06-17-2012, 02:30 AM
1) The server is still here if people want to play, we can't force people to play. We'd love more people to play but we're limited, despite what various people believe turning the staff into slaves and destroying their real lives to push the playerbase up by 5-10 isn't feasible or sustainable.
2) I really do think when D3 and the summer weather start to pass some players may return. Generally when it comes to UO most players play when they feel nostalgic, it isn't a new and shiny game anymore, and nostalgia goes in cycles. It also tends to be more prevalent when players have less other things to do, i.e. no massively popular other games, sunny weather and so on. Plus, as sad as it is for all of us, we (the players of UO) are getting old, we're not young teenagers any more, and I suspect a lot of players can get carried away with UO for a few weeks then remember the mortgage, job, wife etc...
3) A big playerbase tends to attract more players so whilst the playerbase is low it will probably grow slowly, but it may (hopefully) snowball again at some point after the summer.
4) Darken, why are you still here? You whine a lot and claim not to play, so quit wasting everyone's time yeah? If you have it all worked out then please go ahead and make your own UO server somewhere. Just because you hate D3 and having nothing else to do but bitcdh on a game server forum where you don't even play doesn't mean the same applies to the rest of the players who are not currently playing.
5) I believe only Taran has ever had control/access to the donation money, most staff (myself included) don't even know how much there is or who has donated. But unless bribery can make people play on the server there isn't much that can be done with it even if there's a lot, we've done advertising, it worked pretty well (as Eru said) but it was probably a case of right advert at the right time...
6) As someone already pointed out, donations are donations, we never charged anyone to play and donations always went towards things that helped the server (e.g. support for the ingame/browser chat, advertising, the website etc.) if anyone thinks running a UO server is a good way to make money they need their head examined. The scripting and customisation on IN represents thousands of man-hours of work by dozens of people, if we all went to Burger King instead and manned the drive-thru we'd have made a hell of a lot more money than all of the donations combined.
Edit: I should say I only say this (point 6) to allay the conspiracy theorists, I do not mean to sound ungrateful to those who have donated (which has undoubtedly helped the server to keep running as long as it has).
2) I really do think when D3 and the summer weather start to pass some players may return. Generally when it comes to UO most players play when they feel nostalgic, it isn't a new and shiny game anymore, and nostalgia goes in cycles. It also tends to be more prevalent when players have less other things to do, i.e. no massively popular other games, sunny weather and so on. Plus, as sad as it is for all of us, we (the players of UO) are getting old, we're not young teenagers any more, and I suspect a lot of players can get carried away with UO for a few weeks then remember the mortgage, job, wife etc...
3) A big playerbase tends to attract more players so whilst the playerbase is low it will probably grow slowly, but it may (hopefully) snowball again at some point after the summer.
4) Darken, why are you still here? You whine a lot and claim not to play, so quit wasting everyone's time yeah? If you have it all worked out then please go ahead and make your own UO server somewhere. Just because you hate D3 and having nothing else to do but bitcdh on a game server forum where you don't even play doesn't mean the same applies to the rest of the players who are not currently playing.
5) I believe only Taran has ever had control/access to the donation money, most staff (myself included) don't even know how much there is or who has donated. But unless bribery can make people play on the server there isn't much that can be done with it even if there's a lot, we've done advertising, it worked pretty well (as Eru said) but it was probably a case of right advert at the right time...
6) As someone already pointed out, donations are donations, we never charged anyone to play and donations always went towards things that helped the server (e.g. support for the ingame/browser chat, advertising, the website etc.) if anyone thinks running a UO server is a good way to make money they need their head examined. The scripting and customisation on IN represents thousands of man-hours of work by dozens of people, if we all went to Burger King instead and manned the drive-thru we'd have made a hell of a lot more money than all of the donations combined.
Edit: I should say I only say this (point 6) to allay the conspiracy theorists, I do not mean to sound ungrateful to those who have donated (which has undoubtedly helped the server to keep running as long as it has).