taken from Thread :-AO Style "Free" accounts to dissuade Player run servers? UO UHall

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Recently being disenchanted with Ultima Online, I started playing Anarchy Online, just to give myself a little time away.

I have an account that is free with them (anybody can sign up for a free account) except it is so limited that if I were to seriously continue playing (not just filling in time) I would buy the expansions and upgrade to a paying account.

Perhaps EA can adopt this model to clear off Player run servers. Basically having a non-paying account has the following conditions:

• Free accounts gain no account age and cannot use vet rewards

/LIST]Limits you to Felucca or Trammel only (no malas, ilshenar, tokuno, stygian abyss, etc)[/list]

• No access to anything mondains legacy, samurai empire, etc (no expansions)

• Only playable race is human, no access to Heartwood, etc.

• No house! - Kento & Orvago (Originally: Limit on house size - Quintarias)

• Cannot participate in BODs (Claiming or obtaining) - Orvago

• Cannot play on Seige or Mugen - Orvago

What do you guys think? It basically invites people to come and play, and if they enjoy that little slice of it and want more, encourages them to upgrade & start paying for their account.

Also could be used to stop the "free 14 day account" abuse by already playing & paying players

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Change to No Houses at all (otherwise people will just havetons of free accounts for tons of small houses). A house is a huge incentive to pay for the game.

Then add:

* Cannot Claim or Return BODs
* As well, seeing how Elves are Mondain's Legacy and Gargoyles will be Stygian Abyss, the only playable race for froobs would be Human.
* Likewise, froobs Cannot enter Heartwood (ML Expansion).
* Cannot play on Siege Perilous or Mugen

Then I would see no problems with it.

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By the time you limit all the ways this could be abused by script farms, I fear there might not be anything left for the free accounts to do.

I'm curious what the "new player experience" which is coming will entail and whether it is designed with trial accounts in mind.

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Or they could do it Ashen Empire style and only let them hang out in Haven, with skills that're capped at a low level.

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The whole reason I chose Felucca was because it's as original and base as you can really get. Not to mention the constant pushes by the dev team to get more people to Felucca in general...

I can see reasons against Felucca only though:
Double resources, double fame, griefing, etc...

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I think it's a great idea personally.

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Jeremy_EAMythic UO Community Coordinator

It sounds like y'all are talking about a couple of different things here:

- bringing players from free shards
- bringing in truly new players
- avoiding various abuses involving multiple free accounts

Seems like the various solutions proposed don't really address all three - and they don't necessarily have to. Interesting discussion, all around - by all means, continue.

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Well Jeremy, what would EA's stance be anyway?

After all to get New players in, we'd have to see some advertising by EA anyway. I've NEVER seen advertising of UO ever in any shop, etc since I started. I only found out about UO through a friend.

EA never advertises UO, except to current UO players. This does not draw new players.

A lot of the people I know that have gone to free servers, followed the crowd and left, when everybody else did. Talking to a few of them, they activate their account for a month every now and again, see the servers as empty and go back to their free server which they claim is busy (and the server is post-aos). They give numerous reasons such as being able to get support, actual events run weekly, etc etc.

Things that once again EA should be doing!

As for avoiding abuses, look through the thread, seriously. There are so few concerns, such as script mining & lumberjacking, mass house playing. Simple, cap skills that have no powerscrolls to a certain amount (80 maybe with a total skill cap of 500-600), and those with powerscrolls to 100 (after using a +20 powerscroll). No housing allowed, etc...


I wonder why it works so well for something like FunCom, but not EA. Hell I'm playing AO so much now I'm considering dropping a UO account to start paying for an AO one...

At the end of the day, there is nobody EA can blame for people leaving or not starting new accounts except for EA. The simple things EA aren't doing, are being done by their number 1 competition, which is player run servers.

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Jeremy_EAMythic UO Community Coordinator

These are certainly things we discuss internally and have some interesting plans and theories about. However, marketing, promotions, etc, aren't really things we talk about in advance of when they actually launch - for mostly competitive reasons, I'd imagine. (Disclaimer: Marketing is not my specialty. Marketing is pimping the game to people who don't currently play it. I'm concerned with the people who DO play it - which is why, naturally, I'm always curious as to what y'all's thinking is on any given topic.)

I will say I've seen some fascinating research (here's one study, and another) about how people actually buy new video games. Those particular studies are pretty clear that getting good reviews, whether by actual reviewers or by gamers with friends, is a much more important factor than paying for magazine ads. Getting to try out the game first is also huge. (Hmm... that seems to imply that if you make a fun game, people will buy it. What a radical idea! Heh) Neat stuff, if you're into thinking about how the industry works.

Improving the current game is something we are, I hope obviously, trying to do. Live events, banning cheaters, fixing bugs, adding content, etc - not to mention KR, which is rather a large project - these are all things we're devoted to doing. Not all of them can be publicly visible all of the time (and frankly, the behind-the-scenes stuff is waaaaay more boring than you'd imagine a lot of the time) but we have whole bunch of very good people working very, very hard.


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See the problem as I see it, is the fact that in-game stuff seems to have been put on a giant hold for kingdom reborn, I understand it's a major addition to the game, but does every single person on the UO team from the highest designer to the mail room boys, have to drop tools to work on it?

