Ultima Online F2P in 7 Easy Steps

Razimus

How To Successfully Make Official Ultima Online (UO) Free to Play (F2P) in 7 Easy Steps; 

1. Merge all servers to Atlantic, give players a 6 month warning. (Plan B would be to merge all shards into 3 shards but I believe the number of active players is so low 1 shard would be enough).

2. Give all characters on other shards free Atlantic transfer tokens usable only during the 6 month free transfer to Atlantic period.

3. Start a new currency, Platinum, 1 Platinum = 100 Gold. Platinum cannot be earned in-game, it can only be purchased from the UO store giving it added value and becoming the superior currency of trade among the richer players who have so much gold they have to use vendors to hold it all. (This new currency would combat the gold sellers a bit).

4. In-Game & web UO store, new items, only purchasable with Platinum.

5. Credit all players with established houses X number of Platinum depending on what type of house plot, how long it has been maintained and where it's located, a value algorithm shouldn't be too difficult.

6. Clear all plots on Atlantic making it fair to all players, causing a land rush for active players.

7. Start a new subscription model, $0.00 for all players to play the game minus having a house. $4.99 per month for home owners (To prevent the free players from having 100 accounts and hoarding all the house plots on the shard), $9.99 per month for premium, give all eligible subscription veterans the premium membership for free for the first 6 months. The $4.99/mo. sub model is required to place and maintain a house/plot. The $9.99/mo. sub model gives the player more bank space, gives a discount on Platinum, grants access to a few new areas of the map and allows certain new weapons/armor items to be used.

--- By Razimus aka Dr. Pepper Dragon (October 19th 2014)

lugal

Converting an established and old game to a f2p model will result in failure. All you will do is anger the current players who are paying. The current players will leave and non paying ones will replace them. Due to the age of the game, the numbers of players who would even try playing such an old game would be really low. This has fail all over it.

Switching to f2p is not a garuntee of success. See Turbine's recent layoffs.