•The worlds largest violin

Ok it's about time I post something worthwhile. That hassle we all call real life seems to be getting in the way of more important things like figuring out just how in the world to play my little pixles of woop ass now that UO:R is out. It all boils down to I am not as good one on one or in group pvp situations.PERIOD. With no insta hit haly I have to rely on my magery and only magery. I will most likely follow the herd and go archery so I can be effective when factions come out, as well as play my townie a little more. As I stated in an earlier post, most people I know are quitting. They blame OSI, they blame whiny rpger's, or anyone they can. In my opinion, (and I know you've waited a while for this) the overall enjoyability and integrity of the game has been improved. Here is the raw fact of the matter. We, as UO players have been spoiled. Spoiled by easily exploitable bugs, monsters that a 2 week old newbie could kill solo, and a pvp set up that is so easy to manipulate and exploit to ones advantage, that frankly, I was sick of dominating in it's prior format.

The entire concept of this game should be about group pvm, group pvp, and or group exploration, which is not to say that everyone should be a role player in the traditional sense. I'm not. But I do realize that everyone in UO plays a role. Wether that role is pretending to be an orc at a player run city, or pretending to be a disgruntled rapper from NY that has somehow found his way to Brittania. Social interaction has become more prevalent, and that my friends, is a good thing. This is afterall, a multiplayer game. I know this will come as a shock to some of you spoiled 7x mage/swords players ego's, but this game was NOT designed soley for us to dominate lesser players. You sit and cry that OSI has screwed you for the last time. All OSI has done from day one is make it easy for those of us who knew how to macro up our pvp characters to go out and if you had any type of hand eye coordination at all, lay the ass-smack down on any other player in the game. Now that you might actually have to play another character or (god forbid) interact with your guild and be more of a team player, you're quitting. Ya know what? GOOD. Get your whiny ass out of the game. Not everyone will be happy or agree with this. I have ALOT of friends who are quitting for the reasons I mentioned. I guess not everyone feels that change was needed. Not everyone feels as if there was anything wrong in the first place. I disagree. Change was needed. And any change that makes interaction and team play in any format, be it in pvp or rpg more neccessary, I will be all for it.

•Permanent death, you say?

*You notice management cancelling the game.*

There's two interviews for Dark Zion - that new MMORPG, set to come out on the exact date that all of the others come out. But it's really just a coincidence. Stuff like that is never planned.

Anyway, the first one can be found here, and the second one can be found here.

Some interesting stuff about this game...

There will be no NPC shopkeepers. The only way to get items is to get them from different players. Nothing wrong with that.

There will be no money. You heard me - no money. I like that in a sense, because it makes it so you have to get off your ass and find other players for their stuff.

Permanent character death. Hrmmmmmmmmm... I don't like permanent death, but they're doing it a bit differently. Most of the time, you'll just get knocked unconcious. Death is always one of the most important topics, so that's all they said. I'm sure that they will figure something out.

There will be ships, houses and other cool stuff. Only the difference in this game is you make them by yourself, since there are no NPC merchants. They can also be destroyed by other players.

And the most important aspect: you will be able to sit in chairs (yes, this was asked).

It sounds cool to me. What I like the most is that there's no money or NPC shopkeepers. UO's player-interaction design is decent, but you don't need other players at all. 99% of the time I played UO, I played alone. I went out, killed monsters, bought stuff from vendors (both NPC and player) and I was set. Not once did I need to be with another player (I didn't need to have a player right there - I could use his NPC vendor). This will be different. You have to be face-to-face with other players to get items. Players will make a huge impact on the you. I also like the fact that you make your own houses, ships, etc, and they can also be destroyed.

•One less bug.

Poisoning NPC's now gives you a murder count. No more black sandals for yoooooou.

Thanks to Jacob for the heads up.

•A couple more submissions.

First, the armor. Try these combinations instead:

Female: female plate chest, plate gloves, studded gorget, plate helm, studded arms, ring legs.

Male: plate chest, studded gorget, studded arms, ring legs, ring gloves, close helm.

The only thing that was changed was a plate gorget and ring arms for a studded gorget and studded arms. Apparently, they give the same AR, but do not take away any dex. So for females, you would have 37ar with 9 dex loss. For males, you would have 36ar with 10 dex loss. Every little bit helps.

For money, try killing Orcish Lords. They give 600-700 gold. Remember, only the one's named "Orcish Lord". The rest give the same.

Lastly, on the update center, it says that you can raise healing all the way up to GM by just healing yourself or others. Can anyone confirm this?

•Felucca Stones aka *There is no place like home!*

Got a email from someone who offered to shed some light on the subject.

Best place to find them is the swamps. Lizards have then, every other one
in fact. In half an hour I got over 10 stones.
Just beware of giant serpents, if you cant cure, you better have cure
potions.

- Scyther

Do some testing and let me know.

•Something for Pacman to eat.

Well..after testing out UO:R Ive come up with one conclusion.

Its going to take some getting use to.

There are good points and bad..ill go over my pvp experiences as of yet.

Logged in with my archer/fencer, and I pretty much beat everyone I fought. I did all testing with GM weapons so everyone could get the same results as I got, skill willing.

I found with 100 dex(been running around naked with a boat load of potions..will do this until I get the hang of the new armor.) I have a heavy crossbow ready and I attack a guy in full plate(can anyone say idiot?) Boom..thats like 25-30 points of damage..I run up and get lucky and stick him with my short spear and para him..do a quick UOA hand switch and I stick him three times with a kryss..and im looting him shortly after. I did this several more times..it became a routine..something I could definatly get use to.

My shieldsfighter was a different story..now granted logging in to 49 ar with a archer suit and heater sure was nice..but my dex kind of bothered me but I kept the archer suit on. I did some pvp'ing and in my point of view, im not very impressed. Parry will be good in duels and little else, at least from a PvP point of view. You get into group battles and you will want the distance and punch of archery.

My Lumberjack mule, im sorry thats all he will ever be, I don't care how many 3l33t people I beat. All I have to say is this is plain sick..the damage is crazy. I only fought one guy, and he was sent running..and my lumberjack MULE is pretty weak. But with GM lumberjacking/swords/tacts and 76 anatomy..the damage is nuts..I was out there with a GM large battle axe, and then I saw a Ettin. In the old days I would have taken off like a dog with his tail between his legs..but I thought for shits and giggles Id attack him. I can't beat a ettin as fast as I did with any other warrior ive ever had. Hopefully they will nerf lumberjacking..or at least tone it down. I was kind of hopeing for the same thing with mining and pick axes. I have 99.3 mining and its driving me crazy.

Regardless to say, My favorite warrior, is now stuck in Candyland without any Felucca stones..Ive got them on Hokuto and Atlantic on headless often, but on Drachenfels..nothing. If anyone from any 3 of these shards know a good place to get the damn things send me a email.

On closing I want to say to all the people saying that Nieves is this and that..blah whatever. I personally PvP often and I love his posts. They are well written and full of little gems of humor. Keep it up Nieves.

•A Note on Armor

Remember that your AR is factored based on the protection given and required as an average over your whole body. Wearing ringmail means that when you get hit in the legs all the protection you have is ringmail, total AR is NOT factored into any damage calculation. New AR values are inflated and, since the armor doesn't have any more HP than it used to, AR drops rather quickly. Know your local GM smith because you'll need to repair more often.

•I love this game already.

Part III of Gamespot's Warcraft III preview has been posted. They talk about the undead (the race I'm going to be, since they cast magic and are cooler than the rest).

It's pretty interesting how this game works. Each race has heroes (the main guys). The heroes level up, get the skills/atributes, make buildings, get powers, etc. They do this by doing quests. Each race has it's own set of heroes (6 per race). The heroes will be the most important asset in the game. You can learn more about them on the Part I of the preview. Also, make sure you read Part II. Both are very interesting reads.

Each race has it's own set of resources, instead of just gold. Good. I'm sick of gold in every game. There's also different ways to get your resources (IE: humans use peons to mine gold). The first undead hero that you get is the necromancer (nice). The necromancers resource is mana. You get mana from dead bodies. The more people or creatures you kill, the more mana you get. That mana is used to summon buildings.

The units are more complex than just "double click building, target what you want to make". In fact, you can't make units from buildings at all. You have to get off of your happy ass, kill stuff, then bring them back to life and they turn into whatever unit you select (if you have the proper buildings, of course). You can also summon your own units when they die in a battle.

However, it's not as glamorous and easy as it sounds. In fact, the undead will probably be the hardest race to be. You start out with practically nothing (obviously). You need to kill people and creatures with your one, weak hero - just to get mana to create buildings. Then you have to go out with your one, weak hero again and kill stuff to make units. Repeat until you've died and ressurected 5000 times - then finally you're prepared. While this is going on, the humans are mining for gold and building an empire as ease.

In the long-run, though, I'm pretty sure that the undead will be the best. As mentioned before, each race has 6 heroes. The undead heroes sound very powerful. They all raise the dead (important if you're losing a war and don't have the time to build units and get them to the location where the war is held) and cast numerous spells that will probably kick some ass. Not much about the undead abilities was mentioned, so there's not much more to say. I'm pretty sure they will be balanced to suck at first, then totally dominate after you're prepared though. Blizzard seems to be good at balancing classes/races in their games.

That's quite a bit of information, so maybe it is actually around the corner (late, late this year = around the corner). It's always good to know some information, unlike other games. I now want this game more than any other.

•Interesting armor information...

Female: female plate chest, plate gloves, plate gorget, plate helm, ring arms, ring legs. It gives 37ar and takes away 11 dex (chug a gagility and trefresh potion, and you will get +9 dex).

Male: plate chest, plate gorget, ring arms, ring legs, ring gloves, close helm. It gives 36ar and takes away 12 dex (gagility and trefresh potions would give you +8 dex).

Thanks to KH for the information.

Of course, this means that the armor modifications were slightly useless. Everyone will go from the archer set of old to these (mages will use leather though).

•Skill updates and more submissions.

The archery, bowcraft/fletching, evaluate intelligence, fencing, fishing, inscription, lockpicking, lumberjacking, mace fighting, meditation, parrying, swordsmanship, tailoring and wrestling pages have been updated. I don't feel like linking them all, so just go to the Stats & Skills section.

Submissions:

Refresh pets' stamina bug no longer works. However, the pets stamina has been increased by a lot. According to the submission, you can run from Skara Brae to Britain without your pet running out of stamina. Also, every second of rest is three seconds of running (IE: everytime you stop for a second, your pet is building up the stamina to run for 3 more seconds until fatigued again).

While testing again, Air Elemental's do in fact cast only level 1 spells. This has to be a bug.

Liches, Poisons, Orc Mages, Avengers, and Matriarchs cast every attack spell; up to lvl 7.

Balrons cast level 8 - yes, they summon

Thanks again to the TheProQuo for the information.

•Changes

Well I'm back, fresh off a week long work trip. I turn my computer on to about a thousand uh oh's, 90% of which are people icqing saying that they hate the changes OSI made and are now quitting. Not being one to rush to judgement I log on to see for myself what all the fuss is about. All I will say for now is I will reserve my judgement until factions are out. Being a 7x gm pvp sword/mage, I fall into the screwed category. But ya know what? I can still heal my guild.. I can still make fun of the goofy band of miscelaneous guilds going off to the new lands to share some lich lord fame (oh boy). So UO life is still not all that bad. Keep in mind my fellow UOers and more specifically pvpers, change is usually good, even though it may not look like it on the upstart. Give this some time as I am doing. If it proves to be as bad as everyone seems to think it will be, there are many other options out there.

•Well, it's true.

Just checked out Blizzard's site, and the rumors about open beta starting soon was true. The press release is here and the sign-up's are going to be here - on May 1st until May 7th. 100,000 people will be accepted. I better get in or everyone will die.

