Why Does Dark Age of Camelot get a new website, player-run Wiki and we don't?

[Woodsman]

Remember Dark Age of Camelot, created by Mythic, under which UO has operated under in recent years until BioWare took over. A friend sent me this producer letter about the 10th anniversary.

Mythic Entertainment | Camelot Herald - Community News for Dark Age of Camelot!

It's been a while since I spoke with you, and I wanted to let you in on a little known secret. Dark Age of Camelot is turning 10 this year! OK, so not such a well kept secret, but what we are doing for the 10th anniversary is. To start things off, we are celebrating 10 years of DAoC for the full year, not just a few days in October. We have a lot of things planned, so we will be able to continuously introduce new stuff over the months to come. While we want to keep some surprises, I am happy to announce four of the big ticket items.

First, remember all those new people we brought onto the team a few months back? Well we have been putting them to work creating what is best described as a New User Journey. This new content is focused around new and returning players who may not know or remember all the intricacies that make DAoC great. The plan is to create hubs which will teach players important lessons about Dark Age of Camelot gameplay while getting them ready for RvR warfare. Some of the lessons we have planned are: Assisting, Pets, Crowd Control, Peeling, Stealth, Guard and Protect, Templating, and much more. The goal is to get new players up to speed and out into the fight as quickly as possible while giving them the tools (both in terms of itemization and basic knowledge) to be viable. This new approach to DAoC content will not make someone an overnight RvR master, but it will definitely bring able bodied players out into RvR. So what does this mean for you? Well if you are one of those people who hasn't played the game in a long time, getting back into it will be easier than ever. If you are already out there spilling blood on the battlefield, then be prepared to see more compatriots and more enemies out on the field contributing to the war effort. The New User Journey should be out within the next few patches and once it is, I am sure everyone will enjoy the results.

Second, in the not so distant future (aka soon) we will be unveiling our new website. This is just the first step in improving the way we communicate with our playerbase. The new website is easier to navigate, and chock full of articles and information about the game. You may notice that some of the content is from our old Dark Age of Camelot site; over the coming months we will continue to bring that content over to the new format, but we wanted to get the new look and functionality out in front of you sooner rather than later.

Third, we are working on a wiki site for DAoC that you the players can help to maintain and develop. In the next few months, we will be asking for volunteers and holding contests in the hope that we can blow the doors of this site and make it the place to get all of your DAoC data. If the website is the first step in improving communication, the wiki is the second. But don't worry, there are even more steps we are working on. Remember, we have a whole year to celebrate, not just the month of October.

Camelot is getting a new website, wiki, new player journey thing, and UO is getting only one of those things. And UO turns 15 next year.

Would it be that hard to borrow whoever did the Ultima Forever website for a day or two to clean up the design of UOherald.com? Hell, hit up the SWTOR people, they have a huge team of people working on their website and community relations. If the UO devs got loaned out, it's only fair.

I have nothing against the Camelot players, I've been one myself, what I'm saying is they know that a good website is going to be important for their new player experience thing, and just imagine a new player to UO showing up on UOHerald.com looking for information.

 

[Fayled Dhreams]

Camelot is getting a new website, wiki, new player journey thing, and UO is getting only one of those things. And UO turns 15 next year.

Would it be that hard to borrow whoever did the Ultima Forever website for a day or two to clean up the design of UOherald.com? Hell, hit up the SWTOR people, they have a huge team of people working on their website and community relations. If the UO devs got loaned out, it's only fair.

Well ... I can follow your drift ... however

If the UO devs got loaned out ... it maybe FAIR to assume ...
the best we can hope for in return
is that >we have to keep them<

(Question of their "loaned out" work product "value" ... si? )

and with the "archives" rumored to >be here<
and *spits* uoguide kinda sorta being someone elses "effort" ...
and EAs "knowledge base" ( ) being somewhat ... something ...

*shakes head*

Like I said ... I can follow your drift
answering it?

got nothing substantive to work with, to attempt a reply

ya stumped me ...

 

[JC the Builder]

UO already has a wiki of over 6,000 articles. Dark Age of Camelot never had one made, or at least one which got popular.

I agree the UO website does need an overhaul.

 

[Kellgory]

I would have to agree with JC, they waited so long that the players pretty much took it upon themselves to create a Wiki site that has been up for several years now, and there are at least 2 forums that are being used. I just feel like we got shafted for our 10 year anniversary...maybe they will make it up to us when we hit 20.

 

[Woodsman]

Well ... I can follow your drift ... however

If the UO devs got loaned out ... it maybe FAIR to assume ...
the best we can hope for in return
is that >we have to keep them<

From what's been said here, they were loaned to the Star Wars team, so I was just thinking that with the SWTOR website/community team being a lot bigger than any of EA's other MMO properties, it'd be nice to get something in return. Maybe keeping them from getting laid off was a part of that.

