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March 2003 News:
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^ top-Double standards
[JC_The_Builder] March 31 - 10:29 PM EST | Double Standards and those who use them
So I go to the RpgTradespot Tournement all juiced up to test out my fully developed paladin. I get there and just as the whole thing is about to start a bunch of troublemakers show up. They cast spells on people who are close enough and generaly stop the whole show. So the judges page a gm.
About an hour goes by and finally a response! You get 3 guesses what it was. So the house owner had to redo his rather good design and make it so we were esentially in a box. The troublemakers left once they realized they could do no more harm.
Now here is where the double standard kicks in: About a year ago some people wanted to hold a dungeon crawl in Khaldun. PK-HQ got word of this event and staged a counter-event: PK everyone who shows up. Well they did and a day later the whole guild was banned without warning. Even people who have not logged in for quite a while. OSI said it was guilt by association.
So we have two player run events. Both events were disrupted. But each had a very different outcome. OSI has stated several times that it is NOT OK to disrupt player run events. If this isn't a double standard I don't know what is.
You can discuss this artical Here. |
^ top-Smelt Bug
[Nieves] March 31 - 4:02 PM EST | From gathered reports, it looks like it's fixed now.
We shall see.
Hasta. |
^ top-UOPG T Shirts Still For Sale
[Nieves] March 31 - 2:25 PM EST | What if I offered to sell them to you for UO Gold?
If interested, let me know.
Hasta. |
^ top-Shadow Bane Primer
[Nieves] March 30 - 10:41 PM EST | You can find some information on playing Shadowbane here at Geek Incognito.
It's good way to get started on Shadowbane.
Thanks to Janos for the heads up.
Hasta. |
^ top-UOPG T Shirts Left
[Nieves] March 29 - 1:43 PM EST | I no longer have over 100 Shirts. They are going...
The Sizes I now have left are:
12 Larges
5 Small
0 XXL SOLD OUT
23 XL
And it IS an attractive looking piece of Fruit of the Loom HEAVY Cotton:
Remember, it's 10 dollars for the shirt plus shipping.
Hurry and get your order in before they run out!
Hasta. |
^ top-Donations and Sponsorhip Support is Good.
[Nieves] March 28 - 5:04 PM EST | UOPG will not go to Pop ups or advertisements that knock your computer out of action.
But your support of the sponsors (on the top of this site and the boards and to the left) and your direct donations help keep that type of thing a reality.
On another note, I still have over 100 UOPG T Shirts if anyone is interested.
Cost of the shirt is 10 bucks plus shipping.
As it stands, I have sizes ranging from S - XXL.
Email me with your orders.
Hasta. |
^ top-For all you gardening freaks.....
[Gunner] March 28 - 8:14 AM EST | Mr. Tact posted this in response to a player asking about gardening bugs in this thread posted on UO Latest Upadates:
Okay, now I am normally very calm and patient but enough is enough! With the option to now customize homes, plants are highly in demand and the plant system if full of bugs.
Let me name a few:
1) Locked down plants can no longer be taken care of. This means in order for plants to grow each day, you must keep the plants either on your person, in your bank, or on a beatle. Now, you CAN lock them back down after you water them but then they just loose a days growth so basically, if you want to actually grow them as they were intended, you have to keep it on you.
2) Every time you pull a seed, you get booted outside your house!
3) When locking down or releasing certain plants, you are booted outside of your house.
4) Red Leaves, Orange Petals and Green Thorns no longer stack in your backpack when you "pluck" them. You have to manually stack them.
5) Plants put into decorative mode no longer give the color of the plant (Example: pre-AOS a Blue plant in deco mode would display, "A blue decorative plant". ) I realize this is not a huge deal for many of us but for those that are color blind out there, it is a huge hinderance and I am certain several have fallen prey to thinking they were getting a really good deal on a black mutant plant only to be told by friends it is dark blue.
I am sure there are others that I have not mentioned but these have been my own personal experience. And yes, I have heard all the arguments, there are more important things to fix than the plants but I fail to see how some of the fixes that are being made like: "The Doom boss gauntlet should now re-set itself correctly" and "The Harrower will now perform its drain attack", are MORE important!
----------------------------------------------------------------------
His response was:
No guarantees, but I would bet that some or all of these will be fixed for Publish 18.
Mr. Tact
I hope so, getting really tired of unlock plant, place plant in pack, water plant, put plant back on ground, and then lock plant back down again....
Gunner |
^ top-The lowdown on Stat gain
[JC_The_Builder] March 27 - 9:14 PM EST | Well since they changed everything else with AOS they decided somewhere that they should change how stats are gained also. The following comment was posted on the stratics boards:
Stat gains have changed under AoS in the following ways:
- 1 gain per 15 minutes, max 10 gains per day
- You have a chance to gain a stat with any successful skill check. Since stats no longer affect skills, the skill you use has no bearing on which stat you gain. The ONLY restrictions on gaining stats would be:
* You are at your total stat cap
* The stat you are trying to gain (per your stat locks) is at its individual cap
* The state of your stat locks
Mr Tact
So there you have it. That is why when you use spirt speak you don't gain just Int or using arms lore will just get you str and dex. I don't see why this change was nessesary, but what do I know?
|
^ top- ERTs, Publish 18 and AoS on the Siege Ruleset
[Gunner] March 27 - 6:38 PM EST | Posted to FYI on the official UO.com Website:
For all of our Siege Perilous and Mugen players who have been eagerly awaiting the Age of Shadows publish, our plan is to publish those shards with Age of Shadows after our current ERTs, but before Publish 18.
Confused? Don’t be!
The term “ERT” actually stands for “Emergency Response Team,” and it generally refers to any game fix that’s too time-sensitive to wait for the next regular scheduled publish.
Currently, we’ve released eight ERT publishes since Age of Shadows - some changes have been invisible to the players, such as fixes for the housing server, and others have been bug fixes that we’ve posted here in FYI.
The publish that was on Great Lakes this week is actually what we’re calling ERT 109 internally, and we have ERT 110 in testing as well, which includes a few fixes that our GMs need to help them better take care of some of the common support calls. These fixes will be mostly invisible to the players, but crucial to game support. Next up on our list will be getting MyUO updating again and getting Age of Shadows onto Siege Perilous and Mugen, both of which we hope to see before we resume our regular publish schedule, which will begin with Publish 18. Don’t think that’s an end to bugfixing, however; Publish 18 will include a good number of bug fixes!
As always, please understand that the order of fixes may change; these are our current plans, and we’ll keep you informed if anything changes. Once we get further into testing our Siege ruleset-specific fixes in the AoS code, Siege players will be able to test out these changes on a test shard before their publish; we’ll post an update once those changes are live with a Siege ruleset on a test shard.
Mar 27 2003 5:52PM CST (GMT -06:00)
For all of our Siege Perilous and Mugen players who have been eagerly awaiting the Age of Shadows publish, our plan is to publish those shards with Age of Shadows after our current ERTs, but before Publish 18.
Confused? Don’t be!
The term “ERT” actually stands for “Emergency Response Team,” and it generally refers to any game fix that’s too time-sensitive to wait for the next regular scheduled publish.
Currently, we’ve released eight ERT publishes since Age of Shadows - some changes have been invisible to the players, such as fixes for the housing server, and others have been bug fixes that we’ve posted here in FYI.
The publish that was on Great Lakes this week is actually what we’re calling ERT 109 internally, and we have ERT 110 in testing as well, which includes a few fixes that our GMs need to help them better take care of some of the common support calls. These fixes will be mostly invisible to the players, but crucial to game support. Next up on our list will be getting MyUO updating again and getting Age of Shadows onto Siege Perilous and Mugen, both of which we hope to see before we resume our regular publish schedule, which will begin with Publish 18. Don’t think that’s an end to bugfixing, however; Publish 18 will include a good number of bug fixes!
As always, please understand that the order of fixes may change; these are our current plans, and we’ll keep you informed if anything changes. Once we get further into testing our Siege ruleset-specific fixes in the AoS code, Siege players will be able to test out these changes on a test shard before their publish; we’ll post an update once those changes are live with a Siege ruleset on a test shard.
Uhhh? Which way did he go, George?"....
Gunner |
^ top-Cynthe remarks on Moving characters.....
[Gunner] March 27 - 6:23 PM EST | Cynthe posted this in response to several players asking about moving characters between shards in this thread on Stratics U.Hall Forum:
why when u open a new shard closer i cannot move my chars from a laggy shard to a closer new one ....why do i have to play another 5 yrs to rebuild 10 chars now i have to start from scratch ..........
----------------------------------------------------------------------
I heard a rumor that - soon - for a fee - They will move your chars.
Anything for a buck. And - IF this is true - I will be moving from my lag infested Japanese shard to Lake Austin - losing all 5 of my houses and loot will be SO worth it.........
----------------------------------------------------------------------
This is definitely something we hope to do in the future.
______________________
Cynthe
Community Manager
ORIGIN Systems
Mo' Money Mo' Money Mo' Money....
Gunner |
^ top-Shroud deadline extended.....
[Gunner] March 27 - 5:59 PM EST | Sannio posted this on the Stratics UO U.Hall Board:
The deadline for redeeming Hooded Shroud of Shadows has been changed for all shards to be May 31st.
In a recent FYI, entitled European and Australian Shroud Codes Mailed by April 4th, we mentioned that the redemption period for Europa and Drachenfels was extended to May 31st. Please consider this new deadline applicable to all shards, including Siege Perilous and Mugen.
The Siege testing didn't happen last week, but it hasn't been removed from our testing line-up. There's still a few other things we need to work on before we're comfortable moving ahead with the Siege testing--such as the fixes we had to "unpublish" from Great Lakes yesterday--but our current feeling is that the testing schedule should still give Siege players plenty of time to collect their Shrouds before the deadline comes.
=========
Sannio
Online Content Coordinator
Ultima Online (www.uo.com)
Origin Systems
Woot!
Gunner |
^ top-Some additional points about post-AoS Stat gains
[Gunner] March 27 - 5:32 PM EST | Posted by Sannio on UO Latest Updates:
I saw there were additional questions about Stat gains, so I stole some of MrTact’s time and asked him for some further insights into Stat gain in the post-AoS world. Here’s a general breakdown of how Stat gain can work:
When you use a skill, there’s a check to see if you succeed, and if you do then there’s another check to see if you gain in skill. (By the way, GGS will ensure a minimal skill gain over a certain period, but it doesn’t ensure minimal Stat gains as well.)
If that second check succeeds, and you gain points skill, you now have a possibility to gain in 1 Stat. But which one?
Stats that are locked or set to go down are immediately dismissed, and only Stats set to go up will be considered for possible increases. Of those remaining Stats, 1 of them is randomly chosen for a Stat gain check. Oh, and if you are at your Stat cap then one of your Stats must also be set to go down—in order for a Stat to go up, it needs to pull the points from somewhere.
(Let’s say your STR and INT are set to raise, and your DEX is locked. DEX won’t come into play at all, and STR and INT now have equal odds at being picked for a Stat gain check.)
The Stat gain check odds are basically (100% - (the Stat being checked)), with a minimum of 5%.
Finally, if you’re successful, you can gain up to 1 Stat point per 15 minutes, with a maximum of 10 points per day.
Now, even with all that in mind, some players have mentioned seeing some problems with Stat gains. At this time, we don’t know that this is true, but this concern is mentioned now and again we also don’t want to dismiss it as a possibility. We’re keeping an eye on things, and MrTact hopes to return to the Stat gain process again some time in the not-yet-foreseeable future.
=========
Sannio
Online Content Coordinator
Ultima Online (www.uo.com)
Origin Systems
Sannio has spoken.
Gunner |
^ top-Psyche! Not this week.....
[Gunner] March 26 - 5:53 PM EST | Posted to FYI on the official UO.com Website:
The fixes we published to Great Lakes last night went great – with one teeny shard-crashing exception, which Great Lakes users may remember from this morning. Since this isn’t necessarily a good thing, we’re going to pull that publish from Great Lakes and replace it with the previous code (don’t worry – this will not result in any loss of items or data). We’ll put these fixes back on a public test shard once we’ve fixed the problem, and we hope to re-publish it again next week.
However, for any Great Lakes users who are curious about what code they’ll have tomorrow after maintenance, we’ll let the Test Center run tonight with a backup of Great Lakes with that previous code (in other words, the code that was on Great Lakes before last night’s publish). Remember, by "previous code," we're only referring to the game code itself – this does not mean a shard revert.
Thanks for your patience, and we’ll let you know once we have the new publish schedule!
Guess I'll have to wait even longer.....
Gunner
|
^ top-Items Hiding Under House Floors
[Gunner] March 26 - 5:48 PM EST | Posted to FYI on the official UO.com Website:
If you’ve found yourself looking around your new customized home for that item you knew was right there a minute ago, it’s possible it may have fallen to a spot underneath your floor tiles. If you haven’t had this happen to you, keep reading anyway, because we’ll give you some tips to prevent it from happening in the first place.
If you think something may have fallen below the floor, before calling a GM there are a few things you can try to find these items yourself. First, you can try casting any spell that causes your game client to update your surroundings, such as Night Sight. If that doesn’t work, or if you don’t have spells, you can also try leaving the house—perhaps even running 2 or 3 screens away—and coming back inside. Logging out and then back in could also be helpful in refreshing your screen and showing your “lost” items.
You can actually help prevent this sort of problem by unlocking some of your smaller and flatter items before customizing your house (such as piles of snow, gold coins, and silver coins) and placing them within a secure container before entering customization mode. (By the way, it also helps to chop up your trash barrels before customization for a more trouble-free customization session.) When you finish customizing your house and begin redecorating, consider using a house decorator tool to raise items even just slightly—this sort of nudge can be just the thing to help keep everything in your house visible and accessible.
Gunner
|
^ top-UOPG Publish March 26th, 2003
[Nieves] March 26 - 9:47 AM EST | Added information and corrections to Necromancy, Spirit Speak and Chivalry.