Is it just me, or is it kind of weird and coincidential that three major RPG updates (EQ expansion, UO expansion, Diablo II) arrive at almost the same time? Oh well. Diablo II will sell more and I'm going to laugh at the others.

•Interesting submissions today...

First, let me say that I was joking when I said nobody talks. I was in a pissy mood yesterday (reason unknown).

Anyway, here's the stuff that was sent my way about UO:R:

Stacking and white hair bugs do not work.

No more spellbook scams for you (It displays the number of spells in the book when you single click it in the trade window. 64 is how many spells there are. If you're buying a full spellbook from someone make sure there's 64 spells).

Cotton spawns again.

Archery still misses if you run.

Air Elementals give 200-300 gold and only cast level 1 and 2 spells (can anyone confirm this?).

Terrathen warriors no longer give magic weapons. None of the Terrathen's are worth killing anymore, because there's better ways to get loot and fame (Air Elementals)

Poison Elementals give 1000 gold.

Liches are still easy to kill if you have a decent silver weapon (one healer preffered).

Lich Lords are also easy to kill because there's 50000 people there.

Orc Forts are death traps. Orc Mages and Lords spawn in mass-numbers. They're also tougher than Air Elementals and give less loot and fame/karma.

Red NPC's give 50-400 gold (more if there's no extra items; less if there's more items: wands, plate gloves, shields, etc).

The -PK dungeons are over-crowded, while the +PK dungeons are empty.

Big thanks to TheProQuo for all of this information.

It says on the update center that refreshing pets' stamina no longer works as well. Feel free to test it and tell me if it's true, so I can take it off the bugs section.

•Some Dum "Lum"berjacking (no pun intended)

Well, I went and got my weapons master in training and bought a +15 tactics Double Axe of Force for 3k. I wanted something decent to fight with. I found some Orcs and decided I would wipe the grass with them. Not. I got my clock handed to me. My weapons master has 82 fencing, 70 parrying, 70 anatomy and 75 swords (I am too lazy to GM those skills out on him) and this Orc kicks my ass (must be that 18 dex I have) while using the Axe. Not too mention 25 healing is NOT enough anymore. Hey, again, I am lazy. Macroing isn't for me. I want to PLAY!!!! Hmmm...I wonder if the Wall in Trammel Deceit is being used the "Bob" way? That's a thought...

When the Axe hit, it was DEVASTATING. 1/3 of life there, 1/2 over here. It was a great sight.

I continued on and started choppping wood and watched the Lumberjacking skills go up. I found another Orc spawn and went to see if I can take them on with 30+ Lumberjacking. Nope. That didn't work. Doesn't help that Orcs "call" each other and just swarm you.
Time to go back and build that dexterity and Lumberjacking skill up.

I also gained Lumberjacking while fighting the Orcs with the Axe. That is just stupid :/. WTF? The Lumberjacking engine "thinks" I am using the monster's legs as tree trunks or something? Yes? Really? Ok, how come I am not getting any wood from that? (bad jokes sorry) Someone must've been on some crack when they designed this for the game. I did manage to get roughly 200 shafts which my archer will appreciate.

This character was to be: GM Tactics, Swords, Fencing, Parrying, Healing, Anatomy, Spell Resist. Hence, a weapons master. Well, Fencing is nice, but I hate missing so damn much. And since I already have so many sword weapons, including axes (treasure chests are just the bomb!), I will just drop Fencing for Lumberjacking.

Axe fighting has REAL potential. I think I am going to like it alot. Anyone else try it out, please email me and let me know how it goes. Also, I want to hear about your PvM stories, how the monsters have changed and what you did to defeat the monsters Post UO:R.

Hasta...

•FINALLY!

HA! I got there! After days of trying I finally got to the Terathan fort...but first let's talk about lumberjacking. Nah, let's not. You really want to hear about Terathans anyway (lumberjacking will be next post).

Aight, I got with 3 friends and we gated up there. Well, I had some trouble at first. Like the dumbass that I am, I walked back through the gate and wound up back in Papua. I had to get another gate up there from someone else (ok, you can laugh now). I go there, but I couldn't find my friends :/.

As soon as I got there ol' Miss BusyBody (Matriarch) latched on to me and started chasing me. Anyone remember that nice spot where all the archers and mages would hang out and shoot Avengers from? (I would link you to it, but Red killed the link :p; it's on the west side of the entrance). Forget it. The line of trees/brush that used to be there is gone. I used to laugh when I saw people running from Matriarch and Avengers. Well, I wasn't the one laughing this time. That damn Matriarch chased me all up and down that hill. It got even funnier when an Avenger showed up to help give chase. Finally I got to the hill across the walkway in front of the Fort Entrance. Matriarch is there hovering around just doing her version of the "AI Happy Dance". An Avenger "recalls" (spawns) in and starts to join in the Matriarch for a waltz. Dammit. I am sitting here pecking away with the vanq bow I brought PRAYING they don't teleport on me. The Matriarch wanders away off screen and I have the chance at killing the avenger (which is what I wanted to do up there anyway). I start pecking at the Avenger and keeping myself healed/cured (curing poison is getting easier but I still have trouble healing over 60 skill :/ ). I kill the Avenger and start to run off the hill going east (trying to save regs). Guess who is coming up the hill from the BACK side (the other Archer spot just Southeast of the Entrance)????? Yup, you guessed it. Girlfriend pathfound all the way AROUND the hill after me. Persistant Bitch. I teleported away, ran, looted the Avenger (hey, I gotta have my loot ::head twitches a couple of times::), and trapped MaStA MaTtY (I got tricks and you don't!!! :nah: :P), shot her down with the bow and finished her with a couple of Halley strikes. What did I get out of that exchange? A load of karma and fame and 1.2k total from both of them :). Pretty good huh?

I could go on about my 2 hours but let me just summarize it for you:
Avengers and Matriarchs can teleport and heal themselves. I didn't see that last night. Everyone I talk to tells me about it (thank goodness it didn't happen last night). They pathfind better than ANYTHING I have seen in the game (yet). There are 2 decent trap spots left up there. That's all I found! Avengers were on the "beam" everyone likes to hang on above the entrance. All the other hills they pathfind up. And they do it well. Almost like they were coded with the ways around their area (makes sense since they live there). Ensure you get a head start to the spots you are going to run up because if they are too close, they will pathfind there way up to you and kill you. Ask my 3 friends. I found their ghosts later.

On my march through the Ophidians (still took me an hour to get through them) I got the chance to fight an Ophidian Matriarch. Man, is she a mean bitch. Thank goodness I got to my spot. Pecked her to death (takes ALOT more arrows for her) and finished her with the halley.

Clarification: I did run all the way through to Papua, my friends needed reagents, so we gated back, got supplies and returned (read above).

Those Ophidians will follow you all the way to the Fort. So be fast and don't get trapped. Teleport works good for that. An Ophidian Shaman was tearing up some drones. It was hilarious seeing a Terathan Avenger scream "DRONE KILLERS" and proceed to kick the shit out of that Ophidian Shaman. I don't think the Shaman did much damage to the Avenger.

Of all the Ophidians and Terathans I ran into, the only time I was really scared (heart pounding) was when I recalled in earlier in the evening (before I found my gate buddies) and a Silver Serpent was just off screen. I ran so freaking fast I fatigued my horse. That thing is faster than before. I did manage to get on my "precious" hill and kill it. Gained a ton of karma and fame for it too. Did get a screenshot this time as well thinking about you guys, but being the dumbass I am, I left it at home :/

Ok, for those that are curious, here are my Archer's Stats:
GM Tactics, Archery, Swords
97 Anatomy
63 Healing
60 Hiding (hated thieves at banks; dropping for healing eventually)
50 Tracking (pointed down; loved using it to find stuff in the desert and thieves :grins thinking about the stealthers this char has killed:)
70.1 Magery (30 point heals are nice)
100str/100dex/25int.

And I got these stats the hard way. I played the game. How many can say that? And I dont' want to hear about "she should have this or that". I only lose to monsters when lag/lost con gets me.

Supplies: 15 GHeals, 10 GCures, 50 Bandages, Halley of Vanq, 2 GM katanas (in case one broke--still don't use em much), Bow of Vanq, 350 arrows and 40 of each reg. Oh, key note. Make sure you trap your pouches BEFORE you leave for the fort. Kind of sucks when you go to hit a pouch after being paralyzed and it doesn't explode. No problem right? They usually fire off a magic arrow to knock off the paralysis anyway. Well, it doesn't work anymore (I read that on a site somewhere...what I get for paying attention). Magic arrows or harms no longer kill paralysis :/. Thank goodness MaStA MaTtY fireballed instead of flamestriking when she got to me. :;shakes head;: Told you I was a dumbass.

Loot: 4k, 3 Felucca stones (Mattys and Avengers had em; never did fight a Warrior), no magic weapons. :/

Next: Lumberjacking and Lockpicking.

•I'm updating too much.

I was just sent word that stacking no longer works with UO:R. Can anyone confirm this? Not that I don't trust the source, but it may be a shard-specific thing (it happens sometimes).

•Well ain't this a first. Two UO II news items in one day.

Crossroads of "New" Britannia (emphasis on new, because it's a stupid name to pick and I will not stop making fun of them for it) posted the IRC chat they had with, um, everybody on the team. You can find it here. I just noticed something: the more, the worse - not vice versa.

One important thing mentioned is that the PC Gamer will have screenshots (knew this already, but maybe some didn't) and a trailor clip (didn't know this). And apparently, warriors won't be as lame and boring as they are in every other game. Meh. Give them kung foo moves for all I care. I'd still be a mage and dominate all. The rest of the chat is showing everyone how much of asses the team can make out of themselves.

•Only 10 minutes late this time. I'm getting better at this.

There's a new UO II screenshot. You can check it out here. Looks pretty cool, but it doesn't look like that's how the gameplay view is. Maybe it is. In any event, it's about damn time. I didn't have a doubt that UO II was being created, but by the looks of it, it seemed that they had none of it complete (releasing no information or screenshots kind of makes you think that way). At least this is some insurance that they have some of it done.

Thanks to Blues' News for the update.

In other news, don't listen to Paladin. This is not a competetion - it's for fun. Fun is good. Competetion is bad and makes you work harder. Work is also bad. Besides, we haven't been around since beta like he says. I started playing UO in the summer of '98 and made the site in August of last year.

Feel free to send him hatemail on my behalf.

•Feedback

Ok all. If you are going to use the tweaks I suggested below, drop me a line and tell me what they did for you. Something? Nothing? Slowed you down? Let me know, and if you have any other suggestions, tell me so I can incorporate them. I'll give you credit in the update. E-mail me here people, and tell everyone you know to come to this site. We're better than Stratics anyway. Who cares what bananas weigh? Also we have been updated since beta, and all of our updates aren't direct quotes from the UO official website. Sorry, got carried away there. Remember, like Redrum said, send us feedback darn it!

•Maybe these guys don't know what "cellpadding" and "cellspacing" actually means.

The one day I go Quake Online; RPG Mode's Official Site, there's an interview. It's pretty interesting. Anarchy Online is probably going to be the only decent MMORPG that's coming out this year (all of the other companies lie - none of the other good MMORPG's are coming out this year). The beta sign-up's are already up actually.

Onto the comment: if you notice, everything on the interview site is scrunched in. Cellpadding or cellspacing (I forgot which one) makes it so the tables aren't so close together. The other makes it so the content isn't right on the border of the table.

There's your HTML tip of the day - brought to you by the person who, of all places, learned HTML from Geocities (note: do not learn it from there - they're brain-dead and explain shit worse than me).

•I need a vacation.

