Suggestion to make SotA server ownership available for a fee.

There are obvious issues with population on multiple official servers. Go login to Pac, Chessy, Atlantic, Europa; then login to UO: Forever. I guess everyone is hiding in their houses on the official servers?

With RunUO/Sphere and their many branches, it's a wonder why EA never picked up on this. Lord British has appeared on UO Second Age and I belive UO Forever. So, he seems to support something like this to an extent as far as UO goes. Also, Citadel Studios, creators of Legends of Aria, seem to have been able to conjure the brilliance behind allowing players to run their own servers.

 

I think the point is "I want you to give me your marbles so I can take them and go home with them."

You're talking about population issues with a game that is twenty years old and uses isometric 2D graphics in 2018? Well of course there are population issues! EA doesn't care as long it keeps bringing in the pennies.

 

The "main game" model itself is outdated. Take Fallout 4 for example. I cant imagine anyone playing the vanilla version for 20 years. I couldn't even make it through my first playthrough without at least some modding. Also, the problem with the main UO servers is that their economies are totally borked. A billion gold plays out like a thousand these days, nobody has time for that.

We're not here to talk about UO:Forever, but as Bambino stated, Lord British has graced us with his presence there on more than one occasion. These events brought in hundreds of players to the same screen more than once, which is more than even SotA can say.

This is an all-in-one suggestion that creates the ability for Portalarium to crowdsource both advertising and development, while making a profit and pleasing everyone. Forget about whether or not it's good for the main server in it's current dated format, that really isn't the point. It's good for the both the players and SotA/Portalarium. I can't think of a simpler way to tackle so many issues all at once than this, even if the idea itself is a hard sell.

One idea I've had to build on this is for all the people who have reached certain tiers of backing. Portalarium could develop a way to easily see which Avatars have backed to what tier, like with a symbol beside their name visible on the network. Server owners could then choose whether or not they would also reward Avatars based on their level of backing, to make it easier for them to transition to their server. Some kind of perks certainly wouldn't be out of the question, but would be at the discretion of the server owner.

In terms of what would happen to the main server, it could be developed to be some sort of prime land if the main server adapted to either become some kind of trading hub where people could showcase the different items from different servers, or even the primary "event" server with events attended by the great Lord British himself. When he came to UO:Forever, he fought bravely with the citizens there against hordes of monsters, and I was delighted to hear that even brand new players to the game who had barely any knowledge of who Richard Garriott was had felt fulfilled by having the opportunity to fight alongside him.

And that's just it. Not only would your precious "main server" still be holding all the cards, SotA itself would benefit from a variety of new players even more than UO has because of UO:Forever. I have seen it first hand, it is factual, and while UO itself is outdated 2d technology that can only go so far in terms of player retention, SotA is brand new, up to date technology that will benefit far more by doing this than UO ever could.

 

WoW is almost that old (15 years) and the population is doing great! That is not the point though. The population on third-party servers supersede that of the official servers. That is all that is being said in response to Arradin. Also, I am not even sure who own's what right to Ultima Online at this point with BroadSword having taken over. EA no longer actively develops UO content and passed it on to a smaller development company.

 

One time money up front from one player, resulting in a permanent loss of income from multiple players? Even if Portalarium charged a monthly rent, the game population is already below a long-term sustainable threshold, so I don't think this suggestion makes good business sense. Better to do what they are currently doing - add features and advertise. That way they have a chance of increasing the player population.