UO article

[Penderrin]

Is Anybody Playing Ultima Online in 2025? The MMORPG Legend That Refuses to Die

Is anybody still playing Ultima Online in 2025? Spoiler: yeah. And the reason why is probably more interesting than you think. While the MMO world has moved on to cross-platform battle passes and microtransaction hellscapes, the world of Britannia is still quietly buzzing—because some players...

clownfishtv.com

This is just an article my wife came across so I decided to share here, if it's not here already somewhere. Nothing groundbreaking... But all things UO and such ya know.

 

[Anon McDougle]

Is Anybody Playing Ultima Online in 2025? The MMORPG Legend That Refuses to Die

Is anybody still playing Ultima Online in 2025? Spoiler: yeah. And the reason why is probably more interesting than you think. While the MMO world has moved on to cross-platform battle passes and microtransaction hellscapes, the world of Britannia is still quietly buzzing—because some players...

clownfishtv.com

This is just an article my wife came across so I decided to share here, if it's not here already somewhere. Nothing groundbreaking... But all things UO and such ya know.

The team needs to acknowledge freeshards and reestablish a relationship with stratics

 

[Veldrane]

The team needs to acknowledge freeshards and reestablish a relationship with stratics

What would acknowledging freeshards look like to you? It's a hard place for Broadsword to be in; there are a ton of great ideas on some of these freeshards but the legal issues around acknowledging those shards and ideas would put Broadsword in a bad spot regarding the IP. From a strictly business standpoint, EA & Broadsword should have gone after freeshards hard right from the start. They've seriously weakened their claim on the IP by not going hard to enforce it.

As for re-establishing a relationship with Stratics. I'd love for that to happen, but I'm not sure what the benefit would be for Broadsword at this point. They'd have better return by trying to embrace the Discord channels.

 

[Arcus]

The team needs to acknowledge freeshards and reestablish a relationship with stratics

Just by embracing ClassicUO they have acknowledged free shards. Building a relationship with them is a different matter altogether.

 

[Lokea]

The team needs to acknowledge freeshards

I came back in the past few months after being gone for over a decade, and before making the decision, I looked through UO-related sites and social media, and when players post on these sites/platforms about returning to UO, the responses heavily tilt towards people who manage or play free shards telling them to skip the official shards and play on one of the umpteen million free shards. And it's especially true for those who left in the first 5-6 years of UO - they are inundated with comments about free shards that try to replicate that era.

I was shocked at the number of free shards that are around and being openly advertised on various sites, and how many third-party clients there are as a result (and that would probably be another issue that Broadsword has with them).

The free shards are populated and managed by people who do everything they can on various sites and social media platforms to steer returning players away from official shards, which means less money for Broadsword, so it doesn't make sense to acknowledge them.

 

[Anon McDougle]

What would acknowledging freeshards look like to you? It's a hard place for Broadsword to be in; there are a ton of great ideas on some of these freeshards but the legal issues around acknowledging those shards and ideas would put Broadsword in a bad spot regarding the IP. From a strictly business standpoint, EA & Broadsword should have gone after freeshards hard right from the start. They've seriously weakened their claim on the IP by not going hard to enforce it.

As for re-establishing a relationship with Stratics. I'd love for that to happen, but I'm not sure what the benefit would be for Broadsword at this point. They'd have better return by trying to embrace the Discord channels.

Maybe work with some of the longer running freeshards maybe hire them as free lance workers anything other than the ostrich style we've had in past as far as stratics it's still far more populated and should be embraced

 

[Anon McDougle]

I came back in the past few months after being gone for over a decade, and before making the decision, I looked through UO-related sites and social media, and when players post on these sites/platforms about returning to UO, the responses heavily tilt towards people who manage or play free shards telling them to skip the official shards and play on one of the umpteen million free shards. And it's especially true for those who left in the first 5-6 years of UO - they are inundated with comments about free shards that try to replicate that era.

I was shocked at the number of free shards that are around and being openly advertised on various sites, and how many third-party clients there are as a result (and that would probably be another issue that Broadsword has with them).

The free shards are populated and managed by people who do everything they can on various sites and social media platforms to steer returning players away from official shards, which means less money for Broadsword, so it doesn't make sense to acknowledge them.

Imagine if these people came back ...

 

[hungry4knowhow]

Acknowledging free shards to me would be bringing in some of the awesome programmers on that side AND some of the awesome artists.

There are a plethora of people in that community that would probably love to contribute to official UO. In a freelancer or permanent way. I know I would if I had the skills.

 

[Anon McDougle]

There are literally 1000s of people playing Free shards many that in fact pay to support them again imagine getting them back imagine some of the qol making it's way to official uo and for goodness sake hire the Orion team..

