 October 30, Monday |
Interview of LadyMOI at the Choisen, have a go:
LadyMOI |
| October 26, Thursday |
I found this message at devboard of UO boards, and unlike many ideas there this one is actually a good one, and I could imagine a doable. Judge yourself, but I think this idea could enchant UO in a good way:
RobbieG
Mailbox in your house!
I posted this on Sunday, adn thought i'd repost it so the Dev Team could have a look... Also There wasn't much response to it... :P
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Last night I were wandering about looking for houses for sale and such when I came across a beautiful house located in an ideal spot. I wished I could contact the owner, but then I'd have to wait 'till s/he came online, so I left with unfinished business.
It struck me then how convenient it had been if we could have mailboxes lockdowned on our stairs where people could drop books in and state our business. Perhaps this could be craftable by tinkers? They want more craftables anyway, so why not? I think this would make a great addition to housing :)
Please submit any flaws or additional thoughts about this idea.
Read about it at:
UO boards |
| October 24, Tuesday |
A piece from Damion "Ubiq" Schubert interview from Gamespy:
GameSpy: If you had the means and opportunity to go anywhere in the world (or anywhere else), where would you like to go?
Damion Schubert: I've been trying to save my cash to go to Europe for some time now, see the sights, take a vacation. Maybe some European fan club will throw a conference in the future, forcing OSI to send me on their dime. I can dream, at least.
Well he missed Amsterdam, but maybe he would like to come to the next RL meeting of Europian people. Better keep his email address in mind when having the next meeting, maybe EA would pay his trip. You can always try *grins*
Read the rest from here: GameSpy.com |
| October 19, Thursday |
 | Permanent closing of Ulthuan Library and Magicka -Remy LeBeau |  |
I received this letter from Lestat V'lorea today:
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I am sorry to announce that the Ulthuan Library and Magicka will sadly close it's doors forever today. Thanks to all for your support, in particular: the staff of Spiritwood Library, and the staff of Deepwater Library. The reason of our closure is quite a morbid and puzzling one. Our founder and financer, Qurant, has grown quite disturbingly ill. His is like a zombie, never eating, never speaking except when to shout explicitives into the wind, as if some invisible force was mocking him. He awakes at night from horrible nightmares, but he will not speak of them, just mumbles about 'betrayel' and a sword. Once again I apologize for this sad turn of events, and thank you to our supporters.
Lestat V'lorea
Former Curator
of The Ulthuan Library and Magicka |
| Veteran Rewards are REALLY rewards now... -Videric | |
I really do like the new rewards. Thank you for listening Origin. Now I can complain that choosing rewards is going to be too Hard! *grins*
I hope that banners and decoration is movable, it would be very hard to decide a place where to keep it forever.*smirks*
Original post can be viewed here:
UO:R boards
|
| Return of the Veteran Rewards -Melissa | |
Remember when OSI pulled the Vet rewards out of testing to work on them some more? Well, last night Calandryll announced several changes to the vet rewards, most of which get "Melissa's Award of xTr4 k3wLn3ss (tm)". Check these out:
Calandryll (Manager of Community Services)
10/18/00 06:27 PM
Rewards Update
We’ve identified the new rewards for the veteran rewards program and I wanted to give you all a heads-up. I’ll also comment a bit on some of the rewards that we wanted to do, but decided not to. Note, none of these replace existing rewards in the rewards document currently listed in the In Development section of the site. All of those are still in, the list below is in addition to those. All of these items will be blessed which means they cannot be looted or stolen.
One Year:
-Special Dye-bottle. This dye-bottle has colors that players currently do not have access to and can be used on clothing just like a dye-tub. The exact shades/colors will be available to see once this is put on test center. This bottle has unlimited uses.
Two Year:
-Banners. These banners are hueable (to match personal or guild colors) and can be placed and locked down in houses.
-Flaming skull. This is a house decoration. It is a stone head that that belches flame. The flame is purely aesthetic and does not damage players or NPCs.
Three Year:
-Ethereal Ostard and Ethereal Llama. Basically the same an ethereal horse. We are currently working to resolve the issue with these mounts not being able to be ridden in Britannia. More on that later.
Two or Three Year (undecided at this time):
-Leather Dye-bottle. This dye-bottle can dye leather or studded leather in similar colors that are currently used for armor (copper, agapite, valorite, etc.) This bottle has unlimited uses.
While I know some asked for a white dye-tub, to be perfectly honest, we were not satisfied with the way white appears on many articles of clothing. Therefore, for now, we have decided not to include this item as a reward. Also, we could not use the regular dye-tub colors for leather as many of those colors “bleed” when applied to certain pieces of armor such as the arms and leather helm. Sage and I looked at the leather and studded leather armor when dyed the armor colors and they look really sharp! :)
I want to thank everyone for their feedback following the postponing of the rewards program. I’ll update you again once these items are available for testing and updated to the official document.
