Shard Updates – Page 2 – UOJournal.com

UO’s 14th Anniversary: A Look at 2011 (So Far)

September 25, 2011September 23, 2011 by Deckard

Yeah, I’m behind on looking back at UO’s history with the expansions – I’m getting in the attic tomorrow to retrieve some missing things from my Renaissance and LBR boxes, since they weren’t were I thought they were.

But I wanted to take a brief moment and highlight some key areas covering the last 10 months or so UO. It’s been a while since I made one of these posts. My overall feeling: cautiously optimistic.

The Publishes
In general, the publishes this past year have been pretty solid in my view. A good mixture of bug fixes and adjustments with a mix of new content. A lot of thought has been put into revamping areas that needed it or had been neglected for far too long. Impressive if you stop to consider that a lot was going on that we haven’t seen yet – the high resolution artwork update, among other things.

The Rustic and Gothic Booster Packs
I have a feeling they were an experiment. If they wouldn’t have happened without being paid content, well I’m glad they happened. We haven’t had any mention of booster packs since then. I still think some things should have been broken out and sold on their own, but what’s done is done.

High Seas and Stygian Abyss
Publish 69 saw the Stage One of the “Abyss Flesh Out” where some of the unfinished Stygian Abyss areas started to be fleshed out. High Seas got a lot of work done to it this year since it came out with Publish 68, but Stygian Abyss really needed to be worked on, since it had been unfishined in many areas. Publish 71 saw a lot of work being done on High Seas.

New Magincia Reconstruction, Virtuebane
The New Magincia reconstruction was strongly reminiscent of something first talked about during the Second Age release – player-built towns. No, I’m not ignoring Luna either. While I saw some would-be Lunas in the making, I also saw some serious attempts at larger guilds making a go at having a player town. It was a unique experiment, one that probably won’t be repeated, but it was long overdue. The planting system for New Magincia was also an interesting experiment, as was the New Magincia Bazaar system. Whether you like them or hate them, they make UO unique. Player populations need to be bumped up on some shards to really make them live up to their potential. As for the events, I enjoyed the Virtuebane events, both the EM and non-EM events. The EMs of the events I participated in were top notch. My only complaint is that they weren’t publicized on UOHerald.com.

Honesty Virtue and Mini-Quests
The Honesty Virtue/quest (aka the “Lost and Found” quest) that arrived with Publish 72 are getting a lot of people out and about and walking around Britannia, in areas that they might not normally otherwise go. I have a feeling this was what Mesanna was talking about in February as far as getting away from the mob-killing quests that have no point to them. This was also a part of the Virtue system that everybody has talked about for years. I like it a lot and look forward to the other virtues having virtue-specific quests built around them.

Account Migration
This is the last UO-specific issue I’m going to mention. This was a major lowpoint of UO’s storied history. It’s painful, it’s caused problems for a lot of people, some of whom are still having issues. I’m even having a few issues. I don’t know what else to say, other than BioWare Mythic really dropped the ball on communicating with us before, during, and after it happeend. I don’t know who first said this, but the fact that they included UO in the migration is a good sign that somebody wanted UO around, but UO players were treated poorly with the lack of instructions and help early on, instead forcing players to rely on one another, even when EA’s customer service representatives didn’t know what to do themselves. And before any DAoC or WAR players jump on me, yes their games were affected by the migration as well. UO’s problems seemed worse though.

Dark Age of Camelot / Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning
If you haven’t visitied the Dark Age of Camelot website, do so. It’s been improved. If you read through the stories, you’ll see articles from the developers talking about work they are doing to improve the new player experience. Something is happening with DAoC. Warhammer, I’m not really following the Wrath of Heroes game, which could be seen as an attempt to bring players into WAR. It reminds me of Ultima X in some ways. Still, attention is being paid to the Warhammer franchise.

Ultima Franchise Producer
I’m ending with this one, since it’s the most important one. UltimaForever.com was launched, GOG.com released a bunch of Ultima and other Origin games for players to buy and download at cheap prices. If you’re not familiar with GOG, basically they are wrapping those old DOS games up in a software wrapper to easily allow you to download and play them on modern operating systems. This is generating interest in Ultima. Something is afoot with the Ultima franchise. Last week, Jeff Skalski confirmed he was the Ultima Franchise Producer and that UO was one of the projects under him. What this means for us exactly, I don’t know. I get a sense that things are in good hands.

Yesterday he gave us a brief peek into UO’s future, when asked about EA’s plans for UO:

Continue to grow the game by revitalizing old areas forgotten, add new things to keep players happy & crush as many bugs as we can.”

