I am on holidays and shall return to posting again shortly. However something happened today that compelled me to post. I was cleaning out my Keep when I found a bag of 110 scrolls that I didnt need. Instead of throwing them out I decided to give them away at Luna bank.

All I asked was those that helped themselves only take what they needed. As you can see from this next screen shot that policy was working well. 

Of course what was I thinking. Along came a person from a guild I can only assume has a low standard of hiring as this person after being asked to only take what they needed proceeded to collect all the scrolls for themselves.

The guild this person is a member of is POC. I had a little more respect for them until this incident and now have them as KOS should I see them in Fel. Which I havent seen any of them in Fel in the last 2 months so its very unlikely I will get to show them the disrespect they showed me.

Anyway, my next podcast wont be for a couple weeks as Im on holidays until Saturday when I fly to Bangkok for work for a week. After I return ill get a podcast out and it will focus around Petrify's new guild One United World.

Cheers
Shane

Posted on Stratics UHall: Draconi_EA

Helloooooo everybody!

Winterland is up and running, and more and more activities are coming online every day.

Here's what's happening right now:

* Britain decorated for the season! Snow, party favors, and more!
* Paint stations: Use any hue from 0 to 2000
* Pet Bonding and Spellweaving Gates
* Giant Holiday Tree: The decorations keep piling up!
* Wishlist: Leave three wishes behind as a memory of the shard. (Some, especially the selfless ones, may be answered!)
* Dance Floor with Live Band: A result of one of the wishes, a live band is playing some of Britannia's favorite songs.
* Tunnel of Love: Another wish, try " *kissing*" under the mistletoe for a stat reward
* Decorated the Winery for the U.Hall Party: The party is on the 20th, and the Winery's halls have been decked out There's an ice sculpture, speaker's stage, chairs, table decorations, spa, and functioning restrooms. There's a gate near the Holiday Tree in Britain
* UO Devs in the Pillory: A few of the people responsible for UO chained up in front of cannons, waiting for their just desserts. You can find this north of the Winery at Empath Abbey

More to come! Including Snowball Wars, a Fair... - stay tuned!

Activities Guide

Paint Stations
* Double click, target item, type in the hue you want
* 0: Bleach - returns to natural color
* 1: Pure black
* 1150, 1153: White, Bright White
* 1152: Glacial
* 1154 - 1179: Fun neons
* 1180's: Crazy...

Wishlist
* Double click, and type in a wish! It may or may not come true.
* Three wishes

Dance Floor with Live Band
* Turn on Music in the Options
* Walk onto the dance floor, wait for the band to rotate into the next song (may be a minute or two before you get caught in the rhythm.
* Popular favorite: Selim's Bar

Mistletoe
* Stand under the mistletoe, with someone else within one tile
* Say "*kiss*" or "*kisses*" or anything that starts with "kiss"
* You'll glow a bit and see a message at the bottom part of your screen, and get a 150 base stat change to either Strength, Dexterity, or Intelligence
* You can only be the kisser once in a while (cooldown period)

Restrooms
* Walk inside the stall, sit down, wait for a little bit
* Drops food satiety in half
* Requires several hours before another attempt

Edited by Draconi_EA (12/17/07 12:08 PM)

Image inside.

Post at Stratics UHall: Draconi_EA

Current number of Rift Guardians by shard and facet.
Shard name: Felucca / Trammel

Atlantic: Success / Success
Catskills: 8 / Success
Chesapeake: Success / Success
Great Lakes: 8 / Success
Lake Superior: Success / Success
Legends: 5 / Success
Siege Perilous: 7

Baja: Success / Success
Lake Austin: 4 / Success
Napa Valley: 5 / Success
Origin: 6 / Success
Pacific: Success / Success
Sonoma: 8 / Success

Oceania: 6 / Success

Asuka: Success / Success
Hokuto: Success / Success
Izumo: Success / Success
Mizuho: Success / Success
Mugen: Success / Success
Sakura: Success / Success
Wakoku: Success / Success
Yamato: Success / Success

