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February 2002 News:
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^ top-OSI Makes a Stand on Purple Sigil Items
[Nissa] February 28 - 2:34 PM EST | This was posted to FYI
We announced back in August that we would be taking a stronger stand on illegal purple-hued sigil items. As of that time, and continuing today, any players found selling these items, either in-game or out-of-game, will receive an automatic 72-hour suspension from Ultima Online, a final warning on their account, and the items will be deleted. Any accounts that have already been placed under final warning will be terminated.
Players were urged at that time to dispose of any remaining items that were illegally dyed through this exploit. As of now, any of these items found will be deleted, whether it’s in a player’s pack, bank, or house, and a mark will be placed on the account of the player who had the item in their possession (or the owner of the house if the item was in a house).
Just as a reminder, anything that can be dyed through use of a normal dye tub, including clothing, metal kite shields, and all footwear (excluding sandals) can be hued this shade legally. If an item is purple, and cannot be dyed through the use of a normal dye tub, it is a result of the sigil exploit, and should be disposed of immediately. It is vital that we enforce a NO TOLERANCE rule against exploits in Ultima Online.
Thank you for your understanding,
Ultima Online Support
You have been warned. Not only will they delete the item, they will mark your account. Hey guys, they are just pixels. Delete them. |
^ top-Prophet on...well...a bunch of stuff.
[Catgirl] February 28 - 12:03 AM EST | Okay, this is culled from a chat log I very VERY graciously received from Ray_CG (thanks guy) of Lead Programmer Prophet making a few remarks in #Ultima-Online on Stratics. I've chopped out quite a bit, because it was more than 20k, but here's some of the juicy bits:
<Prophet> Power hour is gone in 16 btw..
<Gilthas> Oh, because of GGS.
<Prophet> yup
<Prophet> GGS will rock so much better then power hour
Yup, it's confirmed. Powerhour is gone, as of Pub 16. Get your Mules done, folks. You'll see why in a bit.
<Ray_CG> Logon, flamestrike yourself, go eat, log back on, flamestrike, etc
<Prophet> won't work ray :) its actually the ALMOST guaranteed gain system
<Prophet> Well there is some anti-login do something, gain skill, logout code
<Jon_Snow> and someone will find a way to get around it, no doubts there.
<Ray_CG> Hrmm..how about, logon, do something, idle, do something, etc?
Looks like Undeez has some work cut out for him and his crew, eh? Haha. He loves a challenge.
<Prophet> plus by the time you get to the high 90's it a LONG time between GGS gain's
<Prophet> Jon: Of course but we arn't going to lose sleep over it
<Ray_CG> 3 hours isn't that long man...
<Prophet> OOoh is a bit longer then 3 hours last time I checked
<Prophet> I will have to double check those numbers tomorrow though
<Ray_CG> Four hours, sorry :<
<Ray_CG> That stil isn't very long
<Ray_CG> guaranteed .6 a day?
<Ray_CG> Think I might wait to GM carp, instead of wasting all that wood...
<Prophet> I think its more like 40 hours .1 in the 99
<Jon_Snow> Maybe if the 1 pet was actually trainable to what they are now...
<Ray_CG> you're doc must've changed then...
<Ray_CG> 99.0 - 100.0 240 mins
<Ray_CG> But hey, 40 is fine with me
<Prophet> Probably. we write the docs's before we write the systems so things will change.
<Ray_CG> Yeah, I figuired
<Jon_Snow> ...
<Jon_Snow> GGS is already written up?
<Prophet> yup
<Jon_Snow> Arrrr
<Prophet> Actually i wrote it in 2 days :)
Ouch...from 4 hours to 40. Well, that'll slow things down a bit, that it will. Nasty.
<Jon_Snow> has it been tested by Q&A?
<Jon_Snow> not that it would really matter :/
<Prophet> Not yet
<Prophet> Its in the super 16 publish
<Ray_CG> Pub 16 is, what, at least a month away?
<Prophet> at least. probably a bit longer
<Jon_Snow> 5 months.
<Jon_Snow> *nods*
<Ray_CG> Good, more time to test...
<Prophet> Not that long. no more then 2 months I would guess
Hmm...over a month, less than two. Get those Mules pumping, kids. Need those 7x Craftable monkeys done.
Here's a few more, uh, "off-color" remarks, too.
<Jon_Snow> That's what was said about rewards.
<Jon_Snow> and that was just 1 system.
<Prophet> Don't get me started with rewards
<Prophet> That was the most ______ system ever created.
<Prophet> I think the last time I talked about rewards in this channel I managed to get myself kicked...
<Prophet> There are some ideas that should be shot, dragged out back and buried in the desert. Rewards was that type of idea.
Heh...interesting opinions.
Anyway...it's majorly cut down, but if there's a "demand" for the full version, I can provide it. This is just more of the interesting tidbits.
Discuss. |
^ top-Housing to Decay
[LadyGrania] February 27 - 7:00 PM EST | Ok so it's not "true" powergamer news, but it's still news.
Just posted today to the FYI section of the UO update page:
Condemned Houses to Decay Feb 27 2002 4:50PM CST (GMT -06:00)
It's that time - the Britannian Housing Association has decreed that as of Thursday, February 28th, all condemned houses will once again be subject to decay! So it's moving time for all owners of condemned houses - please make sure that you've moved all items of value into your main house (the most recent one that you acquired). We are not responsible for any loss of items due to decay in a condemned house!
The length of time for a condemned house to decay is approximately 10 days. The earlier you take action, the better. You can redeed your condemned house, or transfer ownership of it to a player that does not currently own a house. It's important to note that GMs cannot remove the condemned status of a house, so please do not page them about the matter.
YAY! IDOCS!
Love Ya |
^ top-So, whats your idea?
[Gator] February 27 - 7:50 AM EST | I had an OIC (Officer in Charge) once tell me that "You should never bitch about what changes come down the line. Instead why dont you offer a better solution depending on the circumstances. Bitching never solves the problem it only creates more unneeded stress and concern. I want better solutions, not better bitching."
The other day OSI announced change two to its proposed "New Felucca Campaign" to create more livelyhood downunda in the lands of thunda. And ever since then message forums across the "great addiction" we call the internet have been screaming with "These changes suck!!" and WTF, I quit!!" Hell I think I even read a "How about a Pre-UO:R shard?" topic as well. Do some folks have a reason to be disgusted? Hell yeah. But how about lets hear some of your ideas. Toss that "Pre UO:R Shard" out the window, along with anything else crazy like that. Face the facts the UO of olde is gone. Some folks want one thing, others want another.
Hell the truth is, we are LUCKY TO STILL HAVE FELUCCA IN GENERAL. Theives and PKs are the minority in this game. Hell Feluccans are the minority. Count your blessings that we can still do things like we used to. But hanging around any forum threatening to quit wont solve anything. Hell you dont like it, theres the damn door, and dont let it hit you in the ass. Nobody, and I repeat NOBODY is forcing you to pay to play this game. So stick that in yer pipe.
How about lets hear some solutions, and some good ones at that. Your voice does count. But not when it is spent bitching up a storm. Instead of "Stat Deeds" what should they do to entice Trammels, or borderline players? Face facts there are some Trammies that want to come to Felucca, and alot of Feluccians want more folks there as well. Do the math. But there has to be a happy medium.
So whats your non-bitching solution?
Later |
^ top-New Bard Proposal
[Gator] February 27 - 6:07 AM EST | My question is when are we gonna see the Tamer Proposal? I would love to comment on this more, but I gotta get to work...
Possible Changes to Barding Skills (revised) Feb 26 2002 8:00PM CST
This is an updated version of the upcoming changes to the Barding profession, changes being considered toward helping balance Barding as a class, as well as toward improving the overall in-game experience of playing a bard. There is also a FAQ at the end of the document that we hope might clear up some of the questions players might have.
Bard Skills Revamp
For an upcoming publish, the Ultima Online Live Development team plans to make some substantial changes revolving around the game's Bard class. Our goals in making these changes are these:
To fix skill balance issues. This includes the relatively extreme power of the Provocation skill and the relatively weak power of Enticement. Provocation allows characters with minimal skill points to single-handedly kill some of the most powerful monsters in the game, while Enticement has very few worthwhile uses.
To improve the play experience of bards. As they currently stand, the bard skills generally do not require much interaction from the player. For example, once two creatures are provoked to fight each other, the bard need no longer interact with those creatures until one of them dies. As such, combat with a bard character isn't as engaging, exciting, or interesting as it could be.
To increase the versatility of bards. Currently, bards have a very small number of simple abilities, many of which have very limited use in Ultima Online. We wish to ultimately give bards a collection of different abilities that are individually not overbalancingly powerful. As a corollary goal, some of the new bard abilities added will be unique to bards and new to Ultima Online.
With those goals in mind, we have in mind a basic play experience planned for the new bard class. In general, it will work like this:
Bard songs. Bard songs will be an amalgamation of magic and music, voice and instrument. There will be no actual initiation time for a song, but bards will be limited to using bard abilities once every 10 seconds. After initiation, the duration of the song is open-ended, depending on numerous factors. For example, bards must pay a continuous but small upkeep cost in Stamina while the song continues, but bards with the Meditation skill will pay up to 75% of the upkeep cost using Mana. The Stamina/Mana upkeep costs will generally be very small, on the order of 1 per second. Maintaining a bard song won't stop the character's normal Mana or Stamina regeneration. It will to be a very slow but noticeable drain — an additional factor to take into consideration in combat. Also, bards are somewhat vulnerable to interruption by taking damage while a song continues.
While continuing a song, some events will have a chance to abort the song. First, if the bard initiates a new song, hides, casts Invisibility on himself, recalls, or steps through any kind of moongate, his or her bard song running will be cancelled. If a third party casts Invisibility on the bard while the bard is playing a song, the bard will become visible again within 5 seconds. Attacking, taking damage, casting spells, and actively meditating all have a small (normally 10% chance) of interrupting a bard's song. If the bard has Meditation skill, this chance scales downward to 5%. Moving; equipping/unequipping; using potions, wands, and staves; mounting/dismounting; using bandages; and any other activity will not interrupt the bard. (This list, along with this entire design, is subject to change.)
Song effects. The bard songs will have a mixture of effects. Some will be geared toward solo adventure, while others will be more useful with the bard assisting and supporting an ally. Some will be geared toward actively affecting combat, while others will have passive effects that modify rewards gained from many different types of activities. The Provoke, Entice, and Peacemake songs will have the ability to affect multiple targets.
Once a bard has successfully started one of these effects, he can add an additional target by re-initiating the same effect (it won't cancel the existing effect) and selecting different targets. Each additional target increases the difficulty of the skill check (lower chance of success) and if successful increases the Stamina/Mana upkeep cost. The bard must still remain fairly close to all targets of these effects. Also, when interruption checks are made, each target involved is checked individually for interruption. Note that provoking two creatures to fight counts as two targets. Additionally, once a bard has stopped a song or been interrupted, the effect of the song will continue for 5 – 10 seconds.
Targeting and Flagging. Most bard abilities will be considered "beneficial" or "negative" acts. This means that some of them will be unusalbe in Trammel outside of consentual PvP (like guild wars). Others may be used in non-consenting PvP in Felucca, but will give the bard and Aggressor and/or Criminal flags. For example, performing a beneficial song (like a health regeneration buff) on a monster in Trammel will be impossible, but simply flag the bard criminal in Felucca. Passive abilities that do not require explicit targets will have their effects limited as appropriate and not result in flagging.
Bard skills. The existing bard skills (Musicianship, Enticement, Peacemaking, and Provocation) will continue to exist, though their roles will change. All bard abilities will still require a Musicianship check. Furthermore, each ability will require skill checks in one or more of the other three skills. Generally, the more powerful the ability, the more skills will be required. Some abilities may receive very small bonuses for having non-required barding skills; for example, the Provoke ability will require the Provocation skill, but will receive small bonuses for bards who also spent points on the Enticement and/or Peacemaking skills. Furthermore, other skills besides the bard-specific ones will grant bonuses to some bard abilities.
Bard templates. There will be many possible bard templates available. Bards may choose not to raise all four of the bard skills (though at least Musicianship and one of the other three will be required to be effective). Doing that will limit the repertoire of songs available, but free up skill points to be used elsewhere. Bards will also be able to be effective without achieving Grandmaster status in all the bard skills, allowing still more flexibility. Since some bard abilities will receive bonuses from additional non-bard skills, bards will have many opportunities to specialize. And finally, since some skills will have additional effects on the bard (like Meditation offsetting Stamina costs with Mana), the potential variety of bard templates becomes very large indeed.
And finally, here are our ideas for actual bard abilities. With this list below, it is particularly important to remember that this is just in concept and is very subject to change!
Provoke. Requiring just the Provocation skill, the core of this ability remains unchanged. The bard provokes one creature to attack another creature or a player (but cannot provoke a player to attack anything). However, in addition to the basic bard spell restrictions listed above under Bard Songs, there are a few differences. First, Provoke becomes difficulty-based, meaning that the more powerful a creature is, the harder it is to provoke. The tougher the target, the less willing the creature is to fight it, making the provoke attempt more difficult. While the exact difficulty and success rate calculations have not been finalized, here is a general idea of the dynamics of this ability: For a bard with 100.0 Provocation and 0 in Enticement and Peacemaking, the chance to provoke one dragon to attack another will be approximately 20%. With 100.0 in all 3 skills, the chance will increase to approx. 40%. Also, it may become possible to find a magical musical instrument that could further increase this chance by an additional 20%.
Provoking another pair of dragons to fight would probably be impossible, but with the additional skill bonus and the magical instrument, it may be possible to provoke a third dragon onto one of the two already being provoked. Provoking even more powerful creatures (like Balron or Ancient Wyrms) will be possible only when weaker creatures are involved. Provoking a single daemon onto a Balron would be possible but unlikely. Also, once a creature is provoked, it will no longer switch targets (because the effect is continuous).
After the effect ends, the creature will immediately re-target the provoking bard if possible. Bards will be able to provoke creatures onto players in PvP but will not be able to provoke players to fight creatures or other players. And, of course, a player who is the victim of a provoke can run out of range, go invisible, or do other things to break the effect and cause the monster to re-target the bard.
Entice. The only skill this ability takes is Enticement. This ability changes slightly. Rather than a one-time effect that draws a single target to the bard, it will become continuous, causing the target to continue to follow the bard so long as the song is being played. It, too, will become difficulty based. In general, it will be much easier to entice a creature than to provoke it. This ability cannot be used against players on either facet.
Peacemake. This requires only the Peacemaking skill. This ability is now targeted, difficulty-based, and continuous, with difficulty similar to Entice. The target of Peacemake will stop fighting anything it's fighting and not fight back so long as the song remains in effect. If used on a player, the player will leave War Mode and lose their target. If the player starts fighting again, after a few seconds the effect will repeat (so long as the bard is still maintaining the effect). Like provocation, once a monster is released from this effect it will try to target the bard if possible. In Trammel, it will have no effect on players.
Stamina Regen. Rate Buff. The bard selects a single target, and that target's Stamina recovery rate is increased based on the bard's Provocation skill. This is an actively targeted ability and is considered a beneficial act, making it impossible to use on a monster in Trammel. Using it on a murderer, criminal, or monster is a criminal act in Felucca.
Health Regen. Rate Buff. This ability works almost identically to the Stamina buff, except that the skill required is Enticement and the targets' natural healing rate is increased while the song is in effect. Furthermore, the bards' Healing skill will provide slight bonuses to this effect.
Mana Regen. Rate Buff. This ability works almost identically to the Stamina buff, except that the skill required is Peacemaking and the targets' natural Mana regeneration rate is increased while the song is in effect. Furthermore, the bards' Meditation skill will provide slight bonuses to this effect.
Increase Spawn. Skills used are Provocation and Enticement. This ability allows the solo bard or troupe of bards to have slight effects on the spawn rates in "Champions of Evil" (aka "Boss Monster" aka "Evil in a Can" quests, which are themselves heavily based on variable spawn regions. The cumulative effects of multiple bards will not be enough to severely impact the gameplay of others. However, due to the potential for abuse, this ability actually making it into the game is very much in question. The Increase Spawn ability is considered neither negative or beneficial.
Decrease Spawn. Works like Increase Spawn, but in the other direction. Skills required are Provocation and Peacemaking.
Karma Decrease. Requires Provocation and Enticement skills. This ability works against a single target. The actual effect of this ability is to decrease the magnitude of the target's Karma temporarily. This means a target with negative Karma has less negative Karma while under the effect of this ability, and one with positive Karma has less positive Karma. This ability cannot cause a negative Karma target's Karma to become positive, or vice-versa. This effect is considered beneficial.
Karma Increase. This is the reverse of Karma Decrease. The skills required are Peacemaking and Enticement. Targets with negative Karma lose Karma temporarily under this effect, and targets with positive Karma gain karma. This is considered a negative act.
Fame Decrease. This effect requires Peacemaking and Enticement. The target temporarily loses an amount of fame. This is considered a beneficial act, but cannot be used in a guard zone on any facet.
Fame Increase. Requires Provocation and Peacemaking. Target temporarily gains fame. This is a negative act.
Attack Ability. This ability requires Provocation, Peacemaking, and Enticement . This ability is the only direct-damage bard song. It works by delivering damage over time based on the bard's skills. This is a negative act.
Teaching Song. This ability requires Provocation, Peacemaking, and Enticement, plus an additional skill. The bard can use this ability to temporarily increase a target's skill level in any skill the bard possesses. For example, a bard with Mining skill can temporarily increase the Mining skill of a target. The bard can target himself with this ability. The maximum skill bonus will be 10 points of skill for crafting and resource gathering skills, and 20 points for all others, including combat skills. Lumberjacking will fall into the 10 point bonus category. The maximum bonus will be extremely difficult to achieve by requiring the bard be close to Grandmaster in the bard skills and the skill being taught.
FAQ
In a previous version of the bard changes, I read that I had to stand still and prepare my song before I "cast" it. Is that gone, now?
Actually, the initiating "casting" time was never meant to mean that you couldn’t move at all, but that “initiating” casting time has been completely removed from this version of the changes. The small-but-continuous cost in Stamina (and partial offset with Mana for those with Meditation skill) will be sufficient as a built-in "time-limitation" control.
If someone attacks me while I am playing my song, my bard song shuts off, right?
Here's how it might work, with the rules described in this concept document (and please keep in mind, as with any such design concept, it is subject to possible change): some events will stop your song immediately-starting a new song, hiding, casting Invisibility on yourself, recalling, or using any Moongate (including facet gates).
Engaging in combat, casting spells, and using Meditation all have a chance of stopping your song, about a 10% chance.
Moving, equipping or unequipping, using potions, wands, staves, and bandages, and mounting/unmounting will not interrupt your song.
So if you're the sort of bard who likes to play it safe and stick to the edge of a combat-heavy area, you might be able to play your song and still safely take the occasional hit from attackers and possibly heal yourself with bandages, all the while still being able to move around.
Will I be able to Entice a creature at the same time as I Provoke another creature?
No. If you Entice one creature, you can attempt to Entice a second, but once you begin the second song (in this case Provocation), the previous song(s) will be stopped.
How many creatures will I be able to Provoke (or Entice or Peacemake) at one time?
That will depend on several factors. You will be able to have multiple Provocation songs playing (with the difficulty increasing with each additional target), and each successful playing of a given song will have its own Stamina/Mana upkeep cost-perhaps 1 per second, per song. It may not be unlikely that you will have 3 creatures Provoked at one time, but it's probably unrealistic to imagine that you'd be able to provoke two dozen monsters for even a few seconds.
What happened to the concept of groups of bards having cooperative abilities?
Bonus abilities for troupes of bards is no longer a part of this design concept. Bards will of course still be able adventure together, but there will be no special bonuses for "bard troupes"
Will I be able to stack my healing buffs?
No. Only Provocation, Enticement, and Peacemaking will be able to be used on multiple targets. All other abilities are one target at a time only.
Considering the new upkeep costs for bard songs, how are people actually supposed to ever finish a fight with no Stamina or Mana? Combat usually lasts more than 30-45 seconds, and a bard would be drained and helpless at that point-they couldn't swing, run, sing or cast.
Bards will be able to regain Mana faster than normal by targeting themselves and playing the Mana Regeneration Rate buff, or could even use Meditation if they choose.
Bards will be able to regain Stamina faster than normal by targeting themselves and playing the Stamina Regeneration Rate buff, or they could drink a red Refresh potion.
Two bards will be also able to cast their songs on one another as well, at which point an effect perhaps not too dissimilar to two combatants cross-healing each other might occur.
Is it intended for Bards to only be effective in groups now?
We know there are many bards who enjoy their ability to play the game solo, and it is absolutely our intent to see that that remains a valid playstyle. But at the same time, a single character should never be able to take out the toughest creatures in the game single-handedly, and that has historically been well within the bard’s capabilities.
Any time we’re faced with the prospect of having to take something away, or in this case, reduce the Bard’s power, we feel that it’s important to give something back that is new. In this case, we decided to add to the Bard’s flexibility by adding in completely new abilities that benefit others. If we’d focused only on adding new abilities that benefited single play, we’d likely run into the same problem of bards simply being too effective in single PvM combat.
Also note that in this revised iteration of the design, bards can now use some of these new abilities to assist themselves as well as others, which we hope will enhance solo as well as group play.
Later |
^ top-The NEW Set of Felucca Changes
[Catgirl] February 25 - 9:59 PM EST | Okay, Anduin posted this in the forum, so here we go. (This one is long, kids.)
This is a completely revised version of the changes previously proposd for treatment of statloss and murderers, as well as a proposal for enhacing PvP in Felucca's dungeons and Lost Lands. This document also details some new rewards that may be found in the Felucca dungeons and Lost Lands areas. There is also a FAQ that we hope might clear up some questions!
Felucca Changes
NOTES:
- These changes apply to the non-SP/IGR shards only!
- These changes are an independent set, not to be combined with any other Felucca change proposals listed previously.
Intent
As a brief preface, we’d like to explain the essential goals of the changes listed in this document.
The below changes should…
- Establish an area where non-consensual pvp can thrive for a significant number of UO’s players.
- Create a risk versus reward model that encourages non-consensual pvp based around resource control rather than profit from the deceased.
- Provide meaningful and compelling rewards for players that successfully adventure in the specified areas.
Changes to the Dungeons and Lost Land areas of Felucca
In order to establish an area where players can engage in a meaningful struggle for the control of resources without drastically impacting the current play patterns of Felucca’s citizens, the Dungeon and Lost Land areas of Felucca will be modified.
- When a non-Murderer is killed in the Dungeon/Lost Land areas of Felucca, all of the character’s items other than gold, gems, ingots, ore, leather, hides, wool, wood, boards, and cursed items will remain on their ghost (unlootable).
- When a Murderer is killed in the Dungeon/LL areas of Felucca, 50% of the character’s items (random result per item) other than gold, gems, ingots, ore, leather, hides, wool, wood, boards, and cursed items will remain on their ghost (unlootable).
- Any player that dies in the Dungeon/LL areas of Felucca will immediately be given a mandatory “stuck player” option (forced to leave the dungeon and lost land servers). During this process, the player will not be able to hear spoken words (they can send/receive party messages as normal).
- A player that dies in the Dungeon/LL areas of Felucca will not be able to return to those servers for 30 minutes.
- Ghosts will be unable to enter the Dungeon/LL areas of Felucca.
- Players will no longer be able to recall or gate into or out of the Dungeon/LostLand areas of Felucca.
- The various dungeons of Felucca will be linked to each other via teleporters to help alleviate crowding and bottlenecks.
- When a player reports a murder, only the long-term murder count will be incremented.
- If a murderer dies in the Dungeon/LL areas of Felucca, they will not take stat loss upon their next resurrection.
- When stealing from innocents, thieves will only be able to steal gold and gems in the Dungeon/LL areas of Felucca. Thieves will continue to be able to use the full range of their thieving abilities against consensual-pvp opponents (guild wars, order/chaos, factions).
- Many Dungeon/LL areas of Felucca will contain “champion regions” (a.k.a. “Evil-in-a-Can”).
- The various champions of evil and “The Harrower” itself (a new champion monster, not to be confused with the mere “tentacles of the Harrower”) that spawn in Dungeon/LL areas of Felucca will carry special Scrolls of Power (detailed further below).
- The Minax faction stronghold will be relocated from the lost lands to another location in Felucca.
- The city of Delucia will no longer be a “faction city”. However, the city of Vesper will become a faction city.
Changes to the consequences/conditions of the “Murderer” status
- The “bounty system” will be eliminated.
- The “murderer” paperdoll title will be eliminated (although players with 5 murders will still highlight red and be considered “murderers” in this document). This does mean a red character can be titled as “Dread Lord” again, assuming they have enough fame and karma to warrant it.
- Red characters will not be able to gain Virtue, or use any Virtue abilities.
- When a red character takes stat loss, all short term counts will be wiped.
Changes to the conditions of the “Criminal” status
Innocents (blues) will no longer be able to negatively affect other innocents through the following area effects indirectly: purple potions, mass curse, meteor swarm, chain lightning, earthquake, fire field, poison field, paralyze field, blade spirits, or energy vortex. This applies to all of Felucca.
Changes to the consequences/conditions of being a “Thief”
Stealing will no longer be considered an aggressive act, although it will continue to be a criminal act (players will not be able to report a thief for murder if they attack the thief but lose the fight). This applies to all of Felucca.
Increased reward in all of Felucca
In order to provide incentives for some of Britannia’s braver citizens such that they have reason to spend more time in Felucca, we will institute several measures that are intended to increase the reward for adventuring in Felucca.
- Felucca will have much of its spawn modified to include fewer monsters overall, yet a much higher percentage of medium to high-end monsters (liches, daemons, ancient wyrms, blood elementals, etc…), and far fewer low-end monsters (slimes, rats, snakes, headless’, etc…).
- Mines, trees, sheep, will produce double the normal resources in Felucca, as will all creatures that produce leather or feather resources.
- Monsters in Felucca will provide more fame and karma.
“Cursed” items
- Some new items that are available exclusively through adventures in the Felucca dungeons and lost lands will be “cursed” (the opposite of “blessed”).
- Cursed items will always drop to the player’s corpse upon death, regardless of any other looting rules.
Scrolls of Power
Scrolls of Power are significant new items that allow veteran players to continue the development and/or specialization of their characters.
Skill Scrolls:
- A new type of scroll will be added that allows players to raise the limits of their possible maximum skill values beyond 100.0 (up to 120.0).
- The player’s skill will not actually be raised upon using the scroll, but the cap on that skill will be raised to the appropriate level, depending on which scroll was used.
- These scrolls will only be found on “Champions of Evil” that spawn in the Dungeons and Lost Lands areas on the Felucca facet.
- For each eligible skill, there are 4 different types of scrolls:
- +5.0 (raises the appropriate skill’s limit to 105.0)
- +10.0 (raises the appropriate skill’s limit to 110.0)
- +15.0 (raises the appropriate skill’s limit to 115.0)
- +20.0 (raises the appropriate skill’s limit to 120.0)
- The skill scrolls are not cumulative (you must use one +20.0 skill scroll to reach a maximum value of 120.0 skill, that character cannot use four separate +5.0 skill scrolls to achieve the same result).
- Once a scroll of a given type and value has been used, scrolls of lesser or equal type and value can no longer be used (ie: if you use a +10.0 Magery skill scroll to raise your Magery skill limit to 110.0, that character can no longer use any +5.0 or +10.0 Magery skill scrolls).
- The more powerful scrolls will spawn less frequently than less powerful scrolls.
- Once a player uses the skill scroll and raises their skill limit, they will then be able to gain in that skill (through normal means) until they reach their new skill limit.
- All skill points gained above 100.0 continue to count against the player’s skill cap (if the player is a “7x GM” and wants to raise 5 skills to 120.0, they would have to lower 1 of their gm skills and eventually become a 5x 120, 1x 100 character).
- Skill scrolls are “cursed” items (explained further below), but are consumed upon use.
- Players may trade and/or sell skill scrolls to other players (it is not required for the player that found them to use them).
- Only the following skill scrolls will spawn as of Publish 16:
- Swordsmanship
- Fencing
- Mace Fighting
- Archery
- Wrestling
- Parrying
- Tactics
- Anatomy
- Healing
- Magery
- Meditation
- Evaluate Intelligence
- Magic Resistance
- Animal Taming
- Animal Lore
- Veterinary
- Musicianship
- Provocation
- Enticement
- Peacemaking
- Stealth
- Stealing
The interface for skill scrolls will function as follows:
- Player “uses” the skill scroll (double-click).
- The appropriate skill now has a “cap” of 100.0 + the value according to the type of scroll (i.e.: 105.0 for a +5.0 skill scroll).
- The player may view their maximum skill value in the skills window (this will be patched as a publish 16 client change). For example, a player might see: Magery 92.1/115.0
Stat Scrolls:
- Stat scrolls can only be found on “The Harrower” (a new “arch champion” that will also be found in the dungeon and Lost Land areas of Felucca, and will be described in more detail in the near future… not to be confused with the mere “Tentacles of the Harrower”).
- When used, stat scrolls increase the character’s actual stat cap, thereby allowing players to gain stats beyond the normal 225-point limit.
- Stat scrolls can be found in 5 varieties: +5, +10, +15, +20, and +25.
- The stat scrolls are not cumulative (you must use one +25 stat scroll to reach a stat cap of 250, you cannot use five separate +5 stat scrolls to achieve the same result).
- As of Publish 16, the new limit on any one stat will be raised from 100 to 125. This is independent of the stat scroll additions, and will be applied to all players.
- Once a scroll of a given type and value has been used, scrolls of lesser or equal type and value can no longer be used (ie: if you use a +10 stat scroll to raise your stat cap to 235, that character can no longer use any +5 or +10 stat scrolls).
- The more powerful scrolls will spawn less frequently than less powerful scrolls.
- Once a player uses a stat scroll and raises their stat cap, they will be able to gain in any stat (through normal means) until they reach their new stat limit.
- Stat scrolls are “cursed” items, but are consumed upon use.
