Month: May 2011

EA Store – Buy 2 or More Games, Get Half Off Order

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I received an email earlier today, concerning sales on EAStore.EA.com.

It’s a weekend special for digital downloads (PC only) that runs from today, May 13, 2011 through Sunday, May 15, 2011.

I tested it out with a Stygian Abyss (Account Upgrade) which sells for $14.99 USD, and with the High Seas Booster Pack which also sells for $14.99 USD.

With both the upgrade and booster pack in my cart, the total was $29.98, with a discount of $14.99, for a final total of $14.99 for both the Stygian Abyss upgrade and High Seas Booster Pack.

That may very well be the cheapest SA and High Seas upgrades available.

I am not sure if this is US-only. It seems like the past several weeks have seen a huge amount of sales that have allowed a lot of UO players to upgrade their accounts or their extra accounts to Stygian Abyss and High Seas for a very reasonable/cheap price.

Check out EAStore.EA.com this weekend if you have not upgraded your account(s).

This is not the UO Game Code store!

Character Copy – Live on Test Center

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Kai Schober has posted the following on UO Herald:

Greetings!

The character copy feature has gone live! This feature will allow you make a copy of your character from any shard that supports transfers to “Test Center 1”. There may be periods of time where this feature will not be enabled due to differences in server versions.

To start a character copy, login with the character you wish to copy and go to a safe logout location such as an inn. Open the help menu and select the “Character Copy” option. Follow the instructions to complete your character copy.

For those who aren’t aware, this is the ability to copy a character from a production shard that supports this feature to Test Center 1. This is not going to be something that is rolled out that allows you to copy characters to other shards. If you want to transfer characters to other shards, those will require the normal tokens and they are not copies, but actual character transfers.

This feature is a way to allow you to copy a character to the Test Center and then use it to try out various things using that character and his or her items. You will not be able to transfer/copy that character from the Test Center to production shard. This is a feature that will come in handy as we move towards the PvP arenas being implemented at some point in the future.

Publish 70.04 Live on Test Center 1

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Kai Schober posted the following yesterday:

Greetings,

Publish 70.4 will be available on Test Center 1 today. You can find the publish notes below.

We encourage you to check out what’s new and thank you for your feedback.

Publish 70.4
Please join us on TC1 for a preview of our newest Theme Packs that can be purchased later this month.

Rustic Theme Pack
* Topiaries – goblin and llama – Entitled players can use clippers on a hedge and get the choice of a topiary
* Rustic Bench- Craftable
* Raised Garden Bed – a maintenance free garden bed to place your seeds in and walk away. No potions or daily care needed. There will be a reward giver set up in New Haven so you can get this item.
* Distillery – Craftable – Have a drink or two and tell us what you think.
* Board and Batten wall tiles – Housing Customization tool
* Access to the Encampment System – Commodity Broker or Pet Broker – Additional documents will be posted to explain this feature

Gothic Theme Pack
* Gargoyle Statues – Craftable
* Ritual Table – Craftable
* Chest of Sending – You can send anything in your house to the bank if the chest is locked down . There will be a reward giver set up in New Haven so you can get this item.
* Advanced Training Dummy – Craftable – Will train your weapon skills to 60.
* Gothic Wall Tiles – House customization tool
* Access to the Encampment System – Commodity Broker or Pet Broker – Additional documents will be posted to explain this feature

There you have it.

A lot of this we have seen in bits and pieces in previous client patches, without the formal mentions, or we’ve had to poke through client artwork and client text strings.

For previous stories and earlier artwork:
* Ultima Online Client Patches 7.0.13.3 and 4.0.13.3 (Spoilers)
* UO Producer’s Update – Enhanced Client, Story Arcs, Ter Mur, New Magincia, Vendor Bazaar
* More New Content Revealed – Booster Content, Plus Ter Mur
* Publish 70 – New Housing Tile Sets – Gothic and Board and Batten, Virtue Tapestries (Pictures)
* Classic Client: 7.0.13.2, Enhanced Client: 4.0.13.2 – Advanced Training Dummies, Rustic Benches, One More Housing Tile Set

The big question that is left is how much these will sell for. If they individually sell at the same price as High Seas sold at, there will be a problem. If combined, they sell for the same price as High Seas, then that’s another story, and it’s an interesting move. I believe that this will be the last of the true booster packs we see for a while, as they begin work on the Enhanced Client and artwork/asset updates, as well as the New Player Experience. It would be disappointing if they had to continue working in booster packs as it would slow down other areas of work that need to be done, including the ones I just mentioned.

I would rather they work on the long-term areas that need work over the next six months to a year, such as the EC and the artwork updates.

