What's the real population of this server? Where are the 580 players?

One day I will understand the hate people have for free services run by volunteers on the internet. After 6 years of this you would think I would be used to it. But it still catches me off guard how demanding people are of a free service. I guess it is just easier to trust the server run by a guy buying $50k sports cars, or the guy who pocketed all the donations after 18 months and then disappeared. But holy shit, fuck that guy who sticks around for 6 years and asks for nothing in exchange for this free server you are welcome to play on. How fucking dare he not have people at every bank I visited. How dare he not volunteer all his free time to ensure that I am provided with the experience I expect. /s

UO Renaissance is the only, and I mean only successful server that has 100% transparancy. Every item listed on the website. Every player in the world shown on the website updated every 5 minutes. No fake players, no fake bank sitters, no planning how to increase the amount of "fake" players to increase donations. I actually used to mentor players who were interested in opening their own servers. I stopped in disgust after every single person I mentored either sold accounts for $$, or discussed the "right amount of fake players" to add to get people hooked and get donations started.

http://www.uorenaissance.com/players/online
http://www.uorenaissance.com/players/all

Anyone, at any time, can go into irc and type the following.
[8/28 10:44] <~Telamon> !status
[8/28 10:44] * @uor Server:RunUO 2.2 Items:7,840,781 Mobiles:173,830 Guilds:930 Online:549 Accounts:49,840 Uptime:139d 18h

On an average day there are 1.85 accounts online per IP address. With 1000-1250 IP's accessing the game server each day.

Anyone can click on the online history and see a 6 year graph of players who play here.
http://www.uorenaissance.com/serverstatus

The difference is that the Renaissance staff does not play *&^% measuring contests with other servers. We measure success here by the enjoyment of the players. I appreciate the assumptions that I would have created almost 50,000 accounts just to convince UO players of a false reality. On a felucca server with felucca rules people do not always sit idly in town doing nothing. If you want banks full of players sitting around then you will need to seek out a trammel ruleset where players have no fear of basically living at the bank. With felucca people are trained from day one that being in town without a purpose is not safe. And they strive to own a house, and if they are not actively playing they are in their house.

Our staff and volunteers live in ocllo greeting players, answering pages and helping out as needed. Every day we see new players, with new questions and a constantly changing landscape of players at the bank training up new characters. The average new player spends weeks macroing up the skills needed to play here.

Each time a new free shard opens up we see these type of threads serving to draw out former or disgruntled players to shit on the place on their way out the door. Only to slink back quietly a few months later. We welcome our players to play wherever they want. Just remember when that new fancy server refuses to provide you the same resources you find here (online players, online count when you login, online status in irc, complete world history on the website) to reconsider your hate of this place for trying to be transparent.

The staff/volunteers here will continue to support our players who enjoy this place and continue to develop and add content going forward.

And jack if you are looking for activity keep an eye on the forums. There was just a fishing contest this weekend and a huge anniversary event this weekend. If you are just looking for players to be bored at the bank looking for action this might not be the best server for you. Renaissance has endless things for a player to do should you take some time to learn about the server and the world.

Renaissance, as a server, is what the players make of it. Our players have worked with the staff for 6 years to develop a fun and engaging environment. If you want to see more PvM activity then work with the staff on ideas. Concerns about the economy? Work with us on solutions. Concerns about PvP? Arranged your own events, work on ideas to increase activity. Trying to convince other people to share your world(shard)view on the forums will not improve things.