- Players may trade and/or sell stat scrolls to other players (it is not required for the player that found them to use them).
The interface for stat scrolls will function as follows:
- Character “uses” the stat scroll (double-click).
- The character now has a stat cap equal to 225 + the value according to the type of scroll (i.e.: 240 for a +15 stat scroll).
- The player may view their stat maximum status window (this will be patched as a publish 16 client change). For example, a player might see:
Stat Maximum 230
FAQ
What does this mean for the other changes – one red, all red, the 30% looting thing, etc?
These changes are the new proposal that will completely replace the old proposal. This is INSTEAD of the other changes, not in addition to them.
What about the rest of Felucca – is it changing?
The mainland of Felucca will, for the most part, retain the same rule set with the following exceptions:
- Stealing will no longer be considered an aggressive act (although it’s still a criminal act).
- Felucca spawn changes will affect all of Felucca, except the Hero spawn will only occur in the Dungeon/Lost Lands areas.
- Resource levels, along with fame and karma, will be raised in Felucca.
- Vesper will become a faction town.
- The Minax stronghold will be relocated to a mountainous area of Felucca.
- Blues can no longer indirectly damage other blues through area effect spells.
- Increased stat cap on individual stats for all characters (from 100 to 125).
- Skill and stat scrolls will be able to be used in Trammel or Felucca, and their effects will remain constant across all facets.
“Fewer monsters overall”? What’s up with that?
Large quantities of monsters in Felucca will be swapped with lower quantity, higher quality monsters. For example, is that there won’t be as many hordes of rats, but you might instead see a few large rats or ratmen, or perhaps even something single, more powerful entity, like a lich lord.
Any changes to Trammel or Ilshenar?
- Increased stat cap on individual stats for all characters (from 100 to 125).
- Skill and stat scrolls will be able to be used in Trammel or Felucca, and their effects will remain constant across all facets.
Why double the ore in Felucca where miners and resource gatherers can get ganked?
Since there’s nothing in these resource spots you can’t get in Trammel, this change isn’t intended to persuade resource gatherers to mine/gather in Felucca. However, we feel that anyone who braves the greater risk should get a greater reward for their trouble.
Why are you changing both the dungeons and the Lost Lands? Why not one or the other?
There’s two main reasons for this. One is that all these areas are on the same sub-server, which will make the change in rules much easier; and two, this creates a larger area with more variety for the new Hero spawns.
Can’t return to the dungeon server for 30 minutes? Why?
In order for the challenge of fighting the Hero spawns and surviving in these areas to really be a challenge, we need to be sure that people can’t just keep dying and immediately coming back indefinitely. By keeping people from coming right back into the fray of the fight after dying, players are able to establish some kind of control over the resources and territory they’re fighting over. It will also be a greater challenge to groups – it will be highly beneficial to keep your group members alive, thus keeping your group as powerful as it can be.
Blues can’t hurt other blues? Anywhere?
This change affects all of Felucca. Blues can still harm other blues with area effect spells if they target them directly, but they won’t hurt other blues who are accidentally caught in the area effect radius.
So is there any change to how long it takes to work off a murder count?
No, there are no changes.
If I steal from someone in Felucca, or from someone I am in a guildwar with in Trammel, will I get a murder count?
If you steal from anyone, in any situation that allows stealing, you will “go grey” to that person and he may attack you in return, but you will not gain a murder count.
So I can still go grey by stealing?
Yes, but you aren’t going to be considered the aggressor, so you can’t be given a murder count after stealing from someone and being attacked. This applies to any situation on any facet where stealing is allowed, such as guildwars.
You mention a “stuck player” option when you die in Felucca’s dungeons/Lost Lands. Is this the same as the one from the Help menu?
It is similar, but there will be some small, important differences. This new type of “stuck player” option will allow the dead character to immediately move to the town chosen from the “stuck list,” while the Help menu version will continue to have a 2-minute wait before teleporting to town. The new menu will also not be able to be “cancelled”—players must choose a target city or one will be chosen at random for them within a few seconds.
So what about people who get hurt in the Lost Lands area, then go back to Felucca to die, thus giving their aggressor a short-term murder count?
This is something we’ve thought about, and we do have some ideas worked out to prevent this.
What about the PKs who will camp the Hero spawn areas to get the scrolls?
It will most likely take at least 6-10 players to get the champion to spawn, and only one will have the scroll, making it difficult for PKs to know who is carrying anything valuable. Not to mention the fact that potential PK’s will also have to deal with monsters as well!
There will also be 17 different areas in the Felucca dungeons/Lost Lands where the Heroes will spawn, so it will be difficult to camp all of them – as well, the spawn areas in the LL will rotate, making it that much harder.
When do murderers take stat loss and when do they not?
In the main land of Felucca, short term and long-term counts will remain just as they are now. Stat loss is still based on having 5 or more short term counts. The difference is that people who murder others in the dungeons/LL of Felucca will only take long-term counts (which only determines whether or not you are red, and does not lead to stat loss).
So I can’t take statloss in the Felucca dungeon/Lost Lands?
Nope! Even if you have short term murder counts and would typically take statloss in the main Felucca area, you can die in the dungeon or lost lands server and be resurrected there with no stat loss.
Red characters will no longer gain Virtues. What happens to my existing virtue points?
You will not be able to gain in any Virtue, and your existing Virtue points will decay as normal.
If my murderer dies in a Feluccan dungeon, will I be able to go back and get my stuff?
The corpses of players’ characters decay within a few minutes. The proposed system prohibits that character from returning to the dungeon server for 30 minutes, so obviously your corpse (and any items contained within) will have long decayed. After teleporting to town, if you think your items may still be recoverable, you have the option to try switching characters or asking a friend to recover your items for you.
If I get a +20 skill scroll, does that mean all my skills can go up to 120?
No, only the one skill that relates to the skill scroll. If you found a magery skill scroll, only your magery will be allowed to exceed normal limits and achieve 120.
Note also that your total skill points will not exceed the current cap of 700 points. A “maxed out” character currently can achieve 7xGM (a score of 100 in each of 7 skills). With the skill scroll system, a character can achieve 5x120, +1xGM (a score of 120 in each of 5 skills, with a score of 100 in a sixth skill).
So can I raise my total skill cap with these scrolls?
No, the skill cap remains the same, at 700 points. The increased skill limits will count towards that same skill cap.
Why are there only skill scrolls available for certain skills?
Those are the only skills that continue to give an added benefit once they’re over 100 – we could enable you to raise other skills over 100, but there would be no purpose to it.
Isn’t the ability to raise skills over 100 going to imbalance combat?
We’ll be modifying the effects of skills over 100 and will be introducing new items that help maintain balance for all characters.
Can cursed items be stolen?
Yes, but not in Lost Lands areas, since the only things that can be stolen there will be gold and gems.
Will all heroes drop scrolls?
Currently the idea is that they will, but we will be doing extensive playtesting to determine the best rate that won’t be unbalancing.
Why do I have to fight PKs to get the good stuff?
These items will be sold in Trammel, so people who do not wish to risk being killed can buy them from other players. Since players cannot use these scrolls cumulatively, and cannot use any scrolls lower than one they’ve already used, not all scrolls found will be usable by the person who found them, and will undoubtedly be sold.
By making sure the skill cap stays the same, we’ve also worked to see that characters who do not get these rewards are still just as competitive… the rewards simply enable characters to have more control.
Original Link
Discuss |
^ top-Do you ever wish you could turn back the clock?
[FrozenFire] February 25 - 12:13 PM EST | Well go here and prevent UO:R from happening. /dream
Well wouldnt that be nice? Credit goes to CollectorOfShoes for making it possible. Awesome!
Bring in the Clowns! Err. . .bring BACK the Clowns. |
^ top-Passing
[Nieves] February 25 - 4:20 AM EST | Today, February 25th, 2002, at ~5AM EST, my grandmother died.
It hurts.
I remember a day when I was 13 old. I rode my bike the couple of miles to her house. I walked in, said "hi grandma" and she would say: "oh hi Sammy, would you like something to eat?" That's my grandma. No matter what she was doing she would stop and see about making me something or get me a drink. She always had some kind of Peppridge Farm Cake and Pepsi in the fridge waiting for one of her grandkids.
I also remember when my Christmas holidays were spent at her house eating good American and Puerto Rican food and enjoying the time with my cousins playing with each other's presents.
My "Abuela" has been dieing for about 5 years. She had terminal cancer. I went home a week ago to see her. She was asking for me. Me! Someone that's been away for years. Everytime I would go to Ohio on one of my annual trips home, I would take time out of my schedule to visit her. To hug her, to let her spend time with my kids and them with her. She had always said: "you see me more than the people living here". And even when she was sick and in pain, she would stop what she was doing and and try to cook something for me. She also appreciated the fact that I sent her cards on special occassions.
I did not want to remember her the way I saw her last weekend. That woman could talk up a storm. But, she knew how to listen, too. To see her in the helpless condition she was in was heartbreaking. I lost it in the hallway and cried like a bitch after I saw first saw her. Just like I am now.
I used to visit my grandma every chance I could. And in my mind and memories, I will continue to ride my bike to visit her and eat the food she would fix for me.
I love you Abuela. Wait for your Samuelito. I will see you again.
Hasta |
^ top-Well Damn
[Nieves] February 24 - 11:49 AM EST | Thank you Kitiara of UOCraft:
Wow - I must have missed this one. I caught a thread on the UO.com boards discussing the use of inscription, and that it no longer requires magery. (Previously, inscription required that you be able to cast the spells you were scribing). A player in the thread mentions that this change was snuck in with Publish 15. "Snuck" is definitely the right word - thanks to Nadia of Sonoma who found the blurb for me.
Here's the OSI single-line message announcing this change. It was part of the patch screen announcements:
== notes added 1/09 2:10 PM CST ==
The following changes are now live on all North American shards:
- The Inscription skill no longer requires magery.
Er..I guess.
Hasta. |
^ top-Impy Speaks
[Nieves] February 23 - 7:49 PM EST | If you remember, I wrote an article about Impy's. And I had some questions. Here is an email exchange with an Impy's rep.
First mine in Red, then the rep in Yellow.
I am going to have to ask you if YOU even read my whole article?
Did you notice that the addendum was there on the front page? I didn't hide that. I guess you missed that or something, huh?
Now, here are my issues and why I am bringing it to light:
(as posted in the UOPG forum)-
[Frankly, I could give a fuck what Impy and Co. does with their money.
Whether it's UO Gold or Ebay Cash. But something isn't right over at Impy's and I am interested in finding out.
The issues are three fold.
1) They are being accused of price fixing. I don't know how exactly or
what's happened. I want to know if it's true. That wasn't listed in the article because, at this time, it's heresay.
2) BVD still works for them. The person I exposed as a lieing cheating son of a bitch a few weeks ago. Oh, and it's personal now as far as BVD and I are concerned. You don't tell Nieves one thing, then lie to someone else about it. I am not at liberty to say who or what BVD is involved with exactly, but he was a VERY important person in the UO community. That son of a bitch lied about Nieves to an even more important person in the UO Community. I don't play that shit. So fuck BVD.
BVD working for Impy's tarnishes their rep. I hope Impy realizes that
and removes that bad element from his crew.
What right do I have to dictate to Impy's who works for him or not? None. But I sure as hell wouldn't want to do business with someone that has in their employ someone that has been exposed as a liar and possibly other more explicitly illegal things.
3) Why lie if you -are- selling the money to Ebay? Just say "it's none of your business" or, "yes we are, so what?" not "no comment". Or flat out deny it when so many people are saying they are Ebaying shit.
After a quick "hi can we talk" exchange, I had already caught an Impy's rep in two lies. Not a good start.
I hope to find out more and inform the community exactly what is going on over at Impy's.
Even if it's a "it's none of your fucking business what we do". I just
hope Impy himself is willing to talk about it and realize I will post the WHOLE story. Not just one part of it. ]
So you see, I am interested in all sides of it. Something doesn't smell right at Impy's. I am more than willing to hear your side and post it all. Not some fabricated or "edited" story to make people see my side only. I am quick to correct myself if in error. If in doubt, look through the archives.
And I do care about a "small group of people" for two reasons. You are onmy home shard and have wide reaching affects on that shard, and you're a part of the UO Community and are a very public group. Oh, and I have been to an auction of yours. Pretty cool place and nice set up.
If you want to point the finger at others for being jealous or for their own greed, do it. Don't talk around it. Tell me what's going on and then tell me what I can and can't say and I will do my story.
A follow up is coming Impy/Mandrake/Shonda/Whateveryoucallyourself, but I would rather it be a follow up with your side than a conclusion with only "one side of the story". I don't want to be an enemy to you. I just want the truth.
Don't let it turn out like it did with BVD. I asked him for a rebuttal and he refused. Now, people only know the story from one side. Even if that one side has hundreds of people...
I await your reply and a chance at a real interview.
Hasta.
No you did not hide the addendum, but you completely ignored it in your comments. You validated numbers that she clearly posted were not accurate. You went on commenting about 200 million when the number is no where near that. We've done 1 billion in sales through 78 auctions... that's 50 million gold in fees, not 200 and our doors have been open for over a year.
We ask - literally beg - our submitters for low minimum bids because it gets bidding going. This is the first I've heard about "price fixing" so that's all new to me. Interesting how the snowball just gets bigger.
As far as BVD goes, he's had access to every bit of that 1 billion gold, none of it has ever come up missing. I don't know what he does outside game, in ICQ, in email, and I have never thought that it was any of my business. All I saw were accusations, I have never seen any proof. (I have no reason to think you would lie, of course, but it's all "heresay" to me too.)
Noleeens in her article asked a question, a rhetorical question about the gold Impy's makes being sold on Ebay. That is the only reference to Ebay I've ever seen, so where that is coming from I have no idea. I can tell you where MY 1/11th of the gold goes... I spend it on stuff I really don't need to decorate a tower that I never go to... *shrugs*
I have been avoiding naming names when I mention "others" starting
auctions/events because we didn't want to stoop to their level of
mud-slinging. As I said, any new event on GL is great by us. I just find it very odd that the same groups of people that are working so hard to shut us down are the ones with new events popping up all over. It's the complete opposite of what we try to do, which is get new events started and we have continually contacted other RP guilds to get involved in them. If we were so dead set against competition, when we went to 2 auctions per night we would have made it Tuesday knowing we could negate Rattler's auction at RD's, but we didn't want to kill ANYone's attempt at continuing a weekly
event.
I would be willing to bet that 90% of all the rumor mongoring that is going on can be tracked back to one of four people. Three of those people are working to start their own auction, and more power to them, it's a lot of work.
My intent with my original email was not to tick you off, only to inquire why you used that magic "200" number when that was not the correct figure as Noleeens pointed out in her addendum. The people who come to powergamers, as you know, come to read your take on things. I'd be willing to also bet that 90% of those people only read your comments, not the actual article.
Therein lies where my being upset came from.
We certainly don't want to be enemies either, it's just very hard not to get on the defensive when so many people seem to be working so hard to shut down what so many people have put in hours on end to make work, and work well.
From what Mandrake has told me, he is working with you on the interview thing. If you have trouble contacting him via his ICQ feel free to email me back here.
Take Care,
Divinity
Did you get all that? Good. I got this email earlier before tonight's interview. Oh, did I mention I got an interview with two of the main Impy's reps? Sorry. I forget things like that.
I just spent 65 minutes 58 seconds on the phone with the Impy's rep. Oh, I didn't mention we talked on the phone either? Yep. He gave me the number, told me to call, and said "let's squash this now". See? Told you I forget shit. Anyway...
Let's break down the questions I asked:
"Do you E-Bay Auction Gold?"
No. Absolutely not. In fact, according to the rep, Impy's break out per staff member (11 on staff) is ~41k PER auction. Hmm...that's what? 7.00 bucks on Ebay? And who is going to buy just 41k gold on Ebay?
From what I understand, the Impy's crew has tracked every single transaction they have made with their auctions. That they could tell me what was sold when and for how much and what was the profit for EACH individual item sold. They offered to show me the actual spreadsheets so I can see the numbers for myself. I declined. It's none of my business really and that's not why these two articles were written in the first place.
The impy's rep told me of some of the programs they have in place.
They have a Vendor Incentive Program. They pay the player to keep their vendors fully stocked on a regular basis. If the player does not, he's "fired".
They also have a New Event Fund they have set up. This allows them to have the gold to have the big events they sponsor.
The NEF and VIP both get 10% each from the profits earned.
I also was extremely curious as to how they can support the costs for the website they run. I won't get into the numbers because I wasn't told to post it nor did I ask. But the number is up there. UOPG would not be around if it was 10% of that cost.
Moving right along...
"What about these rumors of Price Fixing and Bid Fixing (fake bidders) you have going on?"
'Hell no!' Staff members are NOT allowed to buy or bid in the auctions. Even on their off nights. Even with their alternate characters. They are allowed to put things in the auction but never EVER bid.
On a side note: Supposedly Impy has NEVER gotten a gold piece for these events. He "does it for the community".
"Do you blame folks for being hesitant to work with you since BVD is part of your staff?"
Yes, they would. Without hard proof, how can they dump him? And since noone will talk to Impy's crew at length about what it is that happened with some hard proof, how could they dump him?
A note: From what I understand, in the private Impy's board, BVD received a verbal lashing. One they felt he deserved. So be it.
But, as far as some of the rumors on BVD's asking for fees to do certain things, some are true, some are not. But that was stopped quickly enough.
Also, the rep told me that the BVD person has NEVER broken the Impy Crew's trust. They are going to judge him based on the lack of "hard evidence" and the 'fact' he never broke Impy's trust.
Me personally? I wouldn't work with Impy's because of that staff member being on board. But that's me. If you have had a good relationship with Impy and their "BVD" staff member hasn't done you wrong, then you be your own judge on that.
I asked the rep if he was Impy. "Nope, Impy is someone else".
I will reserve comment on that.
I do want to note that there were a couple of inconsistancies when I talked to the Impy rep on ICQ the day I was posting my original Impy's article.
He sent me an article via Email and stated that he wrote that for me. I found it on their website with a post date of a day earlier. Of course, I pointed it out and let this rep know the article was NOT written with me in mind nor for me. Not a good way to start off with me. But it's all good right?
The other inconsistancy, I will keep to myself. It's not really relevant to this whole "issue". Maybe.
I truly respect the fact that the Impy's folks took time out of their Saturday night to talk to me. And to talk to me on the phone? That says something. What exactly that is, is for you to decide. But I can do nothing but applaud them for that.
If the whole issue against Impy's is one of jealousy, I can see why. They do funnel a lot of gold through their auctions and have a lot of people participating. If it's a personal vendetta, well, some people may need to get a life.
If it's because something really was wrong over at Impy's, then someone was trying to be responsible in reporting it. Sometimes, you see something that doesn't look right and you can do one of two things. Try to correct it or walk away. Some people, including myself, wanted it known and "corrected".
And if the Impy's crew lied to me tonight, eventually it will come out. And you KNOW I will let it be known. If not, then more power to them and I wish them luck and fortune on their way to another 1 billion gold in sales.
Hasta. |
^ top-Guest Rant
[Nieves] February 23 - 5:39 PM EST | An Introduction of Sorts
I am Azreal Darkmoon, Ex-PK from BETA, Ex-ATLer, Ex-Seer, current old man in corner.
Currently my PvP experience is with Bloodrock URKs, a very wonderful experience. I have not had any PK experience since BETA. PK (Player Killing) is abhorrent and not even mentionable. Now you may be asking what the difference is? PvP is the combat between two foes (or more) who understand the costs of living the way they do. Playerkilling is the killing of indiscriminate individuals who are killed because they are weaker and stand little to no chance. There is a difference, although PvP may not always be consensual it is understood
that it can happen between the combatants. If an URK is out near the skirts of Yew he realizes he may be attacked at any time, just because he is an URK and as an URK he realizes that combat is his life. A miner near Yew iwth no weapon skills moving his poor packhorse back to his bankbox then gets ganked by 4 ethereal riding GM Mage PKs, who then tell him he was an easy kill and then run off. Was there a challenge? Did the Miner ever consider combat? Risk vs Reward, was there a risk? No, was there a reward? Most likely
not. Todays batch of Pks/PvPers give little thought to the basic equipment they carry or lose. Most of us are well enough off to not care, and if we are not then a few minutes of our time of gold farming gets us there.
PKing
The heart of PKing is domination of one over another, what other reason can there be for killing the poor miner with no defense. There is most likely little to no gain, there is no challenge. The PK kills for the pure pleasure of disrupting one's day and playing style. Yet many of the same PK when faced against someone skilled in PvP will run, recall or die. Why? Because they fight those who cannot fight back. Skills in combat are a great part of combat. Connection is some, although in group combat I beleive this is lessened, of course in one on one connection plays a large roll. GMs? GMs are something most people can achieve in two weeks? Or if you go Dexer a
few days. PKing is not skill, it is not glorious, it is not exciting. EB EB EB SLASH SLASH SLASH opponent is dead with no health gone from the aggressor. Did that take thought? Might as well go hack Diablo 1, get Staff of Apoc, unlimited charges and just kill Diablo through the wall. That is how much skill PKing takes. Sad isn't it? PKers are those who refuse to learn the skills or take the time to PvP.
PvP
Ahhhhhhhh, now here is something with meat. Here is something that if made fun enough may lure some Trammelites. This is the contest of skills, conn, and templating. I have seen many fights between the URKs and URKs, URKs and hummies, and hummies vs hummies. All put my simple skills to shame because of the pure skill of the combatants. The redline then that heal takes place to give them the edge, to that timed complex series of spells, which I can never seem to master =(. RP groups RPvP and IMHO is where the most engaging of PvP takes place. Simply put both sides have a reason to fight, both sides
know the stakes, both sides are not PKs. Both sides will not hit and run and then run. Both sides are generally courteous.
Take the URKs for example, by and large the URKs are inferior to their human counterparts. Inability for the common URK to ride a mount, wear certain armor, wield certain weapons, cast magic ect. But why do URKs win a large amount of battles? Why do they have fun? The inability to use such things limits us. Imagine making a character
template and saying, cannot use magery. Suddenly a host of options arrives in regards to templates. The extra points allow us to diversify. We learn through our disabilities to become better PvPers, we crossheal, we fight as a mass en group. None of this one of us runs hits then run and hit. You have 4 URKs coming up and hitting you at once. Each one crosshealing, and if we are really lucky a Mojo sitting back throwing Mojo. We learn tactics to fight with, we work as a team. We have no truly distuingishing marks as a simple URK but our personality. Wearing generally ring or leather armor with an URK helm in the same color boots we charge forward. We do not PK, we PvP. If you stumble on our territory you will be told to leave, or give
tribute or both. We do not attack and ask questions later. We take all battles, we fight and give no quarter, but we will heal you once you are dead and not loot, with some exceptions. We are PvPers!
So next time you think about killing that person walking down the road ask yourself are you a silly PK who could not fight a real battle? Or are you a PvPer that can at least hold his head high?
Crosshealing: Healing between two people using 4 sec instead of 13 sec.
Mojo: Spells and reference to URK magic users
-Azreal Darkmoon
Hasta. |
^ top-One Red, All Red, Still Wont Matter
[Gator] February 23 - 7:04 AM EST | I am one of the believers that ORAR is a bunch of shite!! But to be honest folks, I really dont think it will matter. Why? Because Reds are Reds. And if the shiteload of Trammies feel that ORAR is going to solve the issue and that they will be traveling to Felucca soon with $$$$ in their eyes, well they are seriously mistaken. Because when they arrive in Destard with their troupe of Bards to do some damage, they are going to be met my a swarm of reds that hasnt been seen since Pre UO:R. Thats Ultima Online Renaissance to all the new LBR players out there. Hey I gotta cater to a new audience... *shrugs* Ohh yes fellow players beware. I would step foot in to any Dungeons on that faithful night. Why? Remember how the lag was during housing. Same shit different day...
What it all boils down to is that some folks like to kill. And kill they will. All you Multi UO account holders raise your left hand.. *raises left hand* And if I could sacrifice one of my accounts to have some good trammy slaying goodness, I will in a heartbeat. Mainly because...... umm why the hell not?
Who do I feel for? The Trammies? No I dont, sorry. The Bards and Tamer? Newp, hell I play a bard and I am glad the nerf stick is coming to town. I feel for the RPers. The folks that RP reds, ya know, like this guy.guy. Those are the folks I feel sorry for. See they have taken a play style to a higher level. They have done it through stat loss, because they enjoyed playing that style. They have done it with supreme grace and honor. And someone, "OSI", is possibly sweeping through with the big "force playstyles stick" and whopping the Red RPers... Go figure eh?
So let the Trammies go ahead and celebrate the "Second Grand Opening" of Felucca. But heres what will happen.. Trammies will dye, by the hundreds, Reds will have a blast, and not sweat the fact they cant take their smith into town anymore. And RP Red Guild's will have to adapt, once again to a new play style. Does anyone wonder what UO would be like today if they hadnt changed anything 2 years ago? I do...
Later |
^ top-Taking a step back from the toilet.
[Eric] February 23 - 2:08 AM EST | Well, I’m back. Some of you may have noticed my absence…most of you probably didn’t. ;) I had to spend a few days in Los Angeles for various reasons. It was nothing fun, believe me. Then of course, when I got back, I came down with a pretty nasty stomach flu. Being perched over a toilet for a couple days is no fun. Neither was seeing chinese food for a second and third time. Anyway, I’m healthy again and glad to be back. The computer withdrawal was starting to hit me pretty bad (don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about – we’ve all been there.)
Since this is a UO website, let me say something UO related. WHERE THE FUCK DID ALL OF THESE CHANGES/IDEAS COME FROM? I’m gone for 10 days, and I come back to find that my account may eventually consist of 5 red characters because of my one murderer? Bard songs? 1 “power” creature per tamer at a time? Sure, none of it is “set in stone,” but I didn’t expect such drastic ideas to appear during the time that I was gone. What do I think about it all? Well, the ideas themselves could use some tweaking, which I am SURE will happen. When OSI lays these things out there, it’s really for feedback purposes, initially. Who knows where they will end up. What I am happy to see is OSI taking player feedback, and making something of it right before our very own eyes. Yes, it’s happened before, but many of you know that this isn’t something that happens often. Maybe OSI has a new style, and maybe it’ll work for the new “generation” (I’m not sure if that’s the best word choice) in online gaming. Where I come from, players like consistency. Back in the “old days” of UO, there were bugs. There were balancing issues. The game by no means was perfect. OSI comes along with UO:R and the introduction of Trammel. What do the “old school” players do? They’re angry with OSI. They want the once populated land that has now become known as Felucca, now consisting of less than 40% of the game’s players, back. My point again is players want consistency. Fix the bugs, fix the lag, fix the crashing, but don’t create a new game.
That was the old generation. OSI seems to have a new style now, and with the addition of UO:LBR, UO is definitely going to face some extreme changes. Do they favor the 1st generation UO players? Nope. They favor the new players, many who will be fresh from UO:LBR. They will be the majority. OSI can change whatever the hell they want, but the element of an MMORPG that plays the biggest role in a game, is its players. We’re looking at a totally new player base, over time, with UO. That is and will continue to be the leading factor in the way UO is shaped.
Well, that’s enough UO for me tonight. Anyone want to e-mail and give me a reason to buy or not buy UO:LBR? I’m considering it, but I’m interested in what other players have thought of it so far. If you have the time, drop me an e-mail. I’m really not sure if I want to spend $40 (2 accounts) yet.
Goodnight. |
^ top-Banned
[Nieves] February 22 - 6:14 PM EST | And, the drama of the world of Great Lakes just keeps spinning and spinning...
In the RP world of Great Lakes, there was this player who I will call B. He had to be involved in every major RP event on the shard. He had to be in charge. Some of his ideas were solid. He worked hard at a lot of things he did. Which is all well and good. What made this person a sorry son of a bitch was that if he didn't get his way, he went out of his way to make your life hell on Great Lakes. He would try to "ruin you", embarrass you, and just out and out harrass you. It was aweful. A lot of people felt intimidated by this bitch. Of course, Nieves stood up to the prick. I wasn't always right in some of our disagreements, but I wasn't about to let this bitch know it. He didn't deserve that much respect from me.
He was so obsessed with having to be involved in everything, that he had characters in every guild he could get a character into. "Good" or "bad" side, it didn't matter. Just as long as he was involved. His obsession with getting his way finally caught up with him.
This what happened to Mr. Prick:
b[edited] has quit IRC (Killed (OperServ (K-Lined)))
>(This host is banned for 30days due to harrassment. (2002/02/22 13.41))
becuase he has been harrassing people way before you dear. and that was brought to there attention. you are not the only one that hes been doing this too. and they have pulled his logs and found more then they wanted too
Sucks to be him doesn't it?
A few weeks ago, a (what some consider) emberrassing log of a meeting was posted on a website. A large number of guilds were involved in a pretty big series of events and had gotten tired of being dictated too by this B and discussed it during the meeting. They called B in and was going to summarily "dismiss" him from the scenario and "move past and ignore him". Well, B decided to show his ass (something he does at least 3 times a day) and left the room before the guilds even got the message across. Which you can read about in the log I linked above.
What people didn't know was that B already knew what was going on since he was being fed information about the meeting. He always is. I don't know why but people feed this prick information. Kind of funny actually. He has a little crew of worshippers that see no wrong with him. Welp...some people that saw past his beligerent ways, stood up to him, and saw too it to report his harrassment.
Hmm..I digressed, sorry.
After he was kicked from the events, he summarily kicked (unfriended) all the members of the "old guild" from their "HQ" and would ban anyone that was in that guild if they came into the "HQ".
Over a year ago this "B" was the leader of said guild and "owned" the stone of that guild. This B quit UO (about ~10 times*) and passed the stone off to another player, which was later passed on to another player. Who is now the current GM of that guild.
He went so far as to demand the guildstone back but was demanding that the person that had the stone before the current GM give him the stone. That person couldn't as they didn't have access to the account.
B wanted the stone back SO bad that he made it clear he would ruin folks:
if [edited] doesn't give it to me
[19:08] they go down together
[19:08] [she] is a liar
[19:08] I know she has the power to get me the stone
[19:08] but she is playing it off
[19:08] like she can't
[...]
