Hello All,

This article started as an angry rant, but rapidly cooled to a disheartened plea to the current UO establishment. I am enormously saddened by emerging trends that seem to indicate the hinges on the doors of our favorite world are being scoured of rust and greased liberally with oil, that they may more easily be closed.

This assessment has nothing to do with the content of UO, and everything to do with the apparent apathy of the current management team. Here are the harbingers of doom:

1) UO Herald. In an age where my two-year old can post updates on Facebook – honestly, she knows what buttons to click, even if she has trouble controlling the mouse – the powers behind UO are unable to maintain a simple website news feed. The Herald is an embarrassment that serves to undermine faith in the game rather than excite players with new developments. This is compounded by spelling and grammar errors that shout ‘unprofessional’ and ‘don’t care’ louder than almost anything else I can imagine. “Oops! We posted the wrong patch notes.” Seriously?

2) Lack of Basic Knowledge. Take a moment and re-read the UO Herald post about Pub 64’s release (assuming Herald is working, that is). What do you see?

“Origins will be receiving publish 64 today, for the notes on what's new please see this post and keep up the great feedback!”

Interesting. Not only do we see a grammar and a punctuation error in one run-on sentence, but there is also a reference to some mysterious shard named ‘Origins.’ Have you ever played on this shard? Or do you perhaps have characters on ‘Origin?’ I’m not sure if management doesn’t know or doesn’t care what the correct name is, but it does not bode well for UO.

3) Lack of Communication. ‘Five on Friday’ might not win any industry awards for sterling customer communication, but it beats the heck out of nothing at all. Using Stratics is a poor substitute, regardless of whether you like that website. I used to gripe about FoF’s elementary-level questions and answers or the penchant for mysterious promises of far-off improvements. I guess they showed me…

I might be able to identify additional signs of the Sosarian apocalypse, but I’m too dispirited to try.

Please clean up your act and present a positive, interested and engaged face to your loyal customers. Even if you plan to close the doors in another year or so, put up a good front for those of us who have been with you for 149 months.

~M

I for one can remember when EA was far less communicative than they are now, even with the slew of layoffs they just went through. They didn't close UO down then. I don't expect them to close it down now, especially since there's a new publish sitting in the pipeline.

As for complaining about their run-on sentences and what not, perhaps that's one of the reasons they get quiet. Why bother to post when it's just going to get picked apart. There was a slew of layoffs so I imagine the remaining members have many more duties than they had previously. Cut them some slack.

What did you really expect when you put a direct competitor in charge of your game?

I said it way back when EA bought out Mythic. Yes, there have been a few good dev members then what happens? They let them all go. I realize that people have careers and need to move on but the slash and burn of the dev team on more than one occassion just screams cost cutting. Because it is cheaper to higher someone fresh out of school than retain an established member. Then we get the excuse, well we would like to get the x,y and z but we have to first get the new team members up and running with the code, but it is on the list to do. The overall commitment seems to be just keeping the servers running. SA is not an excuse either it was already completed before they cut the dev team.

And communication? Really? It is beyond a joke. How many times were we promised better communications? I have lost count. The FoF was lacking many times, and even repeated many questions again and again. But at least it was there every week (90% of the time). If they are not going to talk with the p(l)ayers just transfer the supposed community rep over to DAoC or WAR and be done with it.

And what about advertising? Last time I saw any print ad was for Mondain's Legacy. Never say any online ad.

Sadly what we have now is most likely as good as it gets. As far as the run on sentence well...grammer was never my strong point, but it does look unprofessional in a note from the company.

And Origins instead of Origin, guess they really do not play the game.

Warsong ya sig says it all. Mag, just anothe post to keep ya total up there, you sould post this tripe on Statics.
Sablestorm, *bangs sword on shield*
Queen Mum, send more cookies please!

It's simple economics really.

They just shipped SA, so that should keep them good for a couple of years.
The exact same happened after ML and even at some scale after SE.

After each expansion, EA keeps people on to squash the bugs and then starts laying off employeers to cut costs.
The main focus after having released a stable expansion is mainly to keep the servers and support team running.
If they could the support team, they would, as that branch is generally the most cost expensive of the overhead departments.

Not a problem if you ask me, we got plenty of goodies to keep us entertained for a while.

If history tought us anything (and yes, I feel that with a game that has been running for 12,5 years we are actually entitled to use this expression in relation to UO), it's that we are now at the "low" and will slowly move to the "high" to become full circle again before the next break down.

Sure, the community rep stuff and communications in general are crap. Complete and utter crap even. But even this will pick up, as it has over the past years. After that it'll decline again to a point where we are now.

As long as we keep positive by playing the game and EA gets some profit out of it to please their stock holders, we will have a game to play for the next 20 years. A game with expansions and one that will be maintained, albeit by a bare minimum of staff.

Might be just me sitting on a cloud, but me thinks "they'll be back".
(and if not them then eventually someone else)

I think if they even undertook the modest effort to communicate on a semi-frequent basis, like an hour or two a week, kind of what FoF was, that would calm and quell and lot of the recent anxiety among the player community(e.g. their customers). That would be a nice start. Instead, we get haphazard, crude announcements about misnamed publishes(Publish 63.0.0) and use of terms that exhibit a lack of even a basic understanding of the game(Origins shard???)

The community folks are supposed to be PR professionals. You get your stuff(nice way of saying it) straight before you open your mouth or click the submit button. This is a multi-million dollar operation as part of a multi-billion dollar, worldwide corporation. If you can't use spellcheck, have a grasp of grammar or use the correct terms relevant to the title then either you're in the wrong position or there is something, more insidiously, wrong with the position.

UO has been, is and will(essentially, must) remain, about the rich player community element. It's not about the killer graphics, l33t raids or entensive quest system like other games. The EM program is a huge plus(especially the EM's on Chesapeake), but at least have someone back at HQ sending bulletins to the field every now and again. UO has some shortcomings and challenges, but all games do, so it's not in a terminal spiral, but a spiral of sorts(at least the perception of the players) of late nonetheless. It's up to the management, through the devs, the community reps, etc., to right the keel and keep sailing forward.

*laughs*
I just noticed that we used to complain about bugs, lag, timewarps and more lag.

Now we complain about spelling and a lack of pampering.

Trammel has come a long way!

Hmm you have a point! Does that mean......*wait for it*.....Its getting better? Hmmm only time will tell. As for me, I shall play this game until one of the powers that be ask me "could you turn the lights out on your way out?" Until then I shall enjoy this game and its people, fualts, bugs, home building, and other good points until it is no more!

Yes I would like to see more ads to bring other in to it, but until they do, it is we the people (players) who make this game what it is! So on that note I say hush! Now get out there and have some fun already...

Don't get me wrong, there are still bugs.

Lag is gone because people aren't on friggin dialup anymore and the game has less than half the players it once did.

They got rid of timewarps(server crashes) because they noticed customers tended to, umm, get mad and cancel their accounts when it was a nightly event.

The point of my post was they hire and retain professional PR people to run their community face and, of late, the info and annoucements they've been producing has been severely lacking. Now I know the specific people in question were more or less "saddled" with UO rather abruptly, but jeez, spend a few hours learning about the game and know how to talk the talk of the locals. They may as well pick an EM, bump up their hourly rate and give them a UOHerald CMS login to take on the community announcements, news, etc.

There is no excuse for a job half-done. I'm one of the biggest UO cheerleaders around, but I get the feeling Mythic just doesn't *care*.

/end