Whats The 1ST, 2ND And 3RD Changes Done To Uo That Caused A Decline In Subs ?

[Morgana LeFay (PoV)]

When I say Trammel I mean the idea. The curtailing of PK's was only part. There needed to be a way for new players to learn the game without having to go head to head with people who knew it inside and out and could game the system. I'm all for NPC paladins and stuff protecting areas but you know as well as I do that it would be circumvented.

That being said I could have given every single aspect of Trammel save one. Thieves. If you knew the gimmicks and had a friend playing a thief you were unstoppable. If you wanted to risk nothing and get ahead you could play a thief.

So I do agree with you that trammel wasn't necessary in the sense of trammel as a method to an end but there were certain elements of UO's wild west that made it impossible to compete with a growing MMO marketplace. The devs took the easy way.

Much better. I agree with 99% of that. The only minor point I might nit-pick would be the part about NPC paladins and such protecting areas being circumvented.

Imagine for a moment a UO that contained numerous shades of grey rather than stark black and white (and no, I am not referring to what you see when you are dead ).

There could have been areas where there was total guard protection (insta teleport death), areas with NPC paladin protection (you might get away with it, but you better be really, really careful about it...and odds are high you wouldn't get away with it for more than a few seconds), areas with lesser NPCs roaming the area, and areas with no NPC roaming the area. Combine that with meaningful punishment for dying as a murderer (not banning or jail, but something of more consquence than UM'ing while you sleep), and a better/working player justice system...and you would have had a world in which there were certain areas that could very well be extremely dangerous, and areas where it wasn't very dangerous at all.

That kind of dynamic system could be changed, as needed, to address PK'ing or lack thereof. I always liked the idea that UO had an element of risk, and I feel that the lack of that risk is what led to where the game ended up...borked up economy (350,000,000 gold for plate gloves for example), item based grind, population concentrated into specific areas where the best items are gathered, etc.

Think about how awesome it would be for the devs to drop a new dungeon into the game, and stock it with some of the best loot, but make it so that there was an actual element of risk involved. That doesn't mean it would have to be 100% open to PK'ing, maybe 20-30% if you want to use percentages. Just stepping into a dungeon like that, your heart would start beating a little faster, you would be on edge with anticipation, and when you did retrieve the reward, it would mean even that much more to you, because you would feel as though you took a risk to get it.

Anyway...we'll likely never know what 'could have been'...I just sort of like day dreaming about where UO could have gone if the developers had not, as you said, taken the easy way out.

 

[HD2300]

^^ The endless debate.

You can argue that production shards are a zone type world with just 2 zones, safe and not safe. It hasn't worked.

Now you could have more zones with various degrees of safety, but why bother because imo if you have separate safe and not safe servers, you would have more p(l)ayers.

It is academic now, UO is in almost zombie mode.

 

[Dakkon Blackblade]

It is academic now, UO is in almost zombie mode.

I cannot wait for the day they pull the plug on UO for good, I will stick around for no other reason but to witness it. What I hope is that someday years after it's collapse a competent team will create UO 2.

 

[Morgana LeFay (PoV)]

^^ The endless debate.

You can argue that production shards are a zone type world with just 2 zones, safe and not safe. It hasn't worked.

Now you could have more zones with various degrees of safety, but why bother because imo if you have separate safe and not safe servers, you would have more p(l)ayers.

It is academic now, UO is in almost zombie mode.

Well well.

What changed your line of thinking? Or was it just personal against yours truly?

Seems to me that suddenly you and I are on the same page.

What happened?

 

[Jartan]

Reading through this a lot of people are just spouting their pet peeves. The thing is any change causes people to leave. I think it's more constructive to post some stuff that could be easily changed which is currently still causing massive loss of subs.

1) IDOC. I'm sure a lot of people won't get this but for a game like UO enticing past customers to come back should be a big deal. City of Heroes proved long ago that it's far more profitable to let your customers quit when they want (while still liking the game overall) and come back later. Housing ruins this concept and makes sure people who finally do quit are very bitter and unlikely to come back for many years. It would be far better for the game to stuff your belongings into a moving crate and store it upon account deactivation.

2) The trade system. Vendors are cool but they need to be augmented. Something like in game vendor search at the very least. Hopefully something is coming with the new trade town.

