January 23, Wednesday

New UO3d Female art (again) -Videric

January 17, Thursday

UO3d new Avatars -Videric

First, have a look here: http://theblackstaff.com/ Then some player based info from the faire, this is what Wyll_Kel said on the board: as for the avatar art, yes they are looking at doing about 32 faces per sex (64 total), so you will be able to choose exactly what your characters face would look like and they do differ alot in some choices. ive seen a pic of all 32 female faces lined up against each other and they DO differ alot (from what i gather, us old characters will be grandfathered in and probably presented with a gump like vet rewards till we pick our customization). They are also looking at altering the X,Y,Z axises. While this still may or may not happen (i want to stress that), it can make your character look thin and tall or stocky and short (or both). I dont think it will mean that your character will nessassarily have this huge gut, but it will allow you to avoid "barbie preportions" if you seek to do so. The art is pixelized and dulled out for an obvious reason. Even in the most zoomed in mode, its still about 1/3 to 1/4 the size of that pic. You would not see any extra detail they put in and it would just appear as sparkles like it used to before MIPmapping. The post can be found here: UOboards post

January 16, Wednesday

Scenario active on Thursday morning -Videric

From FYI: The first week of the new scenario, which is currently live on the Pacific shard, is scheduled to be released to the rest of the North American shards, to be active on Wednesday, January 16th, following their regularly scheduled maintenance periods (local server time). Barring any unforeseen issues, the publish will then be released to the European, Asian, and Oceania shards, to be active following their Thursday morning maintenance periods (local server time). http://update.uo.com/fyi.html

January 12, Saturday

Designer Diaries vol 2!! -Elv'eng

Was scouting the GameSpy page for some new info on the UO:LBR that people have been testing on the Fair in Austin. But insted i found this: UO: Blackthorn's Revenge -- Volume 2: New Player Experience Ultima Online's lead designer addresses the problems they've encountered while trying to retain new players. By - Tom "Evocare" Chilton One of the most significant challenges facing Ultima Online since its release has been the new player experience. Initially, the vast majority of new players were hardcore gamers with enough game playing experience to have developed good instincts which enabled them to make the right choices within the relatively unscripted new player journey into the game. However, as the audience for massively-multiplayer online role-playing games has expanded outside the hardcore gamer segment, the new player experience has become much more of a stumbling block for the less experienced gamer entering this genre. And if you wish to read more about it, just follow this link GameSpy UO:LBR Diaries Vol2

January 11, Friday

Test Center Content -Elv'eng

This was posted at the FYI page For those who are interested, the first week of content for the next scenario has been published to the Test Center 2 shard. This publish also includes the Sacrifice portion of the Virtue System. As always, please report any bugs you may find to tcbugs@uo.com. When submitting a bug report to our QA department, please remember to include the following information: Your UO account name (do not include your password) The time, date, shard, and facet of the occurrence What steps you took that led up to the bug Whether or not you tried to repeat the bug, and if you succeeded

