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R.I.P Ultima Online ?
petrus4 writes "Terra Nova has posted my article about the possible impending death of Ultima Online. In it, I talk about why I think UO is in serious long-term trouble, and what can be done to possibly reverse the trend and rescue the game." From the article: "Admittedly when something is very large, its demise often takes a
considerable period of time...The Titanic took something like four
hours to sink after initially striking the iceberg. But there are a
couple of reasons why I believe that from a long term market share
perspective, the game could be in trouble."
EA's switching to credit card payments strikes me as somewhat reminiscent of the Steam system for authorising Half Life 2 every time you play. It just makes it harder and more awkward for gamers to play the games that they want to, and goes some way to preventing people from being able to play the game. Even if U.O is a few years old, it is still reasonably popular and still in demand. I can't see why the company would want to shoot themself in the foot by preventing consumers from easily purchasing their product.
I'm not stressed. I'm just terribly, terribly alert.
sorry, it was almost impossible to resist typing that.
good luck with that !
the emulator scene will keep UO alive for decades at least
LRC armour is "Lower Reagent Cost"-armour, which makes it free (in a monetary sense) to cast spells. It is very popular, but it is mainly used for training. In Player Versus Player, the miniscule cost of buying reagents is almost always neglected.
Mind you, his point is valid, good items matter a lot. Just not LRC.
Would be nice if they sold the system before closing it.
UO still has a quarter million subscribers, the latest expansion was in the top 20 for PC games sales last month, and the players of UO have shown, historically, that no matter how inept the developer and support staff can be they will continue to pay and play the game.
To counter some of your points directly:
a) Anyone involved with the games "inception" (aka "creation") left, or was told to leave long ago. There's no reason why that should affect the game in the present, as UO has been running without the oversite of the people who designed and implemented it for a long time.
b) EA's tried to push UO in different directions quite a number of times: The failed 3D client, the Steampunk expansion made with unused UO2 assets, this new Japanese themed expansion. None of those ideas destroyed the game and they all tried to push UO in a direction different than its original design. Even if the relics are making it a "Diablo clone", why can the only conclusion be that such a change will be bad for the game? Maybe the players want a different combat system.
c)Since you didn't like the promotion last year the game is dying.....ok.
d) The game had a peak of 240K and is now running around 170k. Nice statistics. What you either don't know, or didn't include, is what number of subs are required to be above a break-even point for the hardware maintenance and salaries of the live team. It's reasonable to assume, based on the age and relative popularity of the game, that it has been in the black for quite some time. The number of players needed to continue to make a profit from the game is quite probably far far less than 165K. It wouldn't be unreasonable to think that a game such as UI could survive on as few as 20K-40K users. There are long running MMOs that have never had player bases that have grown beyond 40K, yet those games are still running.
e)Compared to the subscribers from North America and Europe I can't fathom that Australian subscribers represent a very large percentage of the UO playerbase. As far as I know, from my frequent perusal of the game's section in Best Buy, the only UO disc on the shelves these days is Samurai Empires. Which, as I stated above, is selling amazingly well. Are you implying that SE isn't going to be released in AU, or that it hasn't been released yet?
None of your points, either singly or all taken together, gives any overwhelming evidence that UO is doing anything other than what it's done for years....just existed.
A) Most people who has been there since the beginning has left.
I joined years after the beginning, yet my account is 74 months old. It would be quite a surprise if a considerable number of people had stayed for seven years playing the same game.
B) The developers have made changes I don't approve of (paraphrased).
*Shrugs* Hardly proof positive that the game is dying. The fact that people are paying loads of real money for items in the game is not a proof that people are loosing faith in it, quite the contrary.
E) They only accept credit cards!
Wrong. There are four options avaible. However, the poster's local shop have stopped selling game time coupons. He claims that's the main reason why he doesn't play the game any longer.
His solutions doesn't seem like ways to resuscitate a dying game. He suggests that a vast amount of new land is added, for housing. UO has a 1 house per account rule, so he's actually complaining of overcrowding.
His other arguments are either vague ( There is some evidence to suggest that the game's current programmers are frustrated with the age/possible obsolescence in some respects of the game's codebase.) or about minor things ( EA's "Return to Britannia," campaign last year did not instill confidence in me).
