Hence:

Uhhh, no. Factions were huge, but the bugs (as stated) and other issues made it not so fun.

Where'd you get your info for there being more tamers than people that want to play factions?

Since when are tamers the majority? I'm sure there are more people out there screaming to fix thief nerfs than there are tamers looking for greater dragons.

I've played both sides for a long time. You will find many more people in Trammel than Felucca period. Factions was never huge it was just active. About 50-100 people per shard were into factions (being generous) in there hay day. At the same time there were about 10-20 Trammel based pve guilds on each shard that never touched factions that each had about 50-100 members. Thats not even accounting the for Felucca spawn only guilds that still never touched factions.

Right now there are more people that play tamers or do PvM content (maybe I wasn't being specific enough) in the large scale. Large scale group PvE content was made much easier by greater dragons and that was a bennefit to everyone that PvMs with a group. In the end a lot more people PvM in groups than will ever care about factions. Sorry, but I watched factions for the last 8 years and even in there hayday (before AoS) they were not exactly a popular part of game play.

True, huge was not the right word I was looking for.

There are still those that are big fans of Factions, much like there are those that are big fans of Thiefs. There will always be those that want what they like to be better.

Unfortunately, you are right. There are more people in Trammel than Felucca. So, what? Disregard those that play in Felucca because there are less of them? Disregard those that play Factions because there's even less of them?

Or keep pumping resources into making the "Tamers or PvM'ers" happy, which, by the way may be the majority of players, but a majority that has steadily dropped in numbers.

The number of subscriptions for UO have been on a steady decline, the same time frame that the PvM'ers voices have been heard. Maybe it's time for a change, eh?

PvMers voices HAVE not been heard. The players have been leaving because we get tired of waiting. There are many more bugs in PvM than in PvP. The developers spend more time trying to balance PvP then fix PvM. Many aspects that should have been adjusted long ago or mistakes that should have never happend (putting power scrolls in Felucca, turning off Tokuno Artifacts) and even the Doom change came way to late.

Changing the focus from the majority to the minority is kind of pointless. They should have deleted factions when they realised the system did not work. Do you want to know the real reason the faction system does not work? The players...blame the bugs all you want but when you are trying to have consentual pvp in a system that is already filled with nonconsentual pvp then you will have a problem.

Factions should not be in Felucca...hell Felucca should not even exist on production shards (if you want to have non-con pvp then go to Mugen/Seige). In order to get players actually interested in factions you need to start by ending the involvement of non-faction members in factions via reds ganking faction players. I would be very interested in factions if it wasn't for the fact that they only exist in an area of the game that I don't approve of (the non-con gankfests of Felucca).

What??? I've never once read anyone quit because of PvM issues, PvP issues on the other hand...

What???

Got examples?

Unless you're going to tell me that they made PvM too easy, then I don't know what issues you are talking about.

Believe it or not not everyone has to post an I'm quiting thread when they leave the game. In my opinion, PvPers are much more vocal and normally post these threads more often. I've left this game three times over the years...the first was right after AoS when they still had nerfed the tamers to all hell and I didn't return until after 7th edition came out, the second was over the legalization of sigil colored items (I felt they had no right to do this after having a period of ban on sight issues), and the third was because they turned off ToT phase two and the game just got much more boring.

The flying floating loot bug for starters. Also, they didn't respond to issues with Doom quickly enough. Also, they always seem to favor one template over another much more in PvM than in PvP. It was almost impossible to get involved in the Moonglow event if you didn't have a greater dragon or an archer, for example. On another note, PvP is at least 10x easier than PvM. Sorry but it is, the vast majority of the time you are either the one ganking or the one being ganked (in which case it is harder for you). Most of the time if you are getting ganked you die. Through the use of illegal programs it becomes even easier. I'm sorry, but I have no sympathy for or desire to get involved in non-con pvp. When they make a decent consentual pvp system (what factions should be) that is not influenced by non-con pvp then I will gladly rally around the PvP cause.

Most bugs I've heard of brought up with PvM have been worked on/fixed or not horribly game changing (floating loot bug).

Doom was never a problem.

Template favoring is going to happen, you can't avoid it. But I do agree they need to take a longer look into this when implementing anything new.

The issues for PvP were game changing (for PvPers). Scroll/spell stacking, 4/6 Chiv/Magery, etc. were all issues that were not supposed to exist in the first place, yet those didn't get addressed until far later on compared to other problems.

Spending 5 minutes killing a balron paragon or 10 minutes killing an ancient wyrm paragon when these creatures don't even spawn every 20 like they are susposed to is not horribly game changing?

Spending three months in Doom and getting loot rights on EVERY kill but never getting an artifact while some people got two artifacts in an hour was not a problem?

/agree

Everyone adapted to those pretty quickly on by making characters that were strong enough to stand up to each other. Yes some of those templates were extreme but the scroll/spell stacking issue is the only one that I would honestly have to say was major. I just find it hard to champion anything pvp when its all non-con pvp. I loved pvp in both DAoC and in WoW because I knew what I was consenting to when I consented to it. However, when you have complete non-con pvp it just bothers me. They need a good consentual pvp system (vast improvements to factions) and removal of the affects of non-con pvp on the game (if not an entire removal of it).

Nope. Frustrating yes, but no game changing.

Luck of the draw, you knew it going in. I don't feel anything should be guaranteed. I know that's just how I feel, and yes, I've spent months on end empty handed, but when I did get an item, it felt a hell of a lot better than the "I've killed my X amount of Y and got my Z, yippie".

Adapted to them yes, but still game changing because you needed to change the way you played the game (different skills, suits, etc.). Unlike the noted PvM bug above where the only thing you need to change is.... nothing.

The biggest issue is still that pvp affected such a small segment of the population at the time. PvP in UO has always been a small segment of the population since the intervention of Trammel. Yet, Trammel was needed to keep players from griefing people till they finally just quit logging in. What should have been done was the complete removal of non-con pvp outside of SP and Mugen and the creation of a functional consentual pvp system instead of the implementation of Trammel.