Screenshot: http://update.uo.com/images/rewards1.jpg
One thing, though: I hope to whatever powers watch over Britannia that the "special dye bottle" DOES NOT include the "ice-blue" colour. It looks extremely awful on clothing and I for one would not like to see half of the population running around in ice-blue robes. *shudders*
And Vid, you will take the Trade Caravan banners, right? :) |
| October 14, Saturday |
| The script generating this news has been upgraded and now allows possible addons such as email updates and reader comments. Let Videric know wether you think it would be worth adding additional funcionality. |
From www.lumthemad.com, I snipped this from the post concerning the Siege Perilious:
"...Runesabre, the long-quiet UO programmer who's working on a seekrit project everyone already seems to know about (a new UO client) and the original designer of Siege Perilous, popped into the lion's den of Battle Vortex's Siege Perilous forums to clarify a few things..."
Could the project really be a new client? Well we will hopefully find out soon. |
| October 12, Thursday |
| Development team does listen.. -Videric | |
After numerous complains about clothing rewards not being very special, following was updated to www.uo.com:
Update: UO Veteran Rewards
Over the past several weeks, we have been paying close attention to player feedback regarding the UO Veteran Rewards. While we are pleased that everyone has shown such enthusiasm over the rewards program, we have also noted many concerns regarding the uniqueness of the rewards for each level of game time. In light of these concerns, we have decided to return the Veteran Rewards program to development status while we determine, and add, additional rewards to the program.
All of the current reward options listed in In Development will remain as options, but we will be added a minimum of one new item to each reward level.
While these new items are being designed and tested, we will be focusing our testing efforts toward bringing the Faction System online.
We apologize for delaying the UO Veteran Rewards program at this late date. However, as the program was designed specifically to reward our long-term players, we feel that it would be unacceptable to offer rewards that aren't pleasing to our players. We will update you with additional information regarding the UO Veteran Rewards program in the future.
Personally I think this is a wonderful change and hopefully we will see more interesting rewards (so far only the horse got my attention). I hope we get better clothing options as well.
|
With following of the opening of www.uoshoppes.com (more of that later) Vendor Customization was suddenly patched in. Personally this I like the patch very much as now you can customize your vendors to match the theme of the building.
This is from www.uo.com :
Vendor Customization
Double-clicking a vendor you own will now bring up a window offering two options: “Customize” and “See Goods”. Selecting “See Goods” will display the contents of the vendor backpack. Selecting the “Customize” option will open a menu system through which you may customize your vendor. Customization options will include:
-Clothing Style (for shirts, hats, pants, etc.)
-Hair Style and Facial Hair (if any)
-Hand Held Items (such as fishing poles or spellbooks)
-Clothing Color
If you are not the owner of the vendor, double-clicking it will open the vendor’s backpack.
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| October 10, Tuesday |
I received this about Khaldun, following the link given will lead to spoilers about the dungeon. So if you want most out of the new dungeon, I suggest you do not read the clues unless your absolutely positively sure. Try to figure out the puzzles on your own before reading spoilers to ensure much more fun.
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When OSI released Dungeon Khaldun, they told us there were many secrets to be revealed. Most of these secrets still elude the players, but we have information on one of them, including screenshots and UOAM coordinates!
The Sacrifice Room is a hidden room in Dungeon Khaldun. One of our readers found out how to get into the room and has given us the information necessary for you to get in there as well. To get the directions, screenshots, and UOAM coordinates, go to:
http://www.markeedragon.com/uoscreen/
Follow the link on the left to Dungeon Khaldun, then on to the Sacrifice Room. We'd like to thank The Talisman of Lake Superior for providing this information.
Ramirez Dragon
Member UDIC - www.udic.org
Shattered Crystal Gaming Network - www.shatteredcrystal.com
Markee Dragon - www.markeedragon.com
The Blackthorn - www.markeedragon.com/blackthorn
UO Screenshots - www.markeedragon.com/uoscreen
OWO: Origin - www.uotwo.com |
| October 6, Friday |
Designer Hanse asked very interesting things about house decoration:
Okay, I'd like to get ideas/opinions on a couple items regarding decorating houses.
1) Do you believe that only the owner should be able to decorate their house or both owners and co-owners (probably both, but we'd like more input on this)?
2) How high do you "float" items to get them into positions for your decorations?
3) What items do you decorate your house with that cannot be "rotated" by picking them up and dropping them (even though they have other artwork for those items)? A good example of this is the globe tinkers can make.
Thanks!
-Hanse
You can read and reply at:
http://boards.uo.com/cgi-bin/showflat.pl?Cat=&Board=dev&Number=170592&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5 |
This was posted by Calandryll at official boards:
We cannot add new monster art to UO without a new CD release as that artwork would require a massive download (as in multiples of 10megs). Since UO's art is sprite based the size of a file for a new monster would be prohibitive from a patch point of view. While some players have faster connections, a large patch such as this would not be a quick download for many (if not most) of our players.
