Post: #3

The whole idea of Ultima online would have to change for that to happen.. I mean this in the essence of game play etc. By changing to a normal 3rd person view like many other MMO's it completely changes the persona of what UO game play is -- notably what people are playing it for. I think in the next few years, especially with the release of titles such as diablo 3, and guild wars 2 people will start to move on. From there EA -- money hungry "bastards" as they are will look at the game and how profitable it is for them. ]

I dont know if any of you actually read the OSI Australian forums but I think a while ago they tried to move the server away from Australia to a US / Asia Host to help cut down on costs.

As for Free servers, I think they may remain up for a while but as you can already see they are dwindling in numbers. Most shards out there don't reach a concurrent playerbase of more than 100 and all of those that have the player base have been up for a while.

I would also like to take this opportunity to state that the shards such as IPY2, Hybrid, t2a etc all have "fake" client bases. I mean this in the fact that each player can have multiple accounts logged on at the same time. I think this is why people are turned away from many sphere shards, or the shards that i have played.

Anyway In regards to a new Ultima online I think they would have to re-define the whole MMORPG theme. Would they want to keep a birds eye view? Perhaps they could add the functions of a 3d world in which they could have a rotating birds eye view camera. IDK... It is definitely coming to the end of an era.. In-fact within Australia I looked on steam last night and there were NO populated counter-strike 1.6 servers.. Maybe it is US that have to move on.