I am actually very aware of Ultima Online and its history and unfortunately or fortunately you can ask most former players about this very name and they probably know me or about me and my guild.
However you are trying to spin Trammel killed Ultima Online, that is a utterly false statement. Trammel nearly doubled the size of the population of Ultima Online and also provided a safe haven for many players who really wouldn’t want to have anything to do with Felucca. Furthermore by snagging these players in and holding them it further added to the pool of Felucca people by drawing from these players eventually.
EA is what killed Ultima Online not Trammel, and people who say it was Trammel probably didn’t play or surely didn’t play on the scale like I did. EA had policies of allowing things like speedhacking and duping for far too long until it became extremely clear the economy was faltering. This saving of money for stupiditys sake utterly destroyed Ultima Online for everyone. On top of this there were bad decisions regarding pvp changes, but if the people running the place actually had ever pvped they would of saw as a disaster beforehand.
There is no amount of changes that will save a game when its apparent the people running it wont stop cheating.
But please tell me all the fun I should of had if I stayed when I went into a fight knowing everyone will be faster than me by using a 3rd party program and the people running the place don’t seem to care. Sure you can say “download it too” and a whole lot did. But all the people who didn’t and quit, that’s acceptable? EA is a testament to stupidity.
It had an influx of people wanting to try ultima without the pvp, but that’s before realised what would happen to the market. One of the elements that they wanted, catastrophically affected by one of the elements they didn’t.
No doubt EA played a part in demise, but if you ask around you’ll hear that pvp dried up quickly on the pvp server after the separation and the market on the non-pvp server was fubar. It was never going to last after the separation.
Where do you think the pvp players from ultima went?
While I wouldn’t say it is a mandate, the facts of the sale speak volumes. It was roughly 1/2 up front and 1/2 'IF" certain goals were met. Looking back on my own experiences, my original company sold us quite a few years ago. At first the changes were small, the new company wanted to see what we did well and what we didn’t. We were offered bonuses for meeting production goals and not exceeding budgets. As time went on, my new company looked more at what we didn’t do well, and targeted bonuses at correcting those problems. Over time we were pretty much indistinguishable from the parent company.
It stands to reason that rather than ‘production’ goals (as CCP doesn’t ‘produce’ anything tangible). They have profit and growth goals. 200 mil is a lot of money to leave on the table when your bank balance is 40 mil. So I suspect they are being ‘motivated’ to change. PA obviously runs a successful game, and while I doubt they want EvE to become a BDO clone, I would be stunned if they didn’t want EvE to be successful. CCP Fozzie has told us that PA wants CCP to run and make decisions for EvE online. That (so far) PA hasn’t ‘told’ CCP to change anything, but by defining goals and offering significant money to meet those goals, they are effectively ‘steering’ EvE’s direction. CCP never really addressed player retention and growth after it became apparent how much the Rubicon decisions hurt EvE’s growth. Now it’s a very hot topic, now they have a reason to care about it…The times, they are a changing…
Um no, there is no server on Ultima Online that does not have pvp. There is only a choice to go places you can pvp and places you cant.
Pvp “dried up” long after Trammel was introduced, we are talking many years here. People who say it was before that probably didn’t like the changes and made that excuse but you could find people to fight for a very long time after that moment. Trying to link that particular moment to a moment far far after is reaching at best.
The MMO market is diminishing. Previously, MMOs only had to compete with online FPS (i.e. CS:GO or its previous iterations and Battlefield etc.) and single player games. Now they are being squeezed out of the market entirely by Battle Royales and MOBAs. Out of the top 20 games being streamed on Twitch as I type, there is only 1 MMO - WoW. Black Desert Online is 38th behind Minecraft, SC2 and even Super Mario Party (WTF?!).
Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t see Twitch viewers as the sole marker of how successful a game is, but it’s an indicator. Only 2 MMOs in the top 100 on Twitch is not a good sign.
Where do you see these mythical new players coming from to make EVE more profitable? CCP know this and tried to futureproof themselves by developing new games for when EVE inevitably (yes, it is inevitable) costs more to run that it brings in subscribers and is no longer viable.
When Archeage released there was about a 6 hour wait time to get in. The amount of people who wanted in even surprised the people who ran the game. It was a full pvp mmorpg with some safe areas.
Now of course they ran their little game into the ground, but the amount of people who wanted to play showed clearly a potential market is there.
It didn’t shut down, it is still available to play even. Its just almost no one is there and it was the first place that depopulated.
It is also fair to point out there is a website named searchuo that exclusively for many years has sold duped goods for real life money ( I used to have one of their employees in my guild). EA has even taken the owner to court several times, has been unable to stop the duping or the duper. Also while the owner of the website made a killing it basically ruined farming of many things but at the same time provided easy access to end level pvp for cash.
HS profits are low from PvE, in all its forms available there.
The question here, is how much player attrition are current PvP mechanics, both legal and illegal, causing in HS, and whether its worth it.
Logically, it would make sense to further restrict PvP in HS, and commensurately increase PvP in LS-NS, both as a factor of the potential rewards in PvE in them, and as to the nature of players in those disparate regions choosing to act there.
The notion that HS should have more PvP, is flawed.
More PvP in HS just leads to more players leaving.
LS and NS (both Player and NPC) should have more PvP.
You cant make people PvP in HS, but you can make them PvP in LS and NS where rewards feom PvE are greater.
It’s normal and accepted by most, because this is a PvP game. The topic is about the announced wardec changes, which focuses on bringing player activity back, because the current situation is that large PvP groups are suppressing even those players, who do want to PvP.
