Freeshards!
Now mods, before you get twitchy, I saw nothing in the RoC about discussing freeshards, only advertising them. And the point of this thread is just the opposite.
I've often given thought as to why EA has never brought down the hammer on the people who run these. I made comment in another thread, that I appreciate fans doing what they do, for free, but imagine the revenue from some of these people coming in to continually develop our UO, the real UO, if they did not exist.
Now, you can argue that people play them because they can set the shard up how they want it, we all know this, but I've met several people over the years who left the real UO in order to go play freeshards, well, because they are free.
Why pay for something when you can get it for free?
I've seen the sub numbers for other "UO killers" over the years, like SWG, and EQ, EQII, etc. and it seems to me UO is doing rather well, still, after TEN and a half years. I don't see the others lasting that long. This says something. UO is something special. But we are losing massive amounts of revenue that could pay new devs, QA'ers, etc.
Why then is this allowed to go on? Too much work? If they sent notice to even just some of the people running these, threatening action, and the major freebies closed up, I'd venture to say that many would get the hint and come back to the real UO to get their fix.
There are a lot of untapped subscriptions floating around out there that we could add to our own community, if they were made to follow the rules of the real world.
I don't know, correct me if I'm wrong, but WoW has no freeshards right? SWG? EQ? EVE?
If it ever happened, couldn't you see Blizzard threatening lawsuits against people who set them up? Why not EA then?
Now mods, before you get twitchy, I saw nothing in the RoC about discussing freeshards, only advertising them. And the point of this thread is just the opposite.
I've often given thought as to why EA has never brought down the hammer on the people who run these. I made comment in another thread, that I appreciate fans doing what they do, for free, but imagine the revenue from some of these people coming in to continually develop our UO, the real UO, if they did not exist.
Now, you can argue that people play them because they can set the shard up how they want it, we all know this, but I've met several people over the years who left the real UO in order to go play freeshards, well, because they are free.
Why pay for something when you can get it for free?
I've seen the sub numbers for other "UO killers" over the years, like SWG, and EQ, EQII, etc. and it seems to me UO is doing rather well, still, after TEN and a half years. I don't see the others lasting that long. This says something. UO is something special. But we are losing massive amounts of revenue that could pay new devs, QA'ers, etc.
Why then is this allowed to go on? Too much work? If they sent notice to even just some of the people running these, threatening action, and the major freebies closed up, I'd venture to say that many would get the hint and come back to the real UO to get their fix.
There are a lot of untapped subscriptions floating around out there that we could add to our own community, if they were made to follow the rules of the real world.
I don't know, correct me if I'm wrong, but WoW has no freeshards right? SWG? EQ? EVE?
If it ever happened, couldn't you see Blizzard threatening lawsuits against people who set them up? Why not EA then?