Azaroth

A couple of weeks ago, some mouthbreathing EA fanboys got pretty heavily on my case when I dared to suggest that a 2-3 year old, inactive chart showing UO’s subscription numbers to be ~135k might just be inaccurate in 2007.

I also suggested that there should be much more done with the game if EA/Mythic desire some sort of rejuvenation. This particular comment was met by cries of “What more could they POSSIBLY do, IDIOT??”.

Being that I’m not big on doing people’s jobs for them OR explaining simple concepts to retards on the internet, the conversation pretty much stopped right there.

As a preface, if you scroll down a bit, in a recent post I dug up a chart listing the (heavy) decline of active guilds on UO shards. This was basically all I had for current statistical information, but extrapolating a trend of downward spiraling account numbers wasn’t hard to do. And it certainly wasn’t a crazy leap of negativity like some would like to believe.

Now comes this.

Put simply, it’s a continuation of SirBruce’s old MMO subscription chart. As mentioned, at last update, the old chart had UO sitting at around 135,000 accounts. Personally, I felt this number was probably embellished by the company even though half of the accounts being owned by Japanese gamers was granted. Regardless of that, I knew very well that the subscriptions haven’t held steady.

The new site linked is updated, apparently, solely on insiders sending in the information needed.

Well, whoever sent the UO info should be hunted down and fired (no, not really). I think that a lot of UO players and UO fans were holding relentlessly onto the dream that Ultima Online was still pulling nearly 150,000 credit cards every month.

Yeah. Not so much.

What’s listed on the new site looks to be somewhere between 60,000 and 70,000. Considering at LEAST half of these are very obviously in Japan - UO is in a very, very sad state of affairs. To say the least is to say that my earlier assumptions were correct, and I sincerely hope that the people running UO aren’t as thickheaded as your average message board chucklehead. You have to recognize that a poorly received client update and a generic expansion aren’t going to turn the sinking ship around.

I take no pleasure in this information, but I do honestly think that some people need to get their heads out of their asses before it’s so far past “way too late” that nobody gives a flying fuck anymore. If you need a place to start, there’s a post two or three down that might get you going in the right direction.