April
30, 2003
And another cheat in the Doom Lever Puzzle
First it was using young chars with skill jewels, then it was insta-log in the lamp post room, now it's using ghost. Cheaters will never cease to amaze me.
It is not intended for players to be able to do any portion of this puzzle with a ghost. This is considered an abuse of the game mechanics and is not allowed. I have consulted with each of the GMs and they are all consistent with how this issue should be handled.
Platinum
Player Relations Lead
Thank you
Account's age not updating
I don't mean to sound sarcastic, but when Stratics posts this as being current issue, I can't help but laugh. This is beyond old news. People have been complaining about accounts' age not updating for well over a year. But hey, as long as they're finally doing something about it, I can only be happy.
We have seen some reports from players that their account age has not updated in a while. We have identified the issue and it has been reported for resolution. The account ages appear to be correct and the issue is simply in the updating. If you are experiencing this issue we ask that you please be patient until we can get this issue resolved. Once it has been resolved your account age will update on its own. I appreciate your patience on this and I am working to get it resolved as quickly as possible.
Platinum
Player Relations Lead
I have to add this though, I'm not sure how long Platinum has been around, but man, I've seen him discuss quite a few long outstanding issues and they all seem to be on their way to be resolved. Keep up the good work!
Is luck worth it?
Hanse says yuppers. And I concur, because everytime I hunted with decent luck armor (and mine aren't all the hot just yet), there was a noticeable difference in the loot quality:
Oh, luck is worth it... You can get a luck roll to increase the amount of items that drop, the amount of properties on them, and the value of the property. More magic items means more chances... More properties... and better properties. The neat thing about luck is it is balance-light (balance issues are not very noticeable). A player can fight without luck and get good items off creatures, although it may take a little longer than someone with a high luck suit. :)
Hanse
UO Live Designer
Read about it further here.
Accounts become inactive for no reason
Yeah, it's also old news, but at least they're finally looking into it. I had 2 of my accounts go inactive on me even though the credit card they were on was very valid and had plenty of funds. Only took minutes to reactivate it, but considering those are accounts I don't use much (they basically just hold houses) if I had not decided to log on with them when I did, my houses could have gone bye bye on me through no fault of my own. Needless to say, I wasn't smiling. The same thing happened to a few of my friends. I'm just happy Phase III isn't active yet.
You can read the discussion on this issue here.
Enhancing Items: ASHs won't help!
Yeah, I'm depressed about that too. I was very much looking forward to Pub 18 so I could use my +60 ASH (ancient smith's hammer) again so enhance my stuff. I hate breaking good stuff with that forever failing enhancement. Here is Hanse's speil about it:
An ancient smithy hammer would not reduce the chance to break it. Break chances are based on how high the original resist is and how much you increase it by.
That is a nice piece. I've been hunting for about 40-50 pieces like that to do one fell swoop of enhancing on. :)
I have...uh...zero so far... the chances of getting more than three magical resistance bonuses are in the wee percentages (below 1%, I believe). After that, you need to get good rolls on the property values. It received some hefty rolls on that piece, though.
and…
Augur did the enhancing code. He leveraged the magic item effects Evocare and I wrote. Although, I'm familiar with the system. Blacksmithy skill affects your ability to use specific ore types. If you have insufficient skill to craft with valorite, you cannot enhance an item with valorite and so forth.
and….
It is significantly more difficult to get luck items with good resistances, because the percentage to roll the properties stack up. So, a high luck item with good resistances is something that folks consider an "uber item". I'm sure some folks have a few good pieces so far, though. I always jump at luck armor and start adding up percentages to see if I should enhance it. :)
Hanse
UO Live Designer
Oh well, was a nice dream... You can read the whole thread here.
April 28, 2003
AoS Newbie Accounts for $19.95
If you got the CD and want another account but without leaving the comfort of your own home.
Actually, those just went on sale a short time ago - you can get them at uogamecodes.com. :)
Cynthe
Community Manager
Sorry to point out another flaw in your communications system Cynthe, but this feature has been available for well over 2 weeks now. When the Fortuity Necklace promotion came out, we had already discussed on the boards how it came up to paying $30 for it since you could get a newbie registration from the AoS site for $19.95.
But aside from rubbing it in, could someone please explain to me why buying a 90-day gametime coupon (ie 3 months of UO) costs $38.99 when paying for the same length of time with a CC or by check would come up to 3 x $9.95 = $29.85 ?
Banning: Training your blue pets
People are all nervous lately about talks of getting banned over training your blue pets one against the other in Trammel. Currently, this trick is allowed. The only thing that will get you banned is if you do it unattended. So it's the unattended macroing and not the pet training that is forbidden. But I can see this trick being categorized in the near future as an exploit. But for now, here's the official word:
It has come to my attention that there is some confusion regarding the situation with "blue" pet training. Our current policy on the issue is the GM staff will only take action if the training is done unattended. Our stance on this issue can change if we review the situation and determine there is an abuse of the game mechanics involved. If there are any changes made I will post an update to this forum.
Platinum
Player Relations Lead
Where are those gifts already?
Still brewing somewhere and not before a few more weeks. I never though rehuing and relabeling existing stuff would be this complicated, but then, I never pretented to be a programming expert.
The Age of Shadows Launch Gift is in the works. We have a document in the UO.com Update Center, and you can read that at update.uo.com/design_434.html. I know it's been a couple of months, but new items take a while to create, even when they seem simple. After the exploration of what sort of item to make, working it into the schedule figuring out how to make it, developing it, and QAing it, we're close to being able to present it to you. It's now scheduled for the next publish, known as Publish 18, due out sometime after mid-May.
Sannio
Online Content Coordinator
Oh well, keep selling those roses before they get the shaft. Then again, maybe you want to hold on to them because my understanding is that the "we screwed up" roses will be of a different hue than the whispering roses.
How about those 100% lower reagent suits?
Dont you just hate the guy waltzing around in his l33t insured/bless suit and bragging about how buying reagents is now a thing of the past for him? Well, I do cuz I still don't have one of my own and I'm dying with envy. At least, for now, there is no plan to nerf these suits even though exploiters are hard to work already to see how they could gain unfair advantages from it. But if I can get my act together at some point preferrably in this lifetime, I get one of my own before the nerf.
It is certainly possible and allowable to have a 100% reagent reduction suit. Right now it seems fine to Create Food and then spell(sell) that food to NPCs, but we'll also keep an eye on techniques such as that. If it somehow becomes considered a major exploit then we'll address it at that time. But for now it seems okay.
Sannio
Online Content Coordinator
I wonder how long a good thing can last in this game. *sighs* You can read the rest in this thread.
AoS And Siege Perilous
It's closer folks. For better or for worse. As 7 of 9 would say, resistance is futile, and yes, you will adapt.
Has anyone noticed all these things still happening today? We've published some updates to the Siege test center over the course of the day, and I was wondering how much improvement is visisble, particularly with the list of concerns that have been presented in this thread in mind. Our AoS-version of Siege is almost ready to go live, but we want to make sure there's as few surprises as possible when it does so, and going over your lists can help.
Sannio
Online Content Coordinator
You can read further about it here.
April 23, 2003
Site Update: Provocation Skill Guide
As you all know (I certainly bitched enough about it), some revision had to be made to the Provoke skill guide since OSI's official stand on the boat trick now considered as an exploit under certain circumstances. After much procrastination, I have finally revised the guides. There isn't that much difference. Turns out there was only a small technicality to work around to make it entirely legal. The upside is that this will prevent some people from unattended macroing so it's not all that bad after all.
I've also done some tweeking to the Magery and Necromancy.
Extended Maintenance on 5 NA shards
From the FYI:
Tomorrow morning and Thursday (April 23rd and 24th), we will be performing extended maintenance on the Chesapeake, Atlantic, Catskills, Great Lakes, and Lake Superior shards. Rather than bring them all down at once while we perform the maintenance, we will stagger the times, ideally keeping the downtime for each individual shard to a minimum. We've planned these times to be as close to normal morning maintenance as possible, so these downtimes will take the place of the normal maintenance periods for these shards.
Here is the currently planned schedule for these downtimes:
Wednesday 4/23
Chesapeake 4:00 AM CST (5AM EST)
Atlantic 5:00 AM CST (6AM EST)
Catskills 6:00 AM CST (7AM EST)
Thursday 4/24
Great Lakes 4:00 AM CST (5AM EST)
Lake Superior 5:00 AM CST (6AM EST)
The downtime for each shard is expected to last approximately three hours from the time it is brought down, but we will update you further if that changes. Thanks very much for your patience!
Luck... Again!
Also in the FYI, more answers to the whole luck issue:
Question: In the shortest way possible, could you tell me what Luck does?
Answer: Some monsters, upon death, will have magical items in their loot. Your Luck rating has a chance of increasing the number of magical items in that loot, increasing the number of magical properties for each magical item, and/or improving each magical property of each item.
Question: Hm. Are you saying blacksmithing isn’t affected by Luck?
Answer: That’s correct. Luck only affects magical items that are generated when certain creatures die, and won’t improve the items you craft on your own. (...)
You can read the rest here.
The multiple doors bug
Ever cursed at having to open 20 doors before the passage finally opens up for you (can we say Deceit!) especially when you have a crapload of spawn attempting to chew you up? I sure have. Well, there's finally light at the end of the tunnel:
There's a fix for this problem in testing right now. Hopefully it will pass and go out with Pub18.
MrTact
Lead Server Engineer
Woohoooo!!! Thank you!
April 21, 2003
Test Center: Siege Perilous and AoS
From the FYI:
Siege Perilous and Mugen players, the time for you to get the Age of Shadows code is getting closer, so be sure to check out Test Siege now and experience the changes in Age of Shadows before it hits the public Siege ruleset shards! Before you go, though, we want to warn Siege players that Test Siege will feature a Trammel facet, which is different from the live version of Siege Perilous. That does not mean Siege is getting Trammel - that facet on Test Siege is for the sake of testing Mugen, which does have a Trammel facet.
At last! Enjoy folks!
So, is UO coming to an end?
Funny how that question keeps popping up since AoS. I think pretty much everyone agrees that OSI really screwed up with this one. But we're still here today so in the end, despite all the aggravation and the nerf, we're still hoping something can be salvaged out of the game we all once loved. A lot of people have left. A lot more are in the process of leaving. Many are just downsizing (like I have) and the others, including yours truly, will more than likely tough it out til the end. But the end doesn't seem to be scheduled anytime soon:
UO is not coming to an end. Far from it. However, it has been changing, and some of that change has been difficult.
I don't have much time to post on this subject at the moment, but I read this and felt I have to say something. I will elaborate more on it in a "Comments from the Producer," soon.
1st of all, scenarios are not dead. The UO Live team is undergoing a transition in process and form that has two goals:
A) To increase overall quality
B) To update the service more frequently
In order to do this, we have to be more disciplined in both planning and execution. We have already headed down this road, and so far, the planning has resulted in the need to do more feature revision, bug fixing, and infrastructure development than pure content (scenarios) for the first 2 publishes (18 and 19). Once we have accomplished this, we will have put the service into a state in which we can add content (scenarios) with the quality and frequency that you and I demand.(...)
Anthony Castoro
"SunSword"
Producer, Ultima Online
You can read the rest of his post here.
That still doesn't answer a lot of our questions, but I will give him this: yes, there is a major problem with the way UO is being handled currently. And the fact that they are publicly acknowledging it and working at restructuring this to make things more efficient certainly gives me great hope that UO may yet know another golden age. So if only for the effort of trying to get your act together, I'll say thank you.
About Pub 18 and Scenarios
Yes, we're all very upset that scenarios have been put on an indefinite backburner, but there are more important issues. The bugs and ridiculous lag needs to go yesterday. I'm beyond fed up with it so yes, let Pub 18 focus on bug fixes. To one Stratics reader that whined about Pub 18 being mainly about fixes, here is what Mr. Tact had to reply:
We will get pub18 that is probably nothing but bug fixes
*gag* *choke* *sputter* Hello!? Aren't you the same people who have been taking us to task since day one for NOT fixing bugs before moving on to adding new content? Hell YES, pub 18 is mostly bug fixes, and I for one am very happy about that!