 

[Halister Marner]

Being back for two years now, one thing I noticed is the constant veteran return/quit/return cycle. So many subscriptions lost due to lack of retention. I don't think I've seen another MMO with as harsh a turnover rate, and that's something that needs to be looked at seriously if the game is to keep turning profits. The subscriber base is out there if they do the correct things to retain them.

 

[Veldrane]

Maybe work with some of the longer running freeshards maybe hire them as free lance workers anything other than the ostrich style we've had in past as far as stratics it's still far more populated and should be embraced

yeah, they’d have to do something like they did with CUO (without the part where they hosed it up at the end by stopping short with the web only thing). Not sure they’d be able to do any coding specifically but the artwork and general level design for sure

 

[Lokea]

Imagine if these people came back ...

That's a huge problem on other forums/social media platforms (reddit is a good example but there are plenty of others). The moment people pop up with a "I played from 98-2006 and am thinking of returning", they are inundated with posts telling them official UO sucks and they should only consider a third-party shard and there's not much of a way to counter that, without being shouted down/neg-repped so your posts don't show up.

 

[Anon McDougle]

That's a huge problem on other forums/social media platforms (reddit is a good example but there are plenty of others). The moment people pop up with a "I played from 98-2006 and am thinking of returning", they are inundated with posts telling them official UO sucks and they should only consider a third-party shard and there's not much of a way to counter that, without being shouted down/neg-repped so your posts don't show up.

Again if those third party people were brought in there wouldn't be such issues

 

[Stinky Pete]

What would acknowledging freeshards look like to you?

It's not very hard to find the people who work on things like new and improved server software, clients, and assistants. The people who work on these projects literally give them away for free to anyone. They don't have to acknowledge the shards, they can literally just take this tech and the people who work on it would say, "cool, is there anything we can do to make it better for you?" All it takes is reaching out and showing interest.

As for re-establishing a relationship with Stratics. I'd love for that to happen, but I'm not sure what the benefit would be for Broadsword at this point.

Being able to log in would probably be the biggest benefit I can think of off the top of my head.

 

[Lokea]

Acknowledging free shards to me would be bringing in some of the awesome programmers on that side AND some of the awesome artists.

There are a plethora of people in that community that would probably love to contribute to official UO. In a freelancer or permanent way. I know I would if I had the skills.

You would be asking the UO team to put aside the fact that people who play and manage free shards are constantly and publicly undermining official UO with potential or returning players on various other social media platforms and forums, including mocking certain UO team members, etc. As soon as I brought up that I was thinking of returning and going through my old accounts with EJ, within 30 minutes I had a half-dozen private messages begging me to play one of four different free shards, and all of them were trashing official UO (I had mentioned I was going to probably play official). It took two days and a lot of other messages begging me to play a free shard before an Atlantic player contacted me and offered me a few million in gold and some help getting established on ATL if I chose to try a new shard, and a few days after that I got a few more messages from people playing official shards. It was extremely clear to me that most of the freesharders are done with official UO, and nothing is going to bring them back.

As for contributions, if it was easy to bring in new contributors to the live team, it would have already happened.

A decade ago.

But it's apparently not that easy to get the payroll for additional live team members, otherwise Bonnie would have done it long ago, and it wouldn't have taken years to get New Legacy off of the ground, and we would get more frequent publishes. Ironically, we'd have more stuff to buy (which would generate more income - chicken and egg).

 

[Lokea]

Again if those third party people were brought in there wouldn't be such issues

At the drop of a hat, these people will elaborate to anybody who will listen about how they think official UO sucks and how much they hate EA/Broadsword and could never imagine paying for UO, and how much they love their shard that covers a tiny sliver of UO's life, and some brag about how much better their client software is that allows them to do all kinds of things that would get them banned on official shards. And more than a few have never even played official UO.

They aren't coming back nor are they interested in signing up.

It would be more cost-effective to put together better email campaigns for former players or add even more stuff to the store. Try to figure out how to make EJ more appealing to ex-players or new players, without a bunch of existing players using it to help close down accounts they rarely use but they pay for (EJ is ultimately what prompted me to re-subscribe). Promote ClassicUO to Mac and Linux users - it runs well on our Macs. There's hundreds of thousands of ex-UO players floating around, and most are not playing the free shards, they've moved on to other games. Maybe start playing up the 30th anniversary is coming up? Is the UO team planning a new expansion or a booster pack?

