The NEW guild on Siege has seen a steady influx of new players/new characters over the last couple of months. While some of these characters belong to veteran players who were recently playing on other UO shards, I think a fair number of them are returning players.
Most characters stay in NEW for at least four weeks, perhaps a little longer, and in general are freshly made characters. Some of them, though, are characters made long ago that were abandoned for whatever reason and are now being dusted off and played by their owners.
Below is a list showing when the 58 "new" characters currently in NEW joined the guild. Keep in mind that these totals don't include characters that joined in March or early April and that have already graduated and moved on to other guilds on Siege. Also, don't forget that because you can only have one character per account on Siege, this list gives you a very good idea of accounts that are newly attached to Siege that were never tied to it before.
2 March 7
1 March 8
4 March 10
1 March 13
1 March 15
2 March 18
1 March 20
1 March 21
1 March 22
3 March 23
2 March 24
3 March 27
1 March 29
2 April 2
1 April 4
1 April 6
1 April 10
1 April 12
2 April 14
1 April 15
1 April 16
1 April 18
1 April 20
2 April 21
2 April 22
2 April 23
3 April 26
1 April 27
2 April 29
1 April 30
4 May 1
3 May 2
1 May 4
2 May 5
If it's true that Siege is the last stop for many veteran characters who have become disenchanted with other shards, the growth on Siege may be either a warning sign to EA that some things about UO in general on the production shards need to change because people who are very addicted to the game have lost faith in it but aren't quite ready to quit, and/or perhaps there's something about Siege that is worth nurturing to try to get even more former players to come back to UO.