SWTOR, Warhammer, and Camelot all have much better sites than UO currently has. I never understood the reason to move from UO.com and to ditch the UO.com scheme in favor of the UO Herald scheme which does not favor new players (or returning players) at all. It has no personality.

I still don't get ditching UO.com.

UO already has a wiki of over 6,000 articles. Dark Age of Camelot never had one made, or at least one which got popular.

I agree the UO website does need an overhaul.

I'm sorry, I did not mean to slight you or your efforts. I use UOGuide a lot and I think it's one of the main cornerstones of the UO community.

Personally I think UOGuide needs to be linked from the front page of the Herald.

 

[Woodsman]

And it is nothing against Camelot players - I have not played Camelot seriously in years, and for all I know they've got a lot more subscribers than UO and have generated a lot more revenue through expansions and boosters and pixel crack. In which case they have a right to a better website than we do.

But I can just imagine them spending 100s of developer hours on the new player experience, and 100s of hours or more on the graphics update, and not spending even 40 developer hours on the website

It really hurts when you look at the UltimaForever website. I'm familiar with Drupal. I could easily take the artwork/background from UltimaForever and apply it to UOHerald.com within a few hours. Even just having the background from UltimaForever applied to UOHerald would be a huge improvement that could be done in a few minutes.

And SWTOR runs on the same software that UltimaForever does - Drupal as I said, and so obviously the SWTOR team have some talented Drupal developers.

Other than the words "Ultima Online" there is nothing on the UO Herald site that would stir any memories in a returning player.

 

[Nok]

Looks like the DAoCXbar is getting a rebuild soon.

The DAoC site has needed a rebuild for a while now, yes... so does the UO site. Just saying. There are a few databases and wikis for DAoC, not many but a few... none of them I've seen are the caliber of UO Guide.

Hopefully the UO team is working on things and we just don't know it.

 

[Capn Kranky]

between uoguide and stratics, there's plenty of UO info. what the heck do we need EA for in that regard? pffft. They can't update their own content pages and you want them to revamp them?

UO is now the ******* child of EA, even though it may still bring in cash. then again without knowing sub numbers we don't REALLY know it is bringing in cash, do we?

Enjoy it while it lasts folks ...

 

[smip]

Remember Dark Age of Camelot, created by Mythic, under which UO has operated under in recent years until BioWare took over. A friend sent me this producer letter about the 10th anniversary.

Mythic Entertainment | Camelot Herald - Community News for Dark Age of Camelot!



Camelot is getting a new website, wiki, new player journey thing, and UO is getting only one of those things. And UO turns 15 next year.

Would it be that hard to borrow whoever did the Ultima Forever website for a day or two to clean up the design of UOherald.com? Hell, hit up the SWTOR people, they have a huge team of people working on their website and community relations. If the UO devs got loaned out, it's only fair.

I have nothing against the Camelot players, I've been one myself, what I'm saying is they know that a good website is going to be important for their new player experience thing, and just imagine a new player to UO showing up on UOHerald.com looking for information.

We only got the "Harold" when Mythic got involved with EA. While I agree that that uo.com needs a drastic re-vamp.. ESPECIALLY for the new player that is looking up questions they may have... I have to admit that it's alot better and more info than most on line games sites. I too was once a Camelot player. For several years. Then the graphics changed and I could not stand to see EA looking clothes in the paperdolls when things changed. I think the graphics were really downgraded. Although I have not looked at it in years.. I really do hope they fixed it.

 

[phantus]

Because when they ask for a budget for UO for the given quarter to work on things with they have to decide on where that money will go. Those budgets are more than likely based on sub numbers. The less subs the smaller the budget. Pretty clear to me the budget is so small they have to blow half of it to make the new thing they are going to sell to keep everything floating. I don't know what the rest is used for...


UO didn't loan anyone to the other groups in the company. They were given the opportunity to jump off a sinking ship and they took it.

 

[Sevin0oo0]

ditto JC

after reading a lot of that post, couple things came to mind:
new player experience
uo forever website
uo's wiki (uoguide)
player story line submission
player art submission

it all seems like UO, except the name is changed

 

[Woodsman]

between uoguide and stratics, there's plenty of UO info. what the heck do we need EA for in that regard? pffft. They can't update their own content pages and you want them to revamp them?

UOGuide and Stratics are not linked prominently from UO Herald.com, and for a new player coming in to UO, they are going to end up at UO Herald.com first and they are going to have to go off of UO Herald. The Camelot people realize how important the official website is, hence them redesigning it.

Look at how much effort was put into the SWTOR website. BioWare gets how important the official websites are.

 

[Woodsman]

We only got the "Harold" when Mythic got involved with EA. While I agree that that uo.com needs a drastic re-vamp.. ESPECIALLY for the new player that is looking up questions they may have... I have to admit that it's alot better and more info than most on line games sites. I too was once a Camelot player. For several years.