As for the present suspension of scenarios, here is my take on it: fiction doesn't work in an online game. Why? Because fiction by definition means planning what the protagonists do, and if you do that, you exclude the players as protagonists. Which, IMHO, they should be . . . long-term, our goal with UO is to address this problem (players being able to have a real impact on the world) so that should we choose to do scenarios again, they are meaningful.
Personally, I'd be much happier making the world more dynamic and letting players create their OWN scenarios.MrTact
Lead Server Engineer
Mr. Tact, would you marry me? Gotta love the man sometimes.
April 20, 2003
Cocktail Molotov or the new "fire bombs"
You know, I really wish I knew where, when, how and why people come up with or discover those new things in UO that, as far as I know, weren't advertises anywhere, yet someone thought of it. You know, like those secret housing locations in Malas. How the hell did anyone think of using a rune in those bags? It's not something you could discover by accident. I mean, smelting BODs, yes. You mistargeted the item you wanted to smelt in your bag and smelted your BOD instead. Dang!! Ok, you just discovered something. But those runes?
And now we have the fire bombs. You know those fire pitchers people have been selling for an arm and a leg in Brit? How did anyone think of that? Why was it not advertised anywhere? I mean, all it takes to build one is a pitcher and an oil cloth. What are the odds that someone that regularly uses water cloth would also have a pitcher in his backpack? Considering the Matriarch's Quest has been caput since AoS, it's not like many warriors run around with pitchers in their bag (not to mention that this doesn't work with water pitchers), nor oil cloths especially now since poison no longer messes up your blade. So where did that "insider" info come from? GRRR. I swear, I should learn to suck up to the Dev Team...
... or not. *shrugs*
Anyways, for the wannabe bombers*, use an oilcloth on a pitcher of liquor or a bottle of liquor to create your firebomb. The cloth will not be used so you can make many bombs with 1 oil cloth. Once created, the bottle will be hued blaze. You use them the same way you use explo pots. As for damage, you won't kill a balron with those. If you don't throw the bomb in time, it will blow up in your hands for a hefty... 5-7 HP damage. So what's the point of that bomb aside from looking pretty? It could be a good alternative to the trapped pouches and save you from para gankers. Trapped pouches cause way too much damage to be a decent alternative for people who dropped resist.
Oh well, have that cocktail on me!
So when is the next scenario?
Not anytime soon I'm afraid, if ever again. This is a big downer. I may have bitched quite a bit about how the scenarios were unimaginative, especially the way they ended at times (or kinda didn't end?), but at least they were a nice change of pace from stocking vendors and dungeon crawling.
The schedule for scenario publishes has been put on hold indefinitely. We aren't currently developing any new scenarios. Resuming regularly scheduled scenario publishes is not currently on our calendar.
We are shortening our publish cycle. Bug fixes, tweaks, and new content will be delivered more frequently. Some of that new content may include new quests. However, it is not likely that it will be delivered on a weekly schedule like scenarios were in the past.
Vex
Designer
And...
We don't have any events in development right now, but such things will probably pop up from time to time, albeit rarely.
I may actually pop into the game later this month and wander around a random shard or two to chat with players 1-on-1, although I obviously wouldn't call that an "event." I'd be happy to talk with players about events at that time, however. Any related feedback will be good feedback. :]
Sannio
Online Content Coordinator
Well, I guess that means I really should stop procrastinating and finally get my Quest going.
Server "hiccups"
You are asked for help identifying “hiccups:” By this he means those very, very pleasant extended periods of uber lag where the world of UO just stops turning for everyone. You know that 20 second lock up that feels like 10 min. That probably got you killed if you were running from something, or that made you restart your client because you thought it had crashed. But that if you were patient enough and waited, it's the lag where once it lifts up, everyone in the vicinity spams laaaaaaaaag, omg lag, grrrr darn lag... Yeah, that one.
I saw a couple 20 second hiccups on Pacific yesterday as well, I've got a good idea what the cause is, and we have a fix that should ship with Publish 18 that should correct the problem. I'm looking into getting the fix out even sooner, but I've got a lot of verification to do first.
It would be helpful to know how widespread this is right now, so if you've seen this (20-240 second hiccups that you've verified with other nearby players that also effect NPCs) this weekend someplace other than Pac, and Drach, please post which shard(s), and about how many times you saw this.
Sorry for the inconvenience,
Ferbert
Server Programmer
So if you've been experiencing those hiccups, Fertbert would like you to tell him about it here.
The nightsight bug
Most of us have had that problem. Pitch black night suddenly drops on you and In Lor doesn't work nor do nightsight pots. The only thing that can save you is a nightsight jewel or piece of armor. Trouble is, if you're not already wearing it, goodluck finding it in such darkness. Recalling across server lines sometimes fixes it but it's still a very annoying problem. But there is hope. It should be fixed in Pub 18. However...
Indeed... I just worked on it, I suspect that the code changes I just made will fix this, but since I was not able to reproduce the problem I can't really test my code changes.
I'll be sure to post here once the fixes are on a test center.
Ferbert
Server Programmer
So lets expect the worse, but hope for the best
IanStorm Chat Logs
A few interesting things have been debated there. The highlights being:
You can read it in details here
Site Update: Champion Spawns
For those of you who still do champ spawns, I have update the section regarding them under the Q&A menu with detailed maps to all champ location as well as some updates on the powerscroll page.
The lowdown on luck
You can read about it all in this thread, but here's a few of Mr. Tact's explanations and responses to questions asked by some of our fellow players:
Luck translates directly into a % chance to get a bump in number of items, number of item props and property intensity. The % is calculated very simply: it's luck ^ ( 1/1.8 ), which ends up being slightly better than the square root. As you know, luck maxes out at 1200, which gives you roughly a 51% chance of getting the bump.
Is this a one time check, that once you pass, gives you you bonuses in all three catagories, or is it actually three checks per kill?
It is checked once for the number of items, once for each item (to determine the number of props) and once for each prop (to determine intensity)
does your luck value determine the intensities when applied to items? Meaning will somebody who has 1200 luck be able to get higher intensities than me at 1000 luck? Or are the intensities random?
There are ranges determined by the loot template. These are modified by the creature they spawn on -- a weak creature might have a max intensity limit of 80%. That means that if an item has an intensity range of 1-10 (for example) that creature's effective range would be 1-8. Luck gives you a chance to increase the randomly-generated value by 10% of the max (the original max. I think.) But it can't raise the intensity over the limit.
UO:R seriously damaged the function of UO's random number generator. Ever since UO:R everything in UO that involves the random number generator has been frustratingly streaky.
Ha! At last, I can say "you are wrong." We rewrote the random number generator for Age of Shadows :-)
It used to be pretty bad, though. Some places still exhibit poor behavior (like, surprise surprise, the skill & stat gain systems), but not the loot generator.
If 3 people are all killing the same monster how do you determine who's luck applies to the kill?
The person who gets the credit for the kill via the looting rights system has their luck applied.
Also, does luck have any bearing on the ability to enhance an item with tailoring or blacksmithing?
No, at present it only affects loot drop. But given the overwhelming interest in it, perhaps we ought to consider expanding its scope . . .
Could we get more than a two sentence explanation of this important topic?
This is probably all the detail I'm going to give out for now, but I will pull together more over time. Part of my reluctance is that I don't want to spoil it for people who are still just having fun with it & don't want to have to become min/maxers. Partly it's because pulling together more in-depth information than this would be a vast undertaking. And partly it's because the details get kind of scary (example: intensity is generated using a table that simulates an integral function, so you are VASTLY more likely to get low-intensity items than high).
So when someone told me the other day that you have a 0% chance of getting an undead slayer weapon if you have less than 700 luck, they didn't know what they were talking about?
I love the smell of crack fumes in the morning. It smells like . . . UO.
MrTact
Lead Server Engineer
What about Magic Resist?
There's been lots of talks about how they intend to change magic resistance in Pub 18 and beyond to unnerf it a little. Here's a look at what they have in mind.
…Resist will increase your minimum resistances, but that minimum is applied after spell and equipment modifications. So, if you're wearing a suit that gives you 60/50/20/20/20 and you have GM Magic Resistance, then the minimum would raise only apply to the values below it. For example, at GM your minimum would be 40, do you'd effectively have 60/50/40/40/40.
This grants extra flexibility with the use of Reactive Armor, Magic Reflection, and Protection. If one of those spells would modify a resistance below your minimum, it wouldn't drop below the minimum. It also makes it easier to build specialized resistance suits. For example, if you can focus in fire resist and not have to worry about your other resists being below 40, you have a broader range of items to pick from.
However, this will do nothing to make it easier to build a 60+ All Resist suit.
Vex
Designer
Hmmm, it's not exactly what I had hoped for but that will already be a major improvement compared to what we currently have. You can read about it further here.
April 16, 2003
Site Update: Peacemaking
And another one down. You can now find the Peacemaking skill guide under the Skill Training menu.
Enjoy!
UO Loop and illegal 3rd party programs
Most of the people that use UO Assist (a legal 3rd party program) are also aware of UO Loop and the 8X8 macroer. For a long time, I thought those 2 programs were legal, seeing how they only worked with UO Assist which is an authorized complementary program to UO. I was even told by a Counselor back in the good old days that using the looping program was legal as long as I was macroing attended. But it is not the case. Any program not listed in UO Pro is considered illegal. Despite that, I had GMs tell me both that it is and it isn't legal. So which is it? For this reason, I used to have both programs available for download in my links page but have removed them for over a year now, while waiting for the official word to come out, which never did.
The debate resurfaced on the Stratics boards this week and Chinalilly pulled out an old response from a red:
Canyon
(Player Relations Training Lead)
08/21/01 06:18 PM
UO Loop: A Ruling (Sorta)
For now, UO Loop is still considered illegal because it is not an approved program listed on our UO Pro page. Until it receives official approval, it should be considered illegal, and players should not use it. I've forwarded along the main thread on this issue to QA as well as the Live Team, so they can see your feedback.
The Live team could always choose to approve it at a later date. However, at this time it is still an illegal program.Keep in mind that it would be almost impossible to test every single utility or program that players put out. Every main program might have several variations, and those could always be changing. If the Live team were focused on evaluating these programs, they would have less time to add new content and fix existing coding issues. It's a tradeoff, and evaluating all of these programs is not high on the priority list.
Canyon
OK, so this was posted almost 2 years ago (August 21, 2001). I'll agree that you guys were too busy but we're now in April 2003, still haven't had time to check it out? Nope, they sure didn't. And why? Peaches had the answer:
Thats because the uo pro program is closed and has been for quite some time.
Peaches
So... UO Pro is closed, yet there are countless new proggies popping out every day (not of them looping programs) and no one is bothering to check them so a ruling can be passed as to which is acceptable and which isn't? Way to go!
You can read and/or join the debate here.
OSI and UO or a Pimp and his...
She's beautiful, wild and untamed, keeper of countless mysteries. Within her embrace, the daring adventurer will discover unparalelled pleasures and excitements. That's right, boys and girls, there is nothing Sosaria will not yield to you, even her most forbidden secrets, if... the price is right. All you have to do is open up your wallets.
And now, for the lousy sum of $30, you will be able to taste yet another pleasure of Sosaria: the Fortuity Necklace. Doesn't it make you want to laugh when they have the nerve to add that it's a new IN GAME RARE? mmhmm, that's why we can buy it.
So what does that necklace do? It gives you +200 luck
How do I get it? Con a friend into joining UO for 3 months or open a newbie account for that same period of time (hence the $30 or $20 if you have an unused newbie account), make sure you or your buddy inputs your email account as the person that referred him/her to UO and patiently wait 3 months. You will then receive a code that will serve both to get you your necklace and give you 1 free month of UO. So in essence, if currently have an unused newbie account code, the whole deal will only cost you $10 (the first month is free, you pay the 2 other months but get a free month in return which is equal to $10)
What will they be selling next when everyone has their l33t necklace? Leprechaun boots that actually do give luck?
Funny how they have time to come up with ways to milk more money out of us yet can't seem to find time to fix stuff such as the Ancient Smith's Hammers.
Start you necklace timer here.
Seeing how they wouldn't want you to frolick in public (exhibitionists aren't well perceived in Britannia), they want to give you a chance to do it in the privacy of your new l33t 18x18 house in Malas, courtesy of the Pimp. That's right, con your friend into signing up between April 15 and May 15, and you'll automatically be entered into a sweepstake to win that baby. Read about it here.
Stratics Plus is out
In short, pay to get less lag and no more pop-ups and a l33t icon when you post on their forum.