3) The little stuff. Chat, friends lists, looking for group window(!), etc. All that stuff is relatively cheap to add compared to the long term new player retention it adds.

 

[olduofan]

Reading through this a lot of people are just spouting their pet peeves. The thing is any change causes people to leave. I think it's more constructive to post some stuff that could be easily changed which is currently still causing massive loss of subs.

1) IDOC. I'm sure a lot of people won't get this but for a game like UO enticing past customers to come back should be a big deal. City of Heroes proved long ago that it's far more profitable to let your customers quit when they want (while still liking the game overall) and come back later. Housing ruins this concept and makes sure people who finally do quit are very bitter and unlikely to come back for many years. It would be far better for the game to stuff your belongings into a moving crate and store it upon account deactivation.

2) The trade system. Vendors are cool but they need to be augmented. Something like in game vendor search at the very least. Hopefully something is coming with the new trade town.

3) The little stuff. Chat, friends lists, looking for group window(!), etc. All that stuff is relatively cheap to add compared to the long term new player
retention it adds.

good points and true

 

[Farquhar]

No, it didn't.

As per investor quarterlies for 1999-2000, uo saw a 57 000 subscriber increase around the release of uo:r because they localized it for multiple languages and shipped it to the asian market. The free months in asia were expiring when uo:r was released.

They could have called it uo:triangles and made triangular shaped housing, and it would have still seen the same increase.

If you remove the asian growth from uo:r release quarter, the north american population was stagnant to decreasing.

The bottom line is there were other games out there for the north american market to play.

LOL. After UO:R the population increased steadily for the next three years. This wasn't a short burst. In fact, it grew at a faster rate after UO:R than before it. And there were multiple high profile MMOs released during that time and they had no negative impact on UO.

As I said, old graphics are okay for a while, but beyond a certain threshold they can no longer be considered noble or quaint and start to be perceived as a signal that the game lacks sophistication and modern sensibilities. Like a CEO for a Fortune 500 company who sucks his thumb. It was okay for him to suck his thumb when he was 2 and he may be a spectacular CEO, but if you're an investor it's going to turn you away.

You're right, the game continued to grow with uo:r. But it isn't the reason why you think it did. The game was localized into German, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, and a bunch more. The primary growth was in Asia and Europe. If you were an investor in EA, you'd of received investor's quarterlies. I imagine they're all online and you can go back and look at the numbers if you want to.

I'll try to track some down for you. But I just want to reiterate, the growth had very little to do with uo:r - and the only area where uo existed pre uo:r continued to be stagnate after the release of uo:r (america's)

Here: As you can see, the populations jumped significantly as soon as the Asian servers went live.

o The average number of paying customers for Ultima Online increased to over 190,000 for the three months ended September 30, 2000 as compared to over 120,000 for the same period last year and was over 194,000 for the six months ended September 30, 2000 as compared to over 116,000 for the same period last year. This increase was due to continued strong sales of Ultima Online, the addition of new events and parties within the Ultima worlds and the release of Ultima Renaissance in April 2000. Ultima Renaissance added features including new houses and land mass.

o We established servers for Ultima Online in Korea in September 1999, Taiwan in November 1999 and Australia in January 2000 which resulted in new customers for the three months and six months ended September 30, 2000, as compared to the same periods last year.

 

[Armageddon]

1) IDOC. I'm sure a lot of people won't get this but for a game like UO enticing past customers to come back should be a big deal. City of Heroes proved long ago that it's far more profitable to let your customers quit when they want (while still liking the game overall) and come back later. Housing ruins this concept and makes sure people who finally do quit are very bitter and unlikely to come back for many years. It would be far better for the game to stuff your belongings into a moving crate and store it upon account deactivation.

+1 This is a very valid point. I happen to be one of those old schoolers that had 4 accounts at my peak. After I stopped actively playing, I still maintained and occasionally logged into my accounts but started decreasing them. When I finally deactivated my final account, it was painful to think that there would be no going back because everything I had worked hard for over the first 8 years of the game would be washed away.

Would I ever consider returning to UO? Sure, but they would have to make some serious changes and from what I've been reading, that doesn't even seem to be a likely option.
There's too many "modern" or free alternatives out there now-a-days to go back to something as archaic as UO. Even bringing back a "classic" shard I doubt would be enough to bring enough people back to make a difference.

Ah well, UO I knew you back in the glory days but everything must pass in time.