[20:41] I am being nice
[20:41] now
[20:41] and you know I can be cruel
[20:41] the cruelity I showed towards you
will be nothing compared to what I will bring down on them
All for a guildstone.
Oh, and here is what he posted to the website he writes for:
To R
Consider the deal off
When I get home at the end of this weekend, I will deal with you, [her], and [her], and I won't be nearly as forgiving as I was going to be.
~b
Again, for a fucking guildstone. Because he didn't get his way.
Here is the cute part about this whole guildstone mess. He was actually offered the stone in the past and didn't want it. His paraphrased statement was: "I would never take the stone back, I would never do that". Of course not. At the time, it didn't fit in with his need for control.
And some of you may scratch your heads and wonder why he would get banned over something like this. Well, from what I understand he may have personal information (real life stuff) about the people he is threatening. Well, I say let him be a dick with that information. Let him be a weak and petty bitch. All that will happen is he will see himself in court on the Defendent side.
I hope he sees this article. I hope he writes a "rebuttal" or whatever on that website he rants on. I hope he complains about not getting his way or getting back "his" guildstone to a guild he quit and passed on. A guild he doesn't have any real direct dealings with other than harrass it's current members when they do something he doesn't agree with.
As I told Mr. B:
Congratulations on getting banned.
You have achieved the popularity you have always wanted. Enjoy.
I told people that, eventually, this prick would show his true colors and everyone would realize how petty and weak he really is.
That day has come.
*Note-This number might NOT be an exaggeration.
Hasta. |
^ top-I Ain't A Cheap Ho No Moah!
[Nieves] February 22 - 2:38 PM EST | From FYI:
Previously, players with slower connections could be killed after traveling through a moongate before their computer ever caught up with them and they were able to defend themselves. Players will now be hidden when coming out of a moongate, meaning that they will not become visible until their computer has finished loading, and they are able to move.
Hirelings will now cost 8K in return for their services.
Thank you to Cynthe for pointing that out.
You can read the rest at FYI.
Hasta. |
^ top-Erf..
[Nieves] February 22 - 11:01 AM EST | As American Pie 2 taught us -- times change, people change, everything changes. No matter how much we don't want it to. I know what Evo and Adrick feel. They don't want UO to change. They want it to stay the same. But the people playing it don't feel that way. The people playing it have changed and the game needs to change with them. Its time for Adrick and Evocare to let go of this fantasy of making PKs more attractive to people. Its time for them to forget trying to make Felucca a place for sheep to play with the wolves and be happy.
Its time to stop kicking this dead horse and just bury it. The "good ol' days" deserve that much.
Damn.
::stifles a sob::
Excuse me while I go get a tissue...
Hasta. |
^ top-Bards Get Beat By a Beat Stick, News at 11.
[Nieves] February 21 - 10:35 PM EST | I can just see the bleeding now.
To fix skill balance issues. This includes the relatively extreme power of the Provocation skill and the relatively weak power of Enticement. Provocation allows characters with minimal skill points to single-handedly kill some of the most powerful monsters in the game, while Enticement has very few worthwhile uses.
Right now, Entice = GM Music. Other than that, garbage.
To improve the play experience of bards. As they currently stand, the bard skills generally do not require much interaction from the player. For example, once two creatures are provoked to fight each other, the bard need no longer interact with those creatures until one of them dies. As such, combat with a bard character isn't as engaging, exciting, or interesting as it could be.
Ok...and?
To increase the versatility of bards. Currently, bards have a very small number of simple abilities, many of which have very limited use in Ultima Online. We wish to ultimately give bards a collection of different abilities that are individually not overbalancingly powerful. As a corollary goal, some of the new bard abilities added will be unique to bards and new to Ultima Online.
With those goals in mind, we have in concept a basic play experience planned for the new bard class.
Ok...I am waiting....
In general, it will work like this:
Bard songs.
Eh...?
Bard songs will be an amalgamation of magic and music, voice and instrument. A bard will initiate a song, which will take a short time during which the bard is very vulnerable to interruption by taking damage.
Woah. Sounds like EverQuest already...
After initiation, the duration of the song is open-ended, depending on numerous factors. For example, bards must pay a continuous upkeep cost in Stamina while the song continues, but bards with the Meditation skill will be able to pay part of the upkeep cost using Mana.
Oh shit!
Also, bards are still somewhat vulnerable to interruption by taking damage while a song continues. While initiating and continuing a song, equipping or unequipping any item or actively using most skills will also abort the song. However, the bard will be able to use many items that need not be equipped. Furthermore, the bard will need to stay near the song's target. After song initiation and during upkeep, the song's actual effect occurs.
Yikes. Play a song but you got to pay it's upkeep over time and you are vulnerable. Try doing that shit when there is a Terathan Avenger on your ass.
Song effects. The bard songs will have a mixture of effects. Some will be geared toward solo adventure, while others will be more useful with the bard assisting and supporting an ally. Some will be geared toward actively affecting combat, while others will have passive effects that modify rewards gained from many different types of activities. Furthermore, each bard ability will be usable by a solo bard, or by a "troupe" of three or more bards combining efforts. The troupe version of each ability will be much more powerful than the solo version.
Hmmm...groups of pink robed, mansechs hunting, lute toting gangs roving around ganking folks. Man...it could get ugly.
Targeting and Flagging. Most bard abilities will be considered "beneficial" or "negative" acts. This means that some of them will be unusable in Trammel outside of consensual PvP (like guild wars). Others may be used in non-consenting PvP in Felucca, but will give the bard an Aggressor and/or Criminal flags. For example, performing a beneficial song (like a health regeneration buff) on a monster in Trammel will be impossible, but simply flag the bard criminal in Felucca. Passive abilities that do not require explicit targets will have their effects limited as appropriate and not result in flagging.
So does that mean the fagg...er, Bard dies before the mages in group combat now?
Bard skills. The existing bard skills (Musicianship, Enticement, Peacemaking, and Provocation) will continue to exist, though their roles will change. All bard abilities will still require a Musicianship check. Furthermore, each ability will require skill checks in one or more of the other three skills. Generally, the more powerful the ability, the more skills will be required. Additionally, other skills besides the bard-specific ones will grant bonuses to some bard abilities.
Ouch, there was the nerf. Let's see....
Entice,Music,Prov,Peace,Med,Magery,Resist. Well damn...there is no room for much up in the Bard Set. Talk about a beating. I predict a big time reduction in Bards in UO.
Bard templates. There will be many possible bard templates available.
Oh sure there wil be. ! Oh shit...ARGH! More templates for UOPG's Char Section. ::groans::
Bards may choose not to raise all four of the bard skills (though at least Musicianship will be required to be effective). Doing that will limit the repertoire of songs available, but free up skill points to be used elsewhere. Bards will also be able to be effective without achieving Grandmaster status in all the bard skills, allowing still more flexibility. Since some bard abilities will receive bonuses from additional non-bard skills, bards will have many opportunities to specialize. And finally, since some skills will have additional effects on the bard (like Meditation offsetting Stamina costs with Mana, or Wrestling reducing the chance to be interrupted), the potential variety of bard templates becomes very large indeed.
Specialized fagg..er, bards eh? I guess.
And finally, here are our ideas for actual bard abilities. With this list below, it is particularly important to remember that this is just in concept and is very subject to change!
Got to remember that part. It's in concept.
Provocation. Requiring just the Provocation skill, the core of this ability remains unchanged. The bard provokes one creature to attack another creature or a player (but cannot provoke a player to attack anything). However, in addition to the basic bard spell restrictions listed above under Bard Songs, there are a few differences. First, Provocation becomes difficulty-based, meaning that the more powerful a creature is, the harder it is to provoke. Furthermore, the target that the creature is provoked onto affects the difficulty. In general, provoking one creature to attack another of the same type will be more difficult. However, provoking one creature to attack one of its natural enemies (like provoking an Ophidian on a Terathan) will be much easier. Also, the tougher the target, the less willing the creature is to fight it, making the provoke attempt more difficult. A solo bard will be simply unable to provoke very powerful creatures
Are you feeling the Siege Nerf yet!?
- however, a troupe of skilled bards working in concert will most likely be able to provoke almost all of the most powerful monsters in the game. This is an actively targeted ability and is considered a negative act.
See? Groups of Ganking Bards. It's over now! They fagg...er, Bards are going to OWN dungeons!
Enticement. The only skill this ability takes is Enticement. This ability changes slightly. Rather than a one-time effect that draws a single target to the bard, it will become continuous, causing the target to continue to follow the bard so long as the song is being played. It, too, will become difficulty based. If the bard is very skillful, his or her Enticement effect may even be able to draw in multiple creatures of the same type, if the creatures are individually very weak. Bards working in groups will be able to Entice extremely powerful creatures individually, or groups of medium-level creatures. This is an actively targeted ability and is considered a negative act.
Can you say EverQuest trains!??
Peacemaking. This requires only the Peacemaking skill. In a radius of effect around the bard, monsters and players may occasionally stop fighting. (Players will leave War Mode and lose their target; monsters will stop fighting and after a moment might look for a new target.) The radius of effect and chance to stop fighting depend on the solo bard's skill level, or the combined power of the troupe. A troupe of very skilled bards would be able to stop very powerful creatures and players from fighting in a fairly large radius. This is a passive, non-targeted ability and is considered neither negative nor beneficial. In Trammel, it will have no effect on players and in Felucca it will affect all players (even the bard's party members) in the area of effect.
Oh SHIT! Two Peacemaking Bard-Mages will OWN a group of dexers. Where you at Galahad!? Hey BDA! We need a couple Peacemaking Mages ASAP!
Stamina Regen Rate Buff. The solo bard selects a single target, and that target's stamina recovery rate is increased based on the bard's Provocation skill. When performed by a troupe, all party members receive a stamina recovery rate increase. The greater the combined skill of the bards, the greater the increase. The further the effect spreads (the larger the party), the lesser the gain. Party members will actually have to be within a certain distance of the bards or they lose the benefit, until they return to the area of effect. In solo mode, this is an actively targeted ability and is considered a beneficial act, making it impossible to use on a monster in Trammel and criminal in Felucca. In troupe mode, the bard's party are the only beneficiaries, making flagging irrelevant.
I don't see this being used much. A Total Refresh will take care of the loss of stamina problem.
Health Regen Rate Buff. This ability works almost identically to the Stamina buff, except that the skill required is Enticement and the target’s natural healing rate is increased while the song is in effect. Furthermore, the bard’s Healing skill will provide slight bonuses to this effect.
Now this could be beneficial in group battles...maybe.
Mana Regen Rate Buff. This ability works almost identically to the Stamina buff, except that the skill required is Peacemaking and the target’s natural mana regeneration rate is increased while the song is in effect. Furthermore, the bard’s Meditation skill will provide slight bonuses to this effect.
DOH! Yep, Peacemaking mages will OWN!
Increase Spawn. Skills used are Provocation and Enticement. This ability allows the solo bard or troupe of bards to have slight effects on the spawn rates nearby. The effects will be slight but noticeable, and will be geared toward assisting players in "Evil in a Can" type quests, which are themselves heavily based on variable spawn regions. The cumulative effects of multiple bards/bard troupes will not be enough to severely impact the gameplay of others. However, due to the potential for abuse, this ability actually making it into the game is very much in question. The Increase Spawn ability is considered neither negative nor beneficial.
Um...so? Other than a possible grief tactic, who would care about having that ability?
Decrease Spawn. Works like Increase Spawn, but in the other direction. Skills required are Provocation and Peacemaking.
Lame. Weak. Sucks. <--- Pick one.
Karma Decrease. Karma Increase.
Oh please.
Attack Ability. This ability requires Provocation, Peacemaking, and Enticement . This ability is the only direct-damage bard song. It works by delivering damage over time based on the bard's skills. The troupe mode can have multiple targets based on to-be-determined rules involving party, guild, order/chaos, faction, and/or red/blue affiliation. This is a negative act.
OWN! Area affect damage over time! PHEAR THE FAGG, er...BARDS! Aw fuck it: PHEAR THE FAGGOTS! My only question is, what's the maximum damage these faggots can do?
Teaching Song. This ability requires Provocation, Peacemaking, and Enticement, plus an additional skill. The bard can use this ability to temporarily increase a target's skill level in any skill the bard possesses. For example, a bard with Mining skill can temporarily increase the Mining skill of a target. The maximum skill bonus will be 10 points of skill, but this amount of bonus will be extremely difficult to achieve by requiring the bard be close to Grandmaster in the bard skills and the skill being taught. A troupe of bards will be able to enhance the skill level of their entire party. This ability cannot be used on non-humans.
Hmm. Ok, say you got 3 GM Prov/Peace/Enticement Mages with Wrestling, Eval, Med and Wrestling. They go in and enchance their Eval Int Skills while fighting against some Dexers. Well, ok, maybe. C'mon, I am trying here!
Update: Or not. Read below.
Notes and FAQs
They go on and explain why increasing and decreasing karma/fame would be a cool thing, blah blah blah.
An important point: 4. Those regen buffs sound uber! Sounds like mages ability to mana dump could really be increased
True. However, the bard who is boosting the other character's ability is himself basically unable to fight. The mage/fighter/whatever gets a nice boost to his abilities at the cost of the bard's effectiveness in any other capacity. The effects of these buffs will be reasonably balanced --a mage and a bard who is buffing the mage's mana regen would be about as powerful as a mage and a half. We wouldn't want to make the buff stronger than that, because that combined with the bard's flexibility would effectively make bards overbalancingly powerful in a way different from how they are now.
Ok, someone call 911, there are Faggots all over the place dieing over this beating. /kidding*
Overall, the changes being discussed go a LONG way to balance out an overly powerful class while giving bards the ability to do some cool things.
When OSI said they would balance out Tamers and Bards, they weren't fucking kidding. I can see an exodus of players changing their Bards over to different types of characters. Probably over to Tamers since they can still control a single, and still powerful, pet. The Tamer/Bard/Treasure Hunter Template goes bubye. Not too mention Tamer Bard Templates.
Gotta luv retraining characters huh?
It's ok. You still got UOPG to show you how to do it, right?
In my final analysis: the old Bard Template got fucked.
Welcome to UO2.02k.
*Note-Not all bards are faggots. They just like pretty pink clothing, like holding up their pinkie while drinking green tea and play with their hair a lot. ::winks at all of Nieves Bard playing friends::
Hasta. |
^ top-More from Adrick on the ORAR (One Red All Red). . .
[FrozenFire] February 21 - 3:19 PM EST | Wow, lots of feed back out there. Heres some of the latest from Adrick on the reviled ORAR proposal:
What I was attempting to do is to let those who are complaining so hard against #5 know that if they are really serious about not wanting that they are gonna have to trade off for other things -
as I said nothing is set in stone - There are valid concerns with #5 - there might be a way to compromise a bit on it but I really really like #5 - it holds reds accountable for their actions and ensures that pking is a choice and that it is considered a serious choice. Now I know that some people are saying it destroys family play and that each of their characters are unique and have their own identities - Im guessing alot of these characters know each other - I could be wrong but why do I feel like Joe the pk is getting his armor from mike the armorer on same account, getting his loot from steve the tamer on the same account :) and counting the gold from jasons vendor on the same account and pking with the magic weapons borrowed from Jane the treasure hunter on the same account heh
Im not trying to belittle the valid concerns - Its just currious that there are all of these role played pks and yet visiting felucca you rarely see any reds :(
I appreciate your feedback - we do not take changes of this magnitude lightly we really want to do the right thing - unfortunately given the nature of the beast we really must chose the lesser of the evils
- Adrick
Heres the key passage:
I really really like #5 - it holds reds accountable for their actions and ensures that pking is a choice and that it is considered a serious choice.
If the consequence is not ORAR, then what? PK:ing become empty when there are no blues to hunt. Wolves starve and turn onto themselves when there are no sheep. And since players can always choose Trammel/Ilshenar, there need to be a balance. Too many wolves and too few sheep only means that the sheep escape into Trammel again. And then what good is the removal of stat loss - really?
Removing stat loss is so much more than just what happens to Pks when they die. Because in order to entice players to hunt in Fel with a thriving Red community, there needs to be added rewards (*gasp* Yes added rewards for greater risk). But what will happen if PK:ing is too easy is that guilds of reds will divide the cool drop spots between themselves and get all the cool rewards for themselves - and kill the few blues that dare venture there.
Or in Adricks words:
really want to get this point across to folks - its being missed.
If we remove stat loss from fel and put really cool stuff there I can almost guarantee this is what will happen.
A small small few blues who play in tram will say hey I wanna go see if I can get these new items. Then an equal number of people who are in fel are gonna get overrun by pks - they could be house owners or just people who accept the current risk in fel protected by statloss. Lots of folks will go red - lots of reds will form groups to go try to own an area - any blues that go will be destroyed and either turn red themselves (cant beat em join em) or never come back. So the net result of this will be that we drive some folks in felucca out, trade them for a few folks that will check it out a couple times get ganked to oblivion - get looted and never come back and then we will have shards with nothing but reds duking it out. That is not PKING - that is pvping that is not nonconsensual pvp it is 100% consensual pvp. Reds dont typicaly like that - :( yet by arguing for no real tradeoffs for being red they are in a sense arguing for a red facet full of wolves. I could be wrong in this - is that what the reds here are asking for?
So, if not ORAR, then what? Adrick again:
The question the red pkers in felucca need to be asking themselves is - what is it worth to me to be kill players who are blue and wanting something that is only in Felucca. More importantly what is it worth to have more people involved in pvp, less people afraid to do it because its to risky. What tradeoffs are they willing to live with to be able to PK. These are important questions - every single person we entice through reward and acceptable risk is someone who might decide that pvp is fun - felucca is fun being an anti is fun, trying to get these rewards is fun - they arent gonna do it remembering the death/loot/grief fest that any good spot was in the olden days.
If you scroll down, youll see that Nieves updates about alternatives from players. One of these I like better than most:
m000:
instead of all chars going red,
1) other chars can't give counts
2) no beneficial acts from players on these chars in tram (no healing etc)
3) other chars cannot travel to trammel, yet remain blue (this helps populate fel with blues that have to live/work there) <-- i like this idea
4) all chars get outcast karma level while the red char is red - and so cannot purchase things from npc vendors.
Its not exactly coherent - if you cant go to trammel, then it hardly matters you cant be healed by others there, right? And combine 1) with 4) and the only difference between actually being red, is that people have to pull up your paper doll and see out cast before they know that they can attack you and get no count.
But two things I liked 1. No Trammel/Ilshenar for accounts with reds. Most red with balls couldnt care less about this one though, since they already shun Trammel - right? But it would cut down on the holiday pee kays that hide in trammel when they dont pee kay. Good riddance. 2. Out cast title means NPCs wont talk to you and thus wont sell/buy your goods. I know this is a pain in the ass for civil chars, but being red and not allowed into town, is just a limit on where a pk can hunt. Because all the actual buying and selling can be done by the other characters. of course there are ways around it, like asking a friend to shop for you. But that added affort adds up, and hopefully it means you care whether youre red and if its not worth it, you stay blue. Remember if everyone goes red, the fun ends.
This way, youd still be able to have your chars in O/C or RP guild (well as long as they dont hang in Trammel all day) and still be able to PK.
Well its not perfect but its a way around it. Also you gotta give OSI credit for actively asking for player input - and listening -. Not only is PK:ing under review, but I bet well see major changes to Tamers and Bards soon too.
Cynthe promised som kind of stat of the skills document, so soon well be able to see what exactly changes they plan (or not) for our favourite skills.
Now that they are listening, make yourself heard:
Adrick
UOPG
|
^ top-UO Boards Downtime
[Nissa] February 21 - 1:20 PM EST | This was posted to FYI:
Most of our boards posters know that the boards have been slowing down considerably as more load has been placed on them, and as traffic increases, they’ve slowed down to a crawl. We’ll be moving the boards to new hardware today at 2:30 PM CST, which should solve this problem, but will require that the boards be down for a short time while we copy over the database. It shouldn’t take more than an hour (and may take far less time, but we’ll say an hour to be safe), and the boards should be back up – and much faster!
Hope this helps. The last week these boards have been crawling. |
^ top-Adrick and Evocare Thinks about it.
[Nieves] February 21 - 9:35 AM EST | First Adrick:
Its one challenging job to design on a game with so many players with so many different playstyles.
The team has been reading the boards and 95% of people posting despise the one red all red - thats way more than we expected.
Ok before everyone thinks I and the rest of the team are on crack and out to ruin everyones game let me attempt to explain our reason for proposing that.
First off it was something we had heard players ask for on several occasions. We discussed it and we had concerns - many of which we heard today on the boards.
We want to remove stat loss from the game. We want more neutral players from trammel to play in Felucca. We want to keep non consensual pvp - meaning we want reds and blues to duke it out in felucca. We want to reward those who play in felucca and assume more risk.
Removing stat loss - increases risk in trammel for blues, greatly increases reds to the point where a vast majority of players would be red - decreases fel population overall since not many blues would want to be there with so many reds and so high a chance of dying and losing items.
One Red all red - keeps the number of reds relatively the same - keeps level of risk in fel relatively the same.
So just throwing something out - Id like to see posts from those who said that one red all red was horrible and they would quit. One red one red but no looting for reds that kill blues other than gold coin and gems. Reds lose 30% items on death (meaning 30% of items go to corpse along with all gold anf gems). No recall for anyone in Fel, A timer on gate travel after resurection - say 20 min.
Now also keep in mind we have as yet not discussed the rewards that will ONLY be available in felucca and they are not token items.
Also keep in mind this is stuff we are discussing as possibilities - but we are listening to feedback.
Blue players - would you go to felucca under those curcumstances if there were items you could only get there?
Red players - is not looting victims better than all characters on your account being red?
*Hides*
Adrick
For the record, Adrick doesn't do crack, he freebases.
Now Evocare:
Hi there, I just wanted to add some reassurance that the changes listed on In-Concept are by no means set in stone. We've released those ideas in order to get feedback (which we've certainly seen) and we're also looking into other options for Felucca changes based on the feedback.
The references to publish 16 are there since we do expect to make changes to Felucca in publish 16, but it's still a ways off and the implementation is still at the point where it's subject to change.
**whew**
i feel a bit better, dont you?
I know I do...
And some ideas from this thread:
Martal_Bau:
You adjust the push-through and I'd give Fel a chance again, regardless of how many pk's there are and whether or not I lose items. To me that's the only thing I dislike about Fel as is.
Katroine:
I personally don't care about looting.
I do not want my "nice" girls to be red.
I do not want all the so called "evil" people that I am friends with to leave this game.
I just want to keep playing this game that I so adore.
(and for the record, I never said you were on crack)
Sister Marie:
Put these items in Fel dungeons and the Fel Lost Lands. Disable Recall/Gate into or out of these areas.
Instead of being in Fel being the PvP switch, make walking into the Fel Dungeons/Lost Lands the switch.
Allow Reds into towns like on Siege.
You would adventurers going into the hot zones for the new items, PKs trying to nail them, and Anti's hunting the PKs because they would be in a fairly limited area.
Rainier:
I've never PKed in my life. In fact, I've only killed one character in self defense in my three years of playing UO. I'm 100% blue. I like most all of the ideas you initally posted today. So this statement might shock you.
If you were to remove statloss and not make all of my characters red, I would create a PK!!!
No doubt about it. Suddenly there would be nothing to lose. I know I'd suck so I'd die a lot and lose the few items I had on me. I could care less. The reason I don't PK is that frankly I am scared out of my mind from statloss. I don't want to lose the many hours of training I put into my character. I can deal with the no-recall and other issues you proposed.
Merjoh:
Someone above mentioned that blues keep 100% of their loot after being PKed, this sounds like a decent option to me. Let's face it, getting loot in this game is not hard. Regeants are now easy to come by, magic weapons are a dime a dozen, and we've discussed gold-farming to death elsewhere. Sure, having your blue char get PKed should be a sucky experience, but not so much that you get a sour taste for UO in your mouth and want to quit. So you have to be ported to town get rezed, and go back about your business. I don't PK for loot, or grief -- it's an RP thing. Those that do might continue if it was gold only or something. Personally, when I play in Fel with a blue I pack a minimal amount of suppies, and nothing I'd mind losing.
Anti-PK guild would have an advantage here, so maybe if they initiate agressor flag to a red player, they lose the 100% protection and it drops to 70%? 50%?
How about decreasing the gold carried by monsters in Tram? I know you're considering other rewards for blues who want to be challenged in Fel, but knowing my blue has a choice of 300 gp from a titan in Tram (minimal risk) or 900 gp in Fel (more risk due to PKs) I might consider fighting in Fel if I'm in gold-farming mode. Tram only players would have to work harder, which addresses some of the economy issues there, but they can make big bucks in Fel if they're willing to fight in groups with anti-pk measures in place.
No recall for anyone in Fel is a bad idea. I play Siege as well, and building a fighter char, it's really tough to get around not being able to cast Gate. I'm confused about where this idea is coming from -- we already have the ban on recalling when you're an agressor to someone - or is that just for guilded chars?
Thanks again for being willing to revise your stance on this, and explore other options. As you said, lots of people get scared when big changes are mentioned, and I think people have a view that once something's put In Concept, nothing we say can change it. Not sure where this comes from, because the virtue system has evolved over the past few months.
m000:
instead of all chars going red,
1) other chars can't give counts
2) no beneficial acts from players on these chars in tram (no healing etc)
3) other chars cannot travel to trammel, yet remain blue (this helps populate fel with blues that have to live/work there) <-- i like this idea
4) all chars get outcast karma level while the red char is red - and so cannot purchase things from npc vendors.
Mahkno:
I am a BLUE.... I live and have played in Felucca ONLY. There should be 100% looting. Why? Because there is no perma death. If you do not allow 100% looting then its possible that the struggle will not end. Dry looting and selective rez killing are substitutes for the absence of perma death. They are necessary and essential tactics however distasteful they may be. There is a difference between rez killing someone to keep them off the field and rez killing them just to spite them.
GooTheLowly:
0 looting is a bad idea -- we proved that in the early days of Hero/Evil on Siege. Just farm to your heart's content at the bottom of a dungeon that has PKs camping the entrance, have a red friend attack and kill you there, and waltz out with all your loot. That being said, I don't kill people for the loot, since I've got a fully-built tamer, craftsman, and picker on Napa, and a tamer and craftsman on Siege. Sure is nice to not have to buy new pouches though...
No banning is okay. Autobanning reds is annoying, because it would automatically kick you off of porches and away from houses as you run past. Since many houses in Fel are improperly placed, this will lead to some nasty deathtraps. :/
Avindale (Me):
Well I was unable to read everyone's response so this may be a repeat.
What if you had it so that if someone had one red, then no one else on that account would be able to go to trammel.
It's like being semi-red heh.
That way they are still punished, but their other chars can still enjoy the towns of fell and walk around without being gangked.
As for the inital proposals:
The only loot gold and such is harsh because it lets blues bring along vanqs without a fear of losing them.
It also makes blues who seek out reds invulnerable to them. If they die they will come back with everything, because why would they have brought gold?
The no recall anywhere in fell is interesting.
As for the choice with all red or no loot, I'd go with no loot, but I'd rather you found a different choice.
I made it about half way through, kind of picked the ones that were kind of interesting without talking for like 10 pages.
And a word from Cynthe:To start off, let me assure you that these are the official boards, and it is our policy to post most of our thoughts, ideas, feedback gathering, etc. here. However, quite a few of us are also on a Yahoogroups email list called ultima@yahoogroups.com. This list has been around since long before I've been here, and there are quite a few dev members, players, ex-players, fansite admins, and even ex-dev members on the list. It's public, and moderated by Joshua Rowan and the Stratics crew. Generally, the conversation there consists of approximately 30-40 people debating the finer points of systems and game changes, and the dev team usually just reads the relevant threads, replying to questions or asking for more information occasionally.
Sorry for all of that. A lot of info out there.
There are a lot of proposals out there for alternatives to stat loss *koffAngelIslandkoff* and maybe those should be looked at closer. Maybe? And when they say "can't be done", I laugh now. Just like Precasting wouldn't come back, Stat Loss would never go away, etc. A bit of advice OSI? Don't say "can't be" anymore... Unless that's your plan? Piss us off and then make us love you more when you do it anyway? Stop it already. You are hurting my ulcer.
At the UO Faire, the point that was stressed by the OSI team was that they did not want to take away from the current playerbase. They would only add to them without necessarily hurting everyone as a whole. Yes, the taming nerf is going to hurt, but it's needed. And the issue of Player Killing as being a "griefing playstyle" is a hot debate. But do you really want to kill something that is as old as UO itself? And do you want to punish a group of players because they decide to roleplay the brigand or cut throat? A tamer will STILL be able to rake in the gold with a single pet. And this time you will have to "earn" your pets. Sorry if you 60/60 tamers can't handle that. A PK has to "earn" his loot too. And the thing is, a PK takes chances. Not all PKs get their kills. They fail in their "endeavors". Sometimes they get caught fighting someone that is having a good PvP day or 10 friends just happen to recall/gate in as the PK tries to do his/her work.
Making an alternative to Stat Loss is way cool. The one red all red plan was a bad one.
I am sure Adrick and Company will take it all to heart and come up with a better solution.
Excuse me while I go get Adrick and Evocare some more baby powder. Yeah, that's it.
Freebase with us .
Hasta. |
^ top-On A Lighter Note
[Nieves] February 21 - 8:58 AM EST | What a night!!
If I overuse the words ‘thank you’ than you have to forgive me! I have to tell you about last night in Sosaria.
I started in power hour and was having fun sailing. I recall to a mage shop in Moonglow, but my sulphorous ash and than go to the coast line. I have to teleport on the one ridge there which is annoying and fun at the same time..annoying I have to teleport but it’s a fun spell to cast. Anyway im power houring evaluate intelligence and I get an icq message. I found I was annoyed. Haha!! Im annoyed that someone is interuptting my power hour!! I laughed and shook my head to escape my immersion in the game and looked to see who it was. I had added a few people just before logging in so was eager to see who was ‘dropping by’.