And honestly, even if they could pull in a few hundred of the third party people, would it do much? They would probably need a thousand new people to subscribe for a year to generate enough revenue for another live team member, but would Broadsword or EA care about plugging that extra money into a new live team member, or just keeping it as profit? And we don't even know how the revenue sharing works anyways - say a thousand new players (free shards, returning players, whatever) sign up and they all pay for a year and it's shown that they contributed $150,000 USD to UO's bottom line. If EA gets say half and Broadsword gets the other, EA isn't interested in a new live team member, and that's not enough for Broadsword to add a new team member (assuming their agreement with EA allows it).

I'm not trying to be Debbie Downer, but when you talk about it in a lot of places, you're not going to have a flock of official shard fans flooding the comments.

 

[Lokea]

I don't think I've seen another MMO with as harsh a turnover rate, and that's something that needs to be looked at seriously if the game is to keep turning profits.

It's always had a high turnover rate problem with a section of the player base, but is it as much of a problem if people keep subbing for their houses?

WOW has a massive turnover rate, but it has enough activity that you don't notice it, and because of how it's setup and no housing, people aren't as loyal to this or that realm since they are indistinguishable (outside of PvP vs non-PvP, roleplaying and hardcore). If I look at my nearly 20 years of playing WOW, outside of the first 3-4 years, it was rare that I subbed for more than 3 months at a time, even as I have many years of subbing. My guild will all subscribe, knock out whatever new content has been added and then drop back to f2p (a few will stay paid because they play the auction house).

And Blizzard acknowledges the high turnover rate - they could have easily used the upcoming housing system to make you subscribe, but if your sub lapses, you don't lose your house.

I think a lot of us could make up lists of what we think should be done, and 75% of the lists would probably mirror each other, but at the end of the day, the UO live team is half-a-dozen members or less (not counting community/EM/GM), so whatever should be done, it can't rock the boat too much for existing players, and it has to be reasonable and achievable with only 1-2 programmers, 1-2 designers, and 1-2 artists.

 

[HippoRedux]

Is Anybody Playing Ultima Online in 2025? The MMORPG Legend That Refuses to Die

Is anybody still playing Ultima Online in 2025? Spoiler: yeah. And the reason why is probably more interesting than you think. While the MMO world has moved on to cross-platform battle passes and microtransaction hellscapes, the world of Britannia is still quietly buzzing—because some players...

clownfishtv.com

This is just an article my wife came across so I decided to share here, if it's not here already somewhere. Nothing groundbreaking... But all things UO and such ya know.

Thanks for sharing the article, Pen!

 

[Merlin]

Very interesting article. Much better than the 1-2 paragraph blurbs that occasionally pop up on MassivelyOP.

That said.. with respect to developer team re-establishing a relationship with Stratics, I don't want to say anything out of line beyond stating that it was the developers who stopped talking to us long before any free shards or other objectionable material was allowed here. This includes Bonnie not allowing any EMs to even post event times on Stratics. Kyronix reads UHall, but doesn't read PMs here.

I've never understood the 'politics' behind these situations or why such a large UO community was shunned to begin with. It's a stupid pissing match that started with Mesanna years ago... a real shame quite honestly... especially considering that the Official forums became hot garbage once all the browser issues (WHICH STILL PERSIST!) started a few years ago. I have long tried to be one of the positive voices here because I love this game and will be here until it closes... but it's definitely hard sometimes. It is my sincere hope that Greg at the helm will start to repair some of these issues over time... fingers crossed.

Personally, I hate the free shards and definitely am of the mindset they take away from OSI. It's probably easier said than done, but I don't see why there hasn't been atleast some basic legal action taken to shut down these shards via cease and desist orders, or at a minimum, to make life more difficult for the server hosts. I concur with other posts in this thread that there is always a risk of "rocking the boat" too much... and maybe that's some of the reason why free shards haven't been addressed already. It's also for that reason that as much as I hate the "O Constellation" program, the developers have allowed the problem with that illegal third party app to fester for too long to address it now. Alot of people play it as their main and only client at this point. The developers only option at this point would be to embrace some of the best features of the illegal clients on CC and EC to try to bring folks back in. As others have pointed out, we can probably all create a laundry list of our gripes and 70% of them would overlap across the board.

Trying to end on a positive note... this article highlights some important points we shouldn't forget that even after nearly three decades, our community is still alive and kicking... we are still getting new content... there is still new ideas out there and Greg's promotion is akin to this continuing long into the future. We all have our various areas of focus and I think the developers sufficiently give each sub-community their little carrots to keep chasing after. Just as with real life... we can either be Debbie Downers and focus on the negative, or we can continue enjoying this game we love, most of which is focused on the communities across all areas of the internet, whether it be large forums, Discord servers or other guild specific groups. Nine times out of ten, any time I have a UO-related frustration, getting into a Discord chat at night and interacting with friends in-game makes all right in the (UO) world. Our complaints are all valid - but I just hope we still have a game to complain about another 10+ years for now.