Now I hope when I revisit this topic at the end of the year, I’ll have even more to talk about, including the art update, but putting aside the migration problems, it’s been a solid year for UO. Last year had a lot of us worried about the future of UO.

UO’s 14th Anniversary: The Second Age – Delucia in the Papua

September 19, 2011September 18, 2011 by Deckard

Yesterday we covered the launch of Ultima Online and today we are continuing on with the quest of looking back at all of the expansions and major events of Ultima Online, as we head towards the 14th Anniversary. That brings us to The Second Age. The Second Age rolled into UO in October of 1998, but a lot happened between the original release of Ultima Online and T2A. I’ve included some specific highlights in this previous post if you’re curious. It must be noted that not long after T2A launched, UO would grow to reach 100,000 players. These were pretty heady times for UO.

Note: Click on images for larger versions or visit the entire flickr set of T2A
So how was it being sold? With a similar message as the original UO, but adding in all of the accolades it had received (Game of the Year type of stuff), as well as emphasizing the social aspects. It also emphasized things that had been added since the original UO launch – guilds and vendors.
From the back of the box:
Thousands of Players
Potentially thousands of players online day and night from around the world, each character as indivdiual as the person who created it. A vibrant player community, hundreds of websites, hundreds of guilds to join. Are you with us?
A Persistent World
Your actions have a real, lasting impact on this fully simulated world. Regular and ongoing automatic updates to the game snure that it remains fresh and exciting.
Endless Possibilities
Ultima Online offers an unprecedented degree of freedom for you to seek out your own destiny. Craft weapons, tame wild animals, build a house, run a shop, quest for treasure, delve into dungeons – true role-playing where your only limitation is your imagination.
The Second Age
Ultima Online truly enters a new age, with over a year of gameplay refining, increased land mass, new creatures, towns, and terrain, enhanced interface, extended chat features, new in-game language translation, and a new tutorial.
The Best-Selling Role-playing series of all time has revolutionized online gaming again with Ultima Online: The Second Age. Interact with thousands of players simultaneously in this breakthrough Internet fantasy world. Get online and immerse yourself in the adventure of a lifetime..
Inside the flap/cover of the box, you got a very nice display showing some of what was going on. If you don’t look at this and grin, then you have no soul:

Click for a large/readable version
As the first expansion, what did T2A bring? Quite a bit:
* The Lost Lands, a new land for us to explore, with jungles (also new)
* Delucia and Papua
* Better chat features
* New dungeons
* New Monsters
* New language translation for players in-game
* New tutorial
* The Big Window Client
Now “Quite a bit” is very subjective obviously. If you were doing the upgrade price, it was a steal.
What was in the box?
Note: This is for the full version of the US retail box
* The game on a CD
* Ultima Online: The Second Age Install Guide
* Ultima Onilne: The Second Age Reference Guide
* Ultima Online The Second Age Playguide
* Reversible map – one side was Britannia, one was the Lost Lands
* EULA
So what about the contents of the box? If you purchased the upgrade, you didn’t get the box, you just got a CD and the guides/documentation – pretty good for I think it was $7 or $8. I picked up a copy of the retail box for another account, which is what I’ve scanned. Looking back at the original UO boxes, retail or charter, the install guide for T2a was actually expanded to explain in more detail the in-game support. The Reference Guide was shortened, most likely because of the Playguide. The Playguide. Simply amazing, probably 150-200 pages, very hefty. Two steps forward, one step back – the map was paper and reversible – one side was the Lost Lands, one was Britannia:

Click for a huge version of the map

Click for a huge version of the map
As much as I liked the cloth maps, I don’t have as much of a problem as these were pretty detailed, more detail than you get with cloth, as you can see from my scans above.
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UO between 1997 and 1998 or I Killed Cows for Karma Loss

September 6, 2015September 18, 2011 by Deckard

As I’m working on the article about the The Second Age expansion (Update: UO: The Second Age – finished)in my little quest to look back at UO’s history as we head towards the 14th Anniversary, quite a lot was added to Ultima Online outside of the T2A Expansion, between September of 1997 and October of 1998. The following are some highlights taken from Update.UO.com/OldPatch.

Warning: This can be a long read, but it should be a fascinating read, as you’ll see some of the things we don’t even think about anymore had a lot of time and effort devoted to them. Those not familiar with UO’s early years but who play these days will probably (hopefully) be surprised and amused that some things we take for granted were not always a part of the game.

