon and to start the 500th (give or take) Classic Shard thread on these boards. It also takes no balls whatsoever to extrapolate from loud people on message boards (especially a board like this one, which the loud people all-but-own) to the majority, or totality, of a player base.

*shrugs*

Whatever. You all will get your way sooner or later, I'm almost positive. When you do, I will congratulate you on your masterful campaign to make the few seem like the many.

The complaints will start within hours; half of you will complain about the time period picked for a Classic Shard, the other half will complain about not fixing the old bugs. When it fails, you'll blame "tRaMm135," or blame EA for in some way not implementing it properly.

-Galen's player

 

[Nexus]

I have balls.. so here goes my post..

EverQuest
EverQuest II
Dark Age of Camelot
World of WarCraft
Warhammer
Final Fantasy
Lord Of The Rings
Conan

And now Darkfall is on the rise.

What do all of these listings have in common? They leech away from the common population in Ultima Online. Sad, but true.

Origin had in development what looked to be the best of them all, Ultima Online 2 or Ultima Worlds Online: Origin as it was labelled. We all know what became of its fate. Richard Garriot has become a bit if a clown with his whole Tabula Rasa dream too although thats a little off topic.

Let's talk about sustainability.

I feel it is only a matter of time before they close down half of the shards and give everybody free character transfers to move onto the ones that remain. It sounds sad, but it would fix UO. Or some day, they will just shut down Ultima Online all together. With the competitors today, it is inevitable.

Look past my post. Look at the playerbase on each of the North American shards. The only ones that stand out are Pacific, Atlantic, Lake Superior.

What is EA's failure as an organization? Failure to deliver!

Devoting resources to pointless causes - small yearly expansions as an attempt to generate revenues, artwork and 3D clients that nobody is interested in, etc. Change after change the community is becoming progressively worse and depleted. They are wasting money paying employees to build a 3D client. WHAT FOR?

Err What?
Everquest has many more expansions than UO....


1. The Ruins of Kunark (March 2000)
2. The Scars of Velious (December 2000)
3. The Shadows of Luclin (December 2001)
4. The Planes of Power (October 2002)
5. The Legacy of Ykesha (February 2003)
6. Lost Dungeons of Norrath (September 2003)
7. Gates of Discord (February 2004)
8. Omens of War (September 2004)
9. Dragons of Norrath (February 2005)
10. Depths of Darkhollow (September 2005)
11. Prophecy of Ro (February 2006)
12. The Serpent's Spine (September 2006)
13. The Buried Sea (February 2007)
14. Secrets of Faydwer (November 2007)
15. Seeds of Destruction (October 2008).

There has been a huge movement toward a classic brand of UO. Thread after thread, complaint after complaint. Electronic Arts has never delivered. Their portrayal of a classic brand of UO is Siege Perilous, possibly the biggest waste of resources imaginable in the eyes of the true veteran playerbase (pre-2000).

Originally people cried out for pre-Renaissance shard. But now, imagine a pre-AOS style shard and how many former players would come back. Imagine an opportunity to profit. Imagine an opportunity to do something that would for once appeal to the customers.

Yea it would be fun...for a while...No one else does this...for the same reason it increases development cost...and no matter how much folks "claim" they would accept it with no furthered development, you have to remember that would include live events and everything....Also UO's only real Flaw in design (not bugs or cheats) is that PvP and Non-PvP are on the same Server...There's a reason no successful (well wildly successful) MMO has followed this pattern, you have PvP and Non-PvP servers...this means no griping and whining among the player base of a given server, it also assists in balancing...you can see the effects of a change Globally much better this way I think....

CUSTOMERS ARE EVERYTHING.

However, they look at us as expendable "video gamers" before they look at us as customers or consumers. We will PAY for what we get.

EA's failure as a company is that they ignored the money maker that would be a classic brand of Ultima Online that they could leave alone, whilst continously enhancing the new variety which is what UO is today.

Unfortunately we are going to watch our great game suffer for this down the road.

Thanks for reading.

Actually I like where the game is heading...if they don't introduce a working client that's more up to date with today's standards they might as well pull the plug, they would be alienating future players...the only down side of this is they are still building it to interface with a 11 year old steaming heap of swiss chesse coding that is so full of bugs it's hard to pin something down. With any luck once they get a solid 3D client out, they will look to doing a complete overhaul of the server side code (I doubt it though hope for it) into a more modern standardized programming language, using proprietary coding languages is flat out insane, you can't learn them in college, you can't easily adapt to them because they don't always follow the rules your taught. Bringing modern programmers on board who learned anything except Java (Please IBM when you Buy Sun PULL THE PLUG ON JAVA IT'S WORTHLESS) it's doing nothing to benefit them by trying to teach them a home grown fork of a programming language, especially one that's as old as what UO has for portions of it's code. Some of the more modern languages or versions of older languages are superior in their flexibility and overall ability than anything dating back that far including C++ and C. I could write an Emulator for UO in VB.NET and it be more stable than what we see most the time...and best of all any 1st year programming student could probably walk right in and pick it up......and be productive!