It was one of the guys I first met and we adventured in the new lands where I thought was Oasis..we have kept in touch and like to kill stuff together. He wanted to show me something so I told him to give me a bit so I could finish with the ‘chore’ of gaining skills. Heh.
After that was done (5.6 pts in eval bringing me to 71whoohoo) I went to meet him. He invited me into a guild (LOTS more research to do here btw, what ‘good’ is a guild? Yes, he can attack me now but I don’t see a ‘guild chat’…AND we have to be careful vs monsters because flame fields and stuff (I love ff) will hurt each other now). Anyway now im guilded.
Than I get an ICQ and I see its from ‘Gator’. Whooo hooo! He wants to meet me so he picks me up at the Vesper Bank. (I need to get around more, I find this bank is convenient because its so close to a mage shop, BUT its far from an INN to logout and most of the time regs are sold out anyway..I need to explore!) He takes me to ‘Fire Isle’…It looks kinda like a jungle with no swamp. He shows me his house and than says I can use it. Heh, I know, BLAM! Like I was shot with an .88 magnum! I was like “um, excuse me”? I figured Gator must be an old man who just had his 90th birthday and didn’t know what he was saying…but its true! Can you believe this?? I finally have a place to store this worthless tuff ive been holding! I can have my OWN vendor! Muhahahahahhah!! Hes got it decked out too – its loaded! I cant wait to start my mule smith now!
Gator took off and I explored and sunbathed a bit at the top of the tower. I didn’t know what I wanted to do next and decided I really needed to do this stat thing. I was close to 700 so did spirit speak for 40 points and bingo! I hit 700 unmodified skills (I didn’t go buy the skills like everyone reccommended and um, now I see WHY they recommended..if I just listened!!). So I started the ‘see-saw’. OMG. I am…now…a GOD. Hear me roar!! Int went to 105 quick (im gonna lose the hat), but str was slow to gain.
I get another ICQ and its from ‘Cael’. (I invited people by numbers but like me they have different nom de jeurs…im Fury here, Khan in game). Cael = Diosyn. We chatted and of course I immediately told him my problem…I didn’t want INT to go down but friggin str wasn’t raising. Taste ID and Arms Lore were my two. He told me to get that shovel and pretend to be a dwarf – mining is where its at he said! Use Item Id as the other to keep INT in place.
Worked like a charm! I now have 100 str and 100 int and dex is 25. Not great maybe for Archer Mage so Ill say im a Mage Archer now! I buzzed Diosyn and he told me he has a newbie archer too and if I wanted to kill demons with him.
Heh, year right. A newbie archer and a God fighting a demon??? I was riding that high though and said sure wtf, like im gonna wus out to this guy! Bah! So we meet and im looking him over…he doesn’t seem to be wearing armor and im wondering if he knows that my Archery is at 86, tactics at 89 and magery 78..demons? yeah, I know…
Well we port to ‘Wind’…very, very, very cool place. Mages only! His gate is on the roof – (rofl). I marked my own rune and went inside…spending a good minute clicking on the pentagram trying to get in until he said just walk over it. (duh!).
Inside we meet a person who kinda seemed clueless like me and joined our party. I will call her Lucky Lurica because she was unlucky but that would ruin the alliteration. Liches are popping up and dying while we sit there talking (and im not even thinking of looting, im still trying to ‘slow down’…Diosyn is a whirlwind..killing liches, talking, healing, curing all at the same time…
Finally we get to the Demons. And..whoa – these guys have names and everything..was very cool. Well, Diosyn is NOT a newbie archer! He is laying down the thunder with his bow….has pretty much the entire demon population mad at him and hes just cutting em down. I do my small part (100 int is NICE, I can cast ebolts all day long!!) Lucky Lurica ran off down the tunnels with a demon in tow – im not sure why he/she didn’t stay with us but I know when I get something coming at me my first instinct is to run…im learning its MUCH better to sit there and gun the sucker down.
Well, Diosyn starts wrestling a demon and im (really overwhelmed) like wtf is he doing…his health bar is dropping faster than Enron stock so I go into heal mode which is good for two heals and I hear him die..and the demon comes at me. Remember what I said about sticking around? Well I was low on mana and decided to run myself…and invised (fuck hiding, waste of skill pts – see im listening!). Diosyn had gotten booted and came back. I carry res scrolls and got him back. We avenged him and than it was laaaate so I waved and logged.
Pretty exciting night eh?
Thanks again to Gator, and thanks Diosyn for fun night! Newbie archer…yeah right. : )
-Fury
Gawd I new players! :) Why do you play UO?
Hasta. |
^ top-Impy's The Money Bin
[Nieves] February 20 - 7:47 PM EST | Well well well, and I thought the asshoes at BSI had something going*:
[...] Auctions are exhausting. Trust me on this. I didn’t want to become an auction house. I just wanted to raise a little gold for my Young Fund.
But wow - if I made over 2 million in one evening - just think how much a place like Impy’s must make every week!
It’s a good thing I was already laying down when that last thought hit me. JUST HOW MUCH DOES A PLACE LIKE IMPY’S TAKE IN EVERY WEEK - AND WTF DO THEY DO WITH ALL THAT GOLD?!??!
So I left word for Impy himself - he never responded. So I went to the auction last night to see for myself just how much they took on an average night.
jim spellhurler had the night off, no sign of Garber around... Impy's staff on hand for the evening included Ashley, Violet, Lady Dawn, Pratt and Laurel.
It was announced that there was a contest on the Impy's website worth 50k in auction credit. There was no winner in last nights Runes 2 Riches game.
And then the show began.... (I list the final sale price and then in brackets - what is the profit amount based on 5% going to the auction house)
Dragon Statuette ..... 160K (8k)
6 Shrine Snowglobes (all diff) ..... 80K (4k)
2 25,000 Diamond wedding bands ..... 225k (11250).... clearly the bid could have gone higher on this item... but the auctioneer called it sold even though people were still bidding.
FORT/INVUL Helm ..... 10K (500)
2 Coal Ingots ..... 50K (2500)
Golden Strongbox ..... 350K (17500)
Lizardman Statuette ..... 170K (8500)
500 Faction silver ..... 25k (1250)
A 'scroll' ..... 85K (4250)
Full 300th Anniv set ..... 365K (18250)
3 studded gorgets invul/1 studded gloves ..... 6K (300)
Vanq bow and Vanq Xbow ..... 11K (550)
Lakeshire Snowglobe ..... 35K (1750)
Daemon Armor FULL ..... NO SALE (500K min)
Dur Bow of Vanq/Dur Supr Acc Silver Bow of Power ..... NO SALE (65K min)
Daemon statuette ..... NO SALE (200K min)
25 slayer bows (complete set) ..... (only 4 prepped for use) 130K (6500)
Complete V-Day set (5 cards, 5 candies, 2 red flutes, both champagnes) ..... 460K (23K)
White statue of Keeonean ..... 400K (20k)
Full set of Ranger armor ..... NO SALE
Scimitar of Spiders Death ..... 5k (250)
Maul of Vanq ..... 15K (750)
2 Lvl 5 T-Maps ..... 27K (1350)
Full set of potted plants ..... 1.6Mil (80k)
Full suit of coal ringmail (GM) ..... 450K (22500)
5 Whispering Roses ..... 275K (13750)
345 spell reflect charges ..... 10K (500)
Earth Elly statue ..... 165K (8250)
Dupre Statue ..... 10K (500)
Humility Shrine Snowglobe ..... NOSALE
Repond Scimitar and Exec Axe of Gargoyles Foe ..... 30K (1500)
10 Coal Ingots ..... 180k (9k)
2 Gold Mark scrolls ..... 30K (1500)
Gold Strong Box ..... 300K (15k)
300th Anniv set ..... 220K (11k)
2 Miscolored Ingots ..... 50K (2500)
2 Xmas busts of Juo'Nar ..... 27K (1350)
Dur Leather Legs of Invuln ..... 25K (1250)
Zombie Statuette ..... 600K (30k)
Mint Green eggs ..... 250K (12500)
Runic Hammers (2 dull, 1 shadow, 1 copper) ..... 500K (25k)
Chaos/Honor Globes ..... 80K (4k)
2nd Lvl T-Map ..... 5k (250)
Dur Acc Mace of Vanq Feeble x39 ..... NOSALE (10k min)
10 Whispering Roses ..... 550K (27500)
Ethy Horse ..... NOSALE (670k min)
10 MIBs ..... 125k (6250)
G'Thunk Angel ..... NOSALE (2mil min)
Rope ..... 40k (2k)
Tall Candle ..... NOSALE (50K min)
2 Acc Silver Longswords/Power ..... 40K (2k)
Crawworth Statue ..... 10K (500)
Practice Mace ..... NOSALE (25k min)
Dragon Statuette ..... 120K (6k)
Agapite Anvil Deed ..... NOSALE (3Mil min)
Mystery Chest (59 items 305 stones) ..... 1.7Mil (Again the item could have sold for more... I personally bid 1.9 before the auctioneer called 'sold!' and after acknowledging my bid, she let it go for 1.7 to the previous bidder...(85k - but this was a donated item which would lead me to believe ... 1.7Mil in profit :/ )
At 5% of the sales... that's 5,000,050 profit for the evening...
If you factor in the Mystery Chest as pure profit... that's a grand total of… DUN DUN DUN -- 6 Million 6 Hundred and 15 Thousand and 50 gold pieces PROFIT.
And that was one night. The auction house wasn’t even full. Even if you factor in that he may pay his staff a salary to bring the public these auctions… there were only 5 people on hand. Maybe I missed one, give them the benefit of the doubt - say 6 people for the evening. Now even grossly overpaying them to stand around for 3 hours - say he pays them 100K a piece to work the auction - that’s still only 600K out of 6 MILLION IN PROFITS!
Do they math with me for a few minutes. Impy’s has been running auctions for how long? Well I didn’t know the exact answer to that question - so I turned to their website for some help. The first news item was posted March 27, 2001. That’s 47 weeks x one auction a week at (I will lowball it) and say 4 million in profits. That’s 188 Million.
IN PROFIT!
A look back on the Impy’s timeline:
March 27, 2001 - The website goes up.
May 8, 2001 - They celebrated the fact that they had “given away over 1.2 MILLION in gold to date in that game".
May 24, 2001 - A second auction is held this week to accommodate all the items.
June 13, 2001 - The Mystery Chest becomes a item donated from an outside source
June 14, 2001 - Another second auction this week
July 30, 2001 - Another second auction
At this point the second weekly auction seems to become a pretty regular thing.
August 30, 2001 - Using his website to advertise it, Impy places an order across the land of Sosaria for 180 fishing nets (with another 60 to be needed in the near future) Here’s the quote from the website: “We've got enough in the new event fund to pay 5k per net. We'll accept any amount from 1 to 240 nets. For those who prefer to donate to the new event, we do heartily accept donations of nets (or gold to purchase them)."
They are basically saying they have at least 1.2 mil in the event fund at this point. Anyone else having trouble believing its anywhere close to JUST 1.2 mil?
August 31, 2001 - They announced that in the month of August alone they sold over 100 million gold pieces in items… the exact reported figure for this month was 109,153,000. That’s 5,457,650 in profit for the math challenged. They also officially announced that the second weekly auction was here to stay.
That was roughly 24 weeks ago. 4 million profit per auction (remember, I lowballed it based on last nights sales) x two nights a week x 24 weeks = 192 Million in profit. Even if you take half that amount - say 100 million - what do you do with 100 million in gold? A typical person with a large windfall of gold might invest in rares - if you look around Impy’s there are quite a few rares on display - but most of them have been on display for quite some time. I couldn’t find someplace on their website that showed how much the staff gets paid. Is the surplus of gold being anonymously given away to newbies? Are the staff members of Impys getting wealthy off your 5 percent? Is there an ebay account out there selling off this gold? (Just imagine, 192 million x the average lowballed ebay price of 1 million gold = $3,840 US dollars!) And if so, who see’s the cash?
Sept 17, 2001 - They started giving away 50k per week on the website in auction credit.
(22 weeks x 50k per week = 1, 100, 000 out of 192 mil profit)
Where does this gold go? I left a couple of messages for Impy asking for a bit of his time to get his input on this article but apparently it is against Impy's policy to grant interviews. His staff was also instructed of this policy. *shrugs*
Someone sent this reporter a copy of an ICQ log that contained some pretty interesting information. Seems one of the folks responsible for Impy’s was recently caught red-handed destroying advertising materials at another Trammel auction house. On a separate but related note, Impy himself was not to pleased the Sandlewood had stepped into the ‘auction’ market. I think he preferred we stay in the ‘event’ market only.
I can tell you this. Unless I have reason to raise more gold for the Trinsic Young Fund, I see no reason to charge any player a percentage of the sale. Not in this days economy. Not at these sale prices. And certainly, never again, at 5 percent.
I leave it to you, the player, who works hard for their items, and hard for their gold, to decide what is being done with the profits that little dwarf is rolling around in.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
***Addendum to this article
It has been brought to my attention that my math sucks!
And the person that brought it to my attention certainly couldn't be farther from the truth *chuckles*
For all the folks that fell in to the 'math challenged' category I mentioned above -- feel free to put me in the 'black kettle' category. *smiles*
So here's the fresh math - checked and rechecked... and well.. you should probably redo the math yourself, as we have already decided I am no Lars Ahlfors.
Valentines Night Auction TOTAL PROFIT (at 5% of the Mystery Chest) 415,050
With the Mystery Chest at FULL PROFIT the total take for the night is 2,030,050
(Seems I mistakenly added in the NOSALEs - bleh)
So if I lowball my *coughs* corrected *coughs* estimate of what they take in per week down to 2 mil (using 1 mil per auction night) and multiply that by the 24 weeks used in the example above..... that comes down to 48 Million.
Half the amount I originally estimated.
I wrote the article. I asked for Impy's input. I was refused an interview on the grounds all interviews are against Impy's policy. I apologize for the incorrect math - but quite frankly, a simple interview could have resolved this on the spot. And before you get all freaky on me and say it could have been reported with the correct math figures if I had simply checked my math - I used an Excel spreadsheet to do it... *laughs* But if you dont put the amounts in the right place, your formulas still do not work. Now the article stands with this correction.
Laterzzz
~~Noleeens
Veddy interesting. What would you do with 200 Million gold...?
*-Article was edited for brevity. You can find the original article here. Scroll down and look for Scrooge McDuck and his Money Bin. Above it is a counter post. A weak one. So weak in fact, I forgot what was said in it 2 seconds after I finished reading it.
And I am told their ads aren't being posted to other sites anymore.
Noleens had been continually denied interviews. "Bottom line, as you are aware, if you have nothing to hide, why not open yourself up to an interview? Why put your staff under a "NO INTERVIEWS ALLOWED" rule..... just leaves cynics like me thinking the worst."
Yep. Exactly.
Oh yeah...by the way, Barth Van Dorn worked for Impy's. Or does he still? Oh, let me correct that. The player that played Barth Van Dorn was a part of Impy's crew under a pseudonymn. We all know who BVDorn is right? Right.
Am I jealous of them making all that gold. You better fucking believe it. But would I hide the fact? Nope. I would revel in it and tell people to "worship me". But that's Nieves. I am not scared to stand up and admit something like that. You know me. The Glory Hound and all.
UPDATE: An Impy rep denied they make that much gold. They also denied BVDorn works for Impys. Ok, right. BVDorn doesn't work for Impy's. His other character, Garber Devinci, does. Don't you love semantics?
That person also noted their ads are still being posted at UO.com. Of course, UOSS isn't posting the ads. Who is more important as far as announcing player run events to the UO Community? Well, let me not diss UO.com. Most people look to UOSS for advertisements of player run events. So they lose a lot of advertising with that lack of advertising.
It's interesting because Impy's is on Great Lakes, my home shard. Anyway...
Let me leave you with quotes and a follow up comment: "dare ya to find a better bunch of dedicated GL players who care about the shard . Safe travels friend "
Um, define dedicated please.
"Dedicated means people who sit in front of their pc's 3 to 5 hours TWO nights a week in order to hold an event that benefits both sellers and buyers and give the community a chance to interact. People who really care if the crowd is amused or bored and are happy when someone gets a good deal. Dedicated on call for submissions and payouts ALL the time, updating sites doign reports and all the other things that help the event continue with such success."
KoffBULLSHITkoff. Personally, I don't think they are that dedicated to the Great Lakes community. I think they aren't dedicated to anyone but the gold that lines their pockets. And the cash that probably gets generated from the selling of UO Gold...
But that's a guess. Don't quote me on it. ::winks::
And, again, I wouldn't cover it up with "dedication". Just say: "the million gold piece checks sure do look good" and move on. Being exposed can suck later on. You know what I mean?
That is of course if there is something to expose right?
I welcome Impy to write in and give me his rebuttal/thoughts.
UPDATE part 2:
As of the 14th of February, Impy’s has assisted the players of GL in the sales of over ONE BILLION GOLD PIECES worth of their goods. WOW!
How, in the name of all that’s UO, does that happen? Well, let’s take a brief peek into the history of this place called Impy’s, shall we?
· Date the doors swung wide for their first auction: October 18th, 2000
· Number of auctions provided since that date: 78
· Total Auction Sales since inception: 1,016,878,902 gp
· Most Frequent Submitter of Items to Auction: Sir Charles (38 weeks)
· Most Successful Submitter of Items (in gold): Fabio (50,115,000 gp)
· Number of Weekly Events: 2 (plus 3 mini-events)
· Average Crowd Size per event: 50
· Average number of items auctioned per event: 54 (64 is the most ever)
· Total number of submitters since opening day: 482
· Average gp sales per individual submitting: 2,109,707 gp
Do the math...
Impy’s Arctic Faire is suitably named for it’s proprietor…a cranky old dwarf named Impy. He asserts himself to be 108 years of age, but does not appear to be a day over 98. Remarkably, he has absolutely no interest in the auction or the events themselves,
Yah, sure. Impy isn't interested in the auction at all. Nuh UH!
Has Impy’s Arctic Faire stagnated? Are their events strictly auction-related? Are other events being planned? Where does all of that money go? Any juicy dirt neatly swept under the proverbial rug over at the castle? Are there plans to branch out onto other shards? What’s with the “Faire” theme mentioned in the name of the place? Why haven’t I ever seen another dwarf around? For that matter, why have many of us never seen Impy himself? How did this single individual build his castle, much less the empire utilized by such a large segment of UO on a weekly basis? What’s the secret behind Impy?
Impy has agreed, after over a year of silence, to come out of his self-imposed seclusion and grant an interview!
Note: We’re really more interested in what YOU want to know. If you have a question that’s been burning a hole in you for the last 16 months, drop us a line. We’ll make SURE to ask him, if time allows.
Oh sure. "I dont submit questions so people can word their stuff for a week before getting it back to me".
Anyway, an Impy's honcho said they would talk to me later. We shall see what we shall see. Maybe I can get their side of the story and set the whole record straight.
Hasta. |
^ top-What a Concept!!
[LadyGrania] February 20 - 6:14 PM EST | While on of our illustrious reporters posted his views and comments on this earlier, I feel that it is now my turn.
It's also my pleasure to inform you that this is now officially posted on the UO website as "In Concept"
Possible Felucca and Murder System Changes Feb 20 2002 11:49AM CST
Note: The murder of an innocent is defined as a situation where a player deals unlawful damage, thereby directly resulting in the death of a blue player (note: damaging a guild war opponent, faction opponent, a criminal, a murderer, guildmate, etc, are considered lawful damage).
What this means is, if you aren't orange or green to the victim, and you kill them, you're a murderer.
When an innocent player is murdered, 70% of the innocent's items (a random result per item) will remain on their ghost (unlootable).
When an innocent player is murdered, that player will be given the option to teleport to a town through a free “stuck player” window.
All dead players (ghosts) without the spirit speak skill will no longer be able to hear what live players are saying (they will hear something to the effect of "blah, blah, blah" instead of the actual words).
What this means is, the victim no longer loses everything, thereby taking away some of the incentive of phat lewt, the victim gets to leave immediately instead of being stuck on hell's half acre, and they don't have to listen to the kewl dewd smack
Changes to the consequences/conditions of the “Murderer” status In order to provide a means to eliminate the “stat loss” system for punishing murderers, while providing a new, yet suitable level of consequence for the “murder” of characters in the Felucca lands, the following measures will be taken:
All characters will receive a “one-time” reprieve for all murders of every type (all murder counts will be reset).
All tracking of “short-term” and “ping-pong” murder counts will be eliminated (they will be obsolete upon the implementation of the changes below).
The “stat loss” system will be eliminated completely (red characters will no longer take stat loss upon ressurection).
All newly acquired murder counts will decay with 120-hour (5 days) real-time timers (online or offline).
Wow! In 5 days you can go to the bank somewhere other than Buc's!
Due to the imprecise nature of Justice in Felucca, murder counts will now be tracked on a shard level for each account. After 5 murders on that shard all characters on that shard for that account will become red (all other characters on that shard for that account are considered accessories to murder).
While I see the point, I think it sucks. My guess is that if you want pk characters and non pk characters, this will force you to buy yet another account and give more money to the great OSI Gods
Reds (murderers) will no longer be able to ban other players from houses. Houses will have a “no red entry” option that will prevent all reds from entering the house (essentially, they will be “auto-banned” from that house).
What?? Macroing the phrase I BAN THEE isn't good enough anymore??? I don't care if a red comes in, but if he starts anything I'm damned quick to ban him"
Due to the remaining force of Justice in Felucca, reds will no longer be able to cast the recall spell.
Welcome To Siege! This was long overdue in my opinion. Yes.. I like this one.
The “bounty system” will be eliminated.
Who cares? It's broken and stupid anyway.
The “murderer” paperdoll title will be eliminated (although players with 5 murders will still highlight red and be considered “murderers” in this document).
OK. I didn't need to pull up a paperdoll to know they were murderers anyway
Luv Ya!
|
^ top-Adam Ant Tells Us What He Thinks of OSI's Stat Loss Alternative
[Nieves] February 20 - 4:23 PM EST | It's not pretty:
Okay, now I’m mad
Let’s take these one at a time:
1. When an innocent player is murdered, 70% of the innocent's
items (a random result per item) will remain on their ghost (unlootable).
Excessive. You all know my feelings on this. It’s important to allow the PK to do the honorable thing by leaving the loot on the corpse. This change takes that option away.
2. When an innocent player is murdered, that player will be
given the option to teleport to a town through a free "stuck player" window.
This is fine. (Isn’t this the way it is now?)
3. All dead players (ghosts) without the spirit speak skill will no
longer be able to hear what live players are saying (they will hear
something to the effect of "blah, blah, blah" instead of the actual words).
Okay, kind of a reasonable. I see that they are trying to eliminate the smack talking PK.
However it does away with any role-playing that the PK might want to carry out.
Changes to the consequences/conditions of the "Murderer" status:
1. All characters will receive a "one-time" reprieve for all
murders of every type.
Okay.
2. All tracking of "short-term" and "ping-pong" murder counts
will be eliminated (they will be obsolete upon the implementation of the
changes below).
Okay.
3. The "stat loss" system will be eliminated completely (red
characters will no longer take stat loss upon ressurection).
Yay! (I think….)
4. All newly acquired murder counts will decay with 120-hour (5
days) real-time timers (online or offline).
Doesn’t really matter because I am a true PK and never plan on being blue again. *shrugs*
5. Due to the imprecise nature of Justice in Felucca, murder
counts will now be tracked on a shard level for each account. After 5
murders on that shard all characters on that shard for that account will
become red (all other characters on that shard for that account are
considered accessories to murder).
WTF! So, instead of just having to worry about by PK, I now have 4 other characters that are now toast?
This is by far the dumbest thing I have ever heard.
Adrick, wake the hell up, we’re role players!
I have a treasure hunter that won’t be able to treasure hunt. An adventurer that won’t be able to adventurer. Basically all the other “roles” I play are now thrown away.
This is it folks, the absolute worst proposed change ever made to UO. Worse than stat-loss even (and that’s saying something!)
6. Reds (murderers) will no longer be able to ban other players
from houses.
Why? So we’ll have blue gank squads rushing into the reds only safe refuge to kill them?
7. Houses will have a "no red entry" option that will prevent
all reds from entering the house (essentially, they will be "auto-banned"
from that house).
Don’t we think that players can make an “I ban thee” macro?
8. Due to the remaining force of Justice in Felucca, reds will
no longer be able to cast the recall spell.
I see. So the only way to be a red in Felucca is to run in a gank squad that’s not afraid of the possible retaliation?
Adrick, I hope you realize you are killing the solo RP PK.
Adam will never again be seen in the Elder Gazer room of Shame if he has to walk home.
9. The "bounty system" will be eliminated.
Who cares.
10. The "murderer" paperdoll title will be eliminated (although
players with 5 murders will still highlight red and be considered
"murderers" in this document).
Well I always wanted this, but it’s of little value if I give up being a Guardian for bank-sitting.
--------------------
Lord Guardian,
Adam Ant
Just because we're a bunch of murderers and thieves doesn't mean we need to act uncivilized.
I only have issues with point 5. I will look at it a bit more and talk to Adrick about it all. Please feel free to post your thoughts in the following threads.
Talk about it at Adam's or here at UOPG.
Hasta. |
^ top-What the future holds in store for Tamers
[FrozenFire] February 20 - 12:59 PM EST | At least this is the info that Oaks is willing to relase, along with heavy disclaimers of nothing being decided yet. So with no further ado, I give you the big tamer "nerf":
We are considering the following:
*** PLEASE KEEP IN MIND THAT NOTHING STATED IN THIS POST IS A PROMISE ***
- Can't Tame/Can't Own for high-level pets (or a variation of)
- Limiting the number of pets you can control based on: a max hard limit of 8, and the power/toughness of the creature relative to your taming/lore
I do not have exact numbers, but it'll boil down to not being able to control more than 1 white wyrm, dragon, nightmare, or drake even at GM taming/lore. You might be able to control a couple sidekick creatures, however, like hellhounds or the like. We are taking nightmares/ki-rin/unicorns into consideration as a secondary creature possibly without the ability to attack.
- Reducing the hit points and overall melee strength of white wyrms, dragons, drakes, and nightmares.
- Making pet combat more interactive by decreasing the effectiveness of tactics which put the controller in little to no danger (casting invisibility or standing too far away from your pet, allowing your pet to be gravely injured, ...)
- Making the Guard command require loyalty checks every time your pet tries to guard you.
- Increasing the resources/player skill to keep a pet faithful and happy. Tossing a rib to your 12-ton dragon is not likely to max out its loyalty, but a pile of gold will probably do the trick.
- You will be able to tame creatures that are attacking you. However, it will be impossible to tame them if they are unable to reach you or are paralyzed (or any other "twinks").
- Taming difficulties and skill gain will be tweaked so it will be favorable to successfully tame powerful, dangerous creatures. Hopefully you won't even *want* to tame a bull.
- Creatures of a certain type will not always be tameable. You may come upon a dragon who simply cannot be tamed.
- You can bond to a single pet. This pet will log out with you and can be resurrected, and the pet loses less loyalty in all situations.
- Fixing skill gain for pets (like magery).
- Hitching posts that take up X number of lockdowns (or secures) which allow you to store additional pets.
- Pets will not attack (unless attacked) without their master's command.
Yes... and more. Like the things we've been discussing on the boards here. It's a matter of development time how much more 'gravy' could be added... in all honesty, the more time I spend on the boards, the less I can get done. So if you have something important to say, I strongly suggest doing so in this post, as it'll be the main one (and maybe the only one for a little while) that I read.
*** PLEASE KEEP IN MIND THAT NOTHING STATED IN THIS POST IS A PROMISE ***
I like these changes. Cant Tame, cant Own is a no brainer for the big 6 pets. Limiting the number of pets a tamer can control is also sound. Weaker pets should be controllable in numbers, but not the "big 6" (Wyrm, Dragon, Drake, Unicorn, Mare and Ki-Rin)- Add to that the decrease in power of Dragons and the like, so that they arent the omnipotent beings they were before, and I think the gold farming may at least slow down noticeably.
Making pet combat more interactive sounds great - but how do you do it? Right now its "a kill" + "An Lor Xen". Adding something that requires some player input and timing would add at least some elements of player skill (or at least a penalty for the lack thereof). Notice Oaks tells us what he doesnt want, but he makes no case for just how it should be acheived.
Pet Bonding and hitching posts in player houses are long time tamers wet dreams. With these changes I see no reason why they [edited from should] shouldnt have them.
Whats missing is the pet stat loss idea, where a pet goes through heavy stat loss in taming/transfer requiring tamers a long training period and thus making pets more of long time companions and not simple gold farming tool. In fact Id rather have that instead of a general pet power nerf, but thats just me.
You can read Oaks full post here. |
^ top-Happy Birthday Gator!
[Epyon] February 20 - 11:58 AM EST | | Id buy you a drink if I was nearby..perhaps our paths will cross sometime in the next few years and you can take me up on it. |
^ top-Stat Loss to go?
[FrozenFire] February 20 - 5:45 AM EST | Adrick is finally releasing at least some information on how they plan to change PK:ing - and the big item is that they will do away with Stat Loss. Finally, two ywars after Trammel went live they have realized that PK.ers got shafted. But before you rush out and make your new PK chars, this is still tentative and subject to change, and the removal of stat loss is part of a package which may not make everyone happy. Read on:
1. When an innocent player is murdered, 70% of the innocent's
items (a random result per item) will remain on their ghost (unlootable).
2. When an innocent player is murdered, that player will be
given the option to teleport to a town through a free "stuck player" window.
3. All dead players (ghosts) without the spirit speak skill will no
longer be able to hear what live players are saying (they will hear
something to the effect of "blah, blah, blah" instead of the actual words).
70% was higher than I expected, I hope they reduce it a bit. But its better to get 30% of the loot without stat loss, than 100% of nothing with stat loss.
The teleport to town is OK I guess. It makes the game a bit easier, but Id rather have that AND a thriving PK community than not.