How much is it?
$3.45 for 1 month
$9.95 for 4 months
$24.95 for 1 year
Can I still use Stratics if I don't sign up? Yup, you sure can, but it will still be a nightmare to load.
You can read about the new features here. If it takes too long to load, you can read about it here.
So what's the deal with factions?
Same old. We all know it's broken and it sucks but there are more important things to deal with. So keep holding on to that number cuz they're not about to call it yet.
…There are no direct changes to factions on the schedule yet (we really need to tweak PvP so that PvPers in general are a little less miffed first). But Factions is on the Big List of Things to Work On for upcoming publishes.
Mr. Tact
Lead Server Engineer
*sighs* at least, they acknowledge that PvP really got shafted.
So what's in Publish 18?
Take a stroll over to the FYI and you can read the Q&A they setup there. A few things are answered, especially for Siege Perilous. Some of you will be pleased to know item insurance will not be available of SP. As far as Pub 18's content is concerned, here's what they had to say:
Question: What’s in Publish 18, and when can we expect it?
Answer: Keeping it simple, Publish 18 will be implemented after the items mentioned above are completed. Pub18 will bring the AoS Launch Gift into UO, plus another large wave of bug fixes. There’ll also be a neat little bonus or two—but more on that when we get closer to publishing. ;)
Publish 18 is currently scheduled for mid-May. And, by the way, we’re working out a new publish process that should make our publishing schedule more reliable and of higher quality. Pub18 will be the first publish of that new process.
So mid-May it is... for now.
UO
StormChat - Tomorrow Night!
IanStorm is pleased to announce another UO StormChat with the
teams from OSI. It will take place at 7pm CST (5pm PST, 8pm EST,
12noon AEST) on Thursday, April 17 in #StormEvent.
To access the network, you will need an IRC Client (like mIRC or Pirch) and use one of the following
servers:
irc.ianstorm.com irc2.ianstorm.com
If you don't have an
IRC client, you access their network via their Java IRC client, here. Read their FAQ if you need help with IRC
commands.
The topic for this month is General Discussion, so if you
have a niggling question to ask, come prepared!
You can access logs of their former chats here.
April 15, 2003
UO Auction 2
Remember how we were all crushed when UO Auction went down (at least I was)? Well, it's been back up for months now and I just don't get it. I would have thought people would have flocked right back to it. After all, it is one of the most reliable way to auction off your goods for UO gold and to acquire some pretty good stuff for decent prices without having to grow roots spamming at WBB, so why is it so darn deserted? I went there a few times over the past weeks and aside from Europa and Great Lakes, most other shards seem pretty shy to post. Come on guys, do you enjoy the lag of Britain so much? And as Satyr was pointing out, we should all pull our weight to bring it back to its glory days. So if you have a fansite, please advertise them. And if you have goods to auction off, give them a try.
PS: for those who wonder, the guys over at UO Auction 2 didn't ask me to advertise for them. I just agree with an email I received from Satyr that we should give these guys a boost for the awesome service they've been providing FOR FREE to the UO community.
Interview with a former OSI employee
Remember the smurfs? I sure miss them. Funny how you never truly appreciate something (someone) until they get taken away from you. For those of you who don't know, the smurfs were the petname we gave counselors because in their blue robes they looked like smurfs. Sundancer wasn't a smurf, but he was an Arch Companion. And he gives us a little bit of insight on how it was, back in the good old days and how it all came to an end. Here's a sample:
...after the volunteers where taken away from US- and Euro-Shards, you could really see the impact on in-game service. Especially the disappearance of the Counselors made the whole system crash, and OSI hasn't really found a way to bring it back to where it was before until today (which is, to stay fair, quite impossible. There are simply too many calls for the handful GMs).
After all, as most of you might know, the reason OSI shut the volunteer programs down was a lawsuit caused by an ex-volunteer who wanted to have the volunteering time paid subsequently. So OSI probably feared a success for the claimant and pulled the emergency brake.
You can read the whole interview on the Online Traders site.
Yamato Shards gets a 29-hour revert
All I can say guys is a big OUCH! Thank God I don't play that shard or my ladylike manners would have gone right out the window once again.
Yamato's difficulties were due to hardware failure, and our technicians worked on it from here over the weekend. They send out updates when they can, but it takes them a while to identify exactly what's going on and send the info to Japan, where it's posted by our Japanese OCR group.
I'm sorry about the revert - I know that's extremely frustrating, and it's definitely not something we do lightly.
Cynthe
Community Manager
Then Formosa gets it too
The Formosa outages were most unexpected and were the result of critical hardware failure. There was no way to know that two servers from that shard set would fail the way they did so there was no warning we could have posted.
We had two servers from Formosa die and we can't even get a video sync when we attach a monitor and keyboard. Luckily we were able to spare out one of the machines and reconfigure the shard to keep running despite these failures. We're scheduling onsite service for these hosts and hope to have them back in service as soon as possible.
We could not warn the Yamato player base about their 29 hour revert either, so I hope the Formosa players do not take this personally.
TomtheGrey
Sr. Unix Admin, Origin Systems
You know guys, 2 in a row should make you go hmmm. Either your maintenance guy isn't doing his job properly or someone is trying his hands at sabotage. In any event, I sure hope that's where it stops.
Mr. Tact gets verbose
Wow, I can't recall the last time a red posted so much in one day. Granted, nothing revolutionary was said but it's nice to at least get some kind of info from time to time. Keep them coming Mr. Tact!
On bug fix priorities:
"The decision as to what bugs we fix is affected by a several different factors.
- How annoying players find them to be.
- How easy they are to fix.
- How risky they are (in other words, what's the likelihood they are going to break something else?)
If our choices sometimes seems arbitrary or capricious, I assure you, they are not. Often times there are good reasons for not fixing bugs that seem like obvious high priorities.
Yes, yes, that's a cheesy no-risk answer. I will say that all the bugs you folks mention ARE being looked at for Publish 18. With luck they will all be fixed for that publish. "
Hmmm, if I may say so, yup, that is a cheesy no-risk answer, but based on your factors' list, how hard and complicated is it really to fix Ancient Smith's Hammers?
In that same thread he talked about...
...The Plant Bug
"I am working on the ejection bug [removes you from house when you pull seeds] even as I write this].
I am also nagging the designers to get the watering bug into Pub18. We'll see. "
Wooohooo! thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you...
You can read about it here. Now, let's continue...
About Test Shards:
"It's part of our publish process now that all code has to run on a public test center for at least 24 hours before we will publish it. You will probably have a public TC again very soon . . ."
Woot! thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you... You'll find the full story here.
About the firehorn bug:
Using a firehorn in Trammel, can make you turn grey. If you are inside guard, hence lootable.
"We know about the firehorn thing. It is high on our list of bugs to fix. "
Ugh, that sounded so much like something a GM would say. *gets the creeps* Read about it here.
April 11, 2003
Splitting hairs on provoke
I have a very, very, very strong urge to curse right now, but seeing how I have somewhat been swaying from the ladylike manners I should have, I will try to behave. But I'm still very much annoyed.
As some of you may have noticed, I went to great lengths to explain how to train provoke safely (or as safely as can be) in the Provocation skill guide. Well, turns out that months (and I really mean months) after we asked if this technique was in any way illegal (question which as usual was ignored), someone finally wakes up and says, errr, yeah, it is kinda illegal, but not in all cases. GRRRRRR
In this thread of the stratics forum, Sannio had quite a bit to say on the "safe boat" provoke setup. I will only post here the bits I find the most important but if you're a bard or a bard in training, I strongly suggest you take the time to read every responses Sannio made in that thread (and there are a few):
So: training in your barding skills in your house is fine. You can train them anywhere you like, and working your skills in your house is not inappropriate. A GM was quoted elsewhere in this thread as stating it is allowed for players to provoke 2 creatures against one another in your house, and that you need to personally be there during the training. This is all true in general.
I can't tell if the GM knew of the more specific scenario of "bears behind a fence," so I'm going to try to expand on his reply. The creature you are attacking, or using to attack for you, needs to be able to defend itself by having the possibility of attacking you. In the case of the bears, if you failed your provo and the bear decided you looked like someone who should be eaten, it sounds like the bears had no chance of escaping the fence to attack the provoker. In this case, the "creature behind the fence" technique would be unacceptable. If the creatures were dragons instead of bears, that would be a bit different since dragons can fire off spells without the fence being such a, well, exploitable game mechanic.(...)
I recently expanded on this same scenario in this way: Blocking monsters is inappropriate mostly because you can attack the monster in such a way that you're never, ever at risk. If the monsters just happened to be on boats or in a house, that's not specifically wrong, as long as the risk and potential for harm still exist.
Shooting at a bear which is on a boat means the bear will take damage and you will never take any. That's an inappropriate situation. However, shooting at a demon which is on a boat is different--crossing ever-so-subtly into possible-acceptability--since the demon can fire back at you, your buddies, other enemies, etc. In some ways, it's almost doesn't matter that the demon is on the boat.(...)
If you attack a monster from the "safety" of your boat, and the opportunity exists for it to attack back (such as with spells or firebreath), then this general situation is acceptable.
(...)
I'm curious as to why bards are required to be "in danger" or attackable just to train skills.
I could go train a 7xgm mage in no time without ever risking harm, and with all 100% legal training methods.
Truthfully, it's the technique that's I'm discussing--penning in the creatures (ex. the bears) without any possible retaliation scenario--and not so much the specific skills. You could easily substitute magery or archery based attacks for a barding-based tact and the same concerns would still come up. In this way, the concerns we might have against the stated technique are not bard-specific.
Sannio
Online Content Coordinator
Soooooo... because the bear or bull can't chew me up while I provoke it, it's not legal, but if I stand on the "safe" side of the fence in Yew graveyard and provoke the very much trapped skeletons that have 0 spellcasting ability it's legal only because I'm in a potentially dangerous environment? Can I say that this is a big fat load of ... hmmm, nm, I said I would remain ladylike...
Basically, I can 8x8 magery, necromancy and safely spar any combat skill to GM while cross-healing with a bud, but the longest, hardest, most freaking boring skill to train I have to put myself in harm's way just cuz some computer generated bear might want to have a piece of me for supper and is being denied the privilege cuz I was smart enough to trap him? Riiiiiiiight. So what's next? They're gonna tell us that it's ok for bards and archers to attack ophidian shamans, matriarchs and the whole tribe of spellcasting lizards from the safe spot in the Lost Lands but that killing any Knight-Errand or warrior would be construed as an exploit cuz the poor little creeps can't crawl their way up the ledge? GRRRRRRR
*takes a deep breath*
Will I update the provoke skill training page? Hmmmm, yeah, I guess, someday, when I remember.
BODs: No more spamming "vendor sell"?
I for one will be very happy with that. Ever got pissed after selling 25 items to a not too smart NPC that stubbornly refused to give you that darn BOD even though every time you checked BOD info, the NPC kept saying "You can get an order now" but still wouldn't give you one? Well, sometime, God knows when, they will look into changing it so that it works the same way as on Siege (since you cannot sell items to NPCs on that shard).
The reason BOD's are randomly offered from vendors is for new players. It is intended to be a surprise for them. For veteran players, it's not a surprise and is tedious.
We'll most likely make the Bulk Order Info context menu option work the same as it does on SP on all shards. I'm not sure on the ETA on that, though.
Hanse
UO Live Designer
Thank you!
What about them gifts?
Yes, everyone is asking about them. I don't think a day goes by without someone asking. And the answer is:
The AoS Launch Gift is currently under development. Right now it's in the "In Concept" section of UO.com's Update Center, as an article called "Age of Shadows Launch Gift" that you can read about here. We haven't announced a release schedule yet, but things are proceeding fairly smoothly so far behind the scenes.
Sannio
Online Content Coordinator
In other words, don't hold your breath. It won't be for a while yet, so please stop asking :^P
Want to meet some UO fellow players IRL?
Then get your camping gear ready because a group of them on Ianstorm are planning a get together. Yes, it's going to be in the US (I believe Wisconsin is still the State considered but that might change). If you like camping and want to put some faces on the names, they'd love to hear from you. You can give your input/suggestions in this thread.
