I did one last weekend, in fact.
I will be xfering to ATL again come early April, so if you have anything you need sent over, you know where to find me.
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How to revive the dying shards
- Thread starter Yadd of Legends
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I will be xfering to ATL again come early April, so if you have anything you need sent over, you know where to find me.
Every week? How are the skeleton crew supposed to pump out weekly content?
This could easily be the death stroke for UO. It does not cost UO any more money to keep all shards open but could cost them the game by closing shards down. Not everybody wants to play on an over crowded shard.What I'd really like is to shut down all but 2 or 3 shards. Give everyone a transfer token for each character. Open 2 new clean shards to replace the shut down ones. One Saturday open em both up and watch the fun begin
I like playing dead shards,I have stuff on atl but moved to dead shard and I get to do stuff without running into greifers. When I want to PvP I log on atl and when I wanna do a spawn
Or fight andros I go to my dead shard. Only one guy that is a jurk but he can't find me every where
Or fight andros I go to my dead shard. Only one guy that is a jurk but he can't find me every where
Come to Siege and you will see the need for a Guild! You won't see many wearing em event items if they wish to keep them, and working together is the only way to get things done.
I've been on Siege. And I still find 99% of the time I'm playing SOLO. No one is around doing much of anything.
Are you in a guild, if not you should find one. I have said it in other post but the guild I'm in does something every single night.
I'm in a VERY large alliance supposedly. Though I never hear much of anyone chatting. And I can't play "normal" hours. I don't just play in Prime Time. I have stuff to do during Prime time with my friends on my home shard.
maybe hire one person per shard to do it
What hours do you play some of us were on pretty late last night. I would suggest you try talking in Gen Chat if anyone is around they will answer. If you need a hunting partner I am sure you can find one. I am sure my alliance wishes I would shut up at times. Maybe its time for a guild change, find people who play the same times as you do.
That would pretty much eliminate any profit, lolmaybe hire one person per shard to do it
I'm generally on all night Monday thru Thursday. In the wee hours of the morning CDT. I sleep all morning.
maybe a revolving cycle month timer.. each month a dungeon opens .. to a mini turn.in..
like they did with doom..
each month click.onto the next.. with a list of items for turn in.. pts .. could come up with some stuff.. and have the cycle hit all the dungeons... so.it would take over a year or two for a repete
like they did with doom..
each month click.onto the next.. with a list of items for turn in.. pts .. could come up with some stuff.. and have the cycle hit all the dungeons... so.it would take over a year or two for a repete
Numerous suggestions have been offered on how to revive less populated shards and increase overall player population. I think many are actually good suggestions. However, we'd need more than the present number of Devs, and more of a financial investment from EA, to effectively implement them. Sure would love to see that happen.
I don't know how many times that must be pointed out. People will lose castles and/or player communities and decide they're done. It does have marginal cost to have a shard hosted at AWS, but they'd lose far more in closed accounts than the status quo.
Nails Warstein
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Here is a thread I started on the same topic. There were some more good ideas in it, not just my own.
https://stratics.com/community/thre...-repopulate-shards-sorry-not-atlantic.303660/
https://stratics.com/community/thre...-repopulate-shards-sorry-not-atlantic.303660/
I personally have moved off atlantic to a "dead" shard (sonoma) and love it. Yes it is quiet, but for my style of game play its been great. EM support on the shard seems top notch and the player base is awesome. UO is a mmo, so people are naturally going to be attracted to the shard with the most people. I think as players age and start to understand the systems more, some will notice you do not need a shard full of people to enjoy the game nor be limited to anything in it.
That's a great idea, but how do you propose they PAY those people? Apparently hiring more than 6 people to run, troubleshoot, handle accounting problems, and do PR for the WHOLE game would "break the bank"maybe hire one person per shard to do it
Shhh, don't say anything good about Sonoma, or we will be overrun with people migrating to us! Oh wait, never mind.
I will say, Sonoma is an AWESOME shard to be on. Smaller population to be sure, but we are pretty self sufficient, and always willing to help each other out. A couple of idiots here of course, but I suspect they will migrate somewhere else before too long. Or get banned! COME TO SONOMA! Housing available, and a pretty good veteran group of players to hang out with!
sorry all those comments on new weekly content were just an allusion to that we do have an EM program that gets 50-100 people out on all the shards on a regular basis : )
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Those people don't actually play on those shards once the event is over. That's not repopulation so much as tourism.
true, but they probably play more if you add up all the time than most of the players who actually have a house on the shard.
