Server Growth #2

I think people that join something new and make their negative judgments based on a newbie area, don't actually go into the world and give the game a try, were never going to stay anyways.

I agree with that. Especially in the state of ALL free shards, and I would assume even the population on the live servers is down significantly. I do my best to hang out at Skara, even tho it's not populated it seems anytime someone is there they are actually present and not AFK. But I notice everyone seems to have their hub.


On another note, awesome for everybody to help keep that post relevant on /r/Ultima @Caska VS Trees ; I see you buddy. I think it's still a great idea to just boast about your experiences on the shard; I reallly believe it trumps all the other responses ("Check out this server, blah blah blah, best blah blah blah") I've had 3 people PM me today responding to me just reaching out like, hey come play with US, not promoting the shard but just having some people to play with. Cheers guys, even you @Blaise

First off, please dont derail this thread.
Threads concerning server growth are always interesting for new players.

Im aware of your grudges, but please dont bring them here @Mes @napo @Blaise , just to name a few of you personally - you literally have every other thread


Now to the topic..
The server growth is real!
Thanks to all supporters for theyr ideas and thoughts to advertise the shard, and for all player run events, which are benefiting the community here big time!

To tell the truth... PvP is great lately, and theres a lot of stuff going on!
Ive seen the scene grew, and im happy to have a lot more small groups here than, lets say... 1 year ago.

Ive heard the same from pretty much almost anyone ive talked to, and this shard, hands down, turned out to be even more suprising that i could ever imagine.


Now to "The Occlo Macro problem" that came up earlier:
There isnt realy a "banksitting" problem here in my opinion, just a lot of new folks since Occlo is designed as a new player town/isle.
Lots of new players with [young] = lots of macroing chars, its been like that since ive started here, and it will stay like that.

Its also the same on literally every other shard - you will have people macro at banks.
Restock Agents and a decent macro lets you train a lot of skills directly out of your bankbox with zero to low risks of loosing anything.
This is nothing out of the ordinary tbh.


"The 3 account problem"
Yes, we can have 3 accounts here with 5 chars each. There is also a plat welfare program, so there would be enaugh reasons to let your chars logged 247.
To be honest... some people do it to some extend, and its not suprising that new players who are starting out here are using 3 accounts to macro and farm effectively.

Is this a reason to describe our online numbers fake? - Actually no.
Again, these are the same rueles A LOT of other shards are using, and nothing out of the ordinary for the "normal" UO player. Its written in the shard rules, and the majority of the members here agree with it.
Its also fake to believe that everyone has 3 accounts logged at any given time.. Given to statistics, i believe the online chars / player ratio is 1.8 (please correct me if im wrong, its been a while ago)

UOR has a HUGE and active playerbase compared to other shards, check out the forums, and check out IRC and you will know what im talking about.
There are just... simply put: "A LOT OF THINGS TO DO HERE" and thats what makes this shard very awesome in the long run!

Oh, btw.. youre free to forward any young player to me.
Im offering new player housing in Stormhold, to give them a safe place to start out and macro. (just if you want to get rid of a few afk macroers instead of complaining about them)


Anything more to discuss?

LONG LIVE UOR

Awesome response. I've seen the shard grow literally in the 50 days my account has been active. My reddit inbox has been flooded with people asking about the game in its current state and all! It's pretty fucking cool when I see someone in game and this is their first time in game; in over 13 years... That gives me fucking butterflies.

Ive been on Reddit for a while and there were always random guys asking about UOR.
At one point ive streamed on Twitch.tv, there were also A LOT of players asking about the game.

Ive experienced that streams with voicechat (when i was on a teamspeak/vent/mumble with someone else) were usually those where ive had the most viewers.
And yeah, id propably enjoy watching one too... The best possible streamer would be a talkative person with pvp interests and a good upload speed

I've never streamed and I don't think I would enjoy it (Don't plan on finding out to be totally honest); BUT I would be interested in playing with those people who are doing it so we can show off some fun adventures to help bring players. I feel like if we set a certain time during the week with certain days we could get big runs going.

Maybe running dungeons on foot, with huge groups of players. CTF and or Fight Nights.... Just seeing Ultima Online on the game list would be crucial.

i might be able to do it on the naturalist. just have to set the stream delay WAY high to be able to do it safely. ugh i can't gate and that will suck using scrolls the time to keep moving.

even better. i'll stream this weekend's hard mode hunt!

Once things in a discussion line have devolved to the point which they've devolved to here, I usually refrain from sticking my nose in it. I just don't want to get the stink of it on me. To be honest, there's been quite a bit of base behavior on display from both some of our newer members as well as people who have, by their own admission, been around long enough to know better.

