I would like to see the DEV team consolidate the existing shards to increase the community base. I would also like to see them impliment new lands, and replace the look and feel of all towns in game.

consolidation of shards would be great, but i doubt it would work. alot of people would be upset loosing their houses as all shards are pretty much the same there would lots of houses placed on the same spot if they merged. Or if you meant being able to travel to each others shards through a moongate or something that would get very confusing!

Hmm
Yes a good idea if it was possible as it would bring the player base into one spot, or at least less than there is now.

If all players were well prepared for the transition.... also with the consolidation of shards would bring new found lands, and dungeons. Make a huge land grab event where the new lands are opened up for all to explore, and place houses.. (this would solve the housing issue)

Few problems I see with this

Players have items, characters, houses and trained skills on their current shards, I can't imagine anyone wanting to lose any of them
Opening new lands for housing, would spread an allready thin playerbase out even more

Question though, what housing issue? there's housing plots all over Lake Austin, right upto 18x18 size, probably even keep size
People on more populated shards are having problems GIVING away houses.

Consolidating shards? If people were compensated, with free transfer tokens to another shard, yea.

I'm sorry for the literary confusion... If they were to do this then all players from the defunct server would be compensated accordingly....

Now, if OSI did something about house-hoarders (Anyone ever heard of a certain 'tyrant'? ), there would be less of a housing issue to begin with...

I found a nice spot on Origin, next to the mountains near Vesper... (Actually a fellow guildmember found it for me) However it is still a couple of screens away from vesper, and there is quite some spawn of Harpies, rats, Ogres, Trolls, Ettins and Brigands...
(Not good if my miner is out mining and all of a sudden Brigands appear from nowhere, and the miner is like 100+ stones overweight!)

Sorry if this comes across as a rant, but this idea keeps resurfacing, and as far as I'm concerned it's one of the worst possible ideas for the game anyone has ever had.

Compensated accordingly? My homes go poof, my guild built and community built villages vanish, all the seer-created sites with the associated memories they hold for a lot of people, as well as being 'shard history', are gone ..... and I get a transfer token?

If the problem you see is too few people on a particular shard for your liking, then move somewhere more active - there is nothing at all stopping every player running characters on any shard, apart from them not wanting to, or having the time to do it. People can choose where to play, what level of activity they like, how easy/hard it is to get housing space, how busy the vendors and trade markets are. Some folks like low-population shards - why take that choice away?

This would free up precisely NO dev time to fix problems, make an insignificant reduction in maintenance and bandwidth costs for EA, and bring nothing new at all to the game.

No. Absolutely bad, bad idea.... the game needs more players, this can do nothing but help persuade people to leave, and will do nothing to bring new people in.

I intentionally LEFT a highly populated shard (Atlantic) for a more quiet life on a less populated shard (Lake Austin). I'd be highly displeased to be forced to go back to the insanity of a crowded shard.

If this were to happen that would be the end of the UO road for me.
I like having the freedom to pick a home shard and still be able to play on other shards also.
I also love my houses, the odds of me getting another Luna house and an 18x18 on it's own peninsula are very much not in my favor, especially since I only get to play on my weekends and it'd be a mad dash for everyone to get the "good spots".
Changing the whole look and feel of all towns would be a HUGE mistake, there are those of us who have been playing for years that would be extremely mad about this... like UO isn't changing enough as it is lets completely take everything UO out of UO... no thanks.