The Spirot Speak thing is to prevent smack talk I suppose. Would work but I wonder why people have to take everything so personal? Just take 20 seconds and put them in your ignore filter. Anyways, that change doesnt *really* matter so its all good.
Changes to the consequences/conditions of the "Murderer" status:
1. All characters will receive a "one-time" reprieve for all
murders of every type.
2. All tracking of "short-term" and "ping-pong" murder counts
will be eliminated (they will be obsolete upon the implementation of the
changes below).
3. The "stat loss" system will be eliminated completely (red
characters will no longer take stat loss upon ressurection).
4. All newly acquired murder counts will decay with 120-hour (5
days) real-time timers (online or offline).
5. Due to the imprecise nature of Justice in Felucca, murder
counts will now be tracked on a shard level for each account. After 5
murders on that shard all characters on that shard for that account will
become red (all other characters on that shard for that account are
considered accessories to murder).
6. Reds (murderers) will no longer be able to ban other players
from houses.
7. Houses will have a "no red entry" option that will prevent
all reds from entering the house (essentially, they will be "auto-banned"
from that house).
8. Due to the remaining force of Justice in Felucca, reds will
no longer be able to cast the recall spell.
9. The "bounty system" will be eliminated.
10. The "murderer" paperdoll title will be eliminated (although
players with 5 murders will still highlight red and be considered
"murderers" in this document).
Ok, so Stat loss goes, so does ping pongs, Long term and short term counts. Cool. Counts are still there, but decay after 5 real life days. If I understand that correctly, it means you dont have to macro or idle at all. The counts will disappear whether you are logged on or not. Sweet.
No recall for reds isnt as critical now that Stat Loss is gone. If youre red you better be good (or able to afford loosing your loot).
Whoa! Count applies to the account and not the character? So taking 5 counts means all 5 chars goes red? Thats a tough one. Most people I know wont like that one bit. On the other hand, with stat loss gone, being red essentially means that Buccs is the only town available and that youre freely attackable. Add to that that theyre thinking of making red people unable to ban from their houses as well as letting others have an auto-ban-all-reds.
Well Buccs will become the main Anti Camp spot for sure. Reds with one account will essentially be restricted to Buccs for purchases (and there is NO regs shop there as of now). Its either that of participating in the player economy and buying from player vendors or using blue friends to get supplies.
I have mixed feeling about this for sure. In the old days, being red was the only setback for murders. The idea was that not being able to go to town and being freely attackable on sight was harsh enough. Since reds just transferred their loot to a blue char on the same account, it wasnt a set back at all, just an inconvenience. Anyways, the flip side of things is that having a craft oriented character and a PK on the same account will be pretty hard. I just dont know what to think. But Im pretty sure Adrick and Evocare will get quite a bit of feed back on this one.
Oh, and the bounty system goes. Might as well, it was always too easy to exploit so good riddance.
There are more changes to come - and the ones you just read about will likely change with player feed back. The original thread can be found here.
|
^ top-OSI needs your brainstorming ideas...
[Nissa] February 19 - 2:58 PM EST | Well it seems that OSI is really trying to get some feedback about taming and how to enhance pets.
Oaks posted this thread to The Tamers and Rangers Forum
I'd like to use this thread to brainstorm for ideas on pet special abilities. Here's a few I've come up with so far...
Hide: this pet will hide when you do (success based on its skill). Additionally, you can see a gray image of your hidden pet when it hides like this.
Wouldn't that make tamers more powerful?
Stealth: this pet will stealth with you (see Hide above)
Uh... see my comment above.
Use Objects: this pet can operate simple objects (doors, chests, etc.)
Why?
Lockpicker: this exceptional ability allows pets to pick locks, based on their skill.
Lockpick? Why? So now the owner wouldn't have to do any work?
Talker: this pet repeats things they hear
Oh ok. Why?
Begging: this pet can do everything the begging skill can, although they are likely to receive treats and other pet-related things. Additionally, they may help their master with their begging efforts as well. Who can resist a starving beggar and his or her faithful starving dog?
Begging as a skill is pretty useless. Now have a pet with that useless skill?
Berserk: this pet goes into a rampage when it takes too much damage. However, once they are in this state, it is much more difficult to command them.
Well, this seems to make more sense. As a pet gets more hurt, the harder it is to keep their attention.
Pack Instinct: these pets work exceptionally well in groups with others of their own kind.
So, let me get this right. The problem with tamers right now is that they bring in 3 white wryms to fight stuff, and you want to encourage that behavior by introducing Pack Instinct?
Tough Hide: while these creatures do not dish out a significant amount of damage, they can take it in droves.
This seems to make sense. Have a pet that does a lot of damage, but takes a lot of damage, or a pet that doesn't dish out a lot of damage, but can take on more damage. It seems like a fair trade off.
Rideable: duh, we already have this one. =)
Detect Hidden: this animal is likely to sniff out traps and hidden PKs (or any hidden player).
It has often been said that PK tamers aren't that powerful. Maybe this would make them more in-line with others.
Fishing: when idling near a source of water, this animal can fend for itself by catching fish (and eating them) thus greatly increasing its loyalty at no cost to the master. This ability is based on fishing skill and pets who are incredibly adept at fishing may even be able to bring up shiny objects occasionally (which they of course give to their master).
Huh? Oh I bet all the fishermen out there will love this one. Fishing sucks now and they want to make it so pets can fish up stuff. Yikes I can hear all the fishermen screaming already.
Develop Color: this animal will change hues based on what you feed it.
Does that mean if I feed my one horsey bananas, he will turn yellow? And if I feed my other horsey grapes, he will turn purple?
Eat Trash: this pet can eat almost anything to heal its wounds and increase loyalty: weapons, armor, boxes, hats...
Will this coincide with Develop Color? So if I feed my dragon valorite armor he will turn blue?
Production: this animal periodically produces something (not just dung). For example, a spider may yield a large pile of spider silk. (Any more ideas for production are welcome here.)
Could be interesting. Does that mean chickens will produce eggs? Cows will produce milk?
Gassy: this animal has a bad intestinal track and produces a noxious smell. Not really... just making sure you're paying attention.
Don't ya just love OSI humor?!?!
Armored: with the help of a talented craftsman, this animal can get a modified armor value.
Would need to hear more about this one. But it seems that it would make pets even more powerful.
Faithful: this animal is exceptionally faithful and is extremely unlikely to leave your side even through poor treatment.
I hope this is something that a tamer would build over time with his/her pet. The more you use them, the more faithful they will become.
Augmented: similar to armoring, pets can be modified in other ways to boost their stats, usually with a disadvantage. For example, a dragon fitted with undead-slaying silver claws might attack slightly slower.
Again, this something I would like to hear more about.
Feedback, additional ideas...
Oaks
I don't know about this stuff. I was surprised to read this post. I just didn't think OSI was looking to go in this direction. I was hoping that they would introduce pet improvements that would require tamers to work along side their pets to make them stronger. It just seems that pets would be stronger now. I can't compete with tamers now, how the hell will I be able to compete with some of these changes implemented?
Well if you would like to discuss this further in the UOPG forum, please go there now. |
^ top-What *REALLY* needs to be changed in Fel...
[Talanithus] February 17 - 7:55 PM EST | First off, I should introduce myself. I am Talanithus, and run UO Lake Superior, another UO Fansite. My site is mainly news oriented, and we don't post "opinionated" posts (aka rants). Unfortunately, I am pretty opinionated about UO. Fortunately, Nieves is going to let me post here.
Muhahaha!
Ahem... So back to Fel. Recently, there has been a lot of talk about "changes" in Fel. Adrick posted multiple threads bouncing about all sorts of ideas, but they can pretty much be set into two categories:
Increase the rewards for Fel hunting
Decrease the amount of "damage" a PK can do to another player, mainly via looting
The purpose of these changes was simple, to entice player's from Tram to Fel, mainly because the shard population is so low and they need to balance out their server resources. I posted my thoughts of why I think this will not work on the UO.com Boards, but after reading Gator's post on the state of PvP in Fel right now, I thought I should post them here as well.
Basically, the real problem is that Adrick's current line of reasoning is "How do we entice Tram Players to come to Fel". The answer is, you don't. Most Tram players have no interest in non-consensual PvP, and nothing is going to change that... not reduced loot, not greater rewards, nothing. Even with more rewards, that would only bring more PKs, thus discouraging the few Trammelites who DO go to Fel and completely destroying any hope of success, as we have seen with Khaldun. Even now, Khaldun is one of the main PK hangouts left in the lands... why? Because its one of the only places "victims" in the form of Trammelites go to. Increased reward already exists in Fel, simply because almost nobody hunts there. The monetarial gains are much greater, so increasing the rewards more so isn't going to do anything more then it is currently... which is to say, nothing.
What would work is fixing PvP in UO, and thus enticing more players who are not only amiable to the Fel mindset, but PREFER it. Which changes the real motivation for improving Fel from "how do we entice Tram players" to "how do we get people interested in PvP, Factions, and Fel by default" Part of that starts with making PvP comfortable in UO:TD, which it most certainly is not, at the moment. Most new players play the Third Dawn Client, or now the Lord Blackthorn's Revenge client, and so of course PvP is harder for them. By adding in features to tone down the client, and specifically orienting future fixes on making it stable enough for PvP play, you are assuring a compatible audience. They will at least be able to try it. Adding in features that encourage Trammelites to try out PvP from a relative safety zone will also increase PvP Devotees... perhaps the new Valor virtue could focus on that, by allowing players to "try out" PvP with zero risk and maximum fun factor. A PvP Ladder, similar to what player's have always done and the Kill Point system in Factions would help create a more visible meter for PvP success, and if OSI would even go so far as to host a "tournament" once a month for the top 10 point winners I can sure as hell bet you it would become a popular event. Especially with l33t monthly titles given out to the winners. Last and probably most important, there is a general revamping of Guild Stones and the Alliance feature, something which has been needed in UO for its entire period of existence.
So in short, forget about the Trammelites. They aren't going to move into a war zone no matter what sort of carrot you wave in front of them. Instead, focus on making PvP more comfortable, fun, and easier to move into... if you do that, you'll repopulate Fel with people who actually WANT to go there.
Talanithus Tarant
 |
^ top-Statues, Deamons, and Unicorns. Oh my!
[Nissa] February 16 - 11:53 AM EST | Well, I got my copy of LBR yesterday. It actually came the day before, but I wasn't home to sign for it, so I got it yesterday.
I decided to take a short trip through certain parts of Britainnia before I loaded to take some screenshots for some before and after.
While some stuff is cool, other stuff they just destroyed.
First example is my statues. Now let me say that I spent a lot of time and money to get these suckers. And I was really proud of them. Now look what I have to be proud of...
Statues
Well, the gargoyle looks like he fell into a pool of red paint. What the hell happened to the ogre and ettin. Looks like they have never eaten!! And I don't know what the hell happened to the troll. It isn't even recognizable anymore.
Deamons
Now let's move onto the deamons. Has there been a sudden food problem in UO? What happened to the deamon? He used to be so menacing and now he is just a joke!! What a shame.
Unicorns
Deep down I always wanted to start a female tamer. I loved the look of the white horses. Now it looks like this tamer is sitting on a bag of bones!
Villa
This is a split screen of a villa. Many people are complaining about this new look. I don't own a villa so I don't really care either way.
Trees
And here is a split shot of the trees. Whatever, trees were never really a big concern of mine. I guess they look better.
Jukas
These little buggers look pretty cool. Better than a yellow naked guy. :)
Golems
Not bad. This is a new monster just introduced in one of the scenarios and I didn't get attached to the grey earth elemental that was used in 2D.
Krakens
The krakens are pretty cool. Much easier to target this sucker rather than the blue corpser. They do make a creepy sound.
Wyvern
Hmm... another bag of bones. This wyvern looks like a starving fish!!
Ancient Wyrm
And last but not least, the ancient wyrm. Pretty cool looking. This is probably the only monster change that I like. He is very cool looking.
I thought I read somewhere that OSI would only be updating the art on 2D for monsters introduced into the game since UO:R. I guess I read wrong. Deamons are not new and I really can't stand the way they look now.
The client seemed to run smoothly, but I never had problems with connection. I have great ping on my cable connection. I only had problems with 3D when there were a lot of people around, so I can’t say if there is much difference in the before and after.
I did, however, notice that these new monsters seem to move choppy like they do in 3D. And I had problems targeting them.
They simply destroyed the liche sound. I just don't understand why. So many people comment about the first time they heard that sound and how it stayed with them whenever they played. If there is just one change they make to LBR, I hope they bring back the original liche sound.
I am seriously considering uninstalling LBR and reinstalling UO:R. I can't say that I am overly thrilled with the changes. Definitely not worth the $30.
Special thanks to Prophet for hosting my pics. I couldn't get my free webhost to work! I tried to get the images to appear on this page but it just wouldn’t work. I finally gave up. I will ask Nieves when he gets back if he can get it to work.
|
^ top-State of PvP Address
[Gator] February 16 - 11:32 AM EST | Heh, I am by no means the resident PvP expert, though I do take a stab at it every now and then. But do I think I have enough clout to present a "State of PvP" address? Ya damn skippy I do. So here she goes...
First things first, PvP is at an all time low of total all out suckiness. This was my story last night... I logged in with my LumberHoe then my Bard/Fisher/Mage. Yeah thats right I wax ass with my Bard/Fisher, mainly because I can. So anyways, I do the norm and hit up the Yew Moongate. Where myself and a bunch of other folks camp a Vila and kill things. Sometimes we blast the red sometimes we dont. Sometimes we talk about the weather, sometimes we work on our cooking skill. Its crazy. Red LJ comes out of nowhere, so I pop him with my Hoe. We proceed to chase each other around like a few schoolgirls, eventually we are off by ourselves. We stand there talking, and beating the hell out of each other. My client bugs up on me to where I cant move East only west. Eventually I get stuck, yada yada yada.
OOOooo OoO Oo ooOo.
I am sorry this is NOT all that exciting... What happened to the days of Blue Vs Red? And now we have stooped as low as house fighting is the norm. Well that or Moongate fighting. Take your pick, Moongate... House Fight... Its rather sad when you have to have some sort of ranged attack to PvP... aka Housefight... hmmm Greater EXPs will have to try that one next time...
Factions was the end all to end all for PvP. It was going to get all of Fel involved because hey, ya know I live in Brit and I will be damned if I gotta pay an assload for vendor bought regs... I know, I will join a Faction!!! MUHAHAHA Cheap regs for all. WRONG!! Ok Factions has totally nose dived at the box office since its release.
Adrick, I plead with you, remove this Half-ass Aborted Abortion from the servers!!
I can only pray that the changes to Fel will somehow cure the PvP issue...
Order/Chaos isnt all that bad I guess, if you dont mind being ganked by 4-5 Dexxers on DSL.Not much opinion on this one, but when I do I will let you know...
Where is the best PvP right now? Well honestly I feel its in the hands of the big RPing guilds. Yes thats right, the RPers are laying the smacketh down in a big way, and guess what? Its "fun" too. No longer do you have to leave that Vanq you got 3 years ago sitting in the bank because you dont want it to get looted. RP Guild wars dont loot. Well they sometimes arent "supposed" to. But usually they are good to go.
So whats your best bet? Either Join a bunch of l337 RPers, or prepare yourself to be hanging around Brit GY, TwoStory Vilas everywhere, and Moongates for a long time... Because for now... thats the best its gonna get...
Later |
^ top-UO Patch 3.0.7b
[Fixxxer] February 16 - 9:56 AM EST | From FYI on uo.com, this patch will contain the following changes:
2D Client
- An issue with NoDraw tiles in Ilshenar has been fixed.
- An issue with missing terrain textures has been fixed.
- A client crash bug has been fixed.
Both Clients
- Codex of Wisdom changes:
- If no search results are returned, you will now get an informational page that has a link to the RightNow webpage.
- Titles will no longer be in boldface type.
- Related topic titles will be clickable.
- Item lists will be denoted with a [+] instead of a .+. in the index.
- Various localization files.
The current version should be 3.0.7b for both the 2D and 3D clients.
dabu |
^ top-UO.com Boards Get The Smack Down.
[Nieves] February 15 - 4:11 PM EST | Pheel it biyotches!
No longer will the UO.com Boards be the "whiney boards"!
Check it:
So What’s Changing Today?
Now that I’ve discussed some of the good and bad sides of the UO Forums, here’s what we’re doing today to fix some of those problems.
You can go to Stratics and read the first 4-5 pages. I did. It's gives you a precursor to what's going to be changing at the UO.com Boards...
1. Welcome to the New Player Haven forum!
We’re creating a new forum for game questions and advice. Both new and advanced players can exchange tips, advice, and help each other with specific game questions without the fear of their questions or answers scrolling off the page within an hour due to hundreds of other posts.
This forum will be fully moderated, meaning that all posts will have to approved before they’re seen (and we’ll make a very strong effort to see that the approval time is short). This will be done for two reasons: one, it will ensure that new players won’t be insulted right off the bat by people calling them a n00b for asking silly questions, and two, it will prevent the legitimate game questions from being scrolled off by other things.
Eat it you kewl dood son of a bitch!
My only thing is, after my experience moderating the UOPG board for almost 3 years, that could be a nightmare. I hope they are ready for that task.
Of course, everyone knows the UOPG Forums are the place to go for UO gaming information anyway... /shameless plug.
2. You must now be logged in to read the MyUO Forums.
This change will mean that in order to read the main forums, you’ll need to sign up for a MyUO account and be logged into the boards. The two exceptions to this will be the read-only FAQ board and the New Player Haven board, which will both remain visible to all visitors, whether they have a MyUO account or not. This change will help us in two major ways – one, it will give us real numbers on how much visibility we get on information and assets that are posted to our boards. Two, we hope it will encourage more people reading the boards to actually contribute – people who have very legitimate concerns or thoughts, but who may not have been driven before to actually register to post. And three, there’s the fact that our boards are a marketing tool, and confronting a potential player with pages of complaints and concerns about advanced game features can be overwhelming.
I am kind of "eh" on this as the anonymity of posting is now gone at the UO.com Boards. But whatever, if you can't stand behind your arguement, it's not worth posting anyway, IMHO.
3. Our boards will no longer be a rant forum.
JOY OF JOYS! THE MESSIAH HAS COME!
In the past, we’ve leaned more towards the lenient side when it came to rants, allowing many things to stay simply because they were honest opinions, and we wanted people to feel free to voice those opinions. But what we’ve ended up with is an overabundance of rants,
No shit...
...and a multitude of posts on topics from how incredibly out of touch the dev team is, to why people shouldn’t buy the new product, to how evil the corporation is, etc.
OSI isn't the Devil. EA is. OSI is just a Succubus draining the life out of the addicted playerbase. :D
These kinds of posts, while perfectly valid and honest opinions, do not benefit anyone by being on the official UO Boards. As said above in the “Catharsis” section, the web has no shortage of places that cater to free and unfettered rants,
Oh yeah....can you say Black Dagger Rants and Raves? Thought so.
and I’m sure that we, being the masochists that we are, will visit those sites often to see what kind of fun things people are saying about us. But when they’re on the UO Boards, then they’re our responsibility. Greywolfe spends an enormous amount of time watching and monitoring these posts to make sure they don’t get out of hand, and I see that as time that could be better spent dealing with something that could improve the game, such as helping Oaks compile suggestions on taming, or collecting feedback on the German UO translations to send on to our EA UK office.
Yeah...I can see it now. Everyone leaves to go rant at the other sites, then they get booted for posting bullshit or those posts are deleted. Aw yeah. Let me make a quick point. If you want to make a rant about something, make it sound semi-intelligent and include some solutions to the problem you are talking about. You will go a long way to earning some respect and people will want to read your future write ups. If you want to see some kick ass rants with some good solutions, give Watts some love.
A further note on Rants from Cynthe:
Online games are one of the only industries that exist where customers can essentially walk into the business, stand on a table and tell every person in the store how horrible they think the food is. Well, there’s a reason that’s not allowed in most instances, and it’s because it disrupts the playing/eating/purchasing experience of the other customers, and it’s bad for business. Granted, that same person can picket outside the store, and that’s fine. Rant sites all over the web are essentially “outside the store” for us, and we’re accustomed to seeing all sorts of things there. But the UO Boards are part of our store, and we will no longer allow people to be disruptive by posting vitriolic rants towards UO or OSI there.
We reserve the right to refuse service.
Sounds like the ToS doesn't it? Welcome to the real world :)
4. The “Banned from boards = Banned from UO” disciplinary policy is changing.
This is probably the biggest change, and I recommend that everyone read this one closely! When these boards were created, the policy was that if you were banned from the boards, you would also be banned from the game. This was done to ensure that folks knew that if they ignored board warnings and kept violating board guidelines, they would lose more than just their board posting privileges, and that it would affect their UO account. Unfortunately, it’s had a different effect.
Generally, a person will not get banned from the game for simply being a jerk. There are certainly exploits and unfair practices that will get you banned, but just being argumentative or insensitive isn’t enough to warrant being banned from a game. So in the interest of fairness, since the penalty for being banned from the boards has been so high, we have provided PLENTY of warnings (unless the offense was so grievous as to not even leave a question). Since I have taken control of OCR, we have banned only 4 or 5 people due to board offenses, despite the fact that we give out several warnings a day. An unfortunate side effect of this is the apparent lack of action perceived by others in the board community. For example, John Doe calls another poster a moron, and others see this. It’s deleted, and he’s given a warning. He then comes back the next week, and people conclude that apparently, he was never punished for his blatant misdeed. He then tells someone to grow up and get a life, and he’s given a second warning and a 24-hour suspension. He’s back three days later and insinuates to another poster that he should learn to read, and posters see this as well. Other posters then start saying things like, “Why hasn’t this guy been banned yet? It’s obvious that you only care about the griefers.”
So let’s take a look at what’s happened here. A person has called another player a moron, told him to get a life and grow up, and then insinuated that he should learn how to read. Is this really something that should be a bannable offense in UO? Granted, he’s a jerk, but banning isn’t called for just yet. So according to our board rules up until now, he still has 2 more suspensions before banning. John Doe would be given a 3rd warning and a 72 hour suspension for his third insult, and the next insult after that would be a Final Warning and another 72 hour suspension. One more offense results in being banned from the boards and game. Of course, if his offenses were significantly worse than simply telling someone to “grow up”, we might have skipped a level or two, but generally, people have been getting MANY chances on the boards – and the reason for all these chances was the significance of the punishment.
So here’s the new system. The first time someone is found breaking board guidelines, they will receive a warning. This warning will explain that they have broken the board guidelines, and will include a copy of those guidelines. It will also notify them that any other instance of breaking the board guidelines will result in being permanently banned from the boards, and will result in a mark being placed on their UO account. This means that being banned from the boards will not mean being banned from the game, unless the person’s UO account is already on Final Warning for other offenses. It will, however, count as an official strike on their UO account – so yes, a player’s behavior on the boards will still have an effect on their UO account!
Holy Bannings Batman! Er...um...I surely do hope they will ban for much more than someone saying "you are a moron". I mean, c'mon. With the example given, it's not like someone is saying "you are a fucking moron". Anyway...I guess it goes with UOPG's Forum policy of no personal attacks. Period. We enforce that one hard don't we folks? Yeah. Sure.
By lessening the consequence associated with being banned from the boards, my department will be much freer to remove those people that are being consistently disruptive, knowing that the punishment more aptly fits the crime.
Last Word
I’m looking back at this and thinking, OMG, did I really write 7 pages’ worth about the boards? Apparently I did… the boards have been a constant source of both pride and concern for me for a long time, and it’s important to me that they stay a place that benefits us and the players as much as possible. While some of the changes (such as the rants crackdown) may not make me the most popular figure at OSI,...
Who gives a shit if they get pissed because you you are killing the rants posts? It's way past the time for this action to have taken place. I hate going to the UO.com boards for that very reason. All that white noise is a bitch to filter out.
...the task of making the boards a more constructive and positive place is an absolutely necessary thing, and I believe this is the best way to do it.
Online Community is an ever-evolving thing,
You are damn right it is!
and who knows if we’ll ever get it completely right?
Er...good luck. You can't please everyone. All you can do is do your best. I know, from first hand experience here at UOPG why sometimes it's best to just do your thing and not worry about those you can never please.
But as it evolves, we have to keep evolving with it.
Amy "Cynthe" Sage
Manager of Community Services
ORIGIN Systems
Pheel it.
Hasta. |
^ top-Weapon BOD's
[Nissa] February 15 - 11:07 AM EST | Well, since I have already done 2 cut and paste jobs today, why not make it an even three!! :)
This was posted to the Uo Development Boards
Weapon Bulk Orders
Due to the responses we have been getting for weapon bulk orders, here's the list of tentative categories of weapon large bulk orders. These bulk orders will have new rewards that are interesting and can be used up.
Axes:
large battle axe
double axe
battle axe
two handed axe
axe
executioners axe
Swords:
cutlass
viking sword
longsword
scimitar
broadsword
katana
Piercing:
dagger
kryss
warfork
shortspear
spear
Bashing:
mace
maul
war mace
war hammer
hammer pick
war axe
Polearms:
bardiche
halberd
Polearms will not have as high of a point value as the rest of the categories due to only having two items in it.
The rewards are still being worked on.
Post away any comments and positive criticism you may have!
-Hanse
UO Live Designer
Further in the thread, Hanse posted again:
I should have posted this with the information about the weapon large bulk orders.
Large bulk order rarity:
Right now, the system uses a 1 in 3 chance to get a large bulk order for blacksmithy (ringmail, chainmail, and platemail).
With the new system, it will not become a 1 in 8 chance to get the large bulk order you want. The chances will be split as follows:
1 in 4 chance... ringmail, chainmail, platemail, and weapon large bulk order.
Then, inside the weapon category it has a 1 in 5 chance to get the deed you want. The categories being axes, swords, maces, fencing, and polearm.
This does reduce the chance for armor deeds from 33% to 25%, but it's not as harsh as 12.5% across the board. Although, multiplied together, the percentage chance of getting the large bulk order for a specific weapon deed is 5% (25% and then 20% of that chance). BUT...weapons are not colored...so they're easier to fill. :)
Color rarity:
Since only armor deeds can be colored, the small bulk orders have a boost in chance of being colored (percentage is still being evaluated) if you're a GM.
All of the above is valid for publish 16, at the moment. We may tweak the system as it goes through testing, of course.
-Hanse
UO Live Designer
And another post in response to some questions that were asked in the thread:
We mulled over the idea of colored weapon deeds, but discarded the idea due to many reasons. It's an interesting idea, though. :)
We're looking at making all tools anti-scam (ie: show charges). Also, we're changing ancient hammer informatoin to show the blacksmithy bonus and colored hammers to have their color included in the name ("dull copper runic hammer" is an example).
-Hanse
UO Live Designer
Guess I will hold onto the 394098324755 weapon deeds that I have collected. Knew there was a reason I didn't throw them on the ground!!
See it pays to be a pack rat.
|
^ top-Stop Teasing Us!!
[Nissa] February 15 - 10:56 AM EST | Yes, I have my scissors and tape out again for the newest cut and paste job.
However, I believe all the 4+ vets out there are foaming at the bit for some vet rewards news. I for one have been saving my picks to see what OSI has in store. My one account has all six rewards left and my other account has 4 left.
This is what Cynthe posts to theUO Development Boards:
4th Year Vet Rewards - not quite an update
Just didn't want to get your hopes up, thinking I had a definite list for you or a date yet. :)
But... we are discussing them, and Sannio's working with the designers to solidify the list so that we can at least announce what they will be. I've archived the umpteen-million-post Vet Rewards feedback thread, since many of the choices will not be the same ones listed there.
There will be info on it soon (and in this case, soon means that whenever we can get that list solid while we also work to nail down a good idea of what's going to be in Pub 16 so we can start getting that stuff posted in In Development).
__________________
Cynthe
Community Manager
ORIGIN Systems |
^ top-The ABC's of the UO Boards
[Nissa] February 15 - 9:40 AM EST | In the On Line Community Relations area, Cynthe takes the time to give a through essay of OSI's UO Boards expectations.
Not a bad read if you are a fervent reader/poster on these boards. I for one hope that people take the time to read this post and listen to some of Cynthe's suggestions to better understand what the boards are for as well as the do's and dont's.
I for one get sick and tired of reading the same Felucca/Trammel debates, the economy sucks posts, turn on house decay whiners, and this game sucks trolls.
If you have the time and patience, there are some good posts on these boards and some great ideas as well as constructive critisim.
Cynthe's final paragraph
Last Word
I’m looking back at this and thinking, OMG, did I really write 7 pages’ worth about the boards? Apparently I did… the boards have been a constant source of both pride and concern for me for a long time, and it’s important to me that they stay a place that benefits us and the players as much as possible. While some of the changes (such as the rants crackdown) may not make me the most popular figure at OSI, the task of making the boards a more constructive and positive place is an absolutely necessary thing, and I believe this is the best way to do it.
I wish you much success Cynthe, it isn't an easy job and I'm glad it's not mine.
Note: I just reread Cynthe's post and there is something else that I wanted to bring to everyone's attention:
You must now be logged in to read the MyUO Forums.
This change will mean that in order to read the main forums, you’ll need to sign up for a MyUO account and be logged into the boards. The two exceptions to this will be the read-only FAQ board and the New Player Haven board, which will both remain visible to all visitors, whether they have a MyUO account or not. This change will help us in two major ways – one, it will give us real numbers on how much visibility we get on information and assets that are posted to our boards. Two, we hope it will encourage more people reading the boards to actually contribute – people who have very legitimate concerns or thoughts, but who may not have been driven before to actually register to post. And three, there’s the fact that our boards are a marketing tool, and confronting a potential player with pages of complaints and concerns about advanced game features can be overwhelming.
So, if you were one of those folks that didn't have a MyUO you will now have to sign up inorder to see the UO Boards. Signing up is very easy, just go here to sign up. |
^ top-Faust, the Kamikaze!