April 10, 2003
Archery and best weapon skill
Sorry guys, but those two don't mix
Right now Use Best Weapon Skill will let a person with swordsmanship, fencing, or macing use any sword, mace, or fencing weapon. It has no effect on ranged weapons...which means that having use Best Weapon Skill on a bow or crossbow is meaningless right now. This is by design. As it was explained to me, we didn't want melee folks to gain a ranged attack with no skill point cost, nor did we want ranged weapon folks gaining a melee attack with no skill point cost.
Fertbert
Server Programmer
You can read the whole discussion about it here.
Why they don't return stuff lost in reverts
Ever been super mega pissed after GM'ing that really painful skill or getting that kick ass wep from a monster, or getting that +20 magery scroll from a champ only to see it all fade into oblivion thanks to a revert and be told by a GM, sorry bud, the joke is on you cuz we don't return stuff? Here's why they don't return things:
The loss of game items and/or time is an inherent problem with a revert, it's what defines a revert really. So there is nothing we can do about that except try to make it as brief as possible when it occurs. Maybe 15-30mins is a best-case scenario, the last Chessy revert was in that range but previous ones may have been longer. These backup corruption related reverts always occur during a shard restart or during maintenance, this helps us a little in that there won't be as many lost items since the revert occurs during the slowest time for the shard.
I really can't speak to player compensation for shard issues but I would ask you to read the service agreement again and also think about how difficult it would be for GMs to handle so many of these requests with no way to validate the claims (since the transactions were lost in the revert).
Someone in my team was up at 4AM CST to monitor how Chessy did this morning at maintenance and we were pleasantly surprised to find that the problem did not resurface. iostat and vmstat don't indicate an i/o or memory problem so we're going to continue working with Dev for a fix.
Thanks for your patience and understanding.
TomtheGrey
Sr. Unix Admin, Origin Systems
Generally speaking, I agree with that stance. I mean, I could page right after a revert and tell them I just lost 4 +20 scrolls cuz the shard reverted right as I was running away from the left over spawn and this time, I got whacked by a swarm of PEs. Naturally, those +20s would be the most sought after. Can I hear someone say BS? So yeah, people could take advantage and lie through their teeth to get some awesome freebies. But how about the cases where people lost the content of their entire chests because the game reverted after they had unlocked/unsecured it but before they had locked it back down? In this instance, they can see in their backups that the last action taken was unlocking and they can see what items were in that secure. So there is no justification for not returning such items. But, as we all know, that's too much work. Why should they fix their screw ups when there's an easier way out by saying: "sorry, I can't help you with this".
In Concept: Player run vendor enhancements
Now is your chance to throw out ideas about how you would like to see your vendors improved. There are lots of pretty good suggestions already posted out there, but if you can think of even better ones, now is your chance to be heard. I know I'm hoping for the ability to either transfer to and/or friend people to my vendors so they can help restocking, as well as the possibility to move them without having to customize the house. Be able to customize their names so people can only click on vendor once to know what he sells rather than go through the bags (like Ada the regs vendor, or Remy the bod vendor), selling tamed animal on vendors, etc. etc.
Just a note about that "In Concept" post. We've already been jotting down notes on your thoughts regarding today's "player vendor" situation, gathering a lot of great feedback from Helios' "Vendor Owners & Shoppers of Britannia!" thread. The "In Concept" Vendor Improvements doc doesn't go into any details, but we wanted to let you know that there's changes under consideration even though we couldn't yet commit to any new related designs.
Like I said, there was a lot of feedback in Helios' thread, so you won't need to repeat any thoughts already posted in that other thread. Anything you'd care to share would be great, but if you could keep it short and very specifically related to vendors that will help us a great deal in keeping up with the multitude of ideas & comments that might posted here. :]
Sannio
Online Content Coordinator
You can post your ideas and suggestions here.
AoS, Siege Perilous and Shrouds of Shadows
As a reminder, the deadline to claim your shrouds of shadows has been extended for EVERYONE to May 31st. So if you haven't claimed yours yet, regardless of what shard you play, you can still do that.
As far as Siege and Mugen go, the AoS publish is still in testing and if all goes as planned you should be receiving it soon, which means you'll have plenty of time to claim your shrouds before the deadline is up.
Last month, we extended the Hooded Shroud redemption period to May 31st. The FYI announcement was entitled "European and Australian Shroud Codes Mailed by April 4th," but that extended date actually applies to all shards. We're currently testing the Siege version of the AoS rules, and if the current plan stays close to schedule (and I believe it will), then you should have plenty of time between when Siege Perilous gets the AoS code and when the Shroud redemption period ends.
Sannio
Online Content Coordinator
European and Australian players
If you didn't get your shroud code yet, here a little bit from the FYI
If you're one of our European or Australian players and you were eligible to receive an in-game Hooded Shroud of Shadows, your code should have been mailed on April 4th. If you upgraded to Age of Shadows before March 21st, and your billing address accurately reflected that you live in Europe or Australia (with the exception of Germany or Sweden, who had separate shroud promotions), and the email address on your billing records is correct, but you did not receive the email from us with the Shroud code, please visit this article in our Support database to see about claiming your shroud.
April 9, 2003
AoS and PvP
In the FYI, there is a bit of a spiel about how the AoS changes are meant to make PvP more interesting (sure if you say so) and goes on to explain a bit why they made some of the changes we're now dealing with. I'm still not overly impressed with their justification of said changes, but the one thing that gave me hope:
Question: There’s been some pretty big changes to resist — is magic resist ever going to be changed to be more like it was before?
Answer: It’s already part of our plan to continue checking back on the AoS changes, and it’s probable that we may be taking a more critical look at the Magic Resist skill in the near future.
Please do revise Magic Resist cuz right now it blows!!!
Fame decay
Last nigth, I got pretty annoyed. Here I am sitting at Umbra's moongate talking to this guy while waiting for my friend Xa to show up. After about 8-10 minutes, she finally gets there and while we're talking she goes: Sak, what just happened to your lady title? I have no clue what she's talking about. I look at my paperdoll, it still says lady. I click on myself, and surely enough, it still says lady. But Xa insists that my title is gone and that I'm down to Glorious. I close my paperdoll and reopen it, and lo and behold, my lady title went for a stroll. So I'm like WTF?! Xa casts a gate, I go through it and come back, and now the title isn't just gone on my paperdoll, it also went bye bye on my profile and when I click myself it only says Sakkarah. As you can guess, I'm not a happy camper. I page a GM: 86 in queue *sighs*. I already know how it's gonna play out, so I icq my bud Dark Knight so he can babysit me while I whack OLs (man, those guys are such a joke to kill now!). Two OLs later, I'm lady again woot!! (thank you Isic for being such a gentleman and being so gracious about taking turns). It's great to see there still are nice people on Atlantic.
How about the GM? I'll let you guess. That's right, I got that very pleasant message telling me they are aware of this issue and are working to fix it. Have a nice day! Mmhmm. Whatever. That being said, I can't help wondering if this only happens in Umbra or if people have had that problem in various other areas.
On a side note, ogre slaying katanas really do a number on OLs and peacemaking roxxors. I wonder how long it will take before they nerf peace. It's just too powerful (not that I complain).
Deceit Brazier
As you all probably know, one of the ways to get a firesteed spawn is to double-click the brazier in the large room at then entrance of Deceit dungeon. A random creature spawns and chances are it could be a firesteed. Well, griefers have discovered a new way of making people's lives miserable (especially on Atlantic, gotta love 'em). They just summon as many crits as possible and hide outside waiting for the unsuspecting hunter to walk in. The lag fest gets you killed before the inside of the dungeon even has time to render. Naturally, you can forget about recovering your stuff. if you want to have an idea of the mess that could away you, Kylie Nightangel provided us with 2 very interesting pics. Pic 1, Pic 2.
Suggestion: until OSI does something about this (e.g. cap the number of creatures that can be summoned AND be alive/untamed at any given time), avoid entering Deceit through the main entrance. You will die before you get a chance to know what hit you. Look for a rune that will allow you to recall in past the doors leading to level 2. In case of trouble you will have time to recall out. Frankly, whenever I go inside a dungeon, I normally gate in as it's easier to run back right out when there are too many uglies coming after you.
April 8, 2003
Todays is your last chance to vote for the best house design!
Some folks really worked hard to come up with nifty homes. Please take a second to encourage them and vote for the house you would like to receive as a 1st year vet reward mini-house.
You will be given the option to vote on a series of fansites that can be found here.
In the same context, you guys probably remember when I first posted about the Fishers' Council house design contest (see news of March 13) and posted the design of one of the contestants (Ruffie's Lighthouse). I must say that I pretty much pictured this guy winning the contest because I think he did an awesome job. He submitted his work in due time yet got screwed out of the competition because they managed to "lose" his entry. You can read about this mess here, and post your comments/encouragements to Ruffie here. Maybe if we fuel the debate enough, they will compensate him somehow for him getting shafted through no fault of his own.
The mana regeneration calculator
Some players never cease to amaze me. They're just too darn talented for their own good, but I sure enjoy they smarts. Stephen, Gyb and A Ninja came up with a little proggy that will tell you exactly what your mana regeneration rate will be based on your int, skill (med/focus) and the number of mana regeneration items you're wearing. So if you've ever wondered whether or not you should have med or focus or both, you will find the answer here.
I will add a link to this program under the AoS Q&A page.
About the vet reward gump
Yup, seems like even it suffers from lag.
The vet reward gump may not appear right away each time you log in. It may take a minute or two to appear. Also, the vet reward server is also down for a short time each Monday starting at Noon CST. So, if you were planning to pick a vet reward while it was in its maintenance period, you woudn't have seen the vet reward gump-window during that time.
Sannio
Online Content Coordinator
Inability to ride mounts while in vampiric form
You can't, simple as that. It's not a bug either, it's now an intended feature which quite frankly make sense. I would like to see a bat riding a horse irl. From the man himself:
It's intended. There was an issue that was discovered while mounting pets in necromantic form that came up while testing the latest publish, and it became necessary to disallow mounting pets while in certain altered forms.
Sannio
Online Content Coordinator
About the personal item bless deeds
If you blessed stats enhancing items, do not throw them out just yet or you might get screwed out of your bless deed. This little update was added to the FYI:
Update: Players who used their Personal Bless Deeds on their bless items should not throw these items away until their Deeds are returned. The items may be required for the "unblessing" process.
AoS and Lag
Well, seems like it's really not their equipment that's faulty, but the rather the programming:
We did add more RAM to the servers for Age of Shadows. We have plenty of free CPU cycles so we didn't add additional/faster CPUs. The only time there is server lag is when something is going horribly wrong, at all other times the servers have plenty of power to spare.
The lag that folks encountered with Age of Shadows is caused by the servers sending too much data. Alai and I are working on this problem as fast as we can... I think you'll find that it's now MUCH better... and we still have more improvements in-store for the future.
Fertbert
Server Programmer, Origin Systems
Sorry, but no, I didn't see that much improvement lately, but I'll keep hoping.
April 5, 2003
Stats enhancing items and bless deeds
Remember how everyone was happy about those old stats enhancing items that were never using charges and that basically gave you close to +10 to all stats? Well, as you may remember, this was a bug that they intended to fix. The items were supposed to use charges til they ran out. Now, this bug has been fixed and those items will eventually become useless once they run out of charges. Unfortunately, some people rushed to used their personal bless deeds on them and are now basically screwed out of their bless deeds. But, do not despair, in a very smart move by OSI (they impressed me on this one), they have fixed the bug but will be returning the deeds to all the people who used it on such items. From the FYI:
Before we published the fix that is currently being rolled out to all shards, stat-enhancing items were continuing to apply their stat-enhacing effect to players even after their charges had run out. In this publish, we fixed the bug that was causing the effects to stay on, and we gave those items a one-time re-charge. However, we know that some players used their Personal Bless Deeds on those items, thinking their effects were permanent. As stated in a previous FYI, we will be implementing a fix that will refund these Personal Bless Deeds, but in the interest of getting the rest of the publish out more quickly (especially considering the vast improvements in this publish for dial-up users!), that particular part of the fix is not included in this publish.
We will keep you updated as to how and when these Personal Bless Deeds will be returned, and we ask that players not call GMs on this issue. Thank you!
The Taming Exploit
Funny how you're not supposed to describe exploits yet OSI goes to great lengths to describe this specific one in order to prevent people from using it... Oh well, I guess there is no reason to keep quiet about it anymore then.
