A Comment on the Decay of Town / City Loyalty

There is a heated Stratics thread.

Just to give an all-too-brief background (and it’s way too brief because my spare time is devoted to another UO project), as part of the ongoing story arc, you need to acquire city or town loyalty.

For a full explanation of city loyalty, see the UO Herald page or the loyalty part of The Awakening at UO Guide.

Current Rewards
Is it useful? Besides trying to engage the players and give them a geographical sense of belonging, the current reward is a spiffy looking city banner that you can display in your house showing your allegiance to whatever town/city you prefer (UO Guide – City Banners).

The thinking is that it will be importan0t later on down the road leading up to the anniversary in September, and the hints we’ve received indicate that town loyalty will play a part, but for now it’s the banner. I certainly don’t think that the loyalty ratings are only for the banners.

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UltimaCodex.com and UOJournal.com Changes, and Happy 20th Birthday to Ultima Underworld

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If you haven’t seen the Ultima Codex, then you should see it. It officially launched today.

And a big Happy Birthday to Ultima Underworld – see the Ultima Underworld page at UltimaCodex.com.

What Does That Have to do with UOJournal.com?
Have you noticed I’ve not been posting much lately? I’ve been a little busy. I’m not quite ready to talk about parts of it, but parts of it will be available in the next few weeks.

Serious/community/news stuff is moving to UltimaCodex.com. Soapboxy/Rant/Humor stuff is staying here at UOJournal.com. I’m working out how to move stuff over without any penalties within Google, but there you have it.

So UOJournal.com will continue on, it’ll just be on a diet. Some of the new stuff that will be UO-related on UltimaCodex.com actually relates to what I wanted to do on UO Journal, and other (cool) people in the UO community who are working on this have some interesting things to add as well on the UltimaCodex.com side of things.

I Didn’t Go AWOL and There’s Stuff Happening

I didn’t go AWOL. I have a certain amount of time I can devote to UO-related website stuff, and right now that time is devoted to a website that is not UOJournal.com.

But there are things happening, big things. Here are a few of those things.

A new third party program has been approved for UO! It’s been a while.

Ultima Mapper

Ultima Mapper is the new mapping application for Ultima Online Classic and Enhanced clients that allows users to share the entire experience, rather than just their whereabouts.

UO gets its 1,623rd mention on Massive – Do you Miss Player Written Books in MMOS:

Ancient sandboxes like Ultima Online and modern classics like EverQuest II give players the ability to write their own books, which then populate player-run libraries, serve as tavern menus, explain quests, and mark the memory of friends who left the game. Later games, however, have sadly passed over the mechanic.

Another edition of The Yew Times, a break from the normal UO news.

The Awakening – Act II, Part 2 – A continuation of the ongoing story arc.

People who hare having patch issues, read this

And finally, Patch 75! There is so much going on, you just need to read it yourself.

We are Not the Future of UO. Hell, We are Barely the Present.

So here’s the video again:

Stratics’ user Tina Small has put together a transcript that was posted on Stratics.

These are some of the things that stood out to me, and that I felt like commenting on.

I’ve already ranted about cheaters and scripters, so this will be a more positive look at the interview.

Focuses, Short-Term Plans, Long-Term Plans
Everything is focused on the 15th Anniversary for now, or rather using it as a kind of a timeline (my words). There is a focus on addressing unfinished systems, long-standing bugs, and revamping old areas. That is good!

New Players – Act like it’s the 15th Anniversary
You know a lot of people are going to show up to your party. If you give them crappy beer in the form of a shitty new user experience, you think they are going to want to come back and party with you in the future? Don’t give them Schlitz or Pabst Blue Ribbon, give them the good stuff that says you are interested in seeing them come back.

And make sure to have at least part of the high resolution artwork update available. A lot of folks are going to be looking at UO, and momma needs a new pair of shoes, or dress or something. You want them to get their foot in the door, but you better give them reasons to keep on coming through that door. 1990s graphics don’t cut it for a lot of potential players. There are people who might be interested in UO who might have still been in diapers when UO was in beta testing. They don’t get excited over the thought of playing Intellivision games and they ain’t going to get excited over UO’s 1990s artwork.

Ultima Franchise
Jeff mentions that there is “Lots of stuff going on”, not just with Ultima Online. At the start of the interview, he mentioned that his job is a lot more than just UO. I know I’m bitching, but we’ve been teased about other Ultima-related stuff for over a year now. I’ve said this before – it’s Ultima-related, and when you play something up for so long without talking specifics, people are going to start thinking that it’s just going to be typical EA – another Ultima project that goes nowhere and is canceled.

Subscriptions:
Jeff mentions subscriptions have climbed. I’m not sure what to say other than to put some money into more artists and into dedicated community relations.

Publish 75 and future publishes
Sometime this month (March). Upcoming publishes are focusing on the 15th Anniversary content-wise. Jeff discussed town loyalty, including obtaining city banners that declare who you’re loyal to.

Updating UO to “current” MMO styles
Jeff says no. I agree completely. If I want to play World of Warcraft or Rift, I will do so. UO does need to support modern computers though, namely higher resolution artwork.

Advertising
A question was asked about advertising. From a long-term UO player and MMO player point-of-view, UO is not worth advertising at this point. It needs a new website (UO.com), high resolution artwork, and a better new player experience.

I see this question come up a lot on Stratics and elsewhere. Look, UO gets plenty of free exposure from some very high profile MMORPG websites. Many people who have never played UO are aware of UO. The problem is they take one look at UO and flee in terror, or they go through the trial and are hampered by a shitty new player experience.

Merging Shards
Jeff says no plan to merge servers. I don’t know why people bring this up, it’s a ridiculous question, because you are going to destroy the community of whichever shard or shards are closed or merged. The fairest way to merge shards would be to set up a brand-new shard, and allow everybody from the shards that would be merging an equal chance at house placement, etc., on that new shard which to Jeff’s credit, he brought up.

Jeff understands how disruptive shard mergers is, but it’s a damn shame that some people don’t give a shit about their fellow UO players who are happy on their low-population shards. I would bet a large sum of UO gold that the players who push for shard mergers are not advocating their shards be closed, they probably want other shards closed and those players moved to their shard.

That leads me to this:

We are Not the Future of UO. Hell, We are Barely the Present.
You can’t continue down the road of catering to us older players while ignoring potential new players. I think it was JC the Builder who said that UO producers can never compete with real life. Players are constantly leaving UO, and we are lucky that so many are able to come back and that so many want to come back, but many will never come back. Real life issues such as children, illness, jobs, finances, all contribute to UO players leaving and never returning.

At some point, you have to decide that new players are more important than a lot of what’s going on with UO. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with trying to keep existing players around or bringing older players back, but the resources don’t seem to be there for accommodating everybody. I know that many hundreds of thousands of people have tried UO over the years and then left, but that pool of players who might come back is not as deep as we’d like to think it is.

I leave you with this thought:
We were all new players at one time. It’s time to say that you want to give a new generation of players a chance to walk in our shoes and experience UO. Right now, new players are screwed unless they find a kind soul to help them out.