So we start in October 1997, just after the launch, here are the changes and additions made:
* A new pet command, “transfer,” was added. This completely transfers loyalty fr om one boss to another. This should be used to sell pets to other players, rather than “friend,” which merely adds an additional master.
* Animal trainers now understand the word “stable.” They will charge you 30gp fr om your bank account to stable a pet, and will keep it safely (unless they are killed) and well-fed even while you are logged out. The word “claim” will retrieve all pets y ou have at a given animal trainer.
* When clicking on someone, their name appears red, gray, or blue, depending on the following:
*** if performing a bad action such as theft, attack, or snooping would lower yo ur notoriety, they show in blue
*** if performing such an action on them would improve your notoriety, the name shows in red
*** if it would have no effect on your notoriety, it shows in gray
* The area west of Trinsic that has no bridges over the river will gain them.
* Ships and houses now put a duplicate key in your safety deposit box when they are built. Note that existing houses and ships will not do this for you!
* When you build a house, the key will appear in your backpack instead of in front of the house.
* Safety deposit boxes! All banker functions remain intact as before. But in addition, if you say “bank” to the banker, he will open up your personal chest. Note that there is a limit on how much this chest can hold! Also, gold in your account and gold in the box are the same gold; there’s just two ways of getting at it now.
* Committing a criminal act (an action that results in the loss of notoriety) will flag you for two minutes as a criminal. During this time period, actions against you will not result in any notoriety changes at all. Note that looting is not currently defined as a criminal act! Also note that attacks of any kind are still illegal in guarded areas!
* Herds of deer, flocks of sheep, herds of cows, packs of timber wolves, and small packs of undead will start roaming the land.
* Gypsy camps and brigand camps will appear.
* You will be able to rescue prisoners and escort them back to the location they request, for a reward.

November 1997
* Added a macro called “AllNames” that lets you bring up the names of everyone on screen instantly.
* Mining now has a small animation, a delay, sound effects, and autostacking of ore in your backpack.
Fletching and lumberjacking also now have sound effects, animations, and require “process” time.
* Gate travel is now two-way, so that if someone tries to trap you on a roof you can just walk back.
* There are now four damage types: direct (ignores armor), physical, fire, and energy.
* Newbie items are not stealable.

December is where things really start to pick up. Among the additions: Vendors, tinker traps, pack animals, the bounty system, orc mages and orc lords, circle of transparency.

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Compassion Dyes, Vet Rewards, and Publish 72

September 14, 2011 by Deckard

It’s been nearly a week since I last posted, and a few things have happened. Nothing too major – the UO team is still working through Publish 72.

From the UO Herald, Vet rewards are back online (but nothing new just yet) on Origin.

* Publish 72 bugfixes on Test Center

* Mannequin can no longer be placed outside of a home.
* Increased the point value for the Item bless deed
* Changed the name of the item bless deed to bless deed to preserve the rare factor of the original one.
* The Cornucopia will now give points as it should.
* Removed the cooking bonus from the full Fisherman’s set.
* Fixed an exploit with placing Clean up Britannia items in the trash can.
Please note: If you put female gargoyle cloth armor onto a male gargoyle you cannot remove it via the paperdoll. You can remove it by changing the race/gender. This is a classic client bug that will be fixed in the future.

And last but not least, The “Compassion” dyes were pushed out last week:

As announced in a previous news the compassion dyes will be patched into the game this evening. If your character is more than 30 days old and not on a trial account, you will see the dyes in your pack after maintenance.

Some complained about the dyes being only one per shard per account, but it increased the amount of interaction among players as they traded for them, and that’s not all bad is it?

Cleaning up Britannia, One Cake at a Time

September 4, 2011 by Deckard

. UO Pub 72 is in testing on the Test Center, and the Clean Up Britannia program is one of the additions that is being heavily tested. I’ve already posted some of the rewards available for turning in items.

UOGuide has a very comprehensive guide to Clean Up Britannia 2011, assembled by UOGuide.com users Gemmie and Cogniac. It’ll show you how many points are available for items that can be turned in. There are a lot of older items that you can turn in for points to apply to new things, such as archery buttes, armor, virtue tiles, and some new house deco items.

Highlights and their reward points include:
* Red Crystallized Essence 25,000 points
* Blue Crystallized Essence 25,000
* 120 Powerscroll 2,500
* A Tattered, Ingeniously Drawn Treasure Map – 1000
* Berserker’s Scythe 10,000
* 300th Anniversary Ball “Ask and thou” 15,000
* Janna’s Hangover Remedy 15,000
* Christmas Statues of Dawn, Katrina etc etc 12,500

Yes, the infamous crystallized essence is worth a lot, the most of any of the turn-in items.

At the bottom of the guide, there is a list of rewards as well. I expect that some of the values and items will change between now and when the publish is pushed out to the prodo shards.