For some people an hour a week is their total gametime. many people in fact, probably half of all accounts or more. Id say a shard being "populated" for a few hours a week is a success.
Id like to add, you know how easy it would be for the EM to just leave on the event spawn, for say 1 week before the event. Chance at rare item. say .1% to 1% chance depending on difficulty of the spawn.
This would provide almost continuous new, daily content with very minimal extra time involved to create it.
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I would rather they stay "home". Most of them care NOTHING for the EM "story" and just come for the drops.
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I wouldn't. Farming a shard to haul stuff back to Atlantic to sell is not repopulating it.
I also think it extremely unlikely that the cross shard group that descends upon EM events, at least half of which (if not more) is probably alt accounts, represents more play time on a given shard than the actual residents of those shards.
i hope your right.
If you get to know who the dedicated eventers are, probably about two thirds do really care about the story / plotline. Yes theres the cross shard eventers who care nothing for the story, but overall looking at the numbers a higher percentage of eventers care about the story than actual home shard players.
How to revive the dying shards?
The first and mainly - necessary stable functioning our shards.
When some shards have problems, and full week no one from devs fix this, it is already bad.
https://stratics.com/community/threads/developers-where-are-you-shard-europa-need-your-help.336271/
The first and mainly - necessary stable functioning our shards.
When some shards have problems, and full week no one from devs fix this, it is already bad.
https://stratics.com/community/threads/developers-where-are-you-shard-europa-need-your-help.336271/
You know what else they can do? Start banning people who are blatantly cheating - I don't care what some people on here say, the use of cheat programs is alive and well. Over the past few days on LS, I've been fighting a guy who does nothing BUT run, and he's ridiculously fast. I've commented on it multiple times & told him to turn the speeder off each time. That's only part of it - his casting? He quite literally CASTS WHILE RUNNING, and this is with protection up (he also has a max CF suit, but CF doesn't proc every time. I was spamming weaken on him earlier hoping I could get him to fizzle. It didn't happen ONCE.)
Before I logged out on my main account tonight, I paged, told the GM what he's been doing, and that if 3rd party programs are supposed to be illegal, they need to start doing their jobs.
I don't think they can even detect speeder. Then again nothing usually happens.
Nonsense.
The fact that siege exists blows your statement out of the water. No character or item enters or leaves siege from another shared. It's its own game.
Even despite that your statement is just pink and fluffy jargon. We are not all one shard at all.
i am playing on one of the low pop shards (Drachenfels) and i have a shared opinion here, first of all i like our great community, i can recommend everyone to come to DF and check out what the players are doing. but i also see the landmasses free from houses which makes me sad when i think back. moving items and chars to Atlantik to have more Population is no option for me because i cannot afford Castle there and my connection make it laggy to play there.
merging shards is not a bad idea at all, but this can only work if done right. for example.
i would not let people lose their homes as this is a very important part of the game. my suggestions would be more the following:
specify 3 shards (one for each region) + 1 or 2 siege ruleset ones
offer the players to move their complete stuff (include house and storage and chars) to a destination server of their choise, in order to hold these houses they can make nice maps with sea, desert, inslands, woods rocky stuff etc. and just fit in the houses into predefined plots, so when i got a 18*18 there are plots for 18*18s which i can choose upfront, same for keep and castle. i would forbid any player based placing on this "facets"
do this for a certain amount of time like a year then shut off the other shards.
of course some will not move because they like "their" shard, but in the end i would more like to live in Drachenfels Village on EMEA Region shard instead of having only 15 people left on my shard.
ALSO its neede of course to offer enough dungeons etc so that joining people are entertained.
AND WE NEED GYPSY WAGONS AND TENTS (one per account per server)
merging shards is not a bad idea at all, but this can only work if done right. for example.
i would not let people lose their homes as this is a very important part of the game. my suggestions would be more the following:
specify 3 shards (one for each region) + 1 or 2 siege ruleset ones
offer the players to move their complete stuff (include house and storage and chars) to a destination server of their choise, in order to hold these houses they can make nice maps with sea, desert, inslands, woods rocky stuff etc. and just fit in the houses into predefined plots, so when i got a 18*18 there are plots for 18*18s which i can choose upfront, same for keep and castle. i would forbid any player based placing on this "facets"
do this for a certain amount of time like a year then shut off the other shards.
of course some will not move because they like "their" shard, but in the end i would more like to live in Drachenfels Village on EMEA Region shard instead of having only 15 people left on my shard.
