Azaroth

Even I’ll admit, when I took a look at the UO:KR screenshots, I was impressed.

Not because the art was some kind of next-gen marvel. It wasn’t. It isn’t. People are criticizing it, saying it looks like they updated from 1997 to 1999. And it does.

What I liked about the art, however, was the fact that it retained the LOOK and FEELING of UO, I thought. As much as it could be retained with new graphics, anyway. I thought they did a good job of that. Like I said, I was actually fairly impressed and surprised. However, others seem to be harder on graphics than I am. I suppose I’m not enough of a graphics whore to be cool these days.

The main point is that, if they managed to keep the system spec requirements down - these graphics were great. They felt great for what they were, they looked great for what they were. Just keep the specs down.

After all, UO was released in 1997. A lot of the long-term users are “forced” into playing out necessity or inability to upgrade their old state of the art 486, and thus they’re unable to even consider playing the newer MMORPGs. Even some of the newer players are younger, older, or just, in general some kind of user subcategory that’s NOT tech nerds running two month old PCs and able to deal with 124GB clients and incredible hardware demands.

Thus, many of them are likely running some sort of hand-me-down machine.

I’ll digress here, but the point is that UO’s new client needs to be three things:

A) Nice looking. Or else what’s the point of spending the time, money, and effort on the upgrade?

You’re going to run this client, hopefully, until UO dies in (EA prays, anyway) about 2020. You’re probably not going to ever upgrade the client again. It won’t be cost effective. You also want to make this client upgrade count, you want a rejuvenation of your playerbase. You want the new players that’d never come in with the mid-90’s graphics.

B) “Classic” UO in art style. Don’t scare anyone. These UO players have been around a long time, and can probably be very ornery in their old age.

They don’t want things to look totally different. Or, probably, very different at all really. UO is all about nostalgia and familiarity for a lot of people, especially after ten years.

C) EASY ON THE HARDWARE SPECS.

Like I said, you can’t alienate your current playerbase - which is made up of a lot of people on a lot of old machines. Pulling a Vanguard would mean certain death.

Or, I suppose you could go hardcore, purposely alienate your loyal userbase, and hope for a TOTAL rejuvenation of UO. That’d be one strategy. It’d also be one real bad strategy. If you want to do that, remake the whole game - art is the most expensive part. And nobody wants to play “that old game”. Even if the graphics were totally updated, you’d garner more attention with a new game. Yeah, they’ve already got Warhammer coming anyway.

So, the problem is?

UO:KR is failing on all three fronts.

People REALLY hate the look. Now, I don’t get it. But like I said, I’m a bit easier on the graphics than most people. However, as far as I’ve read, I’m in a serious minority here. Even among people on the UO Stratics forums, which is usually nothing more than a love-in for all things UO related.

They didn’t retain the look of the graphics enough for some people. Hey, I don’t get it (again). I think they did alright. But one female player commented that her pets didn’t look like “her” pets anymore, and she’s had them for something like four or five years. And she may quit now.

You may find this strange. I may find this strange. However, these are the types of problems that you run into with such an ancient game. People are going to get attached in strange ways (especially with the type of player UO has gone looking for, and succeeded in attracting - but that’s not a dig), and they are going to get pissed off in even stranger ways when you change things. Especially so drastically. And especially of a visual nature. Much in the way one becomes attached to the small imperfections and tiny details of a long-term companion’s looks, personality, demeanor - these people just don’t want their ten year old world changed so drastically.

Is it entirely logical? At first glance, probably not. I think they anticipated that to some degree when designing their new art, too. Apparently it just didn’t go far enough in not going anywhere.

Along with all of that, I’m seeing a lot of comments about how the game looks during actual gameplay. In a word, that word seems to be “Bad”.

Apparently it’s “impossible to pvp”, among other things. People are claiming that the screenshots put out for public consumption have been doctored to look better, and that when the game is actually “moving”, it looks terrible.