 

[Sorcon Gartius]

EA offered long term UO players a UO Pin that they could wear in Warhammer, same for DAOC. Warhammer was on track to being the next big thing until they ran into issues w/ Lag and being unable to stabilize the servers. I would have never even bought WoTLK if they hadn't nerfed the healers role in Battlegrounds.

 

[Viper09]

I don't think I would say EA is a failure as an organization as they have plenty of good games outside of the MMO market.

Perhaps you should re-state that and say they are not doing very good with MMO's? But even so, they have pretty good MMO games. Not as big as WOW, obviously, but decent enough to entertain people. With an MMO is huge as WOW, it's kind of hard to get out of their shadow.

 

[Remyi]

UO has survived longer than any other MMO, am I right? EQ is close behind. I would say it's been a success if they're still adding to the game, and not shutting it down. Failures would be games like Tabula Rasa, Anarchy Online, Asheron's Call 2...need I go on?

Edit: Forgot Age of Conan. The slide continues and Funcom reported a 4th quarter loss of $23.3 million. Subscriber levels for Age of Conan are now estimated to be below one hundred thousand. This is acording to DnB NOR Markets.

http://www.onlinemassivelymultiplayer.com/mmo-news/funcom-age-of-conan-is-dying-subscribers-under-100k-23-million-4q-loss-cfo-resigns-plus-combat-tutorial-video/

 

[Tek]

You forgot hellgate london in your list of failures.

also Warhammer isn’t doing as well as they had originally hoped and has shut down a lot of its servers and its population has dropped from 800k on opening to 300k.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/90081-Warhammer-Online-Merges-Servers

I can see that if merging serves works well for Warhammer it is possible they will try it with UO as well, the biggest issue being housing spaces & locations.

 

[Uvtha]

I have balls.. so here goes my post..

THANK GOD someone with "balls" could finally speak out on this issue. lol

 

[Sarsmi]

I have balls.. so here goes my post..

THANK GOD someone with "balls" could finally speak out on this issue. lol

haha I know right? It's par for the course to slam EA, tho I'd hardly call them a "failure" as an organization. They make 100x on console games compared to what they get from their MMO division. Whatever happens with UO or Warhammer certainly won't make or break them. I think they do pretty well with pogo.com too. They do have a long history of being extremely corporate and profit driven, and that has garnered them a lot of negative publicity (much of it deserved).

I don't think the OP really has a clear picture of what is going on.

 

[Connor_Graham]

I have balls.. so here goes my post..

EverQuest
EverQuest II
Dark Age of Camelot
World of WarCraft
Warhammer
Final Fantasy
Lord Of The Rings
Conan

And now Darkfall is on the rise.

What do all of these listings have in common? They leech away from the common population in Ultima Online. Sad, but true.

Origin had in development what looked to be the best of them all, Ultima Online 2 or Ultima Worlds Online: Origin as it was labelled. We all know what became of its fate. Richard Garriot has become a bit if a clown with his whole Tabula Rasa dream too although thats a little off topic.

Let's talk about sustainability.

I feel it is only a matter of time before they close down half of the shards and give everybody free character transfers to move onto the ones that remain. It sounds sad, but it would fix UO. Or some day, they will just shut down Ultima Online all together. With the competitors today, it is inevitable.

Look past my post. Look at the playerbase on each of the North American shards. The only ones that stand out are Pacific, Atlantic, Lake Superior.

What is EA's failure as an organization? Failure to deliver!

Devoting resources to pointless causes - small yearly expansions as an attempt to generate revenues, artwork and 3D clients that nobody is interested in, etc. Change after change the community is becoming progressively worse and depleted. They are wasting money paying employees to build a 3D client. WHAT FOR?

There has been a huge movement toward a classic brand of UO. Thread after thread, complaint after complaint. Electronic Arts has never delivered. Their portrayal of a classic brand of UO is Siege Perilous, possibly the biggest waste of resources imaginable in the eyes of the true veteran playerbase (pre-2000).

Originally people cried out for pre-Renaissance shard. But now, imagine a pre-AOS style shard and how many former players would come back. Imagine an opportunity to profit. Imagine an opportunity to do something that would for once appeal to the customers.

CUSTOMERS ARE EVERYTHING.

However, they look at us as expendable "video gamers" before they look at us as customers or consumers. We will PAY for what we get.

EA's failure as a company is that they ignored the money maker that would be a classic brand of Ultima Online that they could leave alone, whilst continously enhancing the new variety which is what UO is today.

Unfortunately we are going to watch our great game suffer for this down the road.

Thanks for reading.

Translated:

I want a classic server! Waaaaaaaaaah

 

[Chiera]

Translated:

I want a classic server! Waaaaaaaaaah

lol, yes... same old dead horse beaten from a different angle

 

[GalenKnighthawke]

lol, yes... same old dead horse beaten from a different angle

I'm pleasantly surprised that this post was recognized for what it was and moved.

Now if the moderators would just make universal the policy that shard-specific posts belong shard-specific forums.

-Galen's player