Shard Advertisement

[William]

A shard that has been around for ages like this one needs a larger playerbase. I can try to bring players from other shards here; I have many accounts across dozens of shards. I don't want to cause trouble though, and advertising in-game can be a known trouble-starter. I usually abide by the Golden Rule in this situation. And I also tend to look for quality over quantity. So maybe I just talked myself out of it, haha I enjoy playing here and I know others would too, they just haven't stumbled across us yet. What does everyone else think?

On a side note, there is/was another shard advertising as Unreal UO recently. I don't know what can be done about that.

[AdminDupre]

Yes, I saw that other shard - I wasn't too happy about that. I don't know if they're still around or not though.
Advertising on the "top game list" sites didn't seem to do much at all. I'm not sure how people are locating shards.
Perhaps if I knew how the existing players found this shard...?

[William]

Perhaps if I knew how the existing players found this shard...?

When I first started playing free shards in 2000-2001 I played a friend's shard with a couple other friends. Once he closed his server I used UOGateway almost exclusively so I chose from shards on that list. Shortly after that I began to use Google searches for keywords like "renaissance, pre-renaissance, uor, t2a, pre-t2a, aos, pre-aos" and things of that nature. This usually led me to free shard websites and from there I could determine whether or not I should even log into a shard to play it. I believe I found this one through a search though I have seen it on a top list or two in the past.

There are 5 or 6 well-known T2A-based shards out there that comprise up to 90% of the playerbase for this type of server leaving the rest for more obscure shards such as this one. Some shards will get higher playerbases by hyping the shard up on gaming forums prior to release. At release they implement misleading scripts that add a fradulent number to the "players online" message so that when a player logs in they won't know there are actually 50-75 accounts online instead of 400++. I don't like the idea of misleading folks in order to get them to participate; it reminds me of politics actually

[AdminDupre]

No, misleading people isn't part of the plan here, but improving our search engine visibility is. Thank you for the info - I do have some ideas.

[black7and7gold]

Hi there, i'm looking to start into UO again after a multi-year break.

This shard looks interesting, and i'm a bit surprised shards like "The Second Age" have such high populations, and here is seems kinda abandoned.

What kind of players are you looking to attract here?

RP?
PKer-type?

[AdminDupre]

RP?
PKer-type?

In general I don't see these as mutually exclusive, though obviously not all PK'ers enjoy role playing. Unfortunately, it seems that a lot of role players don't like being around PK'ers at all, but some do see it as adding excitement to the game. So, to try to answer your question, a role playing environment with both peaceful and non-peaceful role players would be ideal.