Updated Evaluate Intelligence (anything else you guys got on the skill would be appreciated).
Hasta. |
^ top-Custom House Entries
[JC_The_Builder] March 25 - 9:12 PM EST | Stratics, IanStorm, UO Wedding, and UO Cheseapeake have all posted the entries for their respected sites. Some are really good looking. And some you just wonder what the person was thinking.
I especially liked #29 on stratics for it's creativity. And #96 (on stratics also) for it's stage by stage development with captions. |
^ top-Publishing a Plethora of Fixes
[Gunner] March 25 - 8:43 PM EST | Posted to FYI on the official UO.com Website:
The fixes you’ve been testing on our publish test shard since last week are ready for prime time!
We will be publishing several fixes to the Great Lakes shard this evening, to be active after its normal morning maintenance tomorrow. This publish will include the following changes:
Fixed a problem that was causing too much data to be sent to the user. This fix will greatly reduce lag for players on dial-up connections!
The Harrower will now perform its drain attack.
We’ve added a fix that should prevent players from experiencing the “blackholing” issue.
Pre-AoS items that add to stats will no longer add those stats permanently to characters, but will lose their bonuses after the charges run out.
Characters who die while in monster form will no longer be lootable.
The Doom boss gauntlet should now re-set itself correctly.
Houses that have been re-possessed by an in-game support rep (in the case of a player being taken to jail, for instance) will now be able to be transferred back to the player.
Fixed another issue causing some teleporters and doors to become static and unusable (note that this fix is separate from another door fix published last month!)
Locking down an overweight container will no longer cause “locked down!” barks to appear.
The House Placement Tool no longer thinks it’s a spyglass.
Fixed a crashing issue
Barring any unforeseen circumstances, we hope to publish these fixes to all remaining AoS-enabled shards beginning with the North American shards Wednesday night, to be active Thursday morning, CST.
Still not the fixes I am really looking for.... but Hey! its a start.
Gunner |
^ top-Europa/Australian Shard Update
[Nieves] March 25 - 3:46 PM EST | News Alert
The following new update has been posted to UO.com:
FYI:
===
European and Australian Shroud Codes Mailed by April 4th
If you live in Europe (excluding Germany and Sweden) or Australia, and you created a new Age of Shadows account or upgraded an account to Age of Shadows before March 21st, 2003, you'll be receiving a Hooded Shroud of Shadows Promotional code via the email address on your account information at ultima-registration.com!
We've stated that these codes would be mailed on or near March 25th, but to make sure we cover all of our European customers and get the correct data pulled from our databases, we'll be mailing out these codes over the next couple weeks, meaning players should receive their codes through email by April 4th. Again, be sure to that your contact information with us is correct. If your email or other information is incorrect, you will not receive the code for your Hooded Shroud!
Since these mails with the Hooded Shroud codes will be sent a bit later than originally expected, we will also extend the Hooded Shroud redemption period to May 31st for the Europa and Drachenfels shards. Note that this only applies to the period when you can use your Hooded Shroud code after you receive it - the Shroud codes are still only being sent to European and Australian players who upgraded their account to AoS before the date of March 21st!
Remember, German and Swedish players should have already received their Shroud codes, provided they pre-ordered through their participating retailers.
================
Kerowyn
Online Content Editor
ORIGIN Systems
Thanks Kero.
Hasta. |
^ top-Woops
[Nieves] March 25 - 3:43 PM EST | Missed this update:
Ferbert explained here on the UOSS Boards:
in reply to …
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I have noticed a problem, and I'm not sure if its related to the fixes you are working on. Seems to be random, but every once in a while if I double click on an item in game, be it a container, a book, a potion...whatever. Any "item" seems to have caused me to get the "connection Lost" messege at one time or another. I just find it odd because I'll be doing somthing like fighting with my guild, or just chatting with NO signs of any lag...and click somthing and lose connection.... then the really odd part is I can still see stuff going on in the background befor I click the "OK" button.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Also running on "AoS Fixes" is a fix for a server-side packet corruption bug that has been in the game for years. You wouldn't hit the bug unless you weren't emptying your buffer as fast as you were filling it for at least a few seconds, so pre-AoS it was pretty rare. With all the extra data being pushed down the pipe to modem users in AoS, I believe we'd been hitting it very frequently lately. Now I realize that you reported that you're using DSL, so it sounds like you probably shouldn't run into this very often, if at all.... However there is a major twist... this bug would totally destroy the packet stream of the person who encountered it, usually resulting in an eventual disconnect with the added bonus of dropping a single bad byte into someone else's buffer. This bad byte would nearly always be interpreted as a packet type indicator, and would cause random stuff to appear on the client, yet the game would appear to continue running... random stuff includes the disconnect gump, the character selection screen, random text, etc. I am VERY eager to see this fix live on the production servers.
Please let me know if you encounter the problem you describe while on AoS Fixes.
In reply to :
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
One more thing thats causing an error, not sure if its your department though... seems like there might be a conflict with the music files and the spell sound files... I used to fatal crash UO at least 4-6 times a day and get nothing but a grey blank window when it restarted....I'ld have to reboot to fix it. When it would crash I could still see things on the screen moving around, and could still perform actions for a few seconds (like try to run to safety) befor whatever the error is made it unplayable untill i reboot...and I would her a spell effect and the background music "skipping" in the background..
Once I turned the music off I havnt crashed yet. It's only been one day though so I cant say for certain thats the culprit, but it looks like it so far.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What you describe could easily be triggered by the packet corruption bug, in testing my client would often do stuff like that after it encountered the packet corruption bug. Having to reboot afterwards sounds like some part of DirectX didn't shutdown nicely when UO crashed... not surprising with Windows ME... Windows ME is part of the Win 9x line and tends to not deal well with applications crashing... Windows 2000 and Windows XP tend to behave MUCH better in similar circumstances. You might want to consider switching to Windows XP for gaming... but don't switch just due to this one problem you're seeing in UO.... the patch on AoS Fixes should be live worldwide in a matter of days, and hopefully you won't be seeing this problem again.
Cheers,
Fertbert
and in reply to..
I am dissapointed that over the past few years my plea's and complaints regarding how hard it is to move in UO for people playing on connections of over 300-350ms have seemingly been ignored. Why on earth the walk synchronization was cut from 4 or 5 steps down to 2 to make it even worse is beyond me. And now that lag for modem players with good pings is being addressed it quite frankly annoys me, It seems like the only customer base being looked after is all the players in the US where most of the servers are located close by players.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I've actually brought this up in discussion several times over the last few days... it seemed to me to be an obvious way to allow dial-up modem users to be able to run around at full speed. I'm going to investigate bumping this number up. There may be a few trade offs, but letting dialup folks run around at full speed, even in laggy areas sounds like a big improvement for most playstyles.
Cheers,
Fertbert
Allison
Thanks as always Allison.
Hasta. |
^ top-New Advanced Character
[JC_The_Builder] March 25 - 1:50 PM EST | As posted on the UO website, there is a new character template avalible for purchasing:
Treasure Hunter (new): The treasure hunter is a true adventurer, one who travels the world in search of buried chests of valuable treasure and oftentimes has to battle (or escape from!) formidable foes in order to claim such bounty. They are often found traveling with groups of other adventurers, but with magery, musicianship, and peacemaking as part of their repertoire of skills, they are able to tackle most obstacles on their own. If you're looking for challenge, companionship, fun and fortune, the treasure hunter is the character for you.
85 Lockpicking
85 Cartography
85 Peacemaking
70 Magery
70 Musicianship
100 Strength, 100 Intelligence, 25 Dexterity
Hmm, is 85 lockpicking worth 30$?
|
^ top-Magery Spell Damage Testing
[Nieves] March 25 - 1:00 PM EST | Here is a tidbit:
Magery 100/Eval 120/Inscription 100
Ebolt damage:62,62,57,64,64 Average 61
Flamestrike damage:77,80,73,78,75 Average 76
Want to know more?
Hasta. |
^ top-UOPG Publish March 24th, 2003
[Nieves] March 24 - 1:41 PM EST | Released Chivalry and Necromancy to the skills page.
Edit: Spirit Speak up as well.
Please feel free to send in tips or corrections.
Hasta. |
^ top-Something To Consider
[Nieves] March 23 - 10:32 PM EST | This is NOT an anti-American article. Actually, I looked at it as being pro-American.
Just read.
I hope the advice given is at least considered up in our nation's capital.
Hasta. |
^ top-BoD / Deed Smelting
[Nieves] March 23 - 1:55 PM EST | It's OSi's fault for releasing the buggy code. The player's fault for abusing it.
But some folks, don't get the fucking point.
Hasta. |
^ top-Game Wizard updated
[JC_The_Builder] March 22 - 2:21 PM EST | Sannio posted on the Stratics boards about how the game wizard has been updated with a list of illegal items. From the Game Wizard:
How can I tell if an item is illegal?
Unacceptable Bug- or Exploit-created Items
In the long history of Ultima Online, there have been times when certain items were able to enter the game world due to the result of a bug or exploit. In the past we have been hesitant to post a list of such items, for some unscrupulous players might see such a list and decide to attempt to recreate such illegal items. However, in recognition of player concerns with regard to the growing inability to discern the differences between these illegal exploit/bug items and legitimate & acceptable rare items, we now feel that there are certain exploit-based items that can be publicly listed and discussed in an open forum.
The items listed below were created or obtained through the use of an exploit or bug, and are not able to be obtained or acquired through any legitimate means. They are considered illegal within Ultima Online, and players who are found to have, use, trade, or sell them may have action taken against their account.
These items are listed because they continue to exist in the world even though they are not re-creatable, but please do not consider these listed items the only ones that are unacceptable within UO. Just because an item may not be on this list does not necessarily mean it is legal. We reserve the right to change & update this list at any time:
-Portable ballot boxes
-Portable forges, looms, spinning wheels, or other obviously not portable add ons
-Belt pouches
-Metal ranger armor (ranger armor should be leather-based, not metal) or ingots from the same armor
-Faction-purple non-dyeable items (please note that some items in the game, such as cloaks or fancy shirts, may legitimately be dyed a color similar to the faction-purple color. This listing specifically refers to those items that should never be purple, such as spellbooks, armor, weapons, etc.)
-Water tiles
-Silver steeds (except for Siege Perilous, Mugen, and Baekdu)
-Tame ancient wyrms
-Red scimitars
It is critical for all players to understand the following information about this list of exploit-created items:
There may be exploit-created items within the world that are not on this list, but just because items are not on this list, does not necessarily mean they are legal.
We reserve the right to change this list at any time.
This list will only note items that were created with bugs or exploit that can no longer be created.
Please also note that we continue to look extremely unfavorably against any player who attempts to use a bug or exploit in order to create an item that should not normally exist within the game, and players who violate the rules of UO at any time may have action taken against their UO game accounts.
The only problem I have with the list is that Belt pouches were actual loot on some monsters during the trinsic invasion.
|
^ top-House Design Contest
[JC_The_Builder] March 21 - 9:54 PM EST | Just a reminder that the fansite house design contest will be ending on sunday. You must submit your entry by 11:59 pm eastern standard time to be entered. For more information go Here.
Good Luck. |
^ top-Upgrading to AoS
[Nieves] March 21 - 2:36 PM EST | You can do it here for the low price of 9.99! Or, you can do it for a couple million gold through Markee Dragon.
Personally, I would rather pay gold than Cash. Yeah yeah, I know what the market rates are for UO Gold, but, what's easier to get? Gold, or cash? And you can even buy UOAssist codes for those brand new Malas accounts you got! All for UO Gold!
Besides, I don't think Markee Dragon has a limit on the number of Upgrades you can get...
Thank you.
And if you do need gold, there are plenty of brokers listed to your left.
What? Hey, at least they aren't popups.
Hasta. |
^ top-Current Stratics Still Free.
[Nieves] March 21 - 1:49 PM EST | Found here:
The Stratics Forums will always remain free to our readers.
With the "teaser" announcement that we made yesterday about our upcoming Stratics Plus program (sorry, still no further details available yet), I wanted to make one thing very clear, and that is the fact that these forums will remain free to our readers. With the speculations that were being thrown out there yesterday, we felt it important to make that clear. And as soon as I have more info for you, I will definitely post it here. Thanks!
-Joshua Rowan
Welp, it still doesn't answer the question: Is Stratics+ free or not?
My guess is: no.
One thing of note at the UO Stratics Forum:
UO Spiels n' Rants
Gripes, Rants and Venting. No matter where you stand, prepare to meet people to challenge your opinion. Note that OSI does not participate in this forum.
I could say something stupid about this. But for peace of mind, I would avoid a Rants Forum too. Hell, UOPG's own Rants/Raves forum is SCARY sometimes.
So, they will focus on the important forums (we hope anyway) Can *you* blame them?
Hasta. |
^ top-Since Jade Won't.
[Nieves] March 20 - 10:44 PM EST | Ok, so you know about it by now.
Everyone wonder what I think? Well, Jade made some valid points (yes, you can blame her for this).
1) Have you ever heard of 'plus' or 'bonus' features that you don't have to pay for?
2) In the above linked thread, you don't see anyone actually coming out and saying "no, you don't have to pay".
And finally,
3) Is it me, or is how UOSS is handling this kind of like how OSI handles thing? "OH! We got something coming! Just wait and see!"
Tsk tsk tsk. C'mon Sparrow and Joshua. You guys know better.
I just hope this isn't the type of thing we are going to see Stratics doing to the players. We get enough of that from OSI.
So, what do YOU think about it?
Edit: You can read Jade's take on it here.
Jade > juus.
Hasta. |
^ top-Speed Improvements for Dial-up Users Now on Test Shard
[Gunner] March 20 - 8:54 PM EST | Here is a little something for you people STILL using dial-up that was posted to FYI on the official UO.com Website:
If you've been playing Ultima Online on a dial-up connection, you've probably noticed a decrease in performance since Age of Shadows as a result of the increased amount of data being sent for the new item properties.