Thankfully, I happen to be one of them guys that doesn't stop until the job is done. The Character Creation section is done. 20 cigarettes were smoked during the making. I kind of rushed it at the end, because it was getting boring. I might've missed something. Make sure you tell me if I did.

I'm not sure if the PvP section is going to be done as fast as I anticipated. They added a lot of characters into the PvP scene and I'm not sure I want to spend 50 straight hours making it.

Meh. Someone's really crabby today (I think the sarcastic update two posts below pointed that out). Feel free to send money to cure me.

•UO:R is here.

Some links have been temporarily disabled, because they're out-dated. The character creation section I should have done later tonight or sometime tomorrow. The PvP section is going to be done by me and a friend shortly after. Hopefully, Nieves, the PvM expert, will take care of the PvM section in the meantime. Feel free to spam his e-mail box just incase. The money section - all I have to do is ask some friends. That shouldn't take long at all, since they all have no lives.

It shouldn't really take that long to get it finished. I'm aiming for a week - give or take a few days.

•What does it take for you people to talk?

Approximately, .007 (went up .001 since last month, woot!) of the people that come here actually say something - whether it be on e-mail or on the forum. Maybe someone around here refreshes this page 1000+ times a day, while a select few come periodically. That doesn't make much sense though. Not that I'm complaining, but it's good to hear what people have to say. Input = good. Comments = good. Suggestions = good. Opinions = good. Arguements = good. As long as they're well thought out and make sense, of course.

The funny thing, though, is that the only time I get mass-submissions is when there's a new exploit or I'm asking about one. Hrmmmmmmmmmmmmm...... I hope that doesn't mean people come here only for exploits. It could mean that you're brain-dead and can't think for yourselves. If that is the case, then it's understandable and you have my humble apologies.

Anyway, apparently, all of the templates are good except for the thief. The thief I have listed is more of a pure thief and the rogue is the rare collecting type, so let's try a tank thief. How does this look:

100 str, 100 dex, 25 int
Anatomy, Archery, Healing, Resist, Snooping, Stealing, Tactics

I'll be eagerly waiting for two of you to reply.

•NT 56K Update

For NT users, all of the steps I outlined previously will help you except for the part about the latest DUN. NT has it's updates released as service packs, so you should make sure you have service pack version 6 for NT 4.0. Thanks to King Hell for the heads up. BTW, man you need a new nickname =)

•Well, I'm banned.

I tried to log into my account before I went to work tonight, and discovered it was blocked. I still haven't recieved an e-mail telling me why exactly, but it's probably related to a harrasment complaint I filed this morning. I reported a guy for repeatedly calling me a "c*cksucking n*gger f*ggot" while I snooped his pack at the bank. He used the actual words, and I'm sure you've all heard them before, but I doubt Redrum wants them plastered on his page. Anyway, a big round of applause to OSI for keeping their priorities straight.

•56k Optimization

Here is the simple method of optimizing a 56k connection that I have used since UO started and I was on a lowly Lucent modem.

The first thing you need to do is go to Microsoft’s site and download the most recent update of DUN for your operating system. For the purposes of this article I will assume that you are using Win98 or Win95.Install the most recent DUN and it should overlay itself and restart your machine.

Next, you want to right click network neighborhood and look for the line in the box that comes up that says properties. Go ahead and select that and a new box will come up. Look for the one that says “TCP/IP > Dial Up Adapter.” Make sure that everything in there is properly set for your ISP. They should have the information for you, probably on their website. If any of it is wrong, your con might not work, or it might work badly. If there is any other protocol bound to the Dial Up Networking adapter in the same manner, I.e. XXXXXX > Dial up adapter, you can probably delete it, which you should do, just check with your ISP to see if they require it. If they do, get another ISP.

Now, you get to check the configuration on your modem. Go to Control Panel/Modems and select the modem that you are using, then click the properties button. Maximum speed on the first page should be set to 57600 because that’s as fast as you can get and trying to force it to go faster than is possible will actually slow the thing down. COM port you really don’t need to change, because if the modem is working at all then that part is fine. Next go to the connection tab and go to port settings. Unless you have trouble connecting to your ISP move BOTH sliders all the way to the right, then go back and click the advanced button. In advanced make sure that use error correction and compress data are selected, and make sure that you are using hardware and not software flow control. Click OK, and then, if you made any changes your PC should restart.

A note about modems, here. If you have a piece of crap modem, you will have a piece of crap connection. That’s a fact. Invest in a good modem, my personal preference is USR, but others prefer other brands. The simple fact is that if you bought a bundled PC for a bargain price, the modem is probably a piece of crap so get a new one.

Now you want to use some software to tweak your connection fully. The one I use is TweakDUN which you can get here. All you really need to do with this software is to select the recommended values for your dial up networking adapter and it will make the changes to the registry for you. Make sure that MTU is set to 576, RWIN is set to 4x, and TTL is 128. Now click OK and you will probably have to restart one last time.

Now when you connect, the actual listed speed may not be different, but you should notice a definite improvement in throughput. This will help when playing UO and when you are downloading files. If you have any more questions, you know how to contact me, so feel free.

•UOQuest

I rushed home from work this morning to work on stealing with my trusty packhorse. Imagine my delight when I stole ten different dye tubs 3 time each, with no failures and no skill gain. I wasn't aware that they were going to change stealing from packhorses, but I guess they did. If you have any other decent ways to raise stealing, put 'em in the forum!

•In other news...

UO Terror moved. I love his new poll.

In Diablo II news, it appears that the closed beta is about to end and the "stress test" (was open beta) is about to start. There's a few things that hint at this: apparently, someone from Blizzard announced it on battle.net; Gone-Gold updated about it; GFraizer, the Calandryll of Diablo II, didn't say yes but he didn't say no either; they updated about it here and here.

While they're rumors, most rumors are true (no matter how suspicious), especially when multiple people say the same thing. Plus, the more details (official board and FAQ), the closer it is - that's a given.

This isn't just good news because open beta is going to start. It's good news because open beta's last a really, really short time, then it ships out to stores.

I'm going to play hardcore mode, since normal levels are for pussies who like god-mode. Unfortunately, you have to beat it on normal, nightmare and hell difficulties before you can play hardcore. Bleh. I want to play hardcore from the get-go, because I'm a hero from the west with no fear. Hoorah!

•Note to self: quit AFTER a major update.

That would've been wise. Oh well. It's a 50/50 thing now. My 50 is using my brilliance (note: no sarcasm this time) and the other 50 is putting that brilliance to work. I came up with some character templates for UO:R, but I need some input.

Archer Warrior
100 str, 100 dex, 25 int
Anatomy, Archery, Healing, Fencing, Magery, Resist, Tactics


Lumberjack Warrior
100 str, 100 dex, 25 int
Anatomy, Healing, Lumberjacking, Magery, Resist, Swords, Tactics


Parry Warrior
100 str, 100 dex, 25 int
Anatomy, Fencing, Healing, Magery, Parrying, Resist, Tactics


Pure Mage
100 str, 100 int, 25 dex
Anatomy, Evaluate Intelligence, Inscription, Magery, Meditation, Resist, Wrestling

Tactic
Attempt to stun punch and fire off spells at will.


Tank Mage
Archery, Evaluate Intelligence, Magery, Meditation, Resist, Tactics, Wrestling


Assassin
100 str, 80 dex, 45 int
Fencing, Meditation, Magery, Poisoning, Resist, Tactics, Wrestling

Tactic
Much like the old assassin - only use a short spear for the paralyze blow, then switch to a deadly poisoned kryss.


Rogue
100 str, 100 int, 25 dex
Hiding, Lockpicking, Magery, Snooping, Stealing, Stealth, Wrestling


Thief
100 str, 100 int, 25 dex
Anatomy, Arms Lore, Magery, Resist, Snooping, Stealing, Wrestling

Tactic
Attempt to disarm weapon and immediately steal/last target to steal their main weapon. Then keep attempting to stun punch to freeze them and steal everything you can.


The only thing that needs explaining is the reasons behind the pure mage and thief templates - the rest are pretty self explanitory.

For the pure mage, people suggested hiding. Fuck that. Nobody needs hiding. So I figured, since you can't have any combat skills (no tactics), why not try a wrestling maneuver - afterall, it does freeze them, thus not allowing them to do anything at all (except bandage and drink potions). It beats hiding...

For the thief, your basic priority is to steal, steal and steal some more. Disarm is great, because warriors usually never unequip their weapon. Stun punch is also great, because most people try running after you steal their reagents/weapon. You also have to factor in the fact that you can't attempt to steal if you have anything in your hands. Casting spells automatically equips your spellbook and a melee-thief would use a weapon. Screw all that. You're there to steal. Period. Plus, if you had PvP thief, a 7xGM only-for-PvP-character would eat you for dinner.

Any comments or suggestions? E-mail me.

•The Mini-Update

Hello all. When you read the second mini update note the part that pushes archery a little back from the far end of godlike. Now melee weapons will swing when you approach someone w/o standing still because the swing time will tick away while you move and you will hold your swing until you are next to someone. That's only been 2 years plus in coming, thanks OSI for removing that. Also, the BS parry increase is a bug according to GM shade on Atlantic, so use at your own peril.

•Bleh, small update.

If you attempt to steal from a packhorse, you must tell it to guard you; otherwise you will turn grey and guard-whacked if in town.

•#UOPG

Alright I set up a room for everyone to get together and talk..bs or whatever you want in real-time fashion. Here are step-by-step instructions on how to get there.

1) Go to the IRC homepage.
2) Click download mIRC
3) Click on the link thats closest to you to download the 32 bit version.
4) Once its downloaded start it up.
5) A option box will open up.
6) Click on the add button towards the top.
7) Desciption: Stratics Server. Irc Server: irc.stratics.com Port: 6667. You can leave group and password empty.
8) Fill in the name, email address and your nick(s).
9) Press connect to irc server.
10) Another box will come up..asking what channel you wish to join.
11) Type uopg.
12) Tada..welcome aboard.

Ill be in there most of the night..might not always be at the computer..but irc doesn't take hardly any system resources so its ok to leave it open while you play uo.

In other news..after 4 months of macroing everynight on hokuto..Vegeta is still red.

•What didn't happen.

Remember the last update about the Liches? Forget it. It never happened. As a matter of fact. It didn't happen twice.

I logged in on GL last night with my archer to give something else a go around and found myself in Papua. Um...that's where I logged out when I was done "testing" the Ophidians. Ok, fine. I got myself to Delucia and decided to "test" the Lich room in T2A again. This time I took a guildmate (Ok, Elyssa, I mentioned you! Sheesh :p) and wound up just trying to stay alive. That's all we did. It was nuts. Granted I pulled over 4k in gold and some loot which is cool, but goodness, it was actually challenging. And people were dieing everywhere. I guess I should say that's a good thing. It's what we wanted right? Now, I logged off with my archer thinking, I am going to go mine and get some blacksmithing going.

Not.

I got a brand new packhorse, had mined up a whole bunch of ore, and BLAM, "lost connection". WTF????? I went to OSI's UO website and no mention of the outage. WTF???? An hour later I read about the mini-update on the site. Nothing about "it's going down". Just that it went down because of a "fix" they have to do. Ok, that's fine, but where was the "The server is going down" message?

I don't know about you, but this sucks.

If there is anything that really pisses me off about a company or merchant it's bad customer service. If OSI didn't have such a good game (relatively speaking of course), I would say screw you and go play Baldur's Gate (never got to finish it). Thanks to the OSI gods, I lost 2 packhorses (this is what the homeless do to store items) over the last 3 days. One was my weapons packhorse (my +20 tactics halley of power was on it), and the other was my Treasure Hunter's packhorse which had over 50 trammel moonstones and at least 20 Y2k valentines flowers and bottles. You may laugh at me, but dammit, it was the only real "true" rare I had and I was going to decorate my new 2 story house with the shit. ::ARGH::

Oh, and I did the GM/Counselor thing to report the problem. "OSI can't replace..." "yeah yeah, I know that. I am just reporting it. I don't need to hear that shit from you".