ALSO its neede of course to offer enough dungeons etc so that joining people are entertained.
AND WE NEED GYPSY WAGONS AND TENTS (one per account per server)
Yes!
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Smoot... are you serious here? That's more than a bit of an exaggeration.
YOU ACTUALLY SPOKE WITH A GM????? WOW, so they really do still exist!
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On the topic of shard mergers...
There is a player city on my shard that is 17 years old and still going. I'm sure there are plenty of other player cities of various ages and with various histories. There are old GM and seer blessed houses and areas. There are unique EM areas. There are established communities, both physical and social.
Merging shards would destroy all of that, and an awful lot of accounts would go down with their former shards. No, we are NOT all one shard. Far from it.
That history is not replicable. It is not movable. And it is valuable because even if the people who own those houses aren't playing, they are still paying to keep that history, those houses, those cities, intact.
And then of course there is grandfathered housing. Malas reward castles. Old improperly placeds. Even disregarding player cities and choice locations, it is completely impossible for some people to get back anything comparable to what they have now.
A house isn't necessarily just a place to dump your junk in UO. It may be for some players, but to many it is a home, a history, a part of a community. There would be too much lost revenue from shard mergers to make up for whatever glorious utopia anyone thinks they would create... not to mention lost revenue from shard tokens. They won't make shard travel free/equal for everyone supposedly because of token sales, so why would they want to reduce the number of shards AND alienate all those players who are attached to their homes, cutting off two revenue sources in one move? It would be like shooting themselves in the foot then smashing their own nose with the recoil.
Shard mergers would probably mean the end of the game. There is definitely an argument to be made that people should be able to play together and find others to play with more easily, but shard mergers are NOT the answer.
There is a player city on my shard that is 17 years old and still going. I'm sure there are plenty of other player cities of various ages and with various histories. There are old GM and seer blessed houses and areas. There are unique EM areas. There are established communities, both physical and social.
Merging shards would destroy all of that, and an awful lot of accounts would go down with their former shards. No, we are NOT all one shard. Far from it.
That history is not replicable. It is not movable. And it is valuable because even if the people who own those houses aren't playing, they are still paying to keep that history, those houses, those cities, intact.
And then of course there is grandfathered housing. Malas reward castles. Old improperly placeds. Even disregarding player cities and choice locations, it is completely impossible for some people to get back anything comparable to what they have now.
A house isn't necessarily just a place to dump your junk in UO. It may be for some players, but to many it is a home, a history, a part of a community. There would be too much lost revenue from shard mergers to make up for whatever glorious utopia anyone thinks they would create... not to mention lost revenue from shard tokens. They won't make shard travel free/equal for everyone supposedly because of token sales, so why would they want to reduce the number of shards AND alienate all those players who are attached to their homes, cutting off two revenue sources in one move? It would be like shooting themselves in the foot then smashing their own nose with the recoil.
Shard mergers would probably mean the end of the game. There is definitely an argument to be made that people should be able to play together and find others to play with more easily, but shard mergers are NOT the answer.
LOL if he actually spoke to a GM, he got more GM response than some do.
Barring server merges or (both impossible and undesirable) some kind of megaserver, the only thing that will revive the ghost towns is a large influx of players who don't immediately quit, who stick around and build houses and become invested in their server. There's some hope that the prophesied Steam launch will inject some vitality into the game, but will those players stick around beyond the initial trial and start paying a subscription fee? I kind of doubt it. The industry has moved beyond the subscription model and many folks will refuse to pay one now.
I'd love to see a new type of account introduced prior to the Steam launch that would allow access to one character on one server, at the box price of the game, but would not require a subscription. This "basic" account type would allow them to capture some of the crowd who otherwise would not play beyond the trial, a new group of potential expansion or game code purchasers.
I'd love to see a new type of account introduced prior to the Steam launch that would allow access to one character on one server, at the box price of the game, but would not require a subscription. This "basic" account type would allow them to capture some of the crowd who otherwise would not play beyond the trial, a new group of potential expansion or game code purchasers.
... if house placement would be possible with those account, it should be only the smallest house available and as soon as the account has not logged in for 90 days it should start to decay. No friends or coowners allowed.
Well, but this would open the unpaid account influx on IDOCs again ...
I wish. lol. I haven't checked my email, but one of this guy's guildmates was calling me & some of my guildmates apes, used the n word, etc. idk if he was paged on for that, but a few days ago (the same guy, obviously), he told me that I should kill myself and my mom. I IMMEDIATELY paged on him for that.