Why do You Love Ultima and What Makes an Ultima?

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WtF Dragon over at Ultima Aiera has expanded on a comment made by an Ultima fan, and is asking for stories about what Ultima means to fans, and what constitutes an Ultima game. It was based on this comment:

I think a thread should be started where we can all tell stories about why we love Ultima. Testimonials, basically, so we can gain greater insight into each other’s understanding and perception of the series, and perhaps in some way begin to understand what we as a collective define Ultima to be.

Good idea or nay? It’s been touched on here and there, myself included, but I’d love to see everyone’s experiences in one place. It’d be hella inspirational and maybe bring us together a bit more. This is a very fractured community at times.

and he went on ask Ultima Aiera visitors this:

So, here’s the deal. If you’re already registered at Aiera and would like to contribute, let me know and I will enable your user account with post-drafting rights. (I’ll still have to approve all the articles, thanks to the WordPress security model, but don’t worry…I’ll publish almost anything!)

If you’re not registered (how come?) and would like to contribute, send me your thoughts via the contact form and I will figure out how to post them under your name.

While Ultima Online has diverged from the original Ultima series a great deal, there have been efforts to bring the original Ultima stories and lore back into UO, and some of those efforts continue up through today, as we look towards the expansion of the Ter Mur storyline from the Stygian Abyss expansion. If you have some thoughts and time, head over there and post them. Even though it’s been many years since we’ve had a true stand-alone Ultima game, if you look through the Ultima Aiera site, you’ll find that people are just as passionate about it today as they were two decades ago, with fan remakes and updates still coming out.

Read the article and comments: Ultima Aiera

Harassment in Ultima Online

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Bonnie “Mesanna” Armstrong, UO’s Associate Producer, earlier this week posted an article about harassment on UOHerald.com:

By GM Acheren

Verbal Harassment is almost by definition a frustrating experience for those affected. Unfortunately we continue to see a few mistakes that turn many potentially valid harassment reports into situations we cannot assist with. As your glorious GM overlords we suggest following the steps below to avoid these problems:

1. Do not exchange insults or taunts with the harassing player. This is by far the most common mistake we see. If both parties are involved in harassment or the reporting player instigated the situation then it becomes mutual harassment and a GM will not intervene for either side.
2. Ask the player politely, by name, to stop. For example: “Please stop insulting me Acheren.”
3. Stop talking to the player. You may also want to leave the area.
4. Add the player to your ignore list (In Options under Filter Options.)
5. Wait a few seconds and if the harassing player still does not stop then you should immediately report them. Do not wait more than a minute or two after this point to report them and do not log out of the game before reporting them. Open your Help menu, choose “Another player is harassing me”, then pick “VERBAL HARASSMENT”.
6. You will be prompted to enter some details about who and what you are reporting. Keep this short and to the point. For example: “Acheren will not stop calling my llamas fat”.
7. Select the harassing player as a target. There are a number of ways to add targets, the most common methods are “Target Involved Players” which allows you to simply click on the character you wish to report and “Type Names of Involved Players” which allows you to type in the character name even if they are no longer online. You can always include a target, even if the other player has left the area or gone offline. This is the second most common mistake because with no target included the GM cannot see the chat logs and may not even be able to determine who exactly you are reporting. As a result the GM will not be able to investigate your report in any way and your petition will be closed.

Disruptive Behavior:

Be aware that in addition to the Verbal Harassment policy there is also a seperate Disruptive Behavior policy. Disruptive Behavior applies to the use of Vulgarity, Racism, and Objectionable Content in public chat channels such as the General channel. Unlike Verbal Harassment you do not need to ask players to stop or take any other additional steps prior to reporting this behavior. Unlike the default channels we do not tolerate the use of profanity in public chat channels so for Disruptive Behavior you may simply witness a player using vulgarity a few times in a public channel and skip straight to reporting them. For rather obvious reasons this means you should avoid responding to such players with more vulgarity in those same public chat channels lest you both end up in jail.

You may find a great deal of additional information on harassment in the following links:

* What is Verbal Harassment
* Harassment Policy

I have some ideas as to why this was posted, but regardless it’s always good to see the harassment policies mentioned every so often.

I found this line to be particularly interesting: Unlike the default channels we do not tolerate the use of profanity in public chat channels so for Disruptive Behavior you may simply witness a player using vulgarity a few times in a public channel and skip straight to reporting them..

I see that all the time in general chat, and I’ve heard that the reporting and enforcement between shards differs. I doubt enforcement differs all that much though, I have a feeling that it’s tolerated more on some shards by players than on other shards. It’s good to see it out and in public and publicly supported.