Dear Mr Crowner,

I write to you regarding the desperate state of the Siege Perilous shard on Ultima Online. My apologies for the length of this letter, but I feel it is necessary to put across all my concerns and suggestions.

As one of the leading members of the Siege community, who has run more player events and probably logged more hours on the shard than anyone else over the past three years, I have noticed the player numbers steadily declining for some time. While this is true of UO as a whole, the situation on Siege has now reached a critical level such that many players are reducing their time in-game due to the lack of population, which of course leads to a vicious circle of decline. Further, those coming to try out the shard, and those reactivating accounts here, are equally put off by the apparent scarcity of fellow players. I know many colleagues and former Siege players, generally PvP types, who now play on player-run shards where they say the population is far greater, the combat more favourable, and those running the shard are more willing to listen to concerns regarding PvP.

Siege Perilous, I hardly need tell you, has always been a very different animal to the other shards, and its players of a very different character. I am certain that in many ways it is a thorn in the side for the development team due to the extra coding needed to maintain it. Yet Siege is often the last place that UO veterans turn to before leaving the game altogether, and so keeping the shard going has some benefit to UO and it also provides an experience very different from the regular "production" shards, as Siege players refer to them. Furthermore, Siege players are far more likely to run multiple accounts than a regular player.

The recent alarming declines in the player base here, coupled with what many see - rightly or wrongly - as a lack of any concern by the UO developers, has left many of us in despair and with real fears that the plug will soon be pulled on our shard. Combined with the huge drop in players, there are four things in particular that have brought me to the state of almost total apathy and an unwillingness to continue with community projects and trying to rebuild the population:

i) The removal of unique event rewards for the EM program. As the original EM of Siege under the new program, this was the most extreme blow I have suffered whilst playing UO and meant that I instantly lost all enthusiasm to be an EM and had to resign. The one event that took place here with rewards proceeded without any complaints from the Siege population with regard to who did and did not receive a reward. Siege players recognise that there are winners and losers - risk and reward. That is one of the primary reasons for playing this shard. To remove the rewards after only one event, as a result from the usual whining by some of the production shard community who seem to want everything handed to them on a silver platter, was a blow to all that Siege stands for. To replace this on Siege with a winners' "hall of fame" is utterly pointless.

ii) The removal of the "NEW" books. For years, Siege has had a unique guild know as Newborn on Siege, or NEW. NEW is a completely independent guild that helps out new players to the shard by providing them with basic equipment, advice, a place to train, and so forth. Newcomers can join for approximately their first thirty days on the shard, after which they must leave to find a regular guild. NEW receives almost universal support from the Siege community with many guilds and individuals donating items and equipment. The GM for several years now, Shalimar, regularly places books at gates and banks for newcomers to see. Obviously, this is a time-consuming process and the books will quickly decay or be stolen. As EM, I locked down six of these books at key locations. In the days that followed, NEW had a huge rise in population, leading to the inevitable conclusion that many players arrive on the shard, see it seemingly deserted, and then leave the shard (and probably the game in some cases), never to return. Before placing these books, I made sure I had explicit permission from Mesanna via email. However, shortly after a new EM was appointed, he had the books removed, apparently after further consultation with Mesanna. The reasons given were apparently that the books constituted favouritism, supposedly brought about by just one or two players who were opposed to them.

  This represents a fundamental failure to understand the shard. NEW has for many years been a key provider of fresh blood to the community. They act as the Counsellors of Siege, and I do not think it would be stretching the point to say that without NEW the shard would be even more deserted than it is today and maybe would no longer exist. The few complaints about NEW, that they do not favour certain guilds when advising graduates who have not made up their own minds on which regular guild to join, are simply not valid. All members are encouraged to find a guild by themselves, and if they do need help finding one, GM Shalimar often gives preference to smaller or start-up guilds. Those guilds that do not attract so many NEW graduates are those that do not interact with the NEW community, either by hunting with them or organizing events, etc. To my mind, removing these books is one of the greatest disservices the development team has done to the shard. Anything the player base has ever done to try and encourage people to Siege pales into insignificance compared to the value of these books during their brief existence. I enclose a copy of the text contained within the NEW books.

iii) Siege skill gains. Siege uses the rate-over-time (ROT) skill gain system which limits the amount that can be gained each day in skills above 70 points. This prevents new players from macroing skills to GM overnight and means they have to work themselves up on the shard gradually. A few publishes back, after much pressuring from the Siege community, the amount that could be gained each day was increased slightly. At the time, the then Community Coordinator, Jeremy, said that the values could be adjusted somewhat if needed. Some time afterwards, I asked for feedback and conducted some polls on Stratics to see if the community wanted any changes. It is usually very difficult to get the Siege community to agree on anything, but in this case a large majority felt that the time between gains in ROT was too long. This meant that many players were unable to get their full gains for the day and that they were spending too long just training instead of going out and actually playing the game. The limiting factor should be the amount of gains, not how long it is going to take you to get them each day. I twice submitted the results of my findings to the developers (I made sure I got acknowledgement on the second occasion), but thus far there has been no word on whether they have even been considered. I enclose a copy of the original message I submitted.

iv) "Bugged" housing. A while ago, the developers requested that players send in the locations of the "unowned" houses on their shards. These would then be gradually removed by the GM staff. My guild helped compile a list of those on Siege and I submitted it twice. I do not know whether any such houses have been removed on other shards, but the fact that nothing has yet happened on Siege - combined with point (iii) above - once more enforces the belief that anything the community does to try and help is just being ignored.