Basically, a tamer can sic a pet on a spellcasting monster and as soon as the monster starts attacking it, mount the pet. This way, the monster remains targeted on your pet but cannot harm it since you're riding it and you get to kill the monster at your leisure with 0 threat to you. Is that illegal? Of course it is. It's not how the game is intended to work but the programming is flawed so monsters cast spells in the twilight zone while getting their butt handed to them.
Trouble is, this could happen without you intending to be using the exploit. For instance, you're fighting a monster and your mare is about to bite the big one. So you quickly mount her to spare her from certain death, but monster remains locked on her. Did you use an exploit? No, you just tried to save your mare. Thing is, if you stick around to finish off the monster while riding that mare, it will be construed as you using an exploit. In essence, the only way to make sure not to be accused of exploiting, should you find yourself in such a situation, mount your pet and leave the area to go heal it then return to finish the monster. That is the only way to make sure you won't get in trouble. Does is suck having to run when your monster is 99% dead and some lamer is sitting nearby with a big fat grin on his face waiting to steal your kill? Yup, it blows. But, better lose a kill than lose an account.
You can read the all the details about this exploit here.
TC Backup Shard
Have you ever been to the test shard? Notice how there's rarely any room to place a house to test house design and all that stuff? It's because they use production shard backups on test shards. This is a good thing in a way but sometimes, it really blows, especially when wanting to test house placement. The official word on TC backups is:
Are you saying you want more variety in terms of which shard backup we load onto test centers? Or do you want the test center wiped more frequently?
OSI Dev and QA leads decide which backup to use and in most cases this is a backup from a highly loaded (larger backups/load) or from a particular shard when specific reports of problems are occuring. Using backups from large and popular shards also helps us by giving a larger player base the option to test their player or a fix candidate on a test center.
Don't worry, we've thought of it.
How are we to find housing spots on if you use the busiest shards? Also, in years of playing UO, I'm still waiting to see the Atlantic shard be used as backup. We may not be the most crowded shard but after a while, it gets old always playing Pacific or Great Lakes. A little variety would be appreciate.
Regarding Housing Phase III
Man, I hope no one out there is holding their breath about it coming out because it more than likely will be delayed some more. It's been what? 6 months and counting? Something like that. Anyways, here's the deal:
It's possible that Phase 3 will be part of Publish 18 - that's something we're really hoping for - but we won't be able to verify whether it will be out then until it actually passes QA. The reason for this is that Phase 3 is a much bigger, and more time-consuming project, than most of our bugfixes, and there are a LOT of players waiting for those bugfixes!
So our goal is Pub 18, but if we discover issues with Phase 3 in QA, we probably will not hold up the bugfixes to wait for it.Cynthe
Community Manager
ORIGIN Systems
At least, they're handling this the smart way. I rather hold off on it than see more bugs added to an already heavily bugged game. So all of you with houses on inactive accounts, you might be getting another reprieve. You can read the whole thread here.
April 2, 2003
Relax people, it was just a joke
Seeing the crazy amount of emails and ICQs I've received, I figured I would make an official post about it. Yesterday, there was a post on Stratics informing us that thieves were getting hammered with the nerf stick, each items held by vendor would now count towards 2 lockdowns in your house and skill jewelry were going to be permanently removed from the game.
Take a deep breath, swallow that curse you were about to scream outloud: it's just a joke. Remember, April 1st = April Fool's Day. So everyone, please put those rumors to rest and stop cursing the Dev Team, for once, they didn't do anything wrong, hehe.
To think I was gonna pull one of my own. Oh well, I'll get you guys next year *winks*.
April 1, 2003
Site Update
Man, I'm on a roll *kisses self*. I've finally updated the archery and stealing skill pages, and added the Macing skill which can now be found under the Training Skill menu. A special thank you to Shaun for pointing out some changes in stealing and to Xa for running all over Sosaria testing stealing grounds. Much love sis, you're the best.
Pet Bug on Great Lakes
As you know, Great Lakes currently has been published with the fixes for various bugs. All other shards were supposed to received it today, but a bug involving ethereal mounts has come up and therefore delayed the publish to other shards. Until the bug has been fixed be careful when using ethereal pets. From the FYI:
A minor issue has been found with the fixes recently published to Great Lakes. At this time we must caution players on Great Lakes against attempting to mount an ethereal pet when not in human form. This includes all necromancy forms as well as polymorphed forms. We will be addressing this minor issue before continuing with the publish to the remaining shards. We will keep you updated on the new publish schedule.
UO Magic Tool adapted for AoS
If you use UO Magic, it has now been updated to accommodate necromancy and chivalry and keep track of the new necro regs and tithing points. For further details, you can read all about it here. Yes, UO Magic Tool is a freeware.
March 31, 2003
A BOD book!!! *faints*
I still can't believe they FINALLY acknowledge a requests we've been making since the very first day BODs came out. Anyone who collects BODs knows the nightmare that these things represent as far a storage goes. Funny that the thousands of posts on that topic on MyUO boards never were acknowledged but that a single one on Stratics was... but that's another debate. I'm too happy to flame right now.
No, the book isn't scheduled to come out just yet, but the first (and most important) step has been taken: i.e. the Dev Team officially endorsing the idea and looking for suggestions as to the best way to implement it.
We definitely like the idea of BOD books, and would be interested to hear what more people think about how they should be implemented.
Cynthe
Community Manager
ORIGIN Systems
To this I would like to say read the countless posts on MyUO boards. Oh yeah, you deleted them without reading them. Sorry. We'll post again then seeing how we have nothing better to do. Doh! Did I just rant again? Sorry, it's Monday. Bear with me. *winks*
Please post your suggestions and vote here.
The Fix Publish on Great Lakes: Round 2
Here we go again. They have once more published the countless bugs fixes on Great Lakes today. Hopefully, this time it will hold. If all goes well, every other shard will get it after tomorrow's morning maintenance. You can read about it in the FYI.
AoS and Siege Perilous / Mugen Shards
Sorry guys but you're not getting it just yet. The plan is for AoS to go live on your shards before Publish 18 but after the ERTs (Emergency Response Team) or, in other words, after the game stopping bugs have been fixed. We're all hoping those main bugs will be fixed very soon but as Cynthe posted a few days ago, they have no clue when Publish 18 will go live. They're hoping it will be sometime this Spring. Considering Spring ends on June 21st, it might be a while just yet before you get yours. So I suggest you expect the worse, but hope for the best.
You can read it all here.
Stratic's House Design Contest
And the winners are:
GRAND PRIZE: 27.
Created by Pedde
1st PLACE: 42. Created by Eowyn of Chesapeake
2nd PLACE - 39. Created by Sarogin of Chesapeake
3rd PLACE - 8. Created by Margot Filligar of Drachenfels
4th PLACE - 6. Created by Nirnaeth of Europa
FINALISTS (will move
on to OSI Contest):
100. Created by Darkoth of Napa Valley
29. Created by Brian of Pacific
96. Created by Rutherford Een of Europa
51. Created by Polenth of Europa
79. Created by Crie af Greygal of Europa
103. Created by Milo of Legends
The funny part is except for Sarogin (whose house I somewhat didn't notice) all of the winner's were on my favorite houses list (which is also why I had them added to the decor section of my site). I am surprised though that Darkoth didn't make it into the first 4. But my hat off to Pedde. His house totally rocks. I drool everytime I go to my house and pass by his. Awesome work and congrats to all.
You can view those babies here.
March 26, 2003
Site Update
The Battle Focus skill has been added to the skill training section (as if that one was hard to train...) and the Spirit Speak page has been updated. A bunch of new house models have been added to the decoration section.
The fix publish needs a fix
It's been released yesterday evening on Great Lakes and removed tonight. Apparently worksed somewhat well but still caused some crashes so they will fix it and eventually republish it. Hopefully, this will take place very soon as it is supposed to take care of the various problems including blackholing (yes, it's still happening), lag due to data flooding, the gauntlet champs not showing up and the static door bug to name a few.
You can read all the details here.
The vanishing items
You may remember one of the horror stories I posted a while back about this guy losing countless items only to find out later on that they had simply hidden under his floor tiles. Well here a few more tips to avoid this kind of unpleasantness posted in the FYI
If you think something may have fallen below the floor, before calling a GM there are a few things you can try to find these items yourself. First, you can try casting any spell that causes your game client to update your surroundings, such as Night Sight. If that doesn’t work, or if you don’t have spells, you can also try leaving the house—perhaps even running 2 or 3 screens away—and coming back inside. Logging out and then back in could also be helpful in refreshing your screen and showing your “lost” items.
You can actually help prevent this sort of problem by unlocking some of your smaller and flatter items before customizing your house (such as piles of snow, gold coins, and silver coins) and placing them within a secure container before entering customization mode. (By the way, it also helps to chop up your trash barrels before customization for a more trouble-free customization session.) When you finish customizing your house and begin redecorating, consider using a house decorator tool to raise items even just slightly—this sort of nudge can be just the thing to help keep everything in your house visible and accessible.
Gaining Stats
Many of you may be having serious problems gaining stats lately, yours truly included. So the subject was brought up on the Stratics forums and red provide the following answer:
Stat gains have changed under AoS in the following ways:
- 1 gain per 15 minutes, max 10 gains per day
- You have a chance to gain a stat with any successful skill check. Since stats no longer affect skills, the skill you use has no bearing on which stat you gain. The ONLY restrictions on gaining stats would be:
* You are at your total stat cap
* The stat you are trying to gain (per your stat locks) is at its individual cap
* The state of your stat locksMr. Tact
Lead Server Engineer, Ultima Online
Well Mr. Tact, with all due respect (and I do like him very much, at least so far), I have to say this is a big fat load of crock because it is very much broken. Now, I'm sure this is the way it is supposed to work (though I think it's dumb that you should get a gain of int in a skill that has absolutely nothing to do with int, but that's another debate), but that is not how it's currently working. I can tell you from experience that you will not get a single stat gain from Magery, Meditation, Music, Provoke, Focus, Spirit Speak or Eval. However, you will gain from Necromancy, Arms Lore, Anatomy and Camping. So if like me you are stuck on your stats gains, use one of those 4 skills to seesaw your gains until you get the desired balance as long as they haven't fixed this.
You can read and/or participate in the debate here.
ASHs and Runic Hammers: don't hold your breath
The bug preventing ASHs, mining gloves and runic hammers from working properly is beyond annoying but unfortunately (and I hate having to admit it) they are not game stopping bugs. Some other issues are more urgent (even though frankly I can't believe it would take that long to fix but what do I know about programming?) and so it won't be for a while yet.
Those who've mentioned that the data-flooding and game stopping issues are higher priority are correct... while we know the problems with ASHs and Runic Hammers is definitely a major pain, it isn't quite game-stopping.
We haven't nailed down the exact contents of Publish 18 yet (that's our first of the back-to-normal-schedule publishes), so I can't tell you if it will be in it or not. However, my guess is that we'll be trying to keep Publish 18 fairly small, because we're also working on getting AOS to SP and Mugen, as well as Phase 3... and we want Publish 18 to still get out sometime this spring if possible.
Cynthe
Community Manager
ORIGIN Systems
The part that makes me groan in pain is when she says "we want Publish to still get out sometime this spring if possible". This means don't hold your breath folks. Rez only works in game.
Pwned IRL!
When Stratics advertises a website providing cheats and exploits. tsk tsk.
Read it here.
March 25, 2003
Advance Character Service: Treasure Hunter
Was wondering when that one was gonna pop up. Well there you have it. For $29.95, you can buy the following t-hunter template:
85 Lockpicking
85 Cartography
85 Peacemaking
70 Magery
70 Musicianship
100 Strength, 100 Intelligence, 25 Dexterity
While peacemaking is extremely sweet now since AoS, it's quite surprising that their t-hunter template shouldn't include remove trap and detect hidden. Normally, I would imagine the worse and say that those 2 are the next skills on the chopping block, but a red did say that thieves should pick up the remove trap skill for extra goodies coming soon. Oh well, time will tell. You can read about this new ACS here.
European & Australian shroud codes
At last, you will be getting your codes to claim your shrouds. Those babies will be emailed to you by April 4th at the email address you entered on your ultima-registration.com page. If you've changed email addy recently, now would be a very good time to go update your registration info.
You can read about it further in the FYI.
