Month: November 2011

New QA5 Series for the UO Developers

by

There is a new series of short interviews/questions asked of the UO team that has been posted on Stratics.

First up is Bonnie “Mesanna” Armstrong who is UO’s Associate Producer and head of the EMs, and here’s the first question:

For those of us who don’t know, what has your “career track” been with the gaming industry?

I started in 1999 working for Origin as an External Test Lead when we were allowed to have volunteers with approx 20 testing volunteers. Origin then built a structured team with 10 testers and myself. I worked as a Contracted External Lead over the external testing program for years, then I was hired full time in QA after UO was moved to San Francisco. When UO moved to Virginia, I was offered a different position as associate producer so I packed my bags and left San Diego and moved to Virginia with the team.

Now then, reading through the discussion thread on the issue, it has been clarified that this is NOT the official discussion of the game, this is about the developers themselves. A few Stratics’ posters were concerned that this was going to be the communication about the game, and raised the issue that this is more about the UO team members than the game itself.

Source: UO Herald
Read: Stratics

Jeff Skalski’s Introduction Letter for UO – Maybe Tomorrow

by

Quite a few of us have been awaiting the introductory letter/producer’s letter from Jeff Skalski, who is over the Ultima Franchise (including Ultima Online). It was finished last week, and went through the approval process, however it was held up somewhere in the process. Where or what parts of the letter, we don’t know, but this was just posted a few minutes ago:

Few edit request changes that I’ll turnaround 2night 4 anothr round of approvals. Crossing fingers my intro lettr 2 UO fans goes up 2morrow.

I think this is going to be a big letter and very important for UO’s future and UO’s players.

Last week, I mentioned three things needed to start fixing UO
1) Act like BioWare owns it.
2) Raise the level of communication.
3) Talk to us about the short and long-term plans for UO.

I stand by those and think that some of those areas will be addressed in Jeff’s letter. To what extent, I’m not certain. I know that things cannot continue in the current state – BioWare needs to publicly act like they care about UO, and communication between players and UO team needs to increase, and this includes doing something with UOHerald.com. We’ve just seen a flurry of communications from the UO team following Publish 73, but this is something we’ve seen in the past – a major publish followed by a burst of communication, followed by virtual silence until the next pub. There needs to be a constant flow of communication, even if it’s posting on UOHerald.com once a week with a few paragraphs concerning what’s happening.

And finally, we need to know where UO fits into the BioWare scheme. We know some things about the long-term plans of UO – Publish 73 saw the first of the high resolution artwork upgrades, terrain, for the Enhanced Client (EC) and Publish 74 is going to include high resolution updates for the wall tiles.

Publish 73 on Origin, Veteran Rewards Added

by

Publish 73 has been pushed out to Origin, with additional changes and additions, including Christmas Gifts and new Veteran Reward Items

We’ll push Publish 73.0 to Origin today, Tuesday 1st at 5:00 pm EDT.

Here are are the additional changes:

Publish 73.0.0

Christmas Gifts
* Customizable Welcome Mats (2 styles)
* Vocal Santa Statue
* Customizable House type signs
* Scroll of Transcendence Book

Veteran Reward Items

This year for the 14th year we have added the following in celebration:
* Group Bracelet of Binding – This item allows you to bind with 10 people at once. Handy for those times when part of your group is lost or has issues with running into trees and being left behind.
* Seed Box – This box will identify all seeds put into the box, it will hold and organize up to 500 seeds.
* Shard Shields – We have added this as the 14th year vet reward. These are new art that represence a specific shard. The shield will give you a character transfer token once a month to the shard it represence. The token is account bound, so they can not be traded or sold. If you have a shield in your house and the house decays the shield will disappear.
* Sheep Statue – This statue is a resource giver, it will give you 10 pieces of a random hide or wool. This caps at 100 resources so make sure you collect your items.

Classic Client 7.0.19
* Trial accounts can only join the Help Channel

Enhanced Client 4.0.19
* Trial accounts can only join the Help Channel

Source: UO Herald

Thoughts
They probably worked on Halloween and Christmas items at the same time, which makes sense. Frees them up to focus on other items (high resolution artwork upgrades). The vet rewards – the Seed Box, Shard (transfer) Shields, are very nice. Both of these will be well-received I believe. Now begins the waiting game for Pub 74 and the high resolution wall tile upgrades.

And the new Producer’s Letter from Jeff Skalski is still tied up in red tape.

Additional Reading:
* Additional notes for Publish 73, preview of Publish 74
* Publish 73