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May 2002 News:
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^ top-ImIsCoR's State Of UO Address
[Nieves] May 31 - 9:20 PM EDT | Game-An active interest or pursuit, especially one involving competitive engagement or adherence to rules. Lets look at this carefully. What does UO need to do to be a "game". First it needs a crowd that has an active interest or pursuit in it. Second, it needs competetive engagement. Third, adherence to rules. When a huge corporation such as EA has a product as successful as UO, they must be careful with what they do to please the general public. If you make something that pleases one group you may be successful, as long as it doesnt displease the others. The problem UO is faced with is that of trying to appeal to all the different groups of players.
Publish 16 is a massive publish that has to appeal to several groups, and in some cases it does. Furthermore, one could also raise the
argument that this is an update for the Feluccian, or the unwanted child so to speak.
In the past we have seen several updates that target the majority
of players(Trammel Players), such as the noto system, the invention of Trammel, and so on. Now that Publish 16 is coming out the UO community will finally have an update for the more aggressive players.
When UO had to decide what goes in the update they made many poor decisions because they wanted to please the Trammel players(who the majority of dont like getting pked and/or fighting). These decisions include the looting rights and the 30 minute rule. These two rules are the heart of the problems with publish 16.
Think of a pker(or any pvper for that matter), as a car. What does every car need to run? Gas. Think of reagents and weapons as gas. For a mage pk or pvper the main thing they are in constant need of is reagents. For a towny pvper they need new weapons(more powerful weapons hopefully). Reagents or weapons are not on the loot list for a blue who dies. This would be like running a car that needs Supreme Unleaded gas with diesel. This simply does not work. The pvp system that is intended for the dungeons will fail miserably because the pkers will lose interest. If one has to refresh regs every ten minutes because the people they are killing do not have any to give they will soon tire of fighting. The fighting is the essence of fun
for the group that this publish is targetting. The REASON they are allowing powerscrolls and pking in this area is to catalyze the growth of the pvp scene on the shards. The reason for this is because back in the day (97-98) when there was pking and dread lords, everyone loved UO. The reason they loved Uo was because there was a risk involved with going out, and fighting is the ultimate game.
There is no thrill greater than fighting another human being. Killing monsters gets old very quickly. UO has finally realized that the thing we need as a human race is the chance to challenge one another in combat on this game. This is the true competition that is
necessary to make a game fun. More fun=more money for UO. If they plan to put in this poor decision of having no regs or weps loot then the system will fail.
Factions combat failed because all the pvpers did not like having to wait 20 minutes after each death. The Faction sizes compared to the first weeks of factions are considerably low, b/c the system failed. If UO does not change the 30 minute rule or loot rule Publish 16 will ultimately fail and we will all then wait for a publish 17 that is designed to introduce something to replace publish 16.
Regardless of what UO attempts to do they will never be able to please every audience with their updates. The only thing that we can hope for is that they realize their mistakes before we all get tired of these fiascos and quit.
-ImIsCoR
Hasta. |
^ top-Breaking It Down For Ya
[Malis] May 31 - 5:22 PM EDT | Resource and
Crafting Changes
- Several new rewards have been added to the Blacksmith’s
bulk order system.
- Prospector’s Tool.
- Powder of Temperament.
- Blacksmith Scrolls of Power
- Gargoyle’s Pickaxe.
- Blacksmith bulk order system changes include:
- The reward value for items with an exceptional
requirement has been increased.
- Large bulk orders will now be received for sets of
weapons.
- Grandmaster smiths will now have a greater chance of
getting bulk order deeds with color requirements.
- Players will now be able to collect the following new
stackable resource types.
- Spined, Horned, and Barbed leather
- Bones
- Players with an appropriate amount of tailoring skill will
now be able to craft bone armor.
- Players on shards with Siege Perilous or IGR rulesets will
now be able to receive bulk order deeds.
- Armor crafted with colored ore now yields better armor
ratings the more rare the ore type.
More rewards is always good in my opinion, the one thing I
really like about this is the Blacksmith scrolls of power
granted this may make ASH a little cheaper, but I don't see this
hurting anyone just helping with the painstaking task of making
plate armor.
Better BODS also a plus, finally those damn weapon BODS may be
worth doing. Hopefully that full set of shadow ringmail armor
will get you more than a damn pair of ringmail mining gloves now as well.
New leather armor I like that. The whole bone
armor thing, well unless they increased the AR on it who gives a
damn its crap.
Love the fact that higher range armor values will give more
armor, maybe there will be a use for dull copper ingots now.
Tailoring Bulk Order Deeds
- Tailor NPCs will now issue bulk order quests to players
- Several new items have been introduced to Britannia as
rewards for completing tailoring bulk order deeds.
- Special cloth (20 new hues).
- Brown Bear Rug.
- Polar Bear Rug.
- Flower Tapestry.
- Small Stretched Hide.
- Medium Stretched Hide.
- Specially Hued Sandals.
- Tailoring Scrolls of Power.
Yippie More pixel crack, but hey what ever makes ya happy.
I like the Tailoring Scrolls of power. The
stretched hides, I find this funny more than anything else
all you fools that bought that crap in chests that you can't
move now enjoy your junk.
Barding Changes
- New items related to the Bard profession can be found
and/or crafted
- Exceptional instruments
- “Slayer” instruments
- Fire Horn
- Many changes have been made to the various Bard skills.
These changes can be summarized as follows:
- Difficulty-based barding
- Target limitations (targets cannot be influenced by more
then one of each bard ability at a time)
- Distance checks
- Line-of-sight checks
- Provoke changes
- Creature damage scaled based upon difficulty level
(weaker creatures hit harder than normal, stronger
creatures hit more lightly than normal).
- Peacemaking changes
- Target-specific and area-effect functionality.
- Enticement changes
- Skill changes to “Discordance”
- Discordance skill reduces power of NPC targets.
My main character for about two years is/was a bard so don't
even get me started on this one, granted I hate these changes but
I do see why OSI is putting them in though. Its too little too
late, unless they put some killer gold sinks in to suck in the
gold that's already out there.
Taming Changes
- Changes have been made to the animal taming and pet
control system. These changes are summarized as follows:
- Creature control “slots”.
- Improved pet training.
- Animal Lore functionality improvements.
- Taming process changes.
- Inability to tame “trapped” creatures.
- Creature taming skill-loss penalties.
- Taming difficulty changes.
- Pet loyalty changes.
- Pet behavior changes.
- Pack instinct.
- Pet bonding.
- Pet resurrection.
- Stable slot changes.
- Summoned creature changes
- A new tame-able creature named “a fire steed” will be
found roaming the lands of Britannia.
These may actually make me wanna make a tamer and not hate
everyone that plays one. A good thing for the few
weird people out there that actually bond with their pets no
more crying when the damn thing dies, just res it and nurse it
back to health kinda reminds ya of those damn pocket pets they
had in the mid 90's
Changes to Felucca
- A large number of changes have been made with respect to
the Felucca facet. These changes include:
- Changes to the Felucca dungeon and Lost Land player
interaction rules
- Changes to the conditions of the “Murderer” status
- Changes to the conditions of the “Criminal” status
- Changes to the conditions of thievery
- Improved resources in Felucca
A thief will be a lot more fun to play
in my opinion if you steal and someone gets ballsie enough to
wanna get it back by attempting to own your ass, now you have the
right to show em not to mess with a thug.
I'm one of the few people that actually likes the pk thing,
granted the loot would be nice to get from killing your prey,
unless your poor as shit you enjoy the hunt much more than the
loot from pking. The 30 min timer
does suck though.
Housing Changes
- Houses will now auto-refresh under a more limited set of
conditions.
I like the auto refresh but come the freak on if someone has
houses on all shards let them auto refresh all of them don't
make em pick just one. At least they are allowing those people to do it the old way.
Guaranteed Gain System
The core of this system is the guarantee that if you play
"normally", you will gain skill.
- Players will continue to be able to gain skill when
successfully performing an action, with the following
additions:
- Under this system, if the player has not gained a point
after successfully performing an action within a specific
time period, the next successful attempt will result in a
skill point.
- There will be a limit on how many skill points a player
can earn through the GGS during each day.
- This will not affect the current use-based skill check
system. Players that reach this limit can continue to gain
skill through the old system.
- This system will replace the old ‘Powerhour’ method of
gaining skill.
Many see this as the death of powergaming, I don't how ever a
few skills will get racked over the coals by this, but for the
most part everything is still doable it'll just take longer.
The only people I see this hurting is the new players since they
won't be able to make characters as quickly to compete. Some see
that as good, I see that as a double edged sword, On one hand you
have your player base that will take that much more pride in
building a character so they can be leeto like everyone else,
but on the other hand you will have those that say this
sucks I'm going to play something else.
Evil-in-a-Can Changes
- Many changes have been made to the “Evil-in-a-Can” spawn
system. These changes are summarized as follows:
- Champion status shrines.
- Undead creature group.
- New, dynamic, Felucca spawn locations.
- “The Harrower” super-champion monster.
- New paperdoll titles.
- Monster spawn changes.
- Spawn timing changes.
- Champion spawn changes.
- Creature group changes.
I like the idea of bringing these to Felucca but the rewards could really use some work.
Like everything else most people take advantage of a system before osi notices its broken.
Changes to Combat
- Unarmed “to-hit” changes (chance to get hit while unarmed
is now the better of either Wrestling skill, or an average of
Anatomy & Evaluate Intelligence).
- Tactics will not influence damage when above 110.0 skill
as much as it previously did.
- Players will no longer be able to “run away” from
arrows/bolts.
- The dexterity stat will no longer affect at what point in
the swing animation a hit or miss occurs.
- Mace weapons will now do less damage to armor then before
(but still more then other weapon types).
- Staff weapons will do the extra stamina damage that “true”
maces do (they still do not get the extra armor damage that
“true” maces get).
- The damage done by the earthquake spell has been
increased.
- The 8th circle summoning spells will now have a normal
spellcasting delay.
- Purple potions deal extra damage based upon the thrower’s
alchemy skill.
- Ethereal mounts will now have a 3-second “summoning”
delay.
- Bolas will now deal damage when successfully dismounting
their target.
- Bolas will no longer require the tactics skill to use.
OMG I love these to tell ya the truth, I was actually thinking
of leaving UO but these changes right here might keep me around
the whole anatomy+eval/2=Chance to hit unarmed just makes me
feel all warm in fuzzy inside. I can see a lot of new character
designs coming out of this. I don't fight with magic
weapons so the tactics thing is no biggie. URks are just
gonna clean up on Great Lakes since you won't be able to run
away from arrows anymore be afraid be very afraid.
The dex thing kinda ticks me off that was one of the few
skill full things about playing a dexxer there is when you would
take a step back as your target swung missing his hit then
run in and hit him rinse wash repeate. I don't use
mace weapons so no comment.
EQ spell increased I can see it now three pks in t2a fel all
have protect on run up to a group of 8 blues they all cast eq at
the same time, three red lined pks 8 dead blues.
Purple Pots Alchy pk all the way.
Ethy's having a 3 second summoning delay umm okay no biggie.
The bolas aww the bolas I love it hopefully this will cut
down a lot on horse and bring back foot fights.
Changes to New-Player Quests
- A new “quest button” has been added to notify the questor
of any quest status changes.
- All quest text has been refined, shortened, and updated
with links to the Codex of Wisdom.
- Several quest steps have been improved and/or simplified.
- Quest monster AI has been improved.
- All quest gumps have been visually and functionally
improved.
Um okay
Miscellaneous Changes
- Players will now be able to gain in the
Justice virtue.
A new category of items will be found in Britannia.
- Skill Scrolls.
- Stat Scrolls.
Player “bones” will now follow the same rules as player
corpses for being looted.
Furniture dye tubs will now be usable by appropriate
players when locked down or when in that player’s backpack.
“Young” characters will no longer be able to travel to
Felucca. Young characters logging into Felucca will be sent to
Trammel.
Justice virtue is a joke in my opinion because it relates
directly to the skill scrolls which are evil no one should have
over 100 resist 120 resist I have a feeling poison will be
resisted every time.
Player bones will follow same rules as player corpses for
being looted = you want loot go grey bitch
No more youngs in Felucca good they don't belong there and
Fel house fall camping will be what it should be one big ass
fight.
Bug Fixes
- Sandstone houses will no longer have a “hole” in one of
the wall segments.
- Items should no longer “fall” through the steps of a log
cabin.
- All items that can be used for crafting will list their
number of remaining charges.
- A bug that could result in players being alive on one
subserver and dead on another has been fixed.
- Players will now receive a message when the archprotection
spell fails to take effect on a target in range.
- Stablemasters will no longer spam the names of their
inventory when the stablemaster is created.
- Bolas will now properly dismount players on Unicorns,
Ki-rins, and Ethereal Mounts.
- Players will no longer be able to use items that are
stored on stabled pack animals.
- Some misleading messages in the new-player tutorial area
have been fixed.
- A bug that allowed players to enter houses they were
banned from has been fixed.
- Players accepting a guild war invitation will now receive
the correct message.
- Gypsies in Illshenar will no longer report incorrect
inventory descriptions.
- Players will no longer be able to steal from Guards.
- A bug that could prevent locked-down forges from working
correctly has been fixed.
- Thread will now work correctly when used on a loom.
- Players will no longer be able to use items of
teleportation to gain unauthorized access to faction
strongholds.
- Forges will now play the appropriate sound under all
conditions.
- Some vague Bulk Order Deed text has been clarified.
- Players will no longer be able to use health potions
unless they are damaged.
- Items that are un-equipped while the wearer is already at
their item limit (125 items) will drop to the ground.
- Various erroneous system messages have been fixed.
- Players killed by guards will have their hit points set to
zero under all circumstances.
- Players will no longer be able to gain the snooping skill
by using the skill on barkeeps.
- Treasure chests will no longer appear below ground level
or upon invalid terrain.
- Players with over 100.0 mining skill will be able to use
mining specialization books.
- Various “rares” that were improperly renamed to seem like
normal items will regain their proper “rare” names.
About time they fixed sandstones hell I mean they only been
out for two years. Woooo Whoo bolas work on everything now
lets see you son of a bitching Nightmare riding ass holes run
past me now. Bunch of other misc. crap, and all
you rare collectors out there get to have new names to make ya
happy.
Malis Out |
^ top-Various News
[Nieves] May 31 - 4:24 PM EDT | This thread is the official UOPG thread for Publish 16. Please put all your thoughts, comments, finding to that thread. All other posts will start disappearing in a day.
Also, I am hearing that the rare the ore type, the higher the AR it gives to armor. My question is, does this affect shields? If yes, I am thinking Shadow Armor with Valorite Shields will be good for parriers. Cheap and effective. And it looks kind of cool. Kind of.
And the smithy business for armor will skyrocket. For those that buy their armor, expect the prices of the armor to go up. People are greedy like that.
Or, smart players won't buy armor (which is sad for players that play to craft). They will mine or buy the ingots they need and stockpile, then get their 7XGM Mules out and just make their own armor sets.
Someone find out for me if the higher AR for ore type affects shields?
A note: This sucks. Why? I am hearing that a full Valorite Set will have more AR than a Invulnerable armor. No, that's not why it sucks. It sucks because YOU CAN'T LOOT IT IN CERTAIN AREAS OF TRAMMEL! WHERE IS THE RISK VERSUS REWARD IN THAT!?
Also, I am hearing people mumbling about Macers being nerfed. Yes, Macing weapons won't have as much oomph which really really really bothers me. But the Qstaff sucks stamina now (even though lots of damage still = stamina drain) and that is good. If you can't run (and are out of Refresh Potions), what does it matter how high your AR is?
Anyway, I know you have been waiting for my review of what's in the FYI release for Publish 16, but I am waiting for more reports from various players on what's going on with people on Test Center 2 before giving a good, experienced, write up.
Wait for it.
Hasta. |
^ top-Initial Bard Testing
[Nissa] May 31 - 11:13 AM EDT | I logged into Test Center 2 last night to test the new bard changes. Unfortunately lag was terrible, especially in the towns where every single person (including myself) would dump all the excess stuff out of their bank boxes. There had to be over 300 moonstones all over the place. Note to OSI: Chests for dumping garbage would be a great help. While not everyone would use them, a lot of people would and this would really help out with the lag. At one point, I was taking a step every 10 seconds or so. Brought back horrible memories of playing Chesapeake in late 98/early 99 when every day was like that!!
After spending some time making armor, musical instruments, buying a horse, getting spells setup and making sure macros were all set, I was ready to go.
My template was 7x GM (magery, meditation, magic resist, provoking, enticement, peacemaking, and muscianship). My bard character on Chessie is 6x GM with 89 enticement, so I wanted to play a character that I currently play.
I really wanted to test dragons, but with the lag and my lack of time to walk to Destard, Wind, or figure out how to get to the Deamon Temple, I decided to hope into the gate over to the Valor Shrine in Ilshenar.
I first headed over to the Cyclops camp. I successfully provoked 2 cyclops. First noticable difference is that information now appears on the screen above the monsters. It indicates how many tiles away the monsters are from the bard. It displays the the combined skill of the 2 monsters.
In addition if you run off screen, there is a counter that appears on the screen indicating how long you have until the monsters stop fighting because you have broken LOS. There is a counter for each monster which appears every second counting down to 0. So if you have 5 monsters fighting and you invis or run off the screen, that counter could get quite large. When I get on again, I will test that further.
While the cyclops were fighting, I used the discordance skill (which still appears in the skill list as enticement) on one of the cyclops. If discordance is used on a monster, it will now have the graphics that appear when you cast greater heal or reactive armor. That twinkling (for lack of a better adjective) will continue on that monster until it dies. When discordance is used, a message appears that the strength of that monster has diminished. Once discordance is used, especially when provoking 2 of the same monsters, there is a difference in the time it takes for one to kill the other.
An ettin wandered onto the screen and I used peacemaking on him. It will take a little while to get used to clicking on monsters after using the skill. However, it is very cool to be able to stop one monster while the others continue fighting. Nice added feature that will make peacemaking a more useful tool for the bard.
A titan spawned while working on these monsters. I provoked a cyclops onto the titan and then used discordance on the titan. The cyclops had no problem with him.
I also provoked a drake onto a wyvern. Failed the first 2 times I tried, but was successful on the third try. I then used discordance on the drake and the wyvern then proceeded to kick his ass.
All in all, my first night out wasn't that bad. But I didn't really get into any big bad boys. I simply ran out of time and was too tired to stay up any longer.
Tonight I will do some testing with a treasure hunter using the same template that I am currently using to see how I do on each level. And if time allows, I would like to test my bard character on tougher monsters with a more intense spawn. |
^ top-Get Resist Done Now
[Nieves] May 31 - 6:30 AM EDT | Yes. Creatures summoned with Summon Creature, Blade Spirits, and Energy Vortex each take up 1 control slot. Summon Daemon takes up 5, Summon Fire Elemental takes up 4, Summon Water Elemental takes up 3, Summon Earth Elemental takes 2, and Summon Air Elemental takes up 2.
Also, the 8th circle summons (except EV) are much more powerful than before, and much more difficult to dispel. While the Earth Elemental and Air Elemental take up the same number of slots, the Earthy is more melee oriented, and the Air is a spellcaster type.
Oaks
Oh yes, Publish 16 is the serious Nerf Stick.
On the plus side: The mages among us will care to read this. Especially you, Nisse.
Here are my Summon Daemon findings for TC2.
You cannot hurt eachother in trammel, at all. (didnt try with a guild)
Their HP still sucks.
However.. on the offense... wow.
All I can say is thank you for fixing those daemons offensively.
You can only summon 1 daemon at a time. Didnt try to get an ele.
Daemons are trreated as normal reds, in that they can be guardwhacked.
They cast very fast, very smart and very furious. Their magic hits hard now. They meditate extremely fast, easily recovering an ebolt in a few seconds.
They no logner summon as "a lesser daemon". they now are randomly named a daemon name.
They have the flag [summoned] above their heads.
It has more of a realistic feel to actualyl summoning a demon.
You can quite easily PK someone who is on foot with a daemon now.
All they need is more HP, and they'd be great.. tho it is a most definate improvement.
Thanks Teich and Gloval.
UPDATE:Janos! An update on one of those Blacksmithing tools from a SP player! That prospectors tool? It is a large black smith hammer, mine was dyed dull copperish. You double click it, then click on mountains and it tell's you waht ore can be found there...oooooo...useful!
Actually, that is useful. Sometimes the spawn changes/moves. This will help those that are dedicated to mining. But, you only need one if it doesn't have charges.
A note: For those of you that like these items but would rather buy than make or earn them, do some research. You might find that you only need to do minimal work or that the amount someone is charging isn't what the item is worth (i.e.- 200,000 for a Dragon Smithy Hammer).
Hasta. |
^ top-Running A Website Isn't Free
[Nieves] May 30 - 9:45 PM EDT | Especially one as bandwidth hungry as UOPG.
UOPowergamers, as of tonight, has acquired a sponsor: UOEmporium.com.
You will notice their banner at the top, left and right of UOPG now.
As everyone knows, I don't bullshit or fuck around with bullshitters. Nieves has done business with folks from UOEmporium. Those guys are fair and stand up guys.
Give them a chance and do business with them.
They will provide you with smooth and honest business transactions and your business will help keep UOPowergamers.com on the Internet.
Hasta. |
^ top-As Great Lakes Turns
[Lealla] May 30 - 6:58 PM EDT | Humph! And they say roleplay is dead! Well folks I can prove them wrong!
From our friends over at The Daily Herald we have these little goodies!
A few days ago, Lord Rath Stonesoul and Brother Marcus went to Britain to see if they could help the Order of the Silver Serpent and the long dead Edguardo.
As many people know, a warrior named Anton whom is a member of the Order of the Silver Serpent had been acting as if he was Edguardo, running around in yellow and blue, not to mention trying to cast the spells of a powerful mage. Much mystery has swirled around the death of Edguardo. There have been ghostly sightings in Nujel'm, strange occurences in Serpent's Holds, and other things that have led some people to believe the man is still alive.
It was just a few months ago that a crowd dismissed Anton's words of Basil and Edguardo being supernaturally binded.
the story continues Here
Hmmmmm, Shall we see what else is brewing at The Daily Herald
Can the rumors really be true! The end of The Cult of the Black Dragon is at hand!
The end finally came to the Cult of the Black Dragon in the year 368. Nero, General of the Order of the Silver Serpent, finally broke the camel's back. After almost thirty years, the General's campaign to destroy the Cult came to an end.
The time had come for General Nero to strike a death blow the Cult. After the long siege of Serpent's Hold, the power of the Cult had been drained to just a fourth of what it had been. With the orcs occupied by some new clan, the time was now.
Rumors abounded that they would try something else, so the decision was made to finally destroy them. The information that Rath Stonesoul and Brother Marcus had recieved from Antony only encouraged this action. Basil had something to do with the ressurection of Edguardo, and the only way to find out would be to take his body and study it.
Troops from the Highland Guard, the Order of the Silver Serpent, and House Stonesoul amassed to attack. The army was split into two parts and moved from both Britain and Trinsic to trap the Cultists. Resistance was met at several points, but was quickly put down. It was clear that the Serpent's Hold Alliance had fared much better since the Serpent's Hold siege.
The story continues Here
It seems the folks over at the The Crusaders of Virtue and The Fallen are having some fun!
Alaric could not force the dreams from his head. They haunted him by day and by night now. It was as if a great need pulled him. The Angel Enclosed wanted to be found. The Book of Radiance screamed to be released from its coffin.
Alaric called all the Crusaders he could muster for another attempt at finding the Key of Antiquity; a few answered his call. "Razor! Thank ye for coming and Gilhoa thou art a ray of hope. Servious thou hast done well to us in all they commitments," Alaric greeted each as they walked into the Monastery of Rose. "Hail Papas!" Razor said as he took his hand and shook it hard, "I have yet to see any of the Fallen about in the woods today. Mayhaps we'll have more success than we did last time?" Gilhoa chimmed in by drawing her deadly katana, "Aye Cardinal," she nodded to Alaric as she continued, "But let them come. I haven't finished with them yet!" A smile stretched across her face. Servious stood and nodded while he tucked his hand into his reagent bag to count his magical herbs.
"Then let us be at it. Let us hasten to follow the map to the burried remains of another templar teasure," Alaric said with serious looking approval from the others, "Razor, ye have the map and ye have journeyed to scout the region. Are we ready to embark?" "Aye, Father, we art ready. The location is in a dense jungle. I saw no healers about so we shall be on our own, but we should be victorious."
Flashing gestures and sparks of power lit up the dim chamber as Razor opened a gate to the unknown. Gilhoa, Servious, Alaric and Razor entered to find themselves deep in the jungle. A quick patrol reinforced the danger. There were no healers for leagues. Razor went about his business to determine the exact location where the treasure was said to be burried. Servious, Gilhoa and Alaric scouted the area, careful of an attack by brigands, creatures of the dark or those of the Fallen.
The story continues Here
And Last but certainly not least the Ranger Enforcers of Sosaria seem to be having too much fun!!
Loren gave what seemed a difficult task. Rath Stonesoul would not be king.
While watching one of his 'political rallies', she talked to many in the crowd and listened as they murmured about Rath's associations with the Cult. Loren then watched as dark members of The Cult and The Temple lurked in the background. Then the dark ones showed their support publically for Rath.
That was enough for Loren.
A leader is needed for Brittania, but it would not be Rath. A King should not be influenced by dark or evil forces. The Balance must be maintained. And The Balance is upset if the King is but a puppet to the evil powers. The Order of The Silver Serpent is dealing with The Cult. Loren would have Rath dealt with herself.
Roxanne and her Enforcers found the Stonesoul headquarters empty. Looking up at the tower Roxanne spoke a simple phrase: "Burn it".
The doors were broken down and the Enforcers, Araxas and T'Koda entered and began speaking words of power. Walls of flame began to form and envelope the tower.
the story continues Here
Till Next Time...
Lealla |
^ top-And Down Comes The Nerf Stick
[Nieves] May 30 - 4:26 PM EDT | Read about it.
Think about it a bit.
Then wait for my breakdown of the whole system.
Hasta. |
^ top-Rebuttal To View From A Trammy
[Nieves] May 30 - 6:56 AM EDT | Actually much to my surprise this particular Trammie (Trammilite is my preferred term) has actually hit upon the truth. I'd have to agree with him on a couple of points. Most people assume that Trammel was created because of the 'pk problems in Fel' or the game was too hard etc .... but I think (yup my opinion so if ya don't think I'm right .. so what ? It's just an opinion after all) that Trammel was conceived due to this persons most hated thing about Fel. The griefers. Yes it's true that in the pre - Trammel days that a lot (probably most) large gatherings were indeed interrupted by griefers. If the event was an in-town one then thieves showed up, snooped everyone there, stole a few times, spammed etc. And god forbid the event was out of guard zone as this would most certainly welcome a gankfest if it was publicized.
I remember many of these events, including once at the Mages Tower on
Moonglow when they were holding a summoning contest. It was one of the first major events that I attended in game and it started out very cool.
Mages would pair off and summon an animal, whatever came forth had to be used against whatever the opposing mage summoned. The first two bouts were very cool and fun to watch. A chicken vs a bear .. haha .. stuff like that ... then in come the gankers and all hell breaks loose. Things don't get to me too much so I thought it was amusing as I helped take a couple out and then recalled out when I noticed that the mages had no clue how to successfully defend their tower against such an attack.
Another event that comes to mind was a wedding with the groom dressed in Valorite platemail and holding a glacial staff. (Now this was in the days when not everyone had 3-4 glacial staffs in their banks). The event was disrupted by a pk gang who killed everyone in the wedding party. When this news comes to air you just say "Well what did he expect? That's what he gets for wearing that stuff out of guard zone in Fel."
So Trammel came about, so people could role-play in peace. So people could walk into a dungeon entrance and not be greeted by firefields, poison fields and a small gang of pk's hiding inside the entrance. So the game would be 'easier' for the newer population entering the realm.
But here's the main point I wanted to make. The game's original rule-set was centered around the philosophy that people would 'police' the pk and griefer population by themselves. And this is where the logic failed. It was easy to organize a pk group, they all wanted to do it, weren't afraid to lose the karma and their stuff, and worked together well. It was almost impossible to get a party together to go hunt pk's. No one wanted to lose their fame levels, no one wanted to lose their stuff, no one wanted to play policeman as it were. So in fact Trammel was created due to the failure of Felucian's (my preferred term) because this self-policing idea completely failed.
Your ideas are decent, but they won't happen. You simply suggest a complex on/off PvP switch which has been turned down time and time again by the development team. I've heard them say over and over again that a PvP switch is the last thing they want. You want a one-week PvP switch? Then join factions and resign the same day. You'll be orange for the next week and find plenty of opportunity for PvP. Or join and Order/Chaos guild for a short time.
No, Trammel is for role-play. Trammel is for those who want to hunt in peace from pk's. And griefers? Well let me just say that Trammel created it's own arrogant monster that in my opinion is more annoying then the griefers or pk's that you'll find in Fel. In Trammel we have the snot nosed brat that comes in and trash talks, interrupts your hunting spawn, they annoy the hell out of you and you can't do anything about it. Or the guy who cry's that this is MY hunting spot because I've been here for the past five hours hogging the entire spawn. At least in Fel if you come up and talk shyt to me, or come in and mess up the spawn I'm hunting I can waste your ass, loot your shit, and send you packing to the nearest healer.