Formosa: 8 / Success
Arirang: 8 / Success
Balhae: 4 / Success

Drachenfels: Success / Success
Europa: 8 / Success

Post at UOHerald by: Jeremy Dalberg

Greetings All,

I’m Robert Mull, the new Community Relations Director for EA Mythic.  I oversee the work our team of Community Coordinators do for Warhammer Online (James Nichols), Dark Age of Camelot (Missy Hatch and Joanne Laroche) and Ultima Online (Jeremy Dalberg).  They are a great team and I am lucky to have inherited them.

As a gamer who got his start in MMOs with the Ultima Online beta, being allowed to support the same community that made that game so enjoyable to me is a real pleasure and I feel like I have come full circle.  Since then a decade has passed and I have played countless MMOs.  A few of these became part of my daily routine for years as I worked to found guilds, build cities, run player-events, engage in pvp conflicts, roleplay, and be an active member of the gaming community.  While the games have changed over the years, the real draw for me has always been the people.  A strong well-supported community makes good games great.

Prior to coming to EA Mythic, I worked at Wizards of the Coast supporting brands such as Avalon Hill, Axis & Allies, Dreamblade, Duel Masters and other products.  I learned many lessons there that I have brought with me to EA Mythic, but first and foremost is that you have to be honest and open with your community.

In the coming months you will be hearing much more from me.  I want to continue and extend the reputation EA Mythic has built for integrity, honesty and quality in community and customer support. Our job here is to be the voice of the community inside EA Mythic and the voice of the people working hard at EA Mythic to the community.  The Community Relations team is a feedback loop and our goal is making the community better, day by day.  I, for one, take that job very seriously and enjoy it immensely.

I look forward to talking to you all on the boards and at Road Trips, conventions and other public events.

Bob

If you have been living under a rock or in Buc Dens then you may not be aware that Magincia has been levelled and is currently under full invasion from some hell bent on destruction demons. Various members of the Sosaria militia have been trying to defend the town and those hapless souls that live on the lonely island. However the invasion seems to have kicked into another gear with the corrupted moongate now being guarded by some super demons that summon some of the most vile creates from the depths of hell itself to defend them.

I took my second jaunt over to Doom last night and within 20 minutes I had my second Doom artefact. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw an Ornament of the Magician sitting in my pack. I would have to say I have spent a collective 2 hours in Doom for a collective 2 artefacts.

Apparantly the invasion which has the demons completely leveling the town of Magincia on nearly all shards and both facets as not yet being over. Suppoedly the Demons still have one trick left in the bag and therefore the worse has yet to happen. I'm not sure what could be worse for the poor town folk of Magincia when the citizens are Sosoria have been seen leading the ticking time bombs into town to blow it up.

So be very very afraid the worse is yet to come.

Cheers
Shane

So knowing that EA was going to fix the Doom artefact distribution system I decided it was time to revisit Doom and try my hand at the new system. However the first hurdle was the acquisition of a golden skull that allows you to summon the ferry man, who spends most of his time hanging out in Moonglow Trammel. Now when Doom first launched you could purchase a golden skull off a local merchant who had more time on his hands than was healthy, but as the novelty of Doom wore off the skull market dried up.

So I found myself in a position of having to actually god forbid play the game as it was intended. So knowing where the best spot was to get bones in Doom so you can summon the Bone Demon which will hand out the your ticket for passage with the ferry man I loaded up my archer and headed off. Well I discovered a gold faucet that EA must have forgotten was turned on full throttle and blasting out loot faster than one could reasonable loot without the aid of some unnamed software. I literally was killing guardians faster than I could loot them and within 10 minutes had the 1000 bones I required to summon that ridiculously boring to kill bone demon.

Posted at UOHerald:
Jeremy Dalberg
27 Nov 2007 16:52:10

DO NOT store ingots in your salvage bag while smelting items - there is a possiblity you will lose the stack of ingots.  This will be fixed shortly.

