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UO Herald gradually sliding further out of date...

Aurelius

Babbling Loonie
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Looking to check on Jirel's client version query in another thread, I noticed that there wasn't any clear indication of client version on UOHerald - as far as I can find, for Classic the last client mentioned there is 7.0.4.3, whilst we're on 7.0.5.0.

Then I looked around the rest of the site a bit .... and it's not impressive. There was a short spell it was looking pretty good, and was genuinely useful, but it looks like it's being ignored again and since that's your main 'advert' for the game, there really isn't any excuse for :

Live events category (surely if nothing else is up to date, 'live' events should be...) - last entry

"Hyde and Seek
Start Date: October 23, 2009
End Date: To Be Determined"


There's a link to Five on Friday .... which you dropped months ago, so to anyone looking at that, the last update to the customers was November 6 2009. Either state somewhere it's a now unsupported project, or don't link to it - but it now looks weird that you point out 'hey, look, we've not been talking to people on this site for months!".

The 'Latest Update' takes you right back to the front news page .... not particularly helpful, since the contents there tend to swap between game info, patch/publish notes, adverts for the Stratics HOC, fiction... (and apparently Arirang is still down according to that page, I'd have though at some point since 24 Feb it might have been back in operation?).


There's a fair bit more there too that just looks, to be honest, amateur.... Layout is fine, content far less so, and style is NOT more important than substance. It's your shop window, and apparently the only way EA believes is worth using to advertise UO - and since it's being allowed to get by with ever lower standards and quality, should we assume that's the corporate attitude towards the game, or is it just something else that fell off Cal's radar?

It's not as if the HTML splash screen built into the client - which was expressly to help get important news to players, we were told that when it was introduced - is noticably much better, but at least that's only for those of us already addicted, so maybe you folks feel you can get away with less effort there. Your main website is important both to existing and potential new customers, there is no good excuse for letting that slip.....
 

Bobar

Babbling Loonie
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
It is always an unfortunate side-effect of the current drive for efficiency through 'downsizing' that these things happen. Looking at it simply, say you have 2 people working then the work they produce is 'x' when you remove one of them no matter the arguments used regarding efficiency the work done will no longer equal 'x'.

If the work which used to be done by the person who is lost is added to the workload of the person left the SOME THINGS WILL NOT BE DONE. These things will be those regarded as less important and we have repeatedly seen the high regard we customers are held in so tis no surprise really.

All that has happened here is exactly that, people have gone and the same amount can not be done by those left behind to do it. It is happening everywhere. Real efficient aint it?.
 
C

canary

Guest
It is just disheartening when other small games (that are even F2P!) provide better ongoing content, regular patches, communication and their own boards.

I'm unsure why UO does so poorly in these areas, as other games can pull it off.
 
B

Beer_Cayse

Guest
mebbe they can't maintain because the first to go are the web server personnel? I mean look at how many times there have been issues on the account management pages AND the Herald?
 

Aurelius

Babbling Loonie
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Real efficient aint it?.
Yes, in the modern 'management by euphemism' world. The word efficient is twisted and what is really meant is 'cheap', but you can't say that because it puts a poor spin on what you are really up to.

Efficient means doing the job properly for the lowest cost you can incur - with the emphasis being on 'properly', and not 'cost'. Sadly that's not the way UO has been run for a very long time, if ever.
 

phantus

Stratics Legend
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
The site & login are lacking compared to the other titles Mythic is responsible for. I'd like to a fraction of the effort used to maintain the warhammer site given to the UO site for once.
 

Merion

Lore Master
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
I completely agree with the OP in all points.

I mean, sheesh, it can't be to hard to set up a cms and fill it. There are so many compassionate people on this board, I sure they would find a volunteer to do it for them if the are overextended by this.
 

GalenKnighthawke

Grand Poobah
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
And let's not forget that we didn't get a notice about the latest Publish until after we'd been unofficially notified by Stratics Posters who had translated the Japanese UO site.

While there has been fiction that'd normally go under Live Events, it wasn't put on the Live Events page, just on the main page and left at-that.

What bugs me here, really, is that the last time they talked about how they update the site, it's basically a blog and anyone with the right profile can upload an "article." (In fact one week we missed a Five on Friday for unspecified "technical reasons," but I thought it was pretty clear that it was that Jeremy, whom I still miss btw, had forgotten her EA laptop with the correct permissions to update the blog.) If I'm right it's not like it requires a lot of technical know-how to update the site. You really don't even need to know the HTML code anymore.

That's if I'm right of course.

-Galen's player
 
S

Stupid Miner

Guest
And let's not forget that we didn't get a notice about the latest Publish until after we'd been unofficially notified by Stratics Posters who had translated the Japanese UO site.

While there has been fiction that'd normally go under Live Events, it wasn't put on the Live Events page, just on the main page and left at-that.

-Galen's player
You also have to take into account the timezone differences between Japan and the US.
They get updated a day early because they *are* a day earlier than us.(it's about midnight there now, soon to be tomorrow I believe)

Well technically they're a day after us, so to get stuff "at the same time" they get it a day before us.
It's what happens when you release things at relative times instead of a GMT standard.
 

Martyna Zmuir

Crazed Zealot
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Ever since they started relying on the fan sites to post everything for them their communication skills declined steadily.

In their mind its: "Why bother updating the Herald when Stratics, UOGuide, and UOForums do it all for us? Free labor!"

If UO didn't have these sites nobody would even know it still existed.

Thats whats truly sad.
 
A

AdamD

Guest
In their mind its: "Why bother updating the Herald when Stratics, UOGuide, and UOForums do it all for us? Free labor!"

If UO didn't have these sites nobody would even know it still existed.

Thats whats truly sad.
Agreed
What's even sadder is how they treat these fansites, stratics included.

I always thought the UO team's rudeness was solely for fansites other than stratics, but Stratics themselves also get the same poor treatment.

I mean they shoved the official board status onto Stratics back in 2001 and didn't even bother to offer help pay for the additional costs involved for such a large surge in traffic.

Communication and community is definatly at it's lowest point in UO's history, in my opinion.
 
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