And if you're good I can look forward to you coming back with your 'main' for a really good fight.
I also agree that this patch won't bring Trammies to Felucia. That's ok by me, I don't actively pk anymore myself so I could care less. More open hunting ground for me. When the resources get increased I'll simply hit the same spots I mine now and rack up even more. I look forward to the twinks being nerfed, tamers and bards need it really, and we all know that. (And yes I have both a tamer and a bard) The only one's who are bitching about it are the one's who won't be able to adapt, the ones who will have to actually work a bit harder in the game to get ahead. Oh and let's not forget the e-bayers. God forbid they can't take their 3-5 white wyrms into a dungeon spawn and milk out resources for their ebay sales.
But that's another rant all in it's own .. ;)
Well that's my take on it. Publish 16 has good and bad in it, it's not gonna fix Felucia like they hope it will, it will create all sorts of unbalancing problems with the power scrolls in PvP (like who the hell needs 125 taming to say "all kill'?). I don't have single character that has the same template they started with 58 months ago ... change is constant ... learn to roll with it and adapt to the new ever evolving realm that we live and play in.
My two gold pieces ..
Muad 'Dib of Atlantic
Nieves not adapt? Nieves will have his skill/stat scrolls. If you don't take advantage of what publish 16 DOES bring, you will be behind the power curve. And you don't want that right?
Over 1/2 of Pub 16 does suck, but, I will take advantage of the broken aspects of it.
You know, kind of like scribing demon scrolls with 11 mana, or The Make Last Method, or shooting through a sandstone, or ... well, you get the picture.
A quick note: double resource spawn in Felucca right? So that means Cove and Delucia become mining hot spots. I bet you OSI doesn't realize this and allows people to receive double the recources in those towns. Personally, you shouldn't get that benefit inside guard protection. But, as we know, it won't get 'fixed'. It will just go in 'as intended'. If OSI does realize it, they will just say 'oh, yeah, that shouldn't be like that', then start working on the next scenario and it's set of eye candy and forget about it.
Hasta. |
^ top-View From A Trammie
[Nieves] May 29 - 11:24 AM EDT | If you knew what was going on behind the scenes you would see how my finding this submition in my email box today is a funny thing (I had put it away to post it at a later date and forgot about it).
I believe in posting things 'as is' to allow people the opportunity to make their own judgements. And, if I have a strong opinion about something, I will reply and or comment.
This submission had to do with an article I posted a month ago about my opinion over Publish 16 and how it won't lure Trammelites to Felucca. Anyway...without further ado:
Okay, I admit it. I'm a Trammy. I play in Fel sometimes, but most of my characters are set up for PvM. I've been known to do a little PKing, but by no means am I a skilled PvPer. I do recognize that the best UO players are PvPers, and I have a great deal of respect for them. All that having been said, I have a few suggestions for making Felucca a more attractive place for all players.
So what keeps Trammies away from Fel? Fellators [as we Trammies call you guys *grins*] like to think we don't go to Fel because we are afraid of being pk'd. Perhaps some are, but I'm not. Sure a ganking can occur, but a little awareness of surroundings can limit those instances. I've only ever been murdered in Fel once in my 2 1/2 years of playing, and it was my own stupid fault that let that happen. No, you guys are good and all, but not terrifyingly good.
The real reason most of us don't go to Fel is harassment. I play mostly on LS. If an event occurs in Fel, someone will be there to disrupt it. Fellators talk about honor and all, but it seems there are a lot of you whose big thrill in life is griefing someone. I don't mind the occasional murder attempt. I mind the guy who jumps into a ceremony and spams over the speaker, or interferes in a duel.
So how can this be fixed? I mean there's a whole world out there mostly empty on each shard.
Well, first you guys can start to police your own. You know who the griefers are, and most of you know when events are scheduled in Fel. Hell, you pass announcements around telling people to gather to break up an event! Maybe a few of you guys could work in cooperation with the Trammies who want to know Fel better, and you could help protect an event.
But the heart of my suggestion is a method for opting into PvP. I suggest placing a stone in a guard area that players may double-click to opt in. When the stone is 2xclicked, the player becomes available for PvP for one week of real time. I suggest the player becomes purple instead of blue while this is in effect. It might even be possible to do this at two levels; one being full vulnerability and the other following Trammel looting laws. Maybe two different shades could be used to differentiate the lootable from the non-lootable. No non-lootable person could ever initiate a fight against a lootable person, but a lootable person could attack a non-lootable person. You can fight monsters in Fel, you can walk around in relative safety, but you can't loot anything unless you've clicked the stone. This will let the Trammies see Fel, and I've found that just being able to watch PvP can go a long way toward changing attitudes about it and eliminating the irrational fear many Trammies have of being pk'd.
Now some Fellators are going to hate this idea. But I think those are the guys who just want Trammies in Fel so they can murder the weak and helpless. They want to have someone to grief, and the last thing they want is a real fight.
This idea would work for me. I'd play in Fel more if a system like this was in effect.
*Dons asbestos suit* So what do you Fellators think of this idea?
Sluggo
Hasta. |
^ top-Are UO3D's Grahpics Better Now?
[Nieves] May 28 - 6:39 PM EDT | I went on to check out the new death throes animation. And they are pretty cool. Then I noticed something. The game play was smoother. The grahpics are ALOT cleaner and, well, you decide:
They say a picture can speak a thousand words, but you got to get on and check them out. Those pictures do not begin to show you how the graphics have changed.
Hasta. |
^ top-PATCH TIME!
[Nieves] May 28 - 12:46 PM EDT | Client Patch 3.08d
We will be releasing a client patch today, Tuesday, May 28th. This patch will contain the following changes (note that this patch does not contain the upcoming wearable art for the 3D client, which is still in progress):
3D client only
Framerate Countermeasures system added. This automatically disables graphical enhancements in low frame rate situations. Players can change the point at which this happens with a slider bar in their options menu. Setting this to 0 will make this feature never activate.
Particle system performance and stability improvements.
3D's shadows are now simple geometric outlines instead of layered polygons. "Blob" shadows also added for lower end machines.
Most gestures have been tweaked to play at better animation speeds. A new system for this change supports the ability to tweak other animation speeds as well in the future.
Fancy outlines around text tweaked to enhance legibility.
A small box on containers will display how many items are in a stack under the cursor.
Generic item counter interface also added to containers. This will give you a count off all the objects of a given type in a specific container. Note that only certain types of objects are counted in this.
Death animations will now play out completely. <-- Eh?
Both clients
Several party system fixes.
Ability to disable the menubar.
Stat and skill caps are displayed in the interface so the player knows what their limits are.
Skill icons added. To create, push your left mouse button down on a skill listing in the skill interface and drag it off to the side of the gump.
Many gumps that used to close when you died no longer will.
Misc bug fixes and client performance enhancements
Everytime I get mad at them, they do something to make me smile.
Stop it already. All the drama! I CAN'T TAKE IT!
Hasta. |
^ top-The Sky Is Falling!
[Nieves] May 28 - 11:44 AM EDT | Everyone has heard about my total disdain for Publish 16. I still think it's a bad publish because of over 1/2 of the changes being put in (makes me wonder what else they will slip in).
There are two things I read about in the last few days that had me concerned.
1) The rumor of a full 3D Client for Ultima Online.
A lot of people are crying over what they think will be a bad thing. I am a bit scared as well with the way UO3D went. But, on this one, I would wait. Don't run away just yet. Anyone remember how beautiful Origins/UO2 looked? How smooth the graphics looked and the characters and monsters moved? And it was isometric! Not EQesque.
Anyone remember that some of the UO2 technology was put into our Ultima Online? Why just throw all that code away? Why not integrated that existing code base and throw it into UO?
Wait for it. It might actually turn out to be good. Might. I will reserve judgement on it until there is an official release.
Note: For those of you thinking: "well Nieves, you won't wait for Publish 16 to be released before you bashed it!?" That's because I read what's going to be in it. And I thought about it for weeks before making my judgement on Publish 16. Not too mention I can 'feel' the impact to UO. Ask anyone that knows me about my gut feelings. It's scary to say the least!
2) I read some really scary shit from EA's last Financial Report (Thanks Noleeens for providing me with the link).
Our Revenues Have Been Heavily Dependent on a Single Product and Would Be Adversely Affected if That Product's Popularity Were To Decline
In the near term, EA.com's subscription revenues to date have consisted primarily of revenues from sales of our online product Ultima Online, and we would be adversely affected if revenues from that product were to decline for any reason and not be replaced. We expect the online game market to become increasingly competitive, and it is possible that other producer's current or future games could cause our revenue from Ultima Online to decline. In addition, popularity of Ultima Online could decline over time simply because of consumer preference for new game experiences.
Doesn't sound good. From what I understand though, UO has had a very good year. We will see in the next financial report.
If anyone takes the time to review the Financial Report, you will see that EA.com's only financial source is UO. And EA.com is running at a serious loss.
EA.com Has a History of Losses and Expects To Continue To Incur Losses and May Never Achieve Profitability
EA.com has incurred substantial losses to date, including the first three quarters of fiscal year 2002. We expect EA.com to continue to incur losses as it develops its business. EA.com will be required to maintain the significant support, service and product enhancement demands of online users, and we cannot be certain that EA.com will produce sufficient revenues from its operations to support these costs. Even if profitability is achieved, EA.com may not be able to sustain it over a period of time.
You can look at the numbers for yourself.
Then you got this:
Online Games Have Risks That Are Not Associated with Our Traditional Business
Online games, particularly multiplayer games, pose risks to player enjoyment that do not generally apply to packaged game sales. Players frequently would not be acquainted with other players, which may adversely affect the playing experience. Social issues raised by a player's conduct may impact the experience for other players. We have not determined whether or how we might monitor or proctor player behavior that impairs the game experience. In addition, there are substantial technical challenges to be met both in the introduction of our games online and in maintaining an effective game playing environment over time. Also, hacking and spamming has become a serious problem for online sites, and significant hacking and spamming could seriously interfere with online game play. If these risks are not successfully controlled and technical challenges resolved, potential customers for our games may be unwilling to play in sufficient volume to allow us to attain or sustain profitability.
They recognize they need to fix the hacking problem. I got an idea for you: "IF IT'S FUCKING PROVEN I WAS HACKED BY A DICKHEAD, GIVE ME MY SHIT BACK AND HIS SHIT TOO!" That will go a long way to increase OSI/EA's karma and fame when it comes to the hacking policy.
And:
We Have Very Limited Experience with Online Games and May Not Be Able To Operate This Business Effectively
Offering games solely for online play is a substantial departure from our traditional business of selling packaged software games. We have employed various pricing models, including subscription fees, "pay to play fees" and advertising. We have very little experience with developing optimal pricing strategies for online games. For example, our product Majestic and our Sports package, each of which launched with a monthly subscription pricing model , have obtained only limited commercial success to date. Accordingly, we have discontinued our Sports package and have announced that we will discontinue Majestic on May 1, 2002. Similarly, we are inexperienced in predicting usage patterns for our games. Because of our inexperience in this area, we may not be effective in achieving success that may otherwise be attainable from offering our games online.
[...]
We May Not Be Able To Respond to Rapid Technological Change
The market for Internet products and services is characterized by rapid technological change and evolving industry standards. Both in completing the design and implementation of our network infrastructure and thereafter, we will be required to continually improve performance, features, reliability and capacity of our network infrastructure. We cannot assure you that we will be successful in responding rapidly or in a cost effective manner to such developments.
Doesn't sound like EA has much faith in Ultima Online or in their tech folks..
Scary. But I will wait till the next quarter to see if EA's attitude has changed. If it hasn't, then I will be concerned.
OSI reps feel OSI/UO is fine, but, it's always a good thing to be optimistic...until the door slams in your foot.
We shall see.
Excuse me. I am going to get a titanium umbrella now.
Hasta. |
^ top-Nieves Has A Request
[Nieves] May 28 - 10:20 AM EDT | Would someone mind getting me OSI/EA's last financial statements?
I wouldn't even know where to look.
I would appreciate the effort.
Hasta. |
^ top-The ROT Mage By Janos
[Nieves] May 27 - 6:52 PM EDT | The “ROT Mage”
A guide on how to make Mage on Siege.
I have been speaking with many on these boards on making a character on SP. And over and over again I tell people to make a Mage. The type of mage you make matters little, as a ROT Mage is going to be very different from any other mage you may have previously created.
One of the major differences is going to be that it will over all be cheaper in the long run, but will take some time, upwards of 45 to 60 days to complete. You will not appreciate a Siege created character until you have taken the time to build your character up to this status. This is the appeal of Siege, a 7xGM shows you are dedicated and love your character and have actually worked somewhat to get what you want.
Then again some people cheese out and buy accounts on Ebay! :P
The hardest skill to complete on a ROT mage is Wrestling. On normal shards, it is the easiest of all skills. However the nature of ROT and having to hit something that is equal in difficulty can be quite hard. So I would always say keep this one for last!
A ROT mage, once past 70 skills basically can sit in any inn, or house till it is done. It’s getting there that is the battle. My biggest suggestion, though cheesy to some is to transfer funds from a shard over to Siege. Unless you want to experience starting all over again and gathering reagents and doing all the work, blah, blah, blah! That is fine too. But more than likely you got at least a few hundred 100k’s on another shard and it will save you some time and trouble. Mosher of CWS is one of the best brokers for Siege; you can get a hold of him on ICQ via 97180571. Tell him Janos Simbacca sent ya! :D
Pre-ROT (under 70) you will want to get on a boat and work your Meditation, Evaluate Intelligence, Margery and any other 8x8 based skill to 70. Whatever you do, do not simply log off on your boat! When you buy your boat your going to notice the damn thing cost over 100k! Unless your lucky enough to know someone to loan you one. You can’t just gate back to your ship if you get logged off at sea, believe me I had this happen and was lucky to find some people kind enough to go with me on their own boat to my boat. (Which goes to show you how cool some people are on Siege!)
Once you are at 70 the ROT begins. I am sure you will have quite a bit of each reagent. Then just write a macro in UOA and hit it every 20 mins, 40 mins at 80 to 98.9 and every hour to GM. Here was mine when I made my Meditation Warrior;
Cast Spell: Flamestrike or Ebolt – Margery Gain
Target Self – Resist Gain
Use Item – Bandage
Target Self – Healing/Anatomy Gain
Use Skill Meditation – Gained Med (usually didn’t need to run this part).
Now if I were making a Heal/Anatomy mage I would have also gained Evaluate Intelligence. This formula can be applied to nearly any combination. Its up to you to decide what it is your going to make, and that is the first thing you need to decide when you start on Siege! Some other skills that can be macro'd like this are:
Alchemy
Anatomy
Arms Lore
Blacksmith (I would do this one from home with a anvil/forge at hands reach)
Bowcraft
Carpentry
Cartography
Healing
Hiding
Inscription
Musicianship
Poisoning
Spirit Speak (why?)
Stealth
Tailoring
Tinkering
Now when you create your character, you will want to start with 50 Str, 20 Int and 10 Dex. Basically you will be casting Energy bolt to 70 practically! And with only a 6 stats a day gain limit, it will take you some time to get there! As well, remember that buying skills on Siege is a lot more expensive than on any other shard. You will need to train your skills up to 10 times (it goes down each time you pay) and costs 10 times as much as a normal shard does! But once you get some funds to train skills to their 30’s and buy a boat or borrow one to 8x8 your skills to 70, you are pretty much set.
As well, its been said elsewhere and I will say it here again. Be classy when you pick your name “m0nK3y RoXxXoR” may seem funny and cute, but people will attack you on site for no other reason than having bad judgment for 2 minutes. And for god’s sake don’t become another Raistlin/Rand Al Thor/Drizzt/any other character from a book/movie/show (mine excluded ;) ). With one character you will be known throughout that game as that name! As well, the guild you join and title you hang over your head will also determine many people’s attitudes towards you!
With all that said, I wish you all good luck and please come to Siege. With Pub16 ruining the game for many of us veterans this is our only salvation!
PS: If you can, get an Ethereal Mount – People like to kill mounts for no other reason than to piss on your corpse when you die. And you will die! Quite often.
To learn more please go to this site for another nice essay on Siege and learn more about the community!
Good write up Janos. Thank you.
Hasta. |
^ top-Inhale the Deep Dark Blue
[Fixxxer] May 26 - 2:53 PM EDT | It is an exciting time for the game industry. The Electronic Entertainment Expo, otherwise known as E3, is in full gear and is "attended by 60,000 game industry proffessionals. Here is a listing of all the exhibiters and their press kits.
It can be a bitch searching a billion sites looking for all the news on your favorite MMORPG. A real bitch. So, I got all my info together and reorganized it by game title for you. Now lets dive into what happened in the biggest week of the year in the Deep Dark Blue:
E3 Sites
IGN.com- E3 News, plus they grabbed a bunch of comments from many game Devs.
Games Domain- What's hot at E3.
Fictionless Insight- E3 Awards.
CNN- Yea, even these bastards are talking about it.
HomeLan- Hotties anyone? Oh yea, there is also actual news scattered on the site.
Gamespot- E3 goodness.
The After- Interview on Futurelooks.com
Futurelooks.com grabbed The After LD William Phelps for an interview. A cut:
A short description of The After is a post-apocalyptic world that evolves as time goes by. At the release of the game, players will be in a wasteland of world where technology has been all but destroyed and people must use the most basic of weapons and technology, swords, clubs, and magic being amongst them. As time goes on and people research different technologies, the world will begin to evolve into a more hospitable place, going from a fantasy oriented world to a more modern era, and eventually to a futuristic landscape and technological age.
Anarchy Online- New German Dimension and Expansion Article
Funcom has added a new dimension (shard/server) for its German players. Named Die neue Welt, the dimension will be staffed with German speaking GM's and Advisors.
IGN.com posted an E3 article on the new expansion pack Shadowlands.
Asheron's Call 2- E3, Movies, Trailers and an Interview.
IGN.com posted some impressions about AC2.
You can find a new movie and E3 trailers in the multimedia section of the website.
An E3 interview with Lead Program Manager Matthew Ford and Product Marketing Manager Christopher Lye has been posted over a three day span: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3. Whoever came up with this idea is a jackass. Just post the entire interview on one page damnit.
A Tale in the Desert- Newsletter and Play Session.
This game has become my most favorite of all betas. It is actually fun to play and not just beta work. The newsletter came out right before E3 started:
We're heading off to E3 tomorrow, so we won't have a play session this week. When we get back, we'll "make it up" with at least a 12 hour session. I'll send email with the details.
While we're gone, the server will be up in "Dev Mode" - that means that you can play, explore, build, but nothing you do will save. A few items are disabled during Dev Mode, such as the ability to dowse or build mines. At E3 this week, we're going to have an ATITD get-together on Thursday evening at 7:00PM at the Rosen Brewery, 400 Southwestern Avenue, Los Angeles. I won't be able to check email during the show, but I will check the forums section of www.ataleinthedesert.com. If you can make it, post there so we can tell the restaurant how many to expect.
Go download this beta and have some fun.
Atriarch- E3 News and HoC Posted.
Atriarch is at E3 this weekend and is looking for a publisher. The Stratics HoC also has been posted on IGN.com. Odd that Stratics has not posted it yet.
Blackmoon Chronicles- Newsletter 18.
Blackmoon is an interesting game. It isn't depending on l33t 3D graphics. Take a look at the screenshots, the game is like a living comic book. I love it.
Instead of a predictable, static story, Black Moon Chronicles offers a world with multiple sub-stories, famous and feared players, and the opportunity to organize events that make history in the game.
Newsletter 18 has been published as well. The city of Feyhin has been overhauled.
Call of the Warlords- New Download and 14,000 Users.
On May 14th, CotW hit 14,000 registered users (yea, it's a small game). The game is also available now at Tucows.com.
City of Heroes- New Release Date, Desktops, Movie & Article.
NCSoft and Cryptic sat down and realized that they have a long way to go. They do not want to release an unfinished product, so CoH will be released in 2003, rather than this summer.
Cryptic also released a couple new desktops. There is one for Heroes and another for The Fifth Column. Those two links led to 800x600. If you go to the news section, you can also download a 1280x1204 and a 1024x768 for each faction.
Gamesdomain posted a movie from E3. IGN also has an E3 article about CoH. A cut:
Part of the explanation is that there are several problems inherent in a massively multiplayer game where everybody is endowed with superpowers. For one, superheroes are superheroes because there are only a handful of them in a city -- we know these facts from comic books and Hollywood -- so it might initially seem unnatural for players. The designers have recognized this and are countering it by providing almost limitless character customizations, with a staggering 2.44 x 1024 character possibilities. That's several billion possible combinations
Dransik- Closed Beta and Server Restore.
Dransik is no longer accepting applications for beta and is beginning its closed beta phase. Due to a massive bug, Server #1 had to be restored.
Earth and Beyond- E3, New Website and an Interview.
Lots happening at E3 for EaB. Gamespot posted some screenshots.
EaB announced its new website. Though not yet finished, you can still get a good look at it.
A nice interview with Doug Chiang can be found on the EaB website.
Without a doubt, one of the more compelling aspects of Earth and Beyond is the ability to customize your own spaceship. And regardless of which configuration, color scheme, and equipment you choose, you'll know that the basic idea for your ship came from one of the top designers in the world -- Doug Chiang.
EVE Online- Interview, E3 Video, Newsletter & Pics.
EVEGate, a fansite, posted an interview with Pallantre.
Voidus of Sabaoth Inc posted on the EVE forums. He states that he has 2 hours of video from E3 that includes interviews, backstage footage, among other things. He states it should be publicly posted within the week.
And from the newsletter:
What we've done is we've taken all the EVE goodies shown at E3 and compiled them into a nice little packet for your enjoyment. In it you'll find a short movie showing, amongst other things, the in-flight UI; a new screenshot batch, also showing the UI; some marvelous concept art of stuff you'll see in later versions of EVE; and finally a couple of tunes for your listening pleasure.
However, they did not say when they were giving that to us. *shrug*
ALLRPG has posted some E3 pics and scetches.
Hi Pann! :)
Everquest 2- E3 Article.
IGN.com has an E3 impression of the new sequel. So does Gamesdomain.
Final Fantasy XI: Online- Delayed.
Though it does not state it on the main website, ALLRPG is reporting that:
Sony revealed at its pre-E3 press conference that Final Fantasy XI will not be released in North America until 2003. This may be due to the technical difficulties in Japan that occurred soon after its release last week. This comes as a huge blow to Sony since Final Fantasy XI is playing a huge roll in its online plans.
We expect to hear more about this delay directly from Square within the next few days.
Gundham Online- Something to Report!
The website simply sucks; nothing new is ever on it so I can't ever report anything! Alas, my friends at IGN.com have something to talk about from E3:
Imagine a game where you are in complete control of your destiny. You can join the military, become a bounty hunter, or own and run a shop.
Horizons- E3 News, Articles and Movie.
The Horizons Vault is keeping track of all your Horizons needs at E3. They have two additional interviews since last week, they can be found here and here. Again, there is no new info about the game. The interviews talk about the interviewee and what is his job responsibilities are. GIVE US SOME FUCKING HORIZONS INFO ALREADY! Sheesh.
Gamers Pulse has been tracking Horizons at E3. So has Gamesdomain, who also posted a movie.
Iritor Online- Website Launched.
It's about fucking time. I was getting sick going to the "Iritor Website" only to find out it is nothing but a messageboard. That alone would make you think it was vaporware... but in addition, the company making the game is called Wootsoft. The new website states:
Iritor Online is a third-person Massive Mulitplayer Online Roleplaying Game (MMORG) with incorporating several innovative and ground-breaking action elements. The game is set in a futuristic sci-fi setting that centers around humanities desperate struggle to survive on the alien planet Iritor.
The player will have a great degree of freedom in choosing his playing style, look and character development, as well as a much more action orientated combat system offering many tactical possibilities. Add that to breathtaking graphics with stunning effects, a quest system that guides the players through the epic story line and an update ethos that will guarantee an ever evolving world and you have a game that you’ve never seen or played before.
Lineage II- New Movie and Screenshots.
The screenshot section has been updated with new ones. They also added a new movie to their site.
LucasArts- E3 website.
LucasArts put together a special E3 website for the event. With news on games such as Gladius, RTX Red Rock, Indiana Joned and the Emperors tomb, SWG, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Star Wars: Bounty Hunter, Star Wars: Knight of the Old Republic and Star Wars: The Mace Windu Adventures- Use the Force Motherfucker.
Ok, so I made the last one up.
Motor City Online- Publish 6.2 and Custom Paint Jobs!
Publish 6.2 came out last Monday. A guideline for custom paint jobs was published.
Myst Online- Mudpie Anyone?
I'm sure you can draw your own conclusions on a game called Myst Online. A long time ago, for the hell of it, I visited Cyan's website and I noticed they snuck in, in the news, a new MMORPG called Mudpie. The screenshots were amazing, but that's all there was about the game; not one shred of info. However, that website vanished and this one now exists. Mudpie seems to have been renamed Myst Online (Working Title). Can anyone come up with anything besides XXXXOnline?
Upon further investigation, I came across this Press Release. Other articles on Myst Online can be found at Reuters.com, IGN.com, Gamesdomain and Cnet.
Check out these screenies: Lake, Shrooms, Building, Vault, Shrooms 2 and uh this. Impressive.
Neocron- New Subway System and E3 Article
In the latest news:
Venture into the depths of the new Neocron subway system, with improved stations and more attractive routes - you may even catch a glimpse of some city zones while traveling to the seemingly endless metro tubes.
Looks damn cool.
IGN.com comments on the nudity in Neocron.
Neverwinter Nights- Char Models, Teaser Movie and lots of E3.
5 new models are available for download in the Model Viewer section, including Ettercap, Wight, Intellect Devourer, and 2 spell effects.
A Teaser trailer can be downloaded by clicking this link.
Bioware is at E3. And they are documenting their fun in five parts: Part 1, Part2, Part 3, Part 4 and oddly enough Part 7. Who the fuck knows what happened to 5 and 6.
Gamespot has some E3 coverage. As does Ferrago, Gamers.com, Vault, Frictionless Insight and Gamers Pulse
Planeshift- New Client.
From the PS news section:
A new version of PS is available: 0.1.004. This version is REQUIRED to connect to the game. Version 003 doesn't work anymore. You can find the new version in the download section. Next time we will probably have an update server to reduce download size.
Who cares.
PlanetSide- E3 News.
E3 news from Gamers.com which falsely states:
PlanetSide is the first attempt by anyone game developer to create a massively multiplayer first-person shooting game.
Also, IGN.com has an article about this game.
Project Entropia- Clusterfuck.
When PE went open beta, everyone and their God damn sisters hairdressers fathers cousins landscapers identical twins fucking kid tried to download it thus causing a massive traffic jam. This forced MindArk to put up many mirrors of their client download.
Once done, you gotta figure out how to run the fucking thing.
Shadowbane- E3 Story & Char Creation.
IGN.com, yes it's them again, talk about SB's story.
Sims Online- E3, S.I.M.M. and IGN Again.
Lots of E3 goodness on the main site.
State of the S.I.M.M. address has been posted for May.
IGN.com, heh, talk about "the much wanted, vaunted, and always controversial persistent state online massively multiplayer iteration of the popular and gazillion selling Sims series.
Star Wars Galaxies- Huge week for SWG.
Dev Chat #6 will occur on Tuesday May 28th. Guests Raph Koster, Kevin O'Hara, Rich Vogel and Haden Blackman will talk about E3 and answer your questions about the event!
A new Press Release states that SWG will be available on the Xbox and on PS2. Release date will be announced at a later time.
Gamespy posted an E3 story about SWG. A cut:
Galaxies will have eight to 12 planets to explore at launch, each one roughly as big as the entire EverQuest game. That's a LOT of turf! Every location is rendered in loving detail with an engine capable of dynamic lighting and bump-mapping. The sunrise/sunset cycle is breathtaking, and the backgrounds are alive with shuttles taking off and other details.
*drools*
Gamespot posted some awesome screenshots and a couple movies. Download them now!
Look into the future and you shall see 'Letters from the Team' from Steve Jakob, posted this upcoming Tuesday May 28th. heh.
IGN.com posted an interviewwith producers Haden Blackman and John Donham. Great interview with lots of good info; cloning, player death, missions, factions and some on the PvP System. This is a must-read.
Of the 700 skills in SWG at this time, about 1/3 of those are combat-oriented.
700 skills. w00t.
And finally, LucasArts already announced its first expansion to SWG. I shit you not. Read the Press Release here. The add-on, expected to be available six months after the initial product release, will enable players to own and fly starships, allowing interplanetary travel and space combat.
Wheh. That about sums it up. IGN.com is by far the winner when it comes to E3 reporting.
P.S. Im fucking sick of URL's and my ears hurt.
dabu
|
^ top-New Taming Guide
[Nieves] May 25 - 6:41 PM EDT | Information: Animal Taming is a skill that is very versitile to have. Not only as an up and coming tamer do you not have to pay for your mounts but as you progress in skill you can tame a variety of aggressive and non-arggressive animals all the way from Horses to Kirin's and Nightmares.