(Storing cloth in the salvage bag will simply get it cut into bandages, so... don't do that if you don't want bandages.)

Posted at UOHerald:
Jeremy Dalberg
27 Nov 2007 15:31:48 EST

UPDATED 11/27 12:30:  One more note:

- On Siege Perilous rulesets, all items of clothing that have higher than normal resists - including artifacts, museum pieces, and randomly-generated items with bonus resists or magic properties - will not be able to be blessed with a Clothing Bless Deed.  All currently blessed items will become unblessed, and the CBD will be placed in the players' backpack

There were a number of changes that didn't get listed on last night's server publish - all the notes below the cut are in addition to the previously posted notes:

Posted at UOHerald:

All Servers to be Published
Jeremy Dalberg
26 Nov 2007 17:29:57 EST
All servers will be published with the following during their next available maintenance:

 Added the Salvage Bag: 

•  The Salvage Bag is the core of the enhanced recycling system. Players store items in the bag like any other container, but when a recycle command occurs, they target the bag to handle all the items at once.

• Layout:
  
  
  
  • a blue leather bag labeled "A Salvage Bag"
    
  • Available on Provisioners for a nominal (~1000gp) fee
      
  Read more ...

Posted at Stratics UHall: Leurocian

In response to:  So, I havent tested the changes myself yet, but several of my friends from Japan who play on Japanese shards have recieved 3-4 artifacts an hour each in doom.

Now I know that Japanese pvm playstyle is much different from American pvm playstyle, as it is much more efficient and effective, but was the drop intended to be this high?

Leurocian:  Hello there,

The general intent is if a group of 5 players adventure through the entire Doom gauntlet at various luck values, each one of them would hopefully receive an artifact by their 4-5th run. It could be a little sooner than that. It could be later.

Now if this feels like players are receiving artifacts too frequently, we can easily adjust this frequency. We will continue to monitor your feedback for the next day or so and see what you all think.

Thanks everyone!

I have done some more experimenting with how I can encode the video and keep the quality as best I can. So this link leads to the same video with some additional edits and a different method of encoding the video.

The quality is not as good as the first video and the ability to go full screen goes away with this method of encoding the video. However its three times smaller than the first attempt. So please check out the two videos (dont forget to let them finish loading before playing them) and leave comments in the comments section on what you think. Comments dont require you to even register.

1. Click here for High Quality big download video preview.
2. Click here for Medium Quality smaller download video preview.

I will fix the interface up so that you dont get the option to play the video before its downloaded.

Cheers
Shane

I was listening to podcast 11 and the ideas that Mr Tact had tabled in regards to items decaying and how to make crafters viable. He had some good ideas on how to implement a life span for items without overly pissing of those people that have uber items and don’t want to loose those items. In a nutshell he suggested that items would be able to be repaired, however every time they are repaired they cost more to repair. The idea being that eventually its cheaper to get a new item than repair it.

Now the first thing that comes to mind is that building a decent PvP suit costs a boat load of gold and to have those items decay to the point they don’t exist or cost ridiculous amounts to repair will have the PvP community up in arms. But you know what it would even the playing field a little in that once those uber items had decayed and made it super expensive to repair then peoples PvP suits would start to balance out. Main reason being is that people wouldn’t use those l33t items in normal field battles and may only use them for dueling and other such occasions.

So a feature I mentioned in the latest podcast (20) was I was going to bring videos to the site. Seeing as screen capture technology has gotten to the point that capturing a playing session in UO is relatively easy I thought I would check it out.

So on the menu to the right or clicking this link will take you to a test capture I made last night. Now please provide feedback in the comments for this news post so I can tune the experience. This first video has not been optimised or trimmed for size and is fat and raw. Going forward I will tunes these video alot more.

The opportunities to add content through the site are numerous and I have a series of vidoes I will make should this experiment be well received.

Cheers
Shane

P.S. Update, you need to wait for the page to load as the experience is crap otherwise. I will write some code tonight to hide the video until the page is loaded.