It is so sad that players get away with behavior like that. Just as sad that UO has obviously DECIDED not to enforce it's own rules. Whoever made, yes MADE, that decision should be fired immediately. But of course it's not going to happen.
I wish they would actually open up one more shard. Obviously my preference would be some form of a classic shard but if we can't have that at least make one last shard. No transfers to or from. New characters to be made. Start from scratch without the crazy inflation that is current day UO.
Wouldn't it get people out and playing again? Back to meaningful farming, doing hunts with guilds to collect powerscrolls or stat scrolls. Housing rushes for player run towns or gate hotspots. Maybe even limit the land masses to just Tram, Fel and Ish. Hell, is duping even possible if transfers can not happen?
We can't merge shards cause people will lose housing without a choice. However, this would give people an equal opportunity to place regardless of when they started the game. Without the inflation and current gold surplus...farming has a meaning again.
Wouldn't it get people out and playing again? Back to meaningful farming, doing hunts with guilds to collect powerscrolls or stat scrolls. Housing rushes for player run towns or gate hotspots. Maybe even limit the land masses to just Tram, Fel and Ish. Hell, is duping even possible if transfers can not happen?
We can't merge shards cause people will lose housing without a choice. However, this would give people an equal opportunity to place regardless of when they started the game. Without the inflation and current gold surplus...farming has a meaning again.
I haven't checked out all of the pages of the UO Stratics and what it all offers since the changes but here is an idea that may help any shard.
I suggested something like this about promoting your shard events in an earlier post but this is more of a twist to that idea.
In GW2 we have Bosses just like any MMO out there but Bosses are on a timer.
Link to one I use....http://guildwarstemple.com/dragontimer/events.php?serverKey=107&langKey=en
So if players from each shard could promote events, dates, and times, not on their own shard forum but a general layer event forum for all shards, players that do visit Stratics can see all shard events on all shards. If players have characters on most shards and can play on others where their home shard may not be so busy. Chances to meet new players on other shards and get to know that community as well.
Example below:
Player X home shard is Legends and its Wed night is usually a slow night so they come to the All Shards Event Forums and check out other player events and has developed chars on Origin, Baja, and Pacific. So they see that Baja is holding Doom Runs, and Pacific is having a PvP tournament, and Origin is having a RP event.
Players can even plan out their game time for the week to their own home shard and other shards they have characters available to events to their liking.
I suggested something like this about promoting your shard events in an earlier post but this is more of a twist to that idea.
In GW2 we have Bosses just like any MMO out there but Bosses are on a timer.
Link to one I use....http://guildwarstemple.com/dragontimer/events.php?serverKey=107&langKey=en
So if players from each shard could promote events, dates, and times, not on their own shard forum but a general layer event forum for all shards, players that do visit Stratics can see all shard events on all shards. If players have characters on most shards and can play on others where their home shard may not be so busy. Chances to meet new players on other shards and get to know that community as well.
Example below:
Player X home shard is Legends and its Wed night is usually a slow night so they come to the All Shards Event Forums and check out other player events and has developed chars on Origin, Baja, and Pacific. So they see that Baja is holding Doom Runs, and Pacific is having a PvP tournament, and Origin is having a RP event.
Players can even plan out their game time for the week to their own home shard and other shards they have characters available to events to their liking.
The only way to truly revive this game is to bring in new players. In numbers. The way to do that is through steam on a F2P basis. If the Devs and our producer (if we still have one .... she seems to have disappeared and is no doubt fiddling whilst Rome burns) continue on the current path of destruction then we wont have a game to play in 12 months. UO is shedding players by the boatload.
In other news, effective April 1st, Kate Upton will become the spokeswoman on Ultima Online!!!!! Just kidding, I wish that were the case. I bet she would bring in players by the 1000's. I will say this, I don't even know the name of the game she "promotes" but I sure want to try it. The way UO is run though, our "spokesperson" would end up being Skreech, from "Saved By The Bell". Which would bring in -50 players.
The way UO is run though, our "spokesperson" would end up being Skreech, from "Saved By The Bell". Which would bring in -50 players.
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Which is awesome. Sure we really could use more players...but imo, that shouldn't be forced. I hear far too many Siege players thinking it would be good to allow players to transfer in. I disagree and think it would do more harm than good.
Yes we have a very small primary player base...but for those that do play regularly, we have a real good cast of characters...la
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