Our programmers have been working on isolating the problem, and we've made some great progress! The client patch released earlier this week addressed some of the issues, but we have a new fix currently in testing on the "AoS Fixes" test shard. This test shard currently features a backup of Lake Superior, and we encourage you (especially those of you playing with dial-up connections) to please try it out!
Generally, we ask that players mail tcbugs@uo.com with issues they discover on test shards. However, in this case, we're going to do something a little different. Fertbert, one of our server programmers, started a very informative thread on the topic here, and we invite folks to come add their feedback to this thread. Of course, if you cannot register for Stratics, you are still welcome to use tcbugs@uo.com, but in this case, it's actually a more direct link to post in the thread linked above.
When you leave feedback, please include the following:
Your connection type - dialup modem, ISDN, cable modem, DSL, Satelite, T-1, T-3, etc;
Your ping to the test center (pinging central-tx5.owo.com may work to find this info);
If you're using a dialup modem, your normal connection speed (for instance, you're running a 56K modem, but normally connect at 33.6Kbps)
We may continue to add new fixes to this test shard, and if we do, it's possible the shard may come down for short periods of time. Thanks in advance for your participation!
Gunner
|
^ top-Returning to Character Name Changes & Shroud Recoveries
[Gunner] March 20 - 8:42 PM EST | Posted to FYI on the official UO.com Website:
We’re happy to announce the return of the Character Name Change service and the recovery of lost Hooded Shrouds of Shadows!
Last month, in the wake of unbridled Age of Shadows enthusiasm, our support staff was compelled to temporarily suspend these services in order to focus on more pressing service-level issues. As these game-stopping and time-sensitive concerns have been addressed, players may once again purchase a Character Name Change (read about this service here) or page a Game Master about recovering a claimed Shroud which was lost due to a server revert “time warp.”
Note: Sales of Advanced Character Templates remain temporarily suspended, but please stay tuned to FYI for updates on the return of this service.
So now all you people who were a little drunk or a little stoned when you created and named your character, now's your chance to fix it! (not to mention throw away er.... pay more money to OSI)
Hurry up and claim that sleek looking shroud as well. Do you think it makes my ass look fat? Oh well.
Gunner
|
^ top-Because moderating is hard?
[FrozenFire] March 20 - 5:44 PM EST | Let me see if I got this right. Once upon a time, the ancient dev team used to post on the Crossroads of Britannia boards. Back then Crossroads was a major site, on par with Stratics. Then, the MyUO boards were announced in late 2000 or early 2001 (I can't remember) and the traffic passing through the Crossroads became almost non existant. Then after a few years, OSI discovers that setting up hard rules, and then enforcing them, makes moderating hard. So now they ask Stratics to handle it for them?
This simply begs a few questions:
- Where was the concern for the community when Crossroads were left hanging to dry? Crossroads died a slow lingering death, and it all started when OSI started the MyUO boards. I can't recall seeing OSI ever doing anything to help Crossroads in the way of interviews, promotions like some of the currently favored sites go. Dont worry, UOPG does well without that, but Crossroads sure could have used it after that cold hug.
- If the primary motive was to spend as much time talking to the players, why spend so much time creating and enforcing rules. And hard rules at that, break them and your account could be at risk. Would all those rules really promote community and open discussion among players and dev team members? I think not. Rather, it would serve nicely to shut up the vocal opposition that didn't cheer OSI at every turn. Well they only semisucceeded in that, because a lot of the time, players would run riot OSI:s precious rules be damned. The more you try and take away freedom, the more precious it becomes. Which explains why OSI had to put all that effort into damage control. On their own boards. Enter Stratics.
- What kind of policy will Stratics enforce? Im almost certian that to the extent current Stratics policies does meet OSI standard, they will soon. Watch the volonteer mods handle the large influx of players and the number of locked/deleted threads soar. Good luck guys, I really mean that.
- In effect, OSI is substituting it's paid workforce for devoted volonteers, which may well be a good thing. Devoted players are crucial to building community (well duh, but someone need to tell EA). The irony here though, is that while OSI let all it's Seer/Companion/Counselor volonteers go to avoid legal action (think about the AOL volonteer dicks that sued AOL for back pay, after they volonteered to work for free), its now actually relying on Stratics volonteers. And the fact that the new moderators volonteered for Stratics and not directly for EA/OSI probably made all the difference in the legal sense. Outsourcing at its finest! Lets see if they outsource the power to mark accounts to control the crowds too.
Nieves put up an interesting piece on this as well. Go here to read and then talk about it.
Finally, a few words of gratitude to some real cool persons:
Simkin, thanks for finding a spot and then gating me in to help place it.
Beowulf for putting the madness that was the AoS launch in a sane perspective.
Nieves for saving my house when it was about to fall.
All UOPG:ers who may be in harms way in the middle east. Do your job, stay safe and get home in one piece. OK?
|
^ top-Early Settlers Program
[Nieves] March 20 - 4:05 PM EST | The following new update has been posted to UO.com:
Early Settlers Extension for Europe
To ensure that our European players are given at least the same amount of time as their counterparts in North America and Asia-Pacific to collect their Early Settlers rewards (the Personal Bless Deed and the Mini-Collectible House), we've decided to extend the Early Settlers deadline (previously March 25th) on the Europa and Drachenfels shards to April 8th. This means that until April 8th, players on the Europa and Drachenfels shards will still be able to receive these rewards when logging in a new character. We greatly appreciate all of our European players, and we especially hope this extension will be welcome news to those inconvenienced by the server cap in place for the first few days of Age of Shadows on Europa.
================
Kerowyn
Online Content Editor
ORIGIN Systems
Thanks Kerowyn
Hasta. |
^ top-Tugsoft Interview
[JC_The_Builder] March 20 - 2:07 PM EST | In an interview posted on OnlineGameTrader.net Tugsoft answers a few questions about the history of UOAssist And the new beta program currently code-named UOSpeed. Here is an example question:
Ok, if we can go back to this program that can reduce lag. How does that work and where can users get it?
That would be what is currently being called UOASpeed. It works much like proxy service but is smarter about the data going through it so it can optimize the data flow to the client. Currently it is in beta so the only way to get it is by being lucky enough to see when beta testers are being accepted by watching UOAssist's update/news page or the website. Once beta testing is complete announcements will be made on the UOAssist update/news page and main website. http://www.tugsoft.com/UOAssist/UOASpeedBeta.html
Check out the interview Here.
|
^ top-Hello again, hello
[Gyb] March 20 - 10:30 AM EST | Proving once again that chaotic forces beyond rational comprehension rule the universe, I have been given permission to spew my opinions upon you, the loyal readership of UOPG. You may already know me from the forums, but here is my background: I’ve been playing UO off and on since the beta test in 1997. A lot has changed since then, and I’ve been through most of it. These days I’m mostly PvM and a crafter, but I have enough experience and friends in the PvP world to at least pretend I know what I’m talking about. I like to figure things out, and I enjoy writing long-winded explanations for things, so for those of you craving more verbosity (and big words!) your day has come.
Since there isn’t always enough “real news” to keep us UO junkies engaged, I’ll be trying to write up various “theory” articles to give you all things to talk about and laugh at. As always though, the best place to find out information (and laugh at fellow humans) is the forums, so if you don’t read them get in there already!
UPDATE
Just so there is some actual news in this post, if you haven't been following the Mana Regeneration thread in the new Topped Threads forum, now is the time to go read it again. Steven and "a ninja" have gone way beyond my original, cursory attempts at quantifying mana regen rates and have come up with enough formulae and analysis to make your eyes explode through the back of your head (in a good way). If you want to know exactly how much Focus and how many +mana regen items you need to wear, then go
check it out! |
^ top-Hmmm, notice any similarities?
[Gunner] March 19 - 7:55 PM EST | Browsing through the MyUO boards... oops! I mean browsing through the Ianstorm chat boards, I noticed this cartoon that made me laugh. Seem like anyone we know? Thanks to Kharn for scanning this:
 |
^ top-More UO News From Allison
[Nieves] March 19 - 6:55 PM EST | Posted to FYI on the official UO.com Website:
Actually, they may not be wrong, and you’re probably simply under the effects of a protective spell.
Let’s say you’ve been exploring all the new stat changes, and some time within the past few days you’ve noticed that your physical & elemental resistance numbers don’t add up. You’ve removed all of your magical armor and they still don’t seem to add up correctly. What’s could very well be happening here is that you’re still under the effects of a protective spell that was cast hours, days, or even weeks ago!
Once upon a time, before the coming of the Age of Shadows, protective spells wore off a few minutes after being cast. Now, things have changed, and Reactive Armor, Protection, and Magic Reflection will stay on—even after logging out, even after dying—until you “turn them off” by casting them again! In the Age of Shadows, you cast these protective spells to turn them on, and then you have to cast them again if you want to toggle them off.
- Reactive Armor increases your physical resistance while lowering your elemental resistances. This spell will not turn off until you cast it upon yourself again. If your resistances don’t add up, it may be because of your Reactive Armor.
- Protection
will keep people from disrupting your spellcasting by hitting you, but at the cost of reducing your physical resistance, Resisting Spells skill, and spellcasting speed. If your physical resistance seems too low, you may need to turn off your Protection spell.
- Magic Reflection
decreases your physical resistance while increasing your elemental resistances, and a higher Inscription skill will increase the effects. If the values of your resistances seem wrong, it could be because you still have Magic Reflection turned on.
Further, the Arch Protection spell is very similar to the Protection spell, but with two major differences. First, it affects you and any of your adventuring party within a 2-tile radius of you. Second, it has a time-limit equal to your Magery x 1.2 seconds (up to 144 seconds).
On a side note: If you were here before the Age of Shadows and remember the sound that Protection used to use when it wore off, that’s the same sound all the protective spells now use when they turn off. And you can tell when the protective spells are turned on because they all use the old Magic Reflection “on” sound when you cast them.
In unrelated News … Reuters reports : KUWAIT (Reuters) - Seventeen Iraqi soldiers have given themselves up to U.S.-led forces in northern Kuwait, U.S. military sources said Wednesday.
Thanks again Allison!
Hasta. |
^ top-UOSS Developer Listing
[Nieves] March 19 - 5:44 PM EST | Ok, this is cool.
Look to the left. You see where it says Community? Look for the UOSS Dev Posts link. See it? Good. Click it. Wait a minute or two.
*whistles* Ah, there we are. It finally came up right?
Cool, huh?
Now, why couldn't UO.com do that?
Ignore the 'cheering' going on in some of the posts and try to find some good information....
Hasta. |
^ top-Cynthe comments on Siege and AoS
[Nieves] March 19 - 5:37 PM EST | Cynthe stated here in the UO Latest Updates forum on Stratics:
Our plan throughout these publishes has been to take care of any game-stopping issues before continuing with the publish on Siege. The reason is that because Siege has its own ruleset, it has its own issues that need separate testing - and our QA group has been devoted completely to testing AoS fixes related to blackholing and other things already affecting other live shards.
Once we're out of our current quick-fix mode, we'll be getting the update live on Siege and Mugen. After that we'll head back into the more regular publish schedule Sunsword's mentioned before, starting with Publish 18.
I know the delay's tough to take, but the only reassurance I can give is that everything we fix now means fewer issues on Siege once it goes live.
Once we have a firm date, you'll hear it!
-Cynthe
Community Manager
Ultima Online
ORIGIN Systems
and in reply to :
Do you think UO Devs will be reading Stratics now?
Cynthe said here :
Psst - yes, we're here too! Granted, we won't spend most of our time on the Shard forums, but nothing's off-limits, really.
-Cynthe
Community Manager
Ultima Online
ORIGIN Systems
Hooded Shrouds on Europa and Drachenfels
Cynthe stated here :- Hey for those of you who haven't gotten your Hooded Shroud code yet... that's because we haven't sent them yet. Those emails should be going out on or near March 25th.
As a reminder, here's the relevant info from the FYI we posted about the subject:
---
If you live in Europe (excluding Germany and Sweden) or Australia, and you create a new Age of Shadows account or upgrade your current account to Age of Shadows status by March 21st, 2003, you will be sent a Hooded Shroud of Shadows Promotional code via the email address that is on your account information at ultima-registration.com. You will then have until April 30th to collect your Hooded Shroud by following the instructions at www.uo.com/ageofshadows/preorder.html. This means that any players living in these countries can receive one shroud per purchase of AoS, provided they upgrade within 2 weeks of the European "in-store" date of March 7th. Please note that it is crucial that your contact information with us is correct. If your email or other information is incorrect, you will not receive the code for your Hooded Shroud!
---
Remember, players in Germany and Sweden had their own retail pre-order offers to get the Shroud, so they are not included in this one.
Thanks!
-Cynthe
Community Manager
Ultima Online
ORIGIN Systems
Allison
Thanks Allison!
Hasta. |
^ top-Oh well
[JC_The_Builder] March 19 - 2:14 PM EST | The MyUO boards are officaly closed. They will remain up for at least the evening so people can view and download the last posts.
One countdown done, one to go. Kinda Ironic both are in the same day eh? |
^ top-This Just In!
[Nieves] March 19 - 1:50 PM EST | The secret relationship between Britain and the United States has been revealed!
Go here now!
Hasta. |
^ top-Japanese Boards To Stay Up
[Nieves] March 19 - 1:07 PM EST | There's a couple distinctions. One, the Japaense players don't tend to be quite as forceful in their board posting styles, so moderation is not quite as difficult there as it is here on ours (it's a cultural thing). And two, the Japanese office is, in a way, a third-party in and of itself. Since we're the ones developing the game over here, their development updates are translated from the information we provide, which means that most of the research tasks still lay with us.
__________________
Cynthe
Community Manager
ORIGIN Systems
Know what? Based on the underlined above, I don't blame them.
"Americans whine too much".
Some stereotypes are based on truth...
