Just read this ... It'll make sense

[Jaster]

Something that I have come to realize by playing the server, talking in IRC, or even just reading the forums...

I include myself in this as well ... I see people talking about how we have tons of clients/uniques online, with no active community etc. Then I go and look at servers such as Hybrid and the banks just flourishing with players .... well, even though UOSA has been up for over a year, it still still in its development stage. Servers like Hybrid are in their what, 4th-5th year? UOSA staff is still trying to get the servers mechanics in order. Once those mechanics are in place, and the only thing that they have to worry about is bug issues, they can concentrate on adding entertainment factors to the server, such as those events that many players are asking for:

*monster invasions
*castle sieges
*etc

Many of those clients/uniques that we don't see when we go pvp, dungeon crawl, pvm in t2a etc, are new players that are arriving from other servers or from not playing for so long, are building characters [afk macroing most of them]. The problem is that we lose players because they get discouraged with the actual "ACTIVE" population of the server. The most discouraged players are the PvPers IMO, because they are the ones that crave population to fight with.

What to do about this? There really isn't much that can be done. The more players we get, the more clients/uniques we have that will be MIA macroing characters up. Once all of these new players have suitable characters, they will hopefully be actively playing. What needs to happen is the current veterans that are playing need to stick around.

I think there needs to be a better way to advertise the shard as well. We have spoken a few times about making a movie for what goes on on the shard to allow someone to get an idea of what it looks like etc. Still no movies really posted. I for one have posted about 5 or 6 rpvs on uomovies.com for the server in the past 3 days. As much as voting is said to do a lot, I don't think voting really does much. We have maybe 25 people vote a month and even when we were in the top 2 or 3 on the main lists, the population didn't boom from that. Biggest way to get people here is word of mouth. Once the word gets out there that guilds and players are coming back to UO to play here, guilds/players from servers like Divinity, Angel Island, Hybrid, Defiance are coming to UOSA because its an uncorrupted and solid server to play on that is fun, we will be in business.

With that in mind, other than just raw T2A mechanics, what is to keep players here while the population and activity grows? "Hope" only works for so many people. If anyone has any ideas within the boundaries of the shards goal:

We aim to replicate the T2A era as best we can and within technical limitations as a whole.

We will especially not pull aspects of other eras into this one, even with an overwhelming demand of players.

Please any thoughts or possible ideas would help. I want to see this servers population active, not Missing in Action. I also want to see it grow in every aspect: PvP, PvM, RP, Crafting, whatever ...

The goal of the staff is not to bring in a huge population, it is to provide players with a realistic feel of the t2a era mechanically. I would assume the players would want to have a goal to play on a largely active server to be apart of what t2a felt/looked like ...

... People everywhere "ACTIVELY" playing the game as they chose

[BlackFoot]

Veterans are an important part of this equation. Having them stick around is important, but out of all players they are the ones who should be able to keep themselves entertained.
If they would like a certain part of the community to grow in some way, they need to take the initiative to make that happen. If they want more pvpers they need to teach the scores of new players here how to pvp. If they want more people in dungeons they need to start dungeon hunts certain days/times. Staff has shown to be very accomodating to these types of player ran initiatives putting up system messages and stickys in forums and also adding extra monsters and difficulty in areas.
I would agree that it is the 'pvp' veterans than seem to be the most vocal about their discontent but they are the ones who tend to spend the least time committed to helping growth (not all just majority). Perhaps greater cooperation between these groups of players instead of the trash talking would make some headway in that direction.
As a 'nonpvper' veteran, I have always found somthing to keep myself interested and busy. I spend alot of timing helping newer players and doing simple things like repairing noob gear for free in brit.
I think it in the end is more about the player than the game.
If they arent happy now they can come back every few months until they are happy with what they find, as I think growth is not going to stop.

[RoadKill]

I'd like to add that a lot of the people online are not in popular spawns because of the fact that people grief them.

I do IDOC hunting and make a "world run" a few times a week looking for potential IDOCs. I see more people in the woods or random spawn areas, than I do in dungeons.

[Faust]

Doesn't help when you have the UOR mentality players dry looting and killing horses off after PKing people. This won't change for one simple reason though. This was the way these pathetic morons grew up playing the game in a crappy era of non-pvpers trying to pvp with no respect.

[RoadKill]

Doesn't help when you have the UOR mentality players dry looting and killing horses off after PKing people.

I don't understand how this is a "UOR mentality" but I agree, people are going out of there way to slow down pvp (face it, when you dryloot and kill mounts, there's less likely of a chance of that person restocking and coming back out nearly as fast as they have to do more "downtime tasks")

[Jaster]

The purpose of this post was not to spark arguements, but to promote critical thinking as to what we as the population of the shard can do to increase the size for 1, and number 2, create a more active population visually. I do realize people prefer to play alone sometimes and perhaps always, but our active population that is seen by many players:

*at banks
*in dungeons
*throughout towns
*at vendor shops
*around guild areas

... is visually inactive. What can we do to make the server more visually active?!?

[Safir]

*at banks
*in dungeons
*throughout towns
*at vendor shops
*around guild areas

... is visually inactive. What can we do to make the server more visually active?!?

*at banks
Well, I try to avoid the more popular banks, just because I don't want my stuff stolen.

*in dungeons
Dungeons tend to be stalked by PKs, so perhaps a "dungeon protection squad" from the veterans might be a good initiative. Otherwise the PKs just scare the Blues outta' there.

*throughout towns
I try to avoid town as much as I can, just because I dun wanna' get stolen from. I use my home as a base and visit a rune library to get to a specific shop just to avoid running through town.

