Shutting down some servers is going to happen in the future, before the game shuts down.
It's not a matter of if, but when.
No gunna happen. Cal said the reason why it wont in one of the video's they did. Quite clearly the combining of shards will not happen, servers are set for the 27 shards we have.
There is no need to shut down any, yes it gets lonely at times when the majority of players on any given shard are out playing and not sitting in luna or brit bank. But that does not mean the shard if void of life.
East coast shards are 3 hours different from west coast shards and the original shards do have a mix of east and west coast players. Oceania and the Asian shards are another ball game... they are a full day and 5 - 7 hours ahead of even the west coast players. (try the time math if you want its a doozie) Europa and Drac ........ another time demention all to gether! When you walk on a shard and see not a hide nor hair of a life form other then the npc's are you really seeing the true shard? Not really. Let a EM event be anounced on the forum page and woosh! that shard 30 minutes before it goes off see the horde come out of the closet! To this, LOOK at the players. I mean look hard. Are they beginners?? Hell no. The vast majority are full suited to the teeth and mature characters.
What does that tell you?? Well one that the majority of them played there at one time perhaps even have a grandfathered home on the shard as well.
Many shards are looking like open fields of a new shard in malas, tokuno, ter mur, and yes the smaller house sizes of Trammel and Fel too are open but I bet you a bottom dollar you can't find a castle spot on 99% or a keep placement on 75% (this includes all shards)
You want classic go play Siege Perilous, its the closest you will get to one. Yes its hard, but you wussies have been spoilt rotten with the soft life. Ask tina or any of the rest how nice Siege is to play. It is hard to play from a bank box.... now who do we know who can fix that??? CAL_MYTHIC You dear boy need to get off your pillar and get cracking.
Cal needs to get off his tail and open the houseing ownership, its moot now. Siege is special and EA should never have made it 1 house per account, it was a factor in alot of players leaving. It was the constant taking away.... give something but take back double or triple of other things and not realizing the $$ cost of wanting that new plot but not being able to have it cause you needed another account was the limit for many.
No one is gunna beg for more houseing space. Well Atlantic would but they stole every player they could from the other shards!
Every dev team has come in with what THEY thought UO should be and tried to do it..... at what cost?? Players In all the years I have played UO (from beta) and I played every day mind you. I have seen all the teams come and go and leave the game in a shambles when they left... Bad and corupt GMs, Dev who wanted to mold UO into their version of UO... we have had tirants an saints in the dev teams. Bonnie and Cal have their hands full and yes I do see them having fun in making game content ... they are playing god after all. And Yes we are impatient... some are more so then others.
If I could have one wish for UO would be to have that players would stop the miser bit with making gold off the newest EM event item and go back to when it was the game not an object that drove them.
I'm so sick of seeing the gold become an issue in the game. Here I was back in 97 thinking 10k was a vast amount of gold in my bank. Billions now in gold. omg I had kittens when players were charging a million gold for a house! This has to end. (the last straw) Perhaps removal of any money from the game is the answer.
**Soap box in hand...... ** Take it from me kiddos we need to work on this one issue. We need new players and if EA and Mythic cant or wont its up to us. Invite a few friends. Hell give a months subscription for a birthday gift, or for the hell of it. The best place is the friends and family around us. (easer to plan your play time too) Get the kids into it.. have the wife fish for you.... Returning players need to be hit up too for help in getting more in the game.
Just remember your UO life comes in dead last to RL.
EA will never shut down UO ... loss of Glory.
no worries ...
trolled me ... good one 