Hasta. |
^ top-A Prediction
[Nieves] March 19 - 12:50 PM EST | I predict that all of you protesting the move to Stratics by going to other boards and say they never will go to UOSS will, eventually, start posting at Stratics.
Why? Just so they can anticipate and wait for that exciting and wonderful feeling they get when they see an OSI name post.
Hasta. |
^ top-OSI looking for vendor feedback
[JC_The_Builder] March 18 - 4:36 PM EST | Posted under Stratics General News:
So you own a vendor or two? A vendor mall even? Like to spend that hard earned money at your favorite vendor mall? Great! I've been looking for you...
One of the things you currently don't care for all that much is the issue of vended items cutting into your storage space. I've got that one loud and clear!
Aside from that, what are some of the things you feel might be a good change/addition to the way vendors work in UO at the moment?
I'm looking for two types of feedback: Vendor Owners and Vendor Users.
Ever find yourself stocking your vendor and saying "I wish I could..."? Or have you ever noticed yourself strolling through endless rows of vendors thinking "Wouldn't it be cool if..."?
If so, I want to hear from you! We're just talking here, so anything goes. No holding back on that cool vendor idea! Now is the time for sharing.
<-Helios--<<-
Designer, Ultima Online
"You create your own reality."
If you would like to give some feedback go to the stratics thread Here. (Looks like that is where you will be giving all feedback to OSI for now) |
^ top-Need a house?
[JC_The_Builder] March 18 - 4:22 PM EST | There is a spot about one screen northeast from the trinsic moongate. It is a small spot (7x7), but a spot none-the-less. It can be placed on both in felucca and trammel. Some shards are already taken, check to see if your shard might be open!
And don't say I never gave you anything :) |
^ top-AoS Bandwith Usage
[Nieves] March 18 - 4:21 PM EST | Ferbert posted the following here :
First of all, we're aware that some of you are experiencing lag since the publish of Age of Shadows. For that I'd like to apologize and explain what we're doing to improve things.
While reading this explanation understand that bandwidth usage and lag are related... more bandwidth usage tends to create more lag for low bandwidth users.
Here are the Age of Shadows features that do and will continue to use more bandwidth than Event 5 did:
- Customized houses are about 500 to 2000 bytes each and are cached client side in a persistent cache
- Item properties are about 20 to 100 bytes each and are cached client side in a temporary cache
- Floating damage numbers are small number of bytes (< 20)
Some details about what we're doing or have done to reduce the impact of these:
- Customized houses are about as optimized as they're likely to get right now. Each house is broken into slices and encoded using one of several algorithms, then each slice is compressed. The only further optimizations that can be made with regard to housing is for us to gradually ship each slice to the client instead of sending all the slices at once, and to turn off the standard packet compression/encoding for housing packets. Since I have yet to read one single complaint about customized houses causing undue lag, I have no immediate plans to implement those further optimizations. Further more the majority of the house-related lag appears to be due to the lockdowns and vendors…
- Items properties are the current target of our optimization efforts... these appear to be the major cause of the increased lag, and are what have been causing people to be blackholed. The size of the average item properties packet caught us by surprise, we had not originally intended to send so many properties, so our initial impact analysis was way off. We have a fix in QA right now to address this problem. We're now throttling the rate at which these packets are sent to the client so that when people enter vendor malls or recall to a popular place their available bandwidth is not overwhelmed.
- Floating damage numbers do not appear to have a significant impact upon lag, are are already as optimized as they're likely to be.
Those same features that can cause lag, can also cause the client to be completely overwhelmed with data resulting in a character becoming blackholed. We have a patch in QA to address this problem. I have refactored the server side buffering code to behave better in these situations. Once this patch goes live, naturally occurring blackholes at champion spawns, banks, and vendor malls should be rare. Also in this patch is a fix for the packet corruption problem that plagued many users (especially modem users.) This corruption is likely the cause of the majority of the recent random disconnects, seeing the character select screen in the middle of gameplay, and other miscellaneous weirdness. The reason why this bug appears to be more prevelant now is that it is only triggered when one of the server side buffers in near capacity… as we’ve been seeing lately with the increased bandwith usage of Age of Shadows.
In development is a fix that should address the famous multiple door problem (as it applies to regular buildings in UO) as well as a related cause of blackholes around places with too many candelabra, communication crystals, the Delucia bank, etc.
Right now I am focusing on more item properties optimizations, and weeding through out data stream to remove duplicate information. I anticipate having another batch of fixes in Publish 18.
Thank you for your patience in this matter,
Fertbert
* original post on Stratics UO Tech board... cross posting to uo.com boards... please watch for future messages on Stratics
Thanks Allison!
Hasta. |
^ top-Todays patch
[JC_The_Builder] March 18 - 2:49 PM EST | As posted in the FYI, todays patch contained the following changes/fixes:
2D clients only
Macro creation combo boxes will no longer display “clumsy” when no value has yet been selected.
3D clients only
A crash related to resizing the chat interface was repaired.
An improvement to chat scrolling was implemented.
Targeting pets’ status bars will execute the target function instead of going into edit mode in the text area.
The scrollbar in the skill list should behave better when opening/closing skill groups.
Both 2D and 3D clients
Item property requests are now sent in smaller batches, which will help resolve some perceived “lag” when entering areas with lots of objects. This also means, however, that some objects may not immediately have visible item properties—although this should not generally be noticeable.
Networking fixes/buffer improvements to prevent blackholing*, unintended behavior, and crashes.
The game client should no longer close when encountering errors while playing intro movies.
Updated localization files.
*We are continuing our efforts to remove blackholing from UO. If you believe you may be blackholed while logging in, please restart your game client and log in again.
|
^ top-A Simple Question
[Nieves] March 18 - 2:21 PM EST | First, thanks for having the boards around the last few years it showed a willingness to attempt to communicate with your customers and it was vastly appreciated because it allowed us (for the most part) to discuss something that we all used to love very much....additionally when we did get to directly converse with the publisher it was an added layer of frosting on the cake.
...that being said, here's what I want to know.
Will the Asian marketplace be loosing their boards as well? I ask because while "all players" are susposedly equal that particular marketplace has many things that we do not.
1) counselors
2) IGM's
3) Seers
4) Companions
If #5 becomes an official EA sponsored board I'm going to simply retch...its not that I don't think that they deserve it (asian shards r0xx0r) but rather that it'd be a big huge discrepency in the level of service.
Additionally I'd also like to know just how you think that you'd feel if you were a fansite that wasn't Stratics? Any plans on making those other groups who have worked hard to advertise and sell your product feel a little bit better about getting smacked upside the head with a size 11 favortism boot?
-Talbot
Good points there...and a very valid question. Doesn't it suck for OSI when they have to deal with people that aren't afraid to ask pointed questions like that? And doesn't it suck that there are people that aren't afraid to ask them?
Hey Talbot, if you want an updater job, give me a hollar. You are recommended by some pretty important folks.
Hasta. |
^ top-And Before We Close...
[Nieves] March 18 - 1:58 PM EST | Let's ban some folks shall we!?
Here, why don't you read about it here.
Hasta. |
^ top-UO being audited
[JC_The_Builder] March 17 - 9:36 PM EST | No not by the IRS. Mr Tact is checking into the amount of datae being sent to the client:
The data stream is being audited, just as I said it would be two weeks ago. This only started late last week because there were other fixes we deemed more important to get into production, among them the actual fix for the blackhole problem. Since the person working on the blackhole fix (Fertbert) is the same person who is working on reducing bandwidth utilization, these were not tasks that could be done in parallel.
We know dialup is not fun right now. We are working to improve this situation. There are some fixes in a client patch that will be out this week, and a publish that MAY be out this week, that should make things BETTER, though not GREAT. An aggressive bandwidth optimization pass is in the works and this should make things considerably better for dialup players.
As for UOASpeed, Tug has contacted us and we are discussing it. I can't predict right now how it's going to go, but I don't consider it anything to be alarmed about.
MrTact
Probably the next to last, if not the last useful post coming from the MyUO boards. Now we enter the Age of Stratics. |
^ top-Welcome
[Nieves] March 17 - 5:52 PM EST | To all of you wishing to migrate from the UO.com boards or Stratics, welcome.
To all of you wishing to act like whiney bithes on UOPG's boards or play kissy face with the UOPG mods or OSI, don't bother.
To all of you that are thinking about acting like dicks to MY new guests, don't.
Only takes two clicks to ban an IP.
And since I am in a Nazi Board mood lately, it doesn't take much to set me off these days.
Hasta. |
^ top-UOPG Question Of The Week 03/17/03
[Nieves] March 17 - 3:27 PM EST | What do you guys think of this UO.com board closing?
Talk about it.
Hasta. |
^ top-My UO.com Boards Closing.
[Nieves] March 17 - 2:41 PM EST | No BS.
Read about it here.
Should I say anything?
....
Well, should I?
Nah.
Congratulations Stratics. You got what you wanted. Enjoy it.
On 2nd thought.
Hasta. |
^ top-Back to Business
[Nieves] March 17 - 10:27 AM EST | Not to bad mouth anyone, but on your section of failing when trying to enhance. Someone said
BTW Prophet: The last guy on your update is a moron. Why would you enhance your exc. normal leather gloves that you crafted with barbed leather. It would be the exact same as making them with barbed leather in the first place. :P too bad Sannio didn't call him out on that. hehe
In fact if you make exceptional normal leather gloves You get a 6% resist bonus to the
Normal leather leather gloves
Physical resist: 2
Fire resist: 4
Ice resist: 3
Poison resist: 3
Energy resist: 3
or the
Normal leather studded gloves
Physical resist: 2
Fire resist: 4
Ice resist: 3
Poison resist: 3
Energy resist: 4
Which with 6 extra resist points could all go into making 8 physical resist for GM and then you enhance it with barbed and get an enhancement of
Physical resist: 2
Fire resist: 2
Ice resist: 4
Poison resist: 1
Energy resist: 3
Which would give you a max of 10 physical possibly. You waste more normal leather, but potentially save more barbed leather and with barbed leather costing a lot more then normal hides and being a little harder to collect mass quantities would save you resources.
Again not trying to a smartass just seeing someone being called a moron for something that so many craftsmen are practicing now to make some of the highest resist armor that is possible when crafted.
Thanks for listening,
Sincerely
Galen L. Scott, Jr.
Thanks Galen.
Also:
Reading the playguide, it became pretty easy to see how luck works and how, really, BOTH Mr.Tact & Vex were right. Taking their Ratman Mage example, with the idea that it drops 1-2 magic items, high Luck makes it more likely to be 2, but it can never make it 3. So you can never get more than the template, no matter how much luck you have, so luck doesn't "add" items, which is what Vex was saying, but it does make it more likely to get the highest # of items possible for a creature, which jibes with what Mr.Tact was saying.
On the futility of making exceptional leather gloves then enhancing with barbed: though Coop seemed rather oblivious overall, there are actually good reasons for what he was doing. I frequently do the same thing to make good Valorite armor. Rather than waste 400 Val ingots to maybe get one item with decent fire resist or high physical, instead I blow through 2000 iron which gets me about 5 items with good stats, and usually one of them survives enhancing, so I get the same, or in many cases a better piece of armor, but only blow through 50 Val ingots at most.
just my thoughts
Ian
And thank you for those thoughts Ian.
In reference to my previous post I need to get out of the drama business (YEAH I KNOW PEPPER) and stick to Gaming news. It keeps me sane and makes people (including myself happer). Either that, or I need to quit UOPG.
Hasta. |
^ top-Fucking Coward
[Nieves] March 17 - 10:19 AM EST | Oh yeah, send me an email and don't give a real email so I can reply? Well, here read it here bitch.
I’m sorry what?
Did you say France has a quarter as many people as the US does?
No, I didn't. Please show me where I said that.
…A LOT less land for resources?
…National Debt?
Ditto.
Why does a 1 page COMPLETE military history make you laugh why?
Because it did. What's your point?
Because they aren’t invading every oil producing country in the world?
Eh?
Your site just lost a LOT of respect with quite a few readers dude; your front page makes a lot of us think “typical American” You’d think someone who runs a fairly successful website would be at least open minded that not everyone in the world wants to send people to die for a country NO ONE LIKES.
For the record, bitch, you don't fucking know me. You don't know shit about me. Had you, you would know I really do listen to what others have to say. Do I agree? No. And I don't fucking have too.
As far as not everyone in the world not agreeing, well fucking duh. I mean, it's obvious people don't agree. Why do you think I made my own feelings known? Pendejo.
When was the last time the US won a war on their own? NEVER, you ALWAYS need someone to back you up.
Um, can you say Mexican-American War or Spanish-American War? Pendejo.
And before you scoff, I highly suggest you see how the war really went back then. And do you HONESTLY believe World War I or II would've been won without US Support and their involvement?
TYPICAL AMERICAN
Thanks.
You know, it's fucking funny. Someone expressed their political beliefs about shit and all of a sudden: "OMG Nieves, I lost so much respect for you!?" And? What? You think I write what I write to please everyone out there? Fuck no. I write what's on my mind and conscious and let others either agree, disagree, dispute, or totally ignore it. Life is funny like that. If you don't like it, vete. Ayi esta la puerta. Don't let it hit you in the ass.
And here is something else: If I say something people agree with, it's "YAY NIEVES! YOU ARE MY HERO!" And if I say something you don't: "FUCK YOU NIEVES! YOU SUCK!" Funny how people's opinion can change like that.
People suck sometimes.
And, to the bitch that can't be man enough to give a return email: Fuck you too.
Hasta. |
^ top-State of the Service
[FrozenFire] March 14 - 7:23 PM EST | We all pay at least $10 to play UO, but what kind of service can we expect? Let me put that in perspective right away. I’ve 3 active accounts, for which I pay $30 dollars each month, or $360 per year. I’ve played since early 98. So let’s make it an even $1000 over these years. Not exactly pocket change. So, what kind of service can I expect?
