We need help getting our shard name out there, idk if i didnt write out a good enough ad on here or not , but we are losing our small bit of people on there due to the lack of people...
 
That is a problem with all UO shards that are starting up or have been around for awhile. Have you tried to get your shard's name out on the voting sites? There are several if you google and you can get your people to vote every day as another way to advertise. Ultima Online Top 200, MMORPG Top List, and many more can be found if you do a little bit of internet searching.
 
Asking your players to vote directly shows some kind of desesperation, which may lead toward either a grouped small community server, or just less players. You could have someone evaluate your shard and blog about it, some ads on many forums related to uo which permits advertisement (there are not alot i must agree on that), also being in the lists like ViWinfii suggested.
There would be a way to ask the players to vote indirectly, placing voting stones at strategic places and well in sight, or it could even be a npc on which you can click to talk and send a vote link to the user, this would be an original and interractive way to get them to vote :p
With some pre-made messages to be sent so the person don't just open the menu over and over and get the same text.
Just some little things can help.

-There would also be the "mass emails" solution, with which you gather as much email possible, then send mass emails to inform them about your shard.
if you do tho avoid saying "we got alot of custom stuffs", just saying* xD

Those are thing i've never done and i will probably not do due to lazyness lol
 
Mister Garrison,

Let me start by saying if you've started a server in hopes that you will find many people willing to 'donate' to help you along, you've miscalculated. The ServUO community is one of the most useful resources around, and it still struggles some months to make $30 a month to cover hosting alone. The servers that make "donation money" are generally very well-established servers with higher populations, causing a demand for in-game objects.

If what you're looking for is a player base, even one of relatively small proportions, say 30-40 average, you should be ready to devote years of your life to the cause.
 
@Enroq TRUTH

All you have to do is look here: http://uogateway.com/index.php?p=1&orderby=susers

Those first few shards look pretty promising, right? Well, they're mostly foreign shards. Or ones that have been around for a long time.
But by the top of Page 2, ABCUO has around 40 players. Currently anyway. (it was kind of a big shard back a few years ago)

#'s of players max out in the fall and winter and drop around spring and summer. This even applies to small "friend and family" shards.

if you want to lure the players, you've got to think of something spectacular and new and will really stick out....and then prepare for it not making as much of a BOOM as you thought.

I have seen shards that seem to spring up over night and have a huge player population, Eclipse anyone?, but they always burn out fast and you never see them again.

In my own experience - The average shard will likely never reach over 20 players at one time. So start small and upgrade your webhost and shard server as you get more players and donations become somewhat reliable.
 
not wanting them to pay for it all lol but we cant upgrade everything when we have 4 loyal players. we had 11 altogether when we were partnered with XXXX, but now we are struggling
 
Last edited by a moderator:
UOG the program, long long dead and never coming back. But the website sprang up about a year or two after the program stopped working.

I miss the real UOG, I still have a copy of it somewhere. :-3
 
Yeah, I still have it in my archives too. One of the biggest let downs in our communities history I think, UOG closing down and the software dying with the creator.. Those things should never happen.. Tools should be passed on if the creator leaves the scene. :(
 
Anyways, Mr Garrison, what you are experiencing is just a typical growing pain of any shard. All you can do is what was suggested. Place the shard on advertising shard listing sites, have your players vote regularly, and do your best to make your shard as pleasing as you can. If your shard is good enough, players will stick around and grow with it.
 
I sometimes struggle when i read things like "oh its expensive and i dont get donations". A Project should have a financial background enough to be stable even when noone donates.Remember its a donation not a basical financial subscription.
On our shard i follow the philosophy that i dont care if we get nothin or hundreds of $ of Donations.The costs are determined and throughplanned to be handled by the Owners. If players donate we can use it instead of own payments but everything else should be financed by their respective owners.
Loosing Players can be a normal process, we have this as well, they are not satisfied because they want better loot or stronger pets or weaker champs or higher drop rates or whatever and concuring this reasons with the fact they work irl and dont have time to farm a lot but still want to compete with those who spent 10-15 hours a day on our shard.