Items Needed : Animal Spawn thats tamable
What to tame and when :
This question is a very hard one. Depending on the kind of play you like in game depends on what you tame. I will list all the animals to tame and when it is up to you as the player to figure what you want to tame when.Taming creatures with different skill difficulties within your target range usually give better gains than taming the same difficulty repeatedly.Also anything with a minimum taming requirement of 59.1 or better can allow you to gm. However the more difficult the animal is to tame, the faster youll gain.That all applies for in powerhour gains. Now, for out of powerhour gains there are different rules. They are, as a general rule, anything up to 45 points below your current skill level should yield good gains. And lastly, there isn't a special way to make taming move any faster. Only by working on the skill will it ever have the chance to move.
Skill Level What To Tame In PH What To Tame Out Of PH
Below 30 Buy from stablemaster in town
30-35.1 Boar, Giant Rat, Horse, Desert Same as in PH
and Forest Ostards
35.1-41.1 Polar and Black Bears, Llamas Same as in PH
41.1-53.1 Same as Before However add
Alligators and Scorpians @ 47.1 Same as in PH
53.1-59.1 Panthers Snow Leopards and Same as in earlier PH's
Grey Wolves
59.1-65.1 Same as Before just add Snakes, Same as in Earlier PH's
Grizzlies, Giant Spiders and Great
Harts
65.1-71.1 Same as before just add Wolves Same as in Earlier PH's
71.1-83.1 Bulls, Small Hellcats, and Mongbats
@74.7 Frost spiders @ 77.1 Giant Same as earlier also try
Toads and Frenzied Ostards and @ second taming White Wolves
80.7 Lava Lizards
83.1-85.5 Same as before just Add Imps, Dire Same as earlier
Wolves, And Ridgebacks
85.5-GM You can tame any animal from 59.1 Second Tame Bulls and
up but here you can add Hell Hounds Great Harts
@ 85.5 which is what i gmed from , @
89.1 Large HellCats, @ 93.9 Dragons
and Swamp Dragons, @ 95.1 Mares,
Unicorns if Female, Kirins If Male,
also Drakes @ 96.3 your last and final
creature being the illusive White Wyrm
**Also you will not gain if you release and retame the same target.**
TIPS:
*Out of PH tame Posionious creatures. They seem to spark good gains
*When taming high-end creatures, you can either paralyze then tame. Such as with the mare, dragon, drake, or white wyrm.Note, however, they will cast on you after becoming unparalyzed. Another way to do it is start taming it then hide when it targets you. Then come out and start to tame it again and hide again when it retargets you
*The more spawn you have in powerhour the better the gains
*Look in Ilshnear Dungeons and Old and New land Dungeons for taming Hot Spots
Look for it in the skills section soon.
Hasta. |
^ top-Why do you play anyway?
[FrozenFire] May 25 - 11:40 AM EDT | "We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard. . ."
John F Kennedy, 1962
So, why do you play UO, anyways? Or any other game for that matter? I think I am like everyone else in that I am easily bored when I do things I find uncomplicated, easy and straightforward. In other words, I need challenges to have fun. Not knowing whether I will succeed is a critical factor. Failing and trying again, is the key to make success feel that much better.
If at first you don't succeed (first you don't succeed),
then dust yourself off and try again
dust yourself off and try again, try again
Aaliyah, Try Again
When we first start out in UO, everything is a challenge. I remember running around by the bank, spamming everyone with my questions until someone would answer them. I considered myself rich when I had 7500 gold in my bank and I was well prepared going to Covetous when I could cast Lightning Bolt (what a killer spell, much better than fire ball, heh!).
But inevitably, as we explore and learn the game, and as we develop our characters, the challenges become more and more scarce. Over the last year, OSI has tried, in a couple of ways, to keep UO fresh and even to add some new twists. Periodic new item drops or monsters can breathe life into the game for a short while, but its just CPR for a dying patient.
And soon we will have those power scrolls, meaning that a GM is not quite GM anymore. Dev team has specifically attributed these as something that Veterans need to provide a fresh challenge. And itll work for a while, Im sure. Just as a new expansion to EQ will get all the hamsters out in force to run the wheels another 10 levels, only to hit the brick wall again. . .
Dont get me wrong, I personally like the scrolls. They will add to the game, but they arent the answer - they wont revive UO long term anymore than the BOD system will.
In my opinion, too many things are too easy to a veteran. Difficuly is the key. And I dont mean making Balrons more difficult by doubling their hp. I mean, I want tactics and player input mean more. Monster AI could be a lot better. Dungeons could be designed to give monsters an egde. Monsters with societies should work together better and not just mill around, waiting to be killed.
Another aspect of UO being too easy, is that too many things are just statistical rolls. You work skill X to level Y, which means you have Z% chance to succeed. Where is the challenge in rolling some dice? To be truly challenging, we should try and find ways to make the outcome of something a player attempts depend on player input. Say, if youre a bard, you still need that 90 provovation to be able to affect a Dragon. But when you play, you have to interact with your song (meaning timing key or mouse input) to succeed. Add now fire balls flying and a greater poison and you can see its not that easy to keep your head cool. Thats more challenging.
Another example could be swordswinging or spell damage being affected by player input as well. You press one key to start swinging and depending on how long you wait, youll build power, but reduce precision. Which makes every swing a trade off. There could also be sweet spots where you get a better damage to hit ratio than if youre tgoo quick or slow. Same with spells. Speed casters get lower damage and slow casters get better damage, but wait too long and your control of the spell weakens.
But hey, what about lag and stuff? As a general rule, the more player imput, the more we are vulnerable to lag. Theres no way around it. Would you go hunt Shadow Wyrms, or head to Buccs hunting some Order guys when youre lagged anyway? I my mind its a small price to pay to make players more important than the numbers attached to our avatars in the form of skills and stats.
So just as the space race challenged a generation 40 years ago, a good challenge, in real life as well as in game, is the corner stone to focus our interest and to make us feel good about success.
And no, not all player input is that challenging. A kill . . . |
^ top-EXTRA EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT!
[Nieves] May 24 - 11:40 PM EDT | Vasul Invades Great Lakes.
And Nievesy Pooh was there. I am not in any of the images above. I was too busy on the fringes of the whole event.
I managed to 'snag' 6k gold, 200 of each reg, a silver spear, and some armor for smelting...
Not bad I think. Thank you to all that donated to the Nieves Defense Fund.
Hasta. |
^ top-As Great Lakes Turns
[Lealla] May 24 - 6:15 PM EDT | Well it seems the world of Great Lakes role play may be heating up. I ran a cross a few interesting articles at The Daily Herald
The Challenge
The night was not eventful, and only a handful of orcs were around the bonfire in the fort. They were all extremely bored due to the fact that there was not any battle for hours. The orcs stepped outside and were demanding tribute from a lost human when he approached.
The creature that drew near the orcs was definitely an orc, but was not Bloodrock. The orc was neither Shadowcaster nor any other orcish tribe the Bloodrock Clan had met. He was dressed in a fine verite ringmail suit with a bronze colored orc helm, and carried with him a black staff.
The story continues Here
Seems that misfortune is befalling those who wish to replace Lord British as ruler of our lands. Who is behind this intriguing twist?
Political Summit Ends in Disaster... Again
Citizens of Britannia gathered at the Lycaeum on Tuesday eve to discuss the political state of Britannia with 2 of her possible heirs.
Lord Jorus was the first to take the floor, but was unable to make much of a dissertation, as the crowd was very displeased with him. Seeking refuge, he big Lord Chamberman speak, and he gladly did so.
Chamberman spoke for quite awhile with a dramatic tone which captured the heart of the people. Citizens were very protective of the would-be king, begging him not to open a recent gift he recieved. Not fearing for his life, Chamberman opened the gift and lived, having proven there was no threat to his life.
Shortly after this incident, a man.. apparently a messenger delivered a keg of ale to the Heir. Again, trying to prove there was no threat to his life, Chamberman drank the ale.. which turned out to be poisoned. Spectators quickly rushed to his aid and saved his life.
The story Continues Here
Meanwhile over at the The Royal Britannian Post An interesting question is being raised.
Where are the Heroes
The steady stream of refugees wandered listlessly down the road past the cemetery and towards the crossroads, leading to points away from the once fair village of Yew. Mothers with children, children without parents tended in small groups by the elder women, and lasses not yet out of their teen years. As I watch, a small boy of no more than two begins to cry out for his mother and turns back up the road towards whatever home he had in a not too distant previous life. A 'Grand Dame', already burdened with a babe in arms and a very small child, clothed in nothing more than a rough cloth sack , pulled close to her hip, gently kneels at his side. She holds the youngest in one arm and braces the other on her thigh, then gives him a loving hug and speaks soothingly and softly into his ear. I am amazed to see him give even a very slight smile.
He turns and rejoins his small flock, wiping tear stained eyes with muddy hands. Before the woman gets up, I see her, brave and tired, stifle a small cough with her free hand, and that’s when I remember why I’m here.
The tale continues Here
And for a touch of class and culture The Royal Britannian Post has a new poetry section geared toward Ultima Online.
Pull up a chair and take a peek at their Poetic Verse Section
Till Next Time...
Lealla |
^ top-Vasul Coming To A Shard Near You
[Nieves] May 24 - 10:55 AM EDT | If you saw my early morning post, you would know about the Uber Lich...well here is a report from a Pacific player:
Vasul was also on Pacific a couple of days ago. I haven't heard anyone mention it anywhere. It was fun as hell. Especially on the bridges of vesper. Like 50 people had Vasul boxed in (and themselves) and bk's and ll's were popping up left and right. And there were two ships full of undead pirates sailing around coming ashore. Seriously fun shit.
Vasul kept screaming about how he had to get to the bank. lol
And when he finally died, money rained down from the sky. Every empty tile was suddenly covered with a pile of gold. And this went on for screens and screens. All the way down to the docks. Gold everywhere. I have no idea what was actually on the corpse. I was there with
my stealther theif.
The sad thing is there were the inevitable few trammies bitching for 15 minutes afterwards about how sucky the loot was.
I bitched one of them out for whineing about the most fun thing I've seen in over a year. Go back to the damn tram swamps if you want mindless loot.
[...]
On Pacific, Vasul kept being reduced to 0 hp and then reappearing alive and fully healed. Maybe coming soon to a different shard near you!!
I think they should have one OSI employee whose job is nothing more than doing something like this on SOME shard SOMEwhere at all times!
call me,
OXO
If it opens up, consider Nieves interested in applying for that job.
And you know I would make it interesting for all of you out there!
Can you imagine an Order or Chaos uber-warrior coming out that is orange to the opposition 'faction'? He carries a War Axe Of Pain (Magic War Axe that Harms when it hits) that a player could loot for the 'prize' in finally killing ol' bad ass?
Or 'Minax' coming into Brit orange to the other three factions?? She comes in flinging Flamestrikes like it was nothing and has an Earthquake type attack that harms all oranges?? Her loot would consist of a blessed spell book that you could 'charge up' with up to 10 spell scrolls??
Or Dawn coming in the town of Magincia wanting to kick CoM ass?
The possiblities are endless!
Hasta. |
^ top-When UO Was Fun
[Nieves] May 24 - 6:53 AM EDT | Last night, while in the throes of writing bliss, Jade of GuL, gave me a holler about a Game Master controlled lich in Felucca Vesper on Napa Valley. It's been nearly 2 years since I have heard or seen such a thing.
I just had to see it for myself.
And see it I did. This guy was of an orange hue (he's in the middle) in the 2D client and had liche lords running arounds. I ran up behind him as he was giving it to a warrior and said: "KICK HIS ASS VASUL!" (I am the guy in battle mode wearing purple just to the north of him.) He thanked me by poisoning and casting an ebolt at me (thankfully I was far enough away from him to not get greater poisoned). I ran, of course. Having no horse or the proper supplies to take him on, it would've been a lost cause for me.
When casting poison, and close enough, he was dropping Greater Poison! Ouch. A Nox Lich. Scawy. Then he proceeded to bring some friends in the forms of Lich Lords (you can see one to the right) and Bone Knights to aid in the gankage. He had ALOT of HP but would manage to heal (I believe he had innate healing; I didn't hear the healing sound but he managed to heal up rather quickly when low). His tactic was poisoning someone and then mana dumping them out. If that didn't work, a Lich Lord would come along and finish the job. I had two on my ass at one point. Ever try to run through a crowd in Felucca with two mana intensive fuckers on your tail? It's crazy.
Oh, and yes, I did say Felucca. So neh to you Trammel peepers :p
People were dieing left and right and some were trying to loot (Nix). I caught one guy looting on the north side of that building and took my 4x Fencer and a DP newbie kryss to him. Thank you for the 3 plants :) Oh, and thank you to all of those that donated to the Nieves Napa Valley Defense Fund. Tis truly appreciated.
Anyway, I digress.
Last night was fun because it was random. It was crazy. It was chaotic. People were doing their best to kill this thing and working together (relatively speaking). And when the big bad guy died (I don't know if he did or got away; anyone know??), it was over. There weren't all these guys camping trying to get the next seed, dragon scale, or tribal spear. People were killing him for the fun of it (one guy actually kept calling Vasul out for a duel).
And this was an intelligent evil monster. You had to think at this guy. The only monster in the scenarios I can think of you had to think about what you were doing was the Orc Scout. Now that was a fun guy to fight. Why? Again, because you had to think! It was a challenge!! I can't wait for that in Neverwinter Nights!!
Anyway, I am sure Jade will come to the UOPG Message Board and tell us all about it ::hint hint::
Hasta. |
^ top-In Defense Of My Protest Update
[Nieves] May 23 - 9:47 PM EDT | Sirrion decided to make himself known about how he felt about my Protest Update. I had to defend my stand on it.
Someone told me it was front page material, so I post it here. Mainly because I am a whiney bitch and people think I am also a whiney little fuck.
They must come here to make that decision for themselves. Otherwise, how would they know?
::rubs his hands together::
First, we will talk about what you said to me.
2nd, we will go over what's going to be in Publish 16 since you obviousely haven't read it yet.
And 3rd, I will give you the reasons why I feel it is my right to do what I do on UOPG.
Shall we begin?
[Well, I dont know why nieves is always bitching]
If you have read any of the archives (as Fury obviousely has) you will see I praise as much as I bitch. But since you don't do your research, you don't know that.
[, either about GTA3(hey if you dont want your kid playing it, dont buy him it, if you dont have any concerns over it(which i dont) let him play it).]
Um, we covered that already. Why bring it up? And it's obvious I won't be buying it for my kids. I expressed my feelings on the game. Got a better arguement somewhere?
[ Moving right along to UO, well i think mr nievesy-poo wants UO his way,]
No, Nieves wants a fair and equitable UO. But, again, since you don't do proper research, you don't know that.
[Housing: noones needs 5 houses in the first place, 1 will do just fine, and if you need 5, buy a bigger one (if you have 5, you probably have enough money for 1 larger one... ]
Nope. But I like having my 2 homesteads in Felucca Great Lakes (Small Tower and Sandstone) and my Large Brick and 2 smalls on Pacific. I earned 2 of thsoe houses and 3 were given to me. I also have access to two large towers as well as two more smalls on Great Lakes. I earned the right to have those homes. And I like having houses that each of my characters can call their own. Not too mention "theme houses" (my Small Tower on GL is my PvP house and my Sandstone is my PvM house). Not you or anyone else has the right to tell me whether or not I should have them. If you can't afford to get your own home, tough. Go play something else or get on a shard that has them or earn the gold to get them. I have no sympathy for those that can't tough it out to get their own things.
[ .now, lets see what else did he bitch about, ok Protesting, why would anyone want to protest? you think EVERYONE hates the new changes?you think EVERYONE on stratics team hates them? No, ]
Where did I say that? Please, quote me.
[ and your right stratics would never shut down thier site, its a stupid idea]
Right. That's why I didn't do it. Again, you didn't see where I didn't think it would work. Why? Because you don't pay attention when reading.
[... hmm what else... things about the faire, well they didnt invite people there to TELL them what to do, they wanted to get some player feedback on what they think, and what(if any) GOOD ideas there were]
Excuse me, you idiot, that's exactly why they invited us. To get ideas AND feedback. Did you go to the Faire? No. Did you read my updates on them? Obviousely not. Dumbass.
[... well,, i dont know why, but you always seem to find something to bitch about... whether its UO/Schooling/Video Games... i dont know id swear you didnt have a actual life outside of the online world... ]
That's funny. Here you are telling me I don't have a life but you are worried about mine? Thank you for caring. And I do have a life thank you.
That's why my kids and I had dinner, played badminton and catch today. All before I came in to deal with your ignorant ass.
[Oh yea, well you can quit UO,, i mean you always got GTA3 right? ]
Was that supposed to be a cheap shot? I missed it if it was.
And now, part 2.
[ Taming Changes, revision 1
Animal Lore
The usage and utility of the Animal Lore skill will be altered in the manner described below. (The exact nature of how “legacy”pets are incorporated into this system has not yet been determined.)
The Animal Lore skill will display the following data for any tamed creature:
Numeric values for Skills, Strength, Hits, Dexterity, Fatigue, Intelligence, and Mana.
Any pack instincts the pet may have.
A list of foods the pet eats.
A general description of how well you can control the pet based on your skills, the taming difficulty, and current loyalty.
At 100.0, you can view the above statistics for any tamable creature.
At 110.0, you can view the above statistics for any creature. ]
Very cool, except the bonus parts.
[Stable Slots
The current stable slot system will continue to be in use.
All characters are allowed to store 2 pets with an NPC Stablemaster.
A character that has a combined total of between 160 and 199.9 in Animal Taming, Veterinary, and Animal Lore skills can store 3 pets with a Stablemaster.
A character that has a combined total of between 200 and 239.9 in Animal Taming, Veterinary, and Animal Lore skills can store 4 pets with a Stablemaster.
A character that has a combined total of 240 or higher in Animal Taming, Veterinary, and Animal Lore skills can store 5 pets with a Stablemaster.
The currently allowable stable slots will be increased. Players will be awarded another stable slot for each of the following skills at 100.0, 110.0 and 120.0: Animal Taming, Animal Lore, and Veterinary.
In this way the maximum possible number of stable slots per character will be 14. ]
Good. Except the bonus slots. Why? Because of how you get the slots. The Stat/Skill scrolls.
[Pet Limit
You will only be able to control a number of pets based on your pet control slots. Every player has 5 pet control slots. Most pets only require 1 slot, with the following exceptions:
2 control slots: unicorn, ki-rin, nightmare, drake, hellhound (leader), predator hellcat (leader), imp, and frenzied ostard
3 control slots: white wyrm, dragon
4 control slots: hirelings, golems [I swapped the order of these. I hope that's okay. It seemed more appropriate to go from "1 slot" to "4 slots"]
You must have the required control slots available for your mount. Ethereal mounts will require 1 control slot. This means if you go hunting with a dragon (3 control slots) and a drake (2 control slots), you'll have to go on foot. ]
Very fucking cool. Love it. No more 10 Wyrms for one tamer.
[Pet Loyalty
Loyalty checks will have a tighter range. For example, a dragon used to have a chance to obey someone with 50 Animal Taming/50 Animal Lore skill, whereas now they will not obey anyone with less than 80/80.
If you have the minimum skill required to tame an animal, you will have much greater control.
The number of previous owners will no longer affect control. ]
Bubye twink tamers.
Love it.
[Pet Bonding
After a real-time week of ownership, pets may bond with their owner.
If the animal requires more than 29.1 minimum skill to tame, you must have the minimum skill to tame it before it will bond with you. Examples of animals with 29.1 or lower are horses, ostards, dogs, cats, pack horses, etc.
You are limited in the number of pet bonds based on your Animal Taming, Animal Lore, and Veterinary skills.
All characters are allowed to bond with 1 pet regardless of skill.
A character that has a combined total of between 200 and 299.9 in Animal Taming, Veterinary, and Animal Lore skills can bond with 2 pets.
A character that has a combined total of 300 or higher in Animal Taming, Veterinary, and Animal Lore skills can bond with 3 pets.
Bonded pets will recall with you.
Bonded pets will turn into pet ghosts when they die.
Instead of [tame], the [bonded] tag will display above a bonded pet.
A bond is only broken if the pet goes wild or is released.
Casting the 5th circle Summon Animal spell normally brings forth a random animal, but if the casting player has a bonded pet, this spell will instead try to summon your bonded pets. It will not summon them from the stables, but it will work if the bonded pet is a ghost. ]
I was kind of "eh" about it at first, it is a cool concept.
[Pet Resurrection
When a bonded pet dies, it turns into a “pet ghost.” This ghost can still obey the movement commands (follow, come, etc.). The pet ghost will not dissipate or lose loyalty, but cannot be stabled.
Any player can attempt to resurrect the pet with bandages if they have at least 80 Veterinary and 80 Animal Lore. The pet owner or a friend of the pet must be nearby to confirm they want the pet to be resurrected.
Resurrected pets suffer skill loss. Pets resurrected by their owner receive less of a skill penalty.]
Ditto.
[Pet Taming
If you hide, or come under the effect of the invisibility spell, while using the taming skill, you will automatically become visible
Except in the case of paralyzation, if an animal cannot pathfind to the person trying to tame it, the taming attempt will fail. This limitation includes situations where placed objects, walls, energy fields, and any other such object block the creature.
Pets will suffer some level of skill loss when they are tamed, but have full potential for training. ]
::shrugs::
[Pet Skills
Pets will learn skills at an accelerated rate compared to players.
All creatures, including pets, will have a faster Mana regeneration rate if they have the Meditation skill. Just like players, they will be able to gain Meditation skill when they regain Mana.
All pets will be able to learn Anatomy, Resist Spells, Tactics, and Wrestling.
Spellcasting pets will be able to learn Magery and Evaluate Intelligence.
Pets with Natural Poison will automatically learn the Poisoning skill in combat. The Poisoning skill is used to determine how often they inject poison. Pets with 99.0 or greater Poisoning skill will sometimes inject a poison 1 level more potent than their normal level. ]
Ok, Pets get abilities. They can do extra things. Wee. Fun. Next.
And on and on and on. You can read the rest here: http://update.uo.com/design_416.html
Over all the Taming changes are solid. The taming class is getting a balance nerf and getting some cool abilities.
OSI gets 8 out of 10 cool points for this part of Publish 16. They lose 2 cool points for tieing in the skill/stat scrolls into this change.
[This is the third update to proposed changes for the Barding profession, changes that are being considered toward helping balance Barding as a class, as well as toward improving the overall in-game experience of playing a bard. This document completely supersedes previous posts to “In Concept”on this subject.]
Blah blah blah.
The Bards are getting a serious overhaul (read nerf). They will get a skill (enticement) changed over (discord) that provides some very cool abilities (minuses to monsters stats/skills) as well as making the provocation skill difficulty based. About time. Not too mention making peacemake an area affect as well as targetable. Nice. Very nice .
Yes, the Bard is not going to be as powerful as before nor as powerful as the Taming Class after Publish 16. They will need to work in teams (not a bad thing; but some people want to play alone sometimes) and then use all their bardic skills (discord, provocation and peacemaking) to work spawns properly.
Not too mention having to manage their resources (mana, reagents, monsters) and stay in the area to keep their powers active.
They also get bonuses for using exceptional instruments (another crafting addition which woud have helped crafting vendors had there not been the Make Last Method which made it possible for everyone to have a 7x Crafter in a week).
My concern is they are scaling the bardic difficulty table with the skill scrolls in mind. It's going to be difficult for newer bard characters to get the new skill scrolls (read, I dint' say impossible, just difficult).
Overall, I think this bard nerf is a very balanced thing that is happening for UO. Another 8 out of 10 cool points for OSI.
You can read the rest of the Barding Update here: http://update.uo.com/design_415.html
[Tailoring
The basic concept of the bulk order system is that players who interact with certain crafting-based NPC shopkeepers will, on random occasions, be offered the opportunity to fulfill "bulk order deeds" (also known as "BODs"). In return for completing these BODs, the player will receive special rewards as compensation.]
A VERY nice thing. I LOVE the BOD system. You can ask Lealla. I am passionate about getting smithy BoDs. And Tailoring BODs are going to feed my addiction for that overall BoD system. Giving the different crafters something to look forward too and do outside of crafting for people or vendors is a very cool thing.
The additional leather types is nice too. And allowing Mages to wear something other than regular old brown (when not dyed) leather is cool. Warriors can wear a number of different types of armor. Mages don't get as much as warriors. Anything they get is bonus cookies.
They already got 10 cool points for the Blacksmithy BODs. They earn another for the Tailoring BODs and for every additional crafting BOD system they add.
You can read about the tailoring BODs here: http://update.uo.com/design_414.html
[Guaranteed Gain System (GGS)]
Very good. But this is what should've happened after UO:R. Not Powerhour. Is it too late? I think so. But better late than never? Maybe. We will see.
Note: I heard something about the GGS system I really didn't like. I can't share it yet because of 2 reasons. 1) It's not confirmed and 2) I don't think OSI wants it known...yet.
[Housing]
And here is what started today's debate:
[Players are allowed to have one house per shard, per account. These houses will need to be refreshed manually.]
That's fine.
[Some older accounts may still maintain more than one house per shard, per account (but no more than one per character on that shard). These houses will need to be refreshed manually.]
Thank you.
[Acquiring a new house will put all other houses owned by that account on any shard into Condemned status, disallowing them from refreshing and forcing them to decay.]
Same as now.
[Players are allowed to own grandfathered houses on more than one shard. ]
Thank you.
[In addition, two new elements will become a part of this system:]
Uh oh.
[Players may opt to only own one house per account, period. In exchange, that "primary house" will be automatically refreshed for as long as the account remains active. (See "Primary Houses" below for more details.) ]
This is fine if it was a choice throughout the WHOLE system.
[Note that your account is considered to have opted in to this new "one house per game account" rule if you place a new house or have a house transferred to you. Further, once this new housing system becomes active, any inactive account that is reactivated will also automatically be considered to have opted in to this new "one house per game account" rule.]
Read that 3 times. What that means is that if I place a new one, all my older houses on all shards become condemned. What has happened is my choice is now gone. I now have to take THIS house as my SOLE house in ALL of UO. OSI could've just left the old way of doing it alone and make it a choice: "Do you wish to make this your SOLE home?" But OSI is shoving this one down my throat. Fuck that.
If I want to move to Siege and I want a house onthat shard, I have to make a very important choice. I am being forced to play on ONE shard. Bullshit. Quit forcing me to play the game a certain way. UO was about choices. A choice to PvP. A choice to PK. A choice to PvM. Slowly, but surely, OSI is taking those choices away. That's why I am so pissed.
And will this change REALLY solve the housing shortage? Hell fucking no. Let me put it in the words of an UO.com denizen:
[Qikdraw (grandmaster)
05/23/02 05:03 PM
The thing is....
These new proposed housing changes will NOT solve the housing problem.
230,000 accounts
25 shards
9,200 accounts per shard (average)
Now we know that AOL, Oceania, Sonoma, Siege, and Mugen are not full shards. So lets say they have 3,000 accounts playing those shards. (that's a guess too) That leaves use with 20 shards and 215,000 accounts with an everage of 10,750 accounts per shard. We know that shards like GL, LS, ATL, Baja are more full than others.
How many houses are there per shard? Say its 3,000. (that's a total guess, anyone have a more accurate number?) So with 10,750 accounts per shard and 3,000 houses, that still leaves us with 7,750 accounts without homes.
What are the numbers of people playing multiple shards that own homes? Again a total guess, but I'd say its in the realm of say 200 houses per shard. So we can say that an extra 200 people per shard will get a house.
Will that solve the house problem? Not even close. This is NOT a housing solution! The ONLY solution is to add more lands and ONLY allow accounts with no homes to place. The land would have to be double the size of both Tram and Fel or there will still not be enough housing for everyone.
Yes there are people with multiple accounts living out of one house, but there are also people with multiple houses on one account. I figured they would cancel each other out, that is why I didn't factor them in.
These numbers are guesses really. If anyone can give accurate numbers we can do this again, but really the only numbers could come from OSI, and to my knowledge they have never given these types of numbers out.
I hope you can still get my point though...
Qikdraw]
I am glad they made the decay time 11 days, but damn, the forcing that choice on me is stupid and wrong. I own multiple houses. If I move to another shard for whatever reason, I can't get a new house because I lose my old ones.
Your arguements about "what the fuck do you need multiple houses for?" is lost on me. I bought them. They are mine. Go earn your own houses. You can if you spend the time and effort. Quit saying: "but I want it! GIVE ME GIVE ME GIVE ME!" Thats' why Trammel came out. The game got to hard for some folks so they put Trammel in. Which is fine. But quit YOUR bitching and you go out and earn your own home. I did.
This hurts the IDOC trade bad as well. But most of them are EBAYers so....
-20 cool points on the housing changes.
You can read the rest here: http://update.uo.com/design_418.html
[Felucca Changes]
Ah...the thing that started it all.....
Instead of going on here about why I hate the Felucca changes, you can go to the Archives and look up the following posts using the search engine: Nieves Take On The Proposed Changes and Adam Ant Tells Us What He Thinks of OSI's Stat Loss Alternative
Just so you can do some research on what was said before by me and someone I consider a "Feluccan expert" on the subject.
The double resources spawn? Good. As Watts said: "There should be NOTHING special about Trammel at all".
No stat loss in dungeons and T2A? Good. Give the PKs a bone. And this one is juicy.
