no love from gaming magazines

[onthefifty]

was in the train station going home yesterday. had a few min before my train came in so i went to the news stand and picked up a pc gamer mag.

they had an article on lineage celebrating its 4 year anniversary. i didn't read the article as i could give two hoots about lineage but the point is, i've been making an effort to brouse through the mag's every month looking for any articles on uo. we just had the 10 year anniversary and i don't think i saw 1 publication do an article on it. I don't understand why this is so.

They had articles on different events in wow. Nothing on our event. The only time i see uo mentioned is when they reference Sir Richard who was the founder of UO.

Than I see the JWilson slimes running around and understand JWilson gave UO a bad review. Reporters are typically a hater group of people and I wonder if they have sort of blackballed us. That or the fact that since EA
never buys ad space for UO in these pubs, the magazines don't write about it, rather choosing to do stories on games that pay for advertising, sort of like knowing which side your bread is buttered on.

any thoughts on this matter?

 

[JC the Builder]

we just had the 10 year anniversary and i don't think i saw 1 publication do an article on it. I don't understand why this is so.

Because EA didn't do anything big for the 10th Anniversary. 9th Anniversary turned out to be bigger than 10th, it even had its own box edition.

In my opinion there were big plans for 10th but then Kingdom Reborn fell apart, Stygain Abyss got delayed indefinitely and there was no backup plan. We ended up with some artifacts which are not even special anymore because they have been spawning for 6 months.

 

[Coppelia]

I think all the gaming magazines and websites I consult mentionned 10th year UO anniversary. But not to the point they'd make a full article. KR was also mentionned at its release in websites news.
I've read some "that makes me want to see how it's become now" comments.

But seriously, it's useless to target gamers on magazine with a 10 year old game which always failed with modernized clients but still costs the same fee than new games. Either you scrap it all and start a brand new UO and make people pay for it, or you keep the old UO style, make it a more nostalgic game or an user-friendly game (low PC requirements, lots of quiet things to do ingame) but then you can't sell it at the maximum fee of the market, sell the expansions full price, have an online shop and sell again "special edition" with "unique" items if you want to be ripped off.
EA are damn vampires.

 

[ColterDC]

I can just imagine the article they'd write about UO.


"The game is older than dirt. The graphics are from the early 90's and the sound is so bad everyone turns it off after the first day. 70% of the playerbase cheats in one form or another. There is no in-game support staff. The in-game market is so inflated no new player can possibly hope to compete. There's 1 Dev working part time on the game."


Be glad they don't write articles about UO.

 

[Trebr Drab]

UO could provide the "alternative" play style so many want now, after getting tired of the level grind. They're still half way there to the sandbox "worldly" game that was originally designed, even after these years of trying to mimic parts of other games in this mish-mash mess. That would give UO a boost, especially if they updated the 2D art, used the 3D for spell effects, and generally used their heads for a much more appealing look. I mean, as long as it's stuck in a top down view, who really cares about the details as long as it looks and plays really nice?

Then they'd get some publicity.

 

[dielock]

was in the train station going home yesterday. had a few min before my train came in so i went to the news stand and picked up a pc gamer mag.

they had an article on lineage celebrating its 4 year anniversary. i didn't read the article as i could give two hoots about lineage but the point is, i've been making an effort to brouse through the mag's every month looking for any articles on uo. we just had the 10 year anniversary and i don't think i saw 1 publication do an article on it. I don't understand why this is so.

They had articles on different events in wow. Nothing on our event. The only time i see uo mentioned is when they reference Sir Richard who was the founder of UO.

Than I see the JWilson slimes running around and understand JWilson gave UO a bad review. Reporters are typically a hater group of people and I wonder if they have sort of blackballed us. That or the fact that since EA
never buys ad space for UO in these pubs, the magazines don't write about it, rather choosing to do stories on games that pay for advertising, sort of like knowing which side your bread is buttered on.

any thoughts on this matter?

It,s all about the money, always has been about the money, always will be about the money.

 

[love2winalot]

Hail: You have to spend money to make money. This is built on Product confidence, ie "return on investment". Clearly there is no such confidence in UO from EA/Mythic. They are just trying to stop the bleeding, one band aid at a time.

I wish they would just sell the game to someone else, Ubi Soft as example. The KR client was suppost to be the savior of the game. All it did was divide the player base, 2d vs kr, and because no market reasearch was done prior to this, you have the current stalemate we are in now. Plan A faild, and there is no plan B. shakes head in dismay..........

 

[GAMBIT35]

was in the train station going home yesterday. had a few min before my train came in so i went to the news stand and picked up a pc gamer mag.

they had an article on lineage celebrating its 4 year anniversary. i didn't read the article as i could give two hoots about lineage but the point is, i've been making an effort to brouse through the mag's every month looking for any articles on uo. we just had the 10 year anniversary and i don't think i saw 1 publication do an article on it. I don't understand why this is so.