I have no idea about any of that, I haven’t taken a look personally. I probably should if I want to talk about it, but I’m just not interested. Sound strange?

Here’s the straight 411 99dope tuberculosis bling bling snoop dog:

You could change the look of UO all you want, I’m not interested in the gameplay.

Lineage 2 looks awesome. I don’t want to play a Korean GrindfestTM. Sorry NCSoft, I just don’t. No offense.

I think they’re missing this basic law of MMO nature. If they’re trying to attract new players. Who knows, maybe they’re just attempting to provide more fertile ground in which to cultivate their current playerbase’s tasty, tasty walletjuice for a longer period of time.

I think, if they’re doing that, they’ve missed the point again.

Really, really missed the point.

Not that it isn’t a noble attempt, and a seemingly good idea. They’re just missing the point.

Graphics are secondary. As much as players, and especially prospective players, make them seem like the be all and end all. Itself, UO specifically hasn’t been about graphics.. ever. I wasn’t really impressed with the graphics in October of ‘97, and I promise you that I’m not now.

What got me into UO, what kept me in UO, what got me into ANY MMO, and what has me STILL writing about UO to this day.. is gameplay.

Think on that for just a minute.

Now, if you’re looking for a windfall of new players, do you honestly think that upgrading the graphics two or three years forward on a ten year old game is going to be a magic bullet toward that goal?

If you want to concentrate on graphics, you upgrade to 2007. If you don’t want to kick all of your current players out, and only want to come halfway (or less) in the graphics department - you can’t just go “Alright. There. Halfway. Our jobs here are done”.

No. You need a complete plan of action. That includes, surprise, changes other than graphical (and the same thing you’ve been doing with your expansions for the last seven or eight years).

More people seem to be pissed off with the changes than are happy with them, anyway. The old players were already happy with the way the game looked. Familiarity. Nostalgia. And most importantly… it ran on their computers. Apparently, UO:KR just… isn’t.. working in that.. fashion. You know… the fashion of working. The amount of complaints I’ve read is staggering. People are getting pretty upset. And that’s their right.

The most important thing about UO:KR was that it run, smoothly, on the computers of the existing users. That’s why I found the graphics totally acceptable, and I considered them “good”.

I don’t mean to bash here. That’s not my intention. I’m just reporting what I’ve read.

At one point, I suppose that my point is that I don’t totally understand the new client. I can understand where they’re going with it, but you can see how it may fall apart for them in some important ways.

Maybe the only way I truly understand this move is if the UO subscription rates were crashing at an alarming rate, and they needed “the big fix”. If they’re slightly misguided, I could see them as determining this a decent fix. At best I’d call this a decent fix. Without a full plan, without the other “half” of the equation, I don’t see how anyone who really put some thought into this could see it as any more than a decent fix. Unless someone truly thought that UO’s current mishmash ruleset is truly the height of MMO gameplay, and the only thing that is needed for everyone to realize this and come running, credit cards in hand, is an update to Diablo II graphics.

Hey, look. You’ve got some attention, and you’re squandering it. Another ho-hum expansion is not making the best use of the biggest investment UO has had in 39 years (or whatever), let’s be honest with ourselves. People totally don’t care that you’re introducing a new area and some quests or whatever. I promise they don’t. Not the ones who aren’t already playing, anyway. And I promise you that if anyone thinks that the current design of UO is the height of excellence is PROBABLY already playing UO, “despite” the graphics that everyone has accepted (and loves) as “UO”, anyway.

At this point in its history, UO has to become about variety. Has to. The game has a rich history that people pine for and continue to consider the top of its gameplay class in many instances of that history. Offer a set of classic servers. Hell, offer an entire set of specialty servers. Get chopping. Stop being stubborn about your ruleset. It is not for some. Get over it.

Seems like a lot of work? Well, not as much as creating an entire new client, I’ll bet you that. It doesn’t take a hell of a lot of talent or time to edit an existing set of scripts to alter a ruleset either. I’ve done it, and I’m a fantastic example of “very little talent”.

