A Second House on Siege Perilous?

In a thread over at UO Stratics, a couple of players mentioned that Bonnie “Mesanna” Armstrong, Producer UO, was visiting the Siege Perilous shard (UO Guide) and she talked with several players about the status of Siege and attracting new players.

Normally we don’t post chat logs or player quotes of UO developers as news, unless we can verify it, but in this instance, I have a lot of respect for, and trust Freja completely. In the discussion about making Siege available for new players or increasing awareness, this came up:

Mesanna: one thing I do know I want to do for here

Mesanna: is allow you to have a house here and a house on the other shards

That’s very important, because many people would try out Siege, but you can’t move to Siege Perilous with existing characters, and you are only allowed one character per account on Siege. This means if you want to fully try out Siege, you must bank or pack up all of your items, drop your house, and go to Siege, make one character, get enough gold, and then buy a house.

If they offer the chance for players to truly test the waters of Siege, or make Siege a second shard for many, it could do quite a bit of good for Siege’s population.

There is only one reservation I have. Keep the house limited, either by size or location, or better yet both. It would not be fair to crowd the full-time Siege players out of decent housing spots by people who place a second house and then forget about them or who are looking to sell them. Siege is supposed to be a hard shard. If you want a decent-sized house on Siege, you should commit to it. If you want a large house or a house in certain areas, you should have to commit to it in some way, either giving up a house on another shard, or downsizing on another shard.

I’d like to add that his is the kind of stuff that needs to be communicated on the forums as well by the UO Team. I understand it may have been a spontaneous/off-the-cuff remark, but community relations as a whole between the UO team and UO players are not very good right now, and this is the kind of thing that could open up communications between the team and players.