It´s in your own interest finding a financial plan you can fund your own and then relax if someone donates on his own freedom.

If you are less on payment, get some strong partners, our shard as sample is financed by 3 Persons.
 
we are doing our best and are keeping it up and running, money is tight and i dont really know how to ask someone to partner up, and we arnt solely relying on them bc we havnt even gotten any, i was simply making a statement that itd be a lot easier if we had donations.
 
...I'm better than you because I have help...

Sorry, I may have been paraphrasing.
I hope you don´t forget, iam not native english, so somestimes i mismatch phrases.
What i wanted to say is that Projects such as UOForever have a complete different infrastructure behind the scene.If you have a project team who have time for almost 24\7 Support and a Code Release Team, its only natural that you obtain some donations sooner or later by your community. But the wide mass of shards fighting still for a community of 20 or more real persons and have a single household infrastructure. Or iam wrong? Wich one of you have 5-10 Developers, 5-10 Support-Staff Members and still have only 5-10 Players and no donations?

I just can´t understand how you open a project, if you not have the financial expenses for it. It´s like you open a shop with no money and being deeply in loans after a month and then drop the shame onto the customers who not buyed enough. Every project is based on finances and should be backed up by it.Then when you gain support by the community you can add more content to your infrastructure.
I also wonder why some shard authors who are tight on money not working together. Hosting one capable Server and share it together and run the project.As long as its equal funded there should be no problem of it.

@Mr Garrison : This is not a direct hit on you.
 
im not quite sure how to take the replies... we wanted to open our shard bc a lot of the shard owners seemed like they neglected the player needs, or didnt quite satisfy that certain taste that people had... so we made what we seemed would be right, and thats what everyone has done... am i wrong? look at how many people have their own shard or have opened one.. all people who had the same thought.. i was simply asking advice.. i dont have the financial background to throw hundreds of dollars at anything.. im just trying to make a place for people to play... not a business... thats where the line gets drawn... are you making a fun place for people to play or are you trying to draw income from it. that hasnt been any of our thoughts and it wont be, and i guess till then we will stick to our 3-4 people and stay happy.
 
You dont have to justify yourself, Mr Garrison, mmmmmmmmmm Kaaaaaaaayyyyy? ;)

Seriously though, dont read too much into what was said.
 
lol i just dont want to feel like trying my best to give to the community isnt good enough or whatever, im very active on here and try my best to help in any way i can and most of which i learned from making our own shard..
 
True, seems like some people are just venting.

I could go off on a tangent for hours about people not posting what client version to use for their server. and maybe I will someday.
 
im not quite sure how to take the replies... we wanted to open our shard bc a lot of the shard owners seemed like they neglected the player needs, or didnt quite satisfy that certain taste that people had... so we made what we seemed would be right, and thats what everyone has done... am i wrong? look at how many people have their own shard or have opened one.. all people who had the same thought.. i was simply asking advice.. i dont have the financial background to throw hundreds of dollars at anything.. im just trying to make a place for people to play... not a business... thats where the line gets drawn... are you making a fun place for people to play or are you trying to draw income from it. that hasnt been any of our thoughts and it wont be, and i guess till then we will stick to our 3-4 people and stay happy.
When i read your first post it looked more like you want get more people because of donations.When it satisfy you to run a shard with less people and no donation its also fine. I just think its wrong nowadays making a shard with the mind " donators will pay me up" and then cry when the finances arent up. In the past there were also some shards did so. Running a shard for a few months and offer tons of donation stuff like luck deeds and sdi deeds and such without brain just in order to collect money. Then one day decide to add a cap after some people donated for 10k sdi Armor parts and loosing the whole community. NP make new shard new name new nickname and change content a bit, try same again.

This may worked many years ago when there was a real competition and a wide mass wanted to play on freeshards wth most content, but nowadays the amount of players is very less.Focus on your shard, players will join from alone if you are anywhere in ranks. And when you satisfy those they will stay
 
Thats more what i was looking for.. a little bit of advice lol thanks, i dint intend on being money hungry. haha
You also should share your burdens within the players. If the players complain there are too less new players it should be in their interest to vote for you or grab more people around. I always tell this our players, that i honestly not care if they are 5 people or 50 people. I don´t care if they donate or not or if they only play my shard when their loved content is overpowered. I go the way i think is right and people who follow the same vision will stay.
 