Find it here:
http://boards.uo.com/cgi-bin/showthreaded.pl?Cat=&Board=Disc&Number=170731 |
While the Jugoslavian rulership changes here on the planet earth, virtual world is shaken by another manners. It seems large Vaultnetwork is collapsing at least partly and Everquest has banned roleplayer for too violent story.
You can read more at at Lum's, where I picked up the stories.
As this site is dedicated to Ultima universe and the other online games does not hold much interest to me we do not cover other online games, however "roleplaying" game banning roleplayers for roleplaying is just something I had to say few words.
To me events surrounding EverQuest seems that people behind EverQuest do not know much of roleplaying. The stories might have been moraly questionable, but so are most of the great drama plays of history begining with ancient tales of Greek where "heroes" of the stories might slay his own mother and marry his sister. And I seriously doubt that it would have affected their image by anyway as it was not on official site, instead it probably hurt their image more by doing the banning.
Ultima Online has always been supportive to fan fiction, and I doubt this banning would have happend in Ultima Online. Ultima is from it's very basics about moral choises when Richard Garriot created the Virtue system. However good taste in story telling is always advicable, things can be told many ways. |
The chat is going on and will be posted as whole to Stratics, here is however the few questions I was able to ask:
*Videric[-C-]* Have you considered veteran cloth awards to be other things like masks, lanters or such with special hue. Those would feel more special than the current robes and cloaks which are very close to existing NPC clothing colours.
Right now the program will ship as is. We are listening to player feedback, much of which has been positive. We understand some concerns exist about clothing, but we feel good about the current system.
*Videric[-C-]* Any plans to give more furniture in near future, such neat things like fireplace, rugs, carpets, bookcases(with books on them) are at many house decorators wish list.
Giving players more ways to customize their personal belongings is very important. Certainly additions such as these have to be added very carefully, as would any craftable item, or NPC sold item. This is definitely something we would like to add in the future.
|
| October 5, Thursday |
| October 4, Wednesday |
| Not one, but two Caravan events -Videric | |
Here is about two upcoming Caravan events:
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Hail and well met
The meeting will be held on Thursday the 5th, at 21.00 (CET) at Trade
Caravan Fortess.
Once again free trade has been endangered by savage orcs. According to their warboss these orcs served their mistress Maia the gypsy. It seems they are against for any shipments that would lead to Stonekeep of Guardsmen militia. And to determine which action to take, I will hold a grand meeting at the Trade Caravan of Cove.
The Trade Caravan is willing to hear from anyone who knows this the situation. I am also willing to hear this gypsy named Maia reasoning if she wishes to bring them forward. Although her unprovoked ambush is frowned upon, the Trade Caravan is willing to hear if she has any valid reasons and possibly work a solution. However we are unwilling to break our ties with Yew's finest Militia.
Additional: We will also possibly discuss the threat of the rebels, whom tell to represent people of Sosaria, as the cloud that I thought was lifted has returned in form of announchement at Stratics tome.
As this is a peaceful meeting any acts of violence from any side will
not be tolerated.
For exact location and more information, please look here:
http://caravan.lemming.org/
Videric Gaveston
Leader of the Trade Caravan
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Trade Caravan to Stonekeep
Because the Stonekeep of Yew Militia has been at siege by orcs for sometime, it has been arranged that the Trade Caravan shall deliver needed supplies. We shall start the journey at the Trade Caravan Fortress on Saturday the 7th at 21.00 (CET). Any volunteers who wish to help on this duty are welcomed as an orcish ambush is a possibility.
For more information at http://caravan.lemming.org/
Videric Gaveston
The Leader of the Trade Caravan of Cove
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| October 2, Monday |
I got following in the mail today:
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Vendui, Hail, and Well Met!
My name is Vel'drin and, xas, I am a Drow. Since my arrival in the fair town of Spiritwood, I have come across a large stone house and have since decided that I shall open up a large public library and a museum based firstly on the history of Spiritwood itself with a side exhibit for the Gypsy Quest and other Quest related topics.
Thus far I have acquired over 160 individual books, though I hope that this book count will still increase. I ask ye all that ye have a look around. Mayhap ye have written a book ye'rself? Or know of someone who does. Or that ye run a library? If any of these are the case, or ye would simply like to write a new book, then please leave a note with my Raven (#1397371) so that I may get in contact with ye.
Also, the Gypsy exhibit currently only has four items in it. I would also like this number in increase. If ye have acquired a Gypsy Clayn item and have no where to store it, then I'd much like to add it to the exhibit (all items will be labeled and returned to the owner if they so wish it. All items will remain the original owner's, though will just be displayed within the museum).
My thanks all those who read this, and I hope that I will hear from ye soon.
Aluve' for now.
~*~ Vel'drin |
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