What is "wrong" with your server? That a subjectively loaded question. "Wrong" to who?
Did you design a server that appealed to you and included features you wanted out of an Ultima Online experience? Or did you focus on creating a server that you thought would appeal to other players?
Creating a server of any population worth takes a bunch of effort that most folks don't undertake. I don't see any of that from you either. People throw a server online, add some custom scripts, and then expect people to swarm to it. Eventually I see the same servers popping up with the same scripts because they all downloaded them from the custom scripts section. The server ends up not being very unique.
I often use Outlands as an example for these discussions, but I will start with UO Second Age. I never played on this server, but their niche is trying to give a good old fashion T2A experience. Their website is informative and has that classic Stratics look to it. They provide common answers to questions and have a forum setup for the community to talk. I even see a wiki. They use Facebook and Twitter to promote themselves. From all outward appearances, they look like they have a "team" that cares about their server and players. Again...this is what I see as I don't know the reality of their server.
Ultima Online Renaissance is similar to what I stated about UO Second Age.
Now to UO Outlands. To digress a bit, I would have called it Ultima Outlands instead of UO Outlands so they can make use of the UO logo to match their name...but whatever. From what I see on the Internet, this is the population king at the moment. I never played here either, but lets look at why perhaps they are booming in players:
- New world to explore for those that are bored of Britannia after 20 years.
- Added new art and dungeons to give a fresh feeling overall.
- Redid the overall game mechanics of UO but kept enough to make it feel like UO.
- Redid their interfaces to have a newer look and consistency across the board.
- They promote the hell out of this server using almost any social media options available.
- They have a big team where things happen often and updates occur frequently.
- Their website and wiki look well done and it is very informative.
- They have a Discord and forums for players to chat.
- They do Twitch developer chats with good substance.
- They demonstrated taking community feedback to make their server better.
The initial draw was the map. It was detailed way more than UO's map so players joined up just to explore it. Then they saw all of the new mechanics and systems they put in place. These are systems you can't just go to ServUO's "Custom Release" section and get. They designed them from scratch and kept them close to their vest for their server only so their server remains unique in that regard. They did some things to the game that provide quality of life improvements. They also had to make a financial investment with no expectations of recovering. Sure, they have donations to cover it now but they didn't know that when they started. They took a leap of faith and used their own cash to get these things in motion like website hosting, server hosting, and advertising.
So with these examples, maybe some things wrong with your server are:
- You seem to be doing it alone giving little comfort of support or handling changes as you have no support staff.
- You have no website, and I mean a real website and not some Blogspot page or some page hosted with a DDNS.NET name.
- Because you have no website, you can't advertise why your server should be played. No screenshots. No detailed information on the mechanics. Nothing that would make me join. Your bullet points are super vague and provide no substance:
* Era is UO: Renaissance. Authentic, old school experience.
T2A is "old school"
* Leveling, Guilds, Items, Monsters, Survival.
The original game has all of these things.
* Improved monster AI, Environment.
How is it better? Why is it better?
* No horses allowed in dungeons.
This is not an uncommon element on free shards.
* More focused on PVM and Crafter experiences. PVP still possible.
Focused how? Why is crafting different? Why did you say PVP is still possible? Does it mean you don't care about PVP enough to give it any effort? Maybe you don't want a PVP shard so you kinda have it somewhat?
* Player Managed Towns. Citizenship, elected officials, control of resources.
This is in standard UO already with the factions and such.
* War of Kings: battle for control and territory in Britannia.
Sounds like a system that requires a population.
Free UO shards get out of it what they put into it. If you want to spend the time and money like Outlands did, you may have a successful server but having expectations of such shouldn't be relied upon. The UO free shard community is over saturated with shards so as soon as someone gets bored with one they move to the next. There are too many community members with hesitation of starting on another shard only to statistically have it vanish in a month or so along with the hours they spent playing it.
If you sat at your desk one day and thought that you would make a shard that people will like and want to join, then you already set yourself up for disappointment. You had not substantial community outreach like Outlands did with their 18 months in beta and development prior to beta.
Another tip, and this does not apply to your shard but others I have seen, giving characters free stuff for joining your server never works. We have seen the ads before. "Join my server now and get a 10x skill ball, ancient wyrm mount, castle, and a wand of GM commands".
Again, instead of thinking what is "wrong" see what successful shards do to get a feel of what you can maybe do "right".
