The fact of the matter is, for UO to stand a chance in the market, it has to at least look at good as the main competitors. WoW, GW and others spring to mind; they all look infinitely better than UO. People like pretty graphics. Many wouldn't consider giving UO a chance purely because of the way it looks. Sad, but it's a fact.
The only viable way of EA gaining a large number of subscriptions for UO is, as you've alluded to, releasing a sequel or completely scrapping the isometric view and putting the game into full 3D.
If KR was an attempt at getting new players, it failed. It was always destined to. The existing playerbase, or the former playerbase who quit, weren't really calling for a new client; they were calling for fundamental gameplay changes that weren't met in favour of KR. This was a mistake. We now have a broken game and another 3D client situation. Great. Non-players were never going to be attracted to play it based on graphics alone, which I've covered. Those that did would promptly be put off it anyway because the client is cumbersome and comes across as half finished, as opposed to sleek and slick alternatives that additionally render in full 3D such as the GW or WoW clients.
As JC said, I think EA should be targeting former subscribers, because that's really the only avenue left to go down with what we have currently. In doing so, you'd also appease the current playerbase too, to a degree, and maybe maintain better retention rates.
How to do this? Well, as much as people hate hearing it because they know it's the truth and frankly I think they'd be scared to see it succeed because it'd show solidly many people's displeasure with the direction the game has headed in, a shard featuring a ruleset of old is one method. This may attract older players and maybe even newer players curious about how things were.
The other alternative is fixing what we have currently and making improvements to many areas across the board. Lots of people need some love right now: PvPers, Factioneers, Treasure Hunters, Fishers, Monster Hunters generally, Crafters, people anticipating the latest storyline quests etc. Some systems just need an overhaul and right now, absolutely nothing is happening and if it is, it's happening very slowly as always. Changing tiny aspects once every half-year is going to make things very painful; EA really need to start evaluating this and quickly.
Oh and Sneaky Que, don't even attempt to even try and say KR looks better than GW or WoW because it doesn't. It isn't up for debate. End of. You're in a very, very small minority if you believe this, and you're simply wrong. You can't even compare them properly; one is 2D and the others are full 3D. They are leagues apart by pure nature of the technologies used. People prefer cutting edge, intense 3D graphics to immerse them in the game. This is why virtually all highly successful games today are rendered in 3D. This is why people spend exorbitant amounts of money on expensive hardware like Quad Core CPUs, high-end GPUs in SLi or CrossFire configurations, DDR3 RAM sticks and motherboards that support said RAM running at speeds of up to 1600MHz to run the latest games like Crysis on full settings. People like 3D. The majority like 3D.