March 21, 2003
Get the AoS upgrade for $9.99
Dang, that was fast. Even LBR didn't drop to $9.99 before at least 6 months after it's launch. On their Friday special, Amazon.com will allow you to buy up to 2 copies of Ultima Online: Age of Shadows for $9.99 each. How long will that last? As far as I know, 1 day only, but who knows? Either way, get them while they're hot (if you still think it's worth it *chuckles*). Get your credit cards ready and go here.
Things that make you go hmmm.
Character Name Change and Shroud of Shadows Recovery
Seems like the GM queues are finally going back to a more easy to handle pace. So you can now once more use the Character Name Change service if you've finally come to realize that this "cool" name you gave your character really isn't so cool after all. If you were one of the unfortunate folks who got kicked out of the game seconds after claiming your shroud only to notice their was a timewarp and your shroud could no longer be claimed, now is the time to have a GM retrieve it for you.
The Advance Character Service is still not available at the moment. You can read it here.
Pay to visit Stratics?
A very interesting and strangely timed bit of information popped up on Stratics. As you all know, most former MyUO boards readers are not happy about being forced to move to the Stratics forums. Imagine their reaction when less than 2 days after being shipped to the Stratics boards they read about the Stratics Plus program.
The Evolution of Stratics is Coming
Have you ever wished the pop-ups and flash ads would just go away? That you could have exclusive access to the world's leading massively multiplayer network, along with features and content that have never before been made available? Well, your wishes have been granted...
Check back next week for more on the future of Stratics: Stratics Plus. No more ads, no more lag: just pure Stratics
Naturally, the Stratics staff was quick to try and calm the people:
The Stratics Forums will always remain free to our readers.
With the "teaser" announcement that we made yesterday about our upcoming Stratics Plus program (sorry, still no further details available yet), I wanted to make one thing very clear, and that is the fact that these forums will remain free to our readers. With the speculations that were being thrown out there yesterday, we felt it important to make that clear. And as soon as I have more info for you, I will definitely post it here. Thanks!Joshua Rowan
UO Stratics Project Manager
So in a later post that you can read here, they indeed admit that the Stratics Plus service will cost you but will give you access to focus groups and whatever other goodies. Your dollars will in exchange help fund the expansion of their service (upgrade their crappy server?) and what not. It's just funny to know that they dramatically increased the lag by forcing a very large community to go to their forums just so they could sell a service to reduce that lag. Got to love a good businessman.
About the Stratics ads and pop-ups
In the last hours of the MyUO boards, Cynthe was not a happy camper (about many things actually, hehe) but specifically about a post that thought people how to block adds and pop-ups when visiting the Stratics boards. So she was quick to delete the thread. If view of the Stratics Plus service, it now becomes quite clear why she wouldn't want this information circulating around. After all, if they are not paying the Stratics staff (who are volunteers) to do their work, they must have promised them some kind of upside to convince them to accept the burden of hundreds more readers to moderate.
Gluteus Maximus was kind enough to repost on the Ianstorm forums:
It showed how to block the banners on the stratics boards themselves(not the front page). There's probably more domains to block but the three below were all that came up for me last night.
add the following text to your hosts file (if you use Windows XP it should be in winnt\system32\drivers\etc\):
127.0.0.1 ad.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 image.ugo.com
127.0.0.1 z1.adserver.com
then reboot, and instead of banner ads on stratics boards you'll either get a blank white box or an "Action canceled" at the top of the window.
Enjoy.
About the "sorry for messing AoS' launch" gifts
They've added the doublet to the list of wearables (WOOHOOO!!.. err... hmmm.... whatever). And yes, since some people weren't sure of it, they are indeed blessed and non breakable. As far as the stats scrolls, yes, you will be able to reach 255 stats if you had already used. You can read it here.
March 20, 2003
The creator of UO Assist speaks of his new program
OGT held an interview with the creator of UO Assist, one of the very few authorized third party programs for UO. Too bad they didn't see fit to at least get the name of the guy. After all, Tugsoft is just the name of the company. Oh well, here it is: Tugsof interview
MyUO Boards: RIP
Funny how you can grow fond of people you've never met irl even though some of them are utter morons. But there were quite a few great people on the boards, many of whom I've never really talked to but who gave me some of the best laughs ever, whose witty and sometime completely outrageous comments provoked either a deep moment of reflection or a sudden outburst of laughter quickly concealed by a very fake coughing when my boss happened to be lurking around, hehe.
For those of you who missed it, a few board members wanted to share their feelings about the forums shutting down for which they got a proper banning. Isn't funny to get banned from a forum less than 24 hours before it goes down? Some got banned for "Spreading unfounded conspiracy theories about UO and Stratics", others for spamming or saying what they thought about some other posters and/or reds. But a good number of the folks banned were those that decided to summarize the general feeling of the board members with pictures such as this one.
Yup, a picture does speak a thousand words. To all these people, much love, hope to see ya on Stratics (whenever it loads) and on Ianstorm. For those who wonder, no I didn't get banned. Me was good girl (*cough cough*)
March 18, 2003
So UO not being cancelled this year?
As you know, the uo.com boards are going down. So a lot of the regular posters have gone into a posting orgy about everything and nothing, with some totally non-sensical spamming. And yes, mea culpa too. So during one of those pointless discussions, someone mentioned that maybe the game would be cancelled a few weeks after they ditched the forums. To which I replied that the game would probably canceled by the end of the year, just in time for the launch of UO2. And here is Cynthe's reply to my post:
In reply to:
So expect your 90-day notice sometime between October and December of this year
Sorry, but no... not happening. :)
__________________
Cynthe
Community Manager
ORIGIN Systems
Well then, I guess I should hold off on selling all my accounts just yet... Time will tell.
Fertbert speaks up about data flooding
There we have it. As expected, customized housing, item properties and the floating damage numbers are the main culprits of the lag galore. Can they fix it? Errrr... not really. The biggest bandwidth hoggers are the customized houses. And apparently, they're just about as optimized as they can be. Floating damage numbers don't use up that much bandwidth so again, not much will be done about those. So item properties will go on a severe diet. I wish it would be a permanent one but I won't hold my breath. You can read the whole bit here. I'm not posting the uo.com link since it will be down the toilet by 2pm tomorrow.
And here's the patch
We'll see if Fertbert's fix will indeed make things better or if lag will be just as bad as it's been for over a month now. From the FYI, today's client patch will be addressing the bandwidth usage, a few other crashing issues and the never ending blackholing problem.
March 17, 2003
About data flooding...
...Or paying extra for a service that should already be provided by UO.
As most of you may have noticed, UO is litterally unplayable since AoS came out because the lag is completely out of hand even for people with cable or high speed modems. So you can imagine the nightmare for dial-up users. The cause of this insane lag is basically data flooding. What's that you ask?
Since AoS has been released, the servers have been sending in excess of 20 times more data than before. Most of this data is not only useless, it often also is packet duplication which shouldn't be sent to begin with. A single person on your screen running around can be responsible for 2.5k/sec of information being sent to you. When you know that a dial-up connection can handle about 5-6k a sec, try to run by Brit Bank and you can say bye bye con. Heck, without even going to such an extreme, just try to go hunting with a couple of friends, they alone will cause an overload. Same is also true for people with shared bandwidth broadband connections (tks to The Sickness for this info).
Now, OSI acknowledged the problem a while back then became utterly silent about it until this came up: UOA Speed.
I don't think I have to tell you that people are not happy about this. Why should we pay extra for the game to be playable when OSI screwed up in the first place? This uproar finally got a red to speak up about the issue:
The data stream is being audited, just as I said it would be two weeks ago. This only started late last week because there were other fixes we deemed more important to get into production, among them the actual fix for the blackhole problem. Since the person working on the blackhole fix (Fertbert) is the same person who is working on reducing bandwidth utilization, these were not tasks that could be done in parallel.
We know dialup is not fun right now. We are working to improve this situation. There are some fixes in a client patch that will be out this week, and a publish that MAY be out this week, that should make things BETTER, though not GREAT. An aggressive bandwidth optimization pass is in the works and this should make things considerably better for dialup players.
As for UOASpeed, Tug has contacted us and we are discussing it. I can't predict right now how it's going to go, but I don't consider it anything to be alarmed about.
MrTact
Lead Server Engineer, Ultima Online
Well, Mr Tact has chosen quite an appropriate name. The bottom line remains that their fix won't be much of a fix and I dunno about you guys, but I've never heard of any company working on developping a product that they do not intend to sell. Of they didn't think this one was going to fly, they wouldn't bother with it. Stretch your wallets Ladies and Gents, seems like we're gonna need to pay more for the game to be playable. You can enjoy the discussion (for the next 2 days) on this thread.
UO.com boards: The beginning of the end
You know, just went you think OSI is all out of cheap tricks, they manage to turn around and pull another lame ass stunt on us in the name of "efficiency". Efficiency my ass. If you didn't know yet, OSI is shutting down the forums on the official UO.com website and moving it to the lag central of the online world: Stratics. You can read that piece of you know what here.
No offense to Joshua Rowan and crew, you guys do a great job with your site, but your server sucks ass. That is why I stopped going to the Stratics forum. Not only is the damn website down half the time, when it isn't down, it takes forever to load any page, half of which need to be refreshed a couple of times because they didn't load right the first time around. And we're not even going to talk about the pop-ups and ads that mess up with my PC. That is why I and many other UO fansites added news, skill guides, t-map locations and other game related support pages so that we didn't have to stare at a loading screen for 30 minutes everytime we needed some info.
Even though it may sound like it, this is NOT a Stratics bashing post. But the fact is that Stratics (imho) is like a big fat cow standing on a toothpick. Now they want to place a 2nd huge cow on top of the first one and expect the toothpick to do just fine? Wake up people, this isn't dreamland. Then again, I shouldn't be surprised: it's the same people that thought the European servers would take care of any problem that might arise out of the AoS publish on its own while the dev team was sleeping. Goes to show, the more they screw up, the less they learn. I mean, if they are going to drop the ball on their responsability (I will develop on that topic in a moment), why couldn't they go with a much more stable and reliable site such as Ianstorm or even Markee Dragon? Heck, Ianstorm holds a lot of interviews with these guys, their site is 500% politically correct as far as OSI goes. So why Stratics? Don't we have enough lag as it is in UO? Now I have to put up with it on the message boards too?
Now, on to the real source of my anger over this change.
For the past months, we have been screaming and yelling over the lack of communication from the Dev Team to the player base. Lack of communication had always been an issue but it was even more obvious in the days leading up to and following the launch of AoS. Between them not having time to reply, deliberately withholding information from us, or informing some obscure third party long before the players that asked the questions to begin with and having us discover it by fluke, tensions have been running high. With the Dev Team taking a lot of heat over the way they handled (or rather mishandled) the expansion, instead of doing a mea culpa and getting their act together, they cowardly bow out of it and shove it in the hands of a fansite under the pretense that "they do not have time to police the boards". WTF is that supposed to mean? Don't you have your own moderator? And yes, that was a bit too much for a single guy to handle, which means you should have brought in a couple more guys to help out. Not take the wuss way out of things.
How in the world is having some guy that knows nothing about the work you're doing, about the things you are developping or screwing up moderate the boards going to help improve communications? When I have a question about the game, I don't want some third party assessing whether my question is valid or not before you get to see it, nor have to wait til they go to you about it then have them respond to me. I want my answers from the source not from the other guy. How can communication be improved when once you no longer need to read all the threads, chances are you will only read the ones with the most hits/replies. It's not because a post isn't the "hot" topic of the day that the question it raised isn't just as valid as the others.
But the worse part is, this feels like you're just slowly parting with a game you have already defaced beyond recognition. A friend of mine mentioned how he thought UO is in its last days. That it will soon be shut down and replaced by UO2 next year. I called it paranoia then. Today, this move made me go hmmm. This feels like the single parent dumping his kid at the grand-parents and telling the child I'll come get you soon, but is never to be seen again.
Again, no offense to the Stratics team. I'm not mad at you guys, quite the opposite. I'm happy for you that you managed to pull this off, but you really need to do something about your servers. Your downtime and slow loading rate are beyond ridiculous.
I sound gloomy, but that's how I feel. And this time, I won't hope for the best and be let down yet again. I'll just expect the worse so at least I can be happy if we do get the best after all.