Asshoes. Get your shit together and bring me a product I am paying 19.98+50.00 (2 accounts plus ADSL monthly charge) for.

Sorry, I am a bit upset. These timewarps are annoying. To say the least.

I am going to take a break from playing tonight. Go teach Tae Kwon Do tonight and kick some black belts around the floor. Yeah, that's what I will do. In the morning noone can say "that didn't happen".

•56k Deluge

Ok, it seems that there is a lot of interest in an article on what you can do to optimize your 56k connection for playing UO. I'll get it done tomorrow and either posted here, or I'll E-mail it to everyone that has E-mailed me.

•Redrum's old connection killed mine and took it's place.

This isn't really information for anyone but those playing on the freshly moved East Coast servers. This is what I get every half hour or so of gameplay. If you're getting something similar, let OSI know so things get fixed.

***Update***
It turns out this is a result of a fresh round of DOS attacks. So if you're getting crap connections to your server, it's probably that.

•Who hasn't heard of IRC?

I was wondering if there would be any interest in setting up a UOPG irc room. A place where we can gather and discuss whats going on, talk about this or that etc. It would give you the readers more of a say on what you want and what you wish to know about. Well post your thoughts on the forum or email me and we can see if there is enough interest to get this going.

The bitchest(Is that a word) updater this side of Lum.
-Vegeta

•A quickie

To offset the rather verbose updates that have been posted in the last few days, I thought I'd drop a few quick observations from the TC shard, since I can't play Atlantic today, and we don't have UO:R anyway.

1.) Archery is simply great, but in 1 on 1 it's hard to finish, expecially if you are a warrior with archery. Still, if there are 2 archers on you, you'd better pray.

2.) Spellcasting is pretty seamless with the instant equip of the spellbook, BUT if you are on a slow connection, the amount of time between de-equipping the book and equipping a weapon can be a killer.

3.) Archer-mage vs melee mage. Try neither and see how that works. drop tactics and sword/mace/fencing/archery and take healing and anatomy. Surprisingly effective, since you can pop them with the stun punch allowing you to keep them from casting or chasing you. Someone told me about this and I tried it and it's pretty fun. Carry Refresh potions though, the special move costs stamina to attempt.

4.) If anyone out there is on 56k and has problems with their connection, and the optimizing of it, let me know. I've been dealing with it for 2 years now and pretty much have mine as optimized as possbile. If enough people need it, I might persuade Redrum into letting me post an article on the site about optimizing dial up connections.

5.) The best (legal) parry training method I have found is to get some friends together during your power hour and have em all beat on you with wrestling and have some of them healing you. They gain wrestling, you gain parrying, and you can work it out where you are working a weapon skill too. With healing changes in UO:R it will probably allow you to gain in healing this way also.

•It's always a plus to beat "The Vault".

There's 5 new Black & White screenshots at Brotherhood of Eden. Since he threatens to sue anyone who uploads them, I'll just link them. You can find them here, here, here, here and here. I just want to play it already, damnit.

In other news, 10 SIX blows. Basically, all that you do is make wells to get resources. In a good strategy game, you place something where the resources are and have your men get them. In this game, you can place wells anywhere and the resources come from no where - and trust me, the resources come in packs. You could let the game run all night and you'll wake up with an assload of resources.

From there, you make buildings and get weapons/armor/vehicles. There's about 8 buildings and 4 vehicles per corporation. That's it. You'd think that a massively-multiplayer game would have more stuff than single/multiplayer games, but that isn't the case. There are no air stuff, spies, soldiers or anything - just vehicles. Anyway, since other corporations can't have the same stuff you have, you basically just trade and sell. There's a major imbalance already. There's jitters (everything in the game, as mentioned yesterday) in each corporation that sells for 100-150k each to other corporations. You can buy jitters in packs from "the market" (it just automatically does it) for 25k, and that's usually a ton of new, good stuff. Everyone basically has unlimited gold if they sell the same thing to other corporations.

The view also sucks. It's 1st person - you can go into 3rd person, but that sucks more and you can't toggle or anything.

So what is the point? Build wells, go to bed, wake up with a ton of resources; build buildings; sell stuff that other corporations can't get until you have unlimited gold to get new jitters; get the best weapons/armor; build rovers; attack. That's it. Nothing complex about it and anyone can win easily.

I give it a 1. The one is for the good graphics.

•Holy shit, that's good stuff.

I went to UO Parody Songs before, and while the songs were very nicely done, it's the type of music that didn't interest me all that much. I checked out Lum's latest update, and decided to give it another try. The new song he made, We Will RoxxU, kicks ass. In fact, I like it better than the original version and listened to it about 50 times in a row.

I love that guy. He is my new hero. The site is definately worth checking out.

•No, it's me.

The magery, stealing and stealth pages have been updated.

Woohoo! Information for a change.

•It's me.

Hello. I am the new person (90s term) on the Redrum's Block of Writers.

First: I started playing UO last year May. I am not a person that has played since Beta or own 10 houses or can RoX Jus NOoObie!. I PLAY the game. I actually like going out and hunting down monsters. I enjoy the social aspect of hanging out with folks. That make me a nerd or some stupid N3wbi3? Nope. I am hispanic. And as we all know, there is no such thing as a hispanic nerd (yeah right). I enjoy gaming. I could probably be a kickass Pvper/Pker. I can type 80+ words a minute (fast fingers/reflexes is almost a must in that type of gaming) and I have an ADSL line with a 500MHZ machine. Pretty much what other gamers of that type would enjoy. But I choose not too.

What am I trying to say? I am the other guy. I powergame the other way. I don't use exploits/cheats/macroing, but I know how to do it. I read everything I can about UO on all the sites. Even so far as to visit the "other" guys' sites.

I PvM alot! That's my kick. Call me a wussy or whatever. I don't care. That's the way I WANT to play the game. I think you should play the game the way you want, and that's kewl. Go PvP/PK all you want. Hell, you can even do it to one of my characters. Just leave me a recall rune and a scroll and let me go on my merry way...but don't be surprised if I come back and whip the snot out of you. I can handle myself just fine. I just don't (I said that didn't I?)

I will do my best to bring you the game's insights, tactics, news, information, rants to the best of my ability. I will bring you news on other games as well as I get information on them. I plan on picking up Diablo II and Neverwinter Nights. I will only talk on the topics I know about first hand. And I promise not to talk about fingering myself or anything like that. Something about that doesn't please me.

Be well fellow "powergamers". Enjoy the ride. I know I will.

•Thanks for the input.

It seems that the majority of the people come for information, not to hear us complain (must by why it's called powergamers), so we're going to even it out some. If the updaters know or find any tricks or strategy tactics, they will post it. If that's not available, then they'll just complain (much like I did when I was the only updater).

Don't be mad at the updaters for not posting information - it's my fault. I specifically told them to only update news and comment/rant about it. I never told them to post information... until now.

Hopefully, it will be like it was before I stopped playing - updating with as much information as possible.

•No big surprise here...

Well those intelligent people at OSI finally got off their ass and fixed this Med bug and this obscure post was made on Stratics.


All Ultima Online shards, excluding Japanese shards, will be taken down and restarted upon completion of their next backup (as of 4:55PM CT) to address a recently discovered issue. Japanese shards will go down for their normally scheduled maintenance period today. All shards scheduled for Tuesday maintenance will then skip their next maintenance period excluding East Coast US shards, which will be moving to their new ISP. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Yea yea yea..good job..whatever. Maybe if they would have fixed the dupe bugs, the house break-in bugs like this they would still have more older players.

Got any Horror stories about UO's great support?
Email me with your thoughts.

•Ok, that's enough of that....

It seems that all of Exwhyze's updates have references to homosexuality, masturbating and basically offending/disgusting everyone, while not making any sense, spelling anything right or having anything useful to say.

While that doesn't bother me personally and I sometimes laugh about it, it just doesn't seem right on this site. It fits in the category for here, here or here instead.

You will not see him updating anymore and all of his posts have been deleted.

•Meditation Bug

Yes there is a bug, but I for one won't be posting about it. Fact is go to any bank on any damn shard and you will see people exploiting it. This pisses me off..that means all the money I made killing Lich's today is going to be gone when they revert to a old save. So please..no more emails about it.

•It's pop quiz time.

Seeing how this site took a different path recently, I want to know what everyone thinks about what's going on. There's a few questions I want to know:

What do you come to this site for (information, news, rants, etc)?

What would you like to see more of (read above)?

What do you think about the updaters (all of them or just a few)?

How much money are you going to send me for updating (this is a joke)?

Sure, I have my own thoughts, but I just run the site - you visit it for whatever reason you have. If you want to tell me what you think, then e-mail me. If you don't care, then no response is needed.

•Since everyone with a life left for easter, this technically isn't old news.

CONB, ran by guys that have horrible taste in colors and can't think of anything better than "New Britannia", are having the first IRC chat with the UO II developers. Here's the copy and paste version:

Crossroads of New Britannia, the web’s first and premier site for all things Ultima Online 2, and Origin Systems, Inc. are proud to present an IRC chat for Ultima Online 2, their upcoming persistent world RPG. This chat will provide you, the fans, with an opportunity to meet the team behind the game’s development.

The chat is scheduled for Thursday, April 27 at 7PM CST and will take place at #ultima-online2 on the Sorcery.net IRC network, the official IRC network of the Crossroads Network.

You can log onto Sorcery.net using the following server:

Irc.sorcery.net, port 6667

For more information on Sorcery.net and IRC in general please read the available FAQ.

We will be compiling questions you would like to ask the dev team beforehand, you can post your questions here

Any bets that 99.9% of the questions get answered with "I can't say at this time" or something similar? I hope not, because I'd win.

•That's enough, ladies.

Thanks to everyone that wanted to be an updater. I received more submissions than I originally thought. However, there's 7 (may change if I decide to kick some) and one more on the way. That's plenty - probably too much for just news updates, so no more will be accepted currently.

•The first MMOSG (strategy)?

According to a friend, there's a MMOSG out right now. It's called 10 SIX and it's played on heat.net (free service, like the Zone). Unlike most games, there is no software to buy (it's about time). You download it from the above site, then you get 7 days free. After that you have to subscribe (10 bucks a month - discounts if you subscribe for more), like the other MMOPG'S.

The game is a MMOSG, as mentioned above. I'm pretty sure everyone knows what that is - build base, get resources, make buildings, get vehicles/defenses (no men, soldiers or anything though), etc, and go out and kill other people and take their land. Much like the other MMOPG's, the world is ever-changing, doesn't stop when you log-out and it's just one big game with thousands of players at the same time.

When you start out, you choose a corporation (race, class and all of the other terms that other games use). You can join a guild (and should, because you'll need 'em when you log off), but only with members of your own corporation. However, you can buy/sell/trade with other corporations to get stuff that they have.

Then you choose a plot (land). There's a barrier around your plot. That barrier breaks when you expand your land or enter enemy territority, so you won't have to worry about getting killed the first minute that you log in.

It's basically self explanitory from there: kill other guilds or people and take over their land.

Like other MMOPG's, everything (vehicles, buildings, etc) changes over time, so it's not the same stuff over and over. By change, I don't mean just add-ons - old stuff will no longer be able to created, so if you have the oldest stuff, it will become rare (since you can trade/buy/sell, that's cool) and probably more powerful than newer stuff.

It sounds pretty cool (I'm downloading it myself, so I can't say if it is or not). The best thing is that the software is free. Download it and check it out. It's about 30 MB's.

