City Loyalty Ratings – Explained!

Kai Schober has posted an in-depth explanation of city loyalty ratings. It’s been a hot topic among a lot of UO players since it went live recently.

Basically a character is rated by every participating city, based on whether the city likes, hates, or doesn’t care about them. The values/numbers for these ratings are not displayed to characters/players. The explanation posted on the Herald takes you through the different tiers of being hated or being liked/respected. You can become loved or hated by actions you take based on the live events going on – dealing with rioters, etc.

The notes at the bottom of the document help clear up a few questions I and others had:

* It is possible to shift a city’s favor slowly over time, but this is much more difficult for those with checkered pasts
* Negative deeds are worth more hate than positive deeds are worth love
* Negative deeds are remembered longer than positive ones
* While the world is in chaos, all cities distrust each other. This is why trying to be devoted to multiple cities will just earn neutral ratings from all. However, this will not always be the case…

The implication is that there is a potential for cities to unify in some way, or at least allow characters to be loyal/devoted to more than one city. It also confirms something I thought – that it’s a lot harder to move up the positive side of the loyalty ratings than it is to drop. This makes sense, and actually ties into the virtue system in a way. Evil always takes the easy way, that kind of thing.

Read the full document: Entire article at UO Herald

Publish 74 is Out and About

Publish 74 is out and about on the production shards, yay! If you want to read the full list of changes, check the UO Herald.

I’m just going to give a brief rundown.

Valentine’s Day is nearly upon us. We’re getting cupid statues and cupid arrows. You can tag your true love or the object of your stalking, I mean desire, with these arrows.

A major live arc/storyline is starting up. We’ve been getting hints for a while now – the town loyalty, the rioters. It starts in February is set to run through at least September, and involves both the main UO team and the EM team, and is meant to lead to the 15th Anniversary.

Bulk Order Deeds (BODs) are getting a makeover. NPCs will now cache up to 3 BODs a day for players. All BODs are limited to obtaining a new one every six hours, regardless of crafting skill. You can now bribe NPCs that give out BODs to get even better BODs. I’m not sure what to think of it, since I see both sides to argument – that it was a pain in the butt to obtain certain types of BODs, but on the other hand, I can see the bribery prices going sky high, putting certain BODs still out of the reach of a lot of players. It’s a gold sink, and it will definitely lighten some peoples’ bank boxes.

I’m not going to talk about the Runic Re-Forging – you really need to read the UO Herald publish post about it. It’s interesting, but not something I have time to check out and comment about.

Continuing in the series of dungeon revamps that started last year, Wrong has been revamped! Very happy about this. The New Loot Generator applies to Wrong. The mobs are tougher, there are escort missions to gain Compassion rapidly. The Prison of Nightmares has been added – you’ll have to try this one for yourself. New stealables have been introduced for the thieves out there.

Clean Up Britannia has gained 4 new dyes. I’m glad to see Clean Up Britannia continuing, and hope it’s permanent.

Looting rights distribution has been changed, and healers are included equally, assuming they act as they should.

Some Bard changes were made – I don’t have an active bard character so can’t really comment on those.

Finally, there are a lot of bug fixes. Again, read the UO Herald post for more information – too many to list here.

The Classic Client was updated to version 7.0.23 and the Enhanced Client to 4.0.23.

Overall thoughts
A lot of work has went into Publish 74, and at the same time it seems to have come together fairly rapidly. It’s a good sign, and there is clearly a lot of work being done to rework current systems, in addition to the dungeons. The numerous bug fixes are also a good sign.

Would like to have seen information about the high resolution artwork update to the Enhanced Client.

Additional Notes for Publish 73, Preview of Publish 74

There are additional notes for Ultima Online Publish 73, and along with it, a glimpse at the upcoming high resolution artwork update for Publish 74, which is housing/walls.

Additional Notes:

Clean up Britiannia
Added 4 new pigments – Polished Bronze, Glossy Blue, Black and Green and Deep Violet – 1 charge 250,000 points. We will be changing this out each month so stock up while you can

Arenas Go Live
The arenas located throughout the lands will go live with this publish. The arenas are located in the Lost Lands (both facets), Haven, and Ocllo. The following additions and changes have been made after the public testing done on the arenas test shard:

* Match hosts may now choose to allow or disallow Field Spells
* Match hosts now choose to allow or disallow potions, or to allow only non-healing potions
* A bug that caused some summoned creatures to attack their owner in an arena match has been fixed

Moving forward, we will continue to accept feedback and use it to make further improvements to the arenas. In an future publish, look for the addition of a wagering system.

New High Resolution Terrian Art
As I am sure most of you have noticed the difference in the terrain in the Enhanced Client. Just letting everyone know this is just the first of many more to come. Next publish we will be updating the Wall tile art, I think everyone will really appreciate the new look. Below are a few pictures of what is coming:

Details: UO Herald

UO Publish 73 – Test Center, Client Patches 4.0.19 and 7.0.19

Courtesy of the UO Herald, and it is massive. It also includes the first of the high resolution artwork updates for the Enhanced Client.

Summary/Opinion
I made a pretty strong statement yesterday about 3 things to start fixing Ultima Online and I still stand by those things. They are not things covered by any single publish. But that’s not what I’m here to talk about, I’m hear to talk about Publish 73, and from reading through it, is very comprehensive and has things for old and newer players alike. I don’t have an opinion yet on the artwork – once I try it out tonight, I will. The Dungeon Shame improvements are, I hope, the first of more upgrades/revisions of existing dungeons. The Shame Itemization Upgrade is interesting and will take a lot of time to study, but it shows an awareness of the confusion that new players have.

Shame Upgrade
Dungeon Shame has been revised. The monsters have been revised to be a little bit more challenging and scaled in difficulty for new-to-veteran players. The shame loot system has been revised so you should notice less items with throw-away intensity values on properties, and an overall improvement in the loot generated.

First and second levels will provide a good training ground for journeyman to adept skill levels while level 3 should provide a little more of a challenge. On the first 3 levels there will be a renowned monster that can be spawned at a key point in the dungeon by summoning from an altar to give you a taste of the monster difficulty at the next level.

All the monsters within the dungeon have a chance to drop dungeon crystals which can be used to spawn the renowned of each level. In certain areas there will also be a chance when killing creatures for a renowned version of those creatures to be spawned. Similar to a paragon but not as friendly.

Level 5: The monsters on level 5 are a bit heavier and harder hitting than the other levels.

Overview of Shame’s purpose

Read more

Arena Combat System in Testing for UO

Better late than never! A while back it was announced that there would be an arena combat system coming to UO in some form. It was obviously delayed due to the many bigger things happening this year, but it’s happening, and it’s in testing on the TC Arena Test:

There’s a new Test Center in town: TC Arena Test. This is a special rule set shard for testing a new Arena Combat system.

When an arena match starts, the participants have a short time to enter the red moongate that takes you into the arena. Players will have their movement restricted within the area until the match starts. Gladiators who die in an arena match will be transported outside of the arena and resurrected immediately. Once you die in a match, you cannot re-enter that match!

Full Story with directions and screenshots: UO Herald

Keep in mind that to transfer characters, you login with that character, find a safe spot to logout, but don’t logout – open the help menu and select Character Copy.

I only played with it for a few minutes, but looks good so far. I’d recommend you all try it out, even if you’re not a PvPer.