March 13, 2003
Seaferer House Design Contest
You like the seas and you're good at designing houses? Then this one might be for you. In collaboration with OSI, the Fishing Council of Britannia is running a house design contest where the winner would (among other things) see a mini-house modeled after his design be offered as a 1st year vet reward. You will even get to choose the name of the house design as well as receive other goodies for yourself. You can read more details of the contest on the The Fishing Council of Britannia's website. The deadline to enter is March 27, 2003.
To give you an idea of the kind of competition you will be pitted against, you can see the design of one of the contestants in my decoration section under house design. Take a look at Ruffie's Lighthouse.
IanStorm's House Design Contest
Yup, they too are holding theirs also in collaboration with OSI. This one though is more general as there is no specific theme to be respected. The only condition is that it must be a designed home. Castles, L-Shaped and Keeps are therefore not allowed to enter as these houses cannot be designed. The deadline to enter is March 23, 2003. The grand prize will be the same as for the seaferer contest. You can read all the details of the contest on the IanStorm Contest Page.
Now if I can stop procrastinating, I'll be posting some of the nice house designs I've come across so far.
March 12, 2003
And here is the gift list
I can't remember how the saying goes in English, but you we all know that a gift is a gift. And that you shouldn't criticize it but just say a graceful thank you...
However, considering these gifts are supposed to be the bribe to make us forgive and forget the nightmare that the last month has been and that we all basically paid for a service we didn't get (or barely), I believe we are entitle to a wee tiny puny bit of bitching. And if we're not, well I'll take that right and they can sue me.
So...
We get 2 gifts. The first one is a piece of clothing or footwear with some funky color for every single char we log in with (just like the mini-house deeds) except we get to choose which piece and what color (lets hope and pray it's not the same puke color as the xmas statuettes). Naturally, that piece of clothing/footwear will be blessed and tradeable. So you can get yourself a full outfit of neon colored newbiewear for free! or for a pretty penny if you start buying every single one peeps sell. If you don't want clothes or shoes, you can pick a rose (does that mean whispering roses get the shaft?). You will be able to inscribe a message on these items (from a selection of course, so forget curses and F words, hehe) and sign your char name as well on it
The second gift is also 1 per character, but non tradeable. It is a +5 skill OR stats scroll. If you choose the stats scroll, your cap will be increased by 5, you can then gain the +5 in the stat of your choice. If you choose the skill scroll, the skill of your choice will be increased by 5 points (ie you the scroll will insta-train you for 5.0 points) but will not raise your skill above your skill cap. This is NOT a powerscroll so do not use it if you're GM and haven't used a PS to increase the cap on that skill.
Now, why am I bitching? Well, because of the countless very cool suggestions that were made they once again kinda went for the easy way out. A piece of clothing would have been nice if it had been an unusual design but it's just gonna be the some of stuff. Hopefully the colors won't be too horrible but...
Second, +5 stats kinda sucks. At least +10 would have been half decent. I can understand why they wouldn't give everyone a +25 cuz then Harrowers would become obsolete (even though not many have been summoned lately, but that's another issue. And +5 to your skills? Please. Aside for very few skills, most of them don't really justify using this considering the skill jewels already do that for you without actually eating up your points. Oh well, at least, it will gm my other t-hunter (even though I don't use her).
You can see the official list here.
Thinking of upgrading your house?
There are 2 ways to upgrade your house, either turn an existing house into a dirt plot, which is safe as you do not need to redeed, or tear down the house if you want to try for a larger sized house. If you're turning your house into a dirt plot, everything inside the house will be transferred into a moving crate and you can just redesign at your leisure then commit your design once you're pleased with the result.
If you're changing the size plot here is a series of precautions you want to take before proceeding:
Proceeding with placement
A special thank you
to Lady Tygress for many of the suggestions above.
March 11, 2003
Early Settlers Program at an end
Chesapeake will be the first one to say bye bye to collecting the mini-houses and shrouds and bless deeds. So if you didn't get yours yet, I suggest you get busy asap. From the FYI:
We will be publishing an update to the Chesapeake shard that will be active after that shard’s morning maintenance period on Wednesday, March 12.
This publish will contain the following:
- The Holiday Tree season is over, and any such trees still placed in houses will be turned back into deeds. (Note: These deeds will be stuck to the floor, and only the characters that placed them will be able to pick them up. The stuck deed will not take up any storage lockdowns.)
- Players will no longer be able to collect Early Settler program gifts.*
If no issues arise, we anticipate rolling this out to all other AoS-active shards as of their respective Thursday morning maintenance periods.
* This will not affect the Europa, Drachenfels, Siege Perilous, and Mugen shards. Their respective Early Settler program periods remain 18 days after initially receiving Age of Shadows.
A very nasty Paypal Scam
Scammers never cease to amaze me. If they invested half as much time in ingenuity coming up with a legit livelyhood as they do to perfect their scamming plans, they wouldn't need to scam people in the first place. Anyways, if you use Paypal for whatever reason, beware of the following email. Adam Ant was kind enough to share this info. Please don't fall for it.
Ultima Online: ** PayPal Scam Alert **
On enhancing armor...
Hanse thought he would share his views on armor enhancement. It still gives me headaches but hope it's usefull to some of you out there.
Want to craft better resistances?
I wanted to post a little information for you tradesfolks, because I've noticed a lot of folks hunting with low resistances. :)
Step one: Get a bunch of good armor together.
First, you need to determine if a piece of armor is good in Age of Shadows. A good rule of thumb is to get a bunch of armor with a total resistance of 30 or above to enhance. You'll need a lot of these pieces to enhance.
Step two: Use an appropriate material to enhance the item.
Luck: Spined and gold are the best way to go. A 30 resistance piece of armor will be slightly low, though. A good resistance to start with is 45, although they're much rarer than 30-40 resistance items.Physical: Barbed and valorite are the best way to go. Both give a total of 15 bonus resistance points, although they're slightly weak on fire resistance.
Fire: Horned and verite are the best way to go. Both give a total of 14 bonus resistance points, although they're slightly weaker on physical resistance.
Others: You'll need to experiment. The two I mentioned are good examples of damage types. :)
Step three: Expect to fail.
You'll fail constantly when making these items, but you'll find that your suit total resistance are much higher and PvM/PvP'ers will appreciate it! Adjust your prices accordingly... ;)
Hanse
UO Live Designer
About the bribes... errr, I mean gifts...
Yes, they're still planning on throwing us a bone for the nightmare we've gone through for the past month (and are still putting up with as we speak though it's gradually improving). So here's the update:
The decision hasn't been made yet - we had a meeting on it last week, and you guys should expect to hear an answer on the decision within the next week or two. As someone else stated, bugs are still of higher priority... but the time will come soon when we'll be able to start focusing on more fun things.
Cynthe
Community Manager
ORIGIN Systems
RPG Tradespot Trivia Contest
If you like trivia contest, think you have the knowledge and would like to get 5 million gold pieces on your shard, maybe you should take a moment and look at the contest.
RPG TradeSpot's Trivia Contest
March 10, 2003
Simultaneous player cap lifted on Europa
Since the number of simultaneous logins has dropped back to more normal levels, they have lifted the 1,200 cap that was enforced over the week-end. So in theory, you should no longer get the "Europa is full" message. Hopefully, the shard will continue to be stable over the coming days.
UOHoC Chat Logs
More chat logs, nothing overly remarkable. The few things that did catch my attention was the bit about enhancement being indeed meant to be so darn hard. So far, the failure rate (even at 120 smithing) hovers around 3 out of 5. Think long and hard about which piece you're willing to gamble. Also the fact that there should be more goodies coming towards thieves (even though it's not in the near future, but there was a very clear hint about the Remove Trap skill and stealing. Now might be a good time to start training RT (it's slow and it's a bitch to train). Lockpicking might also be highly indicated as RT and picking normally walk hand in hand. So there might be hope for the pure rogues after all. And of course, the hint about one of the currently unplaceable housing lands opening up pretty soon.
You can read the logs here.
Is stuff disappearing from your secured chests?
A lot of people have been reporting large number of items disappearing from their secures after they customized their homes even though there is no one friended to their house and even though their house is set as private. One of the problems (because there is more than just this one) seems to come from the moving crate.
Once you're done customizing your house, any container/item you had in your house will be transferred to that crate. Say you had 1 chest that contained bags of regs, bags of kegs, and bags of leather/tubs/etc, if you just pull the chest out of the moving crate, stack it on top of another chest and secure it, the bags inside that chest may still think they are inside the moving crate and may not allow you to add anything to them though they will let you pull stuff out. So you've locked down your chest, grabbed some regs and took off. You come home a few minutes later, the moving crate has disappeared (since you emptied it) then you notice your regs bag is gone too. No one looted your chest. Your regs bag thought it was still part of the moving crate and with the crate gone, it took a stroll too without saying goodbye. Any other bag inside that chest will more than likely be gone too. The only items that will not be missing will be the ones that were lying freely inside the main chest.
Is there any way around this? You bet. All you have to do is when you pull out containers from the moving crate, drop them to the ground or in your backpack just so it realizes it's no longer in the moving crate. Then you can place them wherever you want them and secure them. For extra security, if your container contains other containers inside it such as bags, wooden boxes etc., take the time to pull out each of those containers, place them on the ground or on a packhorse, then put them right back in your secure.
It's a bit of an annoyance but it certainly beats losing tons of stuff.
AoS Tales from the Crypt: Horror stories - The Sequel
The secured chest bug reported above was originally going to be part of the horror stories but it would have been too long to tell the tale, but you get the picture of what happened to that poor soul. On today's episode, we'll start with a story featuring my friend Vita Drakonia.
The banning game
Vita customized her bod mall then patiently replaced every vendor on the ground floor of her shop. Later on, she realized that she didn't like the color of the house base and decided to change it to a different one. So she enters the house customization window and changed the house base. Once she clicked accept, the base was indeed different but so was her vendor layout. The vendors had all been banned out of the house and were all happily piled up under the house sign, as if a GM had removed them. Naturally, the "get vendor" option you normally have after customizing a house to replace pre-existing vendors was not available. Imagine, over 50 grandfathered vendors banned still carrying all their goods and gold.
After a little over 3 hours waiting for the GM to show up, the situation was fortunately solved to everyone satisfaction. The GM unbanned the vendors and replaced them all in the house so nothing was lost, except a few years of the vendor owner's life after the scare they got.
Moral of the story: if you have vendors placed in your house, do not change the base of the house until they fix that bug too or be ready for a long queue wait til GM pops up.
Doom Quest: A tamer's woes
Lady Vixen went with a group to Dungeon Doom to try the gauntlet. After completeling Victoria's quest, her party went to the beach, gave the golden skull to the ferryman and everyone got invited to cross to the other side. Unfortunately, half the group got bounced off the boat and back to the shore of level 1. So they decide to go back and do the Bone Quest all over again to get another golden skull. They gave the skull to the ferryman and to their dismay, the whole crew gets bounced off the boat for the 2nd time and back to the shore. They go for a third golden skull. In the meantime, some clever dude summoned the ferryman without a golden skull and in anger, the ferryman summoned a skeletal dragon. As you must kill the skeletal dragon before the ferryman will let you pass, Lady Vixen and her group start working the spawn.
What she didn't realize is that skeletal dragons have a "special attack" by which they make tamed animals go wild and turn against their master. She had her bonded white wyrm with her. It went wild and it took her about 20 minutes to finally get rid of enough spawn to be able to tame her wyrm without getting killed. Unfortunately, she no sooner had it tamed that it got whacked by the spawn. Seeing how her pet was no longer bonded since it was now freshly tamed, the pet is now forever lost as only bonded animals can be resurrected.
Moral of the story: taking your pets along to complete the quest to cross to level 2 is not a good idea. While your pets will do just fine (with HEAVY vet) against the Bone Daemon, if you have to kill the skeletal dragon summoned by the ferryman, you WILL lose your pet. Once your pet goes wild for whatever reason, it loses the bonded status. Now remember, even though it will be easy for you to retame a pet that was once yours, you will need another 7 day waiting period before it bonds again. If your pet gets killed before you have time to get him out of there, he will go bye bye forever. And yes, there is a bug with the teleporter ferry boat. I have been bounced off it myself, so even though you hand the golden skull to the ferryman, you aren't done until you actually set foot on the other shore.