[Nieves] February 15 - 9:14 AM EST | Over the last few weeks, I've been debating whether or not to write a mage essay. I've decided not to, because I'm just too friggin lazy. Besides, the people here that I've met in game already know how to play their mage characters very well, so I figured what's the point? Anyone who's PvP'd with a mage for any length of time already knows the basics (or should anyway). I realized that the only reason that I would wanna read a mage PvP would be the chance to pick up some tactic that might not have thought of before.
So here's a thread to talk about some less common mage tactics, in hopes that everyone (myself included) might get some new ideas from the talent pool here at UOPG. Post em if ya gottem!
I'll start with 3 that are probably common, but I feel like typing.
1) Timing bandages vs. dexers - (I think I mentioned this in another thread somewhere, but it's be appropriate here I think.) If your mage character doesn't use healing, carry a few bandages and use the UOA bandy timer to gauge when your opponent's bandage will kick in and nullify it with a strategically timed poison to keep his/her bandy from healing any damage, and instead wasting their bandy on curing the poison. Simply use your own bandage to coincide with your opponent's own bandaging, and it's a pretty easy timer to get used to. Pisses em off too!
---------------------------------------------
2)Quick heal and cure - Set up a regular UO macro to Heal (not Gheal) yourself. (Castspell Heal/Waitfortarget/Targetself) When poisoned, hit the macro, and drink a GC potion in between the casting of the spell and the macro's targetting of yourself. If you don't already do this, it might take a couple of practices to get the timing down, but it's very easy. Since Heal cannot be interrupted by anything, you'll be able to cure the poison and heal some damage efficiently. The time saved is valuable if you're fighting someone who knows what they're doing. (of course, this is of no use in a potionless duel, but works well in pretty much every other circumstance)
---------------------------------------------
3)Kaboom! - Everyone at one time or another made a mistake, went the wrong direction, or whatever and ended up getting trapped by a few opponents. Carry 10 Greater Explosions on you at all times, and make a UOA macro to "use item type" that activates a GE. As soon as you realize that you're fucked, hit the UOA macro button and then the escape key as fast as you can. Repeat to activate as many GE's as you can keeping them in your pack. Your opponents won't get any indication that you've activated them, and if you do it fast enough, they'll go off in such rapid succession that you will take them all to their graves with you.
Obviously, this is a last resort (or can even be used as a raid tactic - Kamikazes!). In my experience, GE's do an average damage of around 18pts of unresistable damage, so if you can get off 6-8, you can be successful in killing most people in your immediate area. Also, the damage is not lessened by the number of targets you effect, and (this is the BEST part) - Activated GE's will STILL GO OFF on your corpse AFTER you have died.
---------------------------------------------
I realize that those ideas are not unique, and that many other people use them, but I don't read them often, so I figured I'd post em anyway. Maybe someone will find them useful. Please add your own!
Phear it.
Hasta. |
^ top-You Didn't REALLY Expect It To Work Did You?
[LadyGrania] February 15 - 8:51 AM EST | Yesterday LBR was released. Hundreds of people (myself not included) rushed out to buy it. Guess what happened? Nothing! Come on! You didn't really expect it to actually work on release day did you??? Surely you've played long enough to know that it'll be at least a month before it's active and at least a year before it's debugged?
Anyway, enough of my sarcastic editorial in reference to EA's release of games and expansion. Here's what was said on UO's update site.
UO:LBR’s new craftables & critters are dormant Feb 14 2002 6:08PM CST (GMT -06:00)
In case you've installed Ultima Online: Lord Blackthorn's Revenge and are wondering why some of the cool new craftables & critters -- the ridable beetles, horde demons, swamp dragons, etc. -- aren't available yet, the reason is that some elements of UO:LBR are dormant. This means that you've installed them with UO:LBR, but they won't become active until the appropriate point in the upcoming scenarios. This is similar to how such elements as the bolas, ridgebacks, jukans, and such things were introduced in the past, except on a larger scale: players received the art, the scenario's story called for them, and then players encountered these new elements. Please keep in mind that our Game Masters won't be able to give any hints as to when or where these items & creatures will appear -- it'll be up to the players to discover the secrets behind Lord Blackthorn's Revenge!
Discover it for yourself! Just as soon as they figure out how to make it work!
Love ya!
|
^ top-Great news from Adrick
[FrozenFire] February 14 - 12:43 PM EST | Over at the Brit Bank discussion boards (the uo.com boards) someone started pushing for a *gasp* pvp-switch. You know the kind of thing that makes pvp a joke in games like EQ. Well there are folks who want to bring this kind of nonsense to UO, and before you laugh your asses off, think again: Trammel is crowded and Felucca is not. There is a small army of tamers who cant camp their favourite spot at will, yet do not care for the added risk (well in theory) of Felucca.
Lets be blunt: A pvp-switch pretty much equals a Trammelisation of Felucca. So its a huge relief to hear Adrick say that the only switch we will see is in choosing facets. You can read his comment in this thread.
What really worries me is that the discussion over at uo.com seems so one sided. I rarely see pvp/powergamer opinions which means that we risk missing out when OSI "listens to the player base". Take some time to voice your opinions over there in a cinstructive way. Every voice matters. |
^ top-More from the Queen of Cut and Paste
[Nissa] February 14 - 10:25 AM EST | There has been a lot of talk on the UO Boards about some of the changes to the 2D client with 3D art. Many people are complaining without even loading it and seeing what it looks like. I would image OSI posted this in response to those whiners:
If you’re wondering if that tree looks a little different after installing Lord Blackthorn’s Revenge in 2D… well, it does! While LBR has long been said to contain new art files for all the creatures and items added to the game since the inception of Third Dawn, we’ve also updated much of the static art (trees, houses, etc) in the 2D client. This was actually necessary since the client needs to call on these art files for the new 2D version of Ilshenar, but also gives the added benefit of allowing 2D players to see the richer textures that 3D client users have had for quite some time.
BTW, Nieves great screen shots. That kraken looks scary. I can't wait to hear that sucker. On another note, word is that the sounds of the liche have changed. Sorry to hear that. That laugh brings back a lot of memories of when I first started this game and took many dirt naps at his feet. That sound, still to this day, gives me the chills. I hope they change it back. |
^ top-UO:LBR
[Nieves] February 14 - 9:58 AM EST | Before completing my Accounting one evening, I got a call from the Looters, Inc. crew to do some Fishing Nets with them.
Sure enough, before I got there, they found a boat that was open and had a painting and some other assorted loot within it's hold. In their words "yoink". These guys crack me up.
When we threw two nets out, we had 4 Krakens spawn on us. The new art was wicked.
The sounds the Kraken made were eery! My daughter was sitting across the room at the other desk doing her homework. She had stopped, put her hands over her ears and had started crying! I didn't notice it until she said: "daddy!" I had to turn my sound down and give her a hug just to calm her down. Poor baby.
Freaky as hell.
I got more UO:LBR pictures to share. The art is pretty cool.
Here are the Jukas:
Here is me trying to get my loot back after the Juka with the halley and Juka Lord with his Golem friend owned me. I forgot Golems have a stunning blow:
I spent some time in Ilshenar as well. I was excited mainly because it was a new land to explore. It had that T2A feel because you can find a lot of the monsters out in the wild. I ran around and took a few screenshots (unfortunately, I haven't gotten them processed yet). I managed to find the "Undead Fort". There was a Poison Elemental, Rotting Corpse and Lich Lord all in side. I decided at that point it was time to leave.
For those of you travelling in Ilshenar, and don't have pets to worry about, you can get back to a town without having to walk all the way back to a Moongate. Use the Stuck Option in your help menu. Makes getting back and forth easier.
Yesterday I called Software, Etc. and the manager agreed to give away some UOPG T Shirts. I gave the manager 5 of the shirts and gave him the URL. One of the employees asked me for a shirt. Of course I had to run to my car and get him one. He put it on over his other shirt as soon as I handed it to him. Own.
I saw the UO:LBR box. The action figure looks cool as hell. It probably could've looked better painted. Oh well. The box is SMALL. It's about 1/2 the hight of the normal Software box but about 3-4 inches deep. I didn't see a big manual inside, but I am told there is a map in there. Would be great to get a map. I am a map fiend. Ask Vasilias. Back in 1995, I had every map available for the Forgotten Realms world of the AD&D game. Anyway...
I never could understand why gaming companies box up their games in huge boxes when 1/2 of them don't even include a manual that could fill up the box. It makes sense to package CD games in smaller packages, a la Final Fantasy playstation game 'boxes'. It is cheaper IMHO. But what do I know?
The manager of Software Etc. gave me a mini comic for UO:LBR. I looked at the art and...well...I have seen better.
I also walked down to Electronic's Boutique and the salesman told me he played Ultima Online too. The guy couldn't tell me what shard he played on. I named off some shards and said: "Atlantic sounds right". Um, yeah right. Anyway...I gave the manager 5 T Shirts to hand out and UOPG's URL. In return he gave me some boxers some Video Game company is giving away as part of a some promotion for their game. Er...aight. Thanks.
From talking to both managers, the game is selling well.
Look for lots of new "faces" in game...
Hasta. |
^ top-Test Shard: Feels Like Home (Sorta).
[Kamikaze] February 14 - 3:53 AM EST | Today I did something I haven’t done in a long time; today I logged onto the Test shard. I figured I’d actually use it for the purpose it was created and conduct some random dmg studies.
I open my bank box: it is of course loaded. Every supply/resource imaginable, well, they’re at my fingertips. I drop a few 100K on the ground, just for the fun of it and proceed to buy a house deed.
I’m about to head to Brit Fel to place when I realized – shit – if I go outside town I’ll be PK’d! It was a weird feeling, one I haven’t had in a while. Usually a good fight is the first thing on my mind, but today all I wanted to do was collect data. I used the help feature and jumped to Minoc instead. I skirt out of the town limits looking for a housing spot, and goddamn I find one in 2 Mins!
This is when it hits me: Fear of Pk’s, ample housing, the ability to set stats, unlimited supplies. It’s exactly like the old days, but better. Or is it?
I realized the test shard lacked one important aspect: risk.
There has been a lot of hype lately about risk/reward. I fervently believe the true equation is risk = fun. It makes me wonder what people find enticing about Trammel. To me Trammel is merely a Test Shard where there are no PK’s or space for housing and where it takes you and an extra two weeks to set (see raise) your skills.
Of course perhaps I’m just being cynical.
P.S. Bow to my mad HTML skillz ;)
[end rant] |
^ top-I Am Legend - Vol. 1
[White_Crow] February 14 - 3:01 AM EST |
Can you guess which facet is which? This is depressing, to think that's how Felucca looked for about three years, and now this. A newbie thief, a ghost, a naked guy with a hat, and me. Damn it, why don't I just grab my little thief and slit his wrists, put him out of his misery. Doesn't anyone enjoy a challenge any more? Probably not, looking at the screenshots I can see there's been a boom in the population of passive retards. Wandering through a few vendor shops, idiots fly by left and right *pfft pfft*, like they're searching for the pot of gold at the end of the fucktard rainbow. I hate walking through Trammel, on the very rare occasions I'm forced to. Walking to the Brit moongate without looking over my shoulder every few seconds feels weird. Standing at the bank without worrying who I'm standing next to irks me. Seeing so many mindless players running around oblivious, loaded with gold, it's just not right. Unfortunately for me I'm the complete opposite of the majority of players. If the previous and current dev team wanted Candyland they should've stuck to board games. Stop trying to make a profit at the grief players expense. Fight the corporate machination. Oh, here's $9.99
THIS IS NOT AN EXIT. |
^ top-Base Weapon Dmg Study
[Kamikaze] February 13 - 8:49 PM EST | ***My sincerest thanks go to Kat (of Catskills), thanks for your help always***
Hola:
I’m the first to criticize Stratics; the site is unruly and outdated, but I keep crawling back for more. So today I decided to do something about it. I collected my own statistically accurate data. Though I am not a math major, I am taking university stats and I’ve utilized the extent of my statistical prowess to provide you with the weapons data that’s found below.
* Note if you trust me and do not need an explanation of my data collection method jump directly to the results. *
I was primarily concerned with collecting BASE weapons dmg. As a result I tried to eliminate all skill based dmg bonuses. All data was collected on test shard I (02/13/02). The attacker had 50 Tactics (i.e. so he dealt 100% dmg), 0 Anatomy, 0 lumberjacking, 100 (in the respective melee skill). As any amount of str yields a dmg bonus I set str to 100: rendering a fixed 20% bonus to dmg (which in most cases is less then 1 hp). All weapons used were unused, non GM weapons (to eliminate the 20% GM dmg bonus).
The defender was naked (to eliminated armor dmg absorption). He was unarmed and had 0 wrestling skill. All melee related skills were set to 0.
To collect the data the attacker (with dex set to the appropriate level) stepped forward and hit the defender once. The defender would then record the dmg dealt, heal to full, and the process would repeat.
The sample size for each weapon is 30. This is because CTL II (Central Limit Theorem) states that if a test population consisting of random samples is greater than 30, it is approximately normally distributed.
All qualitative comparisons are derived utilizing two-sample hypothesis testing. The population means were compared using confidence intervals and the test statistic (t*).
Observed Results
Fencing Weapons:
Kryss:
Average Dmg (x): 8.26667
Standard Deviation (s): 4.47932
Min: 3
Max: 16
War Fork:
Average Dmg (x): 8.8
Standard Deviation (s): 5.01996
Min: 2
Max: 18
Long Spear:
Average Dmg (x): 10.86667
Standard Deviation (s): 3.58862
Min: 4
Max: 18
Macing Weapons:
War Axe:
Average Dmg (x): 10.4
Standard Deviation (s): 1.6938
Min: 7
Max: 13
War Hammer:
Average Dmg (x): 12.4667
Standard Deviation (s): 1.94286
Min: 8
Max: 16
Swords Weapons:
Katana:
Average Dmg (x): 8.63333
Standard Deviation (s): 2.0592
Min: 4
Max: 13
Broad Sword:
Average Dmg (x): 9.9
Standard Deviation (s): 3.2201
Min: 4
Max: 15
Halberd:
Average Dmg (x): 15.7
Standard Deviation (s): 6.34171
Min: 4
Max: 28
Large Battle Axe:
Average Dmg (x): 13.8667
Standard Deviation (s): 4.0235
Min: 6
Max: 21
Two Handed Axe:
Average Dmg (x): 12.3333
Standard Deviation (s): 5.27554
Min: 3
Max: 21
|
^ top-Nexus
[Gator] February 13 - 8:13 PM EST | Nah, not that stuff ladies use on their legs to make them silky smooth for Gators face...
Nexus is this.
That UOAM part looks awesome, nomore searching all over creation looking for goods. Finally the little man out in the woods, can compete with the big dawgs. Well all most.
But one question.... Is it UOPro?
Later |
^ top-ANOTHER UO Expansion?
[Eric] February 13 - 7:05 AM EST | You heard right. Read this posting from Tajima of OSI:
Right now, we're focusing on many changes that the players themselves have been openly invited to comment on. (Taming, Barding, Risk vs. Reward in Felucca Changes, etc.) There will be more features and changes open for discussion in the near future.
We've also spent much of the past year improving the underlying code base. (Bugs are at an all-time low and server availability is at an all-time high.) We've integrated the Bulk Order Deed system for Blacksmiths, and of course your favorite, the Virtue System. We've completely rewritten the new player experience to include useful tutorial quests. We've also introduced what we feel is the most aggressive and meaningful episodic content program in the industry, while also releasing the most polished and (if pre-orders are any indication) successful expansion to UO ever. Oh, and we're laying the foundations for another expansion, as well.
We didn't just decide to do all this on a whim. We listen to our players, and keep activity logs of what's going on in the game. Our resources aren't infinite, so we focus on the features that have the most appeal for the most players. "Bang for the Buck," if you will.
In a moment of exasperation a former Prime Minister of France once bemoaned the difficulty of governing a country with over 5000 different kinds of cheeses. This humorous anecdote is loosely applicable to UO, which is certainly the broadest and deepest PSW on the market. The incredible diversity of playstyles UO offers can make development and support challenging, to be sure. No changes are trivial, and nothing is ever easy. Most dev team members wind up working nights (check the time of this post) and weekends to make the game the best it can be. (Remember, we're gamers, too.)
Despite our ongoing efforts, however, we may not be able to make every player completely happy all the time. (If only we'd been able to finish the feature that issued winning lottery numbers to our players...) Even so, rest assured we're constantly striving to achieve that goal.
-Tajima
They're already "laying the foundations for another expansion?" What the fuck? Expansion is nice, but I would hate for this game to turn into EverQuest, where I have to spend $30 or $40 every other month to purchase another expansion.
Aside from that though, it sounds like OSI is on the right track. Sure, it's over four years down the line already, but better late than never is what I always say.
Cya later. |
^ top-Some LBR Clarification
[Nissa] February 12 - 5:20 PM EST | Some cut and paste information for UOLBR. (Has anyone been able to buy one in stores yet?)
OSI posted this to FYI:
We have a couple things we wanted to clarify...
New 3D Avatar Art?
First, we've had some people ask us about the new 3D avatar art we posted here a couple weeks ago, and wondering if that's going live with LBR. The avatar art upgrades are not actually listed as a UO:LBR feature, and are not scheduled to go live in tandem with the launch of UO: Lord Blackthorn's Revenge. Many of the art files are on the UO:LBR disk, but that was done just as a way to prevent UO:LBR buyers from having to download those files once the new art is live on the servers. We're making great progress on getting the art upgrades ready, but it's not ready quite yet. All 3D client users will be able to see them soon!
LBR Shipping Outside the States
EA has offices in several territories, including Japan, Korea, and Europe, and each office is handling its own press and shipping arrangements for UO:LBR. Also, due to the translation needs in different places, the ship dates are a little different for each territory. So if you haven't heard yet about the expected ship date for your area, don't worry - it's coming! |
^ top-Late news isn't always bad news.
[Eric] February 12 - 5:01 PM EST | Sure, it's yesterday's news, but anyone who deals with BODs might be interested in some of these changes that are planned for implementation. First, Hanse talks about some current information about the BOD system.
Your samples are extremely small in the scheme of how many deeds are needed to see the big picture. So, you cannot base issues with the system on only a few deeds.
Many of the designers have a regular schedule to get deeds for themselves. :) I myself have received two verite deeds and a large platemail bulk order for the past three offers. Of course, I got very lucky.
Getting a dagger deed, while not what you want, is a valid deed and not an error with the system. It selects from 49 different items randomly as what item will be on the deed.
Fame rewards were too high. We lowered the reward to be more in line with the difficulty of the deed. You still get an enormous amount of fame for large bulk orders that are high-end ore colors.
Great...Now how about some changes?
We've looked into the ratio of large bulk orders versus small bulk orders. We'll be tweaking the percentages in a future publish.
Also, we're looking into more bonuses for GM's and bulk order deeds to ease some of the tougher combinations of ore colors.
I second the idea of more bonuses for GMs... ;) I can't stand the sight of a dagger BOD. That and many other BODs are simply not worth doing.
I totally agree that the low-end rewards are not the most interesting rewards and we expected them to be common. We're looking into new rewards for blacksmithy's low-end.
Thank god. Here are some more random changes:
Ancient hammers are getting a boost in charges and another change should increase their value. Legacy ancient hammers will be "upgraded" along with this change in a future publish.
Mining gloves may be changed to use charges like the shovels and pickaxes. The amount of charges are going to be in-line with the future ancient hammers. This would be published at the same time ancient hammers get their boost.
Only one NPC guild remains in the game now (thieves guild). All the other guilds were removed with the last publish. They were never implemented fully and we did not have any designs to extend them.
Fame was lowered because most blacksmiths are not warrior/mages. They very rarely die and there isn't an outlet for your blacksmith to lose fame.
Mining glove charges are a great idea. This gives purpose to having many mining gloves. Right now, if you have more than 1 or 2 mining gloves, you're wasting space. Don't throw them away though - you'll need them once they have limited charges. As for fame, I'm glad they lowered it. I think if everyone's smith or mule in general is a "Lord" (or another high fame title), having that level of fame is absolutely meaningless. Who gives a fuck if you're Glorious Lord now?
Anyways, that's all for now. While you're bored, check out this kick ass computer.
Cya later. |
^ top-Meer Info...
[Catgirl] February 12 - 2:34 PM EST | Okayyy...since Nieves is being mean to me, here we go:
Meer Mages:
These guys have some odd special attacks that summon [enraged] monsters to attack you, and another one that has a swarm of insects attack you, doing constant damage like a Poison spell, that you apparently can only shake off by casting some variety of fire spell on yourself.
Loot-wise they carry 600-800 gold, a gem, a pouch of 2-3 of each reg, and 2-3 decent scrolls (usually level 5+, I believe). They'll also randomly be carrying a magic weapon, it seems. I've gotten one (a substantial butcher knife of force, woot!)
Until either today or yesterday, they were also dropping a piece of magic armor EACH. It was nuts.
Meer Warriors:
Apparently these guys are like Orc Bombers, in that they throw stuff at you that hurts. I didn't notice this myself when I killed 'em with my Golems...so that's sorta anecdotal.
They seem to have "Ratman" loot...not much gold, and a couple completely random "WTF?" objects.
Meer Captain:
A warrior monster...they carry a Crossbow (no Slayer here guys, stop wetting your pants), and a sword (kat, long, it's random). They drop quick to good melee, and cast 6th-and-under spells.
They don't have very much gold, and about 55 Bolts to start with. They also have a reg pouch.
Meer Eternals:
Best way I can put it: Don't fuck with these. They're nasty. The "trick" to beating them seems to be to provo them on a Meer Mage...because they can't do anything about the "insect" ability.
They have several special abilities. One drains your life and gives it to the Eternal, the other paralyzes you, and the third is a NASTY ability that does about 80 hp to EVERYONE in a radius of ~8 tiles around the Eternal. Even if you're not in combat with it, just stand in there, and you'll be hit. I found this out the hard way.
They seem to have dragon loot, as well as a bonus magic piece of armor.
You'd better appreciate this info. :P I went down a karma title for it. Discuss here. (Note: This post was made after the thread was created, so I said some inaccurate things in the thread.) |
^ top-Keep your check, I want gold!!
[Nissa] February 11 - 4:29 PM EST | Just as a quick note, we want to clarify a recent change: bankers no longer accept bank checks. To redeem a bank check for gold, put it in your bank box and double-click it. Handing it to a banker will only get you the message, "I only accept gold coins."
Not a bad idea. I always hated it when I dropped the check just as the banker moved and my check fell to the floor.
|
^ top-UOHOC Results
[Gator] February 11 - 2:40 PM EST | Well the UOHOC was ran last week and here are the results with commentary from your very own Gator...
Kehleyr - *VenomousDemise[DH* Question: What is OSI's current status on where they are sort of 'leaning towards' when it comes to a substitution to statloss?
Evocare - We've got the start of a plan that involves substantial changes to the murdering system for felucca, but I won't say just what yet. :P
Evocare - keep your eyes open for more details in the near-ish future (intentionally vague)
Evocare - However, making felucca a more interesting place to play is a priority for us. =]
I am really looking forward to seeing what changes will come out of this. Hopefully the changes will be good. I live in Fel myself, and cant wait to see what happens. Ohh yeah and did I mention that Gator will be playing a Red soon? pH3@r /\/\3...
Kehleyr - *neriwa* the talk of fixing horse stamina has been around for months now, when is it planned to be introduced, because it will make factions more involved. It will allow Sigils and Warhorses to mean something
Evocare - Frankly, horses are a touchy subject since there isn't any simple solution to the overall speed without drawbacks issue. Especially when you factor in multiple playstyles that don't necessarily include pvp.
Evocare - We don't have plans to make any significant changes to them right now, but it is, and will continue to be on our minds.
I give factions by there end of the year, and they will go poof. face it, factions dive bombed in the theaters... Solution to horseys... have a bunch of fruit, when ye mount gets tired fill him up and go again. Sucks, but hey so does life...
Kehleyr - *Xena* Will there ever be house decay agian? If so, new system? Old System? What are your plans to do with house decay?
Vex - Right now that's undecided, but I think it's safe to say we won't see the old house decay system coming back.
New system... I am scared yet interested. But decay HAS to come back, the market is OUTRAGEOUS!
Kehleyr - *Wanderer* Will Sosaria ever see the introduction of two-handed swords, perhaps with the release of the 30 new items from LBR?
Evocare - I wouldn't rule it out, but I can't claim that it's right around the corner.
2-Handed Swords would be very l337. But from Evocares comment I suspect that in the future we will be seeing some more Wep changes. Just a guess dont quote me on that.
Kehleyr - *Frigax* Haven's new, expanded look was a surprise. Are more map modifications planned?
Oaks - You can thank Ignatz (and a host of other helpers) for those improvements. And yes, there will be map modifications down the road, but to tell you what would give away too much.
Hmmm perhaps changes to some worthless cities?
Kehleyr - *Spunky* I just want to thank you all for the good work you've done lately. The pure nightmares did take a while, but thanks for getting them in there
Evocare - thanks, glad to hear you're happy!
Oaks - Just like *all* our players are
Evocare - *wink* *wink*
The other night I was on Catskills at the Brit bank, no shiat, probably saw 5-10 Pure Mares in a 5 minute span. And yeah I was in Tram but Is aid I live in Fel. I had to sell some l337 goods.
Kehleyr - *Lord_Elf* Are we going to be able to repair leather items anytime in the near future?
Evocare - Can't say for sure... although we're expecting to do some improvements to tailoring in an upcoming publish
Evocare - It's going to depend on whether we feel reparing will be better-for or worse-for the skill and players in general when combined with any changes we make.
Ummm, better or worse, then how is it that repairing Metal is better? Whats the difference? Improvements to Tailoring? Tailoring BODs coming near you, get them BOD Newbs ready....
Kehleyr - *celest-cv* are they going to do anything to improve the time it takes to make scrolls?
Evocare - No plans to change that right now. =[
Vex - That isn't just a matter of the crafting aspect. Casting a spell from a scroll is much easier than casting from the spellbook. With an extremely short crafting delay, it would be a simple matter to macro the creation of a scroll, and the scribe/mage could then instantly get an effective magery bonus while in combat.
Most of the time is spent on Meditating, not the actual process of making the scroll. GM your Med and have 100 Int and it isnt too bad. But yeah it does suck.
Kehleyr - *Jaelk* Why is there a focus on adding to established classes like Barding when there are issues with classes that haven't had significant change in 4 years (aka. Magery?)
Evocare - Magery isn't as absurdly lucrative as skills such as Barding and Taming. Improving the gameplay for those skills while balancing better is a higher priority right now.
HAHA, check out my NERF stick. Sorry Bards/Tamers, its coming, but dont feel bad, we will make sure you get some eye candy as a reminder of your "glory years".
Kehleyr - *VenomousDemise[DH* Question: Is GGS on 'go' , if so, when is the time/date that it is going to be implimented into gameplay?
Evocare - I can confirm that GGS has at least a yellow light. ;]
Evocare - Basically, that means we want to get it in, but it's possible some publish limitations could force it out of the mix for now. However, we'll try to keep that from happening.
No Comment...
Kehleyr - *Utheg* Is there any way to have a drawback to ethy creatures? Orcs and various other roleplayers try to stay away from mounts and we have bolas to thank for alot of our success, but ethys are unstoppable. Would it be considered?
Evocare - While mount balance in general is a touchy subject, mounts people chose as vet rewards are even more touchy. I am aware of the issue though, and when we address mounts, we won't forget about it.
Adapt, everyone else has...
Kehleyr - *Baja1* Will the pet invis bug (crashing in 3d when a pet casts invis and you have their health bar up) ever be fixed? Last one of these chats said it was 'being looked at'
Evocare - We don't have any client programmers here on-hand to answer that accurately, but I'm certain they know about it and will fix it as soon as they find what causes it. The problem generally comes down to whether we can reproduce the crash with a debug client.
No Comment....
Kehleyr - *neriwa* With LBR coming out, will we start getting patches so people who dont upgrade can use and see new objects and weapons? Will we be able to use all the new items, and ride the new rideables?
Evocare - The 3d client will always be able to see the new art in its "true" form. However, whether non-lbr clients will be able to use "LBR items" is probably going to be on a case-by-case basis.
Evocare - 2d clients will see conversion art for any LBR stuff that has new art.
Nada....
Kehleyr - *Khonsu{OES}* I have a question of magery. Have you ever thought of bringing new magic to UO in the near furture?
Evocare - Have we thought of it? Heck yeah! Will we do it? Can't say just yet. =]
Theres the hint, yes folks one day something new will be added to Magery... I think possibly, harvesting regs... read on.. Though that isnt a true improvement to the skill it would be pretty cool.
Kehleyr - *Bladefire* The reactivation of Condemned housing decay was delayed due to bugs. When will condemned houses decay again and what is planned for regular housing decay? Houses cost twice what they used to cost sometimes even more due to no houses falling..
Evocare - That's a server-programmer question... not sure what the status on that is right now. Sorry. =[
Nada
Kehleyr - *Aphrael* Are there any plans for new skills in the works? Or perhaps more diversity for our current magery skill?
Oaks - Currently, magery is our most diverse skill as it can do almost anything... our focus right now is on balancing our current skills and making them more fun.
Oaks - They might "feel" like new skills when we get done with some of them. =)
Ummm ok 3rd question on Magery, enough already... sheesh...
Kehleyr - *CelestialWinds* Are we going to see any substantial changes to the main world map? What about differences between Trammel and Felucca...is the map going to be more different (like the Haven/Ocllo changes)
Evocare - We expect that over time, the Trammel and Felucca landmasses will become more and more distinct from each other.
Evocare - However, this will be a gradual change, since map changes have fairly considerable patch-size issues.
Evocare - Expect change though. =]
I am HAPPY about this, there needs to be change. The split happened too long ago, lets bring some type of originality to each facet. And eys something more than dead/live trees. Whos sick of the dead trees anyways?
Kehleyr - *Noblesteel[CV]* Are we going to be able to pick or harvest fruit? From like say, the fruit orchard in Ilshenar?
Evocare - Hmm, sort of... although it'll be more like gardening. Ok, no more hints.
BINGO.. Harvesting Regs maybe? New Farming skill to go inline with Alchemy/Magery? Or perhaps new regs?
