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Personally I can't see past the biggest issue - Making Trammel an exact mirror of Felucca.

Perhaps Trammel or a similar idea was inevitable, and the mirror idea was still better and truer to UO's roots than one of the other options, a PvP 'switch'. It could have been done without destroying most everything that made the game great though, I feel.

So the effects of UO:R on shard communities are obvious;

The player base split in half, with no real reason for non-PvP types to visit Felucca except out of Nostalgia or curiosity, and no real reason for PvP players to visit Trammel except through necessity for a trade, or something similar.

Old GM blessed RP communities and towns were faced with a rather stark choice. Remain in Felucca with their beloved town that they had carefully built and established over the years and accept that they would be unlikely to ever meet any new players(new players automatically started in tram, remember) and would be cut off from the majority of the UO community which was now migrating to the Trammel facet. Or; Move to Trammel, remain as part of the community, and accept the loss of all their previous hard work, and memories. Obviously, most took the second option, leaving those remaining in Felucca even more isolated.

The economy was also destroyed. Now there was no risk - but the rewards were the same. Dungeons Shame and Deceit, the traditional best gold-per-hour places in the game were basically off-limits to the average UO player unless in a large group because the risk of player killers was too great. With Trammel, the same dungeons offered the same reward, with no risk. Now there was no sense of a working economy. People with Tamers became millionaires easily, they could do it solo, without risk, and make enough gold to sell millions on ebay.

Because of this, most people could afford their own Blacksmith, Alchemist, or whatever. These expensive and hard to train skills were no longer rare. They were relegated to the role of support character to whatever anyone's main character did. The 'guy at Brit Forge' was no longer needed. The economy spiraling out of control contributed massively to the break down of the community and the immersive 'world' feel of UO. You didn't need anyone else. The first steps were taken in the game just becoming a monster-bashing, item-collecting generic game with bad graphics.

What are the other contributing factors?

People have mentioned the 'itemisation' brought in by AOS, but I don't really see how that comes close to the above. I assume things like BODs didn't help either, but I don't understand how they work. Some explanation of this would be great.
Most people claim p16/AoS were another step in the wrong direction, but in one way they actually reunited the player base. Felucca was relevant again because of Champ Spawns.

I guess just the moving on of time is a massive one. The 'real' world has changed, and people's perception of UO is different. If UO opened today, in it's 1997-1999 state, I'm sure most people wouldn't feel as immersed in it as they did back then, even if they hadn't played the game before. I'm not sure how you overcome this, or if you even try.

What else?

Political correctness and a departure from reality.
For example, if the most fearsome creature in all the lands was a big black fellow with all the attributes of a Balron then this would have been more realistic. You can actually understand the motivation behind grouping up and going into the worst part of the land and beating this creature up in order to get back all your stuff.

If the Harrower was actually a giant Barry White spamming "can't get enough of your stuff baby" it would be good. If defeating him involved throwing potions of watermelon juice then all the better.

I would pay to see that happen.

So basically, turn Sosaria into Afrika and the game is great again?

Random post from stratics:

Really? Because I actually found the opposite.

Player run towns (or communities) who banded together to form a niche in a given territory were torn apart... there really was no need to band together anymore as any real threats were removed with the Trammel ruleset... Monsters dont invade our player run cities... at least not coherently.

Role-play all but died... no more dungeon crawls to protect those who were innocent... no real struggle between good and evil and no real sense of purpose in this game other than trying to conquer the "videogame" in terms of pixels and character advancement... there was no real meaning anymore.
From stratics:

Human interaction is what used to give this game meaning... player inter-dependency... you needed other people in order to accomplish ANY minuscule task... and lets not also mention that role-playing (actually playing that role in the world) was killed off when the majority of it became trammel.

No longer could someone play a pirate and loot and pilage the coastline... no longer could someone play an Orc and clomp oomies... or play a vampire and drain the blood of their victims... or play a chivalrous knight who fought for the innocents of this land... or even a vile brigand whos greed and lust for carnage could give you an afternoon or night of adventure.

No... trammel killed the true role-play in this world. Now all we have is a population of people who are the exact same in roles and the only goal is to out-do each other in that very very... narrow role.

Role-play is dead... sorry but, being a long time role-player the caskets been long and buried in this game. You can find it in Siege but, the suffocating way EA allows its customers access to that server keeps this staple stone of UO... all but dead anyway.

I still think replacing The Harrower with Barry White's head would be a good thing.

Trammel was a necessary evil unfortunately due to childish cunts in (what became) fel harrassing people night and day. As much as it pains to me admit, UO would have died without Trammel. Sure it could have been done in better ways, extended/different lands, safe dungeons etc etc but PK'ing was rampant and out of control and driving new players away in thousands.

Community feel would have been a lot better imo with earlier integrated shard / guild / alliance chat rather than having to rely on UOAM.

Oddly sites like UO-Auction had quite a role to play in the community feel, along with Stratics and UO forums before they moved.

Night wrote:Trammel was a necessary evil unfortunately due to childish cunts in (what became) fel harrassing people night and day. As much as it pains to me admit, UO would have died without Trammel. Sure it could have been done in better ways, extended/different lands, safe dungeons etc etc but PK'ing was rampant and out of control and driving new players away in thousands.

Community feel would have been a lot better imo with earlier integrated shard / guild / alliance chat rather than having to rely on UOAM.

Oddly sites like UO-Auction had quite a role to play in the community feel, along with Stratics and UO forums before they moved.

My problem with trammel isn't trammel itself, it's trammel being an exact mirror. Made the old lands completely irrelevant and cut the community in half. Feluccans had no reason to visit Trammel, Trammelites had no reason to visit Felucca(until p16)

Agreed about websites/forums. The out of game rivalry was massive in UO. Even something as late on as EFC on Europa added to it massively.

Yeah totally right, making Trammel a mirror image was very lazy development ... a trend that lasted for a loooong time !

Forum pvp seemed to be at least as popular (if not more) than actual pvp... so creating that vibe might be something worth considering as an added attraction. You could just make Villa forum mod tbh and that should do it