EA layoffs! Thread on U.Hall. Link inside...

[Tjalle]

http://vboards.stratics.com/showthread.php?t=167051

[Sir Morder]

When they decided to make UO more like every other MMO out there, thats when the ship started sinking imo...If they'd of just left well enough alone UO would still be the benchmark for MMO's.

[Cronauer]

*dusts off MUD client and waits*

[N49ATV]

Could you imagine the difference in profits from say UO in the year 2000, to today. Wow how sad the difference must be

[Troop]

Maybe they just need to cleanse the company and get rid of some dead weight. The company I work for does this every so often. The funny thing is that the rest of us never seem to miss the people they get rid of.

[Freja]

The funny thing is that the rest of us never seem to miss the people they get rid of.

That may be true, but saying it sure not make the ones who lost their job feel better.
Al old danish word say, "out of sight, out of mind", that may be why you don't miss them.

[Astynax]

They should have done something about all the free shards. Isnt that copyright infringement or something? There are THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS of people playing those right now...imagine if just a hand full came back. It would be awesome.

[Troop]

They should have done something about all the free shards. Isnt that copyright infringement or something? There are THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS of people playing those right now...imagine if just a hand full came back. It would be awesome.

Yeah. I woder how all that happened.

[Tjalle]

They should have done something about all the free shards. Isnt that copyright infringement or something? There are THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS of people playing those right now...imagine if just a hand full came back. It would be awesome.

Yeah. I woder how all that happened.

I heard it was something like on one of the expansion boxes you could buy in stores many years ago, they had left the source/code for the game open in it. So people just read it and made their own servers...

[Bruin]

They should have done something about all the free shards. Isnt that copyright infringement or something? There are THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS of people playing those right now...imagine if just a hand full came back. It would be awesome.

Yeah, but the sad part is the free servers and content a lot of times are better than the crap thrown together by EA, a multi billion dollar company.

[Vortex]

The problem is that Richard Garriot (before EA owned UO) made a statement allowing people to use the client in an emulated setting. After EA bought it, they tried to stop this but lost the battle because they own the servers, but not the client which you paid for. The emulators are written from the ground up to copy the action of Ultima Online but they are not the same code. In fact, they are written in C#. Since the emulator is original and the client is yours (especially when EA started making the download of ML free) there is nothing they can do about freeshards (and yes, they have tried). The only thing they are able to do is put in the TOS that if you play on a freeshard, you cannot play on their servers (which is damn near impossible to enforce). More people would play the EA servers if they gave the kind of attention that freeshards give to their players. Amazingly, the freeshards develop more content and have more player interaction, and they don't even make money. EA just doesnt get it.