Kehleyr - *Nomadic_Dragon* Will Magery ever be fixed so that harder, more mana intensie spells like Flamestrike and Meteor Swarm will do noticeably more damage on larger targets?
Evocare - Those spells did recieve damage improvements in the last round of magery spell damage changes (a few months ago).
Evocare - When we do more magery changes, we'll look at the damage values again.
Sheesh.
Kehleyr - *Lord_Elf* When will plate chest Bods be reintroduced?
Evocare - If they haven't already, asap.
Evocare - I'll have to check with Hanse to verify whether they're spawning again as of today's publish.
Simple mistake right?
Kehleyr - *Mordain* Is anything going to ever be done with "useless" skills, for example Begging?
Evocare - ever? probably.
ROFL
Kehleyr - *Ray_LS* When will I be able to PK trammelites, Evocare? :p
Evocare - As soon as they go to felucca.
CORP POR/CORP POR/CORP POR, Stupid Question Dumbass, NEXT!!
Kehleyr - *DarkVeng* wouldn't simply making barding skills difficulty-based reduce the bard problem? It would make the skill gain faster, while preventing 1 day old characters from outperforming 7xGM mages and warriors in PvM.
Vex - It would be simplicity in itself to do that. It would also be a plain old nerf that would make a lot of people unhappy. We do want to correct the relatively extreme power of bard provocation, but don't feel that a simple power adjustment is the answer. Instead, we want to look at how barding can be extended and enhanced at the same time to allow bards to contribute to the game in exciting new ways.
Eh er.. ok so what does this mean?
Kehleyr - *TN-Wormie* When will the next vitrue be out
Evocare - Barring unforseen problems, during the next scenario.
No Comment.
Kehleyr - *Ka`Non*Why isn't there a switch to choose your language. The localisation has been done very badly in parts (Like the BODs) and some players would like to play in English rather than their native tongue.
Evocare - Please send comments on poorly-executed localization to helios@uo.com
Evocare - We'll do our best to fix the problems.
Kehleyr - *Cyberdud* Question: In trammel, We don't turn grey anymore when we spar with the blue fighters in the jhelom dueling pits...was this a undocumented addition to this publish or a bug?
Oaks - You can no longer be flagged as a criminal in Trammel (or Ilshenar).
Oaks - This was done as part of a set of changes to simplify our rulesets in consensual PvP areas.
Kehleyr - *mers* Why is hiding so hard to gain now?
Evocare - I'll check on the hamsters powering the hiding skill-gain treadmill... they might be tired. =[
Evocare - Honestly? I don't know... no changes to it were made to my knowlege.
Hmmm Spion was having a hard time with Hiding the other night.. perhaps, there is a new bug? Please report any issues you have with hiding in the forum..
Kehleyr - *AnvilNForge_C-S* When can we expect BODs for Tailoring, Carpentry, and the lot of the other crafring skills?
Evocare - Tailoring: Soon. The others: not sure yet.
Evocare - The next major server publish will be *very* substantial, so it'll be in development and testing for a while still.
Very Substantial, so I am Very Interested in seeing it...
Kehleyr - *Cedric_OGF* Will factions ever be allowed to fight on trammel or be locked pernamently from Trammel? It seems kind of odd to see more faction people on tramm than fell...
Evocare - I don't expect we'll open faction fighting on Trammel. We want to support "weekend warriors" that don't necessarily want to be targets all the time.
Evocare - Realistically, if we allowed factions to fight in Felucca, those players would leave the system altogether, and you wouldn't get to kill them anyways. So really, you're not losing out on anything. =[
Evocare - erm, i mean Trammel. =]
Kehleyr - *Southernbelle* When will we be able to throw snowballs while riding mounts? And will archers ever be able to shoot while running again?
Vex - No plans on the snowball thing. It was disabled due to an animation problem. As far as the archery one, I honestly don't know what is in the works for that.
Umm no and no... Riding while throwing snowballs, who gives a F$%K? And ever Archer dreams of being able to shoot while on the fly again.
Kehleyr - *Wanderer* Is UO: LBR really going to release on the 12th of February, 2002?
Evocare - Yep.
Evocare - All the servers have been published with the LBR code and are running it already. I'm using it from work and home! ;]
Must be nice to play UO at work.... Damn I need a JOB LIKE THAT!!!
Kehleyr - *TN-Wormie* There has been a bug about guildstone thats you guys never fixed. If i have more than 30 wars i am not able to see the rest of the wars i have.
Evocare - The guildstone code needs some reworking, it's on our "list of important infrastructure changes to make".
Sweet perhaps, Alliances?
Kehleyr - *VenomousDemise[DH* Will you ever be able to lock you're stats so you can keep a stat template and not have to be burdened with constant stat alteration by gaining skills
Evocare - Hopefully. We're certainly not opposed to stat locks, it's just a question of there being so much to do, with so little time. =[
Stat Locks will eb awesome!!
Well as you can see, alot of new changes are coming out. I am pretty damn excited to see what becomes of UO this year..
Arent you?
Later |
^ top-An Addiction
[Kamikaze] February 10 - 8:22 PM EST | They say the first step is admitting you’re an addict, so:
My name is Kamikaze and I am a PvP’er.
But this is UOPG not AA, and I am not seeking a cure for this: my particular vice. I gave up hope long ago. Instead I aim to ensnare more of you. As the newest member of the UOPG mob (I mean revolution), it is my mission to provide you with the best and most up to date info concerning PvP.
Expect to see detailed templates, studies, tactics (in addition to the ones I’ve already posted), and perhaps some rants. If they don’t show up I give you advance permission to yell at me.
I’d also like your input, email me with suggestions about what you want to see. It’s your website, and I want to answer your questions.
-Kamikaze |
^ top-No More Drama
[Nieves] February 10 - 7:23 PM EST | "No More Drama"
So tired, tired of these drama
No more, no more
I wanna be free
I'm so tired, so tired
Broken heart again
Another lesson learn
Better know your friends
Or else you will get burn
Gotta count on me
Cause I can guarantee
That I'll be fine
No more pain (no more pain)
No more pain (no more pain)
No drama (no more drama in my life)
Noone's gonna make me hurt again
What a player fool
Go through ups and downs
Nowhere and all the time
You wouldn't be around
Or maybe I like the stress
Cause I was young and restless
But there was long ago
I don't wanna cry no more
No more pain (no more pain)
No more game (no more game messin with my mind)
No drama (no more drama in my life)
Nooone's gonna make me hurt again
No more tears (no more tears, I'm tired of cryin everynight)
No more fears (no more fears, I really don't wanna cry)
No drama (no more drama in my life)
I don't ever wanna hurt again
Wanna speak my mind, wanna speak my mind
Uh, it feel so good
When you let go
Avoid these drama in your life
Now you're free from all the pain
Free from all the game
Free from all the stress
So bye your happiness
I don't know
Only God knows where the story is
For me, but I know where the story begins
It's up to us to choose
Whatever we win or loose
And I choose to win
No more pain (no more pain)
No more game (tired of your playin' game with my mind)
No drama (no more drama in my life)
No more, no more, No more, no more
No more tears (no more tears, no more cryin every night)
No more fears (no more waking be up in the morning)
No drama, no more in my life
No more drama, no more drama
No more drama, no more drama
NO MORE DRAMA
NO MORE DRAMA
NO MORE DRAMA
NO MORE DRAMA
NO MORE DRAMA
No more drama in my life
So tired, tired of these drama
To everyone needing peace, this is for you.
Hasta. |
^ top-As The UO:Great Lakes Turns....
[Nieves] February 9 - 4:05 PM EST | True love comes but once in a life time…a love that succeeds all else that makes you think of Romeo and Juliet….
*insert romantic breath-taking scene from any love story*
Hearts and flowers swirling above ones head…Love…Valentine's Day approaches and it is for no one else in the world what it is for you and your beloved....
*sigh*
Ain't it grand?!!!
*NEEDLE RIPS ACROSS THE TURNTABLE*
Then you need a support group….
Eyes wide shut is how most of us go into a relationship. Always hoping… This is the one. This is different. Right? I mean we wouldn’t even give someone a chance unless we thought that. So we ladies plod along with our hearts out for the taking knowing this one is the right one…the tales told, the words spoken, the promises of a life together, a love to rival all time…….
*another needle's rip on the turn table…..*
Then you need a support group….
When you're a gamer, you meet other gamers. You automatically have something in common. Some may scoff and ask, "How can you fall in love with a 1", 2D dude?" but history has shown that there are many, many couples who have met and married their true love in the real world because of our virtual world. And the numbers grow all the time. This doesn't mean that we are desperate losers with no real life who can only hope to find other desperate losers with no real life. We are like any one of you reading this who might just happen to meet someone we are attracted to in any kind of setting.
And that’s where I come in. I thought I had found that Special Someone and was on my way to having our names recorded in the big "Happily Ever After" book of Online Gaming. Instead, I find that I can now add my name into the much larger tome of "I Can't Believe I Fell for That". Why? Because in my research of a few short minutes I realized that more than one lovely lady from the Great Lakes Community has been affected (infected?) by the one I thought loved me. Seems he was loving everyone else along with me. Not only that, but he wasn't even original enough to find new snake-in-the-grass lines for each of us. We have all been getting the same warmed over come ons and compliments.
In light of all of this, we have chosen to empower ourselves and each other and do what we can to spare others the pain and humiliation we have suffered.
*rips cord from the ceiling to unveil a banner*
VDn Anonymous - affectionately (or infectionately) referred to as "VDA"
I know many of you ladies have been, shall we say, approached, flirted with, or turned around to see him standing there naked with his dick in his hand offering it to you in one of his many guises. (and perhaps you have been unlucky enough to actually see a picture of it in real life) You may know this particular Creature by many names:
- Ig. Pz.
- B. VD.
- M. VD.
- Mys. VD.
- Garb. Vn.
- Mer. Vn.
- Bet.
- Anv. McD.
- Mas.
- Blank Character spot
[Names have been edited from the original post.]
Beware of that last one. He may crawl into your life thru that portal of “The Unknown Horn-Dawg." One other way to identify this particular Scum of the Bowels of Hell is by ICQ UIN
"Lord VD #[deleted]" & his sooper sekrit identity “Shadey” (now why wasn’t that a clue to me??) #[deleted].
So, ladies, if you have been the victim of this bastage of great whoring proportions you should come to our meeting. Of course, please come with your best disguise kit or incognito spell. I know most of you will be embarrassed as much as I was when I learned the words of this Serial Liar were just that.
In all of this, I feel the sorriest for his poor family - to have forgotten them and pursued all of us here in this realm and left them to live his lies. At least we can get the therapy we need thru each other.
This group isn’t just limited to the victims of this one player. This goes out to all ladies that have been used for the purpose of someone else’s twisted lives and their own self- centered motivations!! And let us not forget that men are sometimes victims, too. There are plenty of stories out there of men who thought they were falling for a woman, only to learn it was some smelly, balding, hairy-backed guy named Bob dribbling stale Falstaff on his keyboard while he cruised prOn sites looking for just the right words for his UO vixen to utter to her unsuspecting lover.
So let's get this going, girls. Let's stop this plague from affecting another unsuspecting loving lass.
*walks away singing at the top of my lungs*
At first I was afraid, I was petrified…kept thinking I could never live with out you by my side..then I spent so many nights thinking how you did me wrong, and I grew strong and I learned how to get along…
-Jennifer/Ariyana
I don't know all the details. I know the person being referred in this personally. I know the person that wrote it personally. I honestly don't know what happened between the two. But something happened. Something that made the author feel the way they did and to make them want me to post this story.
Nieves was considered a player on Great Lakes. It's pretty funny actually. I found out about this "label" yesterday. That I like to cyber. That I like to have phone sex.
I met one person in game a few years ago. I got to know her. I actually started to love this person. Things happened. Everything was beautiful. Then it fell apart when the reality of the distance and responsibilities of our real lives took over. Shit happens. You live, you learn, and you move on.
I have flirted with "ladies" in game. Everyone has at one time or another. If you say no, you lie. But the bullshit being spread? Fuck no. But believe what you want.
Be truthful. These are real people you are dealing with. Don't fuck with someone's heart. Because, in the end, yours is the one that will wind up broken.
Note: This was taken down to consider the legal ramifications of the story (in yellow). All the yellow text was submitted by a UOPowergamer reader and posted here for the UO Community.
All the opinions, comments, and views expressed within said submittion (the yellow text) does not necessarily reflect the views of UOPowergamers.com (UOPG). UOPG does not take responsibility for the story as published.
The commentary expressed after the yellow text is merely this writer's commentary and does not confirm nor deny the validity of the story.
Hasta. |
^ top-UO:LBR
[Nieves] February 8 - 11:10 AM EST | Spending my customary 30 minute break from school work last night, I got online to attend an event.
I saw a Unicorn with the new 3D art. It looked very cool. Also, the new sounds were kicking in. The exlosions sounded like...explosions. Ebolts had a cool sound. And the invisible spells had that weird tinkly effect. <--My least favorite of the sounds.
Also, the deathmoans for males and females have changed. I kind of miss the old ones. They new ones aren't as funny.
As time permits, I will try to bring you images of the new art.
Ok, well, off to fail...er, take a Statistics midterm. Pray for me.
Hasta. |
^ top-I am sorry but I have to state this....
[Gator] February 8 - 8:15 AM EST | ... as plainly as possible.
NOT ONLY NO, BUT HELL THE FUCK NO!!!!
And for the link-impaired...
So... if you could resurrect a pet, how would you like to do it? I'm going to offer a list of potential methods, because some things like pet ghosts would be too time intensive to code:
- Resurrect off the corpse
- Ability to bond to a single pet (maybe more than one based on your skills) and resurrect at a special location
- Ability to store the pet's "soul" in a magic item of some sort to infuse into a similar animal
-
Resurrection would restore the pet's name, body, and coloring, but they might suffer stat loss... maybe even temporary. Thoughts on that?
Oaks the Grandmaster Ninja
Let's see, if this were to happen.... then damnt I want that Vanq back I lost last week while I was fighting Liches and died due to lag. Maybe when we lose something we could get a gump where we could get it back. NO, better yet, when you log in a new character it should be like TC, your bank box should be full of shit, and you should be able to set your skills. Where is the CHALLENGE?!?! ITS FUCKING GONE. This is total HORSESHIT. And I can hear it now, the crying about the emotional attachment to their tames. I have a tamer and damn right I was pissed when I lost "Spot" to some reds in Destard. Was a little mad? Yeah for all of 30 seconds then I got over it. If this were to ever happen it would be the most complete utter bullshit that OSI has ever implemented. Fuck that.
Rez your dog "A" here...
Damn Nieves, and I always asked you to tone down on the cussing on the main page.... Look who the pot is now.. ::points to kettle:: BLACK!!!
Later |
^ top-Of Bronson Pinchot and Miners
[Fixxxer] February 8 - 6:45 AM EST | From FYI on uo.com:
Due to continued public outcry from Britannia's community of miners, local authorities have decided to take action! Signs will now be erected along the coasts near popular mining areas, warning all ship captains to not block valuable resources by leaving their vessels unattended in these areas. Should these signs be ignored, area officials have been given the authority to remove these boats themselves (through deletion). Britannians are encouraged to heed these warnings and park well away from mining zones. Don't be left with a boat-less key and sunken memories; support a miner - don't hog the mountains.
Sunken memories? Since when did uo.com try to get a sense of humor? Who did they hire to write this shit, Bronson Pinchot? Get out of the city! Anyhoo, this was already a rule, nothing new here. So this is just serving as a reminder.
dabu |
^ top-Possible Trojan.
[Catlyn] February 7 - 10:04 PM EST | I log on to my icq tonight for the first time in ages (Work has been nuts and lots on the go with family) and have a message pointing me to a thread over at uo.com.
Credit goes to Kaara who found it but was at work at the time. Here is the opening post of the thread.
Stratics has a utility called UORudder DO NOT DOWNLOAD AND INSTALL IT !!! It contains a trojan called MulDrop
The whole thread can be found here.
This was posted by Casandra with a FntsyAngel and LadyHawke stating the same. There is a couple people who say they scanned and found nothing.
First, I am not saying UoRudder has a trojan, and I am not saying it doesn't. I will say this though, make sure you have a reliable scanner on your computer as well as a decent firewall such as zonealarm (software firewall) or an SMC Barricade (Hardware firewall). Take the time to scan what you recieve folks even if you feel it is a trusted source. Take the time to keep your scanner up to date.
You never know, it might save you 3 years worth of work.
Secondly, Treise makes a very valid point in my mind. To me, if something is border league wrong, pick the right place to bitch about it. If something prevents you from going slightly over the speed limit in RL, you don't go down to the cop shop to complain. By all means bitch at your friends, work, or family but don't go to the law. To me, this is the same thing.
OSI/EA has stated that only programs approved by them (by a program that they stopped running years ago) are fine for use with UO. Sure some of them can't be used for cheating or exploiting and odds are you won't get caught with them or banned for running them. But when they mess up, you sure as heck don't go to OSI's boards for technical support.
If anyone has a copy of it and runs it through their scanner and finds something, send me an email at Catlyn@uopowergamers.com.
Vaya Con Dios.
UPDATE
Joshua Rowan from statics stated he was looking into it on the thread. I went to Stratics to see if anything was mentioned there. Nothing that I could see (am tired and apologize if I missed it) and UORudder is still available for download.
I did how ever find this :
In an e-mail discussion group, Ignatz (UO dev team) added to the discussion of the possibility of having shards look different depending on each shard’s different history:
The possibility of differences between the shards is something we've often kicked around. One method used in the past was to manually make changes on each shard. An example is a past seer event where a building or location was changed during the event and those changes were left even after it all ended. This kind of change is very inefficient and slow. There were never enough IGMs to make a significant impact event when we only had 9 shards, not to mention now that we have 24. And this method only worked for adding or changing dynamic objects. There is no way to manually change the actual terrain or static parts of the map.
(Static parts of the map are those that are on your local machine as well as on the server, and can't be changed without a patch to your local files.) Dynamic objects also add to lag issues since more information has to be sent from server to client.
Nystul's Tower is somewhere between being a static and dynamic. That kind of object (a multi) has elements of both, such as a required client patch but with more flexible placement possibilities. Players houses are a better example of it. There are possibilities here, but so are various problems. Minax's stronghold was originally created using this system, but the lag issues made a fully static version much better.
A much more promising way to create map differences between shards would be doing so within the game code. It then trickles down to finding a feasible way to allow for those differences while maintaining coherent version integrity. Trying to maintain 20+ versions of UO code would be a nightmare, so we need a single version that can handle having map differences from shard to shard. And that's just a simplified description of what amounts to the main problem.
Bottomline is that we're still looking for a viable and efficient way to do this.
Ignatz
Cross your fingers and hope. Maybe some day, we can effect the shards and have them each develope their own personality.
Now, I am off to bed.
Vaya |
^ top-M:TG Online Beta
[Nieves] February 7 - 11:36 AM EST | Go here to download the Beta.
Personally, it sucks. Why? Because they are requiring you pay the same exact freaking cost for virtual cards as you would the real ones. Very fucking lame. Arcadian talked about it's Lameness level a few weeks ago.
Other than that reason right there, I would say it's probably the "tightest" presentation of the game outside of Apprentice.
The programmers have done a great job with it. From what I understand, you can't cheat. Especially cheaters like this. Fucking retarded. I actually looked up to Maher as a player. Asshoe. That's ok, I still got Malka to look up too.
Thanks to Dupree for bringing us the link.
Tell us why paying the regular retail rate for virtual M:TG cards sucks ass.
Hasta. |
^ top-I Love It When I Get Scooped.
[Nieves] February 7 - 10:56 AM EST | Logging in today, I noticed one change right away. Being a tamer myself, I noticed many riding pure nightmares. I decided to investigate. Upon my arrival to the Felucca Keep, I got PKed. *grins* So I went to trammel and tamed myself a pure nightmare. All of the legacy mares are once again spawning.
Another thing I noticed was an additional city added onto the moongate-Haven. I decided I'd check it out.
The city itself, is kind of like Occlo, only much better. There are new buildings in the wilderness, and the buildings are totally different. I suggest that everyone goes to check out the new Haven. It is definitly a city which I will be visiting a lot in the future.
Haven was opened for the Humility virtue, where non-young players accompany a young player and show them the ropes. As they gain skills, you gain Humility points. Thumbs up to the Dev Team!
-Dravec
Hmmm...Occlo opened up again?? Time to check the Reg Vendors!!
Welp, thanks to Silk and UOLS.net for the info...
Hasta. |
^ top-UO HoC tonight at 8:00pm EST
[Fixxxer] February 7 - 8:11 AM EST | Stratics is hosting another UO House of Commons IRC chat with the Dev Team tonight, Frebruary 7th at 8:00pm EST. Simply log onto the Stratics IRC server and join the channel #uohoc to be a part of it. The topic for this chat is general discussion.
Make sure you bring some questions for them.
dabu
|
^ top-Your daily dose of UO news.
[Eric] February 6 - 11:27 PM EST | Someone has to deliver the dirt, right? In today's news, Cynthe explains why the FYI update page was NOT updated, and the current status of Publish 16:
A good portion of our team was out sick most of this week, so it took a little longer than usual to gather the info (the people I usually ask questions of were out). It was posted yesterday afternoon into Testing for the Next Update, the patch message and FYI, though.
As for Publish 16... that's not out yet, and won't be for quite a while. The publish that went out yesterday was actually what we're calling New Player 3, which is the third in a series of smaller publishes released over the last several months aimed at helping new players to learn UO more easily (they mainly focus on changes to Haven, the tutorial sections, and young players). The Scenario Publish was included in this one for ease in testing - easier to test them together than to test them separately and then put them together on the shards.
Publish 16 will contain a good deal more changes that apply to everyone, and won't be out for a while, which is why there's nothing posted about it yet. :)
I wonder what these "more changes that apply to everyone" will include. We'll keep you posted.
In other news, shit, there are a lot of people on the internet and computers today. Here's a passage from an article over at CNN.com:
The report says 90 percent, or 47.4 million, of children between the ages of 5 and 17 now use computers at home and at school.
90 percent?! I know the younger generation is a very active part in today's computer technology, but 90% seems pretty damn high. Go ahead, read the rest of the article. There are a few other interesting tidbits.
And now, I need sleep. Goodnight. |
^ top-In Control
[FrozenFire] February 6 - 3:56 PM EST | Playing a game to the limit means that there can be no weak links. Assuming, you have know your templates and tactics, the only thing between you and r0xx0rhood is connection, right?
Not quite. Knowing what to do when, doesnt mean much if you cant pull it off with your game controls. Anyone who has pvp:d can relate to healing the wrong target and dieing because of it. UO is not exactly known for its smooth interface, and although it has improved over the years, there is still much to do. Perhaps the most important step any UO player can take to improve the interface, is to upgrade the account with UO Assist.
This is the program that had features such as Arm/Disarm and Target Self/Last Target bound to keys, way before OSI added similar functions to the client. If you are into pvp, and you do not have UOA, stop reading now, head over to Tugsoft and download the trial. The trial is free, but if you want to keep using UOAssist after the trial its $15. Considering we all pay $10 each month, thats the best UO-related investment you can make.
Now that you have UOA we can move on. UOAssist strong point is that you can hotkey almost any command (you can even record a set of commands into a macro and bind a key to execute it all in one). This is especially useful to drink potions, arm certain weapon combination for example. Simply using a spell or skill can be done just as well with the normal UO game controls.
If you are anything like me, youll want 10-15 UOA commands, 25-30 spells and perhaps 5 skills on hotkeys. The problem is, where do they all go?. Keyboards only have 12 function keys. Well UOA has some predefined hotkeys, like Insert/Delete, Home/End, PgUp/PgDn and various alt/ctrl combinations of these. But the thing is, to eliminate game controls as your weakest link, you must be comfortable with the controls. I dont like ctrl+Ins very much.
My personal settings have evolved a few times, and I recently redid my configuration again. To give you an idea on how to configure, Ill share my new configuration here:
First off, I use the mouse in my right hand. Which leaves my left hand free to use the hotkeys. I feel most at ease on the left half of the key board- Also, I dont really like the Function keys, at least not those on the left half. I also want to separate offensive and defensive commands to minimise the risk of healing my enemy or blasting myself when Im redlined. Ive used the keys on the left half (in combinations with ctrl/alt) in earlier configurations for voice commands (bank guards, recdu/recsu etc) as well as to bring up gumps like the Paperdoll, Radar and so on. Well no longer, those are now all gone. Instead I use those keys (1-6, Q-Y, A-G, Z-B along with control for my offensive spells. Then, I set up basically the same keys for defensive moves with alt combinations. That yielded me roughly 40 keys to use, heres how I decided to configure them:
Ctrl +: /Alt+
1 Explosion/ Disarm (UOA)
2 E-Bolt / Arm (UOA)
3 Flame Strike/ Arm1 (UOA)
4 Mind Blast / Arm2 (UOA)
5 Mana Drain / Arm3 (UOA)
6 /Disarm Left Hand (UOA)
Q Poison /Target Self (UOA)
W FireBall / Drink Gheal (UOA)
E Harm /Drink Gcure (UOA)
R Mana Vampire / Drink Trefresh (UOA)
T /Protection
Y /Reactive Armor
A Paralyze / Heal
S Lighning / Cure
D Magic Arrow / Greater Heal
F Meteor Swarm / Invisibility
G Chain Lightning /Magic Reflect
Z Weaken /Strength
X Clumsy /Agility
C Feeblemind / Cunning
V Curse /Bless
B Reveal /
Whats missing? The obvious candidate is Last Target. I have a three button mouse so I bound Last Target to the middle button. Its that important.
Other than that, I had a few more options with Alt+ because I use my thumb to press ctrl/alt and when I press alt, I can reach a bit further to the right confortably. I also made a point of making the buff/debuffs being in the order of SDI (Strength/Dexterity/Intelligence), as well as being tied to the same keys. Buff spells cast so quickly, that if you get into a buff/debuff duel youll need to be real fast to come out ahead. Earlier configurations Ive used, have always been lacking in this one.
Odd keys:
After experimenting a bit I found out that UO allows tieing macros to the key between ”Shift” and ”Z”, but they wont save. Same thing with the key to the left of ”1”. After some rechecking with UOA I found out that I could tie UOA macros to the ”key left to 1”. So I promptly tied the Use once agent (to blow up pouches and break para), as well as bandage self to the ctrl/alt kombinations with that key. I use the Tab to toggle war/peace.
So I now have most of my combat related macros set up, and I still have the function keys left:
/Ctrl+ /Alt+
F1 Recall/ Mark/ Unlock
F2 Teleport /NightSight/ Magic Trap
F3 Gate Travel /Resurrection/ Telekinesis
F4 Hiding /Wall of Stone/ Monochrome ;)
I decided to make F5-F8 individual for each character. So My disarm theif would have a few macros for stealing and disarming and so on.
F9-F12 are not really favourite keys for me to use in fast situations (I need to move my hands too much back and forth when reaching for these, which makes for more missed keys), so I put the slow summoning spells there, along with some field spells. Using control on this side of the keyboard is a bit awkward, but work; alt on the other hand is really messy so I decided to not use those combinations:
Ctrl+ / Alt+
F9 Blade Spirit /Poison Field
F10 Energy Vortex /Fire Field
F11 Summon Demon /Energy Field
F12 Dispel Field / Paralyze Field
All other macros, mostly voice commands, some skills, a few spells and opening gumps, were moved to my PC-Dash. The PC dash controller, made by SAITEK, is a secondary keyboard, which connects along with the normal keyboard cable. The great thing about it, is that it lets you tie all sorts of weird keyboard combinations to a single key on it (like ctrl+alt+shift+7 - try doing that one with one hand). However, the downside is that the feeling of its keys is pretty sloppy, and it cant hold all my commands on it. I never liked switching back and forth between the PC-Dash and the key board in a fight. More often than not I had to look at my hands whenever I switched, and thats never a good thing in PvP. So my idea is to keep all nice and slow playing commands on it and focus on the real key board when I need to get the hell out of Dodge. As most of you wont have one, you might have to prioritize between your combat macros.
How you choose to configure your game controls is up to you. Everyone is different; I like to have a lot of commands available, or, my playing style means I may not be using the same commands as often as you do. Think before you assign your commands. I always placed my most important spells/commands where I was comfortable reaching them. I gave some thought to matching the buff/debuff spells on the same keys, making it more natural to find them. This is just to give you some ideas on how you can improve your own configurations and push your playing that much further.
Share your own thoughts and ideas on how to configure the game controls in our Forum. |
^ top-Hybrid Fencer Kamikaze Style
[Nieves] February 6 - 12:58 AM EST | ***Written in Collaboration With Tegan of Napa: My Sincerest Thanks and Respect.***
How to play a Hybrid Fencer (with Eval)
Intro:
At first glance the eval hybrid appears to be a purely offensive thoroughbred based on the premise of the “fast kill”: though it can serve this function, let me assure you it is much more. The hybrid has become my template of choice because of its versatility. In this era of “paper rock scissors combat” with three ways to heal and two ways to deal dmg an eval fencer can exploit any template’s weaknesses, while combating its own. I warn you though, it is not an easy template to play and requires an intimate understanding of both mage and warrior combat, as it synthesizes the two. To play it properly you must manage your resources expertly and bide your time patiently; you must also perfect the art of survival. In essence the eval hybrid is a glass canon, it has a tremendous potential to deal dmg and yet is fragile at the same time.
Template:
GM Magery
GM Eval
GM Tactics
GM Anatomy
GM Hiding or Resist/Wrestling
GM Fencing
GM Healing
Hiding is a must for PK’s, it is also helpful for factioners. For those interested in dueling, O/C fighting, Noto’ing, or just PvP in general I suggest taking wrestling. If you take wrestling feel free to choose mace instead of fencing, as you will not require the para blow to cast uninterrupted. Resist is suggested for those who fear mages, face mages as their primary opponent, or fight multiple mages at a time.