January 9, Wednesday

Fiction Facts -Videric

Some matters about Ultima Fiction were posted by Calandryll: I'lll address the ones here that I am responsible for or know about. While I know you say you only represent the GL group, I have to make my response keeping in mind the entire community. :) 1. In Fiction - Why Lord British went away. If you cant use "Lord British" because of RG's hold on the name.. say that! "Legal issues" can mean anything, please be more specific. --We've already said that. RG owns the rights to the name and legal issues (sorry, I have to say it) prevent us from using LB. - We want to know who is ruling in Lord Britishes stead. There is a gap here between LB abdicating, and the next person taking over.. who is ruling in the meantime? --Right now, we are in a Kingless land. That power vacumm has created a window for which evil (Exodus and now Blackthorn) are making a bid for power. The rest will happen (and be revealed) over time. - We want less words and more action. Sure, we get BNN articles, but 99% of the time, the stuff mentioned in BNN articles never actually happened in the game. --BNN articles are meant to give you clues through fictional accounts. The "real" story is told by you. - We want our fiction written by someone who knows Ultima. you guys are messing with some fundamental plot points and it will be reeely easy to create large, gaping plot holes. --We know Ultima. We're not perfect though, so if we do have a plot whole, please point it out to us. We take fiction very, very seriously. - We want to know why Lord Blackthorn suddenly turned evil. --And you will. - We want to know why Nystul is leaving to follow Lord British. --Mostly because Nystul sees himself as the King's aid and trusts that Dupre and Clainin can handle things. - We want fiction that does not destroy the fiction built by Garriott. --Agreed, although as far as UO's fiction, most of it was done by other people. 2. In game - We are not pleased with the virtue system for a variety of reasons. --While there are some who do not like parts of the virtue system, there are some that do like it. The system itself still has room for tweaking and already has been in numerous ways. - We want more objects in the game that are not house decorations. --Good, because we already have and will continue to put them in. - We dont really like suprises that much. We would rather have documentation on new additions to the game than have to "discover it ourselves because it is a suprise" --Don't agree with this. For many players discovery is a big part of the game. Which is why the scenario stuff is not announced. I think it would do far more harm than good if we announced stuff like new monster AI or item properties in advance. As far as game changes and new systems, I agree however and that is what the Update Center is for. - If its something good, we dont mind waiting for it. Programming time is irrelevant to us. --This is one I will disgaree with as well. Exanple: The scenarios have been well recieved overall and have had very, very few bugs. A lot of that is because we do take extra time with QA and we make sure we don't publish during bad times (like right before the UO World Faire). That extra time causes some delays, which while some people may not mind, some posts on the scenario board point to the contrary. Time and quality are both very important issues. - We prefer to be treated individually and not stereotypically. --Agreed. So do we. :) - We would still volunteer, despite how OSI has treated their volunteers in the past. --Sometimes decisions are taken out of our hands, whether we like it or not. - We will respect you ang give you the benefit of the doubt if you were honest and open with us. --Good. I don't believe I have ever been anything but. :) Sorry I could not address all of your concerns, but I don't feel right answering something that I don't work on or know much about. Hope the ones I did cover helped though. And about showing villains before we know their motives: Actually, no, that was on purpose. Showing someone as a villian before you learn their motivations for becoming such is a very standard fictional practice. Did we learn Darth Vader's motivations before he appeared on the screen? Nope, he just showed up and started choking people. His story wass told over time...as will Blackthorn's. Think about it in a real world sense. How would anyone really know what Blackthorn has been up to and who he has been consorting with. None of our characters can count ourselves as close friends of his so we'd have no idea what he was up to during his absense. All we do know (or rather, will know) is that he has changed. Learning why is part of the story telling process and rushing that become it may seem odd to some people is a really bad idea. Jonathan "Calandryll" Hanna Designer, Ongoing Content a wizard did it Plus Blackthorn's change is not based on or even related to the fiction for Borg. :) Jonathan "Calandryll" Hanna Designer, Ongoing Content a wizard did it Then about the tech: LBR isn't even remotely about "mechanical" creatures. In fact, of all of the monsters, only 2 or 3 of the 30 new ones are even remotely technology based. Everything else is very much medieval. If you look at the renders and screenshots, almost all of them are non-technological. Jonathan "Calandryll" Hanna Designer, Ongoing Content a wizard did it And E-mail group note: …we aren't modernizing UO. The addition of the few (and there are very few) "technology" based creatures isn't an after-effect of modernization, but rather the effects of a new force (Exodus) entering the realm. Those that know what Exodus is (from Ultima III) will know the basis for the creatures. These "technology" creatures don't represent the majority of the expansion and most scenarios wont even have technology-based elements in them at all. In fact, we only have 2 or 3 technology-based monsters in the expansion and all of them are being used in scenario three. Scenario four doesn't have any and the basic outline for scenario five doesn't have any either. -Jonathan "Calandryll" Hanna Designer, Ongoing Content a wizard did it UOboards post

January 5, Saturday

Designer Diaries -Elv'eng

Well, seams like EA/OSI Designers have gone to the Designer Diaries stage too now. This was written at the FYI pages at UO.COM: Interested in a behind-the-scenes look at Ultima Online’s upcoming expansion, Lord Blackthorn’s Revenge? If so, take a peek into the minds of the Designers involved in its development as they discuss the details of its conception and construction in a collection of Designer Diaries that are being published on various popular gaming websites. Two of these diaries, written by Designer Calandryll, have already been released and can be found via the following links: - Calandryll discusses the expansion and how it relates to UO’s ongoing fiction in this Gamespy article. - Insight into the UO:LBR comic, as well as its heroine, “Dawn”, can be found here, at MGON. Future diaries will be posted on both of these sites in the coming weeks, and we will update again once they are released!

