UO.com Relaunch Delayed (Probably), Also Broken or Old Links Can be Fixed, it is True!

In the Ultima/UO producer’s letter from a few weeks ago, the following was mentioned: Speaking of the herald, we are planning to relaunch UO.com later this year with an all new look. More details to follow on that in future posts.

First off, many Lizardmen had to die for this information. And by Lizardmen, I mean electrons that light up my computer monitor.

Top Sekrut Information I Have Learned about UO.com: Since the UO Producer’s letter mentioning a desperately needed relaunch of UO.com, I have learned that UO.com’s redesign/relaunch is still behind WAR’s website redesign, which means that UO.com will not be redesigned/relaunched before the 15th Anniversary.

Why do I say UO.com will not be launched before the 15 anniversary of UO? Because I read this WAR thread in the Official BioWare Mythic Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning Forums. In it, Kai Schober, BioWare Mythic Community Relations Person, who covers WAR, DAOC, and UO, although you would only think he covers WAR since those are the only people he interacts with, explained that WAR’s official website relaunch was still ahead of UO.com.

For those not familiar with the epic saga that is the official WAR website redesign and relaunch, it’s been talked about, hinted at, even had official mockups posted to the official WAR forums on BioWare.com. FOR OVER 6 MONTHS! And now, according to Kai Schober, the official WAR website redesign and relaunch has not only been delayed yet again, to add insult to injury, Kai has confirmed within the thread that WAR’s website relaunch is still ahead of UO’s website relaunch. And Dark Age of Camelot’s redesign and relaunch took equally as long, and was even delayed because the person doing it had problems with a Drupal upgrade or something.

Keep in mind that Kai Schober is in charge of the BioWare Mythic websites. He was in charge of the DAOC redesign and relaunch. He is in charge of Warhammer Online’s redesign, and given that he said UO.com is behind WAR’s relaunch, I have no reason to doubt him, and I believe that he’s also in charge of the UO.com relaunch.

Look at a calendar.

It’s February, 2012.

UO’s 15th Anniversary is in September of 2012. SEVEN MONTHS FROM NOW.

Given that after six months of work, WarhammerOnline.com’s relaunch has been postponed again, and given that it took at least six months of work to get to the point where WarhammerOnline.com could be postponed, well you do the math.

It’s not hard to see that UO.com will not be relaunched before the 15th Anniversary. How embarrassing will it be when UO celebrates its 15th Anniversary, and a lot of ex-players come back to look around and see UOHerald.com.

There is a little hope on the broken links front. Remember all of those broken links I dug up for UO people and Kai to look at? Well after many months of being ridiculed on the official Warhammer forums, the reason being that the latest news links were over a year old, Kai went in to WarhammerOnline.com’s front page, removed the dates so people wouldn’t see how outdated they were, and then added some new links to make it appear that somebody gives a shit about Warhammer’s official website. If he can spend 5 minutes doing that on the official WarhammerOnline.com website, I have every confidence that he can do the same for all of the broken links on UOHerald.com sometime in the next seven months. He will find the 15 minutes he needs to fix those links on UOHerald.com!

Obligatory He-Man video to cheer you up!

By the Power of Grayskull, Real BioWare Mythic MMORPG Producer Letters!

Note: The original title to this article was going to be “BioWare Mythic MMORPG Shits Out One and a Half Producer’s Letter” but some people are offended by the word “shit” so I refrained from using that title. Below is an explanation of the new title.

So UO had a producer’s letter a few weeks ago. Of course, the only thing that was new in that letter was the resurrection token which brings together the gender, race, and name tokens, and mention of a few things announced last year that could all be rolled out together in a single publish.

But let’s shift gears for a few moments and talk about Warhammer: Age of Reckoning or WAR as it’s commonly referred to, as well as Dark Age of Camelot, or DAOC, and Star Wars: The Old Republic. You can read the BioWare Mythic producers letters that were published two days ago:

Letter from the Producer – DAOC

Letter from the Producer – WAR

All I’m going to say is that UO deserves producer’s letters that at least provide actual mentions of things really happening, that are being developed or in the design stages, that tell us the actual status of things that are extremely important to UO’s future, and that give us a reason to think that things for UO might start looking up.

I’ve provided a list of things that would be nice to see in a producer’s letter, but I’ll give a few hints:
1) High Resolution Artwork Update. Talk to us about, show some concept art. UO used to not be shy about showing concept art to the paying customers.
2) Talk about the other Ultima game(s) under your control (give me credit for trying)
3) Talk about where you want UO to be a year from now.
4) Talk about what you are going to do in order to see UO arrive at where you want UO to be a year from now.

A producer’s letter should lay out the plans for a game, talk about things in development, and not be a retelling of past producer’s letters. It definitely should not be so vague as to leave people with the impression that there isn’t much of a plan beyond the 15th Anniversary.

This SWTOR pseudo-producer’s letter is the kind of thing we need to see for UO.