There's only one thing left to do.... Make it free! Free subscription. Free downloads. Hand out UO CDs on the street.
Zed_eX: The original menace to society.
That's funny because I got my bi-annual "UO nostalgia" yesterday. I re-activated my account (which has been initially created in 1999), and I will probably close it within a month.
:)
However, if I could find a community where people aren't powergamers, and better yet, use the faction system, I would probably stay there much longer.
My best UO times (in fact, my best MMOG times ever) were when the faction system launched and virtually every player was in a faction. That was some real fun.
Some guilds seem to be active in factions, but I'm tired of normal shards where every player has their own mules to boost their pvp char with super armors/weapons/potions. I exclusively play on siege perilous now.
Does anyone know any good guild for me in Siege? Is there any place for a crafter with skills in the 70s who doesn't want to grind to 100 before starting being useful in a guild?
I guess that the answer is no, and, IMHO, that is why UO is dying. Netcraft didn't confirm it, but I do
perception is reality
Ultima Online was the first MMOG I ever played, at the time I really loved it. Now, years and years later I have moved on to new games. I went from having a P133Mhz system to a 3.6Ghz, yet the game is still Ultima Online. I think the Ultima universe has a fantastically rich tradition, and the game is due for a modern 3D sequel. Some problems: - People have too much 'stuff' and wouldn't want to leave. - People have to many characters they don't want to lose. Some solutions: - Migrate the original content to the sequel to servers (or shards) that contain old world characters and loot so to not overpower new players. - Launch virgin servers where people can make fresh starts and begin on a open playing level. The game might cost a lot to make, but I'm sure EA can afford it. They have tried making sequels before without much luck, but if they lay the proper groundwork and hire the right people, I'm sure they could make it happen.
First off, lemme make a lil' disclaimer: I'm one of the Core developers at http://www.runuo.com/, the largest Ultima Online emulator around, so I may be a bit biased :)
Anyways, the article seems to have been written by someone who hasn't kept up on the latest UO news. In the past month, EA/OSI released a new expansion with a large landmass, the "samurai empire" expansion. Also, just in the past week infact, They opened up a brand NEW shard, compeltely clean with no players on it. If UO was dying,it wouldn't make economic sense to invest money and time in putting up another server.
In the article, it also lists as a 'reason' for UO's demise as the lack of stores in which to purchase The latest expansions or Gamecodes without the use of a Credit Card. A little searching shows this page listing EB-Games austrailia as a place t' buy 'em.
Another thing that the author didn't take into account is the popularity of free shards. RunUO, in addition to providing highly customizable software, also sponsors 3 shards, all from differing time periods. Combined, they have over 50,000 accounts. And these are active accounts. we purge unused accounts every 90 some days.
Hybrid, Our biggest shard with about 37000 accounts, is based in the Pre-AoS era, with peaks ov over 2000 online at any one time.
Our other shards, Rebirth and Demise, are a super old school shard from the Pre-T2A area, and a Shard from the current era of ultima online, AoS/SE respectively.
Those are just 3 shards. There are MANY more out there which help keep UO alive.
Long live Ultima Online!
Not to nitpick but given the PC market these past few months, saying that UO's expansion hit the top 20 in sales isn't say much. Other than the obvious games (Doom 3, HL2, FarCry, Rome Total War...) how many other games recieved major attention? Additionally, a top -20-? This isn't the Fortune 500 where 500th place is still a multimillion dollar company. I've seen top 20 lists where the top three sell millions and the last few sell a couple thousand. A top 10 or 5 would be much more impressive.
I've heard people telling me the death of UO when: EQ was released AC was released Diablo 2 was released Lord British left EA UO:Renaissance was released NWN was released UO:LBR was released AO was released Shadowbane was released SW:G was released ...
Yet it's still here.
I agree fully that UO is shit at the moment. But the fact is, the shitty parts are good for getting newer players into the game, even though it destroy the game play in the long term. Because makeing a better game is not the goal, getting more money by attracting newbies is. I mean, who cares if they leave after a few months? They'll just add some more crap (like Samurai Empire) and more will come.