Of Lord British we must talk of -Videric

From Gromm about what happend to Lord British: As much as we'd like to tie everything up fictionally with the old king there's only so much we can do. Don't expect a grand exit for LB. Too many real world issues are present. As far as this goes we're trying to look ahead rather than behind. Britannia has been without a leader for a long time, we recognize that, and we're hoping the new scenario fiction will be the beginning of the cure. UOboards post

January 4, Friday

Todd Mcfarlane -Videric

Todd Mcfarlane, man who accoriding to his own words never played UO. The interview is not as much of UO as one hopes, it has some nice art however. Update: Apparently the box will have Blackthorn action figure and Comic. This thanks to Teich Dragon of Stratics for pointing me out what Evocare said: There is in fact a free Blackthorn action figure in every UO:LBR box to go along with the comic, map, and game (obviously). However, it is always a Blackthorn action figure (not random) for a number of reasons. For instance, if you use the incentive of a random action figure where you can't see what figure you'll get when you open the box, it doesn't create as much of a purchase incentive to people that aren't already convinced they want the game (since they can't see what the action figure looks like and say "oh wow cool, I want that!"). Conversely, if you sell the game with a range of different action figures that they can see (through the "window" in the box), there are always a few of the figures that sell a lot, and all the rest get left on the shelves since people only want the boxes that are packaged with the "cool" action figures, and not the "lame" ones (there are inevitably going to be figures that are more and less popular). Seeing as though we're selling UO primarily, where the action figure happens to be a cool bonus that adds value to the game purchase (29.99 is a smokin' deal for a game, action figure, comic, map, etc), we don't want to structure the product in such a way that makes it look like we're selling an action figure that happens to come with a game. ;] -------------------------------------------- Tom "Evocare" Chilton Lead Designer - Ultima Online The Gamespy Interview

January 3, Thursday

UO:LBR due to come on February 12th -Videric

Tajima commented this: LBR won't go gold until well after the fan event. It's on schedule to begin shipping on February 12th. -Tajima which would be here: UOboards post