•Account Security

On the UO homepage there was a article on how to keep your account safe and basic precautions in deaing with others. Most was common sense but what the hell..if this keeps one of your accounts safe from some asshole then it was worth the time to post it.

•Link and site clarification.

Evilseed, the owner of UO Guilds, has his own personal ranting site up. You can check it out here. Apparently, he likes lesbians.

As you can probably tell, this site took a whole new direction within the last couple of weeks. I can no longer update it daily myself, because I don't want to update for a game that I don't play (unless it's upcoming and interests me) and most of my time is spent trying to get the damn network up (about 1% complete - should be a month or 800), so I brought the updaters. Basically, what they do is rant about anything related to UO. However, that's not the major focus of the site - despite what everyone thinks. There will still be information, but there isn't enough updates to the game to update this site with information constantly. I want the site updated daily somehow, and the only way to do that is to expand a little. The information will always be updated whenever there's an update, so those of you that say there's only going to be rantings and no more information, you're wrong.

Lastly, happy easter. I just sat around doing nothing as always. My teams won for a change, so that's cool. The 76ers or Lakers are going to win it all. All of the other teams suck and will lose.

•I owned you, man

I'd like to take some time to discuss proper PVP terminology and maybe a little common sense. Last night, I was sitting at my regular bank when some fellows came riding in on a gate. With them they brought the ghost of a person who had been involved in a group PVP with them and needed a res. Said walking corpse went and got himself ressed and came back spouting how he 'owned' the guys that killed him and his friends. Now, I don't know about you, but to me 'owned' means 'I kicked your ass' but I am obviously wrong, it must mean 'you are mighty warriors who beat me into the gound but failed to shut my big, stupid mouth'.

I also don't understand how, when someone dies, they call the person or persons who killed them, 'newbie'. Hey, where I come from the guy that wins is the one that gets to talk crap. How about when you kill someone, they are required to SHUT THE HELL UP and take it like a man. You got your ass handed to you, don't make it worse on yourself by running your mouth afterward, ok Captain Courageous?

If you are a pvper, do everyone a favor and stop talking crap. You want to fight, fight. If you suck, though, don't bitch afterward because you got your ass handed to you. You didn't 'own.' the guy that killed you isn't a 'newbie.' I don't care if you 'ran out of pouches(or regs, or band-aids, etc.)' Take the platter with your ass on it and go home and get better. Tell the guy that killed you, 'good fight man' and go home with humility. You'll find that you get a great deal more respect than you currently do, oh delusional one.

•How intelligent is the average UO player?

While on my morning jaunt through the myriad of uo links I have I came upon something at the Stratics Community News

Hail,
Tradespot would like to annouce a new UO community Scammer Database board. We are very hopeful that we can make a difference to the hundreds of people scammed in UO, both by warning them and bringing this issue to the attention of OSI. We would love it if you would publish this news on your web page and help us get the news out to the UO community.

Well sure, ill take a look I think. So I think click the link to go to the and im eyes are assaulted by capital letters that all the say the same thing. I WAS SCAMMED! Well all I have to say is no shit, why do you think you are posting here. Is it that difficult for people to refrain from capital letters all the time?

But the post that got my full attention and mirth was this one by a fellow Hokuto player.

Sparring: Someone says will you spar with them if they go grey? They attack a summoned pet of their friend or something to go grey rather than attack you (no murder count that way) then have you attack them while they are grey. They 'accidently' kill you while sparring, and say someone looted you while you were off getting rezed. The moral is: If you are going to spar, do it with someone you know, outside a guarded region, and have the person who asked to spar attack you so you can report the murder.

Ok..Does anyone actually still spar? I haven't seen it ages...long ago in vesper the bank would be lagged by all kinds of people sparing.
Can't say I miss it though.

Wanna go on a dungeon crawl newbie?: This one is too obvious, but a real tough guy asks you to go in a dungeon with him and maybe some friends. The monsters are too tough for you alone, but Mr. Strong takes care of them. Once too deep inside to fight your way out alone, he lets you take on that giant serpant, poison elemental, or whatever by yourself saying he'll heal. Naturally he lets it kill you, and loots you. the moral is: Only fight things you can beat without help

The real moral is to trust no one.

Mismatched Item names: You go to that vender shop to buy a Durable Surpassingly Accurate Katana of Power and find you have a Durable Katana of Ruin. Moral: Always either bring an I.D. wand or keep 20-40 points free for Item Identification or make a throw away character with Item I.D. when buying things for over 2k

But if I saved 20-40 points for Id I couldn't Gm camping!

I need a bodyguard pking: A blue healer says he was pked several times and the pk is hanging out at such and such place. You go with him and attack the pk. The 'pked newbie' suddenly busts out with an In Vas Mani on his supposed murderer. They kill you and loot your nice weapons. Moral: Snoop the 'newbie' to see if he's got regs under that deathrobe

Ok if you are the same guy that gets killed by giant serpents above..why would anyone want you to be a *pk bodyguard*?

Selling Bone Armor: Some guy by the bank sells you 'new' bone armor sets for 200. You put it on and notice your ar is half what it should be for bone. You run out to kill a goat
and your armor breaks. Moral: Don't buy bone armor at the bank

Again, real moral: Don't buy bone armor.

I 'hehe' died in that cave over there, can you get your stuff for me?: This is just a sick way to notopk... A new throw-away character runs into a dungeon while 2 of his pk friends (I forgot your names, otherwise I'd post em) hide nearby. You loot the corpse to bring the newbie back his 3 sewing kits and qstaff and suddenly 2 blue guys on horseback attack your grey butt and all three loot you clean. Moral: Hide or stay in the dungeon for a little while if you get things for someone. Also use detect hidden by the corpse.

Detect hidden?? Item Id?? Snooping?? Perhaps we should point this guy to how to build a character?

And OSI claims a 'very small percentage/minority' of the players act antisocial and ruin it for people. heh, I'm starting to think there are more scammers/thieves/pks than honest people.

Thats not true. Im a Honest Pk.
Email me with your thoughts

•Server War Fun

After returning home from a nice little reprieve from my chaotic life I decide to jump on UO for a good dose of the homosexuality we all know as the server wars. We all know what goes on here but I thought I would just share with you my experience. Where to start. Ok I jump on and race off to the wars.. I immediately attack the first blue I see and low and behold, one of the town hugging sissies actually follows me in the graveyard. In a state of shock that someone actually has nads I'm a little slow casting my harm. Then it all makes sense, the little smurf has his boyfriend with him and he starts attacking me also. Np, 2 townies on foot, me on a horse, I should be fine. At this point of course I am grey with 2 blues on me when someone,(red btw) I completely dominate during normal playing time, decides he is going to take the opportunity here at server wars to get even with me for the ass kicking he takes on a daily basis by lighting me up with a brave precasted exp eb haly all the time with these 2 townies on me. Ok so I die. Luckily all my hombres are logged on fighting the good red server war fight so i get rezzed, healed, and regged. Now, I don't know what it is about being blue that makes everyone cowardice at server wars, but you would think that staying just close enough to town, waiting for someone to attack you, and then running and calling guards, would get old after say.. the 50th time. Apparently not. So there I am, hanging at the cemetary entrance casting at people only to have them run to town when what does appear? Why a dragon of course. Now, let me just say this. If you are a tamer and bring a dragon to server wars, my vocabulary is not extensive enough to even begin to describe how ridiculously lame you are. Not only are they a nuisance to the real battles but they bring lag to a place that is already crawling anyway. So I die again. Frustrated at the idiots who play this game and not enjoying the experience of what could be one of the last things to actually enjoy in this game. Ok enough about my night. To ensure that at least our readers stay hetero, and for those stupid enough to need a guide line for the server wars I have thrown up a code of conduct below.

You yearn to be with Greg Louganis if you do the following at server wars:

1. Being red and killing other reds or greys you know are going red

2. Bring any animals to do your killing for you

3. Rez kill anyone, either blue or red

4. Kill someone with 1/5 life, newly rezzed after being banged by 12 people and have the audacity to utter the words "owned." (this means you not only yearn to be with Greg, but have indeed been with the entire canadien mens figure skating team as well)

5. Sit behind the gates of the cemetary and wait for someone to attack you and run to town and call guards

Now, there are more but it's all common sense anyway. Those are just the top 5 I can think of. I'm sure I'll wake up tomorrow with my mailbox spammed full of shit I forgot, but I'm tired now. See Fight Club if you haven't already.

•*Vegeta is attacking you!*

With all kinds of rants and general news that is.

Well as the newest member of the UOPG UO staff id like to introduce myself. Ive played since beta and unlike 90 percent of the people that say this I actually mean it. Anyone remember what Trinsic was like before insta-kill guards were put in? Yea the good ol days. Ive started on Atlantic as did most people back then and enjoyed the Dread Lord life until oh July of '98 when OSI decided they had a way to make the game better. Alot of friends quit, and yet I stayed on. The dupes on Atlantic pretty much killed the shard..everyone running around with full invul armor and vanq weapons isn't much fun, so I moved on to Drachenfels. Enjoyed that until the summer of '99..then Vegeta was born on Hokuto. Now everyone says Hokuto is a poor shard to PvP on..and I guess they are more or less right. There are a handful of guilds that worth the time warring but with guilds like Love Love Ostard and Minoc Actors its really hard taking the players of Hokuto seriously. One thing enjoyable about Hokuto is the severe shit-talking that goes on in the Hokuto Stratics Forum.

I look forward to bringing you the news with a cynical touch that we've all grown to love at this site.

•Hi Everyone........

Well, I just wanted to say hi, as I am a new updater.

Only thing I have got is that Pacific Shard is receiving the Renaissance Update on Sunday. I personally don't like the new features I saw in Test Center (like spell books being auto-equipped). Also the fact that fencers are being buffed up more, with the paralyzing effect of their hits. I do on the other hand, like the factions idea, or at least some of it.

My accounts on UO were deleted by someone a week or so ago, so of course I lost everything(GM Smith/Alchemist/Poisoner/Mage/Warrior). All of those characters lost, and all my money. Fortunately I have good friends, and I just about have the money I need so I can place a nice Keep in the new lands, =]. I'm not too sure, but I have heard that Keeps will be placeable on Monday (I should have money by then). Wish ya all luck in UO, I know a bunch of people are going to have problems with the Renaissance. Cya Later...

•Well, they took the kid...

In case you haven't heard yet, the INS went in and snatched Elian about 2 hours ago. For the Cuban community that looks like it's about to riot, be glad that no one got killed. If you guys had given a shit about that kid, you'd have given him back to his dad months ago. The whole fucking planet knew you were stalling and had no intention of turning him over. You forced this to happen, so quit your bitching.

For those of you who've never seen it before, this is a guy ready to fucking kill someone if the try any sort of shit. No one got hurt except for the federal agents who were pelted by the stupid people out in the street. Even then there were no serious injuries. The whole thing looked like it went well, especially given the Feds recent track record of shooting everyone and detting their buildings on fire. Kudos to you INS!

•A quick update...

Well, I’ve been pretty lazy about updating the last couple of days since there isn’t much currently going on. A couple of nasty bugs have popped up on Sonoma since the patch: one that lets you steal people’s spell books, and another that let’s you take locked-down items. According to Jalek, these have already been fixed in the next mini-patch. There’s an issue with people’s rares becoming unmoveable as a result of the changes they put in to make the respawned rares unlootable. Also, after the patch 2-handed weapons that are already poisoned will lose their poison. I guess they didn’t want a repeat of all those pre-patch weapons running around. Use up those DP Hallys this weekend, because they’ll be regular ones soon.

Watts over at UO Terror wrote a good essay about how becoming a Bob, and my willing thrall, is a fun break from the usual UO drudgery. Don’t forget, The next Bob event is Saturday, April 29th on Chesapeake. That gives you a week to get a guy going. Just Follow the directions on the Bob page and you can’t go wrong!

