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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."
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!
Hello, this was the biggest year for MMO games ever. AO had an expansion (and went free), City of Heroes, Lineage 2, EQ22, and WOW were released, and Dark Age of Camelot had large free content patch and a boxed expansion pack. That UO should take a bit of a hit from the "new and shiny" syndrome isn't startling.
You used MMOCharts to prove your point, but completely forgot to mention that Lineage's subscriber numbers are dropping off at a rate that is proportional to the growth curve for Lineage 2. Yet no one is claiming that Lineage is dying.
Factor in the fall start of school, the holidays, and the crappy economy here in the States and there are lots of reasons as to why the numbers in UO might currently be trending downward.
The new expansion is in the top 20, as I said. An expansion pack for a game that is dying wouldn't have managed to bust into the top 20. Not this holiday season with so many quality PC games available.
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.