UO Blog - Leaving Britannia Again - May 11th, 2011

In December 2007 I returned to Britannia after a 6-year-break. Now, three and a half years later, it is once again time to say good-bye. This time a return is even more unlikely. Several incidents have made that decision surprisingly easy. In this final column I will try to analyze the reasons behind my final step away from the best MMORPG ever.

Content:

• After My Return in 2007
• Some Things Had Changed
• The Decision to Leave Again
• The Future of Ultima Online
• About My Plans

After My Return in 2007

When I had returned to Britannia by the end of 2007, a lot of things had changed. The game had gained countless features and items and had lost parts of the community and old spirit. Although I very much missed the interaction and conflicts that arose from the so-called "unconsensual PvP" (i.e. the time before the introduction of the safe zone Trammel), I considered many of the new features quite interesting and enjoyed what was left of the old community.

If you read my columns, you know that between 2007 and 2011 I tried to sow out some ideas I had about improving the game and bringing back its old glory. Some of the ideas (mostly the feature-based ideas) fell on fertile ground. Others (especially those concerning social aspects and freedom) did not seem to harmonize with the vision of those responsible for the game's revenue. And of course I can understand why. (You'd have to take risks!) Anyway, these facts did not affect my gameplay too much as long as I enjoyed the company of friends and foes in Britannia and had lots of fun with discovering and exploring.

Some Things Had Changed

During the past 3 years I noticed that the way people played this game had changed a lot. For most people items are the most important goals in game. Everything is centered around items. Even guild and community activities are centered around items. This development is the result of a simple strategy: Introduce more and more dangerous creatures to keep players at it. Introduce powerful and rare items. Players will strive to get those items. After a while, continue from the beginning and introduce more dangerous creatures. Of course, this strategy affects negatively the PvP experience and the behavior of the players. I won't go into detail here, I have done so in previous columns.

I also noticed that the number of active players seems to be slowly but steadily decreasing. This may not be obvious at the first glance, since a lot of players have two or more accounts and multiple houses. But it begins to show when you have 100 active members on your guild roster and never see more than 5 of them at the same time.
To my surprise, even expansions like the Stygian Abyss or the High Seas did not manage to increase the population noticably. Both expansions were extremely well done, but they neglected a simple fact: The best features are useless when you lack of a community (see also my column about the High Seas booster).

The Decision to Leave Again

It first dawned on me that my time in Ultima Online was coming to an end, after I moved from Catskills to the Europa shard in January 2011. While I played on Catskills, I spent most of my time with my guild, the United Pirates. Due to time zone issues (I am European) I was forced to move to a shard that allowed me to play during peak hours, because off-peak UO would be like a single player game. Europa has a great community, so the choice was easy. I became member of a fantastic guild called the Vesper Trading Company. The guild leaders were creative and the events were a lot of fun.

However, I played less and less UO. Somehow I completely lost my appetite for the game. Today I know why: Leaving behind my friends and my guild on the Catskills shard killed the game for me. Obviously, these people were the only reason for me to still play this game. Not the game features. Not a new expansion. Not even events. And certainly no items. After losing that band that tied me to UO, it became shockingly obvious what UO lacks most: Active players.

Today it is almost impossible to log on spontaneously (even during peak hours) and experience an adventure with the community. Events have to be scheduled and published if you want anybody to show up. You have to schedule your playing time after events if you want to meet people. NOTHING happens by chance anymore. And the number of active players decreases even more.

The Future of Ultima Online

What could be done to bring back life into Ultima Online? I have tossed around many ideas in my columns. Some people even suggest merging shards, which in my opinion (even if it could be done) would not at all solve the problems, but just delay the demise a little. The game designers would need completely new strategies to bring new players to the game, and by that I do not mean new features. I think that some of what I wrote in "The Lack of New Players" could work. But I also am convinced that Electronic Arts may neither have the vision, nor the interest, nor the budget to take the risk and try something revolutionary with Ultime Online.

Honestly, I am not too optimistic about UO's future. Without taking measures that automatically would be despised by many of the current veteran subscribers, all that game designers can do is prolong the perishing of a great game. It may be easier to get rid of all the dead weight by just designing a new game and offer current UO players a special deal for switching.

About My Plans

People keep asking me if I will play any other MMORPG. Some invited me to join an UO free shard. I will do neither. Other MMORPGs do not offer the features I would expect from a good game (plus, I hate leveling games). I still consider UO to be the best MMORPG on the market, but with certain conceptual flaws (e.g. Trammel/Felucca), outdated graphics and a lack of new players. Freeshards may have good concepts, but they also have a much lower population than official shards, and they lack of new game features and an improved game client.

I don't have much spare time, and the game that would make me spend time on has not been invented yet. A while ago I started to write a very comprehensive concept of how a new MMORPG should be, with completely new ideas that would solve many of the problems most MMORPGs suffer from today. I got pretty far, but I stopped because I think nobody in the gaming industry is currently willing to take risks and try something completely new. Instead they just copy from each other. So I put that concept into a drawer and will spend my time on more important things. For the time being, playing computer games will not be one of them.
The time I already spent on UO I do not consider wasted, as you can understand when you read my exciting adventures in the Ultima Online Travelogues.

Safe travels!
Hawkeye Pike
(a.k.a. Sharkeye Pike, Andrej Pike, Pete Ninefinger on Catskills)
(a.k.a. Francis Pike, Blackbeard Pike, Robert Pike on Europa)

[ Back to the main page ]