No gates or recalling into dungeons? Fuck that. Give me gating like with the Siege Ruleset. I want to be able to go in and out if I need too. The entrances of these dungeons are going to be killing fields.
Die and out for 30 minutes? This isn't factions. I understand they want to end the PvP battles OSi feels these changes will generate. Give me a choice to stay here or the option of leaving. If I take the option of leaving, I can't go back for 30. That's a fair trade off, IMHO. Forcing me and my boys out because we die is bullshit. How many of you have died to lag or lost con? Is that fucking fair? No. Why would anyone take their guild to felucca if they have to wait 30 minutes for their guildmate to be able to come back with that same character. Fuck that.
And why make it no loot and have the virtue of Sacrifice? Go earn the right to keep your loot. Whether it's by earning Sacrifice or by defending it against those that want it. If you attack a red, lose all your shit. If you die to a red but you didn't attack, lose 50% (randomly). You made the choice to turn on your PvP switch by going to Felucca. So fight for your stuff. I do. Otherwise, stay in Trammel.
Stat/Skill scrolls as a carrot? Fuck no. Why? Who the fuck do you think is going to get most of these scrolls anyway? Those that either get lucky and get away from the reds, or those that kill the ones that kill the stats/skill scrolls or those that can afford them in Britain, Tradespot, or EBAY. And these stat/skill scrolls WILL be unbalancing. Anytime you add something as powerful as this, it will imbalance the game. Mark my words. It will happen.
But I will let you find that out for yourself when they get released.
Other than the incentive (not) of skill/stat scrolls, what's the point in going to Felucca? There isn't one. It's not enough.
And these skill/stat scrolls ONLY benefit the PvPers, Bards, and Tamers (and they can still be effective Tamers as 'just' GM in their skills). Outside of that, who does it benefit? Remember, skill and stat scrolls are 'cursed'. You die, they stay. And you don't come back for 30 minutes to fight for it back. It's effectively GONE! (if you don't come back with a different character)
I can still take a 7xGM and beat any monster in the game with time and patience. Trammel players won't care about these as much. It won't affect or entice them as much.
And finally, what's the point in being Grandmaster anymore? Yes, Powerhour reuined the prestige of being a Grandmaster, but now, it goes away totally. This is a minor point, but still a point I have an issue with.
Let's go over some more points.
[Stealing will no longer be considered an aggressive act, although it will continue to be a criminal act (players will not be able to report a thief for murder if they attack the thief but lose the fight). This applies to all of Felucca.]
Very cool.
[Felucca will have much of its spawn modified to include fewer monsters overall, yet a much higher percentage of medium to high-end monsters (liches, daemons, ancient wyrms, blood elementals, etc…), and far fewer low-end monsters (slimes, rats, snakes, headless’, etc…). ]
I like this.
[Mines, trees, sheep, will produce double the normal resources in Felucca, as will all creatures that produce leather or feather resources. ]
Already said this is good.
[Monsters in Felucca will provide more fame and karma.]
But will the Trammel monsters be 1/2ed? I think it's only fair.
[Felucca spawn changes will affect all of Felucca, except the Hero spawn will only occur in the Dungeon/Lost Lands areas. ]
Cool.
[Vesper will become a faction town. ]
Cool.
[The Minax stronghold will be relocated to a mountainous area of Felucca. ]
Cool
[Blues can no longer indirectly damage other blues through area effect spells. ]
Cool.
[Increased stat cap on individual stats for all characters (from 100 to 125). ]
Eh. What is the balance with this? I can go up to 125 on 3 stats now without any penalty. The stat cap total should stay the same
[Can’t return to the dungeon server for 30 minutes? Why?
In order for the challenge of fighting the Hero spawns and surviving in these areas to really be a challenge, we need to be sure that people can’t just keep dying and immediately coming back indefinitely. By keeping people from coming right back into the fray of the fight after dying, players are able to establish some kind of control over the resources and territory they’re fighting over. It will also be a greater challenge to groups – it will be highly beneficial to keep your group members alive, thus keeping your group as powerful as it can be.]
Why is this so bad? THe reasons they give are not enough to justify a stat loss effect on players. You are penalizing me for dieing. Bullshit. The penalty has already been paid. I died. I got to get back to my body and try to get my stuff. There is a challenge in that situation. Sometimes, I look back after a self, or friend-rescue and think: "damn that was exciting". Again, give me a choice to stay here or get taken away. Don't force this on me.
In effect, what they are offering is not enough. If they offered the stat/skill scrolls without the restrictions (gate/recall, die and 30 minutes out), I might say its' wroth it. But they haven't. This, and the 'house for one account' changes, are shit.
Blah blah blah. You can read the rest here: http://update.uo.com/design_409.html
For now, this gets -50 cool points because of the stupid, bullshit changes.
And on to part 3.
Why do I think I have the right to bitch? Because the first amendment says I can. Because I spent the money to pay for this webspace, maintain it, and make it available for you, you and you.
You don't have to be a part of this part of the UO community. You can stick with Stratics, Black Dagger's other boards, Ian Storm, etc. You don't have to come here. But you choose too. You dont' have to agree with anything I say. Ever. But you don't have a right to say to me: "You can't bitch". You yourself have that right because I give the people the freedom to express themselves however they wish (with a few restrictions) in this message board.
I have the right, then, to refute or applaud it. I am sorry you couldn't come up with a better thought out post or took the time to actually do some research before coming in 'my sandbox' to play with me.
And I am DOING something about it. You think all I do is bitch on UOPG's front page? I write the dev team almost weekly. I give suggestions and ask questions all the time. We talk. Sometimes it goes well, sometimes it doesn't. For example, William Leverett and I traded emails for three days about the hacking issue. Nothing is going to be done about it right now, but he listened. Too bad the others don't take that much time. It's when they don't want to listen or are ignoring what the players REALLY want or our input is when I get truly upset.
I pay money for this website. Out of my own pocket. The UOPG store doesn't make enough for me to to have earned a commission. In effect, these dollars come out of my own pocket. Of course I am going to care about this website that writes about UO. So, don't anyone ever fucking question my sincerity or whether or not I care about Ultima Online.
Go back, read the links I have given you. Then come back and try again.
I might give you some cool points just for the effort.
For now, you get -50 cool points.
BTW: Niki, you get 100 cool points. Very good post. And, I can tell you don't agree with everything I say. And that's ok. I respect you for that. I like your writing. You are welcome to write whatever you want for the front page if you continue writing the way you did here. Just send them in to me for submission.
Excuse me for any typos. My eyes are tired.
Hasta.
|
^ top-MY NEW HERO!
[Nieves] May 23 - 4:16 PM EDT | Larry, you are my hero!
Think I'm wrong? Try calling their offices for 24 hour customer service or account support. Hah Fucking Hah! These players that are getting hacked daily? Again, "fuck you very much, we will keep your account active for you to continue paying". I loathe shitty customer service and support. I loathe other people dictating what I do, what I like, and what I dont like. Especially when I am a paying fucking customer. Operate by the TOS, do not exploit, behave in a civil manner becoming of customer-to-customer interaction. Its not enough though. Essentially you have to quit playing the game in order for changes to be made.
Aw yeah, suki suki now!
Read the rest.
Hasta. |
^ top-Protest
[Nieves] May 23 - 12:58 PM EDT | I was considering a protest today.
Shutting down UOPG, the forum, everything. Hell, even shutting down all my accounts for a month. Just for a time to show my disgust for Publish 16. Hell, I was going to call on UOStratics, Black Dagger, Adam Ant, Ian Storm, UOLS.net, XRGaming, and others, to help me in this protest. But I know better than that. Most people won't make the stand. Especially high profile sites with agendas. You can take a guess which ones of the above would never join in a protest. Anyway...
So, would a protest change anything? Will it really make a difference to the corporate peeps at OSI? Probably not.
All it will do is hurt you, the readers, in the end. So what do I do?
Someone recommended I do a big fat email campaign or petition to get OSI to change their minds. But will that work? Adam Ant has been trying for about 3 years to get his Angel Island Proposal instituted as an alternative to stat loss. What did that get him? A lot of talk and extra bandwidth used up.
So, what do I do? I could quit UO entirely right? But then what? All it means is I gave up on 'the cause' of making UO the best game it could be. It's obvious OSI only cares about what THEY think is best for the game. "But Nieves, what about the bard changes? And one red all red??" Yeah, sure. But, those were THEIR ideas in the first place? Where are our ideas being implemented? And I don't mean stupid ideas, I mean solid ones (Angel Island, paying a fee to keep a house refreshed for a month, attack a red, you lose 100% of your loot, get attacked by a red, lose 50% of your loot randomly, etc.).
You see, I had so much frustration about UO towards the end of last year. Then I went to the UO Faire and I was invigorated again. I was excited about this game and started having a shit load of fun (even with my personal issues going on). And now, here it is, 5 months later, and where are the ideas presented at the UO Faire?
It's said that a lot of what's going in Publish 16 was planned months ago. Even before the Faire.
So why even ask us at the Faire about PvP? Combat changes? Felucca? What was the point then? Why didn't OSI just say: "sorry, we already have fixes going in for that?" Why give us that went to the Faire and those I informed about it false hope? That's just....wrong.
I have a million more questions but there is no point to them. The facts are as follows:
-Publish 16 does more harm than good for Ultima Online.
-Nothing, at this point, from the UO Faire is being discussed publically or being implemented.
-OSI is doing what they want and forcing things down our throats even though they hear from us "um...no, we don't like that".
-Priorities are skewed. Instead of adding new eye candy (seeds/plants), we still have issues with a buggy client (I still get client crashes at least once a night), PvP that needs improved (macroable special moves), etc. I would gladly give up ONE year of new content for a kick ass relatively bug free game. And it IS possible folks. The money is there. It's about priorities and time.
Some things in life just make sense to me and 'should be' a certain way. And, right now, most of what OSI is throwing at us isn't making sense to me. And some of their policies (i.e.- Hacking) are just plain stupid. In the words of a reader: "People [are] still getting hacked and OSI is about as useful as tits on a turtle to help them with it. "
I could give a shit about a new uber-loot monster (plague beasts), plants, a scenario that is boring as hell (monster invades, we kill them, they spawn again), or even new BOD types if the game just worked and was balanced properly!
At the Faire, an OSI rep said that (paraphrased): "we do not want to take away from the player's experience, we want to add to it". And we get the current housing changes. Thanks.
What's funny is that was the same person that told me OSI doesn't play favorites when it comes to Fansites. If you have the UO:LBR Beta CD, you will know what I am talking about.
Eventually, I will get tired of jumping up and down along with the rest of you out there that care and give up....
And I will just give up UO and go play DAoC like some of the OSI Dev Team Members.
Hasta. |
^ top-Housing Update
[Nieves] May 23 - 11:40 AM EDT | Stratics posted some information about the housing changes.
I won't even bother copying and commenting.
It still fucking sucks.
Hasta. |
^ top-Diary of a Newbie (Continues)
[Lealla] May 22 - 6:03 PM EDT | When last we visited with young Khan he had created his “HERO” and faced the lowest form of scum in our pixelated world.. A scammer. Now thankfully all he lost was a dream, but even so to lose a dream can be disheartening. Khan however doesn’t let this scum win and his enthusasim is intact!
Let’s take a peek in on Khan and his “HERO” Bane.
Bill’s knighting ceremony completed, the jubilant rowdy members of KoB returned to the guild tower to continue the celebration. No one noticed the young man standing in the shadows on the roof. Vega spotted him first and called the young one to his side. This scrawny young man, chest puffed, war axe and shield equipped, strutted past members of KoB to stand before Vega. Stifling a laugh, Vega told the young one to disarm, he was among friends. The young one refused. Voice quivering he said “ A Hero is always weary and weapons in hand until he assesses his surroundings” A roar of laughter erupted from the tower roof as the knights welcomed the young one and continued with their tournament. Mystic Rose stood back watching this young man. His name was Bane. He was seeking experience and adventure. Although his skills were lacking, he did not turn down a challenge from a seasoned warrior. He held his ground and bravely faced the test. Seeing so much of herself in him when she was younger, smiling warmly, Rose asked him to join the KoB under her sponsorship. After a deep bow, young Bane accepted and then bolted toward the stairs screaming “ A Hero is born!”
The story continues Here
Till Next Time...
Lealla |
^ top-Nieves Lied
[Nieves] May 22 - 2:53 PM EDT | Mr. Nieves,
Your e-mail regarding how long it would be before you received your degree was forwarded to me. I updated your BS/CISS checklist and it looks like you still need CISS 430. Please let me know what your degree completion plans are. Once I have that information I will be able to give you a better idea of when you will receive your degree.
Sincerely,
[...]
Evaluator
They told me two semesters ago I only had Stats, Assembly Language Programming and Accounting II left. I completed those courses. And the CISS 430 class isn't being offered via Distance Education or at my campus next semester. Or the semester after that.
Can't I get a FUCKING BREAK THIS YEAR!?
GAWD DAMMIT! |
^ top-Choices? You Can't Have Any More Choices!
[Nieves] May 22 - 1:13 PM EDT | In reply to:
...your house on other shards is not affected by the shard you purchsased the home on.
Yes, it will be affected by acquiring a house on any shard. Your houses will now be tracked per account and not simply per shard. As mentioned above, picking up that third building will compell his original two houses to become Condemned.
=========
Sannio
In reply to:
why would both become condemned since they are on different shards,,, I own a castle on pac, a villa on Atlantic and I just got a log cabin todays on baja and none of the houses are condemed becuase they are all on seperate shards but the same acct
The rules will be changing. Where you have been able to own "one house per shard, per account," it will be changing to allow players to continue to own their current housing and any new house purchases will move the new homeowner into the "one house per account" system.
=========
Sannio
In reply to:
Since this is in Development do we have a say? Can we be heard?
It's unlikely that there will be any significant changes to the listed system, although it's possible there may be some during the Test Center testing phase.
=========
Sannio
Only your newest house will remain uncondemned if you collect a new house.
If you already own a villa on Chessie and a log cabin on Atlantic, as soon as you pick up that tower on Chessie both the villa and the log cabin will become Condemned and begin decaying.
So the choice becomes to either stay as you are and continue to own the two buildings and maintain the benefits of owning multiple houses, or to pick up a new building and automatically become a one-house-only homeowner (and suddenly have the option to have a auto-refreshing "Primary House"). As soon as you pick up the new building you will only be able to own one building with that account from then on.
=========
Sannio
Online Content Coordinator, UO
Origin Systems
Oh fuck that. You are going to FORCE me to condemn old homesteads if I decide to pick a new house? Fuck that.
And screw giving an alternative idea as I would normally do:
It's unlikely that there will be any significant changes to the listed system,
The UO Faire was a fucking waste of my time. Thanks a lot.
Gawd you suck.
UPDATE:
OK, now that I have calmed down a bit.
The changes are almost no different than in the past. If you got a new home, your old ones decayed anyway. But, the part that really pisses me off is the "get a new house, get forced into the one house per account system". Bullshit.
Do OSI employees even play UO anymore? Do they ever ask themselves: "if this goes in, how would I feel?"
I doubt it anymore.
You are Hacked = you are screwed.
Get a new house = your other houses are screwed.
You are a PK (red) and in comes Publish 16 = no loot for you = you are screwed as a PK. Yes, some of us PK for 'fun' but the loot is an incentive. I hate being PKed like the next guy. But if I die, I know what's coming. I lost the loot, fair and square.
You die in a dungeon in Felucca when Publish 16 comes = you are screwed. 30 minutes out? Who the fuck thought that up? And why?
Jeesuz, why am I wasting my money, time, and bandwidth on this bullshit?
Hasta. |
^ top-More on Virtue/Slayer Weapons
[LadyGrania] May 22 - 1:04 PM EDT | Another reader wanted to give more information about the virtue weapons. Good information, I was impressed at all the stuff I didn't know. So here it is. Read it and tell me if you want more like it.
side note: Slayer weapons are the official term for the more commonly referred to virtue weapons... happy now Silk?
Hi I'm Rising Force, my essay on ore elementals was in essays section, where I mentioned how I find many gargoyle's foe and daemon dismissal weapons on ore elementals.
There is a reason for this, you may know already, but I'm gonna tell you anyways :P
There are six classes of creatures in the whole virtue weapon scheme.
Undead, elementals, Repond, arachnid, reptilian, and Demon.
Demon class is where both gargoyles of all types, and daemons of all types fit in.
For each class of creature, there is a "group slayer", as in, a single
weapon that will effect every creature in that class.
Repond, reptilian death, arachnid doom, exorcism, and elemental ban are
the 6 group slayer weapons. Obviously the one for "demon" class would be exorcism.
An exorcism weopon will do 2x damage to all types of daemons, and all types of gargoyles. However, the creature-specific weopons in the class (in this class this would include gargoyle's foe and daemon dismissal), I would doubt they would do extra damage to other creatures in the class. This would be the same as a weopon of flame dousing doing double damage to a water elemental.
The "virtue ring" he speaks of, will appear when any virtue weopon is used against any creature, regardless of damage dealt, or creature
type.
As for balrons being classified as gargoyles, balrons have long been known as "elder daemons." If the classification has changed, it was kept pretty quiet. As far as gargoyle's foe weps doing 2x dmg to daemons, as I said before, it would be like flame dousing weapon doing double damage to a water elemental. It just doesnt happen.
There are many, many misconceptions about virtue weapons, such as the rarity of Repond and its purpose, or the effects of many of the virtue weapons.
The page on Stratics has tons of incorrect information. I can tell you
whatever you need to know if you ever want to hear me babble :)
Hope this helps.
Rising Force
_____________________________________________________________________
To Which I replied.. Babble On....
_____________________________________________________________________
Well ok, guess I had to type this sooner or later.
Ok we start with Repond.
Repond is often considered the "rare" virtue. The word is, it does double damage to humanoids, which makes it "better than vanq" against humans. I've had idiots come up to me in Khaldun, trying to whack me with Repond double axe because they think it will kill me in 2 hits or something. This is right before I take it and shove it up their ass sideways...
Repond is a class weapon. Meaning that "Repond" is actually a creature
class, and Repond weps do double damage to all creatures in that class.
This puts Repond weps in the same league as elemental ban, exorcism, etc.
"Humanoids" is the name of the class. In every class there is there is the class weapon, and the creature-specific ones. Ever heard of orc-slaying, troll slaughter or ogre bashing? These all fall under the Repond class.
All creatures in the class are orcs, trolls, cyclops, and ogre. Titans
may be effected as they are probably classified as kind of a "cyclops lord." These are the only creatures it does 2x damage to, and it is not better than vanq. (sorry bank sitters)
Another misconception, has to do with the virtue weapons Reptilian Death, and Arachnid Doom. At first glance, these would appear to be low level virtues. Sounds like the former works against lizardmen, and the latter works against spiders. This is partially true, and partially something only an idiot would belive. :)
Reptilian Death is the class weapon for the Reptile class. This class does indeed include lizardmen, and snakes. What many dont know is that also included in this class are Ophidians, and dragons. That's right, your super-cool halberd of dragon slaying does the exact same damage as the reptilian death one you just threw away. Ophidians and dragons are both in the reptile class, so the class weapon does double damage to them.
It is a similar story with Arachnid Doom. Arachnid is the name of the class including spiders, scorpions, and Terathans. So a weapon of Arachnid Doom will do double damage to all of the above.
Hmm ok that's all I'm gonna write about for now...
I can tell you where they spawn, what creatures spawn what types and stuff if you want. You can post any of this you think you can use, wherever you want.
People need to know so I dont get some idiot charging me 200k for
a Repond dagger cuz its "super-rare, great deal!!!"
Rising Force |
^ top-Gargoyle Foe = Daemon Dismissal
[LadyGrania] May 21 - 7:02 PM EDT | Greetings one and all! This made it's way into my email box!
A board and IRC chat regular, Paxicon, found out some interesting information and asked me to share it with you. He also asked for fame and fortune...
Anyway, here's your five seconds of fame, Paxicon!
Hello,
I recently read a thread on uo.stratics.com europa forum, stating that someone had meleed a balron using a bardiche of Gargoyle's Foe. As i spied upon the picture, i noticed the familiar 'Virtue ring' you get over a critter once you hit it with a virtue weapon. on the Balron.
This got me thinking - Could it be that our beloved and ph34red demons and balrons are simply Gargoyle's on crack?! That i had wasted 150k on a demon dismissal hally for no reason?!
This had to be prooved.
After much blade-spiriting, i today got a katana of Gargoyle's Foe from a plague beast and set off to Yew, using my character Shina - a 6xGM tank mage with swordsmanship and tactic and started whacking those demons. The results are amazing.
The Gargoyle's Foe weapons are truly as strong as any daemon dissmisal, perhaps even better due to the low price. The demon even seemed to take more damage from the Katana of Garg's Foe than my Demon Dismiss Hally at times (Might have been a shoddy halberd blow, however)
Now get those old Garg's Foe weps out and get crackin' on demon killing! ;)
Paxicon
|
^ top-Housing Changes
[Lealla] May 21 - 5:57 PM EDT | Thanks to Prophet for posting this on our message board:
Changes to the housing decay system are being planned for implementation within the next scheduled publish ("Publish 16"). These changes will clarify and affect the status of various player houses with the intent of continuing to move toward a healthier housing situation with in Ultima Online.
The following points summarize the current state of player housing/house decay within Ultima Online, and will continue to remain true:
Players are allowed to have one house per shard, per account. These houses will need to be refreshed manually.
Some older accounts may still maintain more than one house per shard, per account (but no more than one per character on that shard). These houses will need to be refreshed manually.
Acquiring a new house will put all other houses owned by that account on that shard into Condemned status, disallowing them from refreshing and forcing them to decay.
Players are allowed to own grandfathered houses on more than one shard.
Read the rest of the planned changes here: In Testing: Housing Changes
Till Next Time...
Lealla |
^ top-More On Plants!
[Lealla] May 21 - 5:39 PM EDT | Alright folks our resident closet plantaholic *looks at Nieves* asked me to share some interesting findings. It seems as we advance in generations and cross pollinate, different varieties are growing.
Interpreting Starna's chart, this means that the following crosses must occur for the 3rd Gen plants to be created:
White Flowers + Cactus = Small Palm
Water Plant + Fern = Small Palm
White Flowers + Fern = Rushes
Water Plant + Campion = Rushes
White Flowers + Campion Flowers = Snowdrops
Water Plant + Cactus = UNKNOWN
Check out some of the new versions of plants here
Till Next Time...
Lealla |
^ top-New Great Lakes News Site
[Nieves] May 21 - 9:00 AM EDT | Lealla, our little Tale Wagger, has become Editor In Chief for a new webzine dedicated to the bringing Great Lakes folks news and the announcements of events on the Great Lakes Shard. The name of this Web Zine is: The Royal Britannian Post. I see how it is. I get a new updater, and she's moonlighting. Hard to get good, dedicated help these days.
Your source for News, Information and Adventure, on the Great Lakes shard.
As Editor in Chief, I, and the entire staff at Quest, pledge to provide the community of Great Lakes a newspaper for the people, by the people, and of the people. We will maintain integrity through objective and unbiased reporting of all events and happenings in the world around us. It matters not if you are young or old, evil or virtuous, follow order or chaos, live in the light, or the dark, ...your activities and adventures will be factually recorded and reported. To the very best of our ability, we will focus on issues and incidents which are important to you, our readers.
The graphics for the main page is 'eh', but the "newspaper" portion of the site looks pretty cool.
We will see if they can do a better job than GLCN ( not active in months) The Herald.
For those of you aspiring to be shard news sites, look at UOLS.net. That is the best Shard Specific website out there right now. If you can be as consistant in your reporting and bring good news like they do, you will do well.
Congratulations to Lealla and good luck.
Hasta. |
^ top-Training Entice/Discord
[Nieves] May 21 - 8:29 AM EDT | Enticement/Discord Essay version II
Currently, enticement is a little used skill for a bard. Its purpose is to draw a creature towards the bard's position (if you move, then the creature moves toward the spot you enticed it from) potentially so that the bard can provoke it onto another creature. Right now, attacking a creature will cause it to follow you around which is better than the entice skill which only causes the creature to move to a spot on the map.
Enticement is modified by the musicianship level of the character;
a character with 100 music and 0 entice has a 50% chance to entice a
creature while a bard with gm entice and gm music never fails an
attempt. Basically, entice depends not on the difficulty of the monster, instead it depends on the musicianship and enticement skill levels.
Creatures that can be enticed
Player Vendors
Monsters
Wandering Healers
Summoned Creatures in Felucca
Creatures that cannot be enticed
NPC merchants
Certain Scenario creatures cannot be barded
Player characters
Summoned creatures in Trammel
Safe Places to entice
Player Vendor Malls
Ice Island
Any place with a high spawn of animals
Training before Publish 16
1) Buy skill up to 30 or so from NPC bards (Bard or Bard Guildmaster).
2) Entice is a target based skill. So, you will need multiple targets to gain skill. Once you have gained skill, then all the targets (except the last one) reset so that you may start at the beginning if you wish.
3) For the most part, skill is only gained when you use the skill
successfully. So, training out of powerhour will work.
4) The macro: Last Skill, Wait for Target, Last Target, and Target Next will work with just the game macros.
5) If you hit a wall, it is helpful to jump to another server, train
another skill, visit a shine, or allow that character to die.
After the upcoming publish 16, enticement will be changed into
discordance. And, all skill in enticement will be converted to
discordance.
Now, discordance (was enticement) is difficulty based rather than skill level based, and it is now an aggressive act. The monsters that are difficult to provoke will be as difficult to discord after publish 16 (see chart below). The number denotes the 50% chance point to success with this type of creature. At 25.0 below this level, there is no chance to bard the creature. and, at 25.0 above this level, there is 100% chance to bard the creature. For instance, at GM skill level, a bard has 100% chance to provoke a Ohidian Warrior (74+25=99), but he cannot provoke an ancient wyrm (125-25=100). This limitation can be overcome with the use of special instruments which give a success bonus up to +20%.
In the past, enticement was used to bring creatures to a bard's
location. Now, discordance is used to reduce the stats and the skills of a creature under its influence. At GM levels, the stats/skills reduction will total 20%, and those stats will be taken into account when determining the chance to provoke or peacemake a creature. So,
discording a creature will increase the chance to provoke or peacemake
the creature. For example, at GM provoke and discord, a bard that
discords a dragon will have a 55% chance to provoke the dragon
successfully. With a "slayer" intrument, the percentage rises to 75% (GM made intrument brings it to 65%)
107.5-25=87.5 which is the 0% chance level
(100 provoke - 87.5 difficulty)*2%=35% chance without modifications
GM discordance = +20% for high level creatures
35%+20%=55% chance to provoke a discorded dragon
55%+20% for slayer instrument = 75% chance to provoke a discorded
dragon
Creature Difficulty Level
Mongbat 10.0
Headless One 25.0
Orc 59.0
Earth Elemental 70.0
Ophidian Warrior 74.0
Efreet 87.0
Terathan Avenger 93.0
Dragon 107.5
Succubus 112.5
Ancient Wyrm 125.0
Possible Modifiers to barding skills
Discordance = +20% chance for high level creatures
+30% chance for mid level creatures
+40% chance for low level creatures
GM made instruments = +10% chance to all bard skills
Slayer type weapons = +20% chance to all bard skills
** Slayer weapons will have a 0.5% chance to break on every use no
matter the age**
This essay was drawn from the author's personal experience and from
information posted on various websites and discussion boards including
UO.com and UOStratics.
-My Best Fiend
Time to go out and train those bards!!
Hasta |
^ top-Scenario Week 6 - Changes to Plant Timers
[Kaara] May 20 - 10:59 PM EDT | Just read this on the UO Boards;
Starting in Week 6, the following changes will be applied to plant growth :
1) The "free growth day" for the 1st day on a plant will be removed. -- When you plant a seed, the time you plant it is now set as its "growth time". A plant cannot grow until 24 hours after its growth time. Which means :
a) You cannot get a quick free day by logging out and back in with a plant in your pack
b) You may see some extra waiting time for the first stage of plant growth :
i) If you plant a seed at 7:00pm Tuesday, and log in with the plant 24 hours after you planted it, at 7:00pm Wednesday or later, it will grow its first stage.
ii) If you plant a seed at 7:00pm Tuesday and grow the plant on the ground, you'll have to wait for the first server maintenance *after 7:00pm Wednesday*. So the first morning server maintenance after planting the seed, you won't see any growth (as it will not yet be 7:00pm Wednesday). You'll have to wait until the 2nd morning’s server maintenance to see the first growth (at which time it will be after 7:00pm Wednesday).
2) When a plant grows, its "growth time" for the 24 hour timer is reset to the time it grew. --- If you planted a plant at 7:00pm Tuesday, it will next be able to grow at 7:00pm Wednesday or later. If you log in at 9:00pm Wednesday instead, the plant will still grow, but it will now be set to grow at 9:00 pm Thursday (instead of 7:00pm Thursday)
a) This lines up plant growth in backpacks to be more like "power hour" in terms of its behavior (i.e. you eventually will get plant growth whenever you log in normally a day)
b) If you put lots of plants in your pack that were planted at various times, and then log in with them at a time when 24 hours have passed for *all* of them, they will now all grow at the same time, and then be set to grow at the same time the next day.
c) Since plants growing on the ground through server maintenance will get their new "growth time" set to server maintenance, growing plants in this method will end up looking just like it does now.