*at vendor shops
Same thing here, but without protection. I dun want to have my newly acquired goods stolen or looted off my dead body from being killed by a PK when shopping. It's usually a "in and out" sort of thing, I don't stay at a vendor for too long.

*around guild areas
If you visit some guild areas you might just get PKd by that same guild, which is also true for some player run vendors.

I think the problem is that people either enjoy killing other players so much that they take every opportunity, or that they love the PvP in UO, but that the PvP scene is relatively small. Also, the fact that everyone can have a thief ready to go in about a day or two of macroing from scratch makes the average player almost fear player interaction with unknown players.

[DrFaustus]

You guys have to understand that at this point in time UO has been played out. I feel we're always going to have a high turnover rate with players because a lot of people come back for a "quick fix" or are simply moving from server to server.

If we saved up all the players from the beginning and NO ONE quit we'd probably have over 500 unique Ips and well over 1k clients online at any given time. However, I don't feel this will truly ever be possible unless one of the other major servers goes under. I do feel we'll continue to grow, if even at a very small rate over the months, but I don't think we'll ever get that true T2A population that everyone is pining for. PvPers just need to realize that UO is an old game, and you're not going to have a huge slew of people to prey on day in and day out.

I mean most of the top PvPers on this shard are pretty damn good at what they do, and you guys expect people to just keep putting up with getting owned? People get tired of it and entertain themselves in other ways. Some quit from it, others just move servers. However, I doubt we'll ever have a massive population while there are other venues that people can move to (IE: Other shards). This "hope" you speak of is truly the only real way we'll achieve massive population, and that will only happen if UOSA outlasts the other shards.

So donate, don't kick people while they're down, and keep playing...oh and most importantly, "Pace yourselves."

It never hurts to go on other servers and advertise...it doesn't help to continually flip flop server to server and rage quit every time a pvp change comes in that you don't like.

[Teknix]

I honestly don't have a single thing to say after reading what loops, blackfoot, and faust wrote. They took the words right outta my mouth. 'Vets' need to take initiative and contribute to the sustained growth of the server.


And loops has a very important question. How do we make this server more visually active IMO that will rest on the shoulders of everybody. Each person should get out in the open and interact with others (new and old) in some shape or fashion that suits their playing style.

[RoadKill]

IRC removes a LOT of potential game interaction.

[DrFaustus]

I say lets not fix what isn't broken.

[Hemperor]

Let's say the shard peaks at 600 clients a day...how many of those are ACTUALLY playing?

With 4 connections allowed, I know many many people leave their characters on all day (some have more than 1) just to kill counts... Then you have people macroing (multiple characters) all day, everyday, and this certainly isn't just limited to new players.

I know plenty of players check out this shard all the time, but it's sad to say that it's also quite a large number of people don't hang around... There are hardly any newb friendly people/guilds around. [T2A] is just about dead every second week.

Even then, I haven't seen a single guild that helps out newbs actually have fun... They tend to just macro macro macro, same could be said about the orcs. For a roleplay guild, they sure are concerned about becoming 7x before adventuring. People have lost the true spirit of UO, especially in the T2A era. People need to band together and play from the start, it's a great way to help new players, get them accustomed to the shard and the game.

Went a bit off topic there, but I think the last point would help.

[Jaster]

IRC removes a LOT of potential game interaction.

Can't agree more. Instead of logging into the game to go and search for action to see if there is any, player log into IRC and ask if anything is going on, say !status to check the population, say !events to check what free use pvp event they can do, then either log off if it isn't interesting, or play the event and log off. Very few players actually log into the game and go searching for action, whether it be pvp or just to talk to someone. Many people might as well just not play the game at all, majority of their time is spent in IRC chatting/ranting/talking trash.

I suggest that IRC be made only for help and support. General community chat needs to go. Guilds can use the IRC to have private channels for guild business and communication. If players need support ingame, they can use the help option to page a gm for a response, which can then be led to asking them to enter IRC help and support if they need further assistance.

This could be, in my eyes, a giant step to putting players back in the game to show that they play the game, instead of being online and "playing" in irc.

[Hemperor]

IRC removes a LOT of potential game interaction.

Can't agree more. Instead of logging into the game to go and search for action to see if there is any, player log into IRC and ask if anything is going on, say !status to check the population, say !events to check what free use pvp event they can do, then either log off if it isn't interesting, or play the event and log off. Very few players actually log into the game and go searching for action, whether it be pvp or just to talk to someone. Many people might as well just not play the game at all, majority of their time is spent in IRC chatting/ranting/talking trash.

I suggest that IRC be made only for help and support. General community chat needs to go. Guilds can use the IRC to have private channels for guild business and communication. If players need support ingame, they can use the help option to page a gm for a response, which can then be led to asking them to enter IRC help and support if they need further assistance.

This could be, in my eyes, a giant step to putting players back in the game to show that they play the game, instead of being online and "playing" in irc.

This would never happen. I know IRC was big back in the day for UO shards as well. It's pretty much a part of the game.

There is already pretty much zero time for Derrick to monitor the chats, there is no way it could be limited to help. Someone would just make another IRC that everyone would use, or the public ventrilo.

[DrFaustus]

Hemperor's point pretty much nailed it on the head imo...

Moreso than IRC will ever solve. IRC merely makes things like "trade" more convenient, and it's not hard to start your own IRC channel.

I don't think we have the population many people think we do. Hence why you don't see all the banks bustling. I think multiple clients are skewing these numbers, and razor merely makes it a macro fest. By the time New Player #56 reaches 7x Old Player #13 has taken a break from the game.