This is basic. I’m not suggesting anything gamebreaking, visionary, or outlandish here. If they did a simple test run of a classic shard, they’d fill it. Then you keep adding until you stop filling the servers, or stop a bit short so you end up with more demand than supply. That always gets people horny. Once someone logs in to “classic server” of their choice and sees the message “We apologize for the inconvenience, but this server is currently full. Please wait a few moments before attempting to log back in.”, man that’s it. They’re salivating.

“There are some problems with this. Az, you’re stupid. Solve them or else you’re stupid.”

Alright.

1) The cannibalization of current accounts.

Maybe you think that adding a set of classic servers would do a lot of shifting players around.

You add servers of five different past rulesets, you effectively end of shifting people off of their current dying shards onto the new shards.

Not only does this look bad on your current developers (and everything you’ve done for several years), but it’s a lot of work for no reward. Your current users who keep on playing on their regular servers, become disenfranchised and complain. Or even quit. You don’t play MMOs to play alone, and you especially don’t play UO to be alone in the world. Ever run around on an emulator shard alone for a few hours? God damn creepy. I usually end up hiding in the closet.

That may also just be the drugs. Or the insanity.

Listen:

The target is new money.

But you can’t spit on the old money.

Counter this problem by simply charging a certain amount for access to the set of “premium classic” servers. You can even do this individually if you feel that will be beneficial to your bottom line, but only if you start out with one server first. Maybe two. That’s aside from the point.

The point is, most of the people playing these servers will be new accounts. Or, scratch that, very, very old players on new accounts. This is where you get your “new accounts” from with UO. You’re not going to attract newer gamers. At least not until you increase popularity first in general. Your first target, and your ONLY first target, is your old players who have left due to gameplay changes.

Get ‘em back, and start down the road to rejuvenation. Small graphical upgrades alone will not accomplish this.

2) The Nostalgia Conundrum.

“But Az, you’re stupid. Obviously anyone talking about classic UO rulesets is just driven by nostalgia, and would see that the past isn’t always as great as they remember it.”

Wrong again, Flanders. People yelled this at me for years. I don’t want to toot my own horn, but I took it upon myself to fucking prove it wrong on my own. It took a year and still nobody noticed.

In fact, everyone still quotes my bitter, angry post at the end of IPY as some sort of proof positive that IPY didn’t work, classic shards wouldn’t work, and any kind of freedom in a game doesn’t work. Fact is, you either understand this post or you don’t. I’m not taking an hour to type out how it was supposed to be taken in. However, one thing I was NOT saying was “This didn’t work. This doesn’t work. This will never work. This was a mistake.”. The opposite, really. You just have to read it with an open mind and without the desire to use it to prove your own points about your own point of view.

Although there are a million things I’d do differently, one of of them wouldn’t be to mutilate or drastically change the particular ruleset if I were suggesting this plan to EA/Mythic. One of them wasn’t that freedom in MMOs sucks. One of them wasn’t that it didn’t work.

I’d offer some NEW rulesets though. I think you’d be stupid not to do this on a delay. One in particular that I’ve been yelled at by many an ignoramus for not freely sharing. Obviously I don’t have one, or it sucks. Apparently I didn’t run and closely observe an extreme example of a classic, sandbox, UO ruleset for a year of my life after playing the game for x years and writing about it for however many more. Impossible that I know anything on the topic. K anyway.

But the points are these:

- People don’t suffer from UO-related nostalgia as badly as you think. These people aren’t/weren’t lovesick puppies looking with big eyes and floppy ears back on the past simply because it is the past. There is actually a reason, based in reality, why these people enjoyed UO in its different flavours. I never understood why this is hard to figure out, but I could see how someone without any actual experience playing UO in the timeframes referenced would think that way. It’s simple to draw the unfortunately prevalent, and very incorrect conclusion that nostalgia and nostalgia alone drives desire for past rulesets. How could you possibly understand if you weren’t there? How could you understand, doubly so, if you WERE there and were one of the people who HATED it?

