Server costs

[Ladibug]

Kon had a post up about shutting down the server because of lack of donations. I see the post was removed or maybe I just don't see it any longer. Can we get a breakdown of the costs of what it takes to run this server? You're asking for money to keep it up and running. So I'm curious what it takes to run it, and why it's so expensive.

Thanks!

[d35tr0y]

I have had a hard time donating but i will say if we can get an idea and maybe some of us that are able to donate a little but here and there can back the server up to what we need at the least to help i would be all for this in keeping the cost covered just my two cents

[King Kong]

I apologize for posting the message prematurely before talking to the rest of the staff.

We found a cheaper server but did not want to sacrifice for connection and general speed. Vorspire and I figured it out after a long night, scraped some of our funds together, and we are getting a better international server out of it... Similar in specs to the one we have now, but is set up with better connection speeds for our international players also.

Though my original posts overall message does still stand. Yes we will still need donations to run it. We just bought ourselves some time that will work out better for everyone.

Also Vorspire gave Noll and I the green light to start spawning, decorating and bringing evil Abyss Lands for all players .... We are making it our priority over the course of this month; though Noll has a RL friend visiting him this week so don't want to stress him out too much .. We will let you know when the passage is open.

Cheers.

[d35tr0y]

Im sure donations will come back in time with better game play and all I no for myself I try to donate anytime I possible can just to help cover cost but I no its no where near enough but with the dedicated players we do have here no one wants to see anything happen to the server im sure we just need to figure out how to get more players coming in and staying as well as more donations and on another note the economy needs some major help IMO thanks again for all the hard work

[Ladibug]

That's awesome. I'm looking forward to new content.

But also I'm wary of donating to a server that might close. This is why I'm asking for a rundown of the monthly costs.

Thanks

[Tyrone Biggums]

I have no problem donating. I do it as often as I can but as you stated it is summer and other things are more important then UO (to Kendra, not so much me) so maybe once things settle down I can go back to my weekly donating.

I also like Ladibugs idea of maybe a brief overview of cost, not specifics.

Also is there any suggestions for the leaders on how to grow the shard other ways? We use only 2 vote sites now (the best ones I gather from your post) and I do try to get people to join from Twitter(no idea if it works as well as I hoped but it's something)

I was talking to some other vet players and we noticed that it's not getting the people to the shard, it's keeping them here. I mean I could be totally wrong and it's people just making new chars to try and get free stuff but I think we do get some traffic coming in we just don't keep as many as we would like to and I have no idea why. I wish others would join the msg boards and input their opinions. The Young players are who I'd like to hear from on what would make them want to stay? A lot of us give  free gear (not junk) and powerscrolls amongst other things and it just doesn't seem to be enough. I know I've talked to Chicken about giving away free stuff and it feels like were just throwing things away because they stay a week or 2 and poof their gone.

[Voxpire]

Pandora won't be going down any time soon on my watch, not even if it had 1 active player.
We love it too much to let it go.
As for the server costs, let's just say it costs more than a Triple-A title game each week.

As for keeping new players, if you find you have to give out a bunch of stuff in order to get that player started - then we should be revising the starting conditions and the availability of resources to new player for starting.
I know giving away stuff is in good will, but it can also kill the enjoyment for that player as they then don't have to explore to find what they need; I recommend taking them on a tour instead, taking them to hunt for what they need, show them the ropes - and we will take care of the introduction to this amazing community.

[ChickeN]

Vors, The Voice of reason.. I like this idea of "taking players under our wings" so to speak.. no pun intended.. because what Tyrone say's is true.. we cant keep giving items, gold, PS's and whatnot to players we'll never see again.. cause when players come here to stay, which they have and will.. there'll be little left for them.. and I agree there needs to be a desire for players to want to go out and get there own items.. when I first came here almost 5 years ago.. I had a burning fire to become as well suited and have the items that I saw all the other players had... and it still drives me today.. this is without a doubt the best server in the world, and reading your words Vors makes me want to work harder than ever to let ppl know about it and get them to join and stay after they do! I love this server so much and the staff and players here are a huge part of it.. Thank You so much for keep our player base in mind in your staff decisions  Kon, Vors, and Noll.. Great Staff Great Job on this server Thanks so Much for ALL You Guys Do For Us! It Means More Than You'll ever Know.. and I'm sure We ALL Feel This Way..

[Horns Nigel]

Well stated Chicken, I agree TOTALLY, I would be willing to do almost anything to assist our shard.
recently there have been players from another shard who have joined us to see what we have, from what I heard from them they loved it.

We cant just give everything away, then where is is the fun for working for items, it would get boring very fast.
I have been here far too long to let anything ever happen to our shard, I agree it is one of the best.

I cannot thank Kon, Vor and Noll for all the hard work they have put into this effort, and if there is anything you ever need from your players Im sure we will all do all we can to assist you.....Nigel

[ieshabones]

I think that after vet players donate so many times they have everything worth getting.
I think doing either some public events or private events for groups would be a cool idea. For public events people could donate until the set amount is reached (so not one person has to pay for the whole thing).
Another thing that would be cool is to have a monthly auction of items (you could have part of the auction be for gold and another part for p buks. (should help with donations and get rid of some of the gold floating around in our checkbooks)

[DamJ.NeT]

I have no problem donating. I do it as often as I can but as you stated it is summer and other things are more important then UO (to Kendra, not so much me) so maybe once things settle down I can go back to my weekly donating.

I also like Ladibugs idea of maybe a brief overview of cost, not specifics.

