INCREASE POPULATION NOW******

[yakkabakka]

I started here over five years ago and with a real life friend I brought in played pretty consistent until the ev bs nerf. Pvm, thief, and very little pvp are what we did. I started playing UO back in Nov 98 and in no way were the evs and bs so pathetically stupid that a dragon and ev would hold hands and do the dos si dos without ever attacking each other. So with that I think was a huge drop in pop back when I was regular this had mid 500 and up now prime time hours barely breaks 300. Housing also is a problem and I was just as guilty I had 12 houses with a keep couple towers and so on all of which I placed myself. I am all for era accuracy and is why I keep popping back hoping they fixed some things but no luck. The era was long and there were changes by OSI this shard does not have to stick with all the dumb versions just to say era accurate and yet still be era accurate. Why do you need more than one house per account honestly, when I picked other shards to join I picked ones with a chance of being able to place a larger home and after macroing and busting hump would get one fairly quickly. New people need goals and possibilities to stick around. AFK macroing is not a problem and every other person on this shard did it to build chars so that would definately not help to bring anyone new. Sorry to ramble.

[KingCo]

Two suggestions i think would help.

1) Change the silver system to a GOLD based system...
2) ONE house per account.

This is well within the realm of do-able.

[Budner]

Pretty sure we already have a gold-based system, unless I'm missing the point of your post. Silver plays a relatively minor role here.

[KingCo]

makes silver useless? yet allowing you to get the neon hair dye that is so coveted?

[Boondock_Saint]

makes silver useless? yet allowing you to get the neon hair dye that is so coveted?

Good idea.

[Kadull]

Again, people leave shards for numerous reasons. It's an MMORPG with lots and lots of features. There's a lot of reasons to play for some people, and there's a lot of reasons to not play for others. You're never going to make everyone happy, or stay for ever.

If you do not steadily advertise, or at very least run the occasional marketing campaign, you are not going to keep up with that decline. Sitting here and pointing fingers at which exact system is at fault for the decline is, quite simply, silly, especially when you have no data to go off of.

Again: market.

Run a donation drive, try to come up with 1,000 bucks, then run a serious marketing campaign.

Another option is to run some kind of word of mouth/referral campaign. For every 5 players that says Kadull referred them to this shard, Kadull gets X prize.

Again, you're never going to keep everyone playing 1 shard for ever, there will *always* be a decline if you don't keep up with your influx, and keeping up on the top shard lists is not enough.

[Abyz]

Just out of curiosity.... What was the peak population of uosa? What was different about the server then?

[Kadull]

Why? There were probably a lot of things that were different. Arguing over which difference may or may not be responsible for people leaving is pointless.

The biggest relevant difference would be that it was closer to the birth of the shard, and when it was closer to it's peak population. That's all there is to go off of. You have a population, and in order to maintain that population, you have to keep an influx of players. That is the hands-down bottom line.

The PRS world is pretty small, there's not a whole lot of players in it any more, and the ones who are left bounce around from shard to shard to shard, and others just quit UO entirely. So, now you have a very small group of players getting brought into the PRS world, and then you have 100 shards competing for those players... In other words, TopShard sites aren't really going to do an established shard a whole lot of good...

If you do not market and advertise and build your shard/company/what ever, your population is going to slowly drop. However, it takes a population to maintain a population.. In other words, there is a 'point of no return.' Once the population gets *too* low, you're fucked.

Again, the answer is to simply advertise.

[MatronDeWinter]

Economy was better, housing was welcoming to new players (even though we had a higher population..), people were farming in dungeons and not idoc'ing new players that quit.

[Abyz]

There couldn't be just one more difference?

[crappled]

I doubt anybody really cares, but I have read so much of this thread I feel I need to add my two cents, especially as a newer player, maybe it is of interest to someone one of the things that drove me away from playing hardcore every day to logging in once in a while for a half hour to farm a little bit.

Firstly, housing was a huge issue for me. Not so much the "imbalance" of it or anything like that, but the shard just looks ghastly hideous with 15 houses per player. I understand it's tied in with economy in that houses cost more because they are less available, but who the hell needs more than 3 houses?? That being said, I don't mind the price of a house being 3x the deed, just get rid of 15 per person for god sake!

Second thing, I know it's an issue that can't and will never really be addressed on any shard (or any game that runs on skill system) but macroing ruins ANY game for me. I love the idea of your character building over time based on how you play the game, and that there is a mix of people who play slightly different characters with different advantages or disadvantages. Everyone running around with the same cookie cutter build gets really annoying. This is sort of a catch 22 though because obviously the people who have the most amount of time and know what they are doing will come out on top, but I like the satisfaction of knowing I worked on my character from the beginning and that he is unique, maybe not a 7x GM but his skills were advanced according to the things I do while playin the game.

Third, the community. I haven't had a chance to speak with a lot of people, but the few I have really spoken to were really cool and for the most part helpful. But from a lot of what I've read, it seems like people are taking it way too seriously against each other and are just too busy running hate wars and trolling that they aren't making it welcoming for new people to come to the server. I understand conflict in an MMO, but I think that it wouldn't hurt for two people who hate each other (online, and maybe IRL) to put aside their feud for a minute to help a stray noob out or something. This third part is mostly speculation and probably a lot of me blowing smoke out my o-ring...

All those things considered, I will continue to play on the shard and support it, but only for a little while at a time and probably further and further apart. The fact is UO is a game long beyond it's prime where things were new and interesting, everyone has it down to an art and the whole mystery of the game that initially drew most of us into it has long since been depleted and/or ruined by EA. I've spent years trying to find a good shard that has really made me feel like I was PLAYING UO and not macroing UO, but I don't think I ever will. So I guess for me, unfortunately, UO hass really just become a passtime for some nostalgia every once in a while.

Anyway that is probably too long and boring for anybody to read, but I hope someone understands what I mean.

/endrant

[Jay]

You have a population, and in order to maintain that population, you have to keep an influx of players. That is the hands-down bottom line.

^^

[archaicsubrosa77]

purple pot chain explosions
no need to rehide to steal from out of stealth mode
All kill worked, not one at a time kill
BS and EV were not boomerangs
Bandages could be cut all at once not one at a time
Archery worked

Those are the chocolate chips that fell off the cookie

But thats on the imaginary shard UO T2A as it was meant to be.

I believe T2A was in a state of war, and earthquakes started leveling the lost lands and unearthing new dungeons expanding the world as we searched out the other two serpent pillars to define the polarity.

Where do you go after it is recreated? I do like the replica model but I believe the fan base here could go further. It would take money and I think Derrick would be good to lead it. It would go platinum I tell you.

Far from Trammel and Deeper in. Like should there be a T2A entrance through the Savage Cave in Compassion where the tunnels to it swarm with savages and berserker ostards? When it is totally replicated why not expand on it, streamline it to where it took a wrong direction?

[archaicsubrosa77]

PS I am spamming the shard on facebook pages with high reader volume

[Guerrilla]

reactivatedautomatedevents.exe

problem solved