UO Second Age

IMO, the two major things this server is lacking is an old school client and a much larger population. Now as players, we can only tackle one of those issues. Imagine this sever with 4x the playerbase, we can do it! Logging into our "competition" lately it's easy to see why they are struggling. They are sloppy, thrown together shards run by what would seem to be children.

This shard really does have it all, and done in such a professional way that it will survive the test of time. However the one thing we are lackign on is publicity! I hate to sound like a broken record, but voting and things such as this really do improve population greatly. We are one of the largest UO shards left today, however we struggle to stay #10 on Top200, being beaten out by Sphere shards with maxes of 40 online.

I think as a community we are really failing in giving back, simply by word of mouth or encouraging others to come... Voting is only one way.

Hate to be the broken record but I think it's good to have a reminder every once in a while, I know everyone says they vote but the numbers really don't add up. We could easily be #1 on all those voting sites, imagine the players we would have flowing in.

I think what would help immensely is having a new player guide available to all who are interested in playing. When I started I was nearly put off by the fact that there was nothing to teach me the fundamentals of playing the game. I don't mean guides on how the guild system works and so on but real bare bones beginner stuff like what keys to press and how to use skills. A few people I've referred here have told me they don't want to play because it looks a little too complicated. We all know that's not true so I can only assume the lack of guidance put them off.

Being an unofficial shard running an older game, there's no tutorial period with prompts that pop up and tell you what to do. As much as I agree that players don't need to be coddled, I think we could benefit from having some sort of total newbie guide available. It could be a community effort, written by players and finalised by staff or appointed judges/editors.

chainsoar wrote:I think what would help immensely is having a new player guide available to all who are interested in playing. When I started I was nearly put off by the fact that there was nothing to teach me the fundamentals of playing the game. I don't mean guides on how the guild system works and so on but real bare bones beginner stuff like what keys to press and how to use skills. A few people I've referred here have told me they don't want to play because it looks a little too complicated. We all know that's not true so I can only assume the lack of guidance put them off.

Being an unofficial shard running an older game, there's no tutorial period with prompts that pop up and tell you what to do. As much as I agree that players don't need to be coddled, I think we could benefit from having some sort of total newbie guide available. It could be a community effort, written by players and finalised by staff or appointed judges/editors.

Completely agree. UO is an old game so bringing in players that are completely new to UO altogether is essential to it's survival. I have brought a few people here that had never played UO, having to train them myself in every department is quite the hefty task. I think a thorough noob guide would help quite a bit, although easier said than done.

RE: Thread title: Neons and etheral mounts?

Got a point about newbie guides, its so hard trying to teach someone how to use magery as a skill, and have them maintain intrest in it at 50 magery. Dont we have some sort of companion system? Or am i making that up?

Couple comments.

1. A sub irc trash talk room is probably a good idea. Take a snap shot of what is being said in there. I see countless new people ask questions that are just either ignored or replied to in a derogatory manner... and i answer as many as i can. I think this is a bigger issue than people account for. Just since last winter it has seemed to go down hill fast.

2. While a start up guide is a great idea vets need to "donate" some of their time. The Mecca of UO (aka WBB) is not very active...and it is the most active spot on the shard. The shard is struggling to build a community. We all have to point our fingers at ourselves. You cant want to build a community on a shard and log in only to PvP at advanced levels.

3. The big one... How do you keep things fresh with a 10 year old rule set? I hate to even type this but keeping a player base without things like new houses, new skills, new items, etc. etc. is probably a impossible dream... I dont even think OSI could do that. You are going to have your x amount of diehard t2a fans that are happy as is but new players will tend to get bored and move on IMHO. No easy answer for this.

Just some random thoughts there...

I just voted. I try to vote daily but I'll be honest I don't get it done all the time.

Though I would appreciate 4x the # of players the housing would have to change. One house per account would be fine but this one per character deal is ridiculous.

I'm doing my part, I've already recruited two complete noobs for us all to slap around. All you gotta do is tell people they can own a house, break into peoples houses, steal stuff from players, and loot corpses, anyone who enjoys gaming would be intrigued by that. Also, we all know world of warcraft is totally softcore, so if you talk to someone who plays that, just start talking shit about wow and telling them how much better UO is

Another thing I thought of is, a lot of people think graphics are more important than they are, people who have really nice computers with super fancy video cards are probly gonna want to play a game that makes full use its capabilities

Agree that a newbie-guide is very important.
Theres actually quite alot of new people still coming to UO. And it cant be easy starting on here today if you've never played before.

An ingame tutorial (like metros) would be the best, but im guessing thats out of the picture.

A newbie-guide on the forum/homepage would be good aswell, however not everyone is reading it.

3. The big one... How do you keep things fresh with a 10 year old rule set? I hate to even type this but keeping a player base without things like new houses, new skills, new items, etc. etc. is probably a impossible dream... I dont even think OSI could do that. You are going to have your x amount of diehard t2a fans that are happy as is but new players will tend to get bored and move on IMHO. No easy answer for this.

This is indeed a tricky one, however im sure there are ways to do it without adding custom things thats not ERA-accurate.
Such as long-going quests, with much depth in them.
And storylines with depth aswell.
That, together with a very well thought-out rares-system will make it so people have goals to achieve for a long time.

Like I said way back in the facebook thread, the best way to bring new people is to advertise how it is completely free. In the particular thread, someone was talking about a T2A facebook page. If such a page exists and advertises that it is a completely free and fun MMORPG it will be more likely to attract people.

Ronk wrote:Like I said way back in the facebook thread, the best way to bring new people is to advertise how it is completely free. In the particular thread, someone was talking about a T2A facebook page. If such a page exists and advertises that it is a completely free and fun MMORPG it will be more likely to attract people.

Yea, thats step 1 - to get them here. Definately a good way.
Then we need a step 2 - to make them stay here.

And for that, i think we need to make some kind of advanced newbie-guide on here.
Or, as i said, an ingame tutorial for young people.

Hemperor wrote:IMO, the two major things this server is lacking is an old school client

I miss the treasure box login screen with the big red button...

It's kind of sad how virtually nobody in the player base votes. I just checked !status and there's 256 IPs but I've yet to see, on any of the 8 different sites, a count of at least 80.

Someone should setup an IRC-bot that writes the link twice / day.

A link on irc = easy to click on. Plus many people uses it.

I kind of like the fact that there is a steep learning curve in this game. It ensures that the average player have at least somewhat of a sense of gamer ingenuity. I would love a huge player base just like all of you, but not if they're all a bunch of people who never even played video games until they picked up UO. I think we need to rely more on word of mouth on this server so it doesn't become full of trash. So if you have a friend that you think would be into this sorta thing and might even be good at it too, tell em about it.

Hemperor wrote:Completely agree. UO is an old game so bringing in players that are completely new to UO altogether is essential to it's survival. I have brought a few people here that had never played UO, having to train them myself in every department is quite the hefty task. I think a thorough noob guide would help quite a bit, although easier said than done.

Wernham Hogg wrote:Agree that a newbie-guide is very important.

Guys, if you want to get something started along those lines I'm more than happy to put in what I can, we can drag a few more people in along the way. Like I said, I think it would come out best as a community effort. Collective wisdom and all that. Or, failing that, then if it goes wrong we can't blame any one person

There are tons of guides for skills and things on the guide forum. Otherwise, we need a legion of companions for basic in game stuff!