Shard Population Statistic Upon Login?

[Wallenstein]

Seeing as there is no longer a UO Ideas Den board I wasn't sure where to post this.. so feel free to move it if necessary.

It would be very beneficial if there was a "Population:" (high, medium, low) statistic near each shard upon login. This would be along with the Latency/Packet Loss statistics that are currently visible. This would allow newcomers to the game to join a server with some actual players.. If a player unknowingly joins Yamato and finds only two people on the whole shard, they're not likely to continue playing as they will think the game is dead. However, if there was a 'Population:' statistic then people would be geared towards joining more active shards, and in turn would be more likely to remain active in the game.

This would eventually have a snowball effect and the game would potentially gain a good amount of players. I know one person personally who joined the game, went to Baja, saw nobody, and quit. He told me he had no idea which server to join because there was nothing distinguishing any of them from any of the others. This is true. A population meter of some sort would be great for cases like this.

 

[TheScoundrelRico]

Never happen. For some reason EA likes to keep their numbers close to the vest. I wish the transplants from Mythic would show them that providing this information isn't as bad as the EA folks seem to think...la

 

[Nosuperiors_Damnfewequals]

For some reason EA likes to keep their numbers close to the vest.

It's to avoid embarassment.

 

[Spree]

The old UO web site owo.com used to have hours played as a rolling number back in 99.

 

[Cysphruo]

when viewing the shard list theres a button at the bottom "%full" that will do what your asking for.

 

[Joyous2K]

It's to avoid embarassment.

I don't IDOC or look at house names... but I really hope you guys are looking out for EA and IDing all the abandoned houses. I would love for a true picture of how empty the world is.

Too bad they don't have the skill to identify their own houses. Pretty wonky if you ask me. Maybe they figure not too many houses will be submitted and then that way they can say they tried, but you the subscriber did not help them with the cleanup.

 

[Spree]

I have a house on AOL Legonds that I haven't been to in years.

 

[athos_uo]

If a player unknowingly joins Yamato and finds only two people on the whole shard, they're not likely to continue playing as they will think the game is dead. However, if there was a 'Population:' statistic then people would be geared towards joining more active shards, and in turn would be more likely to remain active in the game.

I know that you referred to Yamato only as an example, but this was a bad example because Yamato is the most populated shard in Japan.

I recorded the order list of all the Japanese shards on the [%full] screen during 20:00-26:00(JST) every month from 2006 April till 2007 August, then every two or three months from 2007 August till now. The result of listing shows obviously that Yamato is the most populated.(Cf. here)

 

[Wallenstein]

when viewing the shard list theres a button at the bottom "%full" that will do what your asking for.

Never noticed that before. Too bad it puts the most "% full" shards at the bottom. Any new user in their right mind would assume the ones at the top are the most full.

This needs to be fixed...