Fuck, I hate raiding. I think it’s the stupidest, most assinine activity you can base a world around. I also think basing your entire game around it is akin to selling your soul to the devil for cash. I think you’re abusing the very addictive nature of MMOs for personal gain, and offering people nothing but lost time and lighter wallets.

But I can admit that SOME people may enjoy playing PvE raiding games, and I’ve actively participated in PvE raiding myself. Just because I hate it for every reason under the sun doesn’t mean that I can’t possibly understand why people would enjoy it.

- The effect is a valid point, but not because of a nostalgia burnout. More because of the the various simple truths of the rulesets and the game itself. This is why you offer a natural evolution. The creation of this ruleset would take time, care, and overall, digging your hands deeply into the old rulesets and understanding why they failed - and offering a new ruleset based on this experience and designs - not to change the game for the sake of change -, but to offer the same game with valid, healthy, considered changes to correct various fatal design errors AND offer a new experience for people.

- People will keep an account open to revisit the server for a very long time. It’s UO. This truth be self evident, say I. It’s been demonstrated with normal UO, it’s been demonstrated with IPY. Even when natural, fatal ruleset/design errors cause a person to discontinue their play - they’ll probably be back. If you don’t change everything.

Solution. Don’t delete accounts, WoW does a good job at this. I’d never have come back twice if they didn’t. Also, possibly moving to a long-term subscription for classic servers may be beneficial after they’ve been up for a while.

Worrying about this first is stupid though. Just getting a significant amount of new accounts back for UO would be a magic trick in itself. Diversification and ruleset evolution should be enough to keep those who love UO but truly tire of the old rulesets. The others, and even the former, will continue to play those old rulesets. Possibly just more and more infrequently as the years pass.

However, in general, how can you go wrong? There are a million simple strategies for holding onto players. You have to bring them in first.

3) The Selfish Factor.

“Why aren’t the devs working on MY ruleset? They’re wasting their time working for OTHER people.”

I won’t make any snide remarks. This isn’t about logic, this is about pleasing the customer. Sometimes the customer can be slightly illogical, especially in a selfish manner.

And this is, selfishly, a very valid point. If not, again, totally logical.

Here’s some logic. Increasing the general account holdings of UO will increase the longevity of UO. Increasing the general UO population will probably increase the population on YOUR shard. Immediately there may be a balanced in/out effect, or even a negative effect, but as the game becomes known as more popular, more people are just going to come in. You move up on the long tail chart (nobody will understand that pingback once they see it on Raph’s site).

By moving up in popularity, more and more people gravitate to your game. IPY had a great ruleset, but if people logged in and saw 5 people online, they’d log back out. When they saw 1873, and everyone was yammering about it on various guild messageboards and various outlets in general, it became the place to be. People were given the chance to NOTICE that it was good, and a fun time was to be had by all.

But that’s not something people will think of off the bat. And we’re concerned with the people who will be confused and angry right now, not the centered, positive people who look ahead logically.

Hire people, or move people over from other projects for a short period of time. Tell your players that your team got bigger to deal with this, and that their ruleset is still being worked on. And really, still work on it. Give them a shot of logic, tell them that everyone’s ruleset becomes stronger when UO becomes stronger as a hole, but deal with their immediate “selfish” reaction.

Even if you only hire 2 people. Even if you hire nobody, and only bring 3 coders over for 2 months. Even if the rulesets are done on coffee, tears, and overtime. Give them the straight dope, but make sure their stuff is still being worked on. Let ‘em know that.

4) Scripting.

Stop this. Solve this first.

Apparently they say they have with the new client. If they have, good. If they haven’t, do it. And do it right.

I can’t even begin to explain how many ways scripting destroys the game. Economically, competitively, everything. Once people start to pick up that those guilds got their towers and castles running mining scripts while they watched Iron Chef and ate cheetos, or, even worse, that the guild that just demolished them in PvP did so because they were running PvP scripts… it’s over. They either join the scripters, or they leave. Eventually you have 20 people on the server running pvp scripts.