With decent VPS being pretty cheep these days, I can host a game, plus a website for about the equivalent of one hour of work each month, and I make darn near minimum US wage, so I am having trouble wrapping my head around the expense of hosting a shard. That being said, I can always think of ways player donations can be used to contribute to a shard. I just have a hard time understanding why keeping a small shard running would not be affordable, even for someone with only a part time income.

As far as attracting players to your shard, I pretty much would discount the idea of counting on the ranking boards and such to grow your player base much. Those only really are helpful for shards that have passed a certain tipping point in the number of votes they can generate, and are therefore already well on their way to growing their player base. Think outside the box. Advertise offline. Post fliers in local game shops. Don't just put up fliers though. Actually talk to people. Become an active member of your local gaming community and build up a word of mouth buzz about your game. Start with your friends and family. Organize an in game event, and put together a local meetup where you actually get together with retro gaming enthusiasts from your local community and play the event together on your laptops, live and in person. You could even give out some small prizes. Be active on retro gaming blogs and forums, even those not directly related to UO, and link your shard in your signature. Does your shard have its own twitter account, and its own facebook page? It should. And they should be updated every day. It doesn't have to take a lot of time, just one or two posts a day until you find a dedicated player volunteer to handle your social media. These are just a few ideas that have worked for me on projects in the past, both UO related and otherwise.
 
My shard has been online for going on four years now. Players come and go. It's just the way of things. Try not to let yourself get discouraged and keep developing. Try and establish a set "patch" release date, every six months, every year, whatever. Stay consistent though. Players that joined your shard for a few weeks and then disappeared might just return because of something new you implemented. You really need to have custom content in order to have any staying power though. There are TONS of free shards (well, maybe not tons anymore as they are dropping like flies) that all have the same cookie-cutter stuff to offer. Stand apart and stand ALONE if you can ;)
 
You know one thing that turns me off from any shard is their advertising custom scripts/systems, only to see the stuff is just released forum scripts, that anyone can grab.
I dont think many people realize this, but doing that kinda gives the idea that the shard is not really capable of doing their own work.. or is only able to add work from others as if its their own.

Im not meaning this in any way towards your shard, @Mr Garrison ... mmmm kaaaaay? Just something that I have noticed a lot of 'shard owners' do. Its great to add in stuff from the forums, just be careful how you advertise them.
 
You know one thing that turns me off from any shard is their advertising custom scripts/systems, only to see the stuff is just released forum scripts, that anyone can grab.
I dont think many people realize this, but doing that kinda gives the idea that the shard is not really capable of doing their own work.. or is only able to add work from others as if its their own.

Im not meaning this in any way towards your shard, @Mr Garrison ... mmmm kaaaaay? Just something that I have noticed a lot of 'shard owners' do. Its great to add in stuff from the forums, just be careful how you advertise them.
I have to agree with you there Dian. My shard is running over 200 custom scripts, a lot of which I got from RunUO or here, but they are all customized for my shard. The other trick is getting all that stuff working together and behaving lol
 
*We have custom scripts! evo dragon, custom ressources, tokens, etc*
I laugh every time i see this kind of advertisement xD

And yea, most of the time when you get a script from forums, changing ie: the gump page, reorganising stuffs, changing messages, etc. can greatly help make the player feel like the owner thought about every detail aspect of the game: which can do a difference if they will stay or not, as the gump is prettier on yours that on the other one with the base one ;D
 
Yep, I know.. With a custom map, its nearly a given that anything I get elsewhere must be tailored for me to use.
 
Mr Garrison please don't post other server names which you are having or had a problem with, you should keep to the facts. Thanks! I created a small edit on your post to remove the name :)
 
Last edited:
Removing my comment.

It was not meant to accuse anyone in this thread and was taken wrongly. My apologies.
 
Last edited:
Back