Augur
Designer/Ongoing Content
I can't decide if this is good or bad yet. On one side, I don't have to worry about server crashes. On another, this means it will take my plants longer to grow! Anyways, read more about it by clicking this magic link |
^ top-E3 MMOG Cocktail Party
[Talanithus] May 20 - 4:10 PM EDT | E3 MMOG Cocktail Party...
*please forward this announcement to everyone attending E3*
An informal get together is being held for Fans and Developers in the MMOG industry on Thursday, May 23, from 8 - 10 pm, at Hank's Bar in the Stillwell Hotel (http://www.stillwell-la.com). Nothing formal, just a get together for people interested in the same genre of gaming... with alcohol readily at hand. If you are a fan and looking for other E3 attendees who share your passion, or a Developer looking to meet others in the industry, then come on by for some fun and enjoyment.
Located just blocks from the LA Convention Center, Hank's Bar is one of the oldest drinking establishment's in Downtown LA, and has been in service for most of this century. For a map, go here:
Map to Hank's Bar
Directions from the Convention Center are quite easy:
1. Head NE on South Figueroa St
2. Turn Right on West 7th Street
3. Turn Right on South Grand Ave
4. Enter the Stillwell Hotel, then Hank's Bar
5. Have some FUN!
Hotel Stillwell - Hank's Bar
838 South Grand Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90017
(213) 627-1151 |
^ top-Too good to be true?
[Lealla] May 20 - 1:48 PM EDT | Something many of us have been waiting for
"Bioware, the company who have been working on Neverwinter Nights for many years, have recently released a beta version of the NWN toolset for all to download. The toolset is a brilliant feature of NWN, as it allows players to create and script their own custom made adventures. This beta version is limited, but designed to give players an insight in to the massive customisation available in the game.
Ohh,Ohhh, But wait! The one thing that made the game so desirable is seemingly ripped away!
"Bioware Owns Anything You Make", since if they want to sell a module you created themselves, the clause even allows them to forbid you from distributing your original version for any reason. The sole comfort in this is that the clause apparantly does not allow them to make a derivative work of your module, so it would have to be distributed "as is" -- but if the module contained enough "objectionable" material that they wouldn't want to take it for themselves, they could still forbid the owner from distributing it.
Well doesn't that just take the fun out of things. Read the entire article here Slashdot
Till Next Time...
Lealla |
^ top-Just Because I Have To Share
[Nieves] May 20 - 1:15 PM EDT | NIEVES IS A FUCKING COLLEGE GRADUATE!
14 years later.
4 Colleges later.
3 Kids later.
A divorce.
3 States later (moving around).
None of that stopped me.
Never give up. It pays off in the end.
Well, one hopes.
Hasta. |
^ top-About Damn Time!
[Kaara] May 20 - 11:37 AM EDT | Just found this in the FYI section at uo.com:
Young characters in dungeons May 20 2002 11:07AM CST (GMT -06:00)
An issue that allowed [young] characters to attack creatures within dungeons at no danger to themselves has been fixed.
No more "youngs" at shadow wyrms.. As if they were newbies in the first place. :oP |
^ top-In All Fairness...
[Nieves] May 20 - 7:16 AM EDT | If I report it, and someone corrects (or tries too) me, I got to follow up, right?
Nieves.
The post about the exploit programs itemseller and hairstylist containing virii are misleading, the original releases by Lord Anonymous that were available for download from his official site [...] contained NO virii what so ever. However several "mirrors" sprouted up that had different filesizes and one can only assume any virus that someone was infected with because of the programs were added in by someone other than Lord Anon. People should only ever download programs from trustworthy sites such as Lord Anons own site or our very own [Chopper].
-Lord of the Llamas
Even so...use them at the risk of your account.
Nieves likes his accounts. Nieves doesn't use cheater apps like that.
Hasta. |
^ top-Inhale the Deep Dark Blue
[Fixxxer] May 19 - 10:46 PM EDT | Holy shit. Another week has passed. And the MMORPG world got bigger and full of more shit. Sit back. Relax. And inhale the Deep Dark Blue:
Ages of Athiria- Newsletter 5 released.
The latest newsletter has tons of details on running your own business in Athira, a preview of the human race and an interview with Kressilac, President of Elysian Productions.
An exerpt of the interview:
I want to make Athiria a living, breathing world. I want it to be a place where you can come to escape real life. I want it to be a place where you can make long lasting friendships and adventure together. When I think about the world of Athiria, I tend to think of it as a huge virtual playground where thousands of people come to meaningfully interact with other people in a game where all people are fully immersed into the world.
Isn't that what every game developer wants?
City of Heroes- Hits E3.
In a recent Press Release, Cryptic Studios announced that CoH will be shown "behind closed doors to approximately 150 analysts, buyers and press people representing major gaming outlet stores, industry/consumer publications and news magazines.
Each 'invitation-only' guest visiting the NC Suite will have a grand total of 30 minutes to be introduced to all of NCsoft's games. Half of that time will be devoted exclusively to City of Heroes, and visitors will be treated to a 10-15 minute demo of the latest version of the game, an electronic press kit with current screenshots and other information.
Again, this is invitation only. CoH display will not be open to the public. Though, when E3 is over, we will know a lot more about CoH.
DarkSpace- Gamespy Review.
DarkSpace is a massively multiplayer action strategy game that puts you in command of a massive starship. Gamespy recently posted a review of the game starting off saying:
The massively multiplayer market is filled to capacity. I imagine that soon, natural selection will begin to thin the mix, as gamers find they cannot afford to pay for fifteen games every month. Enter Darkspace, a relative unknown among giants from a small team of developers called Palestar. Can this space-based MMOG survive? If things go the way they have been, I think so.
Dragon Empires- Landscape Screenshots.
Dragon Empires is priding itself on a full and active environment, a welcome change to the lifeless dull environment of games such as UO, EQ, AC and DAoC. This past week, they released some impressive screenshots of their lush foliage.
Dransik- Closed Beta Begins
From the website:
We have been in Open Testing for some time now. We will be closing the doors to new testers as of Wednesday May 22nd. We will remain in closed testing through the duration of the Development Cycle, after which we will launch our Subscription sytem (Ptp).
El Kardian- Launched.
El Kardian was officially launched this past Friday. You can sign up for a free 7 day trial to see if you like the game. Then you can have a heart attack when you find out how much the monthly fee is.
Everquest Online Adventures- PS2 MMORPG Q&A.
EQOA is an MMORPG that takes place in the Everquest world 500 years before the original Everquest. Though many things have been changed to make EQOA different than EQ. Gamespot sat down with the games Executive Producer, Rod Humble, for a short Q&A session. They also posted a handful of screenshots.
The After- Reviewed by ALLRPG.
Not much info is out there on this game. ALLRPG has written a preview for those of you who have not heard of The After.
Horizons- Yes! Something To Report!
Horizons will be wireless. Yes, it's true. Do you care? Probably not. A half a year passes since the Horizons website got pulled, and this is the news they have. Wireless.
uh huh. Fan-fucking-tastic.
There is something their site, for some stupid reason, fails to mention: Horizons will be at E3. IGN.com interviewed David 'not Allen' Bowman about Horizons at E3. So, it doesn't say much other than they are still pumping money into the game. Is it vaporware?
Motor City Online- Reviewed by... Motortrend?
Motortrend Online took time to try out and review MCO. The review doesn't praise the game, though it doesn't shit on it either. They say "most Internet users and game players still feel that online content, including games, should be free. Well no shit. But it isn't going to happen.
Mutant Chronicles- Announced.
Paradox Entertainment issued a press release announcing the game. A cut:
Mutant Chronicles takes place in a dark future where man has abandoned Earth in favour of the other planets in the solar system. Almost 1500 years have gone by since the Exodus and the fighting is more fierce than ever, Megacorporation battling Megacorporation over the scarce natural recourses still existing in the colonized areas of the planets. In addition, mankind is battling the menace of the Dark Legion for the survival of the species and everywhere is the threat of betrayal.
Shadowbane- Interview and E3.
IGN.com posted an interview with Todd Coleman, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Wolfpack. Nothing much new as far as information goes, just a little bit of 'wow it has been three years' type stuff.
A demo world is being put together for E3. It will show an improved graphics engine with new textures, and will also highlight new adventure areas. It will include:
A new forest zone that comes to life, immersing the player with detailed trees, rivers, and lakes with swinging rope bridges and topped off with plenty of bandits to keep you company.
The City of Nightbridge, a fallen metropolis under a desperate siege. Experience flaming trebuchet rounds floating over the walls, see buildings burn and crumble! Draw your sword and jump into the fray with armies of combatants struggling to the last man against the oncoming hordes of the enemy.
And last, but defiantly not least: an Undead Wasteland complete with a menacing Vampyre Keep, surrounded by a menacing chasm, and filled with a deadly army of lifeless surprises waiting to meet you.
Star Wars Galaxies- Interview.
IGN.com posted yet another interview, this time with Rich Vogel. And once again, not much new info on the game; just some personal info and other tidbits like his favorite games:
My all-time favorite games are Centipede, Donkey Kong, M.U.L.E., Wasteland, Planet Fall, Deadline, Monkey Island, Sam and Max, Full Throttle, Streets of Rage II, Civilization, Railroad Tycoon, Syndicate, Doom, Unreal Tournament, Command and Conquer, WarCraft II, StarCraft, Diablo, and Ultima Online.
Hmmm... Monkey Island is teh r0x.
Trials of Ascention- Stratics HoC June 4th.
The chat is scheduled for Tuesday, June 4th at 9:00pm EST. The topic will be character development. It will be held on the irc.stratics.com server in the #toa channel. Learn to use Stratics IRC here.
Universe- Show Me The Money!
I know what all of you are thinking: "WTF is Universe?" Well, do you remember David Allen? Ya, that guy everyone hated at Artifact Entertainment... pssssst... HORIZONS. After he left AE, he went on to make Pharaoh Productions (announced Sept 30th 2001). Their baby is Universe; and there is next to nothing (just TWO pieces of concept art) publicly known about the game.
*cough*Dawn*cough*
This past Friday, a press release was... well... released:
As many of you may know, Pharaoh has worked hard to create advanced technology and an innovative game design for DOMINION. Unfortunately, despite the support for the product, no companies are moving quick enough to support the financial needs of the company, team, or product in order to release DOMINION within a competitive timeframe. I would like to see Pharaoh produce DOMINION, UNIVERSE, and other products, but the only way for this to happen is to gain financial support for the existing company. Having said this, I would like to extend an invitation to financially capable parties to contact Pharaoh and discuss potential involvement with the company. If you or anyone you know falls into the above category, please have them send an Email to management@pharaoh-productions.com. All business-related materials are complete and available for immediate review. I will keep everyone up to date as to the status of Pharaoh and DOMINION. Thanks to everyone for your support!
HAHAAHHAHAHAAHHAAHAH. Oh. Sorry.
dabu |
^ top-The Store Is Reopened
[Nieves] May 19 - 5:58 PM EDT | The UOPG Store has been rebuilt with new offerings.
Please, take the time to shop and purchase an item or two.
All that happens when you make a purchase is make it easier for me to keep UOPG up and operational.
Hasta. |
^ top-Publish Update 5/19/02
[Nieves] May 19 - 1:25 PM EDT | Removed banner exchange code and added UOPG Rotating Banner ("This space for rent!").
Upgraded Warrior Character Creation page to new format (some information updated, but still needs an overhaul).
Minor tweaks to site.
Hasta. |
^ top-I know, I know,I know!
[Lealla] May 18 - 4:27 PM EDT | Hi my name is Lealla and I'm a plantaholic *echos heard throughout the grand hall* Hello Lealla.
I'm hear to confirm the rumors that I am responsible for the addiction of another. * opens closet door * May I present our very own closet plantaholic * drumroll * Nievesy pooh!
and for all you other closet plantaholics Cross Pollination
Till Next Time...
Lealla |
^ top-Trinsic Defense - Rally for Rath
[Lealla] May 18 - 11:11 AM EDT | It seems there are alot of interesting things going on over on Great Lakes!
Knight-General Dovolick, of the Army of House Stonesoul stood next to his master, Lord Rath, at the South Gate of the city of Trinsic, now under siege by the Jukan Horde. Rath gathered the warriors 'round and spoke a few words of encouragement.
'I was going to reply to the accusations made at the last rally, but I have decided not to. I believe that actions speak louder than words. It matters not if you support me, what makes me glad of heart is that you are here with me to help Trinsic. If you choose not to support my claim, that is fine, but stand behind me today and let us help this fine city. Citizens! Warriors! We fight for Trinsic this eve! Show no mercy to these invaders! Send them back to the pit they crawled from!'
The story continues at Quest for Britannia
Till Next Time...
Lealla |
^ top-Para gank solution
[Fixxxer] May 17 - 4:49 PM EDT | I do some PvPing on my orc in Bloodrock on GL. The guild has some strict RP rules that put us at a disadvantage in PvP(weapon and armor restrictions, etc). 99% of Urk do not use para pouches or potions and when one gets paralyzed, he is usually toast (95% of Urk are warriors with no magery). However, there is a trick that I (fencer/macer/archer) use which gives me a higher chance of surviving a para dump. I believe that it would work as a good backup plan in the normal PvP community.
When someone paralyzes you, it takes off one hit point. If you slap on a bandage right then and there, your opponent can simply wait until your bandage kicks in to start mana dumping you, thus rendering your heal useless. If you wait to apply it, you run the risk of naturally gaining that last HP and losing any chance you had on using a bandage before the explo hits you.
My technique will come in handy for those who do not carry (or ran out of) potions and/or para pouches. I'll assume you are not carrying either.
Grab yourself an evil orc helm; it looks like a dull yellow orc helm. When wearing this helm, it will raise your strength 10 points and lower your second highest stat 10 points. I'll use my Urk as an example; he is 100 Str 100 Dex 25 Int (yea I know MB fucks me up, but the dex+str is worth it to an Urk). When I don this helm, I become 110 90 25. When you first put on the helm, you remain at 100 HP's but you have a total possible of 110. You must heal up to have the full 110 HP's. That is what you take advantage of.
At the beginning of every fight, put on your evil orc helm thus giving you 100 HP's out of a possible 110. Apply a bandage and take the helm off (to lessen MB damage). Instead of waiting for your oppponent to hit you so you can apply that first bandage, you have 100 HP's with a bandage already started just as the fight begins. This will give you a small advantage... and every advantage counts.
So during the fight, Phred da Killa paralyzes you. Put on your evil orc helm thus giving you 99 HP's out of a possible 110 (99 because of the 1 HP damage para does). Phred will assume you are using a bandage immediately, and will wait to begin his dump until that imaginary bandage kicks in.
Here is the catch: The key is timing. You want to apply the bandage shortly before he begins his first cast. If he begins to cast, immediately apply a bandage and hope it will 'kick in' in time. Yea, I know it's mainly a guessing and luck game. Get some practice and know your opponents. It works more times than it does not. You'd be surprised.
When his mana dump begins to hit you, you should have 100 HP's with a bandage ready to kick in. Your bandage will kick in either right before he is done dumping you, or just as he finishes. This will leave you with plenty of HP's and him with zero mana. Then go on the offensive.
When timed correctly, your attacker will lose every time.
dabu
|
^ top-A Reason Why You Shouldn't Use Exploits/Bugs
[Nieves] May 17 - 3:52 PM EDT | I have some more info on these recent hacks. The Itemseller and the Hair Dye cheats both contain three separate viruses. Anyone that installed the program also installed the viruses, which of course means that any person using the program has probably compromised their machine and their accounts are in grave danger. This was substantiated by associations I was also made aware of - apparently several people who reported their account to be hacked also were people whose accounts were logged doing those exploits.
-William Leverett, EA/OSI
Some folks that have been hacked did not use the above exploit applications, but, those that did, and were hacked, should look to those two applications as a possible culprit.
If I was a guy wanting to hack UO Accounts, this would be a great way to find victims. I create an application that finds a weakness in the system and gets users something they want for free (relatively speaking). This will get me account information on users and then I can use that information to steal those accounts. You get what you want, I get what I want. But I come out ahead.
Too bad, so sad.
The lesson here? Don't use illegal 3rd party applications. Your account is safe from banning and, possibly, hacking.
Hasta. |
^ top-Some People Disagree
[Nieves] May 16 - 5:23 PM EDT | But Spider Man owns Star Wars: Episode II.
The actor playing Darth Vader sucks at playing a dramatic (love) role but he was decent at showing anger.
And it was LONG in the middle. Too long.
It had it's funny moments.
My highlights were watching Mace Windu (Samuel Jackson) owning J. Fett in front of his son, B. Fett and Yoda doing his impersonation of a Jedi version of Jet Li.
I have never seen anything as hilarious as a little green guy yelling "KIAAAIII!" and spinning in the air doing a 1440o with a lightsaber to kick a Dark Jedi's ass....
Hasta. |
^ top-Publish Update 05/16/02
[Nieves] May 16 - 4:06 PM EDT | All skills pages should now be in the current UOPG Layout.
The last 4-5 skills require text formatting changes (ran out of time).
Added place holders for Cooking and Enticement/Discord.
--------
If anyone feels frisky, I need updated essays on working the following skills:
Cooking
Enticement/Discord (yes, I would like a combined essay)
Taming (it's way out of date).
Hasta. |
^ top-Dude, where's my ring?
[Fixxxer] May 16 - 12:12 AM EDT | Now we've seen it all.
I know you are all needing a good laugh. This will get you rolling on the floor, literally.
I am assuming that just about all of you read the Lord of the Rings books at one time or another in your life. Hell, in some schools it was mandatory (it was in mine). And for those who didn't read them; I'm sure you caught the movie, and/or will catch the new ones.
These books are a permanent staple in literature and are widely regarded as the best fantasy books ever written (not to mention that UO wouldn't exist without them). But you already know that. Everyone knows that, right?
Apparently not everyone.
Everyone also knows that the second book in the LotR trilogy is titled 'The Two Towers." And, everyone also knows that the World Trade Center was nicknamed "The Twin Towers. Right? Similar? Sure.
Check out this (now closed) petition:
To: Peter Jackson and New Line Cinema
Those of us who have seen The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring know what an amazing director Peter Jackson is. When I learned that there apparently was to be a sequel, I was overjoyed. However, Peter Jackson has decided to tastelessly name the sequel "The Two Towers". The title is clearly meant to refer to the attacks on the World Trade Center. In this post-Sepember 11 world, it is unforgiveable that this should be allowed to happen. The idea is both offensive and morally repugnant. Hopefully, when Peter Jackson and, more importantly, New Line Cinema see the number of signatures on this petition, the title will be changed to something a little more sensitive.
Sincerely,
The
Undersigned
Yes, it's true. Someone actually made said petition. Was this a satire? Who knows, probably. I still got a laugh out of some of the hilarious, and sarcastic, flame responses (hidden between some tasteless ones, though).
I, too, was galled, shocked and disoriented upon learning of the cynically crass title of Mr. Jackson's new film. I would also like to start a petition to rename Steven Spielberg's "Minority Report" because of its blatant insult to people of color. Also, the upcoming film "About A Boy" is a clear endorsement of pedophilia. I am also deeple troubled at the subtitle of the new "Star Wars" installement, "Attack of the Clones." This scandalous title is a none-too-subtle implication that scientifically duplicated humans or other animals are violent and hostile in nature -- clearly an affront to copied citizens everywhere. We shall make no progress until Hollywood stems its insensitivity to those factions of society it chooses not to understand. As an avid filmgoer, I shall shed many tears until these senseless titles cease.
I'm so offended I could shit. I mean, Saruman is an anagram of Ram Anus, which clearly incites unhealthy practices involving livestock. And furthermore, Peter Jackson is an anagram of Sneak Project, symbolising that the whole trilogy is merely a front for the Evil Empire.
Yeah, and the San Antonio Spurs can no longer call Tim Duncan and David Robinson the Twin Towers, and Tower Records must change their name, and everything that reminds me of something bad, must be changed...even if it's like 50 years retroactive.
Yes - rename it NOW. Similary, as I am plagued by acute hemorrhoids, I also find 'Lord of the RINGS' pretty offensive as well. That should be renamed retrospectively... and let's not even think about how 'Gone With the Wind' can upset those plagued by their partner's overactive bottom.
...If Osama watches it he might find the one ring and use an army of terrorist orcs to rule the world!
Peter Jackson: Alright, alright! You win. I'm going to change the title to "Dude, Where's My Ring."
A response by the petition-starter was even entered:
Why are you people getting irate about this petition? There are a few simple facts here: (1) The sequeal was only completed recently. Movie studios dont make movies unless they thing they're make money off them; (2) Mr. Jackson named the sequal "The Two Towers" to capitalize on the 9/11 tragedy. (3) All this ranting about some "JR Tolkein" has nothing to do with the movie--they are only similarly named. If you have something to say to me, say it directly. You know where to e-mail me: slashdotwidener@yahoo.com. Screaming cowards don't even use your real neams.
It even spawned an anti-petition.
And I am writing about it
*has no life*
dabu
|
^ top-New musical instrument, the Fire Horn?
[Nissa] May 15 - 12:59 PM EDT | Vex has been very busy. This was posted to the Bards Forum. While Vex didn't specifically say this was an instrument, I am assuming it is. Further in the thread someone said that in the beginning it would be loot on monsters and then eventually craftable. But, no offical word on that yet.
Ok, so here's what the fire horn is all about.
The point behind it is to fill a gap at the lower levels of bard abilities. When you provoke two low-level creatures against each other, chances are it will take somewhere between "a very long time" and "forever" for them to kill each other.
The fire horn is basically an area-effect flamestrike effect with some limitations and costs. The bard can only use it at short range, and not very often (you have to catch your breath between uses). While it is area-effect, having multiple targets in the area dilutes the damage. Also, each use consumes a quantity of sulfurous ash.
The damage done by use of the fire horn depends on the user's skill levels in Musicianship, Peacemaking, Discordance, and Provocation. In the hands of a non-bard it's probably a waste to use it, but it will be useful for someone with 200 or more points of bard skills.
Against low-level creatures, a good firehorn blast can leave a bunch of corpses and badly scorched monsters. Against mid-to-high level creatures, the fire horn does damage but isn't powerful enough to kill. It will aid against tough creatures but not be an uberweapon.
The firehorn doesn't have charges, but it does have a small (less than 0.5%) chance of being destroyed each use. This means that every firehorn always has the same chance of being destroyed each use (whether its new or quite old), so it's impossible to scam in the sale of one by using almost all of the item's charges. On the bad side, it does mean that a new item could be destroyed on its first use -- but on the good side, there's no worrying about charges and it's equally conceivable that a firehorn could go for many hundreds of uses before finally rolling snakeyes. It's possible we'll begin using the same system for other new magic items.
Oh, and the firehorn does work against other players -- since it's area effect it won't damage innocents, guildmates, faction allies, or their pets. It will damage reds, criminals, aggressors, and guild enemies. This does have certain implications that may need to be analyzed more deeply. As far as power goes, the fire horn's damage will certainly be noticeable against other players, but won't be extreme by any means. We will closely watch use of fire horns on public test shards and will alter their damage versus players as appropriate.
Wow, so many changes in one day!! Since this works against non-innocent players, is this to make bards more viable in PvP? Nah. Can't be! |
^ top-Another Bard Update
[Nissa] May 15 - 8:58 AM EDT | Thanks to dewinter from the UOPG forums for bringing this to our attention. I don't know how this one slipped by me.
Vex posted this to the Bard Forums.
Howdy. Here are the latest set of changes to the bard updates. These changes come about as a direct result of feedback from and conversations with the bard playtesters.
First, several bug fixes have been made:
* Timeout of area-effect peacemake will be restored to pre-Pub16 behavior (5 second skill delay on success, 10 second delay on failure)
* Permanent discord effect was an error and will be corrected to obey standard Line-of-Sight checks
* Various problems with monsters not being attackable by pets/summoned creatures/provoked creatures while under a Peacemake effect will be corrected
* Creatures who are "calmed" by Peacemaking will stop moving toward their previous target and instead will return to Loitering mode until they re-target
* Bonus to chance of success for Musicianship above 100 will be properly applied. The actual bonus is 1% per point above 100.0 Musicianship to Discord, Targeted Peacemake, and Provocation attempts.
OSI stated that musicianship would not be a powerscroll, guess that has changed.
And the gameplay improvements:
* Creatures under the effects of Discordance will display a particle effect (3D) or sparkly animation (2D)
* Instead of the line-of-sight restriction operating on a 5-second heartbeat, giving the bard between 5 and 10 seconds to maneuver, it will instead use a much more precise 10-second check.
This seems much better. I have been experimenting with the 5 second delay and it is very difficult. Ten seconds will be much much better.
* Peacemaking (Targeted)
* + Chance of success increased by +10% across the board
* + Corresponding increase in continued suppression effect
* Discordance
* + Chance of success increased by +10% across the board
* + Discord stat reduction effect reduced from 25% at GM to 20% at GM
* + Discord-modified stats figure into computation of bard difficulty for Provocation and Peacemaking
This is the meat and potatoes here. Originally discordance didn't affect your rate of success when provoking. Now it will. So now, discordance is a must for a true bard. While I may not put it on my thunter, I am going to have to change the template on my 7x bard/mage.
* + Since difficulty computation is not linear, this will mean:
* + - Against the highest-level creatures, a GM-level Discord effect will reduce the difficulty of provoking the target by approx. 10 points (+20% chance of success)
* + - At mid-level, a GM-level Discord effect will reduce the difficulty of provoking the target by approx. 15 points (+30% chance of success)
* + - Versus low-level creatures, a GM-level Discord effect will reduce the difficulty of provoking the target by approx 20 points (+40% chance of success)
* + Using Discordance against a target will become an aggressive act:
* + - Bard will be added to the creature's target list (and will attack immediately if not already otherwise occupied)
* + - Bard will receive looting rights/fame and karma credit for the attack
* Mana/Stamina costs for bard ability use will be eliminated.
Yeah!! I am very glad to see this one removed. 10% reduction of both mana and stamina seemed harsh.
With these changes, the bard character is a very playable template. I like the fact that discordance ties in with provoking. It makes the bard a more focused template. Difficulty ratings will remove the twinks, LOS will make the character more fun to play with more challenge. A while back in our forums, someone asked what people were looking forward to in Pub 16. I responded that there was really nothing for me and that I was dreading the bard changes. Now I am not dreading them anymore.
See, OSI does listen. :)
If you would like to discuss this further, you can go to the thread that dewinter started. |
^ top-How Nieves Got Schooled
[Nieves] May 14 - 10:22 PM EDT | So here I am working with my son to GM his macing. And Mr. Atlantic Owns GL shows up to be a general pest and all around bitch.
Words are exchanged and a date is made to the moonglow moongate.
I am on with my jacker, and since we know jackers are the cheesy bitches of the PvP world, I put him away and get Hammer. Mainly because I wanted to beat his ass into the fucking ground.
Sturm shows and we were walking and Atlantic Owns GL tells Sturm he doesn't want him along. I tell Sturm to hang back and let Araxas know to hang around at the moongate until I call. Yes, I called friends. I am not stupid. I am not walking into a gankfest unprepared.
So, we head to the southwestern tip of moonglow. Down by a small tower... ::looks in the crowd:: Yes, that tower. The one ::points:: you own.
Now...
He tells me to flag. Yeah, sure. I get a dog. Before I kill it, he chugs a GSTR and GAG. Dog dies, I cut it up, he loots, I attack. Back and forth. Me with my War Axe, him with his Kryss and Spear. He paralyzes, I wait. He comes to poison, Hammer resists. Redline and he runs off screen. :/ I cast poison and wait, then hit him with it. He chugs a cure. More and more of his running, more of my chasing. Ok ok ok, I will be fair, "he was heal dancing". Anyway...my favorite part was when he called me a chugger. Yep, sure am.
Finally he says something about food getting cold and has to eat. Yeah sure you do. And then he says something about there is no point to this. Um...right.
He starts running into Moonglow and teleporting around using the teleporters. So 'poof' he's gone.
I get back to Araxas and Sturm and we chat a bit about what a pussy he was and how much he sucked for running.
He comes back and says something about fighting again.
I tired of the exchanged and attacked him.
Well, Good ol' Nievesy Pooh missed the part where it said "you are now protected by the town guards". 00oooo00oo0.
Talk about fucking emberrassing. I got resed, he talked shit some. Because, you know, I suck for not knowing where the Guard Zone was in this part of Moonglow. Yep, I suck, becuase I didn't know that shit.
Araxas had flagged off of me ressing me and Mr. Atlantic Owns GL comes back to collect off of her. Unfortunately, her computer decided it would do something else besides UO and she got her own dirtnap.
I took off to get Ms. Roxanne. I come back and Sturm is sleeping on the ground as well. Nice. Being the stupid person I am, I took it to Mr. Atlantic Owns Shit and he ran into the guard zone after taking a DP hit. The guards didn't like it so they gave Roxanne a kiss. Nice.
Schooled. Because I am stupid.
Of course, I was now the newbie and he the 3l33t PvPer because he knew the guard zone area down there and I didn't.
It's all good. Sturm and I gated out, he followed. (Araxas had already left). I dispelled the gate and Sturm was on him. I followed.
After a 2 minute chase, he finally got his house hiding macro work and waited us out then recalled.