Also is there any suggestions for the leaders on how to grow the shard other ways? We use only 2 vote sites now (the best ones I gather from your post) and I do try to get people to join from Twitter(no idea if it works as well as I hoped but it's something)

I was talking to some other vet players and we noticed that it's not getting the people to the shard, it's keeping them here. I mean I could be totally wrong and it's people just making new chars to try and get free stuff but I think we do get some traffic coming in we just don't keep as many as we would like to and I have no idea why. I wish others would join the msg boards and input their opinions. The Young players are who I'd like to hear from on what would make them want to stay? A lot of us give  free gear (not junk) and powerscrolls amongst other things and it just doesn't seem to be enough. I know I've talked to Chicken about giving away free stuff and it feels like were just throwing things away because they stay a week or 2 and poof their gone.

I was actually thinking about all of this, saw Kon message (wich was deleted not much time after posting) and was wondering if I should put what I'm about to say in suggestion or directly PM one of the staff... Well here we go :

I've always been a fan of video games, and for the last years, I've grown more and more fond of youtube videos/let's plays and streaming. It allows you to see better players / different gaming styles / parts of the game you wouldnt reach without MANY hours put in the game, or simply relax while watching smthg else than TV.

But what I've noticed recently, is with medium to big youtubers (and probably streamers), they can make the buzz for "unknown" games... I've seen quite a few games being reviewed by some "big'' youtuber's channel, and then you have an afflux of thousands of people coming to the game's website/servers...
And this last week I've been asking myself : "What if Pandora could find one of those "influent" gamer, and make him do a playtest or w/e on Pandora?".
I bet you it's gonna bring more people than any voting website, since it will touch new players, unaware of UO.
However there are 2 issues with this :
Would it be "legal"... I know UO shards are tolerated, but I'm not expert.
Since a lot of those youtuber monetize their videos, can a video promoting an UO shard be monetized ?

Second point : The gear and progression.
I remember when I started here, having to raise pretty much every skills... Well ok, MACRO pretty much every skills. That could be a tedious process, since you're not actually playing the game but looking at your character doing the same stuff over and over for hours. But in my case, I loved buying/macroing skills untill 60% or so, and just go hunting.
And I liked it because the UO from nowadays remember me Diablo in the loot aspect... If you are lucky you can find good gear. I actually equiped myself "ok", and then with the gold bought runic armor pieces by pieces in vendors.

Today for a newcommer, the tediousness of the macroing is removed, wich is good.
BUT what I think kills the game for a lot of people, is the obvious : The loot is the s**t.
You get some mobs with MASSIVE lootpacks, dozens of items, but after a few of them you quickly realize it is no use of looting anything... You're way better not loosing time sorting the backpack but just getting gold and slaying the next mob etc... Get gold, buy stuff, get more power.
So I feel Pandora removed a very important part of the game process. The feeling of self achievement.

When I started playing here, of course player made items were better, but you could find ok gear on mobs, and it was actually worth it to enhance them with ingots or leather.
Today, even runic crafted items looks crap compared to imbuing. Especially with the "new imbuing". Now you can get +15 stats and +20hp/mana/stam increase, things you'll never be able to see on a regular drop... Before looting a talisman 6/6/6 was golden, today you dont care, you just need any talisman, remove everything and imbue it to be stronger than w/e you can find on a monster.

So it all comes down to finding enough materials to imbue, and to get imbuing PS to not fail crafting. But to get them, you already need powerfull equipment. Or farm millions of gold to afford fully imbued items after fully imbued items bought from already established players.

I'd like to see a vet doing a new character, not getting any gear from anyone else, and doing champs/minichamps by himself... (in less than 4 hours)

And thus, giving free gear/PS won't really help, because once you get there, what else do you have to do for a new player ? It spoils the point of "new begining".

I might be wrong / having biased opinion on this points, but I'm pretty sure that's a problem for new (even non new) players.

/Discuss 

[King Kong]

Dam I agree with many points you made and have already started putting some of those things back into effect... I actually might light a little patch tonight just effecting new players..

Everything of course is open to discussion.

But I do think we are missing that community and self achieve (like you said in Diablo) when you start.. We might say it's annoying sometimes.. But we love it...

[Tyrone Biggums]

Ok then it looks like the only suggestion is a youtube channel. I already run the  twitter and no matter how much I spam and try and get people to join it doesn't look like it's happening. Don't get me wrong I am not stopping any time soon and I search for people that look for MMORPG's  and personally ask them to join. It's not just garbage spam like some sites.

As for the youtube channel, anyone have a suggestion on a program to use to take videos? Maybe this will help prove to people  that I'm not hacking also... Open to suggestions to everything here, I got the next few days off work to work on whatever. I have a youtube channel already but it has things on it like me punching myself in the no no parts so I would have  to make  another one to promote videos I'd assume.

[DamJ.NeT]

Tyrone, my suggestion wasnt to make a youtube channel. Sure it could help, but what I said is we should find an already "famous" youtuber interested in UO/MMO and have him do a playthrough of Pandora or a playtest or w/e...
Because people with 200k subscribers and more are gonna promote the shard a lot more than a "starting" youtube channel.

The point here is to reach new people not aware of UO. Those who would never type Ultima Online in the youtube search.

[King Kong]

Tyrone, my suggestion wasnt to make a youtube channel. Sure it could help, but what I said is we should find an already "famous" youtuber interested in UO/MMO and have him do a playthrough of Pandora or a playtest or w/e...
Because people with 200k subscribers and more are gonna promote the shard a lot more than a "starting" youtube channel.

The point here is to reach new people not aware of UO. Those who would never type Ultima Online in the youtube search.

I like this.