Publish 15 -Videric

This is on testing in Atlantic shard already, so it probably reaches Europe within a week. Lots of fixes in it, I must say. Housing and Lockdown Updates *Selecting YES on the gump to clear you as a co-owner of a house will now remove your co-owner status, allowing proper house transfers. *Fixed an issue concerning flawed tile art while placing a house. *Trading a house to a player who is co-owned to a house will be a two-step process. The receiver will first have to select YES to remove his co-owner status and then the other party will need to initiate the trade again, at which time it will complete normally. *The house co-owner clear confirm gump spacing has been fixed. *An issue allowing house add-ons to be chopped through an exploit has been fixed. *Locked-down eggs and Easter eggs are no longer able to be used. *You will now be able to use runebooks within bookcases or locked down containers. *Co-owners of player houses are now able to dye locked-down furniture within the house they co-own. *Issues involving certain characters being unable to release, secure, or lock-down items within their own houses has been addressed. *The text on the house sign gump when using the 3D client has been changed to black text, instead of yellow, for easier reading. *All houses will continue to be automatically refreshed — except condemned houses. Condemned houses will begin to decay. Guild System Updates *An issue involving canceling choosing new fealty in the guild menu has been addressed. *Guildmasters that resign from their guild using the statement “I resign from my guild” will now receive a resignation confirmation. Also, the player who becomes guildmaster, as well as all online guild members, will now receive a statement announcing the new guildmaster. *Several spelling errors in guild messaging have been fixed. *A typo in the declare war function on guildstones has been corrected. Map-Specific Updates *Liches now spawn properly at (757, 1400, 0). *Numerous bad ocean tiles have been cleaned up. *NPC Waiters will no longer spawn on the roof of the Great Horns Tavern in Magincia. *When you single-click the teleporter in the Moonglow mage shop for a newbie quest you will now see “a magical teleporter” instead of “lookAtText: a magical teleporter.” *Players will be able to insta-log from the first floor of the Sweet Dreams Inn in Britain while using the 3D client. NPC and Shopkeepers Updates *All methods of killing shopkeepers in Felucca will now give a murder count (ie using pets, provoking). *The vendor info and status is now on a gump instead of a bark. Shopkeepers will now buy up to 250 individual items or up to 500 items total, whichever comes first. *The barkeeps now work through context menus. *An issue involving the displaying of the barkeep tip message on the barkeep menu has been fixed. *‘Buy’ is now part of context menus on faction horse breeders and hairstylists. *The cancel button on the hairstylist gump will now cancel the selection and not charge you 50k. *Guards no longer have training menus. *Real estate brokers will be the only NPC interested in house deeds — all others will return them to the person who owns it. *NPC Bankers and NPC Minters are the only NPCs which will accept checks. Pet and Hireling Updates *A loophole allowing transferring of pets while flagged grey has been fixed. *It will no longer be possible to stable a pet using the last object macro. *Fixed the message when you try to stable an object in your backpack — it now says “you can’t stable that” instead of “please dismount first.” *Animal lore now correctly reports how many owners an animal has had. *The message involving feathers in animal lore has been corrected. *If you used your animal lore skill on a tamed eagle, eventually you’d get a random bark saying: “you lock it.” You should no longer be receiving that erroneous message. *Healing a frost spider will now raise vet skill instead of anatomy. *You will no longer be able to tame dynamically spawned monsters — such as Unicorns in an evil in the can region. You will still be able to tame the normally spawned Unicorns. *You will no longer have to pay upkeep to keep your pet refreshed while stabled. *Non faction players will no longer be able to tame faction war horses. *Pack animals are now tamable via context menus. *Players that command their pets using context menus will appear as if they had spoken the command phrase(s). *All pets store bought or tamed and released will now properly be re-tamable. *It’s no longer possible to transfer a pet to a ghost. *Players who mount an ethereal horse will no longer be spammed three times with “You get on your horse.” *An issue causing pets & hirelings to visually disappear (although only visually — they actually remained in the game at the place last seen) when approaching a server boundary has been addressed. *You will no longer be able to hire NPC hirelings and have them guard other NPCs. *An issue involving hirelings performing “grey” activities without their “owner” going grey has been fixed. kill Changes and Updates *An issue disallowing the use of leather which was cut up from leather items has been addressed. *The text displayed when selecting the type of metal on the crafting gump will no longer be garbled. *When crafting items a check of the backpack is made — if it’s full (either item or weight-wise), you will not be able to craft the item. *Both the crafting tools and the crafting resources must now be in one's backpack when crafting a given item. (You will no longer be able to use crafting tools in the bank box.) *Crafting now breaks the necessary concentration for meditation. *All crafting menus have the make last button. *Oilcloths will now be created with the correct variables, and the bug to convert them back into yellow pieces of cloth has been fixed. *Female plate is now properly identified on the crafting gump. *Your backpack no longer closes if you use the materials menu. *Tinkers will no longer be able to make bugged lanterns. Graphics issue were preventing them from lighting correctly. *The “I honor thee” command will no longer disrupt peacemaking. *Maker's Mark for instruments should now go back to being based on your Carpentry skill instead of your Musicianship skill. *The Carpentry menu now has the correct spelling for “Trinsic-style chair.” *An issue with incorrect messages when using Anatomy on targets with low STR and DEX has been fixed. *Players who successfully use their hiding skill while under the effects of an invisibility spell will no longer be revealed when the invisibility timer expires. *Players will no longer lose mana when attempting to inscribe a scroll they don’t