The official UO.com website was downgraded when the whole Herald.com thing came into being and that has never made any sense. It especially didn't make sense when WarhammerOnline was setup as WarhammerOnline.com, with their Herald being Herald.WarhammerOnline.com.

I bet UO.com/UOHerald.com gets some work. There is just no way they can put all of that effort into new graphics, new player experience, etc. and then leave UOHerald.com the way it is. I know it's EA and all but people at BioWare are now getting involved with Ultima stuff.

 

[Zosimus]

This could of gone either way. If UO site was fixed first maybe the DaoC ( I played it also and loved it) players would have issues that they were not first. I cant speak for or know what the devs are thinking but I do know, as a former DaoC player, that DaoC was long over due.

UO seems it has been getting some attention of late especially since the release of the ultima forevere website. Just give them some time since star wars atm has sucked up most of the teams from all 3 current games they have running.

 

[Cear Dallben Dragon]

aside from the front page uo.com is a disaster. Live events starting in 1970, no description or screenshots of the clients in the download section??? You are literally supposed to base your decision on what client to use based on a silver or gold ankh. They even incorporated an ask the devs section on uo.com that is blank

 

[Woodsman]

This could of gone either way. If UO site was fixed first maybe the DaoC ( I played it also and loved it) players would have issues that they were not first. I cant speak for or know what the devs are thinking but I do know, as a former DaoC player, that DaoC was long over due.

UO seems it has been getting some attention of late especially since the release of the ultima forevere website.

I almost hesitated in posting this because Ultima stuff has been getting a lot of attention lately.

And it's very possible that Camelot is bringing in more revenue and has been selling more expansions or whatever, so it'd be hard to complain that they are getting a new website, especially since they are coming up on their 10th anniversary (although we are coming up on our 15th).

Camelot also isn't running on Drupal which is powering UO and Star Wars sites. It could be that Camelot is getting converted to Drupal.

Just give them some time since star wars atm has sucked up most of the teams from all 3 current games they have running.

It has been sucking up resources from the other games, but as I said, Star Wars has a huge web/community team, and they are running on the same software that UO's website is. Hopefully at some point the UO devs will get the use of some of the Star Wars web people.

When SWTOR.com launched, I hoped that BioWare would make them change UOHerald.com back to UO.com.

 

[Fayled Dhreams]

UOGuide and Stratics are not linked prominently from UO Herald.com, and for a new player coming in to UO, they are going to end up at UO Herald.com first and they are going to have to go off of UO Herald. The Camelot people realize how important the official website is, hence them redesigning it.

Look at how much effort was put into the SWTOR website. BioWare gets how important the official websites are.

there is the rub, good sir ...

What IS linked from the Herald?
mmmhuh ... the knowledge base *knuckles temples* ...

what ARE UO's peeps working on?
Graphics and new player experience?

*sighs*
It is as if ... well ...(again: nothing to work with)
It is as if they are unaware of the era we are in ...
the digital age ... by the way (in-case they are reading)

Ya know ... it just occurred to me ...
tis reasonable they >cannot know< what age/era we are in ...
I mean .. please to consider
Our ancient roots are deep in/from D&D ... when the physical RNG >worked well enough<
and translated well enough >into this age<
Dungeons & Dragons Dice Roller

*shrugs*

still stumped sirrah!

 

[Tina Small]

Here's a thought about why DAoC might be getting some new "stuff."

You've heard of Kai Schober, right? He's one of the "community" people who periodically posts stuff for UO.

Well, I'm pretty sure that Kai used to work for the company that ran DAoC for EA in Europe. A few years ago, EA ended that relationship and I believe players on those shards were able to transfer their characters to other shards. But I think that put Kai out of a job.

A few months ago, Kai was hired by EA as a community person and I think he moved to Virginia from wherever he used to live/work.

I never played DAoC, but I did poke around both the US and European DAoC websites. I wonder if Kai has been the driving force behind the new website and wiki for DAoC.

Maybe if we're nice and polite, we can even get Kai to stop in here and FINALLY say hello. That was something we were told would happen months ago. Kai just needed to get up to speed on UO first.

If you're feeling up to speed a little bit on UO now, could you step in here please, Kai, and formally introduce yourself and perhaps tell us what plans you and Rowland Cox have for the UO website.....??

 

[Woodsman]

So was it Kai or Rowland who was doing the questions in the House of Commons?

It's good that DAoC is getting this stuff, and it's probably good for UO overall that attention is being paid to the MMOs within BioWare. UO and Camelot are probably on a more even footing now that BioWare is in charge.

But I still fear that UO will get all of this new player stuff and graphics update done, and then still have what we have right now for the main website.