Of course, despite all my concerns, it is unreasonable to expect the developers to put too much effort into a shard which has such a low percentage of the UO community, especially given that nearly all resources are being concentrated on the new expansion. However, I feel that much could be done for Siege with only minimal effort from the developers, least of all the coders and artists. This mainly involves a little bit of EM support and reassuring those on the shard that Siege has not been forgotten and is still "on the radar". With that said, here are some suggestions for what might be done to help the shard:

i) Restore the NEW books! This is probably the single greatest and most effective change you could do for us. Better still, give the guild a bit of help and extra legitimacy by placing some blessing around their keep and perhaps a noticeboard that guilds can leave contact/event messages on. Have an oracle placed outside so that the EM can leave event news and other information.

ii) Let Siege have a dedicated EM. It seems that since I resigned, no permanent replacement has been made and we are sharing an EM with one from another shard. Nobody I know has reported seeing an EM RPC. Make sure the Siege EM, as I did, has anonymous email contact with the shard News Reporter and feeds event information through them. Advertising at the Counsellor Hall in the deserted north of Britain does not cut it on a small shard like Siege.

iii) Allow Siege to have event rewards. This would be an excellent selling point for the shard. Reward items are isolated here as they cannot be transferred off the shard. There is virtually no $$ value for Siege items and they have no huge gold value either provided they do not give some great combat advantage. Treat Siege as an exception to the rule provided that complaints about impropriety do not start coming from the Siege players themselves.

iv) Consider a change to ROT timings for the next publish.

v) Allow Young players to see Siege on the shard list. Any newcomers to the game are frequently unaware of the existence of Siege. Even though the rule set may appeal to them, by the time they have lost their Young status they may have already become established on a regular shard. Consider allowing Siege to always appear on the shard list at log-in but have it greyed out for Young players or, if they try and select the shard, bring up a message that explains why they cannot join together with a link to the Siege rules page on the UO website.

vi) Siege Tenth Anniversary. Last year, ideas were discussed in the community for a fortnight of intense player event activity to promote the shard. These events would be of all kinds and would be aimed at existing shard players and newcomers. The timing of the events was to be in late July/early August to commemorate the shard's ninth anniversary. It was hoped that some developer support would be forthcoming in the form of a few prizes for key events. In the end, the idea was shelved. This year though, being the tenth anniversary, would be a much more auspicious time for such a promotion. Would the developers consider helping out? Support needed would be some assistance from the EMs for one or two events, a few prizes for key events (the Miss Siege pageant, for instance) and possibly a blessed area to serve as the focus for this shard "expo".

vii) Consider forming a Siege Focus Group. The group would be made up of, say, 3-8 players who would be responsible for presenting ideas to the developers for possible changes (in consultation with the rest of the Siege player base). This would be on the basis that a) no changes are going to be possible until SA is out the door and debugged, b) any ideas submitted should be realistic, c) ideas should have the broad backing of the Siege community.

No doubt some will say that we can't possibly do these things because it is showing favouritism to one shard. That may be true if it were one of the regular shards, but as Siege is isolated and has very different rules I do not see how that accusation holds up provided these changes are not taking up much of the Developers' time.

In conclusion, whilst I am not sure that any or all of the ideas shown above would return the shard to the healthy population of days past, I feel certain that doing nothing will spell inevitable doom for it. Whilst the success of Siege is largely entwined to that of UO as a whole and many are hoping that the release of SA will bring about a revival in players, there is also a general fear that any short-term boost will quickly ebb away here unless we receive some extra assistance. Regular shards do not provide what is needed for most of those who make Siege their home, so without Siege, a part of the UO community will be forever lost to Mythic.

Thanking you for your time,

Yours sincerely,

Dear Mr Crowner,

I refer to my letter of 1st June in which I pleaded for some help for the Siege Perilous shard. I am deeply disappointed to have received no formal reply to this and with the exception of the apparent appointment of a dedicated EM, none of the suggestions appear to have even been considered. I am especially galled that no offer was made to give a small amount of support to a Siege Tenth Anniversary celebration. This would have required just a handful of minutes from the development team compared to the hours that would have been put in by the Siege community. It truly gives the impression that EA/Mythic does not care and are not even prepared to help players help themselves.

With the forthcoming launch of SA and hopefully many players trying out, or returning to, Ultima Online, can I have the courtesy of a reply to the points raised in the original letter, especially regarding support for the indispensable NEW guild?

Yours sincerely,