Aight.
Lesson learned. Know the fucking guard zones.
If anyone sees Atlantic Owns GL on Great Lakes, let him know Nieves sends his love.
Anytime, anywhere bitch.
Hasta. |
^ top-Week 5 Spoiler
[Nissa] May 14 - 4:01 PM EDT | Well, it seems that Yew is changing, must have something to do with the decay spell that the Meer casted in Week 1 (or was it 2?) If you are interested here are some spoilers that I was able to grab from the UO Boards.
As you can see, Yew is turning into a swamp. A lemon tree?
If you look at the radar map, you can see the new swamp by the sheep pens.
It appears the NPC healers are getting sick. Wonder if it is our job to heal them somehow?
Wonder if these are used to heal them. Someone on the UO Boards said he tried but couldn't do anything with them. They are non stackable. He put them on his alchemist to see if a new potion could be greated, but nothing new was on the menu.
One of the lemon trees are growing right in the middle of the healers. This poster said that he took this screenshot about 2 seconds before he died.
Also, the following was posted to FYI today:
Week 5 of the latest ongoing content scenario is currently live on the Chesapeake shard. Barring any issues, all remaining shards should see these changes live following their morning maintenance periods, local server time, as per the schedule below.
Note: There are some map changes taking place within and around the NPC town of Yew. These changes should have little or no impact on player housing, and houses currently in this area will be unaffected. However, players should observe caution before redeeding their house within the vicinity of Yew—changes in the map could make it difficult or impossible to place a new house in the exact same location as the old one.
That last line is very important. Be very careful when redeeding! |
^ top-ImaNewbie
[Nieves] May 14 - 11:29 AM EDT | One of the best Cartoon Series related to UO is shutting down the ImaNewbie series.
To give you a taste of the laughter they bring, check this out:
Go on and read them (Click on the toons link to the left). Old and new player alike will appreciate the stories. And many of you younger players may come to understand some things about the 'old days' of UO.
Hasta. |
^ top-Diary of a Newbie (continues)
[Lealla] May 14 - 10:41 AM EDT | As I stated in my introduction yesterday, I have been working with Fury to bring his tales and adventures to the readers over at The Daily Herald.
The latest in the series was posted today. This is the sixth of the series. You will find the others in the archive section at the Herald.
As Khan grows more comfortable in our world and with his character, he decides it is time to venture further into our pixilated world with the creation of his “HERO” A character he decides to use to role play and fight evil in our lands. As he creates, Bane, his hero, he runs into the lowest form of scum to walk in our world.
Will he overcome? Will his new found friends be there for him? Will this encounter spoil his excitement and innocence?
Lets take a peek..................
Read the rest of Fury's tale at The Daily Herald.
Till next time......
Lealla
|
^ top-Running multiple UO clients under XP by Elcantar
[FrozenFire] May 14 - 9:33 AM EDT | This gem was in our PowerGaming Forum:
Running Multiple UO accounts under Windows XP
Part one: Is this legal?
Running more than one account at the same time is legal, as long as no hacking of the client is done. Also, not more than one client window can be open on one screen at any time - taskswitching is not easy.
The official link for now is this on the UO Read-Only FAQ Boards.
Part two: What are the requirements?
Windows XP (Home or Pro - both work) and two active UO accounts are the minimum. It is possible to run more than two accounts, but with UO's high hardware requirements it will be very slow playing....
Part three: Drawbacks?
Yes - there is one. Switching tasks is not made easy (as you will see) and system performance will be reduced a lot!
On a somewhat recent machine (Early 2002 - Athlon 1.2GHz, 512 MB Ram) running more than two clients will make playing almost impossible.
Lag will generally increase, so it's not a good idea to go into a dungeon while running this.
Part four: Then what's it good for?
Uses for running two clients can be many. Transferring items without a house - or even transferring a "condemned" house safely to another account of yours, scouting an area with a ghost or just old fashioned "roleplaying". I'm sure you'll think of something else that makes using two clients a good idea.
A note of warning: Training skills unattended (which it is, if you're on the other client) still is not allowed by the rules of conduct.
Part five: Can we start with the important information now?
Okay... here we go.
Once you have started Win XP (and gotten past the welcome screen) you should head over to the Control Panel (Start - Settings - Control Panel).
Depending on "old" or "new" menu style you'll see a different picture.
This is the standard layout for WinXP - new style...
This is the old style layout - switchable for those who used other versions of Windows before...
Either of those will take you to User Accounts.
In User Accounts you'll need to create at least a second Account (or more, if you're planning on using more than two clients).
Standard settings have a "guest" account ready, which is inactive - and the one you created during installation of XP - which is set as administrator.
Creating the account is quick and painless - all neccessary is assigning it a name and deciding on "administrator" or "limited" access. If you're not sure what to choose and are running the Computer alone go for "Administrator".
After creating more than one account the "Welcome" screen will look something like this...
You can now switch users freely by "Logging off User 1" which will take you to the "Welcome" screen and from there starting up User 2. Any programs not shut down before you log off any user will still be running.
To switch between users quickly the standard hotkey of "Win + L" (Win being the one between Ctrl and Alt) is defined.
One more setup option is needed. Your internet connection must be available to both users. In case of connecting to the internet via a LAN (Router on DSL or Cable or at work *smiles*) this should work anyway, as all users would have access there.
If you're using a dialup connection of any type (ISDN, Modem, some DSL providers) you'd have to make sure a any user of your computer does use this connection.
Most likely this settings will be "on" by default, but if you're setting up a new connection make sure the box with "Use this account name and password when anyone connects to the Internet from this computer" is checked...
Part six: Setting up UO.
Your new "user" will have a standard screen, with possibly not all programs installed, and almost certainly a different background and layout.
To get UO to run you'll need a separate installation of UO for each of your accounts. Using 2D client for one and 3D for the other would work, as would a second installation of the 2D client.
UO Assist will work for both clients with no modifications needed - just create a shortcut to the UOAssist.exe on th second account and you're good to go.
Final Notes:
- This is not nearly as fun as having a partner for healing training, but sometimes it's just easier and safer to do something yourself. System performance is rather low, so I cannot really suggest this for anything requiring quick interaction.
- First starting up of the second account will take significantly longer than switching later on, as all the User Data will be loaded.
- Don't forget to tell your firewall that both instances of UO are allowed to access the internet
Excellent guide Elcantar. The mine where this gem was excavated, can be found in this thread. |
^ top-Let Loose The Dogs Of War
[Nieves] May 14 - 7:04 AM EDT | Hey mate. I have noticed that you have a rather good sized reader group, including myself. I am working deeper on this quest of mine to get OSI to do something about hacking. Sinc you want to post my message to OSI on your main page, which I am more than happy to let you, I think it would help alot in letting folx know whats really going on. One thing I request if at all possible. I am looking to start a knowledge base of all the folx that have been hacked recently. This way I can find all of the similarities and pull all these folx together and show OSI, then EA exactly what's going on here.
So far, I'm finding that in ALL cases that I've researched, Everyone either had a firewall that they installed, or had built in firewall. Also in all cases, no viruses were found on the systems, nor trojans. No emails were downloaded and noone else had access to account info. Not to mention, so far there have been two people who used to or currently works as an ISP admin and knows what to look for and how to secure their systems that this was done to. We need to get to the bottom of this, and I'm willing to do the Grunt work on this to take care of the matter. I'm tired of autamated reponses frm OSI. So far I've got nothing but that very thing. No real people replying to my emails. Now I'm even going to EA and trying
to get something done there. I'll keep you posted as soon as I get
something solid. I've even been to the FBI on this matter with no luck. Something has got to give and I'm not gonna give up till something is done or I am noticed for it by those creeps at OSI and EA. Please post this to your users if you can. I am looking for anyone hacked or had a similar situation to send me all detailed info, what operating system they had, and just what took place durring, before and after the hack. These guys can icq me at 2981403.
ThanX!
~N~
Is it in vain? Who knows? And does anyone other than the players really care?
Hasta. |
^ top-Some more thoughts on how to improve account security
[FrozenFire] May 14 - 5:30 AM EDT | The worst thing a Hacker can do when he breaks into your account, is probably to tranfer your house and delete your characters. Its no fun loosing all the "small" stuff, like regs, money and armor, but for most players, the biggies are the real estate and the characters.
Now, OSI seems to enforce their standard, sorry-we cant-help-you-with-that policy (it applies for most at least; Ive read in the past about restored characters). To be fair, I can also see a lot of people trying to trick OSI into giving them back items that they just gave away to friends. So items is probably not a good idea to restore. Lets forget about items then, and focus on houses and characters.
What can be done about them? Heres what I think should be done:
Quarantine.
Implement a 7 day Quarantine for all house trades and character deletions.
If you want to redeed/trade your house, you have to "activate it" a week before, and only after a week in "Quarantine", is the house open to transfer/re deeding. Once its passed quarantine - sort of being in a "trade mode" - just have your buyer next to it and proceed as usual.
Same thing would apply for character deletion. Before you can delete a character, you have to activate that *slot* for deletion. That will take a full week of quarantine and then (and only then) can you delete a character in that slot.
A couple of more things about this quarantine hacking protection measure. Once a delete or trade has been through quarantine, it stays that way, until you deactivate the quarantine. Once deactivated, you have to go through quarantine again. The quarantine delete mode applies to a slot, not a speficic character. So if you delete one char, you can create a new and delete that one too, without having to wait for another quarantine. This leaves people with a serious newbie item harvesting habit no worse off.
The one draw back I can see, is that you cant sell a newly placed house until it has passed through quarantine. This could be bypassed by allowing a houseplacer to set the house as tradeable directly after placing it. If the player declines, then normal quarantine rules protects the house.
Now, with 7 days to react and save your characters and houses, most people would be sooo much better off after a hacking. Ive tried to minimize impact for those who feels this is a hassle. If they want the freedom to quickly trade their house or delete their chars, they can - and the security would be no better or worse than today. But for those who dont want to be hacked, heres a simple way to protect yourselves.
What do you think? Tell us in this quarantined thread. |
^ top-I die, sometimes too much......
[Lealla] May 13 - 10:01 PM EDT | This was sent to me over at The Herald by Dupree. An interesting tale for all to Enjoy! Thank you Dupree!
Long ago, I developed a hatred for the evil magic users of our land. One of the largest hubs for evil magic study I know of is the tower deep in the dark recesses of dungeon shame. There was a time when I would stand outside, calling and taunting the mages out one by one so they could meet my axe face to face so to speak. As I got older, better equipped, and more sure of myself I started to enter that evil place. I knew that by facing these wretched practitioners of the dark arts in their own lair, my name would be remembered and strike fear in the hearts of evil mages throughout Sosaria. Several times I have entered that den. Several times I have cleaved through each and every mage in the tower by myself. Some call it cold-hearted justice. The older black robed wizards, the young red apprentices, and any nightmarish minions they may have created have all died by my hands. Each time I raided the tower, I became more and more adept at the quick reflexes and tactical maneuvers that would prove invaluable when facing a large number of foes in an enclosed area.
Read the rest at The Daily Herald
Till next time.....
Lealla |
^ top-An Introduction
[Lealla] May 13 - 7:17 PM EDT | Hello folks!! My name is Lealla. *curtsey* I’ve been asked by Nieves to share stories of our lands, stories of grand adventures, and stories of people young and old, meek and bold. To report to you the happenings in the world around Britannia.
Let me share a bit about myself... As I said my name is Lealla, my origins are unclear, some say I have the look of the Drow, what with my white hair and dark skin, a rare beauty. I was raised in the forests near Minoc by an elderly couple. He a wizard for the royal court, she a simple herbalist. The where abouts of my family a mystery, but that is a story for another time. I enjoy exploring the beauty of the world around us. Seeking that adventure around the next bend. I seek out the unusual and have been known to handle a kryss with deadly force. But don’t let that kryss fool you many more tricks up my sleeves *winks*
But enough about me, for now. *smiles* I want to hear about you.. Your stories, memories, adventures, your guilds, your laughs, your tears.. whatever you wish to share with our readers. I have been working with Fury and sharing his tale with the readers at the The Daily Herald Look for me as I roam our lands. I hail from Great Lakes. Feel free to stop me and say hello, perhaps have a drink as you share your tale with me or send me a scroll here.
Till Next Time...
Lealla |
^ top-Scenarios, the JC way
[FrozenFire] May 13 - 2:23 PM EDT | Heres a few words of wisdom from JC the Builder of our own Powergamer Forum:
Lets face it. This is the 4th scenario so far and what has it been? Lets kill some orcs/savages/jukas/controllers/golems/plague monsters/boglings/etc. Has there been a week of any scenario which has not introduced a new monster for people to kill? I am not saying new monsters are a bad thing, not even rehued one. But Scenarios have been about one thing only so far: New monsters and items.
Sure the Scenario team is trying to make scenarios more dynamic. They are trying to make them more enjoyable for everyone. Well where is this? The most dynamic thing about this scenario is that you could potentially kill you plant (Not making fun of plants, I have 74). This is just what I think scenarios should be like. But first I would like to write a quick summary for each scenario.
First we had the trial scenario: Orcs verse the unknown enemy (savages). It was a pretty good scenario considering it was the first. Orcs "seeminly" advanced on towns. We got several new orcs which fit the storyline. New items included the bola balls, bola, orc mask, and orc bow. Then came the savages the last week or 2 which ended up being a mistake. People went after the savages like mad for their colored tribal masks, tribal spears, ridgebacks, berries, and just because they were the newest monster. And since the finale was decided how many orcs verses savages died the orcs won because people masscured the savages. So the orcs got their cave. Was good overall......for a start.
Next up was the (I forgot the name so I call it) Golem scenario. Started out good and ended well. We got the golems and controllers and those nice puzzle generators. We got the new craftable golem, and arcane stuff. That guy casted that spell. We had to build that tower to block some field. Then we had to go to ish in that dungeon with the exudos minions and kill those 12 huge things which took about 6 hours. Then we freed that city and got the masonary and glassblowing. Was a step up from the Orc scenario of course. The only probelm was people had a hard time in Ish because there was 50 people at the finale. I got disconnected at least 30 times and 25 of those times I logged in dead. But I and many others had a blast.
Then we had the "short" scenario. All I remember about it was killing juka lords in shame. I mean what was the point of the jukas? They came to a dungeon and took it over? I didn't care, I was there for those nifty virtue bows. It was 3 weeks of killing juka lords. The warriors and mages were good aditions, but why kill them? They took a full mana dump and I could just run past them. Even though this was a filler for the next scenario it wasn't much of anything in my opinion. Certainly the worst of the 3 scenarios thus far. I think this scenario wasn't as much about content but more about getting virtue bows into the game.
And finally we arrive at the current scenario which is called, oh geez I forgot it already. Ok how about the swamp thing scenario, no wait dragon scales? Swamp dragon scenario! No I think those chaos dragoons did more so how about The chaos scenario? I think that fits. We are 4 weeks into this thing and look at what we have gotten: Dragon scales, dragon smith hammer, dragon armor types, swamp dragon, all the things in the plant system, chaos dragoons, elite chaos dragoons, boglings and bog things, plague monster. I think we have gone from moderate content to extreme. I mean look at it. I doubt publish 16 has as much as what this scenario has (sarcasm). Maybe UO has the wrong people on each team. Put the scenario team to work on publish 16 and the other people on scenarios. I mean look how smooth this runs (end of sarcasm).
Now lets get back to where ever I started at. So Scenario 1 was good, 2 was good, 3 was bad, and in my opinion 4 is worse. I can just imagine what 5 will be like.........*screen gets all blured*
Week one of beetle maina: all the beetles are release including 2 types of rideable beetles with beetle armor. Beetle is stronger then bone. You can also play toons from the beetles on your favorite uo instrament. A new threat to people's plants is beetle infestations and you must get a new type of potions by killing *insert new monster here* and taking *insert new item here* and then go and kill *insert new monster here* and add the 2 things together and then you can be rid of your beetles infestation. And instead of the beetles just arriving at server up they pop up in brit main bank during primetime and eat all the bank sitters..........
*screen returns it it's regular crisp color spectrum*
Oh well that fantasy got a little off track in the end. I might as well move along to my main ideas before people stop reading and start replying how off base I am. Well here is things I think would add a new depth to scenarios and feel free to add your own:
---OSI talks about how much of strain it would be on the server to simulate a "real" invasion. Well what about this idea. Monsters spawn in an area a little ways from the town they will invade. They move around as normal. If players do not find these monsters after a set ammount of time (say half a day) and kill them enough then the spawn moves closer to town. If the monsters are just left alone they could be inside the town in a matter of days. But if they are killed so much they actually have to retreat or are eliminated all together. How is that for players directly affecting how a scenario opperates? But the key is to make sure enough monsters get to towns. So the dev team could "secretly" code in reenforcements for towns that the monsters want to capture for certain. So basicly if the players are beating them back more spawn then before. The players can still push them back but it would require a large number of players working around the clock. I could elaborate on this so much more, which what I will probably do in a reply to this post.
---Woohoo! The scenario is over! We won! Wait what did we win? We actually didn't win anything. Unless you call these new items a prize. I think there should be a chance in each scenario to get an item which will only be able to be gotten for a limited time. This will be an item players can proudly display as them having particpated in a particular scenario. I mean Seers almost always gave away stuff that was unquie. Then stuff became valuable and they pretty much stopped doing it. Anyway, for example: In the golem scenario finale was a perfect place for some stuff. After we vanquished all 12 of those huge things (Yes I was there the whole time) and we rushed the back room there should have been some chests with "treasure" in them. For about an hour after the finale players could grab this item (one per player per account). I might elaborate more later, but basicly I am getting tired and want to finish this thing I am writing.
---Scenarios need more diveristy between the shards. On the Golem one for exmaple when the final puzzles had to be done to break the spell everyone knew where to find them. Why? People found them all the day before on the "scenario test shard". There should have been a random spawn generator which would spawn the puzzles different on each shard with enough possibilties for spots so people would actually have to search for them. Half the fun I think would have been trying to find these things. A better job could have been done I think to make it more random.
That is all I am writing for now because I dislike writing big essays and I will try to add more to this as people respond. Flames/comments/suggestions/ whatever is welcome.
If you want to add or comment, go here |
^ top-You Have Been Hacked? Talk To The Police First
[Nieves] May 13 - 8:28 AM EDT | That's what OSI tells you to do. So what happens when you do?
Hail. Well met? I'm not sure at this point.
Let me give you a rundown and follow up of my recent malady...
A lil while back, my account [nunya] was hacked while I was on UO. Luckily I acted quickly to get the GM to block my account and stop the intruder from taking from me, 3 WHOLE YEARS OF HARD WORK and SPARE TIME. Unfortunately, others being currently and recently effected, have not had such fortunate luck with quick action, mostly due o them not being online during the hacking.
This is what I've come across in my recent adventures of hell. You responded to my problem by telling me to notify my local law enforcement and get them to deal with it, since of course, it didn't happen to you or through you [so you say] and perhaps simply because it's the "paying customers" problem, not the company taking the 10$ a month. Well. I see it differently. You take that 10$ a month from me and fund whatever you choose, so it is directly effecting OSI.
Without my account intact, you will not have my service, thus not having that extra 10$ a month. Overall, it will eventually make a difference. Anyways... I did get with my local PD [which I had been a full time part of for 2 recent years] and just what I knew then, I found out now. They have no idea about computer related crimes, nor how to deal with it. So, since I am very knowledgeable in this field, I was able to take up the investigation myself, through the department of course, since that's the only way you would have it. I then found the information on the person that hacked into my account. You say through some Trojan or virus, and I say not. I ran 3 different virus scanners on my computer and found nothing. Without Trojans, there is no way inside. But still, you claim it was directed at my computer [even though nothing was effected, and with all the other sensitive information laying about]. So, I went further. The IP address belonged to a dynamic IP through AOL. So, I called AOL. Again, THEY needed the police to do the work since they, like you, would not give information to me. Upset, I called the FBI. Unfortunately, AOL wasn't very helpful again. Not to mention, since the hacker did not steal 5000$ worth of anything from me, and since my account wasn't government related, there are no laws against what this person did. NONE!!!
Recently, I've been noticing this happening to people left and right. I've talked with a few so far and found the same problem. No information about ANY VIRUS OR TROJAN, no help from Local police, no related programs, no related operating systems. The only similarity.. UO! What is going on? Should this keep up, I would be more than happy to wipe out every single thing I own and take myself, my wife and my friends and my guild to Anarchy Online until Neverwinter Nights come out. Let's face it. Something is amiss here. You guys need to get on the ball. Admit your mistakes and take care of it!!!! At least track these bloody IP numbers down, put up more secure properties in your programming, and or put it up on your web site about what's going on and keep it updated. Hell. Put up a board just for hacked accounts so we can relate to who and what's going on here. Then and only then can we get to the source. The persons involved [those that instantly poofed over to my home with my main character as soon as I was booted off and hacked] were not delt with. Nor were they even drilled for what they took part in. C'mon people! What more do you need!! This guy that hacked me banned my wife from my own home and kept the very 2 that he came with inside for the simple purpose of looting! Now.. I will post this message to the available message boards and sites that deal with UO to let these people know that someone is at least trying to meet you half way! You need to get with it or loose us quickly. You're choice.. Our money. And I dont want some bloody apology letter telling me that you'll look into it and fluff it up with "nothing we can do but thanks for your service" crap! DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!
~Paying Customer~
"Who is not satisfied with his service"
Although this may not be what happens to everyone, it's happened to everyone I have been talking to that has tried to resolve their hacking issue.
Stay tuned.
More is forthcoming.
Hasta. |
^ top-Publish Update May 12, 2002
[Nieves] May 12 - 10:39 PM EDT | Tried to add Morrowind to UOPG Store, didn't work (Chips/Bits is down right now).
Tried to get date script added, didn't work.
Changed 4 more skills pages to new format.
If you are wondering why I post these changes, it serves two purposes.
It lets you, the readers, know what's new/changed here at UOPG, and I keep an online log of such changes for later reference.
Hasta. |
^ top-Lions, Tigers and Dragons Oh My!!!
[Malis] May 12 - 11:04 AM EDT | Well we all know them. Those guilds that fight with more pets than
actual members and it bugs the hell out of all of us. Well for those of
you that don't know how to dispose of them, let me enlighten you.
It usually helps to dispose of the tamer before you do this but, it is not
always necessary. The first thing you need to do is go to the swamps close
to Destard and mark yourself a rune in the middle of the Tribal Village, try and
find the heaviest spawned area possible.
Now that you have your rune all set up make a macro in your UOAssist to cast
gate to that location this is very important because you need to be able to cast
this quickly.
With that done now all you need to do is wait until one of those guilds shows
up with their tamers to fight yours with a little practice you will get this
method down to a T and laugh when anyone brings dragons to fight you and your
guild mates.
IMPORTANT!!! You must be out of guard area in order for this to work and
it also does not work inside faction base try it in either one of these places
and it will be a waste of 40 mana nothing more.
As soon as they show up with the dragons open up the gate and try and get a
dragon to attack you, or if attacking another guild member have them do this,
then stand directly behind the gate so that its between you and the dragon in a
straight line the dragon will be too stupid to realize its there and walk right
into it, sending it to the middle of the tribal village and to its demise.
If done correctly those 4 White Wyrms that where just sicked on you will end
up looking like this:
Malis Out
|
^ top-Inhale the Deep Dark Blue
[Fixxxer] May 11 - 1:22 PM EDT | One week has passed, and the volume of the Deep Dark Blue rises. So you don't have to read 3 billion websites to get your MMORPG news, I will sum it up for you.
The After- GUI Published.
The folks at NetEmp are stating May will be a big month for the fans of this MMORPG. Starting off with what the GUI will look like, and, soon, continuing with detailed descriptions for player races and 'quite a few' more updates.
NetEmp is taking applications for beta which will begin around the summer of 2003, go fill out the form now.
Atriarch- Stratics HoC May 15th @ 9:00pm EST.
Stratics IRC will be hosting a House of Commons with Serafina and the Devs of Atriarch. The theme will be 'Construction and Housing.' Don't know how to use IRC? Read about it here.
City of Heroes- Paragon City Fiction!
Now that Cryptic Studios has a publisher, they are ready to kick it into overdrive. A rather large section of fiction and timelines relating to Paragon City was recently posted.
Dark Age of Camelot- 200,000 Addicts and Counting!
Gamespot has announced that DAoC has reached 200k subscribers. Why 200k people would play it? Who knows.
Dominus Online- Concept Art and Alpha Client Released.
Hate Shadowbane? Try this new pill. DO is PvP and Guild vs Guild oriented. "Its central focus is on player conflict, land ownership, outpost control, economy building, character development. By offering our unique discipline and skill system, we allow the players of Dominus to actually play with their friends, make and meet new friends, talk to new people and make new friends. We don't push a player into a realm, or faction forever trapped, unless they want to create a new character."
With Beta scheduled for the end of this year, Regulator Studios LLC is starting to pump out some material for their new MMORPG.
This past Tuesday, the alpha client was released to alpha testers.
Earth and Beyond- Reviews, Q&A, 100k Beta Testers.
Games Domain has recently published a review, with some screenshots. Gamers Pulse tossed in their two cents as well as UGO.com. RPG Vault grabbed EaB Producer Eric Wang for a small, but very good, Q&A session.
In a recent press release, Westwood Studios announced that they are looking for 100,000 beta testers for EaB. Yes, that's 100k. So if you have not already done so, go sign up for beta.
Horizons- Nothing... Still.
Same as yesterday. Same as a month ago. Absolutely nothing damnit!
Lineage- Stratics HoC May 28th @ 8:00pm EST.
Stratics IRC will be hosting a House of Commons with the Devs of Lineage on the #lineagehoc channel. Don't know how to use IRC? Read about it here.
Lineage II: The Chaotic Chronicle- Announced, Website Launched & Interview!
Yet another sequel has been officially announced, read about it here and here. So easily mistaken as 'The Chaotic Chronic,' Lineage II is scheduled for an Asian release in early 2003, and a North American release 6 months afterwards. Be sure to check out the trailer.
Lineage II expands the Lineage universe to 3D technology with the introduction of a huge and diverse world six times the size of the current Lineage world! Incorporating the siege system of the original Lineage with the ability to conduct large-scale battles as well as expanding the social system of bloodpledges, Lineage II is currently targeted for a 2003 release.
Oh, and I don't think marij00wannax0r is in the coding plans.
RPG Vault sat down with LD Hyung Jin Kim and Producer James Bae of NCSoft for a long interview.
Project Entropia- New Beta Patch.
The Project Entropia Beta Test continues on. MindArk recently put in a large patch, so sign up or log on and try it out!
This patch contains many new features: There is an increased amount of rare treasure sites in the world. Happy hunting! There are now more stores offering a wider range of supplies such as the new Omegaton handguns. The landscape has been enriched with mineral resources that can be mined and traded. There are also more animals, robots and mutants roaming the world, so beware!
Motor City Online- Update 6 Released.
Update 6 adds many new elements to MCO; Team trials, hub view channel, Goose Point race track, classified ads, player index, local news, more parts and cars, and much much MUCH more. Just click on the damn link.
Note that shortly after, Update 6.1 was released.
Neocron- Live IRC Q&A June 1st @11:00am EST.
On Saturday June 1st, there will be a Q&A session in #neocron, run by Neocron Online on the IRC server irc.enterthegame.com. Neocron Dev Members will be there to answer anything Neocron.
Noon- No Flinging Fetus' Here.
Not a real game, but I figured I would throw it in here because it is hilarious.
Shadowbane- New Monthly Comic.
Guide Zoe is a l33t new comic done by a longtime fan of SB and will be published monthly.
dabu
|
^ top-Morrowind Review
[Nieves] May 10 - 3:19 PM EDT | I found this review of Morrowind linked in UOPG's Forum:
Hey all,
Thought I would unbury myself from what is probably the best game I have EVER played. Mind you, I have been playing console and PC games since I was 4, that was in 1979 for those who don't know me. I have played almost every game under the sun on almost every platform available. Morrowind makes them all suck. Here's my review:
This is THE RPG of the ages. Ultima was great but it was linear and you didn't have true character independance. Baldur's Gate was another GREAT RPG but the world wasn't dynamic and there was a linear path to follow. Also, in the end it was hack and slash. Don't get me wrong, I loved both BG, BG2 and Ultima but they limit exactly what you want to do. The Might & Magic series is ok but its very linear. Arcanum was cool but it's not D&D. Diablo, D2 and Dungeon Siege are also GREAT games but they aren't RPGs. They are straight hack & slash.
Enter Morrowind. 10 character classes, 21 professions and a 22nd which is custom. If you have played Daggerfall (1996) then you are familiar with this. You can answer the questions (a la Ultima Gypsy) or you can flat out choose your profession. Just some examples of jobs: Warriro, Barbarian, Crusader (Paladin), Knight, Scout, Archer (Ranger), Rogue, Mage, Sorcerer, Healer, Battlemage, Witchhunter, Spellsword, Nightblade, Thief, Agent (spy), Assassin (coolest but hardest), Arcobat, Monk, Pilgrim, and Bard.
You have an astrological sign that you are born under and again, you have to choose your race. Being a human (Imperial) actually works against you.