They had articles on different events in wow. Nothing on our event. The only time i see uo mentioned is when they reference Sir Richard who was the founder of UO.

Than I see the JWilson slimes running around and understand JWilson gave UO a bad review. Reporters are typically a hater group of people and I wonder if they have sort of blackballed us. That or the fact that since EA
never buys ad space for UO in these pubs, the magazines don't write about it, rather choosing to do stories on games that pay for advertising, sort of like knowing which side your bread is buttered on.

any thoughts on this matter?

I can't believe that you are in a bubble and believe that UO is relevant in society today. UO is a NICHE game with very few people playing it. Why would a magazine write an article on it. Seriously, if they put a screen shot of UO in a modern gaming magazine, people would laugh their behinds off.

 

[Fink]

Actual conversation:

Friend: "You play any MMO's?"
Me: "Yeah, Ultima Online"
Friend: "Never heard of it, is it new?"
Me: "Actually it's 10 years old"
Friend: "So.. what, it's like, abandonware?"
Me: *sigh* "Pretty much"

 

[Kaj]

was in the train station going home yesterday. had a few min before my train came in so i went to the news stand and picked up a pc gamer mag.

they had an article on lineage celebrating its 4 year anniversary. i didn't read the article as i could give two hoots about lineage but the point is, i've been making an effort to brouse through the mag's every month looking for any articles on uo. we just had the 10 year anniversary and i don't think i saw 1 publication do an article on it. I don't understand why this is so.

They had articles on different events in wow. Nothing on our event. The only time i see uo mentioned is when they reference Sir Richard who was the founder of UO.

Than I see the JWilson slimes running around and understand JWilson gave UO a bad review. Reporters are typically a hater group of people and I wonder if they have sort of blackballed us. That or the fact that since EA
never buys ad space for UO in these pubs, the magazines don't write about it, rather choosing to do stories on games that pay for advertising, sort of like knowing which side your bread is buttered on.

any thoughts on this matter?

I worked for a pretty big gaming magazine and even had a column about just UO for a while. But this was ~7 years ago.

Reporters are typically a hater group of people

That might depend on the mag, but the 3 I've worked for were pretty open-minded. They weren't afraid to voice their opinion, but they never collectively slagged a game off without a good reason. Especially not an EA game .
Despite UO not being the largest game, it's still a fascinating game and would still get some space in a magazine if it was needed.

The core I think is that EA doesn't really push UO. As other people mentioned the 10th anniversary was hardly celebrated. If nothing special is going on, no gaming magazine is going to print a report about it.

Some/most gaming mags (partially) depend on game production companies to provide them with information, games, and facts. If EA doesn't send promotional material to a mag, then chances are (if no one plays UO in their staff) that they won't know about UO hitting the big 10.

The big difference being with WoW, is that WoW has 10m+ subscribers, so that's a big deal. Lots of info to be found, lots of people telling the mag about it. Obviously it also makes more sense to cover more of a game that is 100x as big as UO.

Compare it to football and curling. If some country wins the world championship in football, everybody will know and every newspaper will run a story about it. If a country wins the world title in curling, it might fetch a spot on page 73.

 

[Littleblue]

Interesting to me that people are always saying the subscription fees are too high, etc. Is $12 really all that much to pay for a whole month of unlimited gaming time?
One movie costs about that, if you want something to drink anyway, and it only lasts a couple of hours with no chance for interaction. Seems odd to me. *shrug*

 

[Mavar]

...Compare it to football and curling. If some country wins the world championship in football, everybody will know and every newspaper will run a story about it. If a country wins the world title in curling, it might fetch a spot on page 73.

To increase my Pally/Swords skill in sweeping, should I bump Dex or Str. I cannot curl w/ my Spellweaver, he keeps melting the ice.

 

[GalenKnighthawke]

Those magazines thrive on newness.

A 10+ year old game that staggers on with 100k subscribers and is still "wildly profitable" is not really newsworthy to them, sadly.

Who really should do a story on us is some business publication.

-Galen's player

 

[ColterDC]

Interesting to me that people are always saying the subscription fees are too high, etc. Is $12 really all that much to pay for a whole month of unlimited gaming time?

I remember the first online games I played were somewhere in the range of $100.00 a month for unlimited access. Shadow of Yserbius and Fates of Twinion back in the early 90's.

 

[Evilminion]

Shadow of Yserbius and Fates of Twinion back in the early 90's.

Hey-hey! A fellow inhabitant of The Imagination Network here. Nice to see ya!

 

[ColterDC]

Glad to see someone else has heard of those games, most people I talk to are like "huh".

I still have all the disks, instructions manuals and a giant pile of the printed out maps (printed on one of those old printers with the "holey" ends you had to tear off). Those were some fun games back in the day.

I don't know where they fit in the history of online gaming, but they had to be some of the first MMORPG's