P.P.S You can tell the page is loaded when it says DONE in the bottom left corner of the status bar.

Posted at RPGValut: Ultima Online Memories

RPGVault which started as UO Vault pays tribute to Ultima Online, the Grand Daddy of MMORPG.

Cheers
Shane

Well it was interesting Googleing UO as I found some interesting links.

Heres one that predicts the demise of UO in 2004

For you old PvPers heres a blast from the past.

Any one read Italian, I think this is a free shard.

Your not anyone or anything until your in Wikipedia.

Dont like what EA are doing, then there is always an alternative to getting your UO fix.

You think KR is crap, well have a look at were its come from.

Some old time fan sites are slowly dieing off.

Do you remember Lum The Mad, well heres Lums home now.

Remember the Designer Dragon.

A walk down memory lane would be complete with a link to ImaNewbie.

Cheers
Shane

One of the feature of the new 3D client in Ultima Online is the ability to reskin the UI with a look and feel that the user would like. Over the last week or so I have put a bit of time into discovering the various resources available to someone that might want to hack the UI.

So in the spirit of sharing here is the list of resouces I found on skining UO's UI:

• UO Stratics Kingdom Reborn Forum
• Spellweave.com
• UO Skins
• UO Guide

If anyone else has any other good resouces on the subject then leave a comment and Ill update the list.

Posted By Wilki_EA at Stratics UHall.

As I mentioned in a previous FoF thread, I've made some changes to the BOD system. They're not huge, but it should make things a little more rewarding.

1. Corrected a small error that gave skilled smith's a 45% base chance to get a colored BOD instead of the intended 50% chance.
   
2. GM Smiths still get a 10% bonus chance for a colored BOD (60% total).
   
3. Elder Smiths get a 20% bonus chance for a colored BOD (70% total).
   
4. Legendary Smiths get a 40% bonus chance for a colored BOD (90% total).
   
5. The chances of getting a valorite BOD (once you've passed the colored BOD test), have been raised substantially.
   
6. There is also a short delay (5 seconds) between turning in multiple filled BODs.
   
7. Colored footwear large bods should now be offered.
   
8. All runic tools have had their intensity ranges changed as follows:
   Blacksmithing:
   • Dull Copper: 40 - 100
     
   • Shadow: 45 - 100%
     
   • Copper: 50 - 100%
     
   • Bronze: 55 - 100%
     
   • Gold: 60 - 100%
     
   • Agapite: 65 - 100%
     
   • Verite: 70 - 100%
     
   • Valorite: 85 - 100%
   Tailoring:
   • Spined: 40 - 100%
     
   • Horned: 45 - 100%
     
   • Barbed: 50 -100%

This won't make it into the very next publish, but should be in the one after that.

And to those who celebrate it, have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Edit: Added a few fixes to the end of the list, and changed the delay to 5 seconds.

Edited by Wilki_EA (11/20/07 06:19 PM)

Posted By Draconi_EA at at: Stratics UHall.

Hey, quick note for everyone who enjoys the Luxury Doom Shopping scene:

The secret passage in the Doom Gauntlet has been accidentally paved over. Whoever the Dark Fathers paid to do it, we owe them a good thrashing! In the meantime, there are now teleporters (invisible) set on either side of the wall so you can still use it.

Just walk towards the wall and you'll pass through.

 

Posted to uoherald.com:

Black Screen In KR?
Jeremy Dalberg
20 Nov 2007 21:20:20

If your KR client is set to start in full screen, you may see a completely black screen with an error about a software renderer. We're working on the fix for this, but in the meantime, use the following workaround to get into windowed mode:

Go into "My Documents", "EA Games", "Ultima Online", "User Data" and open the usersettings.xml file in a text editor.

In the first line under "Graphics", change fullscreen="true" to fullscreen="false", then save the file.

That should get you going until we can patch out a fix. (Also, the no sound issue? That'll get fixed shortly as well!)