I'm not happy with the game but I'll make do for now.
I've said multiple times that I have no idea how a couple spare time programmers can run a free shard better than the paid staff we have. Bugs are promptly fixed. New things added weekly. Clothing choices. Art. You name it it's being done BETTER by people for free.
How is that possible? Why is that comparison even a thing?
Because they can steal things and do not have to create the art and ideas. And Have no responsibility.
Just as they stole the coding that started the shard.
The "coding" was left on the T2A cd I believe, nothing was stolen.
I see a lot of poo pooing the devs of this game. Is that constructive? Not really. Is this game being run well? Probably not.
First I want to address the grey shards. Every asset that comes with Ultima online is copyrighted. The grass tiles, the music assets, the sound effects, the UI icons, the fonts, the monster and character graphics, everything. The code that binds these together is copyrighted as well. Any use of any of these materials outside of the owner of the copywrite is theft. This includes if it's considered a pet project that never sees any form of public consumption. Any use is theft, by definition of what a copywrite protects.
I looked at the specific T2A CD on eBay. On the literal CD itself, it states this: "Copywrite electronic arts, inc. All Rights reserved. Origin is an electronic arts brand. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Unauthorized copying, reproduction, public performance or broadcast of this game is a violation of applicable laws."
This means all "grey shards" are illegal. There is NOTHING grey about that. Why EA/Broadsword tolerates them, ESPECIALLY is they are being monetized, I have no idea. The only thing I can think of is that it provides enough of a symbiotic relationship that monetarily it doesn't make sense to pursue shutting them down. A free test bed for new ideas, a way to keep players paying their rent on prodo shards while they play elsewhere, a way to assess talent pools for hiring. Or Occam's answer... They're just too lazy or it's such small potatoes that it's irrelevant.
Now let's talk about the devs, and some of the differences between the grey shards and the prodo ones. There's a beautiful recent example of the difference in standards these two parties are held to. There was a pretty high profile grey shard that got released recently... And I guess there were some hiccups. Imagine if those hiccups hit a prodo shard as a result of a tiny coding error, and all of a sudden you could print unlimited gold or duplicate items... Or even worse steal a house. There's a vastly different consequence to a few missing bits on a grey shard, and a few on the prodo ones. As a result, I think all changes modifications and additions to the game are taken very seriously, and made much more judiciously than anything you would see on a grey shard. As a result, this gives an incredible advantage to the grey shards in terms of being able to be agile.
Now let's talk about the downsides here. The devs absolutely have a responsibility to communicate with their customers better. Going months without communicating anything about the state of the game, upcoming activities, or things that are in the pipeline is just irresponsible. Being entirely unresponsive on bug reports is terrible. I don't know the reasoning behind this... But I do know as a lead developer on many projects, if my customers came to me with a bug or problem that jeopardized our product and I didn't respond within a day, or often a few hours... I'd have been let go. The fact some of these things have not been addressed in decades is actually kind of insane to me from a professional perspective. The devs need to do a better job at communicating.
There's a million reasons why there could be radio silence from the devs. But it's not excusable.
I'll leave with this. I'm complaining, I'm frustrated, and I'm disappointed. I see it on these forums and in game quite often. But rather than be a bunch of whiners and poo pooers....
How can we help? Genuinely, how can WE help? This is our game. This is the game some of us have spent a literal lifetime with. These are our friends, our families, our enemies, our frenemies. These are our houses. Our community. Our stupid digital assets. Like them or not, these are OUR devs. And we are THEIR customers... Their community
How can we help?