Just to be fair, the dev team has done some (not much) good things too. Such as customizable houses, new craftables and I didn't mind GGS (guaranteed gaining system) during my 2 weeks of return to Britannia program.
Why bother predicting UO's demise when even Meridian 59 is still alive? To me, the spirit of UO has died with the release of UO:R, but hay, a living dead is still 'living'. It's simply gonna be here no matter how rotten it becomes.
I am posting doubts and speculation.
You can't take those 2 data points and draw a line and claim that's how much people are leaving per month, it is very likely an upward trend right now because of the expansion. You have no numbers for what has happened month to month between the peak and now, and 2 points does not make a trend.
Emulator shards don't keep UO alive. It may keep people using the UO client software, but UO is a service run by EA, and nobody outside of EA can do anything about it living or dying.
http://www.uorebirth.com/
So long as the server emulator scene keeps going, UO will live on. The link above takes you to a server that strives to capture the golden era of UO... the times before their first expansion, and even before they nerfed PKs so that PvP died away.
I highly recommend Rebirth for anybody interested in seeing, for free, what the best MMORPG ever made was like in its heyday. Since the server is free to play on and the client can be downloaded for free (search Google for gigex+uo+trial), there's nothing to worry about.
Since the article uses my numbers, here are my comments:
Firstly, just to clarify the numbers, while it did have its initial peak of 240K around April 2001, my chart clearly shows that UO actually rebounded in 2003 at reached a new peak of some 250K or more from March to June 2003, and this was confirmed by UO's producer himself ( http://www.uo.com/sept2003nl.html ). So while it's tempting to say the UO has been in decline for over 3 years now, it really has only been in decline for about 18 months.
Secondly, I think the current figure is probably closer to 170,000, not 165,000, and that's what my chart reflects.
Thirdly, I'm not sure where the figure of "the
game's population level has fallen by 32.25% in the last 28 months" comes from. April 2001 to September 2004 (the last data I have) would be 27.1% over 41 months. June 2003 to September 2004 would be 32.0% over 15 months, and May 2002 to September 2004 24.4% over 28 months.
Fourthly, before anyone old school fanboi tries to claim that it was Trammel (UO:R) that began the fall of UO, it was not. People who were working on UO at the time will tell you that they were rapidly losing many subscribers due to the unrestricted PvP, and that UO:R is what actually saved UO and allowed it to continue to grow. UO continued to do well until a confluence of events: the release of UO:3D (largely panned), the cancellation of the UO sequel OWO:O, and the beta test and subsequent release of Dark Age of Camelot.
Fifthly, it should be pointed out that something like half of UO's playerbase is now in Japan, so it is not surprising the the gameplay is changing to accomodate their play styles.
Finally, it's my personal opinion that there isn't much that can "save" UO at this point. The game was starting to look obsolete when they cancelled the first 3D sequel, and EA's short-sighted cancellation of the second 3D sequel (UXO) has only served to hurt the Ultima brand even further. Even a full-up 3D conversion of the game would not help it; the data shows that MMOGs, like most every other product in a capitalist market, has a limited life cycle. You can increase growth by expanding into new markets, but once a title is mature and consumers are familiar with it, there is very little you can do to get people to preferentially pick up a copy of UO off the shelf when you're up against a dozen other MMOG titles on that same shelf.
Bruce
http://www.mmogchart.com
I always thought that everyone just ran their own shard these days.
So what if you can get a 3d engine running on UO... it is still the first generation of MMORPG's everyone else has improved upon the recipe. WOW is destroying EQII right now becuase they looked back at all the mistakes that everyone else made and improved, not being tied to old ways of doing things. UO is dead face it the days are numbered. But assuming they have 100,000 people on line at 5 dollars a month that is half a million dollars a month... I think UO may be around longer then you think it will, it is still profitable for them to keep it up even if they no longer truly support it.
---In a time of Chimpanzees I was a Monkey.
I'll never let go Lord British!! I'll never let go!!
1) Your analysis is based on bad assumptions so your result is way off. 2) You're a sick bastard for fucking a horse.