•We are an equal opportunity linker.

Flame this guy please.

•Stuph.

First, this guy is not funny at all, and his site makes my eyes hurt.

On a cheerful note, Jinx loves me. I didn't have to kiss ass this time either. Woot.

On a confused note, don't ask me why, but Fear went to the UOHOC chat. Apparently, if someone in your party takes a murder count, everyone in the party gets fame and karma loss. That may be stupid, but it really works both ways. You can join a party with a mule and not touch anything, but still get fame and karma when your party members kill a monster (thanks to the updater who desperately needs to use a spell checker for the heads up).

On a pointless note, Hairy Dick II has arrived. What I'm referring to is Heretic II. The first one sucked hairy dick and the title sounds just like it. It's a perfect match. What does this have to do with anything? Not sure.

•The Donkey and the Carrot

In this, my first update here at UOPG, I’d like to talk about the problems that OSI has had in getting UO:R out to the servers and running. I can understand when they have problems getting something to work. A game as vast and original as UO is extremely complicated to do well, but I’m tired of being treated like a donkey. OSI tells us that the new features will be active one day, then says the next day, then the next, ad nauseum. Instead of taking it on the chin, and telling us, the players, that they were not finished and the update was NOT ready, they kept leading us on with the carrot of new features and more space for housing. Somewhere in the cannons of business ethics, I think there is some prohibition on lying to your customers like that.

The patch is now active on Sonoma, and is, we hope, working as intended, so that the patch can be published to all shards as soon as possible. I need to place that stupid tower deed. So, OSI, take those blinders off, throw away the carrot, and don’t publish, or even hint about publishing, something that you have not tested completely beforehand. That way I can stop making these braying noises at the keyboard.

•A rose by any other name...

I reported that this was coming a while ago over on my own site. Read it and weep:

“We would like to take this opportunity to remind you that inappropriate (racist, discriminatory, sexually explicit, derogatory, or offensive in any way) names are in violation of both the spirit of the Ultima Online community and the Ultima Online Service Agreement. As such, we urge that you take the time to delete any characters on your account that have names that may be considered inappropriate.

This warning extends to guild titles as well. If you are a member of a guild and have an inappropriate guild title, it is your responsibility to change the guild title (if you are the guildmaster), or have your guildmaster change it for you. Guildmasters are responsible for the titles associated with their guild members and will be held accountable for inappropriate guild titles. If you are unable to contact your guildmaster, then you should resign from the guild to remove the title.

Please be aware that if we find characters on your account with inappropriate names or guild titles, your account will be subject to discipline and may be subject to permanent suspension.”

Personally, I believe that this will harm the game more than anything else that OSI has done. The part that’s causing me all the concern is "or offensive in any way". That covers alot of ground, and UO is packed full of people who love to be offended at the drop of a hat. UO history Has shown that it’s players love to call GMs in order to “get” people, and every one of them is going to have a different standard of what’s offensive in “any way”. I don’t believe any of my characters would fall under this category, but I’m sure someone will try to make a strong case the next time I kill someone with Cherry Poptart or Vroom Socko. Sure, they’re not equivalent to Supaj3wkilla or Dick Gozinya, but they don’t “fit” in UO any better than Pimphawk Deathbane does. So now we’re going to have to sweat it every time we kill someone because we didn’t use a character named Tristam of Yew?

I don’t know about you guys, but I base a lot of my decisions on the names of people approaching me. When I see someone named pSyChOkIlla, I know that he’s probably a fucknut who’s up to something. Making pSyChOkILLa play a guy named Theobald isn’t going to make him role-play or behave, it just means that Theobald is the name of the guy who attacks you with no warning. A rose by any other names smells as sweet and l00tz4fUn is going to be a grief player. You just won’t have a clue until it’s too late.

Personally, if this goes “official” I will spend every minute I have at work scouring the character database looking for Sephiroths, Gandalphs, any real life person, any fictional character, any name that starts with a noun or a lower-case letter, and especially any elves or vampires. Then, next time I log on, I will spend hour after hour reporting them. None of them fit the UO fiction any better than Assrap3r does, and their presence has always offended me.

What really pisses me off most about this is that they want you to delete a two year old 7X GM character after dangling name-change deeds in front of us for almost a year. If you want to be a hard-ass about proper names, give us the name change deeds or set up a period of time where GMs must change the names of any character the player needs them to.

After I’m banned for spamming the GM queue, I think I’ll join Redrum in a game of Moo-rtal Combat, where I can pit my fireball-shooting, roundhouse-kicking Giant cow against his. B & W does look like a lot of fun. One of the earlier movies showed a giant hand picking up a villager and tossing him through the air. Another movie had the hand pull a tree out of the ground and swing it around before throwing it. Anyone thinking what I’m thinking? Screw populous style fighting actions, I want to play some Villager Baseball!

•Art imitates life, and it's fucking sad.

If you heard someone saying the following things, what country do you think they'ds be talking about?

"Where would one go to see a cast of outrageously wild characters dressed in odd-but-uniform military gear and going by names that would make a sailor blush? At the premiere of Oliver Stone's next flick? Nope...General No-Mother-No-Father, General Housebreaker, General Fuck-Me-Quick and the gregarious General Butt Naked were just some of the colorful and oft-defeated warriors. General Butt Naked was particularly visible since he fought battles in his prime-evil buff--his only uniform was a pair of scuffed tennis shoes and his only armor the protective stench of stale liquor no bullet would dare penetrate. Around him chanted young children brandishing sticks and swearing like diseased sailors."

"if you see anyone dressed in a wig, a Batman mask or a ballgown--run like hell. In a macabre twist to the killing and maiming, tribal militiamen don the clothing of clowns and women while razing villages and slaughtering and raping their inhabitants."

"Like the end of a bad nihilistic science fiction movie, we are leaving a social experiment gone badly wrong and can't wait for the lights to come up and the darkness to end."

If you guessed Brittania, you're only technically wrong. The nation in question is actually Liberia. You can read the rest of the travel guide at Fielding's Danger Finder. If you plan on travelling abroad, it's well worth reading the site. It's packed full of useful information that can make the difference between you becoming a corpse, a prisoner, or a happy tourist. Having traveled to a lot of places that made me cry over the state of mankind while in the service, let me testify that these guys give some of the best advice I’ve ever heard.

Which brings me to my next point: Be thankful that you have a life where you have the luxury of a computer. There are way to many places in the world where real life is no different than the social ghetto of UO. People live without electricity or running water and kids will kill you for fun or your wallet. The only difference between places like UO and most of Africa and big chunks of Latin America is you stay dead in real life. During this holiday season, be thankful that your biggest problems are whether you’ll be able to place a castle or that you’ll need a new car in a few months. There are way to many people doing everything they can to get here in the slightest hopes that they can stay and become the lowest rung of our society because even that is better than the choices they have back home.

On that depressing note let me just say that it's time for the Cuban ex-pats to shut the fuck up, quit stalling like whiney fucking babies, and give that kid back to his Dad. Your community might have some clout in Florida, but the rest of the country isn't impressed. In fact, I could normally give two shits about Castro and what you're all up to, but I'm starting to think about how funny it will be seeing you gunned down when the Feds have to take the kid by force. You all deserve to be in jail for Kidnapping. Never rely on the continued goodwill of the American public: we're as fickle as teenage girl, but have the hitting power of Mike Tyson.

•Stating the obvious

Thanks to the people who took a minute to email me their thoughts on UO2. Most people say they will in fact buy the game. Most also say they are displeased with OSI and they way they have done things. Ok so the fact that OSI has screwed up your game and you believe they will screw up the next one won't stop you from playing it? This is where it gets tricky, and I find myself debating this at times. Are the risks worth the rewards? I'm not going to make excuses for OSI. They do that enough on their own.

UO was a huge undertaking and really the first game with such an immersive world so of course there were going to be bugs and screw ups. I think the legitimate gripe lies in how long it took them to pull their head out of their asses to fix them. I for one am willing to give them another shot. For all the bitching I have done and all of the problems I have seen and the wrongs done.. I still play the game. I play it for the people, and the immersion.

The only advice I can give to those upset with osi and or other game developers is realize that we are pioneers in the online gaming industry, guinea pigs so to speak. Just like any other pioneers, we get the benefit of having a completely new experience but combined with the headaches of dealing with new technology.

•Despite what Angry says, this game will own.

There's 5 new (6 days is new in my world) Black and White movies at Brotherhood of Eden. Two of them suck, so I'll just link the remaining three. You can find them here, here and here. They're all about 2.5-3 MB's, so they're not too big.

The first one shows the inside of your citadel, the second one shows you healing your bitchlings and the third one shows your creature casting fireball (looks awesome).

•You have new mail!

It seems lots of people are interested in updating, but there's only one problem: it's not for UO. The updates here are fine. In fact, we updated this page more in 7 days than I did when I was updating alone in 7 months (mainly because I sleep 12 hours a day, and don't feel like updating when I'm awake). What I'm specifically looking for is updaters for all online RPG's except UO, because this site covers UO already.

99% of the e-mails received were from people interested in updating about UO because they don't play anything else. Clarification: it's just news. You don't have to update about new PvP tactics for a game or anything like that. All that you really have to do is find news/information about a game aspect that's interesting to you (even if you don't play it) then throw in your thoughts/comments/complaints. Pretty simple and isn't actually working - hence why you and I don't get paid (although, arguably, I should get paid for just being cool).

I'm still sorting out all the e-mails, so if I didn't get back to you yet, don't worry. I will shortly.

In other news, it seems as if the time is messed up. I have it set for CENTRAL (quadruple checked), but it's one hour behind. If the last update shows up to be an hour earlier, you'll know why.

•For those to lazy to click

These are comments from Damion "Ubiq" Schubert, lead designer from UO2. Now we've heard things like this in the past but to steal a word from Rum.. there is a "genuisity" about this guy. I can smell bullshit a mile away, but reading this gave me what I refer to as a warm fuzzy. The worst thing we hardcore UO gamers can do is hype this up to the point where it can do nothing but fail. We all know what to expect when that happens now don't we? I still can't help but get excited thinking about it. Listen to this comment from Ubiq:

UO2 is going to be the best thing coming when it comes to doing the things we really like doing in MMPRPGs, be it role-playing, adventuring, socializing, or going mano a mano with other players. On top of it all, we are designing the game systems from the outset to be fast, stable and easily expandable. When I look at what we're doing here, well.... there's no other way to describe it other than to say that it's the next generation of persistent world gaming.

In the skill system we've devised, players should be unable to master all of the magic skills on their own, much less be master of both magic and combat! It will take a LOT of skill points to become a master of any one school of magic, or any one school of combat. Don't get me wrong - players will be able to create warrior-mage characters. However, these characters will find that their individual skills are nowhere near those of someone who dedicated all of his/her learning towards one or the other.

There has always been one thing that bugged me in UO. And that is the fact that a mage has been able to wield a sword and wear armor and still perform very effectively. Now don't get me wrong. I love wielding my haly after an explosion as much as the next guy, but it has never made sense in my mind. If you look at it realistically, you should not be able to have a sword wielding,spell casting tank mage. This created an "elitism" type of character in UO. Instead of having to rely on a well balanced team of players. The "tank mage" can pretty much do it all and be a recluse. For those that are just hopelessly anti-social, it appears the road to being a "tank mage" will be very difficult in UO2. I like that.

•Stratics cheats.

Stratics did a new UO II interview with the producer. You can find it here. He does point out one important thing:

A unique naming system has been discussed, including a name filter. Will the filter cover all supermodels, rappers, executed serial killers and most importantly egotistical webmasters?

Of course! To make sure we are filtering out all objectionable names, the player will only have 4 naming options: Bob, Fred, Jane, and Barbara.

