Ultima Online was the deepest and greatest Massively Multiplayer Online roleplaying game...
Crafting back then was simpler but created a stable economy, but come UO Renaissance the worlld got split in two, one land is dangerous with non-consentual 'pk'ing' and one area is effectively a safe haven where all you haev to worry about is getting killed by a monster.
But this divide created a huge rift in the Ultima Online community, many players would decide to leave and subscriptions would begin to drop, then OSI/EA decided to release more addons and offcourse try to better the game.
Age of shadows came along to many MANY peoples dismay, it completely changed crafting, pk'ing, player versus player combat and hunting monsters. It perhaps benefited crafting at first with a whole new range of items you could build, various properties each weapon would have and the what not, but at the same time it seems to contradict this by turning UO from a skill based game into an item based game, it gave players the chance to get high level items called artifacts which are VERY good, too good for a crafter to compete with so everyone who pk's and is good at player versus player combat HAS artifacts, theres simply no way to beat someone without a massive ambush who has artifacts and you dont. This destroyed alot of the thrill for player versus player / pk'ing for people as unskilled players pre-age of shadoes could now trounce veteran players with relative ease.
Subscriptions began to drop and have countinued to do so.
The latest expansion was 'samurai empire' which gave players bushido and ninjitsu skills, artifacts and another new landmass (this is the usual for each expansion - new landmass (no pk'ing) , a couple new skills and new items). but again it did very little and has added next to nothing to the UO community except helping to balance out the distribution of artifacts so now people who cant afford to spend millions could get at least one or two major artifacts.
Before these drastic changes UO use to have hosted events (which they tried to bring back but failed), a service by Games Master which actually use to solve ingame disputes (for the last year and a bit service has been "limited" so you get automated responses- you can get a response though if you page on someone being unattended but not if theyre scamming a new player). the community was much more alive, you couldnt walk from one two to another without meeting someone, now you can walk from one side of the game world to the other without meeting a single soul! also huunting monsters was actually challenging! now its a piece of piss you can waltz into a dungeon equipped with artifacts and slay a couple dragons at the same time without dropping below half health.
Pvp'ing and pk'ing was actually fun, it was skill based it didnt matter if you lost because you would loose so little compared to now where you might loose alot of gold on insured items because you cannot afford to loose those artifacts!
If UO is to survive it should actually REVERT back to its better stages, its one of the few games that was better in the past than present form.
Offcourse some changes would be necessary, balancing out classes/economymaking the world even more immersive WITHOUT HAVING TO DESTORY THE COMMUNITY FOR THE SAKE OF WHINING PLAYERS!!
EA seems to be realising this slowly and has even recently sent out a survey asking if people would play a PRE-UO Renaissance shard, hopefully EA will demand one is set up! heck id play anything pre-age of shadows.
UO is still a good game, but its dying, its 2D graphics are adequate, they havent aged as badly as ugly 3D polygons such as Everquest, the community was once great , the thrill of pk'ing has been damaged, but its still deeper than any other online game including World of Warcraft.