Now comes the game. There are no rules. If you want to be truly evil, you can. If you want to be a brute and just hack & slash your way thorugh the game, you can. If you like a balance of thievery, warrior and mage, you can do that too. You have skills that you can build up. If you suck at a skill, you aren't very good at whatever task that requires. you have primary skills, secondary skills and minor skills. Minor skills are a pain to increase, cost significantly more to get training for (and they waste more time when training) compared to primary skills.
The art of conversation is truly an art. Yes, many NPCs give the same BS answer but there is a lot more variation to NPCs and they are regionalized. So an NPC in Balmora will know different things than a NPC in Caldera.
your actions are on a global scale. If you play the role of assassin or thief and you get caught or are seen committing a crime, a bounty is placed on your head. That bounty will slowly spready. eventually bounty hunters will seek you out. The cool thing is, these bounty hunters aren't random. They have to travel like you do. they have to ask around like you do. and if you are persuasive enough (another part of conversation) then you can get your bounty reduced or throw the hunters off your trail.
There is no path in the game. you get tasks based on you asking or by you joining an guild/house/religion. There is an endpoint to the game (I think) but how you get there is your business. You can join the fighters guild and get stronger, get more popular for doing good deeds and move up in the ranks of the world. You can join the thieves guild, steal for a living (you really don't have to fight unless you get caught and even then you can run).
There are over 20 detailed towns. No generics here like in Daggerfall. Daggerfall was WAY too big of a game and as a result, some things were too generic, like dungeons, NPCs and towns. None of that in Morrowind. There are no repeating NPCs in towns. There are NO repeating dungeons. On the dungeon/cave front, there are over 500. I think someone said in the final there are over 800. You don't have to visit them all. But you can if you want. I've been in close to 80 dungeons so far. All are different. Very different.
Some caves have a very important purpose. One cave is about harvesting these eggs from this one in-game baddie. In the cave is the queen bug. If you kill her, all these baddies disappear from the region. The Balmora economy goes down the toilet, you are hated, inflation occurs and eventually the entire region is hurt since Balmora is the seat of a powerful house. You also hurt the ecosystem because other baddies move in to replace the now extinct baddies.
There is a huge political and racial battle going on under the surface as well as a guild battle. The Thieves Guild hates the Dark Elves classic crime guild. If you are a human or non Dark-Elf, you cannot get into the crime guild. If you try to intervene in their war, you get caught in the middle. Having an assassin track you and bring his buddies down on you is bad. At the same time, eliminating this guild does wonders for your rep but also makes you a HUGE target.
There are three major houses in Morrowind. All three are elven. You can join one but that can put you at odds with the other houses and their members...but only if you get well known as a house member. You can be discrete about these things. You can join a church. You can join an occupation guild. Churches/cults hate each other in most cases.
You can spread dissent by joining multiple factions within the game. You can assassinate a member of one faction, plant evidence to implicate another faction. Or you can be boring and just transport goods from one city to another, hearing all the rumors along the way.
There is a slavery issue within the game. Slaverly is allowed under the law and freeing slaves is illegal. But slavery is unethical. If you free slaves, you're "bad" but get a good rep, except in whose house you freed the slaves from. And if you get caught, jail time for you.
There is an underwater empire. Once of the races you can choose can breath underwater.
I can go on and on and on. But let me sum it up: If you want the truest RPG out there, if you want something unique, if you want something that is not going to be repetative and something that holds a boatload of replay value, get Morrowind. If you played Daggerfall and you liked it despite the bugs, this totally makes it worth it. If you hated Daggerfall because of the bugs and the length of the game, get this. This makes it all better.
------
Let me just add that you can win the game in any profession, taking any path and if you're an assassin and successfully assassinate even the Duke, despite the fact that the whole world would hate you, you can still win.
If you like EQ but hate PKers, BUY THIS GAME!!!!!!!!
If you want to be evil, if you pickpocket your way through the entire game, if you evade every trap, sneak through towns to not get caught (some cities do have dark alleyways) and achieving your end goal (still haven't figured it out yet, another great aspect of the game) is very possible.
Go forth my youngones, cease this cheat filled arena we call CS. Play with yourself. Play Morrowind.
Oh yeah, and if you don't like a dungeon, town or want to add your own, there is the construction kit that comes with the game, same one the developers use so you can create your own adventures or on the extreme end, your own world.
-Azreal
::drools::
I will be adding this game to the UOPG Store this weekend.
Hasta. |
^ top-Exploiters
[Nieves] May 10 - 2:02 PM EDT | Exploiters in Ultima Online
When exploiters abuse Ultima Online for their own gain, it hurts everyone. Not only does it hurt the people who were directly affected in-game, but it hurts every player of Ultima Online due to the time that it takes out of our development, community and support schedules. In this past week, a serious issue involving the creation of items was discovered, thanks to the players who sent emails and posted on our boards so quickly, and through the diligent work of our Support, Live, and QA teams, a fix for this issue was coded, tested and released to the shards within 18 hours.
We feel it's important to let our players know that not only do we consider exploits an extremely serious and disruptive issue, but that we do track the use of exploits. Several players found to be abusing this exploit have already been removed from the game, and we will continue to permanently suspend the accounts of any and all we find to be abusing exploits in Ultima Online.
=================
Kerowyn
Online Content Editor
ORIGIN Systems
Your welcome from Gimpy and Nievesy.
Hasta. |
^ top-Hacking Update
[LadyGrania] May 10 - 8:55 AM EDT | After an exhaustive amount of looking for and running software to find Trojans and keystroke recorders and anything remotely similar, Every machine in the house comes up clean. It would appear that Fry was NOT hacked, rather OSI was.
Think about it. Earlier this week we received a patch the changed the login encryptions. Why? Standard maintenance? I personally don't think so. I didn't change my password after the patch. Neither did Fry. I can tell you that I did last night.
Mind you, I have nothing to back up what I've said above.. It's all supposition.
Here's something that isn't supposition. I saw it. *chuckles*
One of our readers saw my post and took it to the UO Discussion Boards. It got quite the response before the moderators deleted it.
Apparently, the players were quite unhappy that OSI wouldn't do anything and there were several affirming stories.
Thank you, whoever you are. At least they now realize that the players actually do care about what happens to one another.
For all of you who have emailed me and icq'd me with advice and words of kindness, Fry and I thank you. Your support means a lot and is truly appreciated.
Thank you, Nieves, for allowing me to vent on your page and for the kindness and support you've shown us. You OWN!
EDIT: Just received this in email. I like to make sure I tell the whole story.
From: "Unknown"
To:
Subject: Statment on the UO Powergamers.com
Date: Fri, 10 May 2002 15:46:29 -0700
You stated:
Think about it. Earlier this week we received a patch the changed the login encryptions. Why? Standard maintenance? I personally don't think so. I didn't change my password after the patch. Neither did Fry.
This was not due to OSI's secturity, the patch to stop the ItemSeller.exe that dupes items, it changed the datastream making the programme non-funcationable.
Just clearing things up |
^ top-Mutants.
[Nieves] May 9 - 4:15 PM EDT | Mutant plants were added as the "rares" of the plant system - i.e. simply another "type" that could only be gained through random chance - so the likelihood is that people that grow the most plants are most likely to find them.
The concept is that their rarity of color (of types that people have generally like before in other colored item introductions) will make them desirable enough (to people that like rareified stuff).
They don't produce seeds because then once gained they wouldn't be rare any more.
They don't produce resources because (currently at least), resource production is based off of a color/type combination system.
Anywho, that was the thinking on the matter ^_^
Augur
kthxbye |
^ top-It CAN Happen to you.
[LadyGrania] May 9 - 1:58 PM EDT | "It Can Happen to You"
Like everyone else, I've read about people having their UO accounts hacked. I never once thought it would happen to me or someone I'm close to. We're smart, don't share our accounts, use routers and firewalls. He's a network administrator, he knows his stuff. Nope, won't ever happen to us.
Well, it did. I don't know how, I don't know who, but someone out there, who has no social life (probably due to no sex life), decided to target one of Fryguy's accounts.
The events:
One day last week, Fry got an automated email from OSI stating someone had accessed the account through account management. The email also requested that a reply be made if he was not the one who had accessed it. Fry replied, saying that he hadn't been the one to access account management and that he would change the password immediately. He did not give the password in this email, nor did he even tell me. He changed the password and we really didn't think anything more about it other than "that's weird".
This morning Fry logged in on one of his accounts with a character that was supposed to be co-owned to the house he owns. His character logged in outside, unfriended to the house that now has sign saying that it's improperly placed. He tried to login to the owner's account, but access was denied. Invalid user name or password. He logged into all the accounts we have between us and not one character was able to access the house.
Deduction: HACKED.
A quick look at UO chars showed the character but no skills. Deduction:Character deleted. HACKED.
The next thing he did was run virus scans, check the firewall logs, checking anything and everything that could give a clue as to what happened. Nothing was found to suggest a trojan or anything of that sort.
So, at 9 am he calles OSI to report what happened. They nicely reactivated the now empty account and suggested that Fry send an email to the hacking department to see what can be done. Guess what? They won't do a thing.
Nothing.
To: hacked@uo.com
Subject: Hacked Account
Date: Thu, 9 May 2002 09:55:57
My name is xxxxxxxxx, I just got off the phone with Frank at the EA Ultima Online account support. He advised me to seend this email to you in order to find out exactly what happened.
Account: xxxxxxxxxx
Yesterday 05/08/2002 I was able to login without any problems what so
ever... This morning I recieved an Invalid Username or Password. After
talking with Frank, it appears that the account's password was changed and the email address changed to gibberish. I did a complete Virus scan with Norton AntiVirus, making sure that the latest patches and AV defs were installed and found no virus on the machine. I do not share my account or my account with anyone else. I do not login to this account from anyplace other than my home in Houston on Southwestern Bell's DSL service. I run nightly virus scans as well as running ZoneAlarm on high security. I am also behind a NAT'd DSL router.
It appears that whoever hacked my account deleted all of my characters,leaving my UO house without owner (even tho I had a co-owner listed). Will it be possible to restore my characters and ownership of the sandstone that this account owned?
Thank you for any help that you can give. I hope that character restoration is possible.
I hope to hear from you soon.
Sincerely
XXXXXXXXXXX
Response from OSI
From:
To:
Sent: Thursday, May 09, 2002 10:24 AM
Subject: [Incident 020509-000491] Hacked Account
>
> We will assume your issue has been resolved if we do not hear from you within 48 hours.
> Thank you for allowing us to be of service to you.
>
>
> Subject
> ---------------------------------------------------------------
> Hacked Account
>
>
> Discussion Thread
> ---------------------------------------------------------------
> Response (Ed Ball) - 05/09/2002 10:24 AM
> Greetings,
>
> Thank you for taking the time to write in about your account. We are sorry that you have experienced problems with a possible hacked account. However, with the information included in this document, you should be able to minimize any damage occurred as a result of this attack.
> While we are more than willing and pleased to assist in hacked account cases, please know that we cannot reimburse for anything lost. This includes characters, stats, skills, gold, and any other item once on the account. We simply do not have the resources to track each and every item within the game.
>
> However, we do have a method which you can use to get your account back. In order to get rid of the hacker's virus and regaining control of your account, please follow the below procedure:
>
> 1.) Scan your entire system for viruses. If you have McAfee or Norton's Symantec anti-virus programs, you should be able to update your .dat or definition files to detect any infection. Both of these will detect Back Orifice, NetBUS, SubSeven, and a variety of other malicious programs. These viruses - also known as "Trojan Horse viruses" - allow someone to get inside your system without your knowledge. Removing the virus is your first and most important step to preventing this from happening to you again.
>
> 2.) Immediately contact our Account Support department. If you are in North America the number is 1-888-8-GAME-88 - if you live elsewhere they may be reached at 1-512-434-4357. We consider whoever was paying for the account to have legal access rights to the account, and that person will have the account immediately returned to them.
>
> If you wish to take care of the matter via email, the Account Support department can be reached at account@support.ea.com.
>
> Thanks to the good folks at Symantec Security, we have included a link that has detailed information and FAQs about the Internet and Internet security. The page also contains guides to various dangers on the Internet,glossary of hacking terms, and an online Security Check to test your vulnerability on the Internet. We highly recommend becoming familiar with some of the information as well as some of the solutions that are presented.
>
> http://www.symantec.com/securitycheck/
>
> Origin Systems is committed to assisting hacked account cases as much as possible. However, as neither Origin Systems nor Electronic Arts has not been technically hacked or broken into, it is not a crime which we can press charges. But we will help you as a victim in bringing those who engage in such acts to justice.
>
> We strongly urge any individual that has been hacked to contact your local authorities and/or local District Attorney so that this person can be held responsible for their actions. Hacking is a crime, and if you have had your account legitimately hacked, you are the victim of such a crime. By filing a report, the authorities will attempt to prosecute individuals who decide to engage in this act.
>
> When investigating the matter, the authorities will need the evidence that the hacker accessed your account. This is where we come in. By faxing the UO Account Administration department at (512) 795-8014 and asking for the IP logins of the accounts, we will immediately return the proper documentation back to them, as well as any other pertinent information needed. This information can only be discussed with the proper authorities - in all other cases the information is private and will be held confidential.
>
> If there are any additional questions or concerns regarding a hacked
account, please check the Account Admin website at http://accountadmin.custhelp.com and we will assist you in every way that we can.
>
>
> Question Reference #020509-000491
> ---------------------------------------------------------------
> Product: Ultima Online
> Category: Hacked Accounts
> Contact Information: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Date Created: 05/09/2002 10:09 AM
> Last Updated: 05/09/2002 10:24 AM
> Status: Solved
>
>
Fry's response to OSI's form letter:
> [===> Please enter your reply below this line <===]
So, your telling me that while you can track duped items, illegally hued items and other exploits, you canot tell from yesterdays backup what characters were deleted because of an unauthorized access (ie: hack) into your system?
So your telling me that while you are more than happy to help in any way possible, that it's just not possible to help me in any way?
So your telling me that your willing to reactivated the account so that I can continue to pay you the monthly charge, but are not willing to restore the charaters that are keeping the account active in the first place?
What exactly are you doing to help me with this situation? My account was hacked. You have complete information about every character on the account. What is the problem with restoring the characters and items that were lost due to hacking your system?
Can you tell from where the account changes came from? Do they how that the attack came from my computer or someone elses?
> [===> Please enter your reply above this line <===]
OSI's Non-Reply:
Discussion Thread
---------------------------------------------------------------
Response (Ed Ball) - 05/09/2002 11:47 AM
Technically, neither Origin Systems nor Electronic Arts has been hacked.
We therefore have not had any crime committed against us, and cannot go to the police and file charges.
However, you are indeed a victim of a crime, and can go to the police and file charges. When the police launch their investigation they can contact us via fax at 512-795-8014. What we can then do is provide all necessary information so that this person gets prosecuted, and then proceed to review the matter of possibly returning property back.
Fry's reply:
So, the offical postion of EA/Ultima Online accounts being hacked and
decimated is this: "EA/Ultima Online is not responsible for any account information or contents. We will accept your money, but we will not help in discovering if your account has been truely hacked, nor will we make any effort in tracking said alledged hackers so that they can be prevented from hacking accounts held by our other paying customers. We also will not replace any items or characters that were lost cue to a hacked account."
Would you say this was indeed a true statement? If not, then please explain what is being done for me that disputes this statement.
Thank you.
Here also are the logs with a couple of GM's. At least the appeared helpful. Logs.
So.. here you have it, if you get hacked... OSI isn't gonna do a thing. It's really sad. $10 a month every month. Word of mouth advertising. Fansite posting. And for what? Sorry we can't help you.
I hope something comes of this.. but so far, all I feel is violated by the hacker and fucked over by the people who run the game we love.
To the hacker who did this:
Fuck you! Who the hell has the time to sit around and hack a GAMING account? and WHY? What's the fucking point? To prove your intelligence? I'm not impressed. You intelligence could be better served by doin' something decent with it. You are scum. You are an ugly, hateful, faceless coward. |
^ top-The real reason BODs were put into UO
[FrozenFire] May 9 - 1:12 PM EDT | Back when UO was young and fresh, I remember everyone having a miner. Mining made good money, if you knew how to avoid the despised miner Pks. Back then, Pking miners were so profitable it was like a profession of its own.
Mining was profitable because the ingots were needed by those who trained black smithing and for those that supplied everyone else with GM suits. Since GM:ing blacksmithing pre UO:R ie pre powerhour and pre smelting took hours and hours (think 200K ingots), GM Smiths were pretty uncommon. So the reward for those that made it to GM, was that they could sell goods at a nice profit. It also made sure that there were people around demanding armor and weapons, since having your own GM smith was not for everyone.
That PKs were around sorta helped demand too, since people that lost their gear bought new stuff (but then again, many PKs ran vendors to convert their loot to cash). So there was a nice food chain, with each tier dependent on the next. More than anything, Smiths were needed members of the community - who else would you trust to repair your nice vanq Katana of whoop ass?
Enter UO:R and Smiths became so easy to make its not even funny. My first smith was made just post UO:R and took me perhaps 20K ingots. People caught on, and over time Blacksmithing became one of those skills everyone put on their DIY übermules.
Pre UO:R I remmeber buying light archer suits at 3K or so, and post UO:R they retained that price. In the meantime the general inflation in UO made big ticket items like houses and rares explode in value. Crafted good stayed the same, and even so, they only rarely sold. Why?
1. With fewer PKs, the need to replace lost gear was largely gone
2. The Smith population exploded flooding the market with vendors
Last autumn being a crafter selling your goods to the public, was for die hard enthusiasts only. If you were hoping of be able to save money and buy a nice house with your profits as a crafter, Bards and Tamers would laugh in your face all the while they counted their million checks over and over.
Lets face it: Smiths were screwed. Whats the point in being able to craft goods if you have to beg people to buy it a fire sale prices? Well the only point I, and about 90% of the UO community, figured was self sufficiency. And that cut down on interaction alot. Does anyone beside me find it ironic that a massively multiplayer, game with a full blown crafting system (that actually worked) promoted self sufficiency over interaction through trade and bartering?
So what do you do, when your developing a game that shot itself in the foot? Well the solution is simple really. If players wont buy your goods, let the NPCs demand the services of smiths. Presto: the BOD system. With icing in the shape of rewards that gave skill bonuses and tools that let you make colored über weapons, Smiths became all the rage again. I know of players milking the BOD with 31 smiths over a number of accounts.
Now, OSI will never put it in these words, but the BOD system is a (very successful) fix for a destroyed class. Since so many other crafter classes are doing as bad - or worse - as the smiths, expect more BODs as fast as OSI can churn them out.
On UOLS there is a nice article on the BOD system along the same theme, although it stops short of calling BODs a fix. Its a good write up, so go read it.
And there you have my conspiracy theory of the week: OSI made yet another class too easy and thus destroyed it. To fix it, they created a trading card meta game in the shape of BODs. Instead of that virtual economy that Raph Koster always wanted to recreate in UO, we got something much more mundane and less visionary. But hey, who cares, we have BODs!
If youll excuse me, its time to milk my BODs. . . |
^ top-Duping Gone?
[Nieves] May 8 - 9:09 AM EDT | Apparently not.
[...]exploiters have managed to find a way to duplicate stackable rares (pagan regs, furs, some others) in BULK amounts. This effectively makes any stackable rare junk, null, void, worthless. Once again, please be wary of your purchases. And if you are a rares collector, consider liquidating your assets :>
Once I have located a list of worthless rares, I will inform you of what items are affected.
-SG
Thanks to Gimpy for the info. Fuck you to everyone that dupes.
UO.Tradespot's take on it:
Warning:There is a new exploit that allows ALL stackable rares to be duped in any quantity. These are now worthless. This includes any pagan reg, furs, bloody bandages,and anything else stackable. Again these are now worthless.
This also affects any normal stackable commodity(ie valorite ingots, wood, dragon scales).
The good news is this:
1)OSI is able to track this easily and is banning accounts right and left, and
2)We are banning any user that is selling these type of items as rares...STARTING NOW!!!!
So the downside is that a lot of good rares are now worthless, but on the upside both we and UO will be banning A LOT of scammers.
Wee, more Castles to loot!!!
UPDATE: From a UOPG 'friend'-
An unannounced patch just went into the game. Might be a fix? I was forced to patch just now to log in. So hopefully it was a change in the datastream or something.
Owned.
Hasta. |
^ top-Ewww!!!
[Nieves] May 7 - 12:14 PM EDT | 
Hmmm...does that mean it will eat player's corpses as well?
Tell me if they do.
Um...Regulus, you thinking what I am thinking?
Hasta. |
^ top-Responsible Gaming
[Nieves] May 7 - 11:53 AM EDT | It's been a while since I put up a rant...and yes, 'someone du dat chit tu me'. Well, sort of.
I read this article at CNN. It talks about legislators wanting to have even more control over how our games are managed (censored) and deals out heavy fines to those that sell games to 'minors'.
First of all, let me say something about Grand Theft Auto III. My bother has that game (along with some other game with a similar theme). I went upstairs to check on my son and see what him and my brother was doing. I saw my brother driving a car and doing drive bys. My jaw dropped and I asked my brother "what is that??" He told me and told me what the game was about. I kicked my 11 year old out of the room and told him that when my brother was playing that, he is not to be in the room. My son was upset, almost cried and my brother looked at me like I was weird (my brother is 20). I watched him play the game and even played it a bit myself. The game play was pretty smooth and the graphics were nice. In fact, the graphics were just that, graphic. Afterwards I sat there thinking, "who the fuck would make a game like this?" The whole point was to commit crime, murder and mayhem? Some of you may sit there and think, "dammit Nieves, you are being a weak bitch". Well, I have 3 kids. One a teenager and another about to become one. I don't want my kids exposed to shit like that.
If I was to make GA-III, I would make the character you play an agent or a cop. Give him a 'good theme' and have him go after the bad guys. My kid still wouldn't play it till he's older because of the nature of the violence, but dammit, where the fuck is the responsibility in making games like this?
But, let me back up. The problem really isn't with the game makers. They are just making games and making money. The problem lies with irresponsible parents. The lazy fucks that don't take 5 minutes to see what Johnny and Sarah are doing with their time and at least manage what's going into their kids' minds. Ok, it takes more than 5 minutes to parent, but you get my point. Get off your lazy fucking ass and take care of your kids.
I will never buy GA-III. In fact, you will never see it in the UOPG Store. I don't agree with it and that's my right. But if you have a 17 year old and don't see a problem with it, go for it. But don't bring that shit to my house. Ever. Anyway...back to the article.
Warcraft III is mentioned in the article. I can see how it could be a tad violent on kids. But it's 'cartoon violence'. You know, shit like Tom & Jerry or Wile E. Coyote and The Road Runner. Those two were two of the most violent cartoons of their time. But they were 'cartoon violence'. Noone died.
I guess I am trying to make two points here.
It boils down to common sense, and good parenting. Do both and we won't have the government coming down and telling us what we can do when. Not too mention avoiding things like Columbine.
Hasta. |
^ top-I Couldn't Help Myself!
[Nieves] May 7 - 6:55 AM EDT | You see, I was just killing these big ugly things. And they had these funky looking things. And then, they called to me, and I just had to. I mean...you know what I mean right? I just had too!
I couldn't help myself!!!!! I SWEAR!!
::sighs::
Hasta. |
^ top-Cross-Pollination Notes
[Nieves] May 6 - 4:28 PM EDT | Check it.
Weeee! More Pixel Crack!
::grabs the smoke pipe::
SMOKE IT UP HOMEBOIEEEES!
And more things to lag out a tower!! WOOWOO!
But, we pay for new content, right? Right.
Hasta. |
^ top-And They Bloom
[Nieves] May 6 - 1:24 PM EDT | 
Um....I want to say it's cool, but I just can't....
AHHHH!
Hasta. |
^ top-Vex Speaks On MD.
[Nieves] May 6 - 12:23 PM EDT | Read about it.
UOPG missed their chance to get their questions in. Oh well. Stuff happens. Or doesn't.
Hasta. |
^ top-Plant Spoiler?
[Nieves] May 6 - 7:10 AM EDT | Thanks to the Secret Gimp, we have some possible spoiler information with the plants.
You already feel resilient! You decide to save the petal for later.
You eat the orange petal. You feel more resilient!
Choose a book you wish to seal with the wax from the red leaf.
The ink from this book has already been sealed.
You seal the ink to the page using wax from the red leaf.
You can only use red leaves to seal the ink into book pages!
You feel yourself resisting the effects of the poison.
The strength of the poison overcomes your resistance!
The buzzing of flies surrounds this plague carrier.
*~1_sickname~ coughs and hacks uncontrollably*
*~1_sickname~ appears very sickly*
Frankly, the only thing I'm interested in, in the above, is the poison
resistance.
*keeps digging in his files*
SG
Veddy Intedesteeng!
Hasta. |
^ top-UOPG Publish Update May 2002
[Nieves] May 5 - 4:52 PM EDT | Archives are up.
More Skills Pages ported to new layout.
Skills Index Page has the information on the Make Last Method. <-- Link now fixed.
Hasta. |
^ top-Augur is EVIL
[Kaara] May 4 - 6:59 PM EDT | While browsing the UO.com boards today I came upon this thread where Augur gives more hints about how to accelerate the growth of your plants.
----------
Just to clear up some extra confusion people may have, I will say this :
The method by which you can get your plant to grow faster :
1) Has charges (so there is a maximum # of extra days you can get from it)
2) Has a % chance to work each time your plant grows (so you won't *always* get an extra day of growth for each regular day of growth - and may not actually get to use *any* of the "charges" through your plant's lifetime, if you're very unlucky)
3) Ignores the Health Check part of plant growth. This means, if you get an extra day's worth of growth through the bonus method, it does not do a Health Check for the plant (so you won't get multiple days of infestation or fungus, you'll just get 1 check for the day's regular growth)
4) Only 1 extra day of growth can be gained for each regular day of growth. (So you won't get multiple "charges" being used in one day. It's a maximum of 1 bonus growth per regular growth)
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Just to keep a little mystery for people (and to have another bit of information people can share between each other in game, to show off their expertise ^_^), I won't give out specific #'s for the above-listed points, nor the exact method through which you get a plant to grow faster.
Once people feel they have definitely figured out the method, they'll have to make a decision whether it's worthwhile to continue to do so. The information here will, I hope, simply clarify a person's individual choice about whether they think it's worthwhile to use.
Augur
Interesting.
I wish he would just throw us a bigger bone, or confirm that the method had been discovered by boardmembers-even if he didn't tell exactly what it was! Pure EVIL!
I tend to believe the data posted on various forums about fertile dirt being the key. With my own plants only ones planted in fertile dirt have grown extra stages, and it has only been a few of them at that.
The way Augur describes how the method is still very random sounds very much like how fertile dirt users have been describing their experiences.
This is a very heated topic here on our forum.
|
^ top-Inhale the Deep Dark Blue
[Fixxxer] May 4 - 12:28 PM EDT | What the hell exactly is going on the the MMORPG news? Well, it certainly was an interesting week. I'll sum up what I call The Deep Dark Blue for you:
Anarchy Online - Expansion Pack & S.E. Announced.
Shadowlands is the new expansion pack currently in development and is planned for a 4th quarter 2002 release. It will contain many new areas to explore, profession specialization, additional breed variations, higher quality armor and item options, improved graphic effects and the new floating city of Jobe.
Read the entire press release here.
On May 21st, a special edition of Anarchy Online will be released in the US for $19.99 (one month of game-time included). The S.E. includes a new box design, an updated map, a beginner's guide, and a new keyboard map. Also included is a bonus CD where you can find the entire novel "Prophet Without Honour" in PDF, sample music from the soundtrack, concept art, trailers, wallpapers, the Animated Series and more.
Read the entire press release here.
Asherons Call 2- Beta Accounts Going to AC1 subscribers.
As a 'side benefit' for AC1 subscribers, Microsoft will create for you an AC2 beta account. Your AC2 beta account name will be the email address you have on file with The Zone as your official email contact address. They will create a random password unique to your account and email it to you at that address. You will be asked to type in this email address and password in order to play. You will also need to download the AC2 installation package.
Beta for AC2 starts in June and no one is guaranteed to get in immediately. They will randomly select a certain amount of accounts for beta testing. If you do not get in immediately, you are sure to get in by the end of July.
Read the entire press release here.
A Tale in the Desert- Next Beta Session & Stratics HoC May 7th.
From 12:00pm Noon until 8:00pm EST, the ATitD servers will be opened up for their beta testers. This is a unique MMORPG (takes place in Ancient Egypt) in that there is absolutely no combat, monsters, weapons or armor. Instead you complete, participate in or lead large projects.
Sign up for beta here.
On Tuesday, May 7th at 7:00pm EST, the ATitD Dev Team will be participating in a House of Commons on Stratics IRC in #ATitD. Following this, they'll have a short (approximately 2 hour) play session.
Atriartch- New Screenshots Released.
Atriarch has been quiet for a long time. Their beta has been down forever and everyone has been losing interest. A few days ago, they released some nice screenshots, which can be found here. Talk abut some weird ass funky shit.
Earth and Beyond- Reopened Beta Application.
Westwood Studios reopened their beta app for EaB this week. It's a different taste compared to all the other games out there right now, give it a shot.
Also, starting this week, Westwood Studios is extending their server hours to Tuesday through Sunday from 2:00pm until 2:00am EST.
Everquest 2- Announced, Site Launched & Interview.