Stats (Recommended):
60 Str 85 Int 80 Dex
Some criticize the choice of relatively low str (60). Low strength does have its downsides, but if played right you don’t require more. Sixty str yields you 80 hp. This template relies heavily on pots, before any battle I drink a GA and GS, which will boost your hp’s and dex to 100. 100 str and dex is more then sufficient when facing a warrior or a mage, but you will have to be selective when choosing your loot.
Suggested Equipment:
1 Suit of Full Studded Leather
1 LP Kryss
2 GP/DP Warfork
1 Tribal Spear
1 Reward Robe
1 Reward Cape (If you can stand wearing them)
5 GS potions
5 GA potions
10 GC/GH/TR
10 Trapped Pouches
50 Bandages
20 Fish Steaks
30 Of Each Reagent.
I strongly recommend that you wear a full studded leather set (and reward robe and cloak if possible). This will allow you to hit faster and actually regain mana at an acceptable rate. Combinations of chain ring or plate reduce your already low dex and when facing warriors you will be at a disadvantage.
THE MOST IMPORTANT PART TO PLAYING A HYBRID IS CONSERVING MANA.
I can not stress this enough. I have seen entirely too many hybrids lose a fight due to wasting mana. You must remember you are a hybrid, not a mage. The best time to use your mana is after a para blow. It is the only time that you are guaranteed not to be interrupted while casting and you have already reduced your opponent’s life via melee dmg. Remember though the window is short (4 sec) you must react quickly.
What you cast is as important as how often you cast it. Never cast flamestrike unless the kill is guaranteed; you do not have 40 mana to waste arbitrarily. The best spells to cast during battle are explosion, ebolt, mindblast, poison, paralyze, minor heal, greater heal, harm, debuffs (i.e curse, feeblemind, clumsy, weaken) and fireball. Fireball is an under rated spell: it yields decent damage, is quick to cast, and requires minimal mana/reagents.
SPECIAL TECHNIQUES:
i) Precasting:
Precasting is the process of casting a spell then equipping a weapon, dealing dmg with that weapon and subsequently targeting your opponent or yourself with the spell. My favorite spell to precast is explosion. Either cast explosion outside the view of your opponent or pretend/act like you were disrupted while casting the spell. Next, arm your tribal spear run up and deal dmg. Once his life is low target your opponent. Hopefully he is unaware that he has been targeted and will assume you are merely dropping the weapon to heal/switch/etc.
This technique is most deadly if you land a para blow. Target, step back and fastcast(see next explanation) a corp por followed by a poison. He will not expect the explosion and corp por to resolve. This will (if it has not killed them) usually result in the panic. When your opponent panics he makes mistakes.
Precasting poison also recommended; target your opponent when they are low on life then fast cast a finishing spell.
ii) Fastcasting:
The technique for circumventing the spell delay timer when casting consecutive spells. There are many good essays describing the process in full (I suggest Tapion’s which is hosted by UOPG), but for the convenience of you my reader I will explain the process in short. There is a 2.2 second delay in addition to any casting delay imposed between casting two spells. To circumvent this delay simply cast your desired spell and do not target until 2.2 seconds have elapsed, then instantly cast the next spell and target as soon as the cursor appears (or hold down the last target button or alternatively use the queue target UOA feature). Casting faster means your opponents have less time to heal and will hopefully die more often as a result.
iii) Jousting:
The technique of utilizing mobility to exchange blows with your opponent at a ratio approaching 1:1. Your primary weapon will be the tribal spear. To use it effectively you must intuitively discern the delay between swings and use that to your advantage. When facing an opponent wielding a faster weapon, run towards them on a course just tangent to them. As you run by you will strike, continuing running forward, once your timer has reset return and repeat. This will effectively negate weapon speed advantages. For it to work properly you must keep your stamina high!
iv) Spell Disruption
The technique of casting lower level spell with faster casting times to disrupt an opponent casting a higher level spell. Fireball, harm, and debuffs work well at interrupting. A hybrid has an additionally advantage in this regard, if you have a spell precast, you can release it to interrupt a high circle spell your opponent is casting.
How to fight a(n)…
Mage
Mages should not pose too much difficulty. Make sure up have magic reflect up and that you are wielding a one handed weapon (preferably a LP Kryss in hand). Drink a GS and GA potion before battle and start the bandage immediately; even with 100 str and dex MB will deal you approximately 10 dmg on average. Stick to the mage with the LP kryss swinging and keeping your stamina maxed. This will prevent them from being able to link combo’s or fast cast effectively. Drink GC and GH immediately and OFTEN. If the mage begins to dump, cast GH and or Lesser Heal depending on you life. DO not use mana offensively unless as a finishing blow. Once the mage runs low on mana switch to the tribal spear and go in for the kill. Do not precast GH as a smart mage will simply poison you. With three ways to heal and 85 mana you are a mages worse nightmare. Curse is a great spell you cast against a mage, but insure their reflect is down first.
Axer
Axers can be very deadly opponent, but there is one thing that neutralizes them, poison. To cure poison they need to disarm. An axer without a weapon in their hand is harmless. There are two ways to do this, casting the spell or with a poisoned weapon. Both ways are effective. Precasting poison (as described above) with the spear is especially effective against axers. The odds are you have more nightshade then they do cures. Another possibility is just exchanging blows with the axer until you finally get them low, then with a spear hopefully land a para blow. Back up a few steps and dump as fast as you can. Axers hit hard, so watch your health. As always begin the fight by drinking a GS and GA and starting that bandage. Also utilize curse, as most parry macers do not have GM magery and less wrestling. This will result in a stat parity to your advantage.
Parry Macer
A parry macer is one of the more difficult opponents you will encounter. They are like a brick wall, it takes a lot to move them. Approach these the same way as an axer, with poison. As long as they are poisoned they have to drop either their weapon or shield (in some strange cases both) to cure, and that leaves you the perfect opportunity to strike. I suggest using a poisoned weapon (preferably a GP war fork) first, and then when they free a hand switch to a spear. If you land a para blow back up and poison again. If they are low on health and you do go ahead and dump. Utilize precasting to it’s fullest against these guys and watch your stamina closely. Mobility is your primary weapon against them, see jousting.
Hybrid
Now this has to be the hardest fight ever, hybrid vs. hybrid. Often enough these fights can go on forever with two opponents exchanging blows, casting spells. These fights can often come to a stalemate, with both fighters out of mana, ending when one person runs out of supplies. However, these fights often end with the victor being the one who better used their mana. You need to pay attention to your opponents healing cycles. Don’t use a big spell if their bandage is about to finish. Most importantly, make use of the fireball spell. Use it to interrupt their spells while at the same time doing decent damage to a 0 resists opponent. Also, don’t forget to keep your magic reflect up, it turns your opponents mana into self inflicted damage.
HAH' SAAN CHOP!
Note: In regards to the "circumventing the delay" in the Fast Casting portion of the article, you aren't bypassing it. You are simply using the computer's speed to get the spell off as soon as your 2.2 second wait time is up.
Hasta. |
^ top-Watts Tells Us How UO PvP Could Be Better
[Nieves] February 6 - 12:10 AM EST | PvP should not be about who has the most 7xers. It should be about who has the best coordination, the best turnout, the best leaders. Who can force their way to a victory over their enemies. Make PvP mean something more than a lame capture the flag. I can play Unreal Tournament if I want to capture the flag. What I want, is when I get my hands on that fucker, the enemy weeps in terror and mourns the endless chasm that their lives are about to become because they were too weak to stop me from crushing them like the pussies they are. If my enemy allows me to take what is theirs because they are weak, why do they deserve better? I guess they should have quit spamming the fucking OOC channel about their GM fletching and went to help out. This capitulation to the people who want to sit around fucking off and wasting server space makes my ass ache. This world was built around the conflict between the factions, not around fake ale and hearty back claps over the success of your tailor. Do we need crafts? Yes. Do we need places to level and non-PvP content? Yes. But make the focus of your game mean something goddamn it.
So, there you have it. Watts gives us a piece of his ever working mind.
Go over and read the rest of the article. Then see what one of the Development Big Wigs has to say in the thread related to the article.
Hasta. |
^ top-So..I got out of class and wanted a bagel.
[Epyon] February 4 - 10:45 AM EST | Elmer's County Market in my town make fresh bagels daily...they are very very good. So class got out and I thought id go pick up a few for breakfast.
I go in and grab a chocolate chip bagel and an apple walnut bagel and then notice a healthy choice pizza that I decide to get for lunch later. Im starting to walk up to the lines and run into a friend of mine and we start talking for a bit..and I notice this one middle age guy who puts grocery's on the shelves keeps staring at me. I don't think anything of it and keep talking..well I started walking with my friend as he went to the back to get milk..talked to him a few more moments and started going towards the registers again. Ran into my grandma and I talked to her for awhile..now I notice that this weasel guy keeps walking by me and it is starting to piss me off. Grandma invites me over for lunch and im all for that and then notice the time..shit I have to get to class..so I just toss the pizza on the shelf(not where it goes I know but im in a hurry) and head up to the lines. The guy stops me and this is what insues...
Disgruntled Grocery Man (known from here out as DGM) : Hey sir, can I talk to you a moment.
Me: What?
DGM: Didn't you have a pizza as well as a bagel?
Me: Yea, I did but I decided not to get it.
DGM: Are you sure?
Me: Ummm yea im pretty damn sure..its not in my hands is it?
DGM: Are you sure you didn't try to steal it?
Me: Umm..right im going to steal a 1.50 pizza.
DGM: Ive been watching you for awhile and you come in here everyday.
(Note: I live by myself and I have a fickle appitite therefore I change what I want to eat on a daily basis so I usually go shopping nearly everyday to get my food for the day.)
Me: I live alone and I don't like keeping food in the house.
DGM: What is that sticking out of your shirt?
Me: *Looks down at my stomach* I don't see anything sticking out...
DGM: It looks like a flat box
Me: Well thank you, I try to work my abs daily, and while they arn't a fully formed 6 pack yet im working on it (no bullshit here)
DGM: Take your shirt off
Me: Umm fuck you. (at this point im getting pissed, im so anti-stealing that this whole thing insulted me.)
DGM: Alright follow me we are going to call the cops.
Me: For what? Buying bagels and not taking off my shirt suddenly a crime?
DGM grabs Epyon's arm and starts to pull Epyon.
BAD FUCKING MOVE..EPYON DOES NOT LIKE TO GET GRABBED LIKE THAT.
Epyon grabs two of DGM fingers and twists them til he lets go.
DGM calls two of his friends over to watch me while he calls the cops.
Epyon is seething.
Epyon is getting pissed.
Cops come and escort Epyon to the back room where they have me take my shirt off.
Epyon is now pissed.
Epyon takes shirt off..WEIRD..NO FUCKING PIZZA AT ALL.
Epyon laughs at DGM and tells him that while he might be upset that he must support himself slinging frozen food not to take it out on college kids who want good bagels.
Cop walks out with Epyon (Cop graduated with Epyon from HS)
Cop and Epyon laugh a lot of DGM.
Epyon goes to Super 1 across the street for bagels.
Moral of the story:
If you must sling groceries to make a living, try to be nice. |
^ top-Update Your Fucking Website
[Nieves] February 4 - 10:23 AM EST | Jinx tells us why they don't update their website as frequently as the readerbase thinks they should.
He gives us some inside information as to why his team doesn't.
I could also talk about how incredibly addicted to Camelot Watts happens to be and how it sucks up every free moment he has. I've even heard he has a wireless mouse and keyboard that he uses to play while he's on the toilet. Yes, online gaming addiction is a frightening thing.
Now I know why Watts doesn't answer my ICQ messages. Da bastage. He's too busy dropping a load on Elves and...um...well, you get the picture. Or, maybe you shouldn't.
Jinx continues on: Personally, I have no problems at all. Well, other than a teensy-weensy drinking problem. And my heroin addiction.
"Hi, my name is Jinx, and I am an alcoholic".
And finally: Hey, at least I'm not anally violating barnyard animals, ok?
Nope. Jinx and Watts doesn't do that. That's Redrum. Watts just likes to watch while Jinx snorts a line or two telling Watts, "get the fuck out of here off you bestial faggots!"
Watts reply? "Bahahaha".
Read the whole article here.
Hasta. |
^ top-Eldin Is An Asshoe
[Nieves] February 3 - 10:37 PM EST | Read this and this for yourself.
Then you tell me.
Hasta. |
^ top-From our Forum......
[Catlyn] February 3 - 12:45 PM EST | Nikki of Baja has some interesting proposals for UO.
All,
Flame Away or comment as needed....
1. Differentiate between Trammel and Fellucca
I dont see the point in having 2 Trinsics, 2 Shames, 2 T2As etc etc etc. By making each one unique to the other, an opportunity is available to foster more travel between the two therefore equalling the balance between facets and an opportunity to give the Ongoing Content team more of a theme to start the new scenarios and for each shard to weave its own fiction into the game.
2. Drop support for UO3D and concentrate fully on the 2D client.
I understand the reasoning in having UO evolve to a 3D format. State of the art, the current trend of online gaming going in that direction and a million other reasons. But I dont think the development team understands that UO is a game of depth and not superficialness. Yes, players do leave for other games that are more pleasing to the eye (EQ, AO, DaoC etc) but a portion do come back because after the "eye candy", players realize the depth and width of UO and in that context, UO is unchallenged. Another reason is the numbers, I have read that at least 80% play on the 2D client for one reason or another, it just makes sense to cater to the majority on this issue. Last reason is why be like everyone else when everyone else is trying to be like UO, UO should stay the way it is... 2D
Side note: I am able to play smoothly on the 3d client
3. No Recall/Gate INTO Dungeons
Dungeon delvers should always start at the beginning of the dungeon and work their way down to the more profitable monsters lower in the dungeon. All Heroes who wish to fight the main bad guy have to go through the main guy's minions, henchmen and whatnot to get to him/her. Why should UO be any different, right?
4. Create "Great" Monsters that take a group to kill
In my opinion, the best thing about online gaming is the player interaction. As it stands now in UO, players dont interact with each other as much and this idea would foster a change in that. I understand the issue of grouping in EQ. From what I have heard and seen, to kill some monsters on that game, it would take a group of 16 uber high level people to possibly kill the monster, to me that is an extreme. My suggestion is to design monsters that would take a veteran party of 4 or 5 to be challenged.
5. Make player vs. player combat active on both facets
I realize some aspects of this is already active (order/chaos) but this needs to be active for factions and PKing as well. The reason for this need can be summed up by one word: BALANCE. Back in the day prior to UO:R (yes there was UO back before trammel), there was a PK epidemic. Why? The reason is twofold: One, Players generally have better loot than most monsters (regs, potions, armor, gold, magic etc) and Two, one less competitor to compete for the spawn the PK is currently residing at which in effect gives the PK more monster loot as well. Today, with the new rulesets, Tamers and Bards today do what PKs of two years ago did which was spawn hog. Tamers and Bards have the ability to put out more damage to monsters than other classes which allows the tamers to be in control of the monster corpse thereby getting rights to loot it. How many times have you put damage on a monster to have its corpse be blue and unlootable to you. Which leads to the following whining and crying that Tamers and Bards need to be nerfed on the various UO boards. A simple solution would be to allow PvP combat on both facets. The PKs would prey upon the lone Tamer or Bard, kill him/her then kill the pet at their leisure. From my experience, PKs dont usually attack groups of people because of the risk of losing one of their own unless the PKs are unusually highly organized. But the lone hunter is the meat and potatoes of the PK loot source. The Best solution would be a LONG look at the character classes and truly determine if they are in balance with each other. Given certain rulesets, the answer right now is NO.
I have more but lets digest this before moving on.
Some nice ideas in here. You can add your comments here. Lets not have this turn into a flame war or Tram vs. Fel thread. Keep it on topic please and discuss the ideas put forward.
Vaya Con Dios |
^ top-Not a Bug, Nieves!
[LadyGrania] February 2 - 8:22 PM EST | Back in Publish 15, the list of things done was quite large.
Near the bottom of the list, the problem of the player turning north when casting was fixed.
Cut and Paste Session
Spell Updates
Fixed an issue where you’d get a message saying that you were disturbed while casting the Incognito spell, but you’d still be able to cast the spell if your skill was high enough.
Fixed an issue where an avatar would turn north when casting certain spells.
Telekinesis no longer works on boat decks.
The Firefield spell will no longer be precastable outside of town and targetable in town
So, dear Nieves, It was a documented fix, not an undocumented feature type bug.
Love Ya. |
^ top-Scammed...then Banned.
[Nieves] February 2 - 5:33 PM EST |
a guy is standing outside moonglow bank "Ethereal Horse for sale, 400K!" and I'm waiting for a friend of mine to go fishing this beeing a good price (they go for up to twice that), I figure why not, I'm going to get one anyways and I don't want to waste a reward. So I say I'll buy it Now here's the tricky part
hey places the horse in the trade window I figured out how he did this later.... but I clicked the hrose. And i though it was new anti-scam messaging. Looks like localization got me. Showed the owner name, identiried it as an ethereal horse...
so I gave him the check obviously I get no statue, and he goes Kal Ort Por
The end of the story is, a GM was called, the player that the scammer used was found and his account banned, and the player that was scammed got his 400k check back.
Scam at your own risk. And those of you buying an ethereal horse, watch what you are getting. Realize, OSI doesn't normally get involved in scams. In other words, buyer beware. But, OSI can ban at will. It's in the Terms of Service you agreed to. You never know when the GM that gets called is in a good or pissy mood. Either mood could be bad for the "bad guy".
Be clear in what it is you are bidding for. And be ready to act quickly if you are scammed. In this case, the scammee used the Harrassment option and his log got saved and sent to the GMs. I would say he got lucky, but even so, the GM did the right thing.
Some advice from the scammee when dealing with Ethereal Horse sales was to have the guy say "all follow me" while moving away from the sale area. In fact, you could move a full screen away.
Also, make the person open a door because the targeting cursor will get canceled.
And if you really want to be able to tell the difference, the horse for ethereal statues points at you, where the horse animal is turned to the side.
I leave you with this tidbit:
after the GM gave me the check back
the guy got on another account and proceeded to cuss me out
"It's your fault, you should have known better"
"How can a GM ban me, if I've never had a warning"
"Tell him to un-ban me!"
and finally "Fuck you "
Shit happens. But be careful so that it doesn't hit you in the eye.
Hasta. |
^ top-Nonewsday.net
[Fixxxer] February 2 - 12:34 PM EST | Here ya go Lummies...
Closure
And we got snubbed :(
dabu |
^ top-Did We Get a New Bug From The Last Patch??
[Nieves] February 1 - 10:35 PM EST | I can now bank and cast spells. E-bolt, Harm, Heal, Night Sight, etc. And the bank won't close.
I noticed why it's not happening. Remember how you would face north when casting spells? Well, you don't move anymore.
Is this a fix? Or a bug? I don't know because I didn't see it in the update listing.
Anyone got news on this?
Update: Read about it.
Thanks to the folks that emailed me the link.
Hasta. |
^ top-Siege Rulesets
[Nieves] February 1 - 4:16 PM EST | …there are three Siege rule set shards:
Siege, Mugen and Baekdu.
-Prophet
I have an information request in to OSI on these shards. Once I get it back, I will fill you in on them.
Hasta. |
^ top-The Tamer got its 15 minutes of fame, and now, the Bard. . .
[FrozenFire] February 1 - 2:26 PM EST | It looks like Bards are finally in for a deserved adjustment: OSI is asking for cool additions to bards. The likely reason is that they are looking into RiskvsReward (finally!) and realized that Tamers and Bards made Mages and Warriors look like poor cousins from the countryside in comparison. So before they announce the nerfs, they want to come up with cool additions that would not be overly unbalancing. There are a lot of gold farmers out there, and not everyone wants to be nice and take their medicine. So OSI is looking for some sugar pills as well.
If any UO board would be like Brit Bank, uo.com is it. The discussions is already raging, and I have saved you a trip to "Britain" by reading the thread. Beyond the moaning and flaming, there are a lot of ideas thrown out. A lot of people want changes to tunes and instruments, focusing more on appearance than utility. Others, copy the EQ bards and suggest turning bards into spellsingers. Some deas are really well thought out, while others just focus on adding more power to bards.
Before settling on the details, look at the big picture. What do we want to accomplish?
If you ask me, (you didnt, but Ill go on anyway), the following goals are worth striving for when changing Bards.
1. Tone down the Bard in power, but not to the point where its "useless". Keep bards valuable, useful - and balanced. Risk/Reward is a key concept to get the changes just right. "Useful" is a subjective concept, but useful in the meaning it can earn a nice income compared with other classes, when adjusted for hardness of skill gain and risk taken while hunting.
2. More variety and choices in templates as well as tactics for bard. The major choice now is whether to have both peace and provo or just provo. That leaves 4-500 skill points left to other skills, letting Bards be full bards while doing well in melee or magic. Its even possible to be a good bard and tamer at the same time.
3. Make success difficulty based. Tough monsters should not be taken for granted, which is a central idea in any risk/reward revision. Also, it would reward high skills and not twink bards making a bundle in Destard today.
4. Promote group play. Tamers and Bards are often thought of as Spawn Hoggers. They dont need others to kill the big game and a lot of people dont want to share when they dont have to. Group play promotes interaction, which is a major reason to play online. Yet somehow post Trammel, that way of playing have been lost. Guilds still hunt together for sure, but all too often youll see lone hunters at the best spawns, often not even bothering to say hi or react to you.
But promoting group play is not an end in itself either. A lot of players enjoy just logging in at the lunch and being able to hunt alone. One major grudge alot of players have with EQ and other games like that, is that beyond certain levels its basically required to group to fight monsters that will earn you decent XP. Lets not go there either, there should be room for loners and groups.
So what can be done? Here are some thoughts:
1. Make Provocation difficulty based. But there is a need to go beyond that, because while this will wipe out the twink tamers, its just a matter before people GM their chars and were back to where we started.
A lot of people have worked provo for months and months without GMing it, and it is a tough skill to raise naturally. My own natural gains are like 0.3-0.5 per million gold made. Thats not even 0.1 per hour. But there are ways to PowerGame any skill much faster than through "normal" playing. Bards do not deserve more power because the gains are so hard to come by the normal way. Especially, when so many use other methods and get more power much quicker. The skill is hard to raise in the 90s, yes, but that does not motivate the huge advantage it enjoys now.
2. Not only should there be a higher risk to fail when provoking powerful monsters than weak monsters, but the more powerful monsters attempted should require a higher total in the "bardic" skill. Just like Eval Int increases damage to magery, Enticing (and/or other bardic skills) could help with success for larger monsters. An option to consider would be to scale the time monsters react to your songs (whether fighting or ignoring you and whatnot) on the sum of your bardic skills. A weak bard would have to keep playing continously to keep the provoke going on very tough monsters. While perhaps weaker monsters are easier to bend to the will of the bard, and will stay charmed for a longer time. This would make choices important and cut down on the ability to have full bardic power while also being a pretty good mage or warrior. The bard that goes to snare dragons with their songs, had better be damned good and thus specialize in what they do.
The Bardic skills are currently Music, Peace, Provo and Enticing. Music is a given and entice is rare indeed. Most bard have 2-300 skill points devoted. Enticing would be another step on the specialization and then perhaps even another skill. If you need another skill in the bardic skill set, consider Spirit Speak (its either that or add a new skill to the game I suppose).
New features should be tied to new bardic skills and the major feature should scale power on the sum of bardic skills (á la RA/Protection spells).
Now these changes would mean Bard power are toned down in a major way. If you specialize the full 4-500 skill points youll be able to kick some nice monster ass, perhaps with some more failures than today, but still. But specialization should add new abilities of their own as well. That makes each skill useful in its own right, and not as a booster to provocation/peacemaking only.
3. What I personally would like to see, are bards being able to project "auras" that aid your party inside a certain range. Of course, the more bardic specialization, the better range/effect. Powerful auras require multiple skills at certain levels, similar to how skill requirements for house add ons work today. The important focus is that auras aid others mainly, not the bard himself. The idea is to make bards a valuable and welcome part of a hunting party, where every member can add something of their own to the group. Auras could be to reduce melee/spell damage, protect vs poison, slow monster melee attacks, block breath weapons and so on. So, with a good bard to back them up, warriors and mages can now try, and have at least a chance of killing the big game together, up till now solely (well almost anyways) the domain by tamers and bards.
In my eyes, these three changes are not a true nerf to bards, they change the focus on what bards truly are all about. They arent always loners making it rich bleding the dragons dry of gold. More often they travel with others sharing their songs with whomever needs their aid. Unlike today where people ignore each other at best and compete for kills at best, perhaps, finally, we will see more people playing together as a team in dungeons.
Wouldnt that be something? Well I can dream, cant I?
The original thread from hell, aka uo.com boards are to be found here. Our own PowerGaming perspective is just around the corner. Go there and add your own $9.99. |
^ top-Why Change It NOW!?
[Nieves] February 1 - 2:10 PM EST | GGS.
Taming changed to Can't Tame, Can't Own, no more controlling 20 pets at one time, etc.
Barding made difficulty based (but not exactly like Siege) and additionaly "abilities".
Adding macroable special moves to PvP.
And many more things have been suggested for making UO better.
I agree, some of these changes are late in coming. I agree in a lot of ways, "what's the point now"?
But (and you know I was going to say that right? Right) should we just leave the game alone and let it go on as is? Before some of you start to say "we should've left the game alone PRIOR to UO:R BIYOTCH!", follow me for a moment.
UO is an ever evolving piece of software. If things were allowed to get static, we would all, eventually, get bored. On top of that, it's in people's nature to want to make things better. To improve on what we already have and, depending on the circumstances, see if it can be made more fun or more efficient.
The UO Economy is broken. Thanks to Powerhour, Everyone and their grandmother has the ability to have 7x characters and probably already does. PvP is nowhere near where it could be. Felucca is empty most of the time.
Things being done now to make the game better and more balanced should be looked at closely. Not just negatively critisized the moment it feels like it's something that's going to hurt the game.
For those of you with Tamers and Bards that already have 10+ million gold, a large house, all the rares you would want, or what have you, what the fuck do you care if Taming gets "improved"? What the fuck do you care if Provocation gets needed enhancements and balanced out?
For those of you 3l33t PvPers that see your PvP world get changed and you have to (re)learn some new (precasting) tricks, who cares? You guys are always up for a challenge right?
For those of you that have already mastered the techniques needed to make a 7x character, who cares if GGS comes out? You already have all of the 7xers you would need or want right? And if you go to a new shard, you will find new ways to get past the hurdles and complete your characters. And if you don't find them yet, we will have them here at UOPG.
Yes, OSI fucks up. But they are getting better...for the most part. Chesapeake died a week ago, but it was brought back up within a couple of days. The last couple of Publishes screwed up a lot of little things but they are being fixed as fast as humanly possible.
Come hell or high water, UOPG's updaters will pick additions/enhancements/improvements apart and try these new things out and tell you how they will or will not work.
If I sound like a OSI bitch boy, so be it. But I, for one, will welcome these new changes, adapt, over come, and play the fucking game.
Hasta. |
^ top-Gromm responds to scenario comments.
[Eric] February 1 - 12:23 PM EST | For all of your scenario participants out there, here are some random scenario comments and what Gromm of OSI has to say about them:
The scout was good fun, but as soon as ppl worked out how he worked, it was boring again.
Well it was one of our first attempts at a new scenario monster, and it got great results at the time. I still hear people say that the scouts are their favorite monster to fight. Considering it was our first scenario we considered the orc scout a big success.
The Brutes are still a challenge for any character be they mage, warrior or tamer. But this new monster doesnt need to be encountered. You have to go looking for it to find one, so theres no actual threat of invasion. Never was, never will be.
Heheheh, never, heheheh. Never is not a safe word to use when discussing scenarios. Just because a monster hasn't been reused in a scenario doesn't mean it won't be in the future. We have a lot of new ones to introduce, that doesn't mean we want to forget the old ones. :)
Then we come to the savages. The enemies of the orcs. All the do is fight and heal. Just another bandit (with healing)
Don't forget the bola attack. I personally witnessed a LOT of people having to suddenly revealuate their tactics when they quickly found themselves separated from their mount.
Oh! and the war paint. Now used by the l33t bank sitters in trammel. Throw some war paint on and you've earnt respect from fellow lamer-tamers
Actually the tribal paint is getting quite a bit of use for role players. Many players have told me about their savage characters they rp and from what I hear the vampire rp'ers couldn't be happier with the white skin granted by a jar of paint. Not to mention the use the item had for those that wanted to defend the savages in the first scenario.
Same story really, Controllers chased the Gargoyles from their homes and enslaved and made them mine for ore. As far as i can see it didnt matter whether we killed golems and controllers or not.. the gargoyles still became free and the scenario came to a close.
Actualy they enslaved the gargs in their own city. They were never chased out, although a few escaped and dug the tunnel that allows player to reach the city now.
As far as freeing the gargoyles the ONLY thing that made that happen WAS the players. The garg city would still be inslaved right now if the players had not freed it themselves. It took a lot of players donating resources and killing big big baddies to actually end the scenario.
And in the end, it came down to one individual player, just one, pushing the button to destroy Exodus control device and free the gargoyle city. First one who made it in to the newly opened chamber got to do it.
There were more comments and more responses from Gromm, but to be honest with you, I'm sick of copying and pasting. You can read the rest of the comments in this thread.
And in other totally unrelated news, how fucked up has the internet become?
Cya later. |
^ top-Morning....
[Nieves] February 1 - 10:18 AM EST | 
Ok, now that that's out of the way...
Over at the UO Boards, Vex asked for information on how to make the Bardic "arts" better.
Some ideas were brought up that I thought were pretty solid.
More songs for things like "fear" effects, "aura of strength" effects, and changing Provoking in general so that it is difficulty based. That way, a "low level" bard with GM Music and 50 Provocation would never be able to provoke a Dragon. Very very cool.
::looks at the Bards starting to raise their lutes above their heads and move slowly towards Nieves::
Look...don't yell at me, yell at them.
BTW: Bards suck.
::starts running::
Join the thread already in progess as Nieves runs away from people with bright colored clothing, stringed instruments, and feathered hats.
Hasta. |
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