That being said, I wanted to see if discussions like this really had any merit. Is it really the case that you can't find things to do with other people? Are we really just a bunch of mindless AFK zombies with a handful of real people?



Short answer: It's crap. Of course there are people playing.

Bottom line, if you're not finding people then you're either not looking hard enough, not looking in the right places, or you're purposefully being dishonest. It took me about thirty seconds on the forums to scan the "Player Run Events" forum and find a handful of things going on. I stopped by the Friday Night Fights event, and there were people there. The Hard mode Hunt seems to have been a success with multiple attendants....

Not every night is a balls to the wall party, granted. But then again, if it was, that wouldn't really be realistic. There are highs and lows, but there are always things to do. If you don't like Ocllo's bank macro population, don't use Ocllo as a bank city. I use Skara, Trinsic, Yew, and Moonglow as my main cities, depending on what type of stuff I'm doing.

Anyway.... Just wanted to say that there is an active community of players out there. You just have to know where to look for it and have realistic expectations.

Here's a shot of the tournament finale....

And, just as an aside, this tournament was a veritable "who's who" of UOR. A lot of big names and expensive outfits.....red-carpet event all the way around. The crowd had even thinned out a bit by the time this photo was taken...

Oh wow, actual discussion on this page?? Is it Christmas morning already?

For new players THIS is the issue right here. When you get put in Ocllo by the NPP, the first thing you're likely to see is a ton of macro-ers. Now granted depending on when you go there are indeed a lot of people running around. But when you're in the Young program Ocllo IS your city, period. (I think some of the vets needs to remember this in regards to how to handle/help new people, I see folks in IRC telling them to go to Yew/Brit Moongate/etc when Occlo has p much everything they need for a reason. ) It seems like most people who don't opt into it head for Britain first because of the old days, and ...yeah. I'm a Skara/Moonglow gal myself and I do meet people from time to time but I've been trying to use Oc as well because then people can see a live human being running around/I can help folks/I might catch another live rendition of Thriller.

Not everyone uses the forums or IRC, especially if they're just logging in for the first time. Yes that isn't our fault, but it is a fact. And people who JUST came back after over a decade gone, or people who literally never played UO before are not going to be measuring us by the same stick that freeshard vets will, unfortunately. Again, not really people's faults, but a fact that people who are concerned about growth may want to keep in mind.

Another thing is time zones/schedules. Just because someone's experience here is different doesn't mean they're being dishonest. All the more reason that we players in less popular time zones need to get out of our houses from time to time.

@Blaise , is your passive aggressiveness really necessary? Seems like you just want to start an argument and it doesn't contribute at all.

I think it's great what methmouth is doing and he's actually taken action.

It would be nice if we could give more support and encouragement. This is a server wide effort.

First off, I have to say that I'm really enjoying this server, and the team here has put together an awesome shard with awesome values. I bet a lot of time has been put into strategies to grow this server as well. Here are a few ideas!

It may be worth trying to actively post on /r/gaming, /r/pcgaming, and the various Steam or "what should I play" subreddits. Those subreddits are way bigger than /r/ultimaonline and are full of people looking for something new to try out.

Responding to people's comments with UO and this server as a suggestion may be worth a shot, along with a SINGLE unified marketing/landing page URL with a clear value proposition of what UO and Renaissance specifically brings to the table. As great as the website is, the home URL is NOT a marketing page optimized to drive traffic to a download and try button.

Then, once people have decided to try it out, having a clear onboarding strategy for both returning players and new players to get into the game, get involved on IRC/Forum, get introduced to Project Renaissance and a newbie guild, pointed to basic guides for either exploring the world or earning money -> build successful templates. Ideally, this onboarding material does not exist as a sticky in a guides section of the Forum, but rather (or in addition) somewhere with more visibility on the website.

In any case, there is probably a whole lot of ground to experiment with and more to try. I'm happy to help out here if there is interest.

There are thousands of people playing stuff like Dwarf Fortress, CS:Go and other super-old, moderate-graphics games. A large portion of Steam is full of pixel-graphics old-school retro games as well. There's also a huge population of ex-WoWers that have no good MMO fix these days.

There's no reason why we can't have moderate success drumming up more interest from new places.

Hiya's to all

We just wanted to say that we think you are doing a grand job M3thMouth ! Fantastic what you are doing to try and get more people to play on this fantastic game and server.

We may be returning to play Ultima Online here fairly soon and re-start our Twitch and You Tube channel.

Dakota and Shaylie.

Don't worry guys. Im doing everything I can to make Occlo more exciting for new players, and I know Im not alone. Last night we had 5 thieves terrorizing Occlo for a good 4 hours straight. Nice gang, them. Made some new friends and enemies. Even looks like some unofficial police forces are being set up. One guy on horseback was chasing us thieves around trying to drive us off. He killed me once. Not satisfied, I went and pickpocketed my own head back. He didnt catch me that time since I wasnt so hotheaded.