Note: you do not have to e-mail me telling me that I'm blind. I put that on there because there is nothing interesting in the interview.

On the other side of the table, UO II Vault did an interview with Ubiq; the designer that says more in one interview than the producer says in 50. You can find it here.

And to not feel left out, CONB stole what Ubiq said about the team and properly placed it here.

•We have a problem, jonny.

Redrum's official world-wide network of pissing and moaning is almost complete, and should be public within the next couple of weeks. Mainly because everyone who was going to make an informational site about a game decided "fuck this" and quit. Unfortunately, the site won't work without some resources - otherwise known as people. We're looking for news updaters - only instead of updating just about UO, it's about all RPG's (both online and massively-multiplayer) in general. You see, that way, we can copy and paste from 5000 sites instead of just 3 or 4, then throw in some thoughts, commentary and, of course, pissing and moaning. Brilliance on my part, indeed.

Little HTML knowledge (fonts, links, etc) is needed, because the news generator does most of it for you. If you don't know HTML, I'll teach you the basics. You must also be able to speak in proper english.

Reasons to be a news updater? Free beer and dancing girls/guys. Drop me a line if you're interested.

We are an equal opportunity employer. Kind of.

•UO2 Stratics Site

UOII now has a stratics site. You can check it out here No real new or useful information as of yet, but the layout is nice and organized. Also, I'm curious as to the interest level that is out there concerning UO2.Throw me some feedback either in the forum or by email on your thoughts. Are you really anticipating UO2's release? Or are you disenchanted with OSI and the way they have done things? If the latter is the case, Will that stop you from buying? I'm interested.

•Duh.

I logged back in to Chesie test with my other account and everything was normal except for no leaves and lots of tombstones. The reason all the buildings were gone with my other account was because I was in Newbie Land. Duh, I'm thick as a brick sometimes.

•Test the patch...

When you log on today, you'll get a pop-up to go test the changes on Test Sonoma. I didn't see any Test Sonoma, but I did see a Test Chesapeake. I logged in a character who would be at our X-roads house and got a nasty surprise.

I logged back in a few hours later and all the buildings on the shard were gone, so maybe it was intended. Anyway, check out the patch so we don't end up having to revert to a backup or something gay like that. Of course if you play on the west coast servers you're probably use to them.

By the way, my post about the blue corpses wasn't a "how to", it was meant to be a "how to avoid 'tards guard killing you".

•Just to piss Runesabre off.

The training skills in your home (castle owners only) and kill NPC's without taking murder counts' bugs that Exwhyze (side note: incase you're wondering what the hell his name means; if you pronounce it, it's "XYZ". Not as cool as mine, of course, but it makes sense) posted about earlier were added to the bugs section. Funny how a site that isn't totally focused on bugs has more bugs than sites that are only about bugs do. Despite the fact that I quit (and am not going to come back 2 hours later), my stance on bugs still stands. I will not post major bugs (in the current case, the parry and bless bugs that I get sent 50 times a day).

In other news, this site is not going anywhere. The only way this site is shutting down is if nobody comes, which doesn't seem to be happening at the moment. I might not talk about UO anymore, but the updaters do. Praise them.

•The wake up call

In an effort to preserve the integrity of the game I play, I have decided to start posting on this site. It is my hope to reflect the opinions of what I feel are the majority of the informed ultima online community and hopefully educate those whose only comments on the state of UO are, "man OSI sucks, I hate OSI..they're fucking up the game." I can only hope to provide a reasonable voice and maybe, just maybe get some of our fellow players to look at things rationally. Now let me say that 90% of my online time, is spent actually playing UO. I only play one other game for short term maniacal rage so I will not be posting on any other MMORPG's with the exception of UO II, which I will be covering exclusively for Rum in the months to come. Until then my time is being spent in Brittania.

There is a disturbing trend that has been going on for a while now, and this is the attitude that alot of fellow pvpers have taken in that they feel they are bigger than the game. Newsflash:You are not bigger than the game.

I don't know what it is about paying $10 dollars a month for an rpg that gives people the sense that they can come on and make complete assholes of themselves by reiterating their so called proprietorship over another player. Unfortunately, being a hardcore pvper, I have to put up with the endless cycle of bitching, whining and overall lack of intelligence that is so often found in the pvp community. I will share my opinion of reds and stat loss in an upcoming post, but for now I have a few comments on the state of warfare amongst players.

I play on a nasty shard, known for dupes, seedy players, and arguably the baddest ass pvpers in the games history. But that is what it is..history. And what kills me is the amount of players that quit because they couldn't handle the changes being made. I play a 7x gm. Before all of the updates I would win the majority of my duels, fairly easily I might add. Now, it's not as easy. And I like that. The game is more balanced now, meaning that there are very few Elite players, and that just pisses some people off. Let me say, I am not an osi supporter or antagonizer. I call things the way I see them, and right now I see nothing but a bunch of worthless bitching about what osi is doing to the game which, in my opinion, has been nothing but good as of late. So take this how you want to. If you don't like the game anymore do us both a favor and go here and sell your shit to someone who might actually contribute something to the game other than an overinflated sense of self importance. As for the upcoming changes, I don't know what to expect but you can expect that I will still be your daddy whether I have to equip a spellbook to cast or not. :p

•This is how you get loot if you're too weak to kill stuff .

Just in case some of you weren't aware, you can chop up your own corpse and take the body parts so that it leaves behind a blue skeleton. For the most part only total homo's use this tactic, homo's like KroNiKiLLeR and PoLyThEmUs from First Church of Light on Chesapeake.

As you can see in the picture below, the corpse looks perfectly lootable, but when I single-clicked it, it was blue.

The reason only 'tards use this tactic is because you only get newbies to open up anything without checking it first, and you can usually get better loot from killing an Orc Lord than you do from most newbies.

Don't get me wrong, I'm pro-killing people, I'm just anti-gimp. If you do this sort of shit, you're a gimp. If you're going to be a grief player be a man about it and PK people.

So if you didn't already know about this, single click any corpse before you loot it. Most crap that involves turning newbies grey involves opening some sort of object, whether it's this new, gay trend or the old one where they have a pet guard something.

•Webmaster for EQ found.

Thanks to all 5 of you that responded with, "I played EQ then quit, and so did all of my friends". I especially like this comment:

Here is all you need to know about the tactics of EQ:

Call up their customer support and say "I quit"

It gave me a laugh, since that's what I did myself. Fortunately, a friend still plays EQ (don't ask me why) and is interested in making one. Luckily for me, I get to make the site... again. Expect it to be up within a few days - for the 1, 2 or none of you that actually play EQ and give a shit.

•It's about time they kicked his ass out...

The Age of Darkness site was finally revamped. The old site looked like it was made like an 8 year old. My first site I ever made even looked better. It looks professional now. In addition, they put up a poll on how many characters you think there should be.

In other games that are going to suck goat nuts news, the design for the townhouse for Adellion was revealed. Apparently, it looks better in-game. They made it below-average quality so it doesn't take 8 hours to download.

It will be interesting to see how this game turns out. As said before, it's going to be played on the web browser; using java... I don't like the sound of that. Alpha testing starts in 6 days and beta (open to all) starts on June 1st, so we'll see then.

Of course, you could always screw them both and sign-up for Quake; RPG style.

•Markee Dragon staff banned...

Well, it seems that Tiberius, ColdSun, and Chandral had all of their accounts terminated for posting bugs on their website. While not as large a banning as KoC or SUN, it's still an important piece of news since just about everyone has posted at least one bug on their site at some point. Maybe OSI was just trying to nip the next Twister in the bud. Oh well, you can visit their site at www.markeedragon.com for more information.

•Newsflash: Battle Vortex invents oxygen, or takes the credit anyway.

It's starting to remind me of Old Man Murray vs. The Mushroom, or Musashi vs. Those Dumb Fruits from GOTMilk, but the next Everybody vs. Retards web-battle seems to be centered on Adrick quitting UO every fifteen minutes only to re-activate his account and take credit for something.

Click in the picture of Fear and Adrick to go to their site and read cryptic, fragmented sentences displayed amidst the most confusing website ever written in english.

•News about UO! Patch is Saturday Morning.

If you haven't already heard, Sonoma is going to be the guinea pig for the patch Saturday morning. Hopefully things will go off without a hitch and we'll all be able to begin our campaigns of passive-aggressive grief-playing without fear of being killed a few days later. I've decided to use this picture of Fear prancing like a fruit in a bunny suit as my official mascot, but feel free to pretend he's somebody that you think is special. Only thirty-something hours to go! May god have mercy on our souls...

•Upcoming plans.

Seeing how 99% of the updates on this site are not related to UO whatsoever, I'm making a semi-network. Only a semi-network because there's only 3 games out. Information, tactics and strategy is more important than a release date about an upcoming game - at least in my mind anyway.

The main page is where all of the non-sense and other bullshit about all games in general is going to be (instead of on this site) and the sub-sites are going to be related to whatever game and that game only. Makes sense.

UO is a given, AC is being worked on by someone else, Diablo II is going to be mine whenever it comes out, and EQ is the only one not taken care of. Does anybody play and know the ropes for this lame game? If so, I'd be happy to steal you and give you your own site. If you don't know HTML, I could make you the page and teach you the basics. Having no life is preferred. If you're interested, let me know.

I will also be hosting interesting sites (note: porn is interesting, but does not qualify). RPG-related sites in particular is all that's needed.

When I make the network, it will be on a virtual domain (www.whatever.com) with unlimited space (don't upload a bunch of files if you didn't create them), cgi access, etc. You will also get your own username and password, so only you will have access to the FTP site. So don't worry, the URL won't be uopg.uoguilds.com/sub-site and everyone has access to the FTP site. I might be mildly insane, but I'm not an idiot. The only requirement is that you put up an ad on every page, since I'm getting hosted myself (as if I would pay).

These are just "upcoming" plans and there's lots of shit to do yet, so all of the non-related topics and general bullshit will still be here for the time being. Give it a week or 80.

•Rust never sleeps, and neither do I.

My perverse fascination with making people "get" the concept of "The Wall" in Deciet has risen to new heights. Behold the first draft of my Guide to the Wall. It's on my page, which is a crappy Geocities site, so it might take an hour or four to load if it's daylight out.

•Stealing update and OSI bullshit.

The stealing page has been updated. Basically, it's what was mentioned a few weeks ago: escort nobles and steal their gold.

In other news, as you probably heard already, UO:R is being delayed but they're selling the CD anyway. I wonder who's the moron at OSI who actually thinks ideas like this are good. That's just fucked up. They've done a ton of stupid shit before, but this is the worst that I've seen. How can you release a product that actually doesn't have any of the shit that it says it does? You'd think that since a whole heep-load of competetion is coming along that, oh, I don't know, maybe they would get their act together.

In light of this, I gave away my houses and cancelled my account. Fuck 'em. That's as low as you can go and I don't even find the game fun anymore. I guess I'm going to get Diablo II afterall. I'm sure it will keep me in it for at least a good few months. Even if it isn't that great, all my friends are going to be playing. Now, just because I'm quitting doesn't mean this site won't still be around. I haven't played for about a month and I'm still updating just fine. I have lots of low-life friends, you know.

This must be the first time that someone didn't make a boring ass speech about the time they had in UO and sell their account. I'm genuine. Feel my geniunisity (couldn't think of anything better, so blow me).

•If you're working on smithing, do it quick!

I posted last week that the smithing difficulties on test center were rolled back to pre-exceptional mark levels. Thanks to the tireless efforts of The United Blacksmiths of Brittania, we have some hard numbers on the new difficulties. It's a mixed bag of good and bad news: Good if you're already a GM smith or close to being one, bad if you're not.