Yeah, what kind of service can we expect? Go here to get some straight answers. |
^ top-Google.com
[Nieves] March 14 - 1:42 PM EST | Go to Google.com and type in "French Military Victories", then hit I am feeling lucky. Don't want too? Here, let me show you what I got.
Did you mean: french military defeats
No standard web pages containing all your search terms were found.
Your search - french military victories - did not match any documents.
Suggestions:
- Make sure all words are spelled correctly.
- Try different keywords.
- Try more general keywords.
- Try fewer keywords.
pwned. BTW: Click Defeats above...
When was the last time France won a war on it's own?
BTW: ::Orion::: The last time France asked for more evidence, it came rolling thru Paris with a German Flag on it.
Hasta. |
^ top-Ok....WTF?
[Nieves] March 14 - 1:34 PM EST | From Orion:
There are fun things about having a website about UO. What isn't so fun is figuring sorting out what you hear from OSI. As you know my luck guide says that Luck does not affect the number of items dropped by monsters. I got that information from Vex in the last Ianstorm Chat. Here's what he said:
I think MrTact meant to say that Luck increases the quality of the magic items you get, but not the chance of getting one in the first place.
Okay, but here is what the UO Playguide says about Luck.
Luck can affect the number of magic items the monster drops. The higher your luck, the more likely the monster will drop an additional magic item.
Umm, okay. SO which is right? Good question, my own research showed that killing 100 liches with 0 luck got me 36 items. And that killing 100 liches with 338 luck got me 36 items.
But, a UO Compendium reader the other day said without luck he gets no magical items from Earth Elementals. But when he wears a luck suit he does get magical items.
So it seems that perhaps luck does affect the number of drops a monster will give (if their lists allow).
*sigh*
Why is Orion surprised? I am not.
It's how it is. Hopefully, they will straighten us out on this.
BTW: My testing on Luck has been ok I guess. Really didn't affect my Treasure Hunting chests (as has been stated) but did affect the quality of magic items dropped by creatures.
The question was raised "how high can Luck actually go?" My question back was: "at what point does Luck even matter anymore?"
A note about training magery skills. You can build a suit with -100% reagent cost. We talked about that right? Well, what about combining that suit with a weapon that has spell channeling and use magery skill? Think about it.
Hasta. |
^ top-More UO News From Allison.
[Nieves] March 14 - 1:03 PM EST | In reply to:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
...my thief''s real skill is 102 and I have a +110 powerscroll on her now..so if I add the +5 gift skill scroll she will then show a cap of 115? Correct? Seeing that is the way the stat scroll works I am assuming the skill scroll works the same..
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Actually, ShadowofChaos is correct: the +5 skill scroll gift literally will add 5 points to the current value of the skill of your choice, but it will not allow your skill value to exceed the current skil cap fo rthat skill, nor will it raise the current skill cap for that skill.
=========
Sannio
Online Content Coordinator, UO
Origin Systems
Also:
A fashion question
Hanse stated here on the official UO.com Boards :
All armor pieces have base stats. Cloth headgear starts with no physical resist.
A small quirk with our current resist system for magical items is you can't tell the base stats from the magical stats (as Coop mentioned earlier about a magical cloth piece he found to be better than a plate helm).
It would be kinda confusing to transfer magical properties from a plate helm to a cloth bandana and notice that the physical (base) resist didn't transfer. :)
-Hanse
UO Live Designer
******************************************************************************************
When you fail at enhancing ….
Coop asked:"Why would I ever fail at enhancing when I try to enhance a pair of my own exc normal leather gloves with barbed leather? "
Hanse explained here:
The chance to fail is calculated by the values you're trying to improve. It doesn't matter if you crafted the item or not.
-Hanse
UO Live Designer
Thanks Allison!
Sannio is a busy man these days! Kuds to da man.
BTW: Prophet: The last guy on your update is a moron. Why would you enhance your exc. normal leather gloves that you crafted with barbed leather. It would be the exact same as making them with barbed leather in the first place. :P too bad Sannio didn't call him out on that. hehe
It pays to pay attention!
Hasta. |
^ top-Why You DONT need LJ Or Anatomy
[Nieves] March 14 - 12:30 PM EST | I'm sure most of you have realized this but a lot of people are still asking me about it so I'm posting this.
Lumberjacking and Anatomy both give a 20% dmg increase. Dmg increases do not combine to make a 40% increase. Lumberjacking takes 20% of your base dmg and adds that to it, then Anatomy does the same thing. So in essence you are spending 100 points for 2-4 more points of dmg. This of course is unimportant if you are using Anatomy for healing, then by all means, go ahead.
My MAIN point here is that the 20% dmg increase you get from having 100 skill points is the exact same as having a bracelet or ring with 20% dmg increase. Get on test center, it adds up the same. Additionally, jewelry dmg bonuses go up to 25%, not just 20%.
Some interesting and counterpoints on this discussion here.
Hasta. |
^ top-Unofficial AoS Gift FAQ
[Nieves] March 13 - 7:22 PM EST | From Ali once again!
Sannio answered quite a few questions here on the official UO.com Boards concerning the gifts !
reply to:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
But out of all the cool ideas we get boring clothes?!?! Man I feel like I did at Christmas time growing up ... I get excited about opening a present and when I get it finally open I see that it is boring clothes.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ah, but there's a method here. There are a number of wearables that can have magical properties--typically armor pieces--and the listed gift clothing items were chosen because they don't take up the same slots when worn. In this way, if you wanted to wear your gift sandles, for example, you won't have to sacrifice your favorite magical armor-legs in order to do so--you'll be able to wear both the leg pieces and the sandles.
Later that same day: Some players have been asking about hats, wondering why they weren't included in the gift-wearable list. The reason explained above is the same reason as to why hats weren't included in the list. (Hats would take up the same slots as helmets.)
=========
Sannio
Online Content Coordinator, UO
Origin Systems
In reply to:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
unless of course, your favorite armor piece is plate legs, then you cant wear any footwear.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Plate legs actually take up the "pants" slot, and you should still be able to wear actual footwear in conjunction with plate legs.
=========
Sannio
Online Content Coordinator, UO
Origin Systems
In reply to:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Why couldn't we have been given a list to vote on?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Actually, we at OSI started several long-running threads where we invited gift idea suggestions, and after revisions and continued player feedback, these are the items we felt were appropriate for the game & situation, and presented a good reflection of player requests.
=========
Sannio
Online Content Coordinator, UO
Origin Systems
In reply to:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Can anyone explaim me? that rose is the wispering rose?
Why something thats suposed to be a gift need to nerf others items and $?
Like me thousands of players bought roses and wasnt free...why nerf old item if there are THOUSANDS of unused items that could be used for that purpose?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The new rose won't be exactly the same, if only for the different name it will have. (As for using alternate items, it may be interesting to note that the whispering rose itself is actually based off one of the mandrake art pieces.)
=========
Sannio
Online Content Coordinator, UO
Origin Systems
In reply to:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sannio, if i use the + 5 now, can i use a +25 later for a total of 255? or will the +25 only bring me to 250, like the current +5's work.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As it stands right now, only this new +5 Stat Scroll gift would allow the possibility of breaking the 250 barrier.
=========
Sannio
Online Content Coordinator, UO
Origin Systems
In reply to:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So then if we use a +5 Stat Scroll now, and get a +20 Stat Scroll in the future, would the maximum still be 255, or would using the +20 Scroll later negate that and stop at 250?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The short of it: The existing champion spawn stat scrolls aren't cumulative, but the new +5 bonus scroll is. If you have both champion spawn stat scrolls and a +5 stat scroll gift, I would recommend using the +5 stat scroll gift after you've determined that character won't be using any more champion spawn stat scrolls.
The longer version: Think of the champion spawn stat scrolls not so much as "+5," "+10," "+15," "+20," and "+25" but instead as "new cap of 230," "new cap of 235," "new cap of 240," "new cap of 245," and "new cap of 250," respectively.
Think of the new "+5" stat scroll literally as a "+5 bonus to your stat cap."
This means if your current cap is at 225 and you use the +5 stat scroll gift, you maximum possible stats cap will go up to 230. Then using a champion spawn stat scroll of +20 will change your stat cap to 245--remember, a +20 stat scroll is actually a.k.a. a "new cap of 245."
If your timetable and resources allow, my recommendation would be to first use your champion spawn stat scrolls, and then--once you feel you won't be using any more champion stat scrolls on that character--use the +5 stat scroll gift scroll.
And, of course, the best bonus can come into play if you've already used a +25 stat scroll to achieve a 250 stat cap and then use the +5 stat scroll gift to exceed the normal limit and achieve a 255 stat cap.
=========
Sannio
Online Content Coordinator, UO
Origin Systems
In reply to:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sannio, since you are answering questions, I'll ask mine again. When will we know what the possible phrases to put on gift items will be and what colors will be available?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It's true that we haven't yet announced the phrases or colors, but I don't have an official list for you at this time.
I'm going to take a little chance here and suggest that we might still be open to suggestions for some of the phrases and colors. Suggestions for phrases should be fairly short (as in probably 3-6 words) and may somehow connect with the "Age of Shadows" theme (but this isn't a necessity)--and of course be appropriate as per our service rules. ;) If you have a couple of nicely worded phrases in mind, I'd love to hear them. I can't gurantee that these suggestions (or exact suggestions) will be used, but any recommendations that seem appropriate for this gift item will be forwarded on to the rest of team.
=========
Sannio
Online Content Coordinator, UO
Origin Systems
In reply to:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
when do we get these items?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We're still working on some of the finer points right now, and there's still a few tweaks that need to be finalized and published before the gifts can be completed. I apologize, but I'm going to have to be a little vague: The items won't be finished within a few days, but the current plan is to not have to wait months before these gift items enter into the game. We'll keep everyone updated on the progress of these gifts.
=========
Sannio
Online Content Coordinator, UO
Origin Systems
Thanks girl!
Hasta. |
^ top-More Gift News
[Nieves] March 13 - 3:34 PM EST | Thanks to Ali for this:
If you were unsure wether or not you will receive these cool AoS Gifts , have no fear !
Sannio enlightened us over here on the official UO.com Boards:
These gifts are not just for AoS-enabled accounts. Everyone was affected, and we want every player to know that we appreciate their patience and support. You'll be eligible for these gifts even if you haven't yet upgraded to Age of Shadows.
=========
Sannio
Online Content Coordinator, UO
Origin Systems
Sweeeeeeet !
Sweet indeed.
Hasta. |
^ top-AoS Launch Gifts Update
[Prophet] March 13 - 3:14 PM EST | In response to people wondering about the +5 stat gift, Sannio had this to say on the myUO boards:
The Stat cap bonus scroll grants exactly that, a bonus. So if you're already at 245 then this scroll can bring you to 250. Further, if you're at the normal maximum of 250, this scroll will bring you past the normal limit to 255.
=========
Sannio
Online Content Coordinator, UO
Origin Systems
Me = Happy
eof |
^ top-News Around the UO World.
[Nieves] March 13 - 6:58 AM EST | Concerning the AOS gifts SunSword stated here on the official UO.com Boards:
We'll get the information about the +5 stat cap clarified for you tomorrow.
This will be given to all territories.
I like the idea of being able to test the gifts on TC first, and given the way our process works, that's how it will likely work out.
Although off topic, I figured I'd answer this: SP and Mugen versions of AoS are ideally going to be in testing by the end of next week, depending on how the next 2 ERT's go.
--
SunSword
Producer, Ultima Online
Also:
Hanse followed up his recent comments about " Crafting resistance" here on the official UO.com Boards with …
Woops, I was off on my numbers. I looked at the wrong information. Valorite is a total of 13 resistance points, but with no fire resist. Verite and barbed are a total of 12 resistance points and horned is a total of 11.
-Hanse
UO Live Designer
and
This thread is really for crafters and not treasure hunters. Allthough it's a little off topic, you can get good armor without having to fight the hardest creatures. Folks starting out will have to work their way up (skills and possibly items), but that's just part of the nature of the game.
-Hanse
UO Live Designer
and
Helmets have different resistances than cloth items. So, allowing a transfer of properties is not something we're looking into.
-Hanse
UO Live Designer
and finally:
Last Night's Publish and New Fixes on the Chesapeake Shard
Posted to FYI on the official UO.com Website:
Last Night's Publish and New Fixes on the Chesapeake Shard
The publish made live on the Chesapeake shard last night (see the FYI here) will be completely in effect by mid-day tomorrow, Central Standard time. Tonight, we will be publishing another set of fixes to the Chesapeake shard, to be live on Chesapeake after its normal morning maintenance tomorrow. This publish will include the following changes:
Fixed a crashing issue involving house customization
Fixed several issues with lockdowns not displaying correctly
Spells in a Necromancer or Paladin spellbook will no longer decay if that spellbook is locked down
Runebooks can now be locked down again
Barring any unforeseen circumstances, we hope to make these fixes live on all remaining AoS-enabled shards (currently that’s all shards with the exception of Mugen and Siege Perilous) later this week.
Note: Remember that items that are not locked down or placed in a secure container may decay. As a rule of thumb, always be sure to check the item properties on items by mousing over or single-clicking your items to make sure they’re locked down!
Thanks to Ali for all this news!
Hasta. |
^ top-Harms Way 2
[Nieves] March 13 - 6:56 AM EST | Alexandra is also gone.
Come home safe to us girl.
Hasta. |
^ top-Nieves And His GF Has No Shame.
[Nieves] March 12 - 5:53 PM EST | My girlfriend hath spoken.
!!! OK tell all your friends we will trade for roses on GL with what ever Items they want on their shards!!!
You heard her...if you already got my ICQ, let me know if you want to deal.
Hasta. |
^ top-Age of Shadows Launch Gift
[Prophet] March 12 - 5:31 PM EST | I'll pretend that Jade didn't already post about this on the GUL forums. :P
As Sunsword promised (and after several weeks of brainstorming on the message boards with Vex and the team), we would like to offer an in-game gift as a way of showing our appreciation for all those players who've made this one of the busiest times in UO's history, as well as a way of offering something out of consideration for anyone who’s gone through a revert or other problem caused by the high traffic during the Age of Shadows launch.