Anyways, by most game server standards its a bit slow, but the activity is constant and stable, so a small player base does not necessarily mean a dead one. Liking the server so far. Might start extending out to my various forums for more players soon.

I also have to reply here:

I tryed to play a bit on this server, after i red some guides how to get some early money ( i already played UO alot at the beginning of 2000s ) i tryed to sell some stuff in the beginner town, because i was not able to sell any of my looted stuff to any vendor ( tryed any vendor in the starter town )

okay most of the players were afk macroing, but atleast there were some players moving around, asked if someone wants to buy wool/clothes/leather, not even one answered at all. So after all of my regeants were empty... i tryed to raise my stats with macroing. Because all of you know: when no one buys things you have to kill things.
And with the starting stats its horrible hard.

So.. this was 3 weeks ago , didnt played again yet. Maybe ill give it a try again. But: maybe i would still play if theres a empty starter town instead of a town with 15 afk macroing people.
Maybe i am to soft fot the game, i would agree maybe. But Things changed a bit.


One small solution from my side: let any first created character on the account raise one stat atleast to 80. It makes macroing not so necessary and you have a more fun start.
If theres someone complaining about this idea: 99% of the people macroing the stats first, so where is the fun? ANY one will do it somehow, instead of having fun in the first hours.

*edit* .. tryed to log in again. standing in front of a green event lobby moongate which i cant enter. Tryed to interact and roleplay a bit... numerous guys running around not even trying to stop or interact with me

Hi Dorean

Sorry to hear about your experience. UO is kind of an awkward relic of a game in respect to a lot of the strategies and mechanics players use. Players identify that they need higher stats but the game is intended for you to raise them very slowly by exercising relevant skills. So players learn strange tactics to raise skills or stats that don't make much sense to someone who expects to be able to log on and just be immersed in the game and still progress their characters at a reasonable pace. We probably won't see many future games that have this problem.

I won't tell you that you were wrong with any of the discouraging experiences you've had. I have two suggestions for you if you are on the fence about playing the server.

One is contact the server owner, @Chris (Telamon in IRC), and meet him and tell him about your experience. Your feedback is appreciated.

My other suggestion is you glance at this thread and see if it's something you'd be interested in. It seems to be a weekly, RP style event that the community is having that you can simply come as you are and take part in. Perhaps @Keza can let you know when another event may be scheduled.

http://uorforum.com/threads/hardmode-hunt-13-july-9th.17689/
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

So what you did wrong here, though not exactly your own fault, was try to sell these resources in a town mainly inhabited by other new, poor players. Take some time over a few days to collect a large bulk of these resources (say, 10k each, or more), then make a post on the Trade Forum and the IRC trade channel (#UORTrade). You should be able to easily sell them for a good profit within a day or so.

I've made enough doing this, on my account thats less than 60 days old, to place a Log Cabin and macro several characters to max stats, and have over 100k in the bank.

I would like to share my experience with UOR here if you dont mind.

I started playing on UOR just before xmas 2014/2015. When I first logged in and appeared in Occlo near the tavern I made my way to the bank and on the way met a guy named 'Rotten Teeth' - not very pleasant name I thought at first - but the guy welcomed me on UOR and asked what would I like to do here and if I needed help.
He then set me up on his boat spend time with me chatting and luring scorpions to the boat so I could tame them. He gave me his skype and told me to text whenever I will have any questions, need help or look for someone to hunt with. As I was on the boat trying to make them damn scorpions to listen to me - GM came over to welcome me personally on the server and wished me good luck(600 online and they still have time to welcome the new comers? wow).
After I got my taming sorted I started farming gold with just dragons, constantly asking for help with ress, gate(only 50% magery at that time) etc on IRC and never got refused, always got lots of responses back. PKs killed me, but never looted because they understood I was new player here so: kill -> ress -> wish me good luck. Played here for two more weeks and then private life took over my spare time and had to drop, but once everything settled I came back to all you nice people and I am having a lot of fun here.

Don't read this if you dont want to but to sum up: I never met a shard with such good community and endless library, guides and data that you guys have on the website and forum. Never before did I see players running events, free resist sessions etc.
I am glad that I'm back and every time I see someone new I try to help them too, same as Rotten Teeth helped me.

Hi Dorean! Look for wylwrk here on the forums and irc, he often buys resources from new players in Occlo for a premium. Pop into irc if you have stuff to sell and someone will buy it most likely. Just like in real life, sometimes you just gotta strike up a conversation with people you see. Most of the time here they'll talk to you, and pretty much everyone here is willing to help new players.