PKed in your own house
This guy lives in Felucca, in a neighborhood crowded with PKs. Since AoS, many PKs are going on a rampage, enjoying the new no statsloss rule. Naturally, this guy got a group of them coming after him with a vengeance so he runs home for cover, knowing that as long as he is inside, he should be safe from harm, except if the mages starts massively casting EQs. Yet, to his surprise, he gets slaughtered by the PKs outside his house by them casting ebolts, FS and poison field at him through the walls of his house. A PK archer even messed him up with arrows even though he was still inside his house.
The poor guy figured maybe the windows of his house were allowing the spells and arrows to go through, so he did a new design before round 2 against the PKs. Same thing. He did a 3rd design, with no windows, stone walls all around. Went for round 3 and once but got whooped in the comfort of his own home (hey, at least they can't loot him!). So at this point, he's just making his peace with the fact that when the reds camp his front door, he's dead meat.
Moral of the story: is there really one? The only thing I can say for sure is that in this guy's case it could have been that he omitted to place the one wall section that most people forget to put, thus making an opening allowing spells to go through (this was the same bug that was affecting the sandstone house). If you look carefully at the designed houses, there is always a tiny gap on the west corner any floor when you put walls all around. You can close that gap by adding the very skinny wall section that some people use as a column. In theory, this should fix the problem.
March 7, 2003
Doom level 2 Spoilers Updated
I'm still missing the picture of 1 monster on there, but that pretty much details it all. The high end artifact armor spawns on the champions so if they can finally start spawning again (some people have reported waiting as long as 3 hours before they finally spawned), so it is worth the trouble. Once again, the Dungeon Doom spoilers can be found under Q&A under Doom 2 (for level 2). Will I ever get around to finish level 1? *cries*.
Have fun.
AoS on Europa: does Europa even exist?
Some of you may or may not have noticed this (then you're definitely not European and/or not an Ebayer), but Europa has vanished from the log in servers. There have been some sightings here and there, but don't say it too loud or people might think you're seeing things.
In a colossal effort to once again demonstrate their professionalism in launching new expansions, OSI once again failed to expect what a mess Europa would be faced with. I'm just talking about Europa, but Drachenfels got their share too except despite the horrendous lag, it still remained stable enough that people were able to place. Europa on the other hand, I don't think it managed to stay up for more than 20 mins straight. Considering every step takes 10 min to make, you never have a chance to even leave the moongate area before the server crashes again. A lot of the early placers lost their 18x18 to multiple reverts.
Many of these good folks didn't get to sleep yet just because they didn't want to miss their chance to place a house on an already overcrowded shard. Some of them paid close to US$100 in shipping fees ONLY, just to get a pre-ordered copy from the States. Needless to say, people are pissed, edgy and not particularly in the mood to smile. A lot of nasty words have been swinged left and right, most of which were not helped by the fact that some U.S. players thought it was a good idea to camp the moongate chanting USA, USA or God Bless America. ... Guys, patriotism is good. But when you're coming to place on the other guy's shard with the intent of selling his land back to him at outrageous prices just because you had an unfair advantage over him (ie you got the CD weeks before him) I wouldn't rub salt in the wound. OSI slapped them hard enough in the face as is.
Naturally, the anger moved on to the uo.com boards where the Europeans asked some very valid questions as to wth is going and when is the darn shard coming back up, they got this answer:
It’s clear that we had some issues handling the server load on Europa last night (or today, for those of you in Europe). Many of our programmers are currently out of the office this morning, since they were here the entire night until 6 am, and they need some sleep. But I’ll see what I can do to find out more about the problems, and get you some more information about what happened, and whether we anticipate any more reverts.
Followed a good bit later by this bit:
My group wasn’t here last night when Europa and Drachenfels were published, since we didn’t anticipate the kind of issues we’re experiencing, and at the time, it didn’t seem necessary to have OCR people here at 3 am. In retrospect, I realize that we should have made a point to be here during that period, and I’m sorry that the communication on this seemed slow.
While I’m trying to speed up the boards by locking repeat threads, Sannio is running around the building trying to get answers to questions like, “What caused the reverts? Is the shard stable now? Do we expect any more reverts? Should players be able to place houses now with no issues?” and others I’m seeing.Cynthe
Community Manager
ORIGIN Systems
...
wtf?!
You mean, you guys publish an expansion known as the worse bug galore EVER and you "didn't anticipate the kind of issues we're experiencing"?! Are you retarded? Your guys "were here the entire night until 6 am, and they need some sleep" you think the Europeans don't need some sleep too? How about the North Americans that also PLAY Europa (no I'm not talking about the eBayers), this has also been a mighty long day for them. But as long as your guys get their sleep we can sit on it right? And please answer this, your guys are frolicking in the blissful embrace of Morpheus, yet "Sannio is running around the building trying to get answers to questions". Who pray tell is he asking these questions to? The janitor?
There is such a thing a shifts, you know. You don't publish something like this and take off for a nap. How many more times must you screw up before you get some sense knocked into you and start handling this mess with a minimum of professionalism? You know, saying God will provide doesn't cut it. You got to start helping yourself first.
It's now 3:30 pm Eastern and Europa is still down. That's 15 hours and counting. Got to love it. You can read the flaming war here.
March 5, 2003 (updated)
Site Updates
I know I'm really slow coming with the updates but I'm currently rather overwhelmed by all the changes. I finally got around to make the Chivalry and Necromancy pages that can as usual be found under skill training. In the Q&A AoS section, I've added the page on the Special Combat moves, and on a special request from Inuki, I replicated the Magic Item properties pages since Stratics is always as fun to load.
Most skills have
somehow gotten the shaft with Pub 16 and AoS. It is a huge amount
of work to go through them all over again. So I cannot give you
an ETA as to when all skills will be up to date. If you have been
doing indepth testing or have recently trained a char in a
specific skill currently outdated on my site, I would highly
appreciate any comments you could provide. The more feedback I
get, the faster and the more accurate the updates will be.
People go wild over possible UO2 revival
It is funny how people simply won't let go of UO2. But as we all know, EA/OSI have a strange way of saying NO, then later on saying why not after all. So this very interesting article was posted on the Liquid Development website and BA_Barrackas was nice enough to bring it to our attention, long before EA slapped LD on the wrist for spilling the beans on more info than they should have. The original article reads as follow:
Origin Systems, an Electronic Arts owned developer, has contracted Liquid Development for the past 2 years as their exclusive art provider on for their Ultima Online line of products. Our relationship with Origin Systems began with a contract to design and create the characters for Harry Potter Online, and then progressed forward as a full content provider for UO: Lord Blackthorne's Revenge, UO: Age of Shadows, and now their next generation release of the UO franchise, due out in 2004.
The highlighted part has conveniently been deleted since the post. Note that they said "next generation" and not new expansion. Things that make you go hmmm...
So we
were right, EA was desperate for cash
With the constant apparition of new paying services, a lot of peeps started wondering whether or not the Ultima was in financial trouble. Well, the Ultima franchise is doing great so fear not on that front, but the rest of EA Online isn't necessary as healthy.
The Business Journal had this interesting article about the state of EA's Online Units.
But as Cynthe was eager to point out in this UO.com thread:
By the way, in case anyone's wondering... UO is fine. This restructuring is happening way higher than we are, so we're still doing our thing - we're just part of the core EA unit now, as opposed to EA.com.
Cynthe
Community Manager
ORIGIN Systems
Glad to know my 5 copies of AoS weren't bought in vain, just yet, kinda...
Atlantic down
for AoS fix publish
The Atlantic shard will be down for at least 1 hour starting 2 pm central for some long awaited blackholing fixes, among others.
We'll be taking down the Atlantic shard at 2:00pm CST today in order to publish an AoS update. We expect the downtime to last no longer than 60 minutes. We regret the necessity of taking down the shard outside of normal maintenance hours, and we apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
You can read the rest in the FYI.
Getting
the European Shards ready
Hey guys, your turn to be joining the "heavenly pleasures" of AoS. The publish for Europa and Drachenfels will be released tomorrow night and the shards should be down for anywhere between 5 and 9 hours, if they learned anything from the previous publishes or up to 24 hours if they didn't.
All the details are in the FYI.
The
official list of BUGs the Dev Team is having fun with
I knew that list was extensive but man, this is insane. Again, I think this whole expansion release was handled in a very amateuristic fashion. So if you've got all kinds of weird problems, you may look up in the list to see if it's one of those they will be addressing sometime hopefully soon.
You can read it here (yes, you need a uo.com
board account), otherwise, you can read it here.
Is smelthing BODs for ingots legit or not?
Everyone has been asking this question and it's a very valid one. I've gotten over 30k ingots just smelting the crappy BODs (both smithing and tailoring) that I've been getting for the past weeks. I would be one very pissed off player if I was to get banned over it. Wieland posted the question again on the uo.com boards and this is the answer we got:
Wieland, it is a bug, but I did not say that it was a bannable offense. Although I can understand that you feel that it should not be considered a bug, the fact remains that smelting bulk order deeds was never intended to be a legitimate way to acquire ingots.
Greywolfe
Online Community Coordinator
In other words, they will either fix it very soon or it will be one of those soon to be bannable offenses that will be nearly impossible to enforce. You can read the whole thread here.
That
annoying EA intro movie
A few weeks ago, a friend of mine showed me out to get rid of the intro we're now stuck with everytime we start UO. A few days ago, Semoman of Lake Austin (thanks bro!) emailed me how to do it again and suggested I posted it on my site. Frankly, I should have thought about it first, but seeing how I'm a newb (more than you'll ever know!), it didn't even cross my mind. So here's what to do:
Go to your UO folder. Inside the music folder there should be 3 files ending with .bik, those are the culprits. Delete them and no more intro movies for you. Woot!.
Is UO 2D
eating up your CPU?
I've been wondering how in the world a 1.6 GHz PC with 384 RAM could possibly be using 100% CPU. Well, SPRYG from the UO.com board just solve our problem. Much love to you bro.
If you have UO Assist, log all the way into the game with one character then type -reducecpu in game as if you were talking to someone. Do not forget the "-" before reducecpu or it will not work. Your CPU usage should drop right down to about 30%. Typing it the first time will activate the CPU usage reduction. Typing it a second time will deactivate it.
Enjoy!
What's
the deal with the Sphynx?
So you went to see him and he just looked at you with beady eyes while the spawn was trying to chew you up. You tried to kill him and got your butt handed to you. So what does he do beside sitting in his very boring and blend pyramid..? He could tell you your fortune.
For the small amount of 5K (that seems to be the AoS magic number), he will tell you your fortune. It generally talks about your armor/resistances. If the comment is positive, you will receive a temporary bonus to your stats and/or resistances. However, if you get bad fortune, you will suffer from a penalty. So in essence, you're paying for the random chance of increased stats.
A LEGAL
looting "script" in UO
I totally dislike 3D but it's got quite a few undeniable advantages. If you wonder how is it that this dude on a 56k modem systematically beats you at looting the champ or bone daemon even though you're no cable, this might be your answer. TazDevil was nice enough to share his "looting script" with us.
These are the keys that are used in 3D
SHIFT key = Move entire pile of any stackable item.
ALT+SHIFT = Remove a single item from a stack.
CTRL+SHIFT = Show all names of items players around you.
Best way to get ahead of everyone else at looting is to double click on the monster as it starts to fall. It is still classed as a corpse even before it hits the floor. If you wait for the monsters body to hit the floor then you are most likely too late to loot it in the first place.
Note that you no longer need to steal the skull off champions now. The skull will be randomly given to one of the players who participated in killing him and has looting rights. But this trick is very useful if you're going after the rare artifact found as loot on the Doom champions.
Speaking of Doom champs, you can see a list of the interesting artifacts they carry on Stratics. (Thanks to Orion for posting the link on the boards). And if Stratics is taking too long to load (again), head over to the official uo.com artifacts page.
A good
tamer should be a mathematician
The Pacific Rangers' Council had an interview with Oaks to discuss certain aspects of their profession. I hope you like numbers because they sure seem to love playing with them. The one tidbit I found of great interest was this one.
Question: Is it a bug or intended that firesteeds cannot gain skill above 100.0 and that they cannot get past 100.0 anymore after suffering skill loss if they fall below this level?
Oaks: This is actually not a bug. Any skill over the trainable cap of 100.0 is simply a bonus for a pet that has never died.
You can read the rest here.
I was going to post a few more horror stories, but I'm out of time, hehe. I'll add them in my next update or maybe later tonight.
For previous news, please consult our Archives