EQ2 was officially announced and the site was launched this week. So far there is very little content; you can find a handful of FAQ's, some nice screenshots and a little overview of the new sequel.
Gamespot tackles EQ2 LD Bill Trost for an interview, read about it here.
Motor City Online- Stratics HoC Chat Log Posted.
The 2nd HoC for MCO has been posted at Stratics, read it here. EA has stated that there will be more in the future so keep an eye out.
The 4th Prophecy- T4P is pushing up daisies.
A year after launch, Vircom is putting this lame dog to sleep claiming 'the game did not reach the minimal player base required to justify the costs of operation. I always thought it was a cheap bastardized version of UO.
dabu
|
^ top-Evil when you least expect it
[FrozenFire] May 4 - 9:04 AM EDT | Last night I found out that a new(?) guild, PIR sailed the Feluccan seas on Europa and attacked anyone they could. Mostly I assume they see semi-afk 8x8:ers, as both times I saw them, they were close to the W of Skara server lines.
Anyways, thats one of those things thats so precious to me in UO, something that every year grows more rare in UO. It seems I am not the only one, after all:
buying regs at the encyclopedia amgicak in moonglow, Fel of course, with
two
packies. Nekked guy runs in cast FS...guard wahck and packy at 50% helath
heal packy and loot body...wash rinse reapeat four or five more
times...hehehe...big fun...You just never know
I agree. I used to know a thief guild that hid on the bridges in Vesper. Theyd hide in 2 rows, just like walls, with just enough room between to trap the victim as he pushed through the first wall. Then the stealing frenzy began. In a way its the stealing equivalent to pirhanas feeding. Or. . . *wipes tear* the Gexplosion suicide squads that hit targets in town. Id love to see the faces of the victims they killed.
Im sure many of you have similar memories - please mail your favourite moments of unexpected evil to me! |
^ top-Unacceptable Bug or Exploited Created Items
[Nissa] May 3 - 5:51 PM EDT | In the long history of Ultima Online, there have been certain items that have entered the game due to bugs or exploits. We have been hesitant to post a list of such items, for some unscrupulous players might see such a list and attempt to recreate such illegal items. However, to help players discern the differences between these illegal exploit/bug items and legal rare items, we now feel that there are certain exploit-based items that can be listed publicly.
The illegal 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. Players who are found to have, use, trade, or sell them may have action taken against their account.
These listed items continue to exist in the world even though they are not re-creatable, but please do not consider them the only items 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
Belt pouches
Metal ranger armor (ranger armor should be leather-based, not metal)
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
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.
Time to clean house I guess. I do have one of the items that are listed (it was given to me almost 2 years ago). It is one of the moveable ballot boxes. We use it as a secure in our house just because it looks cool. While I do understand why OSI would take a strong stand on some things that would really change the game in favor of a person (tamed ancient wryms, portable forges, metal ranger armor, purple hued items) I was surprised to see the ballot box on this list.
It basically just sits in my house and stores items just like any other storage box. Oh well, guess it is time to get rid of it. With my recent problems with my husband playing nice with all the other kids in the game, I don't need to get in trouble again. :(
NOTE: After reading a thread in the forum, I realized that what I have is not a moveable ballot box, but a metal storage box. Metal storage boxes are not illegal. My mistake. Thanks Shade for pointing that out for us. *goes to move everything back into my gold metal storage box* |
^ top-Thanks guys - whoever you are. . .
[FrozenFire] May 3 - 1:50 PM EDT | Was practicing hiding on a boat when I ran into 2 boats that looked like they were actively trying to trap peoples boats. With so many sailing unattended these days, I became curious and waited to see what would come next. . .
Didnt have to look long either: In Nox Grav. First field even missed my boat and landed on an abandoned boat next to me. I decided it was time to move and had to do some pretty tricky sailing to get away.
I think this was the closest to a car chase UO can bring. These are the small things that make playing in Felucca so great: The unexpected and the possibility of evil lurking everywhere. Coming at you when you feel safe and least expext danger. I love it, and would recommend anyone who does not play Felucca to try it - just for this feeling. In the end, its one of those things that keep me coming back to UO. |
^ top-UOHoC Bard Chat.
[Nieves] May 3 - 1:23 PM EDT | [19:47] Vex- Current feedback from our player playtesters indicates that solo treasure hunting is still very doable using bard skills. It's just more difficult and risky. Right now we're happy with that feedback -- we don't want to make solo treasure hunting impossible. I'd suggest giving it a try when we open up the test shard to the public -- I think you'll be surprised!
[...]
[19:58] Kehleyr- *Siofra* You say that magical instruments will be available. Will these be craftable by tinkers with some magery or will they be loot?
[19:59] Vex- The magical instruments will be available only as loot, but I can't say for certain they will never be craftable. They'll definitely not be rare items, but they also won't be so common as to devalue exceptional carpenter-made instruments.
[...]
[20:00] Kehleyr- *Falford* what is the curently projected time line for pub 16 to be made available for public testing and its release ?
[20:01] Evocare|OSI- There'll be no less then a month between opening for public testing and release, but I can't be any more specific then that.
[...]
[20:01] Kehleyr- *Xegugg* Will the current "newbie" instruments that bard have had for sometime now be able to wear out?
[20:02] *** StopWithFillerQuestions was kicked by [QT]Lord-Xanthor ([QT]Lord-Xanthor)
[20:02] Vex- Yes, existing newbie instruments will wear out. In fairness, warriors' weapons and armor wear out, mages need reagents, tamers need to feed and bandage their pets, and archers need arrows. Only bards have been able to resurrect with their primary weapon at the ready.
[...]
[20:10] Kehleyr- *Anthea* Any plans to fix the bug where you can entice a bunny and gain like gazillions in musicianship?
[20:10] Yes. :)
[...]
[20:15] *LadyTygress* As a follow-up to Falford's question earlier, let us assume that the evil-in-a-can spawn is being killed off instantly as it spawns. How often should we expect to see skill scrolls under those conditions?
[20:15] That's not a simple question to answer accurately since there are some other variables such as the number of activated spawns based on the number of people on the local server.
[20:16] However, for any given active spawn that is fought with perfect efficiency, it's no more then a couple scrolls on average.
[20:16] per hour.
[20:17] There is the factor of the decreased chance to get better scrolls though, so that adds another complicating factor. ;]
"NIEVES! What? No Commentary?"
Nah, I just want to Play The Freaking Game TM.
Hasta.
|
^ top-"Magic" creature anatomy gains Theory
[Sinister_Saint] May 3 - 1:15 AM EDT | Ok people, after using the "magic" creatures many many times I think that I have finally found the factor that leads to massive anatomy gains. Of course I have also managed to get crazy tactics and parrying gains in the same manner in which you can gain anatomy with these "magic" creatures. To begin with, let's note a few things. I have GMed anatomy 4 times, tactics 1 time and gained over 10 points in parrying, using "magic" creatures. The "magic" creatures that I have encountered are: sea serpents, alligators, lizardmen, boglings, and even slimes (for a measly .3 gains). I have gotten crazy gains while aboard my boat, while standing next to but touching a house, and while on the porch of a house. All of that may add up to a hill of beans but here are the key factors on which I am basing my theory. In order to get those crazy gains here is what MUST take place.
1.) You must be on the steps or touching a house or you must be aboard your boat. Obviously this is easier on land near a house. (I beleive that this locks your melee based skills which is similar to the animal lore/vet method)
2.) You must be near or be able to lead creatures to the house or boat that you are going to be using.
Now for the most important part:
3.) Stand on the porch, do not attack any of the creatures that you have rounded up. In order to gain, the creature that attacks you must be the creature that you melee reactively. Let me draw it out for you:
X = you
0 = monsters
Z = magic creature
- = porch railing such as found on log cabins
- - -X- - -
- - - - - -
000Z000
In the above senario, "Z" is the monster that goes aggressive to you. If "Z" steps onto the porch you will reactively fight back. That WILL be a magic creature. However, if the following happens, you will not gain.
- - -X- - -
- - - - - -
00ZQ000
If "Z" is the next creature to attack/go aggressive towards you, but "Q" steps onto the porch, you will not reactively fight back because it is "Z" that you would be fighting back at. "Q" will not yield any gains.
In other words, it is a crap shoot. If you have 15 lizardmen standing in front of you while you are standing on the porch of a log cabin, only one can get at you at a time. You never know which lizardman will go aggressive to you after you have killed the previous one. If the lizardman the goes aggressive to you is NOT the one that steps on the porch, then you will NOT gain. If the lizardman goes aggressive to you AND steps on the porch, you WILL gain. Everyone following me? Okies then. Like I have said, this works for tactics, anatomy and parrying. Who knows, maybe it works for other skills as well, but that is what I have found so far. If anyone would care to give this a try I would appreciate any and all feedback. Hope this helps you guys and gals. Peace.
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^ top-The Thing
[Nieves] May 3 - 12:28 AM EDT | Before Clainin could speak again, a squishing sound came from the trees. The party turned to witness a huge mass crawling its way towards them. Twisted gaping mouths and misplaced eyes covered the outside of the creature appeared, only to sink back into the depths of the fleshy mass and reappear in a new place. Half of a deer corpse stuck awkwardly out of the side of the mound; the corpse was quickly pulled inside it with a sickening wet crunch. The misshapen mouths on the creature spit a few bloodied bones out as it progressed.
Dawn readied her sword but at the sight of the foul fiend she was fully prepared to retreat if need be. “What is this horrid creature?”
“Another product of the decay! It is now affecting flesh. I expect that used to be a normal forest creature of some kind that became infected and metamorphosed.” The Watcher turned to Clainin as he repressed his coughing. “I believe now we should make our exit.”
Thanks to Kerowyn for the information.
I guess we can have Flesh Rot in the game now?
Hasta. |
^ top-Tips To Fighting Bog Things/Lings
[Nieves] May 2 - 11:56 AM EDT | You want the seeds right?
Ok, do some damage to the Bog Thing (by whatever means), then kill the spawned Ling. Rinse Repeat until the Bog Thing is no longer spawning Lings. Then kill the Bog Thing. Be wary of other misc. spawn.
The Bog Things can do some serious damage but if you are smart, you can joust it to death. Using an Archer if you are not a mage is probably the best way.
Some people have dropped a blade spirit on the Bog Thing. They will kill off the Lings while the Thing is busy then drop 2 more blades and finish off the Thing.
It's been said the Bog Thing will spawn a total of 8 Lings.
Of course, you could be like the dickhead I ran into last night. He gated out, and came back with all 5 of his White Wyrms and killed the Bog Thing and all the Lings I was working.. Bitchass Fucking Tamer.
Be glad Nieves didn't code the Bog Things. They would have a special Vine attack that paralyzes you for 4 seconds. Then if it hit you in melee, there is a chance you would get Flesh Rot (Greater Poisoned AND Cursed). Phear me.
BTW: Juggernauts die to Archery just like the Golems do.
Hasta. |
^ top-From Heather Of XRGaming
[Nieves] May 1 - 6:30 PM EDT | Texas UO Player Lunch at Scarborough Faire, May 26 from Heather:
Plans are finalized for the UO Lunch at Scarborough Faire on Sunday, May 26, Memorial Weekend - The cost is $32 for adults, and $24 for children ages 5-12. Children under 5 are free. You can pay by Paypal to heatherc@austin.rr.com
or by snail mail. Please see the UO Luncheons page for more details and further payment instructions. Deadline for discount tickets is Friday, May 17th, so don't delay!
Once again, Arakasi from the 'Out of Character' comics has provided us with a fabulous logo for the lunch. This time, we see the *true* conflict between Lord Blackthorn and Dawn!! Please be sure to order your UO Lunch t-shirts, hats, mugs, and mousepads from Cafe Press
asap, to get them in time for the event!
Heather is BIG TIME into Player Luncheons. If you can go, go. They are a lot of fun. And no, not all that go are nerds or lame people with no lives.
Hasta. |
^ top-Gardening, Quick and Dirty...
[Talanithus] May 1 - 7:04 AM EDT | 
Gardening 101
- Acquire seeds from Boglings and Bog Things.
- Acquire a plant bowl from a Provisioner.
- Fill the plant bowl with dirt.
- Add water to the plant bowl.
- Plant the seed into the plant bowl.
- Log in at least once per day, checking on the status of your seed. If your plant has become sick, you will need to use potions to heal it.
- If your plant has contracted a fungus, use cure potions to kill the Fungi. Be careful that you do not use too many Cure potions, as this can cause your plant to contract a withering disease (Note: Over-watering your plant increases the chance that it will become infected by harmful fungi)
- If your plant has been over-Cured, then it will contract a Disease. To cure it apply Heal potions. You can view your plant's current Disease meter from the Plant Health menu.
- If your plant is being eaten by insects, use poison potions to kill them off. Be careful you don't use too many, or you will harm your plant! You can view your plant's current Infestation meter from the Plant Health menu. (Note: Flowery plants, over-watered plants, and bright plants all have a greater chance of attracting hungry insects)
- If you poison your plant by applying too many Poison potions, then you can heal it by applying Heal Potions. You can view your plant's current Poison meter from the Plant Health menu.
- If your plant has been over-watered, do not continue to water it. You can view your plant's current Water meter from the Plant Health menu.
- Monitor the growth of your plant. Plants carried in your pack or Bank vault will have a chance to grow once per day, if you log in. Plants locked down in a house will have a chance to grow once per day, regardless of whether the owner logs in or not, and thus can die very easily if neglected. ONLY the plant owner who locked down the plant can perform maintenance on them. Plants grow on a cycle, from Seed to Sapling, Sapling to Full Grown Plant. Once they have reached Full Grown Plant, numerous options are available.
- Once a plant reaches its maximum size you must choose what you wish to do with it.
- If your plant is a resource producer (rare), then its daily growth checks will instead produce one resource each day, up to a maximum of 8 resources. Use the Gather Resources button on the Resource menu to collect them.
- A Full Grown Plant that is NOT a resource producer will instead create a seed on each of its daily growth checks, again up to a maximum of 8 seeds. You can collect these seeds using the Gather Seeds button on the Resources menu.
- A Full Grown Plant can also be set to "Decorative Mode", which is displayed as a leafy plant with a red / symbol. Setting a plant to decorative mode freezes its daily checks, allowing it to be used for decoration purposes and requiring no upkeep. However, it will never again produce seeds or resources, and cannot be undone.
- A Full Grown Plant can engage in Cross-Pollination, a process in which plants can be bred together to form new strains. This requires the use of a Plants pollen, which can be viewed from the Pollination State screen in the Plant Resources menu. If left unattended, it will produce seeds, thus creating an exact duplicate of the parent (see creating seeds above). However, the Gardener can also cross-pollinate his plant with another by using pollen collected from another plant, the targeted plant then producing seeds as a hyrbid of the two parent plants. After a plant has been pollenated with another plants pollen, it will no longer be open for future pollenation (ie, you can only use a different plants pollen on one plant ONCE).
- To collect pollen, use the Cross-Polination button.
- In rare cases, a mutation may occur during cross-pollination. In these cases, the targeted plant will not produce seeds attached to its parent plants, but will instead produce "mutated" seeds that will grow into new mutant plant varieties.
And that is Gardening, Quick and Dirty. For more details visit The Greenhouse on UOLS.
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^ top-Britannia Under Siege... Scenario Info from UOLS
[Talanithus] May 1 - 6:58 AM EDT | 
WARNING!! There is a lot of work left to be done on this summary, but I am posting it as is for those of you helping me find errors... thanks again to all you testers! You are making life easier for players everywhere.
 
Summary:
The Jukan forces have invaded Brittania, with the support of Juggernauts, Golems, and Betrayers... as well as a new troop called Dragoons mounted on a strange new type of dragon. The cities of Minoc, Trinsic, Yew, and Papua (on Trammel) and Jhelom and Papua (in Fel) have all been attacked relentlessly, with Defenders from across the lands rallying to fend them off. The High Council has declared a state of war, and authorized the creation of the Britannian Militia, a volunteer organization dedicated to defending the lands from this new onslaught. Recently, strange new creatures that seem to mesh with the earth itself have appeared, bearing seeds within their corpses. Noone knows where these mysterious creatures, called Boglings and Bog Things, have come from, but they seem most prevelant in swampy areas, as well as those locations under attack by Blackthorne's troops.
Make sure to go over the first three Scenario reports as well, located on UOLS under Scenario 1, Scenario 2, and Scenario 3.
Dates of Activity:
Began April 11, 2002, still underway.
BNN Stories: - Also copied below
Enemies and Allies
The Casting
Seeds
Betrayer Journal
A Welcome
UO: Lord Blackthorn's Revenge
Website: UO: Blackthorn's Revenge
Features
Fiction
Downloads
FAQ
Monster Types:
Jukan
Juka Warriors
Cannot open doors
Carry Blackstaves, Spears, or Halberds & 200gp
Give a lot of karma and fame to a new player
Take double damage from Reptillian Death Slayer weapons (melee and bows)
Juka Mages
Cannot open doors
Carry 6 of each reg, Arcane Gem, & 200 gp
Will heal their Juka Lords if in the vicintity.
Give a lot of karma and fame to a new player
Take double damage from Reptillian Death Slayer weapons (melee and bows)
Juka Lords
Immune to Barding
Cannot open doors
Carry an arcane gem, bow of VIRTUE and 400 gp
Uses bandages, which can be used up.
Literally speak to the player, using the players name.
Very difficult to kill.
Can have their equipment (including Virtue Bows) stolen from them on Felucca, using the random steal option.
Take double damage from Reptillian Death Slayer weapons (melee and bows)
Creatures of Decay
Boglings
CAN be Provoked, but not onto a Bog Thing
Fast natural healing rate
Spawn in groups
Loot: 1 seed & a few gold
Bog Things
Immune to Barding
Strong Melee attack
VERY fast natural healing rate
Creates boglings to aid in their battles
Absorb damaged Boglings that come within a few tiles, replenishing their own health.
Loot: 2 seeds, 100 gold, nightshade & 10 boards
Minions of Blackthorn
Juggernauts
Immune to Barding
Cannot open doors
Very strong melee
Cannot Dispel
Carry 600 gold clockwork assembly, or a power crystal (or combination)
Betrayers
Immune to Barding
Cannot open doors
Very strong melee
Adept level magery (low Dragon)
Can Dispel
Delivers a "collosal blow" which can dismount riders
Ranged gas attack, approximately equal to a level 4 poison, which can affect players through walls or invsible if in range.
Carry roughly 400 gold, and a power crystal [undetermined, send us details]
Occasionaly carry a book entitled "A Welcome by Blackthorn" - appears to be a "recruitment" into Blackthorn's service.
Chaos Dragoon
CAN be Barded
Medium Melee
Weak ranged fireball attack (from Swampies)
Stomp attack from Swamp Dragon.
Mounts can be tamed, see Ridable Swamp Dragons in the New Items section.
Loot: 1 scale of the armor they are wearing, ~200 gold, standard shirt, and 1 random gem.
Elite Chaos Dragoon
Immune to Barding
Immune to Bolas
Strong melee.
Strong Magical attack.
Stomp attack from Swamp Dragon.
Weak ranged fireball attack from Swamp Dragon.
Mounts dissappear when the Dragoon is killed.
Sometimes appear as a Mystic Llama Herder
Possess Dragon targeting, which will cause them to retarget players who come within 5 to 8 tiles of them.
Carry a magical broadsword of misc power, up to and including vanquishing weaponry
Loot: 1 scale of the armor they are wearing, ~ 300 gold, standard shirt, and 2 random gems.
New Items:
Ridable Swamp Dragons "Swampies"
Require 95.1 Taming to Tame, 0 Taming to own
Will attack a monster even while being ridden, if the rider is in close melee.
Can wear Dragon Barding
Dragon Barding/Armor (note: Barding is the name for armor for animals)
Created by Smiths
Requires 750 ingots, in any one color
Each different ore will yield a different colored barding, just like armor does.
Requires at least 72.5 skill in Blacksmithing
For a GM Smith the chances are 50% success, 10% exceptional
Once removed (using a bladed weapon on a barded dragon) the armor is *destroyed*
Absorbs ~ 10% of the damage done to the rider. For example, a Juka arrow that does 50 points of damage will only do ~45 to a warrior riding a barded Swamp Dragon.
http://members.chello.at/dietmar.zehetbauer/barding.jpg
Seeds
Do not stack
Come in over 4 different colors, but dozens of different "hidden" characteristics affect potential plant growth (though not readily appearent until they are planted)
Found as loot on Bog Things and Boglings
Used as part of the new Plant Growing system
Requires the use of a special "Dirt Bowl" to activate the Seeds (available from Provisioners for 2gps)
Check out The Greenhouse for all the details on seeds and Gardening.
 Dragon Scale Armor - Stratics Info
Can cast Reactive armor on yourself while wearing it (unlike other metal armors)
The armors do not seem to take extra damage when exposed to attacks they are vulnerable or resistant to.
Cannot meditate in the armors
Each armor seem to have a different AR, and when you wear a complete suit (helmet, tunic, arms, legs, gloves) you receive certain "powers"
Full 3d & 2d Pics
REQUIRES CONSIDERABLY MORE TESTINGYellow:
- Resistant: Fire-attacks
- Vulnerable: Electric attacks
- RUMOR: Absorbs stomp attacks and collosal blows.
- RUMOR: Melee hits of all types take 5-10 stamina damage
Red:
- Resistant: Fire-attacks
- Vulnerable: Poison
Black:
- Resistant to Poison
- Vulnerable: Electric Attacks"
Green:
- Resistant: Poison
- Vulnerable: Fire attacks
White:
- Resistant to Electric attacks
- Vulnerable: Fire attacks
Blue:
- Resistant to Electric attacks
- Vulnerable: Poison
Slayer Bows
A ranged virtue weapon!
Requires a GM Fletcher to use a gear on the bow to make it operational.
Comes in all the normal Virtue Weapon types. There is one Uber-Slayer that affects everything in its group, they will be listed first. Each slayer weapon has an opposing weakness to a specific monster type, noted in (parenthesis) Uber-Slayers
- Repond double damage to Orcs, Trolls, Ogres, Cyclops, and Titans (Vulnerable to Undead)
- Silver double damage to Undead (Vulnerable to Humanoid)
- Elemental Bane - double damage against all elementals (Vulnerable to Abyss)
- Exorcism double damage to Wraiths, Shades, Ghouls, Gargoyles & Deamons (Vulnerable to Elemental)
- Arachnid Doom double damage to Spiders and Terethans (Vulnerable to Reptillian)
- Reptillian Death double damage to Alligators, Snakes, Lizardmen, Dragons, Drakes, Wyrms, Ophidians, and Juka (Vulnerable to Arachnid)
Abyss Weapons (Vulnerable to Elemental)
- Deamon Dismissal double damage to Deamons
- Gargoyels Foe double damage to regular Gargoyles
Arachnid Weapons (Vulnerable to Reptillian)
- Ophidian Slaying double damage
- Scorpions Bane double damage to Scorpions
- Spiders Death double damage to Giant Spiders
- Terathan Slaughter double damage
- Terathan Slaying double damage
Elemental Weapons (Vulnerable to Abyss)
- Blood Drinking double damage to Blood Elementals
- Earth Shatter double damage to Earth Elementals
- Vacuum double damage to Air Elementals
- Water Dissipation double damage to Water Elementals
- Summer Wind double damage to Snow Elementals
- Flame Dousing double damage to Fire Elementals
- Elemental Health double damage to Posion Elementals
Humanoid Weapons (Vulnerable to Undead)
- Orc Slaughter double damage
- Troll Slaughter double damage
- Ogre Thrashing double damage
Reptillian Weapons (Vulnerable to Arachnid)
- Dragon Slaying double damage
- Ophidian Slaughter double damage
- Lizardman Slaughter double damage
- Snakes Bane double damage
Active Groups:
Blackthorn and his troops
Britannian Militia
High Council
Active Areas:
Trammel - Yew, Minoc, Trinsic, and Papua
Felucca - Jhelom and Papua
Ilshenar - Swamps (for boglings and bog things)
Ilshenar - Blackthorne's Castle
Dungeon Wrong - Level One & Two
Timeline:
Week 1: Apr 11 2002
BNN Story: Enemies And Allies
Barkeep Message: "Blackthorn's personal guard and the Juka are attacking various cities!"
Jukan troops, reinforced by "Chaos Dragoons", begin attacking towns throughout the lands. On Trammel, Yew and Trinsic, and Papua. On Felucca, Papua and Jhelom.
Week 2: Apr 18 2002
BNN Story: The Casting
Barkeep Message: "I hear Blackthorn has sent out even stronger warriors riding atop dragon-like beasts!"
Minoc was invaded and reinforcement troops of blackthorn juggernauts, betrayers, controllers, golems, and the chaos dragoon elite were sent to all towns.
Week 3: Apr 25 2002
BNN Story: Seeds
Barkeep Message: "Bizarre plant beasts have started to rise from the swamps! Where could they have come from?"
Boglings and Bogthings have appeared throughout the lands, though we do not know if they are new force for Blackthorn or a side effect of the Meer's Decay spell.
Relevant Message Boards:
UO.com Scenario Boards
High Council of Britannia (for LS)
Relevant Sites Covering this Quest:
UO Lake Superior
Britannian Militia (for LS)
UO Powergamer
Britannia News Network
Stratics UO
Crossroads of Britannia
References:
BNN
Feen of the UO.com boards (for the images)
Shazam of UO.com Boards
Drak of the UO.com Boards
Cyra of the UO.com Boards
pinzasso of the UO.com Boards
Arcanus_Caligo of the UO.com Boards
Richard of the UO.com Boards
Wandrell of the UO.com Boards
absydian of the UO.com Boards
UberFish of the UO.com Boards
Obsydia_OTE of the UO.com Boards
Icebreaker of the UO.com Boards
Courage of the UO.com Boards
RedPhoenix of the UO.com Boards
Lord_HellSpawn of the UO.com Boards
CyberfisH of the UO.com Boards
TiG of Shadegods
Have some new information? Corrections of current info? Send it to me. |
^ top-Just FYI.. Grr!!- Week 3 delayed for East Coast
[Kaara] May 1 - 5:01 AM EDT | Scenario week 3 Delay May 1 2002 4:29AM CST (GMT -06:00)
Due to an unforeseen issue, the Scenario Week 3 Publish to the East Coast Shards of Atlantic, Catskills and AOL Legends will delayed until their next maintenance. We apologize for the inconvenience this delay may cause.
I am SOOOOOOOOOOOOO glad I got up at 4am to try to beat the rush at the provisioners for bowls this morning! Grrr!!
Grr
Grr!!
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^ top-Who said OSI is not paying attention?
[FrozenFire] May 1 - 3:49 AM EDT | Well maybe not in the way many players wanted. . . One of the "features" setting UO apart is the opportunity to own your own virtual house. To many players, thats a goal thats very hard to achieve and when you look at how house prices have sky rocketed, you can see how important housing is to a majority of players.
Well 6-8 months ago, we had house decay and a part of the player base had a lot of fun camping the houses as they were about to fall. The decay process also made sure a small but steady supply of houses for sale wound up on the market. But then decay was turned off prices and went up yet again.
Why did they do it? I promised you a conspiracy theory on the reasons behind the BOD-system, but it looks like youll get one on house decay first. . . Anyways why did OSI first take it out and then put a different version back in?
Im sure the given reason to remove it, to support the UO players that were in the armed forces, or who needed to go away and take care of urgent framily matters due to 9-11 was a major reason. But people, let me ask you; If UO was your business and you realized a lot of players quit, or more likely, didnt come back after testing the latest new "UO-killer" - simply because their house decayed. Wouldnt you try to change that?
Most likely OSI noticed that many players returned to UO after a hiatus but then quit again within a couple of months. Why? Now these people have already been newbies at least once. They have also alrwady experienced being set with a house and whatnot. I think many simply didnt like having to rebuild what they lost when their houses decayed.
The obvious solution? Stop decay of course. If people come back because of houses, why have a system that takes away that incentive?Better to keep the bait that lures back the straying player at all cost (even if a new player will have an even harder time becoming a house owner).
Well, it looks like OSI is getting ready to turn decay back on - sort of. Only houses with owners that do not have active accounts will decay. Temporary suspensions doesnt count towards decay and coowners to ownerless houses can be grandfathered in. Thats it in a nutshell.
So, why did OSI choose to tie decay to active accounts and not to some form of ingame activity? Look at it this way. In the end OSI is a business. And bandwidth is a cost driver, while active accounts are driving incomes. Now guess which driver the new decay rules are supporting? Before you all PM me to tell me that logging in 10 seconds to refresh your house isnt a huge bandwidth killer - youre right. So maybe the true motive isnt so much cutting costs as it is to conserve the income base. Remember, with the new system, it doesnt matter if co owners or friends refresh for you. Its all tied to your paying OSI the allmighty $10.
And thats where OSI paid attention. Some play to crush. Some pay to bake bread. But almost everyone seem to play to own that cool house. In market speak, thats one of UO:s USP:s (unique selling points). Im not aware of a major graphical game that has housing in the way UO does.
Players will keep going on hiatus' to try other games. But now they will have to pay those $10 dollars (and many will). And so some will return. Thats the "invisible forces of the market" at work for you.
So, am I just an old UO cynic, or did I see through OSIs motives? Im sure youll tell me in this non decayable thread. |
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