Not cool. Not fun. Not a good long term plan. Set up a Quake server for these players.

5) Ruleset Problem X:

Yeah, various classic rulesets have various problems. I’ll admit this AND I’ll admit that I’m not going to solve it in this post. I just don’t have three days to type. Just make sure you have an experienced person at the head of the team and tweak where absolutely necessary without changing the ruleset.

Any real errors in the ruleset are corrected in your new rulesets. Start offering these 12 to 18 months in. Perfect them through tedious design and careful observation of your current classic server rollout. This ends up being a huge part of your long term viability. Don’t fuck it up.

But. The point in general is that you have what may be your last opportunity for mass attention with UO:KR. I think they really need a strategy that includes more than “hey, new graphics, cool.. right?” - mainly because UO wasn’t about the graphics. Not to the people still playing, not to the people who quit, and you’re not going to bring in anyone new with those graphics alone.

I hate to be so belittling with my opinion, but I think it’s the truth. More importantly, I think they’re missing an opportunity here. Graphics upgrade (properly executed): Good (poorly executed: VERY BAD, but that’s all been said).

Proper strategy: Very good.

Graphics upgrade WITH proper strategy: Very, very good.

But is the situation so dire? Is the new client, like I assumed, more than an extended invitation to new players, more than a longer term strategy for holding onto players - but a kneejerk reaction to drastically falling subscriptions?

It’s possible. When the question of UO subscriptions is brought up just about anywhere nowadays, SirBruce’s two or three year old numbers of 135,000 is brought up. It’s generally accepted that half or more of that number is from accounts in Japan. I’d also argue that the number is inaccurate, and high. And probably nowhere near that two years later.

Recently I found some data put together by a player a few years ago, relating to the number of guilds on each server over the years - apparently compiled from data on the old MyUO guilds page.

And apparently my theory about UO subscriptions was more or less correct.

With the amount of guilds on most American shards at around 1,800-2,500 in 2001, by 2004, the amount of guilds had dropped by, it seems, around 1,000 on these shards. That’s pretty drastic. My old shard of Atlantic seemed to be doing pretty well, with a drop of only 650 guilds.

However, many servers such as Great Lakes, Lake Superior, Chesapeake, Catskills, Pacific… all lost around 1,000 guilds.

Now, this isn’t the BEST way to judge population. It’s also not the worst, and could possibly be very telling.

I’d also like to mention that the drop in population was certainly not linear, but more exponential as time passed. The drop from January ‘01 to late ‘02 was totally insignificant compared to the drop in numbers from late ‘02 to early ‘04.

As a random example, Chesapeake only lost an overall total of 143 guilds in the first 20 months of the data collected. In the next 18 months, there was a drop of 975. This is a general rule for the data shown, not an exception by any means.

THE exception in this case is, however, the Japanese shards. In many cases, you’ll see that these shards often GAINED in total number of guilds from ‘01 to ‘04. Is this trend still continuing? Maybe, maybe not. But it’s obvious to see where the strength of UO lies, and it’s in the far east. So you get ninjas and samurai swords in the game. Fine, okay.

But there IS a way to inject a shot of strength back into your Western numbers.

With the rich history of UO, the name it’s built to so many people after so many years, and the pristine relationship its memories regarding different rulesets have with people’s memories - why aren’t you taking advantage of this? Are you nuts?

But then again, maybe it’s too late. I haven’t been paying attention to the UO community for about three years now. That’s a longer time than it’s felt like. So maybe I’m totally mistaken. I know that I, personally, feel as though they’ve missed the boat (six or seven times over). But it all depends on whether there’s still a demand out there, not what I think.

It’s possible people have totally moved on, but I think that it’s equally possible that a new game released with all of the things I mentioned above wouldn’t come close to the popularity that a ten year old UO would if they employed the same strategy and philosophy.

I really should have made this post longer. I won’t talk about this for a while now, and there’s so much more to say.

-Az