Yeah Kamamura!!
Ulm has some intruiging and fun strengths (item forging! plate mail!) and are very popular with many players who are new to the game (that included all of us at one point). So, you have the pro-Ulm-ites, most of which are newbies. This doesn't help Ulm's reputation because these people are not sensitive to Ulm's disadvantages and tend to get slaughtered in multiplayer.
So, Ulm is hated in part as a reaction against the love many people have for the faction originally.
Also, it doesn't help that many of Ulm's even supposed "advantages" are in fact disadvantages. Or at least were up until recently. Take Black Plate, for example -- Ulm's own regular infantry were better than these supposed users of "superior" steel due to encumbrance and defense issues. This has mostly been fixed in the last patch, though.
Then there are the "Ulm is a race of stupid people" arguments. Ulm has no medium infantry even though they would be a great help. Ulm refuses to use swords even though they are better -- we like hammers!
Another reason people don't like MA Ulm because the faction has a long littany of disadvantages, much longer than most factions.
Ulm is slow. Painfully so.
Ulm has only very limited magic diversity in a game where magic diversity is a principle asset and power.
Ulm, until recently, had no good thugs its national mages could summon besides maybe troll kings. So, they have great SC item forging capability, but no SCs.
So, Ulm's reputation is of a race of slow, dimwitted fools beloved by newbies and the uninformed who are slaughtered in multiplayer.
But I love Ulm anyway!!!