Take the current plots at the moment, they just feel scattered and random, there's ricardo, then suddenly blackrock, then books of truth with a minor reference to blackrock. The plot elements seem to lack consistancy, with every new thing thrown in as an afterthought or a form of temporary distraction.

Major plots also fail to flow very well when there's a large gap between them. People lose interest very fast.

Also inconsistant EM'ing. Look at the fact that half the servers don't even have an EM! How can they miss out so much? The servers that do have an EM seem to get an event every random so-on whenever the EM decides to just stop by, open a gate, spawn some monsters, hand out items and disappear for a random interval again, till they feel like coming back on. Don't believe check this thread: When will EM events start back up?

Anyway we've flown far off topic...

Honestly for a game like UO where there is so much to do, and the learning curve is extremely steep, 14 days seems like minimal time to do anything, especially when most people don't really help newbies anymore (other than piling items on them), since that's boring for them to go back to the newbie hunt spots, etc. What happened to companions anyway? Same as counselors?

Not to mention the fact that the new player tutorial is quite lame, and every time i've done it and been told to proceed down the stairs i couldn't. Ended up using "help i'm stuck" to leave the tutorial...

The longer people play the more chance they have of being addicted, closing down player run servers isn't going to swell the population of official servers. It'll drive people off to other games, if you offer some sort of 'free but limited' account, and can get them back into the official servers, you stand a chance of getting them to upgrade to a full account when they're hooked again.

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Jeremy_EAMythic UO Community Coordinator

Flattening the learning curve, at least somewhat, is one of the goals of KR. (That's the whole "Bright Paths" deal that we've mentioned in various places) So yeah, we totally agree with you on that one

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thing is it isnt just because people dont want to pay that they play on free servers, you have quite a few people who want to play pre-aos uo and they can only do that on a free server. Now if uo was to open up a uoren server with no insurance/etc... then i bet some people would come back.. *shrug* thats just how it seems to me anywho

Jeremy I hope you read this-

I started just over a year ago, so I've not been playing long. A friend of mine got me into it, I played on his account for a while before I made my own. But I've had a very, very steep learning curve. But if anyone has ever played Eve Online they'd know that the learning curve is even steeper there. What is it about UO that has caused me to be currently paying for 3 accounts??

I've chosen to take a steep learning curve, I started spawning 5 months after starting playing, I started PvP shortly afterwards. But the learning curve really is quite soft, improvements to the new player quests would be a great help.

I want to ask a general question, what happened to the Community Helpers that used to exist?? They were before my time, but I've heard about them. The two main ones on my shard are Love Spirit and our beloved Queen Mum. Why as a new player wasn't I told about them?? I can't see Queen Mum having any objections to having a little notice when you log onto Sonoma for the first time that said 'Community Volunteer - Queen Mum ICQ# xxx-xxx-xxx'

At least then the scammers of the world that drive people from UO would have less of a rejection rate. This is a true story, 'I was in Luna and someone asked me for some help, as at the time I was quite bored I offered my assistance. I told them how to train magery and swords, gave them a little armor from my training box (stuff with no resists and good LRC + MR.) After talking to her for a while she said that she was going to quit UO when the 3 month pre-paid voucher was up. She had been taken in by said scammers and res killed several times and treated like ****! This particular person suffered from a 'problem' that meant she was in and out of hospital 3-4 times a week. Her brother had bought her a copy of UO and 3 month game code because he thought she'd enjoy making friends online as she couldn't go to school. She was a normal person that had feelings, lacked friendship and longed for friends. I felt sorry for her. Said scammer had told her that he hoped she died in her sad and miserrable existance. Her father had spoken to EA on the phone and EA told him to pi$$ off. Thats not the way to keep customers.'

If EA are to get their members back, or even new members, they need to start with better customer service. Don't make this new fancy client, when most people actually like the original, get a better customer service first, then improve the game. I personally think EA's priorities are all wrong. I am aware of the out-dated graphics in UO. But customer service is more important to use.

If i was in charge of EA, which I'm not, I would have given the young lady in my lil story a free months game time. And maybe something else, a house deco rare or something to appologise on behalf of EA. That was one case, where EA could make $150 a year or whatever it is. So I'm aware of one case where a little understanding and sympathy on EA's part could have made them more money.

Again if I was in charge of EA, new customers would be my main priority. I make a few changes, such as:

• Community Volunteers, those that show their commitment to UO get gifts to encourage this behaviour. IE, gold to help fund their aid to new players or free game time. A monitoring system would have to be in place.
• Community Volunteers' contact details easily available, either via ICQ or a website based PM system.
• Better starting quests for new players.
• Better starting equipment for new characters - mage 50%LRC 4MR all 40's 6-piece armor set - warrior 4MR all 50's 5 piece armor set. This would be better for players that want to go it alone instead of trying to get someone to provide them with a suit.
• Official Instructional videos.
• More area's for houses, alot of houses are placed illegally as the scenery has changed. Getting a 10 x 10 in fel is a challenge.

I'm gonna stop writing now because I've just seen how much I've written and its taken me 30 minutes LOL

But please, I'm not being selfish, just one or two of my suggestions would improve the game, increase new players and not effect the ecconomy.

Gala, oooo another Sonoma player

The way I see it, if you want to play pre-AoS then go to Siege. Pre-AoS rules, but with the expansions.

The reason people play free-shards is because they don't like EA or they don't want to play. EA needs to change its ethos on many issues before they get more players to return. Those that don't want to pay, well more fool them.