have the proper materials for. *Fixed an issue where the Inscription menu remained “active” after clicking “OK,” disallowing further use of that skill for a time. *Characters will no longer lose mana when they fail to make a scroll. *Fixed an issue with the phrase that appears when a cooking tool breaks. *You will now get the correct amount of dough from mixing flour and water. *When starting a tailor character you will begin with a pair of scissors. *The cap and tall straw hat are now included in the tailor items menu for tailors. *You will now be able to make potions directly into a potion keg. *Potion kegs will now display the correct contents when single-clicked (ex. the keg will say “a keg of greater poison” versus “a keg of green potions”). *Blacksmith repair difficulty has been fixed — the more damaged a weapon is, the more difficult it will be to repair it. *If you have a blacksmith tool equipped, you must use that tool while smithing. Otherwise, you can use the tools from your pack as normal. *An issue involving mining at inappropriate distances from the target has been fixed. *An issue involving the ability to smith items without the proper tools has been addressed. *Gargoyle shopkeepers will now give and accept bulk orders. *Added small platemail bulk order deeds. *Male plate tunics are now being given as a Bulk Order Deed (whereas before it was only female plate armor). *Blacksmith repair contracts will now work in the gargoyle city region. *Resmelting metal items now checks for an anvil and forge in the proximity. *It will now be possible to repair and resmelt all metal shields, arms, and armor. *The word “Dull” has been changed to “Dull Copper” on the blacksmith menu. Faction Updates *Faction scrolls now stack properly. *Faction shopkeepers and guards will now correctly be dismissible by a targeting cursor. *Faction vendors should no longer block players movement. *Faction stones will no longer open up the “join this faction” gump window for anyone who has already joined that faction. *Several issues with faction voting windows have been fixed. They will now come up & display appropriately. *A faction town income price modifier issue has been corrected. *An issue involving faction town stones not always recognizing their faction ownership has been fixed. *Factioneers who leave their faction while on the leadership candidate list will be properly removed from the respective candidate list at that time, and the election system timetable will be adjusted accordingly. *Factioneers of rank 5 or lower will not be able to campaign for faction leadership. *Faction titles will no longer display while in Trammel. *An issue involving faction characters getting stuck if they quit their faction while in their stronghold has been fixed. *An issue allowing characters to Gate Travel while holding a faction sigil has been fixed. Spell Updates *Fixed an issue where you’d get a message saying that you were disturbed while casting the Incognito spell, but you’d still be able to cast the spell if your skill was high enough. *Fixed an issue where an avatar would turn north when casting certain spells. *Telekinesis no longer works on boat decks. *The Firefield spell will no longer be precastable outside of town and targetable in town. Miscellaneous Localization/Text Changes *An issue where certain containers were not displaying their weight properly has been fixed. *The listed values when a character is overloaded were reversed-they now display as “Carrying stones/Max stones.” *Legacy naval chests and shipwreck chests now display the correct text. *Pitchers of liquid will no longer just say: “Container. It is full.” *Single-clicking the pitcher will now display the contents. *Links will now show up and work correctly in the help gump. *Special drinks will now correctly display their look at text — mostly covers holiday items. *The mongbat tutorial text will no longer mysteriously disappear. *An issue with overlapping text boxes in the new player tutorial has been fixed. *The gump that pops up when you are leaving the tutorial to go to Haven will now remain on the screen until closed. *The proper localized look at text will now appear over magic teleporters. *When canceling a help request the word request is now spelled correctly. *The wording when locking and unlocking a door has been made consistent. *Kite shields will now display if they are dyeable or not. *A text display issue with trapped chests has been corrected. *Female plate is now correctly identified if it is exceptional. *Text will now display correctly on magical items that are blessed using the Item Bless deed. Miscellaneous *Runebooks now only require 8 blank scrolls to make instead of the previous 10. *Double-clicking a bank check in your bankbox will now cash it in. *Camping now is on a 10 second timer — if a player camps and waits more than ten seconds, the gump will close and the player remains in the world. (This is to prevent insta-logging in combat.) *You can now use a furniture dye tub if you are the owner and the tub is in your backpack. *Recall scrolls will now stack properly. *The woodsman house has been removed from the list of possible escort destinations because it was confusing — there aren’t any woodsman in the game. *Players on Siege shards who aren’t part of the new good/evil system will no longer be able to hue items. *Special case doors now play the correct sounds when opened and closed. *Candles will no longer disappear when used in your hand. *Ghosts will no longer be able to open their backpacks using context menus. *The mongbat tutorial gump will no longer close when entering combat, as well the death gump will not vanish if the player leaves the area toward the exit moongate and comes back. *If a character has his Karma locked it will no longer be possible for others to “honor” them. *None of the decorative bolts of cloth in tailor shops will disappear or give odd messages when double-clicked. *An issue regarding making & collecting bounties has been addressed. *All magical items should now be able to be repaired as normal. *If you choose a Vet Reward from the menu and then cancel your choice, you will be put directly into the game instead of being presented with the Vet Rewards menu again. *An issue involving grey thieves being able to steal and use moongates has been fixed. (Such thieves must wait until they return to blue before using a moongate.) *An issue involving incorrect altering of stats through the used of certain Blessed items and spell combinations has been fixed. *Oil cloths should no longer disappear once you use them on your weapon. *You are no longer able to get more than one stone table from one deed.