The gift will consist of two parts, and will be distributed per character, not per account. This means each character will receive Item #1 and Item #2 (see below). The actual date for these gifts has not yet been decided, but players should expect to see these come to the game in one of our upcoming publishes (basically, once we’re out of immediate bug-fixing mode).
Item #1
For the first item, players can choose one of the following things:
tunic
surcoat
jester suit
sash
robe
plain dress
fancy dress
kilt
skirt
half apron
full apron
sandals
shoes
boots
thigh boots
cloak
rose (for those who would prefer not to choose a wearable)
Next, the player will be able to choose from a selection of inscriptions to engrave on the item, which will include the character’s name.
Lastly, the player will be able to select a hue for the item from a selection of unusual hues. Choose wisely, because the item cannot be dyed once selected!
This item (Item #1) will be blessed, and will be transferable between characters.
Item #2
In addition to whatever they choose for Item #1, each character will be able to choose from the following:
A scroll good for +5 to any skill of the player’s choice (This will act as an immediate 5 point skill gain in any skill. It will not raise a skill over its current skill cap.)
A scroll good for +5 to their stat cap
These items will be usable only once, and the effects will be permanent. These scrolls will be non-transferable, meaning it will only work for the original character who claimed it.
Remember, each character will get two gifts! Item #1 can be traded, but Item #2 will only work for the claiming character, and will be consumed on use.
eof
Edit: I normally don't cut into another of the updater's posts, but I just had to say this:
Kudos to OSI. It's pixel crack and usefullness all rolled into one (not overtly said) 'apology' to the playerbase. You take care of the crackwhores and the powergamers all in one shot with this 'reward'.
Granted, I would've liked to have seen a 30 day free voucher/deed for all the players. But this is a step in the right direction IMO. Well, communications and PR wise for the playerbase.
Anyway, kudos to you Sunsword, Cynthe and her PR team. If it means anything to them.
Hasta. |
^ top-Custom House Design Contest
[JC_The_Builder] March 12 - 4:54 PM EST | Some UO fanstites (including IanStorm.com) are running a house design contest sponsored by the development team. The prizes are as followed:
Grand Prize
-The winning house design will be turned into a miniature house collectible that will be offered as a first year Veteran Reward
-The winner will get to suggest 3 possible names for the new collectible – the final name will be chosen by the Dev Team.
-A signed copy of AoS by the Dev Team
-An AoS poster signed by Brom and the Dev Team
Finalists Prize
-AoS poster signed by Dev Team
For complete information go Here. Good Luck. |
^ top-OSI Playguide on Luck
[JC_The_Builder] March 12 - 4:16 PM EST | OSI has updated the offical playguide with how luck works. There really isn't anything new but it is nice to be able to post a link now on how luck works.
And also it looks like OSI is actually holding up it's promise to continuely update the playguide. It is much better looking then stratics in my opinion, especially the bestiary section. Very nice. |
^ top-Harms Way
[Nieves] March 12 - 12:18 AM EST | I am glad I got up.
Epyon is already in the area he needs to be to help fight.
Lawyer is now on his way.
Thank you to them for fighting for freedom, fighting for me, and fighting for my kids.
Be safe, be smart, and come home soon. All of you.
God Bless The USA.
Hasta. |
^ top-Publishing to Chesapeake
[Alexandra] March 11 - 10:03 PM EST | Posted to FYI:
We will be publishing an update to the Chesapeake shard that will be active after that shard’s morning maintenance period on Wednesday, March 12.
This publish will contain the following:
- The Holiday Tree season is over, and any such trees still placed in houses will be turned back into deeds. (Note: These deeds will be stuck to the floor, and only the characters that placed them will be able to pick them up. The stuck deed will not take up any storage lockdowns.)
- Players will no longer be able to collect Early Settler program gifts.*
If no issues arise, we anticipate rolling this out to all other AoS-active shards as of their respective Thursday morning maintenance periods.
*This will not affect the Europa, Drachenfels, Siege Perilous, and Mugen shards. Their respective Early Settler program periods remain 18 days after initially receiving Age of Shadows. |
^ top-More on "Crafting better resistance"
[Alexandra] March 11 - 11:42 AM EST | Hanse followed up here :
Actually, from a blacksmith standpoint, I do not like enhancing good weapons. The only reason I would enhance a weapon would be for luck, which my warrior is not using, currently. A bard in my guild has over 700 luck through enhancing, though. :)
I've been sticking to spell channeling weapons to augment my healing skill. I cast cure on myself so my bandages go through for health (instead of wasting a bandage on curing).
My warrior is wearing all 45-50 pieces of resistance armor. I'm looking into collecting spell channeling shields with good bonuses to enhance next. I will probably be able to cast reflect and only drop to 55-60 physical resist and have maxed 70's across the board, once I get a good shield enhanced with spell channeling.
-Hanse
UO Live Designer
In reply to:
------------------------------------------------------------
Hanse: A good rule of thumb is to get a bunch of armor with a total resistance of 30 or above to enhance. You'll need a lot of these pieces to enhance.
Easier said then done. Most of the armour I seem to be getting from high end monsters is in the 20-27 range, I have had very few that were over 30.
Hanse replied :
Well, it depends on what you fight. If you fight lower-end creatures, then you won't get very good loot. Luck does play a role, but you can get good items off creatures such as liches, daemons, lich lords, blood elementals, dragons, etc as a warrior now. Try fighting a dragon pre-AoS with a warrior (solo)... The resistance system is a huge bonus for warriors. :)
-Hanse
UO Live Designer |
^ top-Training Magery/Necromancy for Free
[Nieves] March 11 - 9:32 AM EST | It's simple really.
Get items that give you 100% reagent reduction (all items added together when worn) and train away.
Put together a set, use it, and when done, put it away for the next character.
And if Soul Stones come out...
Carrots!
Hasta. |
^ top-Want to run a MMOG?
[JC_The_Builder] March 10 - 10:03 PM EST | You think you could make UO/EQ/(Insert MMOG game here) better? Go Here to read the 10 reasons that make it so hard. For example:
5: Everything You Know about Single-Player Games is Wrong
There are a lot of gameplay formulas for traditional games that have been perfected over the years. But when you go online, things like secrets or puzzles or exploration lose their meaning. Any "secrets" are immediately posted and shared by players all over the world. The only way to give people more gameplay is to give them more content. Tons of content. "You need to launch with so much gameplay that the customer can't figure out when the content ends," Walton asserts.
Even the development process is different. With other games, developers can go into a "crunch mode," release the game, and then take a vacation. That just doesn't happen with persistent worlds. (Actually, at the mention of taking a vacation after release, Walton just threw back his head and laughed.)
|
^ top-UOPG Question Of The Week 03/11/03
[Nieves] March 10 - 9:51 PM EST | Since all of us been affected in one way or the other (Mage, Bard, warrior, tamer, PvP-wise and PvM) with AoS, what has changed for you?
Whats good/bad? Which skill did you drop and why?
Talk about it!
Hasta. |
^ top-Gaining Parry to GM
[Alexandra] March 10 - 9:33 PM EST | WonderBrick writes:
I just GMed Parry in about two days, 6-8 hours each day.
0-30, buy from NPC
30-77 small animals(chickens, pigs, sheep, cows, bulls). Favor bulls at 50-77
77-95 sketelons(like Moonglow and Yew cemetary)
95-GM various Orcs(Orc dungeon)
I kinda wish I picked up skeletons a bit earlier as well as Orcs a bit earlier. After seeing a few "Parry is hard in AoS!" post, I found my gains fast and steady.
I wore full Dull Copper plate(lower STR requirements) and dull copper bucklers(6% physical resist) for an easy 70% physical resist. I held dagger(GM fencing on char). For skeletons and Orcs, I tabbed out of combat with as many beating on me as I could handle and I auto defended against new spawn that targeted me.
I read websites and watched my char incase I got low on health(I am dropping healing and anatomy).
Comments? Post them here !
Thanks WonderBrick! |
^ top-Crafting better resistance
[Alexandra] March 10 - 6:38 PM EST | Hanse advised here :
I wanted to post a little information for you tradesfolks, because I've noticed a lot of folks hunting with low resistances. :)
Step one: Get a bunch of good armor together.
First, you need to determine if a piece of armor is good in Age of Shadows. A good rule of thumb is to get a bunch of armor with a total resistance of 30 or above to enhance. You'll need a lot of these pieces to enhance.
Step two: Use an appropriate material to enhance the item.
Luck: Spined and gold are the best way to go. A 30 resistance piece of armor will be slightly low, though. A good resistance to start with is 45, although they're much rarer than 30-40 resistance items.
Physical: Barbed and valorite are the best way to go. Both give a total of 15 bonus resistance points, although they're slightly weak on fire resistance.
Fire: Horned and verite are the best way to go. Both give a total of 14 bonus resistance points, although they're slightly weaker on physical resistance.
Others: You'll need to experiment. The two I mentioned are good examples of damage types. :)
Step three: Expect to fail.
You'll fail constantly when making these items, but you'll find that your suit total resistance are much higher and PvM/PvP'ers will appreciate it! Adjust your prices accordingly... ;)
-Hanse
UO Live Designer
In other news...
Concering the cookies errr Gifts from OSI ; Cynthe stated here :
The decision hasn't been made yet - we had a meeting on it last week, and you guys should expect to hear an answer on the decision within the next week or two. As someone else stated, bugs are still of higher priority... but the time will come soon when we'll be able to start focusing on more fun things.
Cynthe
Community Manager
ORIGIN Systems
Wondering if you will ever get that Shroud?
Greywolfe said here I don't have any ETA on when GMs will start taking Shroud calls again. It really depends on when the numbers in the queue return to a somewhat normal status.
Thats all !
Carry on :P |
^ top-Trivia Contest Announcement
[Nieves] March 9 - 8:28 PM EST | It's a fun romp through Ultima Online's political, economic, PvP and adventuring past as well as its present.
The rules are simple (the questions are harder). On March 29 at 6 pm EST [login to our RPG TradeSpot Forums]. At [ ] exactly [that time], we will provide a special link below to our Trivia Contest Question and Answer Page. Solve each of the questions and type your answers into the spaces provided. If all your answers are correct, and you're the first to complete the contest, you will be immediately notified you have won.
The Five Million Gold will be paid within 48 hours of winning. In the event of any disputes, Vix of RPG TradeSpot will be the final arbitrator.
So get started studying because Five Million Gold and the Special Title are yours to win!
Click Here to Enter the RPG TradeSpot First Official Trivia Contest
Hasta. |
^ top-Galad Tiene Su Casita Nueva!
[Nieves] March 9 - 9:06 AM EST | That's right folks, Galad and his adventures has a new home and URL.
You will see his new image in the links section to the right, or you can just go here.
Hasta |
^ top-Orion's Gives Us the Goods On Luck
[Nieves] March 9 - 8:53 AM EST | Mr. Orion of UO Compendium did a study on Luck. And it falls in line with my feelings on Luck: It's overrated. Here are his summarized results.
1. Luck just increases the modifiers on items dropped by monsters.
2. Luck does not increase the frequency or the number of items dropped by monsters.
3. Luck does not increase the amount of gold dropped by monsters.
4. Apparently it does not help you stay alive to the torrent of flamestrikes from five liches (even with 49 fire resist!).
I hope this helps everyone understand a bit more on how luck works in UO.
Update: Just a couple more points.
5. Luck doesn't seem to increase the drop of tmaps on monsters.
6. Luck does not increase the items given, or their properties found in treasure chests from either Treasure Maps or SOS's.
Update 2: And another point.
7. Luck is spread out in a group. So if you have a group of two guys, one with 900 luck, and one with 0, the game would treat it as if they each had 450 luck (more or less). In otherwords, it takes the middle ground (thanks Mitar).
You can read the rest here.
Orion also tried to explain Mr.Tact's comments on Luck:
Monsters have loot lists
They are basically a list of possible items you can get, ranging from a raw rib to that super elite weapon you've been wanting for so long. Depending on the dificulty of a monster it may not have any raw ribs in its loot list, it may be all weapons, or shields, etc. Or if the monster is super weak it may not have any weapons, shields, etc in its loot list.
Monsters can have multiple loot lists
Again, depending on the difficulty of the monster, it may have multiple loot lists. The more lists the better, and the more lists available on the monster, you can be assured it is harder.
Luck increases the potency of the items
So, a monster has multiple lists, but Luck (according to Vex) apparently does not increase the number of items you can get, it just increases the bonuses on weapon.
But, wait a minute, is Vex right?
I'm not totally sure if Vex is totally right, MrTact seems to think it ups the items you possibly get from the lists (by a %, which goes up with the amount of your luck). I have yet to do a scientific study on this, but I know a lot of people who think that they are getting more items dropping from monsters, when they wear lots of luck items.
Personally, I would rather just make the items myself with a runic hammer or tailoring kit, but we all know how hard those things are to get. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Hasta. |
^ top-It's up! No, it's down. Wait, it's. back u. . .back down again!
[FrozenFire] March 8 - 9:07 PM EST | Aos hits Europa and AoS knocked the shit out of poor old Europa. It went up right on schedule and the rush to place was on. After about 90 minutes the shard crashed and players had to start over from a revert. That pattern held throughout the day: Up, freeze, crash, down, revert. I never counted them but Id say well over 10 reverts were made.
This news item now reverts to this blackholed thread. (Funny picture included in case your attention span is short.) |
^ top-Making your bard with AoS
[FrozenFire] March 8 - 5:46 PM EST | Helicobacter gives you the three week bard; how to train a brand new character to a full fledged bard with AoS:
The three week bard
Ok, fellas (and ladies, of course).
May not be the best, but here is a handy-dandy guide to making your bard in the post pub-16, post AoS world.
