With posts from four of the team in the past week, two major publishes in less than 3 months and almost daily tweets from Jeff the team must be wondering what the hell it would take to satisfy people. - Every minute spent reading posts here is a minute they're not working on the updates you demand for the game.
Yes, working on the game is very important, but also interacting with players on Forums like Stratics is, at least as I see it, and also providing good quality in-game customer service is.
What I am trying to say, is that, at least to my view, the success of a game like Ultima Online is not dependant on just 1 thing, adding new content to the game, but more, on a combination of things like fixing bugs, adding new content, interact with the player base and provide a good quality in-game customer support.
Sure, when resources are scarce it becomes more difficult to cover all bases but nonetheless, focuisng on just one aspect of the game without also covering the others I would see this as detrimental for Ultima Online.
One way or the other, I think for the better being of UO ways should be found to cover all bases or, at least, as many as possible.
And, if focus should be made on something, I think that should be on increasing revenues for the game somehow and thus, is my opinion, on making life easier for all those players who want to return to Ultima Online. I have read several posts of players having extreme difficulties in re-activating their past accounts. Unless I recall wrong, a returning player mentioned taking 3 months to be able to find and re-activate the old account. How many returning players might have given up well before those 3 months and thus not have returned to UO thus not bringing new resources to the game ??
This may sound reasonable and acceptable to some, not to me. It is not good that re-opening a UO account might be so difficult and, as I see it, this should really be looked at.
I mean, if there are complaints that UO resources are scarce, then why on earth the process to increase this resources is not made more simple and faster like making it a walk in the park for returning players to re-activate their accounts ??
Also, make it so that IDOCs do not cause the loss of an account's items. Save them into temporary storage (like an extra bank box specific for that...) so that when the players returns, they can find them. Make it an option available for a fee which could bring in more revenues to the game. The House would still fall for an inactiva account but as empty.......
This, perhaps, might convince more players to re-open their accounts (as they'd find their old items again) and even bring in added revenues for the special storage fee.....
I recently read some posts from players who were buying UO codes or items and lamented having difficulties applying a promotion. Eventually, they were able to receive the promotion but only after expenditure of their time and efforts.
Not to mention the fact that if one is buying several codes for UO, it is necessary to make several purchases (I have not at least been able to find the way to make multiple purchases of the same one item in the same one purchase....).
My point being, that when it comes to Ultima Online it seems to me that players might have to go through additional difficulties whether to get customer support or buy codes, who knows why...........
Bottom line of my opinion is, that I think that while adding new content may certainly be important, it is not the only aspect that makes a game succesfull, other aspects of the game, including customer support and assistance, should be cared for also.