With the exception of plate armor the difficulty for items has been cut by at least 25%, but 40% is average. That means just about everything a GM makes will be exceptional everytime he makes it. The down side is, the only thing that will give decent gain after about 80 is plate chests. I think it's approopiate that 80 looks like a little screaming sideways face, because getting twenty more skill point with chests is a bitchload harder than doing it with long spears or katanas. Take it from me, cause that's the way I had to do it when I made my GM smith. If you don't already have a GM miner, you will by the time you finish off smithing. Assuming they fix mining gains that is. If you plan on getting GM smith, get cracking now. Smith like little Keebler Elves make cookies, because getting skill will be a pain after the patch.

•Oh boy, something new to exploit!

First, OSI says that co-owners can't place a house. Now they say that co-owners can (the FAQ hasn't been updated, but Cal said so, so there). What does this mean? It means that the one house per account rule is pointless, because you can put the owner of a house that you currently own on a new or shitty character, delete that character and you will be able to place in the new lands with another character. Thus, all of your characters will be co-owned to the other house and you will be able to place another. You will now have 2 houses. You can do this a few times if you have enough characters to delete and houses currently owned.

Of course, this won't happen if they fix it by making it so co-owners can't place houses when the new lands come.

•Let's spread the love.

Seeing how not everyone in the world has a site hosted at UO Guilds, I put up instructions on how to use NewsPro if you don't use UO Guilds. It's basically the same thing; just a different path and possibly different extensions. Go here if you're brain-dead.

•Ok, so B&W vault doesn't have "everything".

There's a Black & White movie at the B&W Zone (don't bother if you don't understand German). It can be found here. It's about 13 MB's. It's pretty interesting. It shows how far you can zoom in and out (up close or all the way up to the sky), what your powers are and your bitchling's chanting and dancing at your citadel.

Thanks to The Oxygen Tank for the info.

•Behold: My screed of Kookery!

For my first post here, I thought I’d actually write something with some substance instead of the crap I normally post on my own site: My doctoral thesis on which MMORPG will have the best PvP.

Pretty much everybody thought that it was going to be Diablo II, but the news from the beta front doesn’t sound too promising. With only eight players per server guild warfare is pretty much out, and the whole hostility declaration pretty much rules out catching anybody unaware down in the dungeon. I mean, if I were on and six people log in to the server followed by six “PlayerX is Hostile towards You!” messages, why the hell would I stick around? Heck, even if you do manage to kill someone, you can’t really get anything good off of them. Naw, Diablo II will be fun and I’ll play it, but it isn’t going to take the PvP world by storm.

Black and White looks really cool, but it suffers from the same thing: even on multi-player, it’s a single player game. Sure, you could get all your friends to log in with their giant anthropomorphized cows and trample somebody’s fruity little villagers to death, but it just doesn’t sound as exciting as riding around with your friends hunting someone. It also sounds like you won’t be able to directly control your horde of little people or your Giant Cow for that matter. I imagine it will be sort of like Populous where you “direct” them to do something, and the AI takes care of the rest. Unless Peter Monkeynuts has managed to steal some sort of Starfleet AI program, you can count on your little guys to just stand around doing nothing at pivotal moments. Nothing spells “Pissed Off” like twenty villagers walking single file into an ambush or you soldiers standing around while some other guy’s villagers burn your shit one inch away from them. That might not make break a mouse in single player, both Logitech will own my paycheck if some twelve year old is taunting me while my village is destroyed because my guys can’t figure out how to quickly get around trees.

Shadowbane? I have to admit I don’t really know much about it. The boobs really appealed to me, and it fits in with my plan to buy products solely on how much they pander to my baser urges. To be honest, I’d like to see how they plan on keeping powergamers from killing everyone, but still remain true to their plans. I guess we’ll see.

So what do I think is going to be the best game for PvP? Neverwinter Nights. Yeah, you heard me right, Neverwinter Nights. Even though the designers put no thought into that aspect of it (as near as I can tell) the game will be almost perfect for organized, or even un-organized PvP and here’s why:

1. Player run servers able to run player crafted maps, but able to set restrictions on what sort of characters can play: Look at what this did for the Team Fortress and Quake communities. Right now they are saying that the average home server will support 64 players. That’s big enough for two large guilds to duke it out pretty thoroughly. You’ll be able to set your server to only accept characters from the NWN vault, so you won’t have to worry about cheaters or twinked out characters. The Vault will simply remove inappropriate items from characters before it saves them. A third level guy would keep his +2 sword, but not a Hand of Vecna. By using only official Vault characters, players would be able to play and level their characters on just about any server, then just log into the competition server for clan fights. Hell, there will eventually be leagues ala TF where clans duke it out on league maps to see who’s number one. The fact that the maps will be player craftable opens up a whole new world of clan warfare. Have a guildmate make your guild’s fortress and invite rival guilds to try to get in and steal a do-dad or just plain take over the keep. If you’re an orc clan, make a Mot and Bailey style fort: if you’re dark elves, make an elaborate series of underground tunnels riddled with traps. The point is, you’ll be able to make it yours and on your terms. Guilds that cheat or make inappropriately hard maps (Glyphs of Warding every inch) would eventually be shunned and find opponents dry up.

2. Diversity with familiarity: I case you haven’t heard, the game uses the new 3rd edition D&D rules. Every player class, race, spell, and skill in them will be available. No guessing what stats will do, what happens when you cast a spell, or why your guild of orcs look like humans with crappy armor. I think it’s safe to say that most people playing MMORPGs are familiar enough with D&D to make intelligent choices about their characters. Guilds would need thieves to disarm defensive traps and scout ahead. Archers could actually man castle walls, and the different schools of magic would actually have different effects.

3. Players would have nothing to loose if they die, but the victors still get loot. The way the Vault works, if you die you just loose experience and loot you gained from the adventure you died in. If you survive, you keep the loot you got, if not you end up with what you came with. Most people don’t engage in PvP for fear of losing “important” objects. This will remove that fear and encourage just about everyone who plays the game to participate through positive re-enforcement. That’s the kind that works best by the way.

There’s a bunch more, but my hands are tired. Maybe I’ll write more later. Post your thought in the forum!

•New show.

Battle Vortex just released a new real audio show with tOAD. They mainly talk about magery, necromancy and factions. A couple of interesting points brought up are that necromancy is coming this year and there won't be any blue-healing in factions (you have to be in the faction to cast "good" spells on faction members). He didn't sound too sure about the alchemy changes though. Sounds like ex-programmers/designers were working on it. Anyway, there's lots of interesting things talked about, so go listen.

•So the Vault is good for at least one thing...

I was planning on making a Black & White site, since the game sounds too fucking cool to ignore, but there's a B&A Vault with all of the information you want to know. It's also updated frequently. If you're interested in B&A, that's the site to bookmark.

In site news, there's going to be another updater. I stole Angry Bob. I love what he updates about and visit his site frequently, so there shouldn't be any problems.

•Finally, an MMORPG with a point.

I heard of Black & White before, but there was never any information about it anywhere. B&A Crossroads doesn't have one piece of information on it, nor a link to the main site. Thankfully, Gamespot wrote up about it, and I finally found the official site.

Two words about this game: sweet shit. Basically, you're a god. You're a creature that's the biggest thing on the screen. Check this screenshot out to see how big. There's tribes - the NPC's. Apparently, they have awesome artificial intelligence. What you do is do good deeds (quests) for these tribes and they worship you. Once they're your personal bitchling (or slave, in "not cool person" terms), you summon them to your Citadel. From there, they chant your name and make asses out of themselves, and that gives you lifeforce - what you need to cast spells. Each tribe gives different pieces of lifeforce, which means a more variety of spells.

We'll take UO's spells as examples. There's good spells (heal, cure, etc) and bad spells (energy bolt, flamestrike, etc). If you use good spells, your land will be full of "joy". There will be flowers, the grass will be green and everyone will be gay. If you cast bad spells, however, everything turns black with skulls, blood and all of that good stuff. That's where the name black and white came from. Nifty.

But anyway, what you're supposed to do is make your tribe stronger and stronger. You do it just like animals do it now. Kill prey and give them to their babies. That's basically what you do. The weird thing is, it's just like real life. Here's some snips I took from the official site:

By plucking any living beast you might find in the game-world and dropping it into your citadel, this unfortunate creature goes through a magical transformation. Like a child, it begins to grow. It grows. And grows… By the time it reaches adulthood, it will have transformed into a gargantuan creature towering above the tribesmen, able to flatten a whole village with a single footstep. Exactly how it conducts itself as it strides across the countryside will depend on how you have raised it.

As you may choose to use good or evil magic, you may also choose to raise your titanic familiar to be good or evil. This you must do in training sessions whilst the game progresses. As you might with a growing child, you must punish it when it does anything wrong and reward it when it acts correctly. If the creature is hungry and stuffs its mouth full of tribesmen, you will probably reward it if these tribesmen are followers of a rival sorcerer. If they are your own, people, you will thrash it. Gradually the creature will learn what it may and may not do.

If they can pull that off, it will be amazing. Imagine if the AI was that intense that it reflects off how people are in real life. It will make every other game on the market nothing compared to it. Can they do it, is the question though.

Back to the objective: you make your tribe as strong as possible then fight other players. You need your tribe for the lifeforce, thus why it's so important to make it as strong as possible. The PvP sounds intense. Apparently, earthquake makes the ground break, lightning shoots lightning that looks like lightning from the sky and more.

The only thing that I don't like is the fact that you can transfer your creature from single-player to multi-player. This shouldn't be.

Overall, it sounds unbelievable. I'm definately looking forward to it. I just hope it's as good as it sounds. It's supposed to come out some time this year.

•Too many damn games to keep up.

3DO, the creators of the Might and Magic series, are making another addition. Only this time, it won't like cat puke, like the last one. It will look cool, for once. Anyway, check out GA-Source's preview.

You can only play up to 6 players on the net, but that's fine. I just hope the Zone isn't needed to play. It looks like it's going to be a game to look forward to this year. It's supposed to be released sometime this fall. Seems as if everyone and their mom's uncle's dog is making a medieval RPG this year.

•It's time to make a tamer RIGHT NOW.

Being late as always, I just read the UOHOC chat that was posted 3 days ago, and I have to say that the bit about the tamers is ridicilous. Basically, tamed pets heal and cure themselves at ease. Tamers are overpowered as it is (don't even go with the "but taming isn't macroable" path, because nothing can be macroed anymore. Add that to the fact that 90% of the people that play UO have no life whatsoever and you can just buy a fresh 7xGM tamer from E-Bay makes it a dead excuse) - they don't need this also.

The only thing that the tamer has to do is feed their pet and heal/cure them. That's easy enough as it is. It's insane to make it so all they have to do is feed 'em once a day, while the pets take care of themselves. You should have to be responsible for your pet - not just spend 5 seconds taming it, give it a cracker and it will be your slave for life (at least this should not be the case for high-level pets).

Let's not forget that killing a tamer currently is pretty damn hard. You need to have one person have the pet chase after him while you kill the "lack-of-skills" tamer. I don't think that will happen if the pet teleports and kills you in 5 seconds (if they heal/cure themselves, it's a pretty good bet that they get all of the monster AI advancements).

Bleh.

•It's good to know that I'm not the only stupid one around here.

In light of the recent "yo, I can't get newspro to work and I use UO Guilds also" e-mails I received, I put up an articles page with step-by-step instructions.

I'm a saint.

•I love being lazy.

Thanks to Lum and PK Ghost, I finally got NewsPro to work (yes, it takes two people to explain something so simple to me). It's good to know that I don't have to type anything but the subject and news, ever again. Laziness is a virtue. Anyone who tells you different has no reason to exist on earth.

In other news, I got this link in the mail. Looks like commentary and humor. Also, they give away free UO stuff every week. Nothing wrong with that.