This guide assumes the following template: GM Music, Peace, Provo, Magery, Evaluate intelligence, Med and Wrestle. There are others, but this is the basis for all the bards I have made--my account and friends'.
Day 1. Make your char: 50 Str 10 Dex 20 Int 50 Magery 50 Taming (yes, Taming. It’s very useful). First thing to do is lock all the skill except those mentioned above, focus, and anatomy. Then lock your Dex and Str. Use anatomy on a valid target and get a point of Int. Do this every 15 minutes up to 10 times a day. Focus will eventually be turned down, but early on it helps speed up magery and Evaluate intelligence training.
Get on a boat along an infinite server line (UOAM can make these easier to find, but basically you can go 'round the UO world and never hit land) with an instrument. Bring a horse (ah...taming ). Sail North along the infinite server line--sail "Forward", not slow forward and you will gain that much faster. While sailing forward, dbl click you instrument or use a UOA macro to play your instrument. Do this constantly. This sequence allows you to actively 8x8 your music.
Every 15 minutes, stop the boat, dismount and anatomy your horse to get your point of Int.
After ~1.5-4 hours, you should be GM music--depends on the server and if the stars are looking upon you with favor.
Time to do magery. At 50 magery, you are going to want to cast the 4th level direct damage spell, lightning. 8x8ing is key here and it still works. If you don't know 8x8ing, then you probably should go learn about that. Basically, on your boat, go "Slow forward" to the north and cast the appropriate spell. At this level, cast lightning and target the tiller man. UOA can help here as well. Once you get a gain, stop the boat, move forward ("Forward One") eight times and try again. You will often be able to string together a series of gains back to back. If the run dries out, go "Back one" 8 or 16 times to try and restart it. Get to at least 60 magery with lightning. You can get to 65 and maybe 70 with lightning, but you'll want at least 60 before moving onto the next spell, which is Energy bolt. You'll see we skipped the 5th level spell. That's fine. If you want to mindblast your tiller man, that should work too, but it isn't necessary. Ebolt will get you to ~ 90 without too much trouble, but it will take ***TIME***. This brings us to day two.
Day 2: Str 50 Dex 10 Int 30 (you got 10 points of Int yesterday, right?)
Template: 100 Music, ~90 magery, ~50-60 med, evaluate intelligence ~ 60's 50 taming, 0 wrestle, 0 provocation, 0 peace, Focus > 0 (who cares, it’s free mana)
Even with a magical wizard's hat, you are still ~ 5 mana points short to cast the 7th level spell Flamestrike, so let's delay working magery just yet. Besides, you want peacemaking (you do...trust me--great skill). It’s easiest to buy it from an NPC bard guild master to 30. Buy provocation up to 30 while you are there (this one you need to buy to 30)
Get off your horse and use skill Peacemake and then target yourself while going slow forward. This is called an area-peace. It is not a difficulty check-based skill, so doing this will get you to GM. Once again, you can 8x8 this skill, so stop the boat on a Peacemake gain and try to 8x8 it. From the 30's-50's, you might save some time not 8x8ing and just going slow forward, but either will work in an acceptable amount of time. GMing peacemake will take a few hours, so make sure you use anatomy on your horse every now and then (best: every 15 minutes up to 10 points a day, remember?) to get your point of Int.
Once you get to GM peace, you should have 40 Int and therefore at least 40 mana. Throw on a mage's hat and you will even have a little extra mana for finishing off magery. From 90-100 magery, you want to 8x8 and cast Flamestrike onto the tiller man. This will work in the same way as magery did before. Cast on the tiller man while going slow forward along an infinite server line and stop on a gain and then 8x8 from there. It’ll take at least a few gain runs to get to GM.
The time and number of reagents can vary depending on your own personal (not the UO property) luck and which server you play on, but you should definitely be able to reach gm magery by...
Day 3: Str 50 Dex 10 Int 40
GM Magery, GM Music, GM Peacemake, 70-90’s med, 60-80's evaluate intelligence, 30 Provo, 0 wrestling, Focus >>0
Let's go ahead and finish up Evaluate intelligence and med first thing. These are both 8x8able and med will gain as your try to GM Evaluate Intelligence. Evaluate intelligence is not difficulty based, so you don’t have to cast hard spells to gain. That means you will want to cast the first level spell fireball as it requires only a small amount or mana and one reagent. Cast on the tiller man while going slow forward and stop on a gain. see the pattern? This will get you to GM evaluate intelligence quickly. As always, use anatomy on your horse to get you stat point every 15 minutes. If you find that you are having trouble using anatomy to get your stat point, then you can bring along kindling and dbl-click it. If your camping is turned up, then lighting a fire will check that skill and you can gain stat points that way.
Now we need to work on the slower skills: Provocation and Wrestling.
These can actually be worked at the same time if you are really skilled at juggling things; otherwise just work them separately.
Provocation: Swing that boat over to Ice Isle. Tame two polar bears (see: taming again) and get them on your boat. Go find some nice little out of the way place that no one ever goes near the shore. Take one polar bear off the boat and leave the other on the boat. Release the bear on the boat. Provoke the polar bear on the boat onto your, still-tame polar bear on land. You might *have* to do this in Felucca, but I don't know anything about tram so your on your own with that. Repeatedly provoke the boat-bear onto the shore-bear. When you fail, the boat-bear will not attack you (it can't get to you) and your friendly tamed bear won't either. This will get you to 65 but it will take (I am just guessing here) overnight. General tips: use store-bought instruments (trust me) and go for lots of attempts.
Day 4: Polar bears have worn out their usefulness, so release them. Some people advocate doing the above bear-trick with Tamed Giant Beetles. I don't know anything about that, but it might work. I use plague beasts in the swamp North of Britain. At least two are always spawned there on LA and if you wear good poison-resist they aren't hard to get them to safely follow you to the shore. You want them near the shore because that is where your boat has been safely parked. Carry the key (Insure it) and recall onto the boat when the plague beasts get too close. Bring up the plague beast's health bar and move the ship away from shore. Plague beasts have a nasty poison attack and will target you after a failed provocation attempt. By you targeting them outside their range, you avoid the nasty effects of their attack, but you might need to target their health bar as "out of their range" is usually off-screen. There are numerous 'secrets" or "tricks" to using plague beast to GM Provo. First: plague beasts are used because they are immune to the attack of another plague beasts; therefore they don't die when you repeatedly provoke them onto one another. Second: Plague beasts can be targeted onto other monsters or animals. When they kill something, they "feed" on it, raising their stats and making them harder to provoke. This is good for keeping your % chance of success in the optimum range. (General trick) Third: You optimum chance to gain provocation is *NOT* at 40-60 % success. You really want to be *lower* than that. Fresh plague beasts (never fed) work well at ~65-75. As your skill rises, you will want to make the plague beasts tougher to provoke. Do this by having them kill some of the local swamp spawn, but keep your % chance of success ~ 30-40%. Low is key. It will always take time, but this seems to me to be better and it will get you to GM (and above). It just takes time.
Provo will take you at least a few days if not ~ 1 week. Keep using anatomy or camping to tailor your stats where you want them to be. Remember to turn down focus after you GM magery and no longer need it.
But wait Helicobacter, there is still wrestling left on your template. Ahh wrestling. I haven't confirmed this still works, but what I did before AoS was to use beetles and golems. Here’s how: Go to the Solen cave and find any of the pairs of beetles that spawn there. BTW easiest Solen hive for me to find is compass west of the Minoc moongate in the clearing line visible on the UO map. Find the beetles, lead them away from where they spawn and provoke them onto one another. When they are both low on health, kill one and "beat the other into subjugation" by bringing his health way down low with magery. Tame the living, yet weak, beetle. Take it home with you. Get off your beetle in an isolated location and tell the beetle "All guard me". This is I love you in Beetle-speak. Tell him that a lot. Then proceed to try and beat the crap out of your beetle being sure to tell the beetle "all guard me" regularly. This is how I got my wrestling up to ~ 65-75 before AoS. I think it'll still work, but I have no hard confirmation. Now that you are at ~65 wrestling, you need to get a GM Golem and do the same "I love you" but-I-hit-you-routine with the golem. "All guard me" and then beat it up. It is best to do all your beatings with a low Str and low Dex to allow time for any damage you might successfully do to your pet to heal.
Assuming, the wrestle still works, following this guide will get you to GM Magery, Meditation, Evaluate intelligence, Music, Provocation, Peace, Wrestling in less than 3 weeks. I did all my training on Lake Austin where it is a little easier to gain skill, but it only takes me two weeks there to make this template. If you are having trouble with the wrestling and think you can stay away from spawn without needing to fall back on your melee skills, then simply ignore the wrestling guide and keep Focus. The increased mana rate is impressive.
If there is something I left out, I apologize, but this should get you pointed in the right direction.
Happy barding all,
Your humble servant,
Helicobacter
Discuss barding post AoS further here. Now that your tamers pets dies to left and right it's time to wise up and make that bard. You know you want to. |
^ top-Final score: Veteran players 1, newbies 0
[Alexandra] March 8 - 9:39 AM EST | "Age of Shadows" does add some neat new functionality and space for gamers already immersed in the game. For that crowd, it's well worth a purchase. But if you've never played "Ultima Online," this expansion pack won't give you much of a reason to give it a go. You're better off saving your hard-earned gold on an MMORPG that doesn't look and play like it was created in the century it's set in.
You can read the rest of Tech Tv's review of AOS HERE! |
^ top-Visiting Europa and Drachenfels
[Alexandra] March 7 - 8:47 PM EST | | FYI: As a reminder, the Europa and Drachenfels shards have been published with the Age of Shadows code, and hundred and hundreds of eager players have been logging onto those shards throughout the day. Both shards have been “full” for most of the day, so if you do find yourself unable to log into one of these shards, we ask that you please wait a few minutes and try again. We’re happy to see such tremendous interest in exploring these shards, but we also ask that players who may already be familiar with Malas & the AoS updates or who have already placed a house on any shard to refrain from visiting your European friends for a day or so. This should be especially helpful for residents of these shards who are looking to place houses and get situated in their new homes. Thank you! |
^ top-At least it isn't a mirror...
[Alexandra] March 7 - 3:12 PM EST | SunSword explained here earlier today ...
Europa is being hammered harder than any shard since the AoS launch, mostly because it is the last regular production shard with housing remaining.
There was a configuration problem early on that caused some stability problems, as a matter of fact, Drach also had this problem. Yet even though we fixed this problem, so many people are going to malas that the shard is becoming unresponsive.
As a result, we are going to put in even harsher simultaneous user limits than we have for all the other shards until the peak demand tapers off. If this doesn't solve the problem, we will have to put in some new code to limit the number of people on the Malas subserver itself.
These two things will make the shard stable, but unfortunately at the same time will limit the number of people that can use it.
I know some of you have suggested that we prevent non-Euro players from logging into the shards, but at the moment, that's no possible, although I've considered it and looked into it.
--
SunSword
Producer, Ultima Online |
^ top-Lockdowns and Secures - Some Helpful Hints
[Alexandra] March 7 - 3:02 PM EST | FYI this afternoon..
With the ability to customize and place new homes, many players have been very busy relocating items as they switch residences or redecorate their rooms to match the new theme of their customized house. While doing any kind of redecorating or item relocation, there are a few things that everyone should keep in mind to lessen the likelihood of misplacing or losing objects -- some of the items in this list are known issues that we're working on, while the rest is simply good advice for any homeowner.
Read the rest here ! |
^ top- Have You Been Blackholed?
[Alexandra] March 7 - 11:48 AM EST | On FYI this morning ...
If you’ve just logged into UO and found yourself standing in a safe place other than where you logged out, don’t panic. You were probably just saved from being trapped in a “black hole.”
Our new “anti-blackholing” workaround is being implemented on all AoS-enabled shards. When you’re logging in, it detects whether your game client is about to be overwhelmed with an excessive amount of information (such as nearby many vendor malls). Instead of crashing and leaving your character stranded in a location that won’t allow you to log in, you’ll get automatically teleported, or “telestormed,” to a new, safe location. (By the way, all of the Felucca locations are safe for both blue and red characters.)
You’ll know you’ve been telestormed because of the new location and a system message notation, but there won’t be any special fanfare or special effects. Your pets will also telestorm out of that location. If your pet isn’t right next to you upon login and try using your Crystall Ball of Pet Summoning to retrieve them. (Note: Because of Ilshenar’s special teleporting rules, you won’t be able to retrieve your pet while in this facet—simply change facets and try summoning it again.)
A truer fix for blackholing is still in the works. Once we eliminate the problem altogether, this telestorming workaround will no longer be needed. But, in the meantime please be cognizant of where you’re logging out—super-sized vendor malls and houses with enormous amounts of hoarded loot can be the most troublesome areas. We’ll keep you updated on this issue; stay tuned to FYI for further information! |
^ top-Log of the eighty-sixth UOHoC chat
[Prophet] March 7 - 9:25 AM EST | Go here and read it. You know you want to. Then go here and comment on it.
*goes to be sneaky and read it at work*
eof |
^ top-AoS Shards Publish Updates
[Alexandra] March 6 - 9:38 PM EST | On FYI tonight....
We’re happy to announce the following fixes are now currently live on all AoS-enable shards:
- A number of server optimizations and fixes. Note: this includes a fix for the largest cause of shard lag & instability.
- Customized house doors will no longer become “static” and unusable. This fix will also retroactively fix any doors currently affected by this issue.
- A fix for the Lake Superior-only issue regarding the inability to ban from customizable houses.
Additionally, the fix listed below—already available on the Atlantic shard—will begin being implemented on all AoS-enabled shards beginning tomorrow.
- Characters that are confirmed to be "blackholed" will automatically teleport to a "safe location," along with their mounts and any of their nearby pets.
As stated in an “earlier FYI, Europa and Drachenfels will be receiving the AoS code tomorrow (CST), and this publish will include all the previously mentioned AoS updates. |
^ top-Helios wants to know ...
