i actually used to be one of the people that would rage nonstop on the forums about the shard and all its problems then one day i decided to try and do something about it on my own. ya obviously i cannot make changes to code in game or the website or anything like that but other people on here can try and do some of the same things im trying to do if they want. if you care enough about this game and this server try and do something about it. its not hard. its basic promotion and advertising.
its 2013 right, what's a website that pretty much everyone on the
planet earth is familiar with? probably youtube right. think about how many players played this game on OSI back in the late 90's, early 2000's, it was almost a quarter of a million people. imagine if only a small fraction of those people, even 1% one day suddenly felt nostalgic about ultima online one day, whats one of the 2 places they would probably turn to first. google & (or) youtube?
while server placement in google search results and rankings are no easy task to be near the top without exact search strings and let alone the websites join button working which currently is obviously completely and utterly inoperable lets just go with youtube for argument sake. search bar yes? someone is reminising about the good ole uo days, "hmm wonder if people still play", they search ultima online, what comes up?
if its not any "recent" videos from our server its other free servers promoting their shards or official EA/Mythic related content. if only more people would invest some time in making some videos, documenting what actually happens on this shard it would really go such a long way and get more eyeballs on our actual server.
some people keep thinking about all this with this 90's mentality, yes this game is from the 90's but the world we live in is not, and people think and consume and get exposed to things/games in much different ways now, if were not exposing ourselves to people on the correct (modern) mediums now, its a lost cause. yes top sites are great, ive long mentioned those, but honestly, its just a small fraction of what we need to be doing...
the in game product on hybrid is really not that bad tbh no matter what anyone says. other servers are plagued with bugs, problems, corruption, extended downtimes (when was the last time hybrid was down for more than say 1 hour?) VERY RARE.
ya changes can be made, ya changes would be nice but our main issue is getting people on the actual server. and yes obviously that website is a big issue that we don't have control over but we can try and get people here in different ways.
we obviously have alot of passionate people on here that care about the shard, while we all cannot and do not have the power to fix all of the issues ourselves we can certainly all collectively make a difference if people only try.
ya that was a bit of a novel but ive said my peace
