That's just it....Everything I have read about MMOs and how they work leads me to believe that UO's still making boatloads of money....However, what I do think happened was that EA doesn't get it or know what to do with it. (You say this elsewhere in your post I believe?)
The sad truth of the matter is that not only did EA not understand what they had, Origin (later known as EA Austin) didn't either. Truth be told, they lucked into Ultima Online (and many of the original developers, including Garriott) will admit to such. UO became something that none of them expected it to be when they began, and followed with a success that, quite frankly, they couldn't keep up with in the intial months.
However, what's been lost is that the players, the veterans who have been here for years and years, see from the outside all of the potential that exists in the game model that is UO. What we don't see, unfortunately, is the server-side code that is twelve years old in many cases, in bad shape, and if I were to take a good guess, horribly undocumented from the beginning (and I'd guess it suffers from inconsistent internal documentation standards currently in the later years after being passed around so much).
So not only does EA not get how the model works (just look at The Sims Online, Earth and Beyond, Motor City Online, et cetera to find their trail of failed attempts), they also don't understand what it is that makes UO successful. This completely explains why they've moved to microtransactions over stuff that should be game FEATURES. Selling me a bookcase that will display books? Seriously? And yet they overlook certain microtransactions that could be success stories (though they have succeeded on stuff like soul stones, extra characters, extra storage space, which to me, is what a microtransaction should be).
What does shock and dismay me is that EA's lack of understanding of this business model (accept a smaller but steadier revenue stream, almost all of which is profit, and forego instant cash) was so total that they'd consider canceling UO.
The sad fact is that in EA's multi-billion dollar structure, UO is a pittance. While to any small company, UO would be a success that could keep a single company alive (if managed properly), in EA's pond, UO doesn't even make as much as some of its Nintendo DS titles in a year. And EA often looks at the buck, not the individual product.
Sure it might be possible that UO's not even profitable anymore, but we have specific reason to believe the opposite. (Was referred to here:
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/warhammer-time as "wildly profitable.")
UO certainly is profitable -- even I believe that presently -- and would be moreso if they put a decent development team together that worked to add to and recreate what is Ultima Online. For example, going in and moving to new code-bases for the server (slow and painful, but worthwhile to fix issues), and working on a new client that did not attempt to recreate what made OTHER games a success, but rather did a good job of improving upon what made UO a success -- and from there, creating a client that has the open scalability for future needs. But THAT would require a ground-up overhaul, not purchasing someone else's engine. What's ironic is that with all of the money spent on UWO:O, UXO:O, and UO:KR, if they'd have spent time working on an improvement to UO that would last, we'd have a new client that met the needs that it should.
So putting it all together.....EA saw the money coming in, and stupidly compared it to the initial release of a sports game (and/or compares it to it at its peak and doesn't understand that the market has changed a lot), sees the basic failure of KR, and wants to cancel it...Jacobs (who seems to understand the business model better) saves it.
What's worse is that they are currently comparing UO to WoW, WAR, EQ, and other successful games, and forgetting what it was that made UO successful to begin with. There's a reason that UO survived the birth of EQ -- they were not the same game. There's a reason that UO survived in a manner that SWG failed to (they changed it from skill-based to a leveller for those who don't know). There's a reason that UO survives today. It's NOT those other games. Now that's not to say that systems from those other games aren't a good idea to implement (the quest system comes to mind), but with something like that, simply doing it in the context of UO and its server is NOT good enough -- it must also function logically, strongly, and fit in. While the quest system "works," it's a failure in implementation.
So why am I still so dismayed? Because EA's still in-charge and one day could still the plug.
And now that I see how close we may have been to the edge, the more I figure that means that maybe we're not any further away now than we were.
Marc, I know these boards suck, but come here anyway.
It is, indeed, sad. And with the negative attitude toward UO displayed by the VP of EA's brand-new shiny entry into the MMOG arena, my faith in UO's future continues to dwindle.