[Alexandra] March 6 - 2:25 PM EST | In this thread on the official UO.com Boards , Helios is trying to satisfy his personal curiosity !i.e. He's not implying any feature/code changes)...
I was wondering what, if any, changes you might have made to your character templates since AOS?
What's your favorite PvP template? I've always enjoyed the PvP dynamic and am very curious about your post AOS PvP experience.
How about your favorite PvM template? Cause sometimes you just want to beat stuff up!
What tactics work well for your template?
If you were to build a new character from scratch, would you chose a different template?
How do you use your equipment to augment your character template? Or do you?
Thanks for reading my very mundane post! :-)
- Titan Helios
"There are no limitations to the potential of the Self"
Go post here this will be an interesting thread ;) |
^ top-Slayer Weapon Enhancement Guide By Gyb
[Nieves] March 6 - 8:33 AM EST | I've been beating my head into a wall lately trying to decide what ingots to imbue into the magic weapons I'm finding, so I finally decided to buckle down and make a chart. For slayer weapons the choice of ingot should be fairly easy, since you want to match up the lowest resist for the creature the weapon is alligned against.
Want to read more?
Hasta. |
^ top-Another Nerf?
[Nieves] March 5 - 10:05 PM EST | You know about the pets?
You know about the Jhelom Fighting Pits and the Golems?
You know about the steeper requirements for plate armor?
Did you know about gating when heavy?
Hasta. |
^ top-Europe Enters the Age of Shadows
[Alexandra] March 5 - 6:57 PM EST | This evenning on FYI:
It’s time for Europa and Drachenfels to join the rest of the world in the Age of Shadows! To coincide with the “in-store” date for the Age of Shadows expansion in Europe, we will be publishing the Europa and Drachenfels shards with the Age of Shadows code this week.
Europa and Drachenfels will be taken offline to begin the publish at 7:00 pm CST on March 6th (which is 1:00 AM on March 7th GMT), and the publish is expected to take anywhere from 5 – 9 hours, depending on whether any issues arise during the publish process. This publish will also include all updates released to Ultima Online since we started publishing Age of Shadows to our shards in February.
The Early Settler promotional items (the Miniature House Collectible and Personal Bless Deed) will be available on both European shards from March 7th until March 25th.
Once Europa and Drachenfels have received Age of Shadows, the only remaining shards will be Siege Perilous and Mugen, and we will provide more information on the schedule for those shards as soon as we have it. |
^ top-Possibly UO2?
[JC_The_Builder] March 5 - 6:48 PM EST | Liquid development had an interesting post on their site today about them working with OSI.
Origin Systems, an Electronic Arts owned developer, has contracted Liquid Development for the past 2 years as their exclusive art provider on for their Ultima Online line of products. Our relationship with Origin Systems began with a contract to design and create the characters for Harry Potter Online, and then progressed forward as a full content provider for UO: Lord Blackthorne's Revenge, UO: Age of Shadows, and now their next generation release of the UO franchise, due out in 2004.
But it got even more interesting when the last line, the part about it due out in 2004 was removed. Someone let the cat out of the bag. Talk about it Here. |
^ top-Electronic Arts consolidates online unit
[Alexandra] March 5 - 1:02 PM EST | The San Jose Business Journal reports:
Facing mounting losses -- some $300 million so far -- video game maker Electronic Arts Inc. is folding its online unit into its core publishing business. Efforts had been unsuccessful to spin off the EA.com unit.
Despite being scaled back, Redwood City-based EA says the online efforts will be maintained at current levels.
Electronic Arts says it will take a charge of $55 million to $75 million in the quarter ending March 31 in writing down the assets of EA.com. Part of that reflects the costs of consolidating the online functions into one studio in Los Angeles.
The unit offers subscription-based gaming for complex multiplayer games such as "Ultima Online" and "The Sims Online."
"Ultima Online" is the company's most successful online offering, with some 220,000 people each paying $10 a month to play the game
Cynthe(Community Manager,ORIGIN Systems)remarked on the UO.com Boards :
By the way, in case anyone's wondering... UO is fine. This restructuring is happening way higher than we are, so we're still doing our thing - we're just part of the core EA unit now, as opposed to EA.com.
Cynthe |
^ top-Publish - Atlantic Shard
[Alexandra] March 5 - 12:41 PM EST | Posted to FYI:
We'll be taking down the Atlantic shard at 2:00pm CST today in order to publish an AoS update. We expect the downtime to last no longer than 60 minutes. We regret the necessity of taking down the shard outside of normal maintenance hours, and we apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
This publish will contain the following fix:
- Characters that are confirmed to be "blackholed" will automatically teleport to a "safe location," along with their mounts and any of their nearby pets.
- A number of server optimizations and fixes. (Note: This is already active on all AoS-active shards other than Atlantic.)
- Customized house doors will no longer become “static” and unusable. This fix will also retroactively fix any doors currently affected by this issue. (Note: This is already active on all AoS-active shards other than Atlantic.)
We will monitor the shard closely, and barring any issues, will update again once we have determined a release schedule for the remaining shards.
Note: Characters that log in with spellbooks (“classic” spellbooks only, not runebooks, Necromancy, or Chivalry books) in their bankboxes may see them transferred into their backpacks, but if their backpacks are full these spellbooks will subsequently drop to the ground. If this occurs, it will only happen the first time that character logs in after this publish.
edit : They added more stuff.. |
^ top-Lusty's Guide to Doom
[Nieves] March 5 - 9:27 AM EST | A work in progress, Lusty has done some great work on his experience with the dungeon Doom and provides handy tips, and information on that 'hardest dungeon in UO'.
Check it out here.
Hasta. |
^ top-Artifact Hunters !
[Alexandra] March 4 - 10:18 PM EST | | The UO.com Playguide has been updated with information on Artifacts. If you want to find out more about Midnight Bracers or the Ornament of the Magician, Stealable Items and Doom Boss Loot Click Here ! |
^ top-A list of known bugs
[JC_The_Builder] March 4 - 8:21 PM EST | | OSI has posted a list of known issues/bugs on their forums. Since the list is very large I have put it in a post located Here . |
^ top-Lake Superior’s Publish Update
[Alexandra] March 3 - 9:11 PM EST | On FYI tonight :
We will be publishing an update to the Lake Superior shard that will be active after tomorrow morning’s maintenance period.
This publish will contain the following fixes:
- A number of server optimizations and fixes. Note: this includes a fix for the largest cause of shard lag & instability.
- Customized house doors will no longer become “static” and unusable. This fix will also retroactively fix any doors currently affected by this issue.
- A fix for the Lake Super-only issue regarding the inability to ban from customizable houses.
If no issues arise, we anticipate rolling this out to all other AoS-active shards, except for the Atlantic shard, as of their respective Wednesday morning maintenance periods. (We are currently monitoring the Atlantic shard regarding other fixes, and if no issues arise there then Atlantic will also receive this publish).
Note: Characters that log in with spellbooks (“classic” spellbooks only, not runebooks, Necromancy, or Chivalry books) in their bankboxes may see them transferred into their backpacks, but if their backpacks are full these spellbooks will subsequently drop to the ground. |
^ top-Lake Superior’s Publish
[Alexandra] March 3 - 5:09 PM EST | This afternoon on FYI :
As stated in our FYI from last week, we published a few fixes to the Lake Superior shard on Friday, and had planned to publish to all shards this morning – provided that no unforeseen issues arose. However, an issue did arise involving banning from customized housing, so we’ve postponed releasing this publish to all AoS-enabled shards until this is resolved. Depending on testing, that could be as early as tonight, but we can’t confirm a time until the testing is complete. Please stay tuned to FYI for further updates on this fix. |
^ top-Vendors to remain broken a little longer ...
[Alexandra] March 3 - 5:04 PM EST | Greywolfe posted the following ..
We are aware that players have recently been having some difficulties with vendors. All of the things listed below are known issues and are being looked at. Unfortunately due to our current bug fix schedule we aren't going to be able to address any of those issues for a little while longer. Please list any other vendor issues that you might be aware of, below.
1.)Various items that list no price but are buyable (seems to affect all vendors). Some items:
- Statues
- Seeds
- Thorns
- Decorative and live plants
- A pile of snow
- Fishing nets
- A water-stained SOS (out of the bottle)
2. Vendors banned by changing house foundation
3. Vendors have a weight limit
4. Some Vendors don't seem to be charging their owners for their services
If you seem to have a problem or concern about your vendor('s) post it here on the official UO.com Boards ! |
^ top-Powergaming Necromancy
[Nieves] March 3 - 3:04 PM EST | Nieves,
Spent Saturday and three hours Sunday morning through an ice storm attempting to GM Necromancy and here is what I found out and did to GM it. After 30 skill (or buying it from a necromancer) you have to succeed in your casting to gain. Yes, 8x8 does work with necromancy but since you cannot cast on the tillerman and it is painful to cast some of the spells on yourself I mostly used the transformation spells or the one area of effect spell. I changed spells when I really wasn’t gaining as quickly as I was previous.
30-54 Pain Strike- 750 GD PI
54-75.2 Horrific Beast 1000 BW DB
75.2-81.7 Wither 1500 NC GD PI
81.4-100.0 Lich Form 3500 NC GD DB
I didn't keep exact numbers of many regeants I used just kept track of how many trips I made to the bank for 250 of each regeant type for the spell. I'm no math genius and I was trying to do this as quickly as possible.
About what it took me to GM-
Grave Dust- 5750
Pig Iron- 2250
Batwing- 1000
Daemon's Blood- 4500
Nox Crystal- 5000
There might be a better but I threw this together adhoc and I'm now a GM necromancer. Thought this information might be good for all the powergamers out there.
Keep up the great work with UOPG!
My regards,
Treadeau Du’rome
Order of the Ebonskull
Atlantic
Thanks bud!
Hasta. |
^ top-UOPG Question of The Week - 03/03/02
[Nieves] March 3 - 10:56 AM EST | Ok, since I missed last week, there are two sets of questions this week.
Set one:
Has the item property system made UO combat better? Why or why not?
Is this why you bought the AOS box?
------------
Set two:
What's your impression of the smithing and tailoring systems?
Have you experienced an increase in demand in your orders? Or has it gone down?
Talk about it!
Hasta. |
^ top-Best Loot In The Game
[Nieves] March 3 - 7:49 AM EST | Isn't on a specific monster or a in a dungeon.
It's in a chest.
That is all.
kthx
Note: This does not include artifacts.
Hasta. |
^ top-MR. TACT READ THIS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
[Alexandra] March 2 - 8:28 PM EST | Just found this little gem while I was reading the UO.com Boards !
Mr. Tact (Lead Server Engineer, Ultima Online) and well respected Dev Team member responded to a post titled "Cynthe, Greywolfe PLEASE Answer!!!!!" with the following ......
It's a bug. It will be fixed.
BTW, the board TOS frowns on bumping, it's a good way to have your thread deleted. And bumping your OWN post is, well, tacky.
A better way to get your thread read is by being clear in your subject. Can't speak for other developers, but I personally tend to gravitate more toward threads with subject lines like "Problem watering plants while locked-down" than "OMFG!!!!! OSI U SUXX0R!!!" or "Fix this now!!" (or "MrTact READ THIS", for that matter). Not because I don't feel people have a right to express their feelings on the board, but because I CANNOT read every single thread, so I usually scan for ones that are most relevent to me, and those subjects don't tell me anything about what the problem is.
Just my $0.02
MrTact
and to his $0.02. let me add my $0.01..
Its Sunday folks ..the man is at work ! I think he deserves some major praise from the playerbase.
He has been posting updates all day and responding to us with answers to our concerns !
Mr.Tact from us to you .." Thank You !" |
^ top-LS, current Publish, upcoming Publishes
[Alexandra] March 2 - 5:06 PM EST | Just a quick Newsflash ...
Mr.Tact stated here :
So obviously, we found an issue with the current publish. We have a fix for this issue (house banning problem) and are testing it as I speak. Don't have an ETA on this yet but I am hopeful we can publish it to LS tonight for tomorrow's maintenance. We will not be pushing the current publish to the rest of the world until this fix is in. That means the rest of the world will get the current publish no sooner than tomorrow night for Tuesday's maintenance.
The NEXT publish will be the return of the blackhole bandaid fix. This is the feature that teleports you to a safe location if you would normally have been been blackholed on login. The side effect of nuking the character's stable (the reason we originally reverted this publish) has been addressed. This publish also includes the crash fix we hotfixed to Atlantic Thursday night. This is in testing and on tx5 currently. We hope to have this on one shard tomorrow or Tuesday.
MrTact |
^ top-UOPG Publish March 2nd, 2002
[Nieves] March 2 - 12:23 PM EST | As mentioned yesterday, the melee skills have been updated with AOS info. The Special Move page has been added. You can find it under Strategy now.
Today I added Aryn's Chivalry and Gyb's study on Meditation and Focus in the essay section.
Hasta. |
^ top-Ultima Online: Age Of Shadows Review
[Alexandra] March 1 - 4:56 PM EST | Michael Lafferty of GameZone Online posted his review of Ages of Shadows rating it overall a 7.2 .
You can read his review here!
Other then that I wish you all a great weekend :) |
^ top-Oaks Interview
[Alexandra] March 1 - 4:33 PM EST | The Pacific Rangers Council had the opportunity to ask Designer Oaks a few questions before AOS was released . Here is a snip of the interview ..
Question:We know the poisoning skill is treated differently as per the design document for publish 16, but for other skills (tactics, anatomy, eval int etc.) do pets get the same bonuses as players do? If not, how are they applied on top of the base damage potential? Essentially, what I am asking here is: What bonus do pets get from higher anatomy, tactics, eval etc.?
Oaks: With the exception of poisoning, skills and stats are applied the same for pets as they are for players.